Different perspectives.

Tuesday, our first full day here this time, was the Día das Letras Galegas, more or less translated as Galician Literacy Day. Perhaps everyone is meant to stay at home and read a book in Galician, written by a Galician, of course! Whatever the intention, it did not seem to me to merit all the banks and shops and schools being closed. 

We keep doing this, arriving here just in time for a día festivo, bank holiday, when the place shuts down. Fortunately we had bought milk and other essentials on arrival on Monday - another benefit of having caught the 1.45 bus from Porto, as the later bus would probably have meant our arriving after the supermarket closed its doors. As it was we forgot all about it and suddenly realised it was late lunchtime, probably too late to find anywhere still serving, and we had to scratch together a gourmet lunch of hummus, olives, beans on toast and salad! 

The Spanish attitude to bank holidays is quite different to the English one. Well, not totally; both nations have a tendency to head for the beach if it's the right time of year and the Spanish have the wonderful habit of "bridging" their bank holidays to weekends if they occur of Tuesday or Thursday. Long weekends are always a good idea. Where they differ is that the British regard shopping as a well-established leisure activity whereas the Spanish do not seem to agree. Window-shopping is as far as it seems to go. If there is a day off to be had, why shouldn't shop assistants have it as well. Bread and cake shops are the exception but even they work shorter hours on such occasions. Nobody, however, expects cafes and restaurants to close. Maybe they are a public service, like the police, fire and ambulance people. 

But the British, or at least the English, for the Scots and Welsh might be more restrained, regard a bank holiday as a shopping opportunity. And it has always been so. As a teenager I worked in a shoe shop, Saturdays during term time and full time during the summer breaks. Since Southport is, supposedly but not always proven, by the sea, as the summer season progressed the shop stopped having Tuesday half-day closing and also stayed open on bank holidays when lots of visitors to the town were expected. None of us were paid extra for Tuesday afternoons; you just had another morning or afternoon off in lieu. For bank holidays however, you were paid time and a half or even on a occasion double. Those were the days. Nowadays, with Sunday opening and shops staying open until late in the evening I suspect such arrangements no longer count. 

I can't say I have ever fully understood the principle of going on holiday and buying clothes but lots of the tourists who come in on cruise ships seem to do so. But then, people do odd things on holiday. 

 I read about some tourists who visited Yellowstone National Park in the USA and came across a recently born bison calf apparently all alone. They thought he looked cold and bundled him into the back of their SUV. When the park officials discovered this they tried to reunite the baby with its herd but it was too late. They wanted nothing to do with him.

 “The bison calf was later euthanized because it was abandoned and causing a dangerous situation by continually approaching people and cars along the roadway,” the park said in a statement. The tourists were reminded of the rules about not getting too close to the animals and were fined $110. Silly people! 

Another bit of silliness was Gary Lineker's promise to present Match of the Day in his underwear if Leicester won the Premier League. Against all the odds they did so and Gary Lineker will have to make good his promise. He did try to get out of it but social media, tweeters and the like are insisting he should keep his word. And why not? 

 “Do I regret the tweet?" commented Gary, "Nah, not really. No, no I don’t because it’s been quite fun. I did the tweet knowing, categorically, there was zero chance of Leicester continuing on the line they were going and to win the league. I was spectacularly wrong but I’m so glad I was.”