Podcasts about lockdown spain

Monday and the day Bruce Forsyth didn't play his cards right, community swimming pools and dirty rain.  The daily Podcast diary of a British couple in Lockdown Spain, phase 2. Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 78 Brucie Bonus Monday oh how I loathe you, but only because it rained last night for 10 minutes, but it was that dirty calima rain, the brown sand from the Sahara fell and covered everywhere in a sticky glaze. So we spent an hour this morning clearing it up from the outside terraces.   If you don’t it finds its way into you home and gets trodden onto the tiles like Man Friday footprints.   Phase 2 here in Granada Province, more restaurants are now opening, the beaches are opening, you can get married and go to a funeral. I think that’s about it, I am confused.  We have kinda got into a pattern now, so are quite happy to make minimal journey’s and eat at home, for the moment.   We are lucky we have outdoor space and a pool, for many Spanish living in small flats with large families – it must have been purgatory, at least now they can socialise.  Even our friend Carmen was out with her friends yesterday, finally celebrating her birthday.   I have never been that good in confined spaces, I think years of working in radio studios haven’t helped.  When LBC was run by the TV news people ITN our studios were tiny, they were in the lower basement, although you were forbidden to call it that.  The Management liked you to say lower atrium.  But in reality the basement, next to the big pump that pumped the poo out of the building up to the London sewer.   The building looks quite swish on the TV, if you have ever watched Channel Four news, all that glass and lit offices is real.  Sadly, their studio is where the original canteen was.  The canteen was amazing, there was a roast of the day, at least two mains and a veggie dish and desserts to die for. Infact where Jon Snow reads the news is where the dessert cart used to sit, I can’t watch the news without remembering the delicious spotted dick that they served in that canteen.   The toilets in the building were another matter, the Architect Norman Foster built the ITN studios and had a love of Italian sanitaryware, so he designed these Italianesque bogs, complete with Italian plumbing and highly polished marble floors.   Now Italian plumbing and British plumbing are a marriage made in hell, our pipes are 1mm larger than the Italians, so the loos leaked.  Worse was if you were hoping for any kind of privacy whilst you were on the throne, there was no chance as the marble floors reflected you and your business to anyone standing by the sinks or urinals.   Also, less glamorous was that ITN only had one dressing room, usually reserved for the female newsreader.  So, the male newsreader would make-up in the toilet.  Nothing is odder than seeing Dermot Murnaghan putting eye shadow on and turning to you as you are washing your hands to ask you if he had put too much on!   So, I like to avoid working in small places, even though I am recording this in a cupboard right now.  I also think the trauma of once getting stuck in the ITN lift with Julia Somerville.  We had a stilted conversation about films for twenty long minutes of my life.   The famous lifts of ITN appear on Channel Four news, they were fast and glass, anybody with a nervous disposition would be better off using the stairs that were oddly hidden behind a false door, - another Norman Foster idea, I guess.   Chris remembers once Bruce Forsyth jumping into the ITN lift, Bruce stood beside him asking if the lift was going up to the ITV programme centre? Unfortunately, it was going down to the basement.  Chris couldn’t help himself and turned to Bruce and did a Brucie “No Bruce you want to go higher, higher!”     Bruce laughed, sadly it wasn’t his day, because they had summoned him to the ITV office to sack him on the grounds, he was too old for Play Your Cards Right.  So, he went back to the BBC and Presented Strictly Come Dancing and took his audience with him.   Monday and a Skype with a client, and a discussion about the community swimming pool. The complex measures to keep the pool social distance safe, hiring a member of staff and the fact that the pool pump needs maintenance, means our Estate will not open the swimming pool this year.   I think a lot of communities are going to struggle to adequately fulfil the rules that the local and national Government have laid down, the local main town beaches open tomorrow, I hope people do a better job at social distancing than Southend-on-Sea has managed these last few days.   This year the summer is going to look a much different place to that of a normal Spanish summer.  I don’t think we will see the usual numbers of tourists coming this year.   Flying will be far more complex, it was miserable enough before passing through airport security, add the extra sanitary measures, temperature taking and the like, not the best or most glamorous way to start your holiday.   We shall see, but if you do make it to Spain, you will receive a warm welcome, enjoy good food, beautiful coastline and countryside, that much has not changed in the new normal.

Day 61  and this is the story of a British couple behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain, the real story of day to day life under the Alarma. The frustrations of a loss of freedom despite the Health Region reaching the criteria for the easing of Lockdown, the Government have decided though to keep us in Lockdown. Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 61 - Civil Unrest and Manic Mondays It is Day 61 of our Spanish Lockdown, we have reached the point last week when we were hoping for a bit of freedom, by the end of today we should know, but last week the government didn’t tell us until Sunday afternoon.   Just the ability to pop to the main town would be helpful, a few restaurants open anything that would bring a touch of normality to our life.   Yesterday we spoke to our friends Shelley and Chris back in Essex.  Apart from going for walks they have not left the house, though will need to next week to pick up medicine in central London. They will drive in and only one visit the Doctors.  They shop online and use Amazon Prime to deliver anything else.    They can both work from home, Shelley has done an amazing job turning the office-based company she works for into a virtual office in a matter of weeks. But she has had to work very long hours to achieve that.   The one thing they miss is the freedom of spontaneity, you can’t just pop out to grab something from the shops as they have to say isolated.  It is the same for us, we are being overwhelmed with rules and regulations by the Spanish Government and the Local Government – The Junta Andalucia. And both keep changing their minds.   As a result, many are not sure when and where they can go out, or if they can travel to certain areas or how many should be in a car. The Police Guide frequently asked questions runs to a head popping 24 pages alone.   As an antidote to all this misery I have been wallowing in old TV shows, I discovered a few days ago that they have made some new Thunderbirds episodes.  Not the new Children’s TV series, but actual episodes of the 1960s show.  It seems there were a number of sound records released with adventures using the voices of the original cast and they have extended those recordings with extra effects and made them into new episodes using reconstructed puppets complete with strings made of titanium.   You might remember in Episode 43 I mentioned that my mother treated Chris a bit like Parker, whilst she was on holiday with us, Chris driving her around everywhere.   I always like those Gerry Anderson TV shows, for one they were made in colour and on film so looked and sounded so much better than the other children’s shows around at that time.   You can still watch an old episode and they stand up pretty well with the current TV shows for children.   There was one night and that famous LBC Arts show, sometime during the mid 1980s when Gerry Anderson came in with two of the puppets, which I think were up for Auction, ‘Lady Penelope’ and her faithful Butler come Chauffeur ‘Parker’     I have to say close up, they were much larger than I expected and ‘Lady P’ bless had let her self-go, her hair was looking very Lockdown – and her dress a bit untidy – but she did have amazing eyes.   Parker was in a worse state of repair.  The solenoid that made his mouth work was connected to a piece of leather that had rotted, so his mouth hung open like some kind of idiot.  He didn’t smell too good either.  That kind of over handled 1960s child toy smell.    But it was a pleasure to see them both close up without their strings.   Day 61 and I have spent most of the day in our little recording studio recording the last few children’s literacy scripts, having work forces us into having a structured day.  Although Chris can’t work at the moment as all the gyms here are closed, he fits in with my work pattern and will do something like an online class or watch a seminar whilst I record.   Yesterday afternoon I spoke to our old neighbour Erika, who now lives nearby, although we cannot travel to see her, as that is not allowed. She says she is going out of her head, living alone she just has her cat for company, she can’t travel the few miles to see her friends as they are in a different Province.    She hates going to the shops, putting the gloves on wearing a mask.  On the way home a few days ago she saw a friend from the local town, they stopped, two metres and more apart and started to have a chat. At that point the police passed, slowed down to have a look at what they were doing.  They both felt uncomfortable so decided to go their different way.   It is very hard to undo human nature, we are social animals and crave fellowship, social interaction – and these last few months have been very hard, particularly if you are on your own.   The Guardia Civil Police have produced a report, which has been leaked, where they fear if Lockdown restrictions are not eased, there could be isolated pockets of civil unrest in the Country.  That, although understandable, would be a disaster for the whole country.   Here we wait again to see if this coming Monday we shall enjoy a Happy Monday or another Manic Monday in Andalucia.  

We have reached Day 60 and frankly have had enough, but we are taking courage by channeling my Great Great Grandmother (Pictured in the episode art) This is the story of a British couple behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain, the real story of day to day life under the Alarma. Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com Here for: Natalie's Golf Conditioning Podcast  Day 60   It is Day 60 of our Spanish Lockdown and we have had enough, enough of the weather, enough of not being allowed, sensibly and with distancing, to live our lives, oh and definitely enough of the stupidity of some Spanish Government Ministers.   Yesterday the Minister for Consumers Alberto Garzón stood up and  said that “Tourism is not a strategic sector of the Spanish Economy”. Consequently the Government will not put any effort into starting the tourist sector up again, until next year.   Stupidly putting the jobs of millions of Spaniards at risk. Uncle Alberto also went on to say that it wasn’t important because “the sector only worked for six months a year and then didn’t actually contribute much to the economy for the rest of the year.”   I have to point out to Alberto that I tend to take my summer holidays in the.. well summer and that will be your explanation for why there is an increase of economic activity in the tourist sector during the summer.   It is bitterly disappointing to my friends who work in the tourism industry here along the Costa Tropical.  For them during summer they work very long and hard to run their hotels, serve their customers in their bars and restaurants, bringing money into the Spanish economy and employing ordinary working people across the coast here in Spain.   For the record Tourism represents 14.6% of the country’s GDP, it grew last year by 2.4% accounted for 2.8 million jobs and nearly 15% of ALL jobs in Spain ..but I quote Uncle Alberto “It is not of strategic importance.”   Perhaps I have lost something in translation, but I doubt it.   A Post on Facebook from Chelmsford Remembered greeted me this morning with an old picture of my Great, Great, Grandmother – oh my God she looks just like me except I have never worn black crinoline. Or one of those stern Victorian expressions. I am usually a far jollier person than Great, Great Grandmama. My Aunt May also saw the post, it has been a difficult year for her as my Uncle Thomas died a few weeks ago, they had been together for better or worse at least fifty years, she messaged me: “I am going out of my head here alone.  At the funeral we were only allowed close family, 7 in the crematorium, 2 in the porch six foot apart. My flowers were cancelled, so the Funeral Directors put a silk arrangement on the coffin.  No order of service, no cars, we just had to go our separate ways afterwards, quite depressing. I take my dog out about 6.30 then call in the Co-Op and get food, then I am in the rest of the day, just keep eating for comfort, no enthusiasm for doing any housework, just trying to keep sane.” The UK Government, or more accurately the Government that now only seems to control England has listed a set of daft complicated and in some places insane rules for undoing lockdown. Including the stupidity of this wonderful quote from my Facebook friend Max Ayres: “Apparently we cannot visit our relative’s homes. But Estate Agents can buy and sell houses.  So I put my house up for sale and my Mum is coming for a viewing at five o’clock.” Day 60 and on a brighter note I edited a wonderful guest for Natalie Lowe’s Pro Fit Golf Conditioning Podcast – Damian Hughes – he was talking about talent: CLIP ..down to talent 1’03 Golf Conditioning Podcast You can hear the rest of that Podcast on Monday Morning on The Pro Fit Golf Conditioning Podcast with Natalie Lowe, it is an excellent listen. He is also right, our dear friend Nick Ferrari is the Breakfast Presenter for LBC Radio, people often say to us what is Nick like in real life?  Well he is exactly the same as he is on the radio, just a bit ruder and louder.  But he fits the 20 80 talent versus determination formula. Last year he found himself stranded in France, due to an air strike.  He was due to present his Breakfast Show the next morning.  He told his other half eff-this I am getting back.  He hired a car, drove all night through France and then onto the ferry, arriving at the radio station just in time for his show in London – Determination. I think it is a quality we are all going to have to channel, if we are ever to break free of the power of ‘R’ the flattening of that curve that will help bring us the freedoms my sister in New Zealand is starting to enjoy. My Nephew has his birthday today and is going out to dinner in Auckland, as today their country reached level 2, well done Jacinda. Even though Day 60 has probably been our most miserable yet, the windy cold weather, broken sleep, comfort eating, drinking, stupid politicians, ..  I think I am going to channel Great Great Grandmama and raise my head and give the world my very best determined steely eyed Victorian stare.

