Day 96 - "Tim Tams"

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 fo