Keeping an eye on things!

Walking around Vigo, we notice some changes. Nothing radical. A few more empty "bajos". A few new places open but not that many. I wonder if at some point they will stop building blocks of flats with the ground floor organised for shops and cafes. It would be a shame because it creates an instant community but if they are going to stand empty, is it really worth it? It would be possible for someone to do a study of this phenomenon. I have no scientific or statistical basis for this but it occurs to me that the creation of shopping centres, such as the one where the Carrefour supermarket is at the end of our street, has "stolen" the shops that might otherwise have been located in the empty "bajos". It's a theory. 

In the flats they finished last year just a short distance from our tower block it isn't just the "bajos" that stand empty. The whole block appears to be unoccupied. Presumably nobody has the money to purchase newly built flats. And so the block stands there, a huge white elephant. 

Closer to the town centre the new train station is coming on apace, even if the date for the arrival of the super fast train is still perhaps uncertain. There is a huge, and I mean really huge, car park. Are they anticipating lots of commuters parking there every day? Might people travel to and from Madrid daily? For the poor pedestrians it will be a long, long walk from the station forecourt (is that the right word for the place where the tickets are sold and you finally get onto the platforms?) to the final exit from the station and out into the centre of Vigo. And there are still huge empty areas at the moment. Are they to be filled with the kind of shopping area you find at big stations in the UK? Piccadilly station in Manchester is like an airport except, of course, for the fact that the shops do not give you a duty free reduction. 

The old chap who used to sleep, possibly even live, in a shop doorway on Calle Urzáiz has disappeared. He was there for well over a year with his suitcase full of stuff, his sleeping bag and blankets. I just hope he has found somewhere warmer and more permanent.

The main streets of the town are all decorated, in readiness for "entroido", carnival, I suppose. Lent starts on Tuesday, after all. On closer inspection, the decorations look remarkably like the Christmas lights that went up at the end of November. There are the same stars and baubles. Of course, I have not seen them switched on this time, so I cannot absolutely confirm that they are the same blue and white street decorations. However, the fact that on Monday I spotted a couple of sneaky Christmas trees still standing at the end of Príncipe, where the big lamp is and where the buses stop, must be significant. They had been removed yesterday when i went into town. It would make sense not to pay someone to put up decorations in November, take them down in early January and then put them up AGAIN in early February. It's rather like those people who leave the fake icicles hanging from their houses all year round and just switch them on for the Christmas period. 

Here's an odd fact: according to a poll of 11,000 people in 24 cities around the world, the British accent is the most attractive of all possible accents. Who knew? It was chosen ahead of an American accent in second followed by Irish and Australian. French, once considered the language of love, was back in fifth place. The survey did not indicate which British accent is preferred. After all, there are a lot of very different ones. We don't all speak like Benedict Cumberbatch and friends. However, I remember reading somewhere that the Geordie accent from the North East is popular with telephone sales people. 

And here's a disturbing fact: some British police forces have questioned newsagents to try to find out who has bought the special edition of Charlie Hebdo magazine published after the Paris attacks. Why would they do that? One police force later apologised! It has not been all over the country but more than one constabulary has been involved. One journalist asked, “Does possessing a legally published satirical magazine make people criminal suspects now? If so, I better confess that I too have a copy of Charlie Hebdo.” 

I wonder if they question who buys Private Eye. Do they monitor which papers you read online? It must confuse them when people read the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph AND the Independent. Big Brother would seem to be watching us more and more. 

In fact, in one article I read about how to avoid being constantly monitored, the writer came to the conclusion that the only way is to have no friends and never use a mobile phone or computer. 

There you go!