Day fifty nine. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today Bosoms and Birthdays Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 59 bosoms and birthdays   It is Day 59 of our Spanish Lockdown, Wednesday, there is a rumour that Mercadona has masks for sale in its stores, and if so we will buy some.   I notice that the UK Government is encouraging people to make their own out of sticky back plastic and a pair of Val’s old knickers, since the episode with the Blue Peter Advent Calendar where my poor construction of the thing allowed family retainer Reg to be scalded with boiling wax.. I would rather leave surgical mask making to, .. surgical mask makers.   The day is dry and there is some sunshine, enough to clear up the mess of dirty rain that fell last night covering every surface in Sahara sand, three good legs cat is having a bad day, he has had several of his ‘fits’ and horrifying sight where his right back leg comes unjointed and clearly gives him sharp pain that makes him spin around on the floor hissing in agony.   Although the medicine we give him helps with the inflammation, it doesn’t stop the pain. When we enter Phase 1 we will take him to the vet, if he does need an operation at least from Phase 1 there will be staff to look after him, and routine or non-emergency operations should resume then.   Day 59 and our friend Carmen’s birthday in lockdown, but she has treated herself to a new red phone, I think it might by an iPhone, she really wanted a red car, but that will also have to wait.   I messaged Juan the builder, not the gardener or the estate agent.  He says that a plumber will call tomorrow at 4 to 5pm in the evening. The drip drip drip leak in the pool room might finally stop.   I caught a video of Sandi today called cleverly, of course Vox Tox, she was talking about the history of May Day.. social history is one of Sandi Toksvig’s favourite things, when she came to LBC it was my job to find and research at least a couple of ‘facts of the day’ for her.   No mean feat as the internet was really still in its infancy, so a mixture of slogging through Google and her mini book library of information allowed me to piece together the information for her the previous afternoon ready for her to arrive in the morning and turn it into sparkling, funny and interesting radio.   She is an amazing woman, I once brought in a very old Electrical Guide I had found in the loft of our house.  It dated from 1920 and was full of frightening illustrations of gentlemen leaning over a full sink of water to fit an electric razor to the light fitting.  She turned the booklet into twenty minutes of hilarious comedy.. genius.   I never made it to University, but my job at LBC was like being in the middle of a living University with so many guests that came in who were as clever as Sandi.    My first encounter with the Arts show I remember had an eclectic mix of guests there was their regular ballet correspondent and slightly built American lady who was forever going on about the Ballet Rambert, then a drunk comedic actor Terry Scott who arrived flustered and beetroot faced, reeking of Brandy who was probably appearing in a local pantomime, I think by then his TV career had ended except for his role as a voice on Dangermouse.   Then the final hour was the film Director Derek Jarman who had just made a film about the painter Caravaggio, that had a lot of male nudity in it.. one of those films that Channel Four used to show with a little triangle in the corner of the screen.    Indeed we would often sit around in the engineering department watching those films in the hope, for most of the engineers, that they might spot a naked breast.. or worse.   I remember we were casually watching one arts film and a lady with enormous exposed bosoms walked into shot, and we all gasped it was Angela, the Producer of the Arts Show that happened to be on the air down the corridor.    My Shift Leader Tony went galloping down to the studio, swinging the door open he announced to her “Hey Angela we’ve just seen your tits on Channel Four.”  She turned toward him with disinterest “Oh that, I did that film in my modelling days, so what.”  She said.   Just another evening working for LBC.   Day 59 and Chris has once again gone out for the weekly shop, he has returned with gin and cake, but no masks yet.    With the Spanish Government now considering the wearing of masks obligatory, we will probably have to wear one, if it gets us to Phase 1 and onward, then bring it on.              

Day fifty eight. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today Bombs and Bonfires Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 58 Bombs and Bonfires   It is Day 58 of our Spanish Lockdown, and what a miserable wet day it has been, chilly too. It is quite annoying that the UK is enjoying good weather and we have had, well really quite British weather.   A few days ago, we had a massive fire along the vega – the reed beds between Salobreña and Motril, destroying many acres of natural wild habitat.  It looks like it was started by yet another bonfire that got out of control.   Several times a year we suffer from bonfires that are uncontrolled, burning whole sides of beautiful rugged mountain landscape, destroying acres of plains,  leaving a blackened scorched waste.   Here between certain months of the year you are allowed to burn agricultural rubbish, leaves and the like, although judging by the acrid black smoke sometimes, the odd bit of plastic waste too.  The bonfires contribute to the poor quality of air we sometimes suffer here.   I can only describe it as the choking, smoky night after bonfire night in the UK.  I have no idea why farmers and small holdings are not made to compost garden and agricultural waste, as they are in the UK, or incorporate it back into the fields, instead in one of the driest regions of Europe, sometimes tinder dry, they can light a bonfire and choke the air with smoke.   The bonfire that got out of hand in Salobreña was also lit in an area outside the town curfew, so the Lockdown rules had been ignored.  It has left a great blackened scar along the coastline, I hope the person responsible feels thoroughly ashamed, but I doubt it.   Day 58 and a chat on Skype with mind coach and hypnotherapist Steve Simpson who is planning a new Podcast. He was speaking from a lovely part of Essex – Burnham on Crouch, probably one of the poshest parts of the county, where everyone has their own boat and makes that strange posh laughing sound. … when they hear something funny.   We talked about synchronicity how certain events lead to others and all of them seem to be interconnected.   If it wasn’t for my friend Diane, helping me get my first radio job and then when she left to work for LBC, I sort of followed her along and ended up at the radio station, I wouldn’t have had a career in radio.   It took me nearly a year to break free of the audio department and start working on Engineering live and recorded shows. What a relief but what a horror, as I had to work shifts, that included night work.   I don’t know if you have ever worked a night shift. Some people enjoy it others do not, I fall into that latter category.  Night-time is for sleeping.  Nights on the radio are populated by weirdos and insomniacs and sometimes insomniac weirdos.   One of my jobs later on was to answer the calls from listeners, some just wanted to call for a chat, some just rang called you an Effing C, hoped you die of cancer, and then would hang up.   Once I took a call from an Irish Man with a strong southern accent, he told me he had planted a bomb at Victoria Station and then he gave me a codeword, which for obvious reasons I am not going to repeat.   We had a special form to fill in to keep those bomb callers talking, I tried desperately to find it amongst the mountain of paperwork in the studio, as he was talking, but to no avail.  As soon as he hung up, I dialled 999 and was put through to Scotland Yard, they asked me what he said, and did he give me a codeword?  I said yes and told them what it was.  They said thanks and hung up, immediately evacuating Victoria Coach Station.  It turned out to be a hoax on that occasion.   To begin with LBC had a trained Counsellor to take the overnight calls from the nutters, but it turned out all the calls were from nutters. Then LBC radio, very early on, hit a financial crisis, the advertising revenue dried up and a large number of Journalists were made redundant.   But they kept the Counsellor, the reason?  He had a bicycle, and as they could not afford the radio car, they pressed him into service covering London news stories holding a walkie talkie as he cycled past police lines, as the BBC and their radio car was being held back, so he scooped a number of stories, broadcasting live to air on just a walkie talkie.   His name was Jon Snow and he is now one of the most respected Journalists in the UK, regularly presenting Channel 4 news since its inception in 1982.   Day 58 and it’s three o’clock in the morning and I am awake.  Once more I have just had an anxiety dream.  This time I couldn’t find my train ticket to get home from work at the radio station, there were lots of young kids, well twenty-year olds, laughing at my incompetence, one round face girl came up to me and said, ‘do you need some help?’  I said thanks and she helped me look for the orange ticket to get me home,   “Where have you got to get back to?” she asked, I answered “Southern Spain” she didn’t blink an eyelid .. well that stuff happens in dreams doesn’t it.   Then suddenly I was out on the streets of London, lost, trying to find the tube station and right line to get me back to Spain. Every corner I turned seemed strange, I didn’t know where I was, then I woke up.   Today the Spanish Government announced that anyone now travelling to Spain will have to go into self-appointed quarantine for 14 days! So I guess that ends any chance of international tourism this summer in Spain?   It is going to mean for many businesses that rely on tourism, some tough months ahead.   Meanwhile, according to The Seaside Gazette, the Town Hall at Velez Malaga have awarded themselves a whopping salary increase, their Mayor will receive over sixty-three thousand Euros and expenses paid in 14 payments, as Functionarios in the Town Hall get double payments in July and December, whilst the Town Hall is in effect closed.   So it really is a tale of two cities in Velez Malaga, the poor businesses and the wealthy Town Hall.. right in the middle of Spain’s most challenging times in its recent history.          

