Day 96 - "Tim Tams"

Spanish Practices - Real Life in Spain

Full transcript:

Day 96 Tim Tams

Friday and the I made a terrible mistake today, I try very hard now to avoid the TV news from the UK, we have enough to occupy ourselves here with events in Spain.

I caught a picture of Headmaster Boris holding a packet of Tim Tams up, from what I understand following a new trade deal with Australia you will get tuppence off this less than delicious biscuit from Australia and the trade deal will end up adding only a gnats thingy to the UK GDP.

Worse I then wandered into the news that the New Zealand trade deal could well have a negative effect on GDP, as things like delicious but cheap New Zealand lamb will lose its trade tariff that allows British farmers to sell their lamb at competitive prices.

I scooted away as quickly as I could, off to Facebook for some friend’s kittens being naughty in his apartment in Spain. Oh no! the next post concerned the much-heralded UK tracing APP.

The story that unfolded that Apple and Google make a free tracing App but the UK Government thought they could do a better job and got one of Dominic Cummings mates to cobble something together which not only didn’t work but drained everyone’s iPhone battery and cost a 120 million British pounds.

That leads me to remembering the plans for ‘the word that must never be used,’ the UK government plan to increase the number of ferries crossing the channel by hiring a company that crucially had no ferries or experience of running a ferry company, but was a mate of somebodies.

I turned off my social media and retired quickly to the uninterrupted view we have of the Mediterranean and a moment to reflect why we are here.

It is a courageous step to leave friends, family and one’s country behind for a new life. Population emigration research by Washington University in 2018 pointed to statistics that show up to 45% of people who leave the UK for a new life in the sun of Spain, return back to Britain.

I think we were both guilty of less than complex thinking about coming to live in Spain. We almost created a mantra of “when we are in Spain this won’t happen anymore”

Train delays – I remember sitting on an overcrowded hot sweaty train, trapped once more at the, once more, broken signals at Ingatestone near Chelmsford thinking – when I am in Spain this frustrating feeling of being trapped and delayed will be a thing of the past, I can sit and just soak up the sun.

How naïve, OK so there are no delayed trains here but waiting for a licence from the Town Hall to paint your bloody house, that takes more than eight weeks, the frustration and feelings are just the same as sitting on that train outside Ingatestone.

Rude and unpleasant people. Well working in London for over thirty years you learn to be a survivor, there is no time for friendliness, it is shove or be shoved, get to the front of the queue at all costs. Then witness someone who’s way you got in, turn and call you a see you next Tuesday and wish death by cancer upon you – when I am in Spain that will be a thing of the past, because everyone is so laid back there.

Naïve thought number two – it is true that the pace of life is slower here than London but tempers flare in just the same way, the swearing is in a different language and there is a deal more physicality in any dispute. But there is I would guess the same ratio of nice people and nasty people. Some of the nasty people have also been in absolute positions of power and living in a foreign country you feel a lot less empowered than living in your own native country to contradict them.

And so the naïve list goes on, the food is not better here, just different, it is a bit fresher, we have just had some delicious Mezula fish for lunch that would give British, well Icelandic, cod a run for its money, but if you fancy a Thai or good Curry, the Catholic tastes of the Spanish mean there are fewer restaurants or availability of ingredients in the supermarket than in the UK.

So, this is the long way around of explaining that we live in Spain because we accept that it is a far from perfect country, just like the UK. It has more than its fair share of absolute political twankers, if you are in doubt about what that word means look it up in an urban dictionary.

OK so I think the Spanish Prime Minister would stop short at flogging Tim Tams, but he has bloated his parliamentary departments to quite an obscene level in light of the crisis that Spain and the world finds itself in. And his Deputy seems to be channelling Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, after a political lifetime decrying the bourgeoise lifestyles of his opponents, the moment he got into power he suffered major amnesia and moved himself into a mansion in an exclusive part of Madrid, every time I see what my friend just calls “ponytail man” I keep hearing “four legs good, two legs bad,” in the back of my mind.

So bottom line, if you are fed up of the stupid and downright crazy things the UK Government are up to right now, and you think moving into the sunshine of Spain you are somehow going to avoid the realities of life, then you are mistaken.

You will, mostly enjoy better weather and a different pace of life. Or you might find you openly hate the culture, if you listen to some of the Ex-Pat, [hate that word], drunks sitting in English bars along the Costas, you would think that the Spanish are good for nothing and that Blighty is the greatest place to live in the world.

I remember a good Spanish friend saying to me, “If they, those Engleesh drunks, think England is so great, why are they living here in Spain?”

I know why we are here, because we love the place, warts and all, the good times and the bad, just like we still love the UK, warts and Tim Tams at tuppence off an all.