Creative parking

Whenever I park in one of the few remaining free parking zones of Girona, I am always struck by how creative the Catalans can be when leaving their vehicles. You will find them at all angles in every spare space. They are up the pavement, in front of the no parking signs and by nine-o-clock there is the barest of space to tour the park looking for your little piece of freebie heaven. Irritating though this is if you are forced to use your power steering to its max to get out, there is something so satisfying about finding just the right spot!

Of course you have to be quick! When my ever-patient father was parking the car a couple of years ago, having identified a suitable space, he kindly let the young lady driver past whilst he got ready to manouver into it. You can guess she wizzed past him, grabbed the space and went on her way into town. I was in the back seat bouncing up and down explaining to him the error of his ways. Speed is of the essence if you find that three by two metres!

Now I don't want you to think that the authorities don't clamp down on parking outside the box! Some days, out of the blue, (we suspect when the coffers are looking empty) the little, white, Girona Council tow truck will come along and take every dodgily parked car away to his den on the other side of town. Your fine is ninety euros for the tow, plus whatever illegible fine your ticket claims, PLUS the joy of paying the taxi to get there in the first place. The thrill is not knowing what month this will be!

Why am I telling you this?

I was talking to one of our visitors this week about Britain as the "nanny state" and how that contrasts with here. More and more aspects of life in Britain appear to be under state control. It seems that the British government can no longer rely on the collective common sense. One of the daftest things I heard about was a mother who could not take her children (who could swim) to the pool midweek as there were three children and one parent. She had to wait until the weekend to get the right ratio of child to adult supervision. What? As for parking, woe betide those who put their wheels over the line!

Rules for driving a car here, as with many aspects of life, are interpreted loosely. They are a matter of general guidance. There's a traffic light on entering our village with a trigger to slow down drivers - only the strangers comply and it puts the wind up friends who come to stay when we all sail through on the red. Don't get me started on the way they use roundabouts here!

Of course, there are laws in Spain for which a strict policing policy would be an excellent idea. Drink driving for instance, when a very lax attitude has meant that drivers still pile into bars for their mid-morning snacks and possibly a glass of brandy or red wine. I have wondered for years how good a job the electricians can do in the afternoons after a set lunch which includes a bottle of red.

However, there is no denying a certain amount of ... flexibility is useful.
This weekend the signs and lines told me that I should only drive right, down to the roundabout, and then go left. Nahhhh! No cars and left I went, feeling like a naughty school girl as I did so.

There is one group of drivers I have a special hatred for and would insist that all rules apply. I believe that in England you have a similar infestation - the owners of up market, four wheel drives, who believe that no legislation applies to them. High on my hit list is the guy with the Porsche who constantly parks on the single yellow line at the entrance to the parking for my gym making the turn difficult, even when there are spaces just 3 metres away. Oh, second would be the guys in the BMWs who think that the importance of their caffeine hit far outweighs the needs of the other poor loosers who must negotiate around his double parking for the café on the main street. Let's not forget the mothers in their enormous Mitsubishi tanks who deem it their right to pull up infront of you unannouncd to drop their little darlings right by the school gate. Can you hear the gnashing of teeth from here?

On balance, I shall continue to enjoy the laissez faire attitude to life's little rules here and continue to play fast and loose with the tow truck.

If you have any comments for me about creative parking or any other issues, please drop me a line on CanTorras@gmail.com or contact me via my website, http://www.cantorras.com/
I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
Karen

Timing

There’s an old joke that Eric Morecombe used to love.
“What is the secret to great comedy, Ern?”
“I don’t know, what is the secret to ...”
Before Ernie Wise could finish his reply Eric butted in, “Timing!”
Cue huge laugh at Ernie’s expense!