Day fifty seven. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today Railway Children and Sewers Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 57   It is day 57 of our Spanish Lockdown and the cold wind has returned and is blowing everything around, making the dogs bark and giving the usually mild-mannered Mediterranean Sea white horses.   I do love being by the sea, everyday it is different, different colours, from proper Med Blue down to slate grey, most days, even in Lockdown there are ships out at sea to watch.  From tiny trawlers to big container ships on the far horizon.   We also get from time to time dolphins coming to play and eat fish, so this is a special place only marred by the poo bloom.  The Mayor of Salobreña just refers to it as the ‘El bloom’ a line of scummy water that makes its way around the coast from Nerja to Salobreña, ending up on the beach.   The bloom is caused by the town of Nerja pumping raw sewerage into the sea.  You are probably asking .. well why don’t they have a sewerage works like every other town along the coast? Well they do, only it has taken more than ten years of misappropriation of funds, bad contractors, arguments between the town and the Junta to be built, but it is now finally finished.. only it hasn’t got any power at the moment, so doesn’t work!   The result is that we live at poo corner, sometimes the effluence washes out to sea – off to Morocco.. so nobody cares, apart from the Moroccans but often it passes by our house onto the tourist beaches nearby.   Day 57 and Juan the builder, not the gardener or estate agent finally called me back.  I had already called him twice, when I finally got through he told me “I am in the place of the wires, making electric shopping, I will call you back.”   He did and hopefully we will receive the honour of a plumber coming to give his expert opinion on our drip, drip, pool leak, it leaks about 5 litres a day, at the moment.   Juan says that there will be no further work on finishing our house until Phase 1 starts, he said “It is crazy we are still on Phase zero, I think the best is to make everyone in Spain angry or everyone happy, not some happy and some sad, but I am not the government.”   So we will wait and wait. This morning I read that South Korea has had a second wave of the virus in one of its towns, the same thing has happened in China back in Wuhan where it all started, so we will wait.   A post this morning from my old LBC colleague Andrew Cheal, who has been posting about Dominic Allen.   I met Dominic on the second day of my new job at LBC in 1983.  I had known his voice for several years listening to the Sportwatch show where we would record match reports off of, to use second hand on Essex Radio.   He was every bit a gentleman and introduced himself, wished me well in my new job as I gave him the reel of tape he required for his sports bulletin.   In the 1980s there was a great deal of drunkenness at LBC.  Pretty much the whole of the Management was the worst for wear post lunchtime o’booze.   Indeed, our Managing Director suffered a heart attack at his desk, collapsed on the floor and his secretary thought he was just pissed as usual from lunchtime.  It wasn’t until he didn’t move for a few minutes that they investigated, and an ambulance was called.   We had an overnight Editor who drank himself into a stupor, by morning he would be lying unconscious on the floor, people would just step over him as if nothing was wrong.  Eventually he would come too, stagger out and get the bus home.   But our Dominic was the master imbiber.  Dominic led a dual life as a Sports Reporter and an Actor.  We once turned EastEnders on to find him serving potatoes to Sharon in a scene where she was in a restaurant and he was the waiter, correcting her pronunciation of Vichyssoise, she called it Vicky Soss.   He was also the bastard policeman that took Jenny Agutter’s daddy away in the film “The Railway Children” He looked great playing that brief part as he was well over six-foot-tall and built like a brick privy.   That got him a similar role in the “Naked Civil Servant” where as an Army Sergeant he was required to stick a finger up John Hurt’s bottom. LBC Sports Editor Dave Brenner, describes that as a two-pint story.  In other words, if you bought Dominic a couple of pints, he would reveal all his thespian stories.   Dominic when he was very, very drunk would lose consciousness and topple over, all six foot plus of massive hulk would come thundering down.  Once at a party he had finally drunk the hosts’ liquor store dry and passed out he went down like a poleaxed tree, straight through the middle of a rather flimsy coffee table, turning it into two, two-legged side tables.   Then there was our famous open all hours drinking hole in Fleet Street – “The Workers” – one of the most mis-named club come pubs ever.   Most of the journalists could be found there getting tanked up and Dominic could spend much of the afternoon there, slowly drinking himself into a stupor. My colleague Rob Sims remembers one day when very, very drunk, Dominic was on the phone to his agent in the tiny little wooden phone booth they had in the club, when down he went,   Wedged at the base, the phone dangling over his unconscious head, The suave and former BBC Radio 4 Newsreader - Douglas Cameron took hold of the receiver and informed the caller "Dominic's just been called away."   Day 57 and the sea is gradually calming down for the evening, as each day passes normal real life becomes more detached, this is becoming the new normal.        

Day fifty six. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today Churchill and Porn Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 56   It is Day 56 of our Spanish Lockdown and the Mayor of Motril is mad, not in the crazy, dribbling eye swivelling sense, although she might be also doing that too.   She is mad at the national Government for setting out the criteria for allowing a Health Area to move to Phase 1 and then changing the rules at the last minute, but only for Granada and the Malaga area.   She has asked for a written explanation as to why they have done this? Many of the businesses that have prepared to open on Monday, now cannot.   One restaurant along the coast in La Herradura - “Bambu” had spent time and money flattening out the beach, laying their tables out at 2.5 metre spaces, putting in sanitation, buying food and bringing back four of their workers from Furlough.   Understandably the owner Darío de Haro is a little pissed off.  One he will have to throw away the food that he has bought to cook with, two what does he now do with the workers who he has put on the pay roll, with no chance of customers? There does not seem to be any coordinated answer from the central Government.     If the restaurants locally can open, there is a good chance that they will survive economically, this is the Secret Spain, relatively few international tourists visit the area, save for a trip to the Alhambra Palaces.   The tourists here are predominately Spanish, usually with their second holiday home here on the coast.    Day 56 and I have never read so many angry Facebook posts from my Spanish friends, they think it is all very unfair.   I have always tried to be fair, I think if you can, try to be kind too.  Maybe it comes from a childhood living in a small town in Essex, where life was relatively simple, the joys of going out to play and three TV channels made things, well certainly more naïve.   It was a tremendous shock to start work in London, it was a bit like starting at the big school where you had no friends.  On my first day I encountered a very bad-tempered Irish man by the name of Donal, it was Derek who was the first friendly person I encountered.  “Has Donal shown you how the Calrec mixing desk operates?” he asked “Er no.” so Derek showed me how the complicated task of bringing audio in from all over the world was achieved.  I managed to grasp most of it.   Then he took me to the area where we fed out audio to the network and showed me how to do that and what to say to announce each piece of audio, then he took me around the studios.   All the while he was doing this, he wore a pair of slippers.  I finally plucked up enough courage to ask him why.  “Oh it’s because I’m just ending a night shift, I find slippers lovely and comfy.”   My friend Diane rescued me at lunch time.  “Come on I will buy you a drink.”  We went to the Cheshire Cheese around the corner, one of the oldest pubs in the world, they still had sawdust on the floor.  There I met Carol the radio stations film critic.  She hugged me, looked at my stressed condition and whispered in my ear “Don’t worry, they are all mad here.”  I said, “Yes I know I have just met a man who wears a pair of slippers to work.”   I spent the rest of the day mastering the equipment, it was very complicated and not what I used to.  By the end of the day I had a splitting headache, mainly from the incredible noise in the newsroom, if you can imagine the clatter of thirty typewriters on the go, a constant swirling blue fug of cigarette smoke,-  it would appear that every journalist smoked, and all in a decrepit airless basement that was painted in different shades of shit brown.   Before I left I was approached by a guy called Ray.  Ray was the wireman, a job that involved a lot of smoking and standing in a small room of teleprinters that provided the newswire services the journalists were copying, .. sorry re-writing, to use for the radio news service.   He told me it was his job to rip the paper copy off and walk to the intake Editors desk.  I said “couldn’t the Editor get it himself?”  Ray’s face went crimson.  “Just let one of the fuckers try.” He said “And we will all walk out, you included.. er you are a Union Member?”   “No, er not yet, but I have filled the form in.”  earlier that day a fairly unpleasant engineer approached me and told me, “You have to be in the ACTT union or we won’t let you work here.”   “Oh,” I said, “so it is not a choice then?”    “Of course it is a choice, you can choose to work here or not, that’s a choice isn’t it?”  So I chose to join the Union and had to pay my subs up front.  “You will get your Union card in a few days,” he said and then slouched off back upstairs.   I told Ray this and Ray’s face returned back to its normal slightly ruddy complexion.  “Good,” he said, then he came closer to me and said “Do you fancy buying a porn video?   “What?”    “A porn video, you see we have all these video recorders to monitor the radio station and, well nobody checks, so we copy some of the best porn in London, proper hard stuff an all.. there is one copying now.”  He had a small TV monitor in the wire room, he took a quick look around and switched the channel, in one blink we moved from Mavis Nicholson to a woman who was inserting a banana into an intimate place.  I said “Well maybe another time.”  It put me off bananas for quite a few weeks after that.   Day 56 and last night we watched the film “The Darkest Hour,” with Garry Oldman magnificently playing Churchill.    There was a Churchill quote that has stuck with me today -   “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”    Thanks Winston as we need the courage to continue in phase zero.  

Day fifty five. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today The Pain in Spain. Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 55 - The Pain in Spain It is day 55 of our Spanish Lockdown and Uncle Pedro has succeeded in shattering the country into tiny pieces. Some parts will move forward to phase 1 including the Basque region which jumps to moving between provinces too, I am sure it has nothing to do with the support that the Spanish Prime Minister needs from the Basque Party. We will stay in lockdown phase zero.  Despite our local health area coming up to the criteria of phase 1 we have been lumped together with the city of Granada and so our lockdown continues. It is interesting a similar province like Valencia has been allowed to split into its health authority areas and not us.  I think the reason is that the government are frightened that if they open up the coastline of the Costa del Sol and the Costa Tropical, where we live.  There will be a great wave of Spanish travelling down from the cities to their second beach homes.  They are probably right. It didn’t stop us getting very cross last night.  My friend Pilar posted a very sweary post on Facebook, we all joined in, I decided to do my swearing in English, which she seemed to appreciate, nevertheless we all calmed down enough to agree that we didn’t want an onslaught of people flooding the coast .. not just yet anyway. What it has done is to fragment Spain into pieces, where one neighbour can be living in Phase 1 and enjoy the benefits, whilst another neighbour a few miles down the road is still stuck at phase zero.. what a shambles. Day 55 and the night was miserable, it is funny how much you are affected by the outside force of government and how miserable you can wake up in the morning, even though the sun is shining. I have busied myself – the best medicine – and connected up our cat 5 network around the house.. I know that sounds beyond boring, but sitting there with a soldering iron reminds me of those far off days when I worked for Marconi and would be assembling electronics from a schematic and assembly instructions. I didn’t regret leaving Marconi or the fruit juice factory to work at Essex Radio, but I was deeply saddened when I parted company with the radio station.  I had been a freelance for over two years and the promise of a full-time job was in the end not offered, so I look around for somewhere else and wrote on spec to LBC radio in London with a list of my experience, they wrote back and offered me an interview.  So I took a rare trip to London, found the wretched place tucked in a side street in Fleet Street, by the famous Dr ‘Dictionary’ Johnson’s old house. The interview was a car crash, I think at one time I thumped the table saying that I could do the job as I already do it every day for Essex Radio.  I left with a sinking feeling. A few days later in the record library I was assisting our Managing Director, the larger than life, Eddie Blackwell, pick his Jazz records for the show I was about to record for him, when the phone rang and Jean on reception said that LBC was on the line for me.  There followed a difficult conversation in front of my boss where they offered me a job. My boss Eddie Blackwell was a kind of east end barrow boy made good.  During the 1960s he worked for a radio station called Radio London, it was on a ship anchored in the north sea and was the inspiration for Radio 1.  Radio London was a slick American sounding radio station and he was in charge of RadLon sales, bringing in a great deal of money with big advertisers like Weetabix.. a fact he reminded us all of at least once a day. He loathed the control of the I.B.A. – the radio authority who dictated when and what we should be broadcasting and also should we dare to make too much of a profit the rate of tax leapt up to something ridiculous like sixty percent.  Eddie used to say “I might as well take money we make and give it away in the street as I would pay less tax.” Day 55 and we went toilet flushing in the big house, I removed a very dead cockroach from one of the bedrooms, it had stuck to the floor, but I prised it off and put it in some loo roll. So that was my bit of exercise today, frankly I just don’t feel in the mood to do very much at all.    Oh and we have a little drip, drip leak down in the pool room, that is coming from the joint between the sump drain and the pump… we are really hoping that will not need the pool to be emptied as it costs more than 100 euros every time we do that.   Back in 1984 and I started working for LBC, my trips to London were a great adventure, I had never properly commuted, though I did travel to Southend on the bus every day when I worked for Essex Radio.   So I got to work with Donal, who was a very bad tempered Irishman who smoked a pipe, he wasn’t particularly well liked, and he smoked that really strong tobacco which filled the already cigarette blue air with a yellow pipe fug.   There were quite a few Engineers who didn’t like Donal or his pipe smoking, once when he went to the toilet they filled his pipe with marijuana and that sent him berserk and then he went fast to sleep for the rest of the day.   Somebody else super glued his pipe to the wall, - he used to leave it propped up against a shelf, that again was less funny than it sounds. As when he tried to pull it off the wall the notice board it was stuck too came away from the wall and struck him on the head.   On the first day he introduced himself “I’m Donal and do you know why I hate the …”. And then he used the ‘N’ word, quite openly and went on with a long diatribe about black people being less than white.   He was a fairly incompetent engineer, I remember once Lisa Hampele who went on to work for the BBC, had tried to send him audio down the line from some far flung part of the Empire and Donal had forgotten to hit record, then she got flustered and her crock clips fell off.. in those far off days you had to unscrew the telephone handset and put crocodile clips of the mouthpiece connections then connect your tape recorder.   It all turned very nasty and we have a recording of her telling him to F – Off, which he did by cutting her off and her story never got to air. Everybody had a story to tell about Donal. I made a decision to get out of that department as soon as possible, I gave it six months and then I would move on.   Day 55 and the best we can hope for is that the Spanish Government realises what a muddle it has turned the country into and re-considers its decisions, it is very disappointing that they treat the Spanish like children but then if you look at the way some people have ignored social distancing in the UK.. you can hardly blame them.          

