Young enterprise????

A person should be able to sleep in undisturbed on a Sunday morning. This is especially so after staying up just a little late on Saturday night.

On Saturday we caught a late(ish) train back from Villagarcía, arriving back in Vigo around 11 o’ clock. This in itself is not exceptionally late by Spanish standards or, for that matter, by Saturday night standards. However, by the time we’d had a couple of drinks to celebrate the chess team’s success in Villagarcía, chewed the fat for a while, solving all the problems of the universe and discussing the wonders of the world wide web as well, time did get on. And then there was the question of eating ... in the bar, which was a bit unimaginative in everything but prices or back home? Life is full of hard decisions but back home won and so we had a long(ish) stroll, continuing the discussion of everything under the sun.

So when I finally hit the sack it was a case of no alarm calls, just let nature take its course and wake up when it starts to get light. And as most of the estuary was under a bank of cloud first thing this morning it didn’t really get light until quite late.

Consequently, when there was a peremptory ring at the doorbell midmorning I was understandably confused. Completely forgetting that today is, after all, Sunday, I leapt out of bed, convinced that the postman was ringing the doorbell waiting to deliver some important parcel. So I flung on my dressing gown, pushed the hair out of my eyes and fought with the keys that refused to open the door, all the while calling, “Voy, voy. Un momento”.

When I finally got the door open, there was no-one there, just an empty doorway. I peered out onto the landing. There, at the next door I spied him, a young lad, aged about 12 or 13, armed with a shopping trolley full of packets of croissants. He was going from door to door, asking residents if they wanted to buy any croissants. Clearly he was a very enterprising young man, if rather inarticulate; it was very hard to understand what he mumbled at me.

What is this, I wondered, bob-a-job week? Is he a lost Boy Scout trying to earn his Young Capitalist badge? Is he on a Young Enterprise scheme? Has Felipe, Príncipe de Asturias, set up a Prince’s Trust to rival, or emulate, our own Prince Charles?

Whatever the truth of the matter, this bleary-eyed blogger said, “No, nada gracias”, shut the door and went back to bed.