It occurs to me that the same answer is the secret to a happy life. Recognising when you are happy is a fantastic and rare talent. All too often we only miss it when it’s gone! Timing is all.
There is an element of luck to life’s timing of course. Good timing gets you in the right place at the right time. It means you get the job. It means you meet the right people. It means you meet that special person. It means the family comes along when time and funds allow. It means that the house you love is for sale when you have the mortgage. Good timing can be as simple as catching that perfect shot on the camera, and bad timing can mean someone else caught your embarrassing moment for Youtube!

I was thinking this week about how timing affects my life here in Catalonia.
I am an early to rise, early to bed kind of girl. From about five am I’m wide awake, but by nine at night my eyes are glazing over, ready for a good seven or eight hours of sleep. There is evidence to show that some humans, like me, are more alert in the mornings, whilst others are at their best in the afternoon. I understand this can change with age and can be tweaked slightly by getting yourself out into the sunshine at significant times of the day. Personally, I have had no success with changing my internal alarm settings! I believe that my body time clock was set for good when I lived for seven years in the Caribbean. Close to the Equator, the day light hours vary little over the year and so daylight usually begins and ends around six. That’s twelve lovely hours of sunshine for most days of the year. Fruit and veg markets begin at six in the morning so you are up with the lark literally, and conversely it’s time to forget work and prepare your sun downer at six at night. Simples! (Sorry, I’m a fan of compare the meerkat.com!)

Back in the UK being an early riser didn’t seem to be a problem. We know that in the UK the hours of work have increased despite all the labour and time-saving devices that have developed since the fifties. Economic and social pressures have meant our hours of commute, work and study have extended way beyond the hours of nine to five. Parents work longer hours to provide for the greater needs of kids, and kids work longer hours for the increased expectations of their future working life. The proverbial rat race! My impression is that despite the offers of twenty four hour shopping and entertainment centres, only the big cities had a thriving community in the middle of my night! I could fit in. OK, so if the best of entertainment programmes in the UK are getting a little past my bedtime at ten, I had no problem with theatre, films, eating out or meeting friends at the pub around seven or eight.

In Catalonia I have had some serious timing problems.
Here the hours of work and play can be very different to Northern Europe. At this point I’m afraid I must burst the bubble that everyone in Spain lives a more relaxed and laid back life compared to Britain! Siesta time is not a tradition in Catalonia. They are renowned for their business acumen and all that it buys. You will hear the same jokes in Spain about the Catalans and their close affinity to money as you hear about the people of Yorkshire in the UK! Thousands of families here have extremely long working days and this is nothing new. A second generation is now raising families with a strict study and work ethic that has flourished since the depressed economy of the Franco days of thirty years ago.

A typical, let's call them middle-class, family in Catalonia will have both parents working full time and the children attending a series of post school activities. Sounds familiar, but here the hours are longer. Children will be at school from nine to five and, after a small snack, will be off to tutorials, language or sports classes for an hour and a half each night. Meanwhile mum and dad after a short commute will start work at nine or ten am. There’s a short morning coffee break outside the office for half an hour around eleven, and a two hour lunch at one or two, but then the working day finally ends at eight. The family will not gather until nine at night for a light meal. Then, it’s a considerable amount of homework, perhaps some TV or computer time and bed rarely before eleven. Children attend a full day nursery from six months and most will start a school day at two years. I simply do not know how they keep going all day! In Andalusia and Madrid the bedtime hours are even later, and in the summer we are talking serious nocturnal activity!

So, how does this all affect me, the early bird?
Well I find it difficult to stay awake for most evening entertainments here, which would not dream of starting before ten pm! Restaurants are empty at nine when we arrive and are only filling by ten thirty when we’re about to leave. Daytime TV is still on at eight when I would like some R&R and I’m catching zzzs when the good stuff is on later.
The answer of course is to enjoy what you have.
I love long, lazy lunchtimes at busy Catalan restaurants where everyone considers they are having the most important meal of the day. DVDs and the computer give me all the entertainment I need on screen whilst theatre and current cinema are a special treat for visits back home. Finally, I relish the quiet morning “me-time” before the rest of the Catalonia starts its day.
It's all a question of timing.