Day fifty four. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today naked women and fireworks. Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 54 Naked women and fireworks It is day 54 of our Spanish Lockdown.  Victory in Europe day.  Last night there was an enormous fire that stretched along the coastline between Motril and Salobreña.  The reed beds were alight, and the fire raged most of the night. It was finally put out at 10.30 in the morning. Weirdly it must have been reminiscent of watching the buildings of London burning in the distance after an air raid.  When I think about my grandparents and my mother, father and stepfather, they all went through an awful lot but the war did eventually end. When the war came to an end the street where my mother lived held a party, somebody had an old firework that they had kept until the end of the war, it was lit, veered off course and burned my mother.  Which is why we rarely had fireworks when we were children. Day 54 and this is a very sad day, we should have been off to Malaga airport to pick up our nieces, to spend a couple of days here, by the pool sipping cocktails.  Hopefully next year. Chris is busy talking to Petra she is very keen for us to go and visit the big house and flush her toilets, .. well whatever turns you on!  It is a bit sad and empty here, there are about thirty or so of us still living on the Estate, but usually by now everyone has arrived for the early summer. We are hoping that maybe some of our neighbours might be able to drive over maybe in a month or so and cheer the place up a bit. The sadness continues as our German neighbour Lena lost her lovely dog Rico this morning.  For quite a few months now he has had a number of medical issues, yesterday he took a turn for the worse, Marie-Carmen our vet gave him some morphine to help him through the night, but he was no better this morning so sadly Lena had to take her beloved dog to the vet one last time.   Day 54 and I was listening to a Facebook post of Spike Milligan from The Goons ruining an Australian news bulletin by interjecting jokes in the background.  I never met Spike but did meet Michael Bentine, who had come in to plug a children’s book.  I had a very interesting chat with him in the green room about the comedic actor Peter Sellers, who he described as a mad ‘see you next Tuesday’ – and actually used the real naughty word too!    It would seem that The Goons real success was that Peter possessed one of the very first tape recorders, a great big coffin box full of valves.  They would all go around to Peter’s and practice all the daft voices, recording them into the tape recorder over and over again, listening back until they got them right.    It was Sandi Toksvig who told me about meeting Spike Milligan, she was appearing with him on a TV show and always admired his work, so took a trip down the corridor to his dressing room.  She found him standing on the table pulling the tiles down from the false ceiling.   “Whatever are you doing dear?”  she said.  “I am trying to get rid of the *******g voices.” He said, “They are in here somewhere, and when I find them, I am going to rip them out.”   She realised that he was talking about the Tannoy that was hidden in the ceiling that the Producer and reception would make announcements on, seemingly it was driving him mad, literally. We went for a walk yesterday afternoon, just to the shared bins, which sit down below on the roadside, we bumped into our Belgium neighbour Enrique, who’s claim to fame is that he had something or other to do with Plastic Betram’s hit, Ca Plane pour Moi. He has relatives in Barcelona and says they are revolting. No not in that way, he says some have had enough of the nationally controlled police telling them – Catalonians – what to do.  There has been considerable unrest in the Catalonian part of Spain, During the riots in October last year police were shipped in from outside the province, who have been accused of being heavy handed. It seems that on the nudist beach between the Olympic village and Barcelona town the police spotted a woman swimming naked, they called out to her to stop, she told them to F off and then  said that they were not Catalonian so she wasn’t going to take any notice off them. That was enough to get them to charge into the water and haul her naked onto the beach, the fracas coming to an end with the woman biting one of the officers on the chin, hospitalising him. It looks like Barcelona and Madrid will be kept on full Lockdown next week, so it is going to be a difficult time in both of those cities. As they used to say on the Jaws films – “stay out of the water.”                                 

Day fifty three. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today back to the sixties and why the Spanish might face chaos   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 53 Buzz Aldrin and Marshall Tito It is day 53 of our Spanish Lockdown, phase zero hasn’t brought any real change to our situation here.  Except Chris has been able to go to the pool supply shop that is now open.  He came back with a boot load of chemicals, but the rules about car travel and distance continue and of course the beaches are closed unless you are walking along the beach.   Phase 1 on Monday might not happen if we do not make the criteria – based on number of deaths and infection rate.  But if that phase starts, we will be in a similar situation as the UK is now.   Spain can only dream of doing what Britain plans this Monday.  The Spanish press has been full of the news that Britain as a country has had more deaths now than Spain or Italy.   After having quite a simple childhood that lacked continental holidays with the only foreigners I came into contact were my Spanish Aunty Isobel and her sister.  It is no wonder that going out to work was a bit of a shock, working at Marconi was really a bit of an extension to school, we were all white working class lads, not a single woman in our group.   Britvic soft drinks was slightly different, a mixture of people worked there including the ferocious Zardar, I am not sure that was her real name.  She was an enormous woman with hands like a navvy.  Most of the men were scared of her, she could lift the bins full of broken glass, with just one hand.  She came from the “happeest country in ze world.. Yugoslavia, and the most vundeful leader – Marshall Tito, well I suppose it did take almost ten years after his death for civil war to break out in former Yugoslavia, so he clearly had a unifying control over the country.   It wasn’t until I got into radio that I started to meet I suppose you would call more educated people, including the kind of colleagues who would smile and be your friend and whilst your back was turned would slag you off and steal your work.   We had one such freelance at Essex Radio, I will call him Brad, that was a minor publicity agent who got himself some freelance work working on the Essex Radio Helping Hands Appeal.  Before you know it he had managed to get out Italian Maintenance Man to get him a desk, a phone extension and an in and out tray.   I shared a desk with the Junior Sports Reporter who was quite unusually a woman, she was kind enough to let me have a drawer and she had the top drawer, in return I purloined and electric typewriter for us both.   Her name was Helen Rollason, she was a petite attractive woman, who could pass for a young looking Valerie Singleton.  I used to joke with her that she should be on TV. ‘Don’t be daft.” She said, “Who ever heard of a woman presenting Grandstand.”   Years later I helped her put together a professional demo for Radio 2, where she became the first woman to regularly present sports bulletins for the BBC, I was so thrilled for Helen when the day came when she also became the first woman to present BBC 1’s Grandstand.  Her early death from cancer was an absolute tragedy, and I still think of those times now of sharing that desk.   Back to Brad with his own desk,but had now run out of work as the charity appeal had ended.  He was looking around for other things to busy himself with and decided that my job would be just the ticket.   I engineered shows, playing commercials, records and producing features for Essex Radio.  Brad decided to pick on the, you might say weakest, certainly the nicest man in the radio station our Sunday Radio Vicar Peter Elvey.   So it was decided that Brad should engineer the Sunday Show and Special Religious Interview that went out every Sunday lunchtime. There is a skill to engineering or driving live radio shows, Brad did not have that skill and you would often hear records crashing into commercials, moments of dead air and missed microphones.   Brad’s demise as an Engineer came one Sunday lunchtime when Peter Elvey had gone over to the United States to interview Buzz Aldrin about his Christianity and taking communion whilst on the moon.     Brad played out the tape, which needs to be timed to fit before the network news at one o’clock.  A mathematical skill I hated and used to check over and over again as the time got closer to the news.    Brad was full of bravado – he had told everyone that this was one of the easiest jobs he had ever done.  Brad also mistimed the Buzz Aldrin interview by a whole minute. For something so important you would make a decision to quietly drop the news bulletin, not Brad.   Peter Elvey had got to his last and most important question to Buzz Aldrin.   He said.  “Now Buzz NASA didn’t want you to be open about your  Christianity, I know you took Holy Communion on the moon, and I just want to ask you what that was like.”   “Well Peter I can tell you it was..   Clip Essex Radio News Jingle   Brad cut Buzz Aldrin off and that was the last time he did one of the easiest jobs he has ever done.   Meeting a wide breadth of people at Essex Radio really opened my eyes to the world. It was the start of a pathway that has brought us both here living in a foreign country, trying to make sense of the way things are done here, I hope on Sunday that we get the news we are waiting for, a tiny bit more freedom, a chance to go and buy Marmite together and sit and have a coffee with friends once again.       

