Communication problems. And solar eclipse.

Obviously Tuesday was not my day for using electronic media. First of all I tried to email a friend and managed 1) to send him an empty message and 2) to send the message intended for him to myself ... twice. I still have not worked out quite HOW I managed that. I could blame the new(ish) laptop which is super sensitive. The curser only has to hover briefly over something for the computer to think you want it do something with that. I have to be extra careful not to delete important stuff all the time. Then there's the fact that I rarely use it to send email, usually because the machine is being used by Phil and consequently I use my iPad. But all of that is just excuses and the result remains a mystery. 

Then there is my Spanish phone. To contact family and friends in the UK I use my iphone, which is fine. But it's useful to have a Spanish mobile as well. So when we first moved out here, we bought a couple of absolutely basic mobiles for a bargain price of something like €40 - and that was for the two of them together. Recently, though, my little Spanish phone has been playing up. You charge the battery, make one phone call and then it beeps to tell you it needs charging again. Or you don't use it at all during the course of the day and the battery quietly discharges itself. So finally I decided to replace it. 

Off I went to the Telefonica shop on Rosalía de Castro. Getting to the shop was an adventure in itself. There is a maze of roadworks to negotiate and finally you arrive at the right place!!! The charming and helpful assistant tried to persuade me to take out a contract and get a very clever and quite expensive phone free. Not what I wanted, so reluctantly she found a more reasonably priced device on which I shall put a bit of pay-as-you-go credit from time to time and over a year it will cost me less than the contract, even taking into account the handset. My Sim was transferred and Bob should have been my Uncle. Except that I had the devil's own job working out how to send messages without having to scroll through options for each letter I wanted to type. And then I kept sending one-word messages to a friend by mistake. Wonderful! In addition, for each letter typed, the handset delivered a resounding beeeeeeeep! But I sorted it eventually. 

What's more, serendipity came into play. As I negotiated the roadworks maze, I recognised the chap at the other end of one of those metal walk-ways they put over holes in the road. "¡Hombre! ¡La inglesa!" he exclaimed. (I love the Spanish use of ¡hombre! To express surprise, even when addressing women and even when it's women addressing women.) It was Isaac, one of the first people I got to know in Vigo when I was trying to learn Gallego. We met at the Asociación de Vecinos Canto do Gallo, where there was a Gallego workshop, and he then got me to go the yoga class there. These local neighbourhood groups are wonderful, community action at its best. So we exchanged news and I promised to call in at the Asociación de Vecinos when I am back in Vigo. 

Something else: there is going to be a solar eclipse in March. The last major one was in 1999. I missed it completely because I was in a shopping centre in Andalucía with my sister and her teenage daughter who went from shop to shop, unable to decide what to buy. Maybe I will be more aware of this next one on March 20th, starting at 8.45 am UK time and reaching its maximum at about 9.40. It'll all be over by around 10.40. 

Authorities are in a bit of a tizz about it because we have a lot more solar energy than we used to have and so they expect the country to go into blackout. This will be even more the case in other countries of Europe where they are more Eco-savvy. Shock! Horror! Whatever will we do? 

 At least they are not predicting the end of the world.