If you have any comments on timing or any other blog posting, please send me a message.
I’d love to hear from you.
Karen

www.cantorras.com
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Can Torras, a rural retreat in Northern Spain

As the dust settles in the UK after another general election, and the politicians squabble and scheme to decide who the next leaders will be, it seems an excellent time to take you away from all this to a calmer, more peaceful place! Let’s leave politics behind for just a few minutes and let me take you to a little farmhouse in the hill tops of Catalonia in Northern Spain, where a farmer’s daughter from North Yorkshire has made a permanent home with her family.

My name is Karen Peirson, and for the last ten years my husband, two children and I, have lived in this very beautiful part of the world, close to the ancient city of Girona. Our farmhouse has wonderful views of the Pyrenean foothills, and as I look over the garden which is buzzing with honey bees today, I can hear the wind blowing through the cork oaks and Spanish pines which surround us. I would like to tell you that as I write this I am sat under our pergola, enjoying the valley views, planning to put a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other! Unfortunately, nothing is further from the truth!

What are we doing on this, a typical Sunday? Well, despite living in a holiday paradise, the mundane matters of life press upon us.

My husband is out mowing our large lawn with a lawnmower which has a wonky clutch, so has to be pushed the entire distance. Not the most relaxing experience, but a similar fate suffered by many good men in the UK on their day off from paid work! In the month of May we have a lovely green expanse of grass (and a good amount of green weeds) surrounding the house, which sets off our flowering beds of sage, thyme, mint and broom to perfection. We’re very proud of our organic garden, clawed back from an abandoned field, car park and terraces, but soon the rains will become less and less frequent. From June we water only the parts we can eat or see close to the house, and the rest turns yellow under the summer sun. It’s a shame, but we can put the lawn mower away until Autumn! Meanwhile every box full of mowings is used in our veggie garden as a water-saving, weed-swamping mulch. It takes twice as long to mow our lawn, but saves us time later on.

My responsibilities in the garden have evolved into the “pretty bits” and the harvesting and processing of fruit and veg. A very traditional role division between my husband and I, but one that just seems to have evolved naturally! I loved designing the cactus, grass and herbaceous beds and like a painter fill the sketch with colours throughout the year with foreground and background plants. Garden plants in Catalonia are at least twice the price of those in the UK, so extremes of weather can cost a fortune in the garden. Luckily, like my grandmother before me, I have very nimble fingers, and when visiting other people’s gardens, cuttings and seeds tend to fall into my pocket. I’m not so good at identifying them though, and must wait for what survives in the nursery pots with labels such as “sticky red seed bush”. Slowly, slowly I am learning what will survive the extremes of our hill top garden but they need help. As all the grass mulch is needed in the veggie garden, I have developed an alternative cover in the flower beds, using the left over plastic from our building projects and the masses of slate rock that our house is built on - no weeds, keeps in the water and shows off the plants – a result!

Today I have not been in the garden but cleaning in the house after a string of visitors. It’s a pleasure to have people to stay and see Can Torras and Catalonia through the eyes of a holiday-maker, but cleaning up can be a pain. Luckily, today the washing machines are working properly again after the long process which is electrodomestic repair here in Spain. Every machine has a different repair company and I have struggled to find the right ones in town. Then crunch time came on Friday - do I repair or replace. One hundred and seventy euros for an old machine or a new one at three hundred and twenty? Ouch! Our decision based on our “Reduce, repair or reuse” lifestyle was to repair. Today I washed and washed.

So you see, a typical Sunday is not so different to your own, but beneath the layers of familiarity lies a totally different culture which we continue to discover.

In the future, and with the pleasure of your company, I intend to dwell on the sometimes weird and the often wonderful experiences of Catalonia, and I’ll promise to leave my chores behind.

Join me again in two weeks for matters ecological, cultural and catalan at Can Torras.

Karen Peirson

http://www.cantorras.com/
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