Day fifty two. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today back to the sixties and why the Spanish might face chaos   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 52 corkscrews and ants   It is day 52 of our Spanish Lockdown and a Wednesday worry, the hateful weekly shop is with us once again.  This morning our neighbour was stopped by the police on the way back from the chemist. “Where are you going?” – back to my casa “Where have you come from?” – the chemists “OK perfecto, you may go.”   An encounter with the police in Spain is very different from one in the UK, where usually, if you are doing nothing wrong the police are usually quite charming.   I remember once when Chris was stopped for speeding with a blues and two behind us, pulling into the hard shoulder the W.P.C. got out and the first thing she said to Chris was “That’s a nice car, I have the new Mini too, and it really can go fast, sometimes too fast.” – And that was her very British way of giving him a speeding ticket.   Here they do a lot of pointing and waving and stand very close so that you can see they carry a gun, they wear a military looking green uniform - and it is for a Brit very intimidating and makes the process of popping out to the shops, rather stressful.   I remember coming on holiday here once and we had gone through the usual car rental hell of Malaga.  “Pleese be checking for any of scratches, or it will be our pleasure to make you pay for them.”   I don’t know if you have spent any time in the underground rental car park at Malaga, but it should definitely be called the twilight zone, a few sad fluorescent lights hang dejectedly from the ceiling, whilst you kids in charge of car returns, screech around the place.   It is hard to get your bearings, you have just got off a flight and suddenly you are in sweaty hot Malaga .. and somebody is asking you to check a car that you can hardly see the colour of, get in drive off in amongst crazy car kids, bewildered fellow holiday makers and try and make your way to the exit and twist the rental car around the corkscrew exit ramp up into the dazzling sunlight, find the right exit so you don’t end up going to Torremolinos.   Chris managed very well there was a slight disagreement about which direction with Chris veering off to the left, correctly, at some speed.  I said “Slow down, you’re going to hit him.”  “Hit what?” Chris still dazzled failed to notice he was heading at speed toward a Guardia officer who was flagging him down.  The Officer jumped back as Chris came to a sudden violent halt in our rental car.  That is the other thing, you never quite now how hard the breaks are going to be on a rental.   Chris eventually wound the window down, when he found the right bottom.  The Officer lent down, “Where are you going?”    “I am sorry I don’t speak Spanish.” Chris said, I said “He is speaking English!” the Officer said “I am speeking English.”   We told him we were off on holiday, he said “OK that is fine, enjoy your holiday.. and drive slowy!”   Day 52 and Chris returns from the joys of shopping in Lockdown.  No fizzy water and still no ant killer.  I am afraid I have taken to sucking the poor ants up into the vacuum cleaner where they have to Dyson with death.  I remember my mother used to pour boiling water over ants and they used to crackle and explode .. so I guess the vacuum cleaner can’t be any worse.   I really want to be able to go shopping with Chris, go to the big store, but the things we like to eat.  It is quite miserable going to the small supermarket in the town, OK if you like offal or chickens feet or just want to make a stew, but there isn’t much else in there.   It is interesting that the same supermarket in the big town has a better selection and things like sushi and fresh seafood salad, then we can go to the Hypermarket buy Chinese food, chilli, herbs .. the stuff of dreams.   This might all change next week if Andalucia sign the Phase 1 of unlockdown.  BUT there is an awful lot of political infighting were the Labour Government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gets criticised by the Conservative Andalusian leaders.  It would be more constructive, I think, that they all got together and got us through this without all the political games.   It took until the 1970s for us to have our first proper family holiday, I think my father toyed with Saint Tropez, possibly Marsaise or the Algave coast.  He certainly brought home all the exciting brochures advertising far off foreign package tours.   They were all deemed too expensive, so we went to Wales in the Hillman Hunter.  To stay at a holiday ‘cabin’ at Caswell Bay. The Hillman Hunter was a quite horrible car that British Steel gave my father when he worked as a salesman for them. Drab Green in colour, it had red plastic seats that you stuck to in summer and froze on in winter.    It was a luxury model.. it had a heater, no radio of course.  My father bought one about six months later and I remember him drilling a hole for the aerial, bracing himself as he hit the metal chassis of the car.   He needn’t have bothered as the drill bit went through the car body like a knife through butter, already the car had started to rust.   So we arrived at our holiday cabin, I don’t remember much about the cabin as I was so excited at being on a proper holiday.  Caswell Bay was actually a very beautiful part of the world with a broad sandy beach.   It only rained for about half of the holiday, so all in all it was a great success.  I wonder if this year’s summer holidays will have to be on home soil… if so I can highly recommend Wales and Caswell Bay.           

Day fifty one. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat. Today back to the sixties and why the Spanish might face chaos   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 51 Cops and Kaftans   It is day 51 of our Spanish Lockdown, and the day started early, Chris had a BBC interview to do on Skype, so I set the laptop up for him and got out the figures and facts just in case they asked him about specific numbers.   Today it was Sonia on BBC Essex, I like her and Ben her normal co-host. Having worked for the BBC it is refreshing to hear real local sounding voices, the radio station is run by our friend Lou and she tries very hard to make the content sound good.  It is really hard to do that as the BBC tries equally hard to be well meaning but often shoots itself in the foot.   Day 51 and my cousin, Pandy has discovered Facebook and also the irritating habit of mass messaging people.  It is her birthday and she is sharing the day with us, complete with pictures of when she was a little girl.    We used often spend a week of summer holidays with her and her sisters and brother Paul.  Usually my dad had spent the holiday money on booze so it was a way of us getting some kind of change of scenery.   They lived just outside of Harlow in a pretty village carved up by a main road called Sheering.  We used to go on the bus into Harlow and marvel at all the wonderful new buildings and go paddling in the municipal outdoor pool and visit the gardens.  I am afraid that Harlow didn’t wear that well and I am not sure anybody would make it a holiday destination town.   Tomorrow is crunch day for the Alarma, .. it might all fall apart in the Congress of Deputies.  Spanish Prime Minister Uncle Pedro’s plan for four phases of unlockdown and extending the Alarma have to be ratified in Parliament.   The PP party are keen to end the whole process and allow for things to go back to normal, straightaway.  The speculation is that they are all missing their mistresses and golf courses, or that might be the other way round?   Uncle Pedro has also been busy with the machinations of Government he has increased the bureaucracy by around nine new departments and sub-departments, so at least the Functionarios will be safe in their jobs if not the rest of the population. Being a libertarian northern European, I find the Spanish way of handling the crisis to be on one hand, strong and trying their best for the people, and on the other hand, stifling all self-determination an echo of the past before 1974.   For instance, I am not sure giving the job of deciding what constitutes essential shopping items to a military man is the right thing to do.  I think I will decide what I need and don’t need, to eat, thank you very much.    One of the most important things is of course Marmite, it comes from the Pound Shop in the main town, and supplies are running dangerously short.  We managed to order emergency provisions of Marmite and Custard Powder from the Costa del Sol, so might have to resort to that again as the Guardia currently turn you away from anywhere that your Postal Code doesn’t cover.   Back to the 1960s and my kaftan wearing Godmother Jenny, another family we spent holiday time with.  They originally lived in a place called Maldon.  A muddy sea inlet in south Essex that had some charm.  It also sported a Lido, a massive outdoor swimming pool fed by seawater that was supposed to be pumped in and out of the pool.    In reality it was a filthy botulistic infested tatty dump.  The only change of water came from kiddie pee.  I remember swimming in the Lido and spent the next couple of days with quite serious food poisoning.  So ill that my mother had to come and visit me.  Happy holidays.   My Godmother Jenny was a proper sixties chick, she was all for progressive education and we spent a lot of time learning things and if we were good we were rewarded with a star, that we could stick up on the kitchen wall league table.  I don’t think I ever made gold star status.. the story of my life!   They moved to Basildon.  My Godfather Gerald was one of the town planners of Basildon… hard to believe there was any planning involved in Basildon, but he was very proud of what he had achieved.    Years later working for Essex Radio we played a friendly game of Give Us A Clue against the local Police there.  Arriving we found ourselves in the reception area where some local was ‘going down’ there was a lot of swearing, handcuffs and a number of officers pulling him through a door, to I guess the cells.  The desk sergeant gave us a hard stare.  “What do you kids want?”  Well we were all quite young then, there was Yvonne, Nicki, me and possibly one other from the Essex Radio newsroom all in our early twenties.   Nicki piped up. “We have come to play Give Us A Clue with you.”  His fierce scowling face broke into a broad grin.  “Oh you are the radio guys.. come in come in.”   There was a buzz of a security door and suddenly we were in the throbbing heart of the police station, a slight smell of disinfectant and strong tea pervaded the corridor.   At the end of the corridor was a carpeted bar area serving drinks and the like and an attempt at comfortable furniture also on one side of the room  big heavy curtains obscuring all the windows.   The Sergeant saw us looking at the massive curtains. “Those curtains are special safety curtains.. cos the little fuckers in the street keep trying fire bomb us, bastards.” He said.  So safely behind the fire proof curtains we played Give Us A Clue – I believe the cops won.. well they usually do in the end.   Day 51 and I can hear children playing, there is a lot more traffic on the roads.  Whether tomorrow will bring a sudden end to the Alarma we shall wait and see, the Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez says if he loses the vote that will bring chaos, I am inclined to agree with him.               

Fifty days of Lockdown. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com A random handful of clips from the last fifty days of lockdown.

