Some anomalies and odd behaviour!

I finally found and bought an academic year diary. It must be all those years of being teachers but we still seem to feel that the year runs from the beginning of September to the end of August rather than January to December. However, I bought the diary in haste, on a whim, and when I examined it more closely I discovered that it starts on Monday August 20 2018 and finishes on Sunday August 4th 2019. So there is a hiatus. A couple of weeks during which academic year diary users have NO TIME, NO DATES. 

Perhaps all academic year people are supposed to go on holiday at that point, rather as in the past workers in the cotton mills in the Northwest of England had to take their annual holidays all at the same time. This was so that the mill owners could close down all the machines and have them serviced. These weeks were called Wakes. Boarding house owners in seaside places like Blackpool knew to expect masses of people from, for example, Oldham during one fortnight and Blackburn during a different fortnight. Even the schools closed for the towns’ Wakes Weeks, to enable children to go on holiday with their parents. That’s what you call organisation! 

On the subject of holidays and families, we have just had a brief visit from our son and family. They were en route for Baiona, a place they have enjoyed visiting in the past, and they stopped off for a day and a night with us. We all went into town to lunch off chipirones encebolladas at the Rasalía Castro restaurant down by the port. Always worth a visit. 

Later in the afternoon we went downstairs to give the four-year-old a chance to run around in the gardens and play on the climbing frame in the little kids’ playground. Imagine our surprise to go out of he back door and find a huge barrier: ¡ACCESO PROHIBIDO! Half of the garden seem to have been dug up, the pool is obviously empty and machinery of various kinds is parked around it. Goodness knows what is going on! 

Of course, had the weather been better I would already have discovered this state of affairs but it simply has not been the kind of weather to induce me to go for a swim. What a fool I would have felt if the weather had been warmer and sunnier and I had gone tripping down in my swimsuit with a cover-up on top, my towel over my arm and with a little bag containing suntan lotion and a book to read! 

Today the weather is much improved and is forecast to remain so for a while. It is a good job we are off to Sanxenxo at the end of the week. There I will be able to make use of the much superior pool in the hotel while Phil plays chess. We did suggest that the organisers of the tournament should arrange the usual good weather for us. Perhaps they have managed to do so. We shall see. 

I saw our son and family off on a bus to Baiona this morning and will go and lunch there with them tomorrow. As a rule I would wait until further into their stay in Baiona but as we head for Sanxenxo on Friday this will not be possible this year. 

I walked back from the bus station, detouring via the Eroski supermarket to buy some honey. The honey they sell there is in more efficient non-drip dispensers than the stuff they sell in the Mercadona next door to our black of flats. I selected what looked like a good queue at the checkout - a couple of people ahead of me with just a smallish basket of groceries rather than a huge trolly. 

As I waited, another customer tapped me on the shoulder and asked could she go ahead of me as she only had two items. I pointed out that I only had one item and that she should wait her turn. She then asked the lady ahead of me if she could go in front of her as her husband was ill in bed at home. At this point the cashier intervened and said categorically NO; I had not let her go ahead of me and the lady before me should not do so either. 

The would-be queue-jumper hovered, moving distractedly from queue to queue, whining and moaning all the while. Eventually she returned to our queue, this time declaring that she would not ask if she were from around here, but she had a bus to catch - ¡es por el bus! 

Finally we had had enough of her whinging and let her go ahead. 

The cashier was quite cross after Mrs Saltacolas had left, declaring that she was in and out of the supermarket every morning at least four times, always buying two items and always trying to get out ahead of the queuing shoppers. 

To add insult to injury, Mrs Salatacolas was dithering around the exit, in no hurry to go anywhere. Clearly this is another form of madness! 

I shall stick to my guns in future, turn a deaf ear to any moans and be a grumpy old meany!