Trivia, of sorts.

Our habits and lifestyle change when we are in Spain. Some things remain the same. I still get up earlier than Phil and he still sits up late at night doing chessy things on the computer. Breakfast here is coffee and fresh bread, bought every morning from the bakers at the end of my run. Back in the UK our main meal of the day is in the evening but here it is at lunchtime, in practice any time after two. This can mean as late as four if one of us gets busy doing something or other. 

I go through the day without checking email or Facebook or the news online, all of these over-breakfast activities for me in the UK. This is largely because here we have limited internet access via the mobile dongle and it is not used for such trivia. Chess related emails have to be dealt with (at one time I thought chess was just a pastime or hobby whereas it is in fact an all-consuming way of life!) and Phil lets me know if anything of importance has come in for me. I may even get to answer it at once. There may seem to be a certain gender imbalance there but it does not concern me. Few emails of great significance come through for me; updates from stores like Gap and The Body Shop can be ignored and the Facebook trivia can wait until later. 

And so it is not usually until the evening when we head for an internet cafe that I get to check my electronic media and read the papers. All the people who are desperately trying to get me to connect with them through Linked-In will have to wait. Most of them are already on my mailing list or friends on Facebook anyway so I see little point in another bit of media connectivity. If the family wan to getting touch urgently they know to send me a text to my iPhone. So it goes. 

Reading the paper online yesterday I came across a report of a Jewish community in London where the rabbi has told mothers that they should not drive their children to school, as this goes against traditional practice. If a mother feels she absolutely has to drive her child to school, perhaps for medical reasons or some such, she can appeal to the council for permission and they will decide whether this can be allowed. Presumably by the time the decision has been taken and then transmitted to the mother in question, the child will have missed several days' schooling. All sorts of things go through my head when I read reports of this nature. Does tradition not permit women to drive at all? Or is it just the school run? Or does tradition just prefer women not to drive? Or is this an answer to the problem all schools have these days of too many parents blocking the school drive with their cars. (It is certainly a problem at the school on my morning running route here in Vigo. I have to time my run so that I reach the school gates before they all turn up or after they have finished their dropping off chats with all the other mums and dads.) 

Getting back to the minority group question, the whole idea of traditional ways is a problem. I can understand a group of people united by religious beliefs wanting to live in their own way, possibly isolated from the wider community. I would prefer a greater degree of integration but that is a different matter. But when the elders of that community start railing against the trappings of "modernity" I find myself wondering where they will stop. Will they opt to live without electricity and running water because traditionally such things were not available? Will they give up electrical gadgets altogether? What about computers and mobile phones? How are their children supposed to get to school? Indeed, traditionally should they go to school at all? 

Of course, all of that has nothing to do with me. Provided they don't try to impose their way of life on me I guess I'll just let them get on with it!