Day forty nine, Gin and Toksvig, Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 49 Gin and Toksvig It is day 49 of our Spanish Lockdown, the start of phase zero and limited outings for exercise both for children and adults.  The day is going to be hot so an early start to build some shelves for a cupboard and to finish plastering over the cables I had put in for the wifi.  All done by 10am before the sun starts to make things uncomfortable.   10 am is usually second breakfast time for the Spanish, so we had a coffee and a biscuit.   The sudden hot weather has brought with it many, many flies, they get it in the moment you open a door or a window. You can spend a great deal of time chasing them around the place.  We have mosquiteros or what the Americans call ‘screens’ and this time of year they are a godsend, that and have persianas or shutters that you can lower to darken a room and finally Toldos – awnings that come down on an electric motor and provide shade for the balcony.   In other words, it is all about opposites, opposite to the British was of letting as much light in, opening every window and sitting outside unprotected by the sun, trying to get some kind of tan before the rain starts again.   It always amuses me on those places in the sun shows, where the voiceover goes.. “and this charming Spanish house has a rooftop solarium.’ Accompanied with a shot of a red painted rooftop. There is no way on gods earth you would want to sit up on a rooftop in the midday sun.. you will die.   Day 49 and we are both getting worried about just how Spain will manage to recover from the pandemic.  Not only from a health point of view, but the Spanish economy, which still hadn’t really recovered from the 2008 crisis.   It is quite disconcerting to see the ‘militarising’ of the whole pandemic.  Whilst it was sort of reassuring to see soldiers on the streets, it was equally disturbing and you can’t help thinking are the military wondering if this is an opportunity, rather like the 1981 coup d’état when the parliament was stormed by the Guardia who took hostages not before they turned off all the TV cameras.. or so they though. Unfortunately for them, they stupidly left the main camera on and the whole world saw what was going on. King Juan Carlos denounced the whole affair and although shots were fired, the hostages were released without anyone being killed.    I worry that if Spain does not get some kind of tangible help from the E.U. the country will face bankruptcy, not at all a healthy situation for the European Union, but much worse for the ordinary Spanish who have weathered the storm of financial crisis that has dragged on since 2008, now only to get another even bigger wave of possible poverty and loss of employment and services.   We shall have to wait and see what the response is from the E.U. You always get the feeling that the far right is quietly waiting in the wings for another chance at a more successful coup d’état. This time they will remember to switch all the cameras off in the Congress of Deputies.   Day 49 and the afternoon has been glorious and I have been for a chilly swim with Chris he insists on proper swimming, today 100 six metre lengths.   Then my phone went off, I am trying to make the weekends different by not reading emails or going to much on social media, most weekends I fail, but Lockdown kinda merges all the days into each other – and that isn’t healthy.   The message read ‘have you finished the timecode editing.’ It was from my client Tony, woops, I thought the deadline was Monday, so I have spent an hour or so doing some work for him.   I got into Podcasting by accident, I was working on the Sandi Toksvig show on LBC in about 2005 when we noticed this new thing called Podcasting that was happening in the U.S.   Sandi is an Americophyle and she had noticed that listening to audio files called Podcasts seemed to be growing in popularity in the states and were starting to be listened to in the UK too.   So I made a ‘podcast’ a special episode of her show with a few extra bits in it.  Some very bright guys in engineering got it into the iTunes system and we also posted it online.   We expected maybe a few hundred downloads of the special show.  We were right we got three hundred downloads – in the first hour! Then hundreds and hundreds more. That attracted the attention of ‘The Management’ who decided to offer a subscription Podcast service.  The software was designed by a brilliant engineer who the BBC quickly poached to write software for their new on demand service the BBC iPlayer.   And I became the Podcast Manager, not only overseeing everybody’s contribution to the service but having to manage all the subscriptions and payments.. what a bloody nightmare that was. In its time it made a good deal of money, a NDC prevents me from saying how much, but it did well.   Now everybody seems to either about to start or have their own Podcast, even the two of us got in on the act with The Campen Players Podcast.. and now Spanish Practices. Day 49 is ending and a gin and ginger beer with ice is waiting for me, and we look forward to phase 1 starting in a week or so.          

Day forty eight, On yer bike! Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 48 On yer bike! It is day 48 of our Spanish Lockdown, slowly we are unpicking that lock, last week, the children could go out for a bit of exercise, today we can join them. I went for a walk, I planned to take a gentle ramble into the countryside, maybe accompanied by my trust tape recorder, giving you a walk with nature, maybe accompanied by three good legs cat, who I take, or rather he takes me on his lead.  He is a bit of a cat dog, in respect that he will tolerate a lead and loves to sniff and explore every nook and cranny along the way.   Instead we headed for Petri and Justin’s big house on the corner.  Petri called from the UK.. “Justin is worried about the tall palm, can you take a look.”    So we both took a walk to the house, took some pictures of the palm, it is growing the fruit tendrils, which Justin would like cut off.  When palms fruit they grow masses of these weird flowery things that one, make a mess and two are loved by rats.   It was nice to leave the house and to think that the Police are not going to stop us for going for a walk. Although back in bad luck La Herradura an English couple rocked up to the beach complete with deckchairs and picnic lunch. The sojourn lasted exactly ten minutes before the police arrived and explained to them that sitting in a deckchair swigging beer might be considered an English exercise – but not here in Spain.   Day 48 I am a bit filthy.  I got up this morning helped clean the pool, then threaded to mains cable through a wall to power our WiFi extender.  Now I have a very expensive and brand new MacBook.  After my other machine burnt out. I have to say, I prefer the older machine, it was better at picking the wifi up, it had considerably more sockets to attach stuff, including normal USB, not what Apple call Thunderbolt, the keyboard rattles, I loved the silent keyboard of the old machine, I could write little notes when when I was live recording with a microphone near by.   Steve Jobs mantra was always “is it better” just making something sleeker and thinner and shinier, doesn’t mean that it is better. It also gets very hot and the battery at the moment says 8% grrrr.   The local Spanish shy away from expensive Apple products, most of the phones you see when you are out and about are Android, computers tend to be P.C. based and much cheaper.  I think the Spanish are far more sensible when it comes to buying in to the Apple experience, as I guess the folk at Cupertino would call it.   So I have had to move the wifi nearer the machine and that involves drilling out more of the horrible white dusty rendering that most houses have on their walls.   So not at all the chilled day I was planning, then I fell asleep outside, in the shade but the midday temperatures have suddenly jumped back to what they should be.  I woke from my doze, overheated and vaguely remember dreaming about Barry Manilow, .. I have no idea why.   Chris has gone off for a walk accompanied by next doors dog, it is still really too hot to go out walking.  The Spanish are used to the heat here.  When summer comes you will see them in the early morning and then they disappear for the rest of the day, returning about 6-7pm in the evening where they will come out be social and finally have something to eat at about 10.30pm, after that maybe spending time out on the street or in a bar till 2 or 3am.   The late night life also includes the children who seem to be quite happy playing in the playgrounds until the early hours, I don’t know how it might affect their education and how tired they might be at 9am when school starts in the morning, but that is life under a hot sun.   The sun is not your friend and sitting out on a beach in the midday sun does really only fall to mad dogs and Englishmen. Oh and a few Germans and other northern Europeans.  The Spanish respect the sun, they hide away from it, even when they are on holiday. Sitting in the shade of a bar, drinking coffee, soft drinks or the odd beer, chatting with friends, that does seem to be what the majority of home-grown tourists do.   Early this morning we were greeted by another magical sight.. the cyclists have returned, not in great packs but enjoying a short healthy cycle for a mile or so and then back home.   We both had cycles back in the UK, I gave up cycling when a bus driver attempted to knock me over as he wanted to get to his bus stop I was passing.  I found cycling in Britain a cold and miserable experience, you seem to be universally hated by motorists.  The cyclists are just as guilty, some ride aggressively, through red lights and the like.  I remember once we were going to work, stopped at a set of red lights at London Wall, when suddenly a cyclist shot down the nearside of the car, smashed into our side mirror, breaking it off its mounting and simultaneously calling me a see you next Tuesday as he jumped over a set of red lights narrowly missing traffic coming from the other direction.   Here there seems to be a much more relaxed approach to cyclists, they are indulged and allowed to meander in front of you. I think it is because they are tourists and bring much needed income into the local economy, something I really hope will be able to start up again soon.       

Day forty seven, Bank Robbers and other Bees. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 47 Bank robbers and other bees It is day 47 of our Spanish Lockdown and the wind has dropped, the sun has come out and the world looks a better place. And you find me outside. Tomorrow we are allowed out to exercise, of course there is an awful lot of complex times and where and when you can go, how old you are as to when you go and there many tables to pour over to make sure you don’t end up with a fine from the Guardia. Municipalities under thousand can go out when they want.  Poor old La Herradura, a small holiday resort that was under 5 thousand on the electoral role has found it number increase this year thanks to the thing that must never be named, so they now have 5,134 residents, in theory – living there. So they have to abide by the times set out by the government. Our niece Facetimed this afternoon, she was surprised that we hadn’t even been let out to exercise from the start.  Britain lockdown is a much looser affair, with large shops already opening like BandQ.  Our own chain of DIY store - Leroy Merlin – still has it’s door firmly shut. I am sitting here in the relative peace of the lower terrace, probably the first time I have been able to sit down here since early February.  The birds are singing and there is a buzz of bees below helping themselves to the nectar from the wild flowers that are growing in abundance thanks to the wet weather.   It was a warm sunny day like this when we went to take a look at a new development of luxury flats in the small coastal town of Castell de Ferro. I think the word luxury gets very overused, you can get luxury chocolate, luxury bath salts and of course luxury travel.. well you used to able to.   The flats appeared to be quite well built, the one we had decided to invest in was somewhat narrow, had the oddness of the master bedroom having an onsuite that was also the only bathroom in the flat.   The Spanish love quite narrow small rooms, I guess that the British obsession with getting as much natural light into the place, just doesn’t matter as the purpose of going inside is usually to escape the sun and the heat.  You often see on those places in the sun shows, Brits moaning about how gloomy it is inside. So we couldn’t loose buying into this development, people were making fistfuls of cash, flipping properties within a few months of buying them. So it seemed a sound investment.  Spain was on the up, there seemed to be a building crane at every corner.  The sun was shining, and every night was fiesta night.   I guess with foresight, that Utopia had to come to a crashing end.  And crash it did, with the financial crisis, Spain, pretty much fell into the Mediterranean Sea.  The crisis unearthed all sorts of dubious land deals, even our block of flats was very near to an ancient fort, indeed the house they planned involved removing ancient pine forest growing up the side of the fort, already land had been cleared and the first flats built mostly with views of somebody’s rendered wall.   Worse the Spanish banks had been giving mortgages out to anybody that happened to be passing by the door.  Even our bank in the UK were, let us say, laissez faire.  We presented ourselves to the British bank and told them we wanted to borrow fifty thousand pounds.   We were expecting, forgive me, the Spanish Inquisition, what we got was a cup of hot tea, they took a quick look at our bank account, there was some tapping of computer keys and then a ‘ding’ and we were told the money would be in the account in a couple of days.   I don’t know why we didn’t hear the alarm bells ringing from that moment on, but my tea had even gone cold and we had enough money to put the deposits required down on the flat in the sun.   So the 2008 crisis struck Spain and the building companies went down like dominoes, the banks were left with bad debt and hundreds and thousands of half built flats and houses, a handful of ghost towns and even a ghost airport.  It was a mess, a disaster for the Spanish.   But never mind we have a bank guarantee, so we can ask for our deposit back.  They told us, “Er we have already spent your money so you can’t have it back”. We said “But we have a guarantee, that is against the law to do that!”   They said “Yes it is, and you are most welcome to sue us.”  As I have mentioned the legal process in Spain is slow.. very slow, like maybe ten years and very expensive, and you do not get your costs back, so you could end up seriously out of pocket, even if you have right on your side.   So the banks got away with it, as they often do and probably will do again when we are finally out of Lockdown.   That reminds me tomorrow we can both leave the casa, together, go for a brisk walk .. not too far and at the appointed time for our age group and health situation. So here’s to a change of scenery and a breath of proper fresh air.               

