Topsy Turvy

We’ve been watching BBC news on TV at our friend Colin’s house. The reports are all full of stuff about the UK heat wave: how hot it is, problems with forest fires, problems at A & E as people turn up with heat stroke and sunburn. I suppose the last is a consequence of the sudden onset of the heat. No-one had time to adjust gradually. Forget about spring; the weather went from winter to summer almost overnight. 

Here, on the other hand, we continue to have mist and this time it’s not shifting to give blue sky and sunshine by lunchtime, something we had got used to. How weird? It’s probably hotter in Saddleworth than it is here. 

The other item in the news has been the cost entertaining children in the summer holidays. There really must be very little going on in the country if they have to spend so much time on hot weather and entertainment. 

They had pundits going on about the difficulty of keeping the children busy and happy. There is lots of advice on how to organise an “event”, even if it’s just a picnic, more or less every day. I wonder what happened to “playing out” which occupied a fair amount of my time during the holidays. Children here seem to do it but during the evening in the squares in town, while their parents also sit out. 
 
There’s the difference, of course: that custom of going and sitting out in the evening and letting the children run around, as these were doing at around 10 o'clock last night. 

The other thing I used to do as a child in the summer holidays was go to the library and get a stack of books to read. I even had arguments with the librarian if she thought I took them back too soon. Now, of course, the children prefer to play on their electronic games, even quite small children. 

I’m still using the library, here more than in the UK I must admit. And so, from what I have read recently, are rather more Spaniards than used to be the case. Back in 2003, a survey on reading habits placed Spain, along with Portugal and Greece, down towards the bottom of the reading table. Only 47% of people said they had read at least one book in the previous year. In the UK and Scandinavia it was 70%, which still doesn’t strike me as fantastic but then I’m a bit of a reading fanatic. But now, it seems reading is making a come-back in Spain. 

Possibly as a result of the high unemployment rate, people are going to the library and borrowing books. What’s more, whereas it used to be mainly women doing the borrowing, now they are finding more men are doing so. In Andalucía library use has gone up by 50.6% and in Seville it has done so by an amazing 150%!!! 

People are also going in to use the computers. An estimated 40% of Spanish schoolchildren don’t have internet access at home and so they use the library wifi. And people who may have had to cut their internet connection as an economy measure are taking their laptops along to libraries to log in there. 

In some places they are also finding an increase in homeless people using the libraries, partly as a place to keep cool (this would not work in the Vigo library which is ALWAYS far too hot) and in some cases going in to use the bathroom facilities to have a wash and brush up. 

The best story I heard was a working class district of Granada where the library had been officially closed two years ago as part of the cuts. Local people have re-opened their library, staffing it with volunteers and keeping the place going despite the fact that there is no electricity or running water. 

They are a bit concerned about what will happen in winter as the days grow shorter but for the moment they are carrying on: business as usual.