Day forty six, Blue Peter and Alcoholics. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 46 Blue Peter and Alcoholics   It is day 46 of our Spanish lockdown, Chris is busy watching a webinar for managing your gym back into business, it is going to be a long complex journey to open gyms up again.  They are a major place where contagion could occur.    Until there is a vaccine the new normal is going to be anything but normal.  This morning I recorded more of my children’s scripts, that kind of takes your mind of things as there is a lot of concentration pronouncing words correctly, enjoying what you are saying without going to Blue Petery.   Blue Peter is a children’s television show famous for sounding very enthusiastic about everything.  I mentioned once before when I accidently burned a dinner guest with my Advent Candle from an old coat hanger.   I worked for a couple years with Blue Peter Lesley Judd, she was great fun, a really heavy smoker, she would sit crossed leg on top of my desk tapping away her script on an old Remington newsroom typewriter we rescued for her, as she didn’t like the computer thingy.   She told me that a lot of her Blue Peter assignments were done on a tight budget, she said there was never a discussion about insurance or risk assessment.  She said one time they winched her across from a Lighthouse to a boat, she told me she was so scared a petrified that she wet herself, screaming out at the cameraman .. he just replied, don’t worry love I am filming only your top half the kiddies will never know.   I got to work with Peter Purves, another Blue Peter presenter and former Doctor Who companion.  We were at the London Academy of TV Film and Media, a rather odd place housed in the Church Hall of St Pancras.  The church was a beautiful Greek revival church built in 1819.  The church hall was a squat concrete ugly lump built in the early 1970s, we had our studios on the ground floor and on the first was the Church Hall used for TV and film rehearsal during the day and The Karate Club and Alcoholics Anonymous in the evening.   The toilets next to the little voice booth I used, would frequently block and raw sewerage would wash under the wall and into the booth, so it always smelt very strongly of room freshener.   From there we taught a variety of students, some already from radio and television, some complete novices.   Peter Purves had the glamourous studio with studio lighting and a camera with autocue.  I had the room that was used for makeup – so we were surrounded by weird dolls heads that the stage make up students would practice on.   I found teaching really hard work and although I enjoyed it, I can now see why teachers need six weeks off in the summer to recover each year.   Day 46 and Chris is busy with his webinar, telling me when the virus hit China and the gyms closed, and Instructors lost their incomes, one chain went on a recruitment drive and cherry picked the best Instructors, paid them a retainer to come and work at their gym chain when the pandemic was over.   We struggle a bit with the Internet and I was pleased to discover our Internet company RadioKable was now offering 40Mb download speed.  I wrote asking to change to the slightly higher speed.   The called.  “Mr Stephen, your mast is in a state of collapse, so many people using the internet, we cannot make you faster.”  A very pleasant man by the of Vincente said.   “Oh dear.” I said is there anything you can do.  “We can make your bill 10 Euro cheaper each month.” He said.    The Internet is almost as important as clean water and electricity, Spain has suddenly discovered that their infrastructure lags a long way behind other countries.  Fibre Optic is available but it is installed by the old state telephone company, who make it painfully difficult for us to get the service.   We had an Engineer come to access our Estate, when we told him that one resident didn’t want cables across his house, he said “Well you can’t have the fibre optic then!”  With that he jumped into his van a sped off.   We arranged for a fund for road cutting and applied for the licence from the Town Hall, which took several weeks to be authorised.  By that time it was too late, the old state telephone company had moved on to their next location.  So no Fibre Optic. The Administration is famously slow and ponderous in Spain, with many people at many desks in many departments at the Town Hall, all sitting as each individual piece of paper lands in their in-tray to languish a few days before the inevitable stamp of approval is dipped onto the ink pad and slammed down onto the application and then off the paper goes to the next desk.. and so on.   If you are coming here to retire and enjoy the better weather, which today is blowing a 60 kilometre gale, yet again! You are probably going to be fine.  But for anyone contemplating a business who has been used to the relative efficiency of northern Europe, you will need a lot of patience.   I think it is one of the reasons the Spanish work to live, rather than live to work, most just can’t be bothered waiting for that piece of paper to emerge triumphant from the Town Hall.          

Day forty five, Flies and Poolside Cocktails. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 45 flies and poolside cocktails Day 45 of our Spanish Lockdown.  When will it ever end?  Uncle Pedro, the Spanish Prime Minister has issued a very complicated phasing of return to halfway normal life. No dates, as it will be based on how many deaths have occurred as each day goes by. It is progress but it does look like international air travel will not return this summer.  The best that can be hoped for is that you can travel within your local region.   This is also the miserable day that Chris has to go shopping, he has to go to two supermarkets as neither are now stocked well. It is turning into an arduous task to find enough food and cleaning materials.   I guess that more than a month of Spanish manufacturing stopped has had an impact on supplies.  Today no bread, but we have potatoes, pasta and rice for carbohydrate.   Nothing to wash your hands with, but luckily we have a collection of old hotel soaps and hand wash that I am pressing into action.   Nothing to kill ants or flies.. a much harder call this one as we are overrun with ants in the house at the moment, three good legs cat doesn’t help with his twice daily fish tossing, covering the floor with little pieces of fish.. you can see the ants just waiting for their moment to carry off a tasty tossed morsel.   The flies I can whack with a handy Chinese shop swatter. But the tiger mosquitos are going to be harder to kill as we have about a week or so of spray left for them.    Whereas Britain suffered with shortages at the beginning, it does seem that we are getting a taste of that now here.    But as my client comedian Rob Deering said on the Running Commentary Podcast today.. “We have just got to suck it up.” As there are more serious things to worry about than getting fly spray and chlorine for your pool.   The Running Commentary boys have magnificently carried on running, both separately but together.  Paul runs in one part of London and Rob in another and we sync the two recording devices and their phones.. and it works really well until they get cut off, which is often.. but once I have edited it all together, they a producing a fine and inspirational show. Some sadness this week as they remember the London Marathon that will at best postponed at worst it will have to jump a year.   I was doing some charity work for Multiple Sclerosis teaching a Press Officer how to deal with live streaming and that’s how I got to meet Rob and Paul.    You can catch Rob Deering at the weekend on the Isolation Song Contest a kind of indoor Eurovision, check the link in the Podcast description, or go to Just Giving dot com, Isolation Song Contest for more.   Day 45 and with the shopping done it has turned out to be a fairly nice afternoon, the sun was shining and the temperature about 20 to 21c, but at about four pm the wind returned yet again.   It took us a couple of weeks to get over my mother’s visit to us a few years ago.  Having to keep working and entertain holiday guests is hard work.   It seems sublime that family would want to come and visit you when you ‘live abroad’ we were really looking forward to seeing our nieces visit us next week for a few days, they had booked the hotel and we were planning to pick them up from the airport and just let them chill in the sun and sip those much vaunted cocktails by the pool.   We are both desperately sad that it is not to be.  But having guests can be joyous but also a burden.  Many of our neighbours curse that they have so many bedrooms and that quite distant members of the family will suddenly descend on them, the children making a bee line for the pool, the adults helping themselves to the booze.. as “It is so cheap over here.”   I think if we had stayed in the UK and moved to somewhere like Basildon, not a single family member would consider taking a weeks holiday with us.    We love our family but love privacy too.  It is handy that we have a very fine hotel just five minutes’ drive away, or even closer is a large Spanish hotel that offers bargain rooms in the summer, well they did.   I hope the girls will come same time next year if international travel is once again allowed.. and of course there are any airlines left that haven’t gone bust, unemployment figures are going to soar so high I wouldn’t be surprised if UB40 put on a comeback tour.   It is far from all doom and gloom and we are very lucky to live where we are, a lack of bread and fly spray can be overcome, and there are much more important things happening right now in the science laboratories of the world.. as Rob Deering says .. “suck it up.”              

Day forty four, Tea and Pee. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 44 Tea and Pee   It is Day 44 of our Spanish Lockdown and we have cautiously put the cushions out on the garden furniture.. I know it is a bit rash, but looking at the weather, which of course was cloudy again today, it says there should be no more rain for a whole week.    The weather in Spain varies a great deal, it is a large country and the places with mountains and northern coastline can experience some pretty horrible weather.  We used to religiously watch the weather at ten o’clock on La Una, it came just after the sports news.   Monica Lopez is our favourite presenter, she always dressed as though she was off to a very good night out, sometimes she wore a cocktail frock, some nights a glitzy number for the town and there was one night when she was all in leather.. not sure where she was heading that evening?  Of course never the same dress and she has a penchant for a thigh length boot.  Her clumping around the set almost drowning out her weather news. whilst all the while there is tinkly pinkly weather music playing, possibly to hide her heavy-footed deportment.     The presentation of the weather forecast here in Spain is somewhat different to the staid dull BBC version. Monica throws her arms around like a Cervantes windmill, caressing the interior and exterior of the country, constantly moving from one side of the screen to the other, then she moves along the set to the different maps, clump, clump, clump and there she here is in front of the UV forecast for tomorrow - running her hands up and down like a dervish.   Most of the time her ample bottom obscures our part of the country so you find yourself trying to glance down the side of her thighs to determine just what the weather holds for Motril.  In the summer it is usually scorchio, scorchio.   Meanwhile back the BBC, we had a look around the weather department, a few years ago, Chris was the LBC weatherman for just over 17 years. A very nice guy called Nana sits at the top table and makes sure that each weather presenter goes to the right studio with the right forecast.  Don’t forget the BBC also have a world service.  Their bulletins seem to come from a little studio to one side of the giant screen that sits up on top of the New Broadcasting House newsroom.   Day 43 and yet again we have good figures for Spain, well I say glibly ‘good’ hundreds of people have died, families are mourning their loss, but the figure is much lower than a few weeks ago.  Also, they are statistics and I think only give an indication of the true picture.   A few years ago, my mother came to visit, we took her out in the large charabanc driven by Chris.  Although it had cost my sister and I quite a lot of money to hire, the Seat Alhambra did not meet with my mother’s approval, the door was not wide enough and it was too far from the ground for her to get into, helping her in was also problematic as her bad arm was the one required to help her into the car.  So, I got her a little footstep from the Chinese shop and that did help.   First stop was the Alhambra Palaces, it seemed only appropriate given the car model.  I enquired as to the suitability of disabled access to the palaces, there is none, but a wheelchair accessible map allowed a trip around the gardens and grounds.   We had bought the tickets from the bank so where able to use the online ticket machines, but we had to queue to arrange a wheelchair, which involved paperwork at the kiosk and then more paperwork and my Tax number and signature at the gate.   The tour of the gardens was a great success, my mother loved it and I spent the hour or, so the others were going around the palaces with her in the courtyard where I bought her a cup of tea.   Tea is a little problematic in a famous coffee drinking country.  Spanish coffee is usually strong enough to blow your head off and leaves you with a slight migraine and vision impairment .. but you get used to it.   To order something like English tea, you ask for Té Negro, that will give you a scalding hot glass cup of black tea.  Asking for milk usually gets whoever you are serving you quite flustered.. Café con leche comes with hot milk and that is usually what you get served with separately to the tea.   My mother was not amused and found the taste not to her liking. We spent the time talking about when we were all children and I think she enjoyed sitting there, but after the hour was done it was getting chilly and the day was over.   Success, so the next day we went up into the mountains with my mother and took her on a tour.. not so successful.  “Breath-taking views of the mountains mum.”   “No I think I will stay in the car.”   “Take a look at these wonderful Olive trees mum.”   “No I think I will stay in the car.”   “Fascinating Olive museum mum.”   “No I think I will stay in the car.”  Brian piped up “Is there a toilet Stephen?” “Yes there is.” I replied.  “Well can you take me as I don’t like those foreign toilets.”   I have to say Spanish toilets are pretty much identical to British bogs, true if you put too much paper down or worse they will block, but the same again can be said for the Lavatories of the UK.   So I took Brian to the toilet passing by the lovely Carmen-Maria who runs the little shop.  She sells or manner of local produce, wines, cheese, olive oil and the like.  I have to say the static display of olive harvesting is well, a bit crap, but it is a nice place to visit if only to pick up fine Iberico Hams.     The next day we brought in the reinforcements in the form of Mark and Maggie and that worked really well.  Far up into the mountains to visit some of the beautiful pueblo blancos that nestle in the Siera Nevada.   Both Maggie and Mark kept my mother entertained and Mark engaged her in conversation and the day was much better, only marred by Brian letting off a giant belch that Maggie, sitting in front of him said “blew a parting in her hair.”   Day 44 and a short exercise walk on Saturday outside is filling me with excitement .. but to dampen the whole thing down we might have to follow a strict Spanish timetable of exactly when we might be allowed out into the fresh air.     

Day forty three, Parker and Lady Penelope. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 43   It is day 43 of our Spanish Lockdown and I was woken today by the noise of the traffic below us going to work.  Which I guess is a good sign.  So far only construction and manufacturing companies have been allowed back to work.   The kids can go out to exercise and yesterday we witnessed scenes similar to the British parks, with families chatting away and kids playing with each other.  It seems it is quite hard to explain social distancing to a three-year-old.   We should be allowed out from Saturday the 2nd of May for short exercise walks etc.  It will be interesting to see how that goes.  The local main town has already frozen rent on the pavement café’s all around Motril, the Mayor, Louisa, is planning to allow restaurants to open for pre-booked take-aways. This will stop crowding and hopefully give some much-needed cash-flow for the restaurants.   It is interesting that the right-wing Mayor of Motril has done her level best to support local industry, going so far as to offer a special City Certificate to all the children who have been locked down for so many weeks.   Meanwhile on the other side of our bay in the Labour controlled town of Almuñecar, Mayor Trinidad has chosen to use the lockdown time to pull down the local market, on the grounds of safety.  A very controversial decision, which has in the past caused people to demonstrate on the streets.. something they were unable to do these last few weeks, whilst the bulldozers tore the building down.   Almunecar has suffered recently from past maladministration they have just been fined two million Euro for an illegal property deal, it does seem some of the old Spanish Practices are alive and well in some towns of Spain.   It is quite hard to get news about Spain, due to the law that prevents Google from searching for news stories from the papers.  A law that says the Internet is stealing the jobs of journalists by allowing people to link to newspaper sites was passed a few years ago.  It does mean I have to rely on the local paper “The Seaside Gazette” and a local online Spanish paper “Motril Digital” for substantiation.   The Press is in a major siege change across the world, we have all become reporters.  On this computer I am taping out this Podcast, I have a camera that is of a higher quality than the ones we made at Marconi in the 1970s, and those colour television cameras cost thirty thousand pounds each, and struggled to deliver 605 lines in colour that stayed stable.  The camera had to have two racks of equipment to maintain the picture quality.   Now we are all reporters with our camera smart phones and Tik Toks, Instas, Zooms and the like.   I don’t know why Spain chose to close itself off to the world, when it came to searching for news about the country, I don’t think it has served the press here very well.  There also isn’t the same culture of reading a newspaper as there is in the UK. I guess sixty years of Franco, the only thing you were going to read in the press is stories that had been allowed by the regime, so ordinary Spanish maybe didn’t bother with a paper.   Here in Andalucía illiteracy levels were, in the past, some of the highest in Europe from 1924 to the 1970s children left school here at fourteen to go work in agriculture.  Franco looked upon southern Spain as a breadbasket for the rest of the country, with industry centred in the north. Spain still spends less GDP than the other EU 27 countries on education.   Day 43 and I have been watching a video of the first radio station I worked for – Essex Radio. The original studios have been bought by a recording studio to make records and the like.  It is a rather unpleasant thirty-minute trip from London to get to Southend, I hope though they will be successful and it is pleasing to see a place that was built more than forty years ago still functioning.   A few years ago my mother visited us in our little flat in the village.  Accompanied by my stepfather Brian and sister Ann - we spent a week showing them the local sights.  We had to hire a very large Seat Alhambra so that we could take everybody in one car.   I see we take, it was poor Chris who had to do all the driving in this enormous beast of a vehicle.  When he was driving the oddest thing occurred, my mother completely ignored him, he said even Lady Penlope’s Parker was treated better.   I don’t think it was intentional, but when at the end of the holiday we were at Malaga Handling and Chris went to say goodbye, at that very moment the buggy to take my mother and Brian to the gate arrived and my mother pushed Chris out of the way and jumped up into the vehicle to be whisked at some considerable speed away to their waiting flight, only my sister waving us goodbye as they disappeared into the scattering holiday makers waiting in queues for their flights.   I have been spending a lot of time in our little studio recording online learning, so far today I have been a porcupine a duck a fox and a small girl, this afternoon I worked for another client for a medical product, for a moment it was quite hard to be a grown up, I wonder if the last few months of incarceration is slowly turning us all into little kids again.  I have one friend who is making Lego and another doing jigsaws.   Evening has come and it is time for my hot milk and cookies before I go to bed and dream of being an astronaut – good night everyone.          

Day forty two, Killer Prawns and Jeremy Clarkson. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.   Find out more at: https://www.thesecretspain.com Day 42 Killer Prawns and Jeremy Clarkson   It is day 42 of our Spanish Lockdown and Jen and Jack have sent us a picture from their balcony showing a little girl excitedly whizzing down the road on her tiny scooter.   For the children of Spain, today is a red-letter day.  They are now allowed out once a day for a short exercise period.  For many who live in the small flats that are dotted along this coastline, it must truly feel like freedom.   The news gets better, cautiously the curve seems to be flattening, so much so that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will allow us all out for a short exercise period from Saturday May 2nd    Last night we watched Jeremy Clarkson with a YouTube live edition of Drive Tribe, the previous night I had a strange unrelated dream about Jeremy Clarkson, he was demanding all sorts of things that I had to do and was asking me to edit some books he was producing, then weirdly yesterday evening we fired up YouTube and found the first recommended live event was a Drive Tribe live interview between him and the recently recovered Grand Tour and former Top Gear Producer Andy Wilman.   Loath him or love him, he made thirty minutes of live lockdown TV that was far better than the uncomfortable Children in Need, Comic Relief affair this week from the BBC.   Andy Wilman had chosen to swig Corona Beer during the whole interview, and we got to learn a candid, maybe too candid behind the scenes view of what it is like to work with Amazon. Andy looked very pasty faced and had clearly had a rough time with Covid 19, whereas Clarkson looked like he had been at the port, but the reality was he was badly sunburn from sitting in the back yard of his Cotswolds farm.   It was funny and raw, quite rude in places and maybe the future of TV?   I don’t know a lot about cars, back in 1997 I was Producing a Car Maintenance Show for LBC and decided that the Expert we had on air didn’t really know enough about cars either.  He was a nice enough guy, I liked him as he was a short arse like me.  So I sacked Richard Hammond from the show .. I often wonder to this day whatever happened to him.   Day 42 and the morning was dry.. no rain and the sun was trying to peak through the cloud.  An opportunity to clear up the mess the dirty rain had made the previous day.   For some complex meteorological reason, sometimes when it rains, it rains Sahara sand – a dirty brown sticky mess that dries like glue all over everything and everywhere.  It is a bugger to get off the terrace.  My Spanish neighbour José uses his Karcher, I prefer a mop, so spent more than two hours this morning cleaning everywhere down, finishing by putting the little plastic robot tank cleaner into the pool to clean that up.   We naively thought that we were leaving outdoor dirt behind when we came to Spain.. as of course it was always sunny and every hotel we stayed at had immaculate grounds.   How stupid could we have been, first hotels have an army of staff that clear up all the time and secondly it does rain and here we do get a lot of wind. And a lot of mess too.   The devils plant also grows here in abundance – Bougainvillea – oh yes you might be shouting at me that it is a beautiful plant.  But it is an absolute horror, apart from the really sharp thorns it has, it grows like a bloody weed and its sodding beautiful flowers constantly fall off and almost instantly dry into a paper thin, drain blocking, pool pump wrecking menace.   Then there is Oleander another ghastly and very poisonous toxic plant, ingestion of any part of this plant can make you seriously ill and even cause death.  Burning the leaves is equally toxic too.  Sorry to be so brutal about two of the most loved plants in the Mediterranean but neither of them are going to get planted in our garden.   Day 42 and the weather has changed back to being cold and windy, Chris is cooking the three good legs cat his fish.  He can no longer digest ordinary cat food, he can manage his little biscuits, but wet cat food has a most unpleasant effect at either end of his body, so he has frozen Panga fish from Vietnam for his breakfast and tea.     My mother’s visit to see us a few years ago in the village was delightful but hard work.  We were living in a little flat and had managed to rent another flat in the same block on the first floor for her visit.   My mother and Brian are old folk and set in their ways and there were more riders than a pop star diva for their visit.  A list of English food was required including English butter, cheese and my stepfather Brian’s favourite – north Atlantic Prawns.  He specifically said that “I don’t want any of those Spanish prawns Stephen.”   We found some frozen ‘prawn cocktail’ type prawns in the local Hypermarket they were nearly 8 Euros for a small packet. Anyway, my mother and Brian were on holiday, so we bought them for their arrival, put some in the freezer and a serving in the fridge to defrost.   My Mother and Stepfather have very prescribed eating times, and I am afraid to say under Lockdown we are the same too, looking forward to and eating meals at pretty much the same time every day now.   So, Teatime was at 5.30pm our time, and my sister was in charge of helping my mother prepare their tea in the ‘foreign kitchen’, as my mother described it.   There was a lot of drama around every meal time, I think I am very much the same as my mother and can create quite a lot of drama over nothing.. it must be something in the family DNA.   Half way through the week Brian surprised me by ordering a large plate of Gambas in a restaurant and finishing the whole plate off with great gusto.  “Those were lovely Stephen.” He told me, “But I thought you didn’t like ‘Spanish’ prawns.”  “Well I do now!” he chuckled.   At the end of the week, I asked him if he had enjoyed his English prawns.  “No,” he said in a very matter of the fact way.  “They were very slimy, so have not eaten them all.”   At nearly 8 Euros I wasn’t going to waste them so a few days later we fished them out of our freezer, having moved them back down to our flat. And I looked at the defrost instructions. It said in Spanish “This product must be cooked before being eaten.” ..woops