The shopping centre has a nice area with stools and tables, and wifi access, where you can sit and socialise without coming under any pressure to purchase refreshments. Some people go there to use the internet, others to play cards or chess, grown up people to chat and young people to get excited about the latest apps on their mobile phones.
My conversation partner, mother of the young chess star, tells me that her son, aged 13 I think, does not have a mobile. He doesn’t need one, she maintains. He doesn’t hang around places like the shopping centre on his own with friends (she thinks there are too many youngsters with too much freedom nowadays) and so he doesn’t need to phone home and she doesn’t feel the need for him to have that extra security gadget. If they are out and about he uses her phone to look up stuff on the internet.
I tell her that our grandson, the same age, has had a mobile since starting secondary school. But then, he travels to school, like so many English kids, on public transport and may need to contact his mother if there is a problem. The young chess star travels to school, like many Spanish kids, on the designated free school bus which picks him up and drops him off more or less outside their home. Different ways of doing things. However, I suspect he is unusual in not yet having a mobile of his own.
And now I find myself wondering if all Spanish schools organise buses to collect their pupils. I am pretty sure young Madrileños travel across the city to school using the Madrid metro system. Teenage Madrileños that is, not very young ones. But then, capital cities are always that little bit different.
The young chess star is off to Pontevedra tomorrow to a chess camp prior to taking part in the chess tournament there. A week of chess training and other fun and games - football, swimming, trips and probably sitting up late talking! He and Phil might get to play each other more seriously during the chess tournament. After that they will both play in another tournament in Mondariz.
So, having played in age-group championships earlier this summer, the young chess star will have spent most of his long summer break playing chess. Not bad!
It’s a bit like the cyclists who have done the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France and are now gearing up for the Vuelta a España which starts on the 25th of August in Malaga. They could follow that immediately with the Tour of Britain, starting on September 2nd.
Summer is a busy season for sportspeople.
Reports suggest that neither Geraint Thomas nor Chris Froome will be in the Vuelta a España. Froome, after all, went straight from the Giro d’Italia to the Tour. He must be a bit tired. And the Welshman is probably going to be celebrating his success and then training for the Tour of Britain. The sports reporters suggest that the Sky Team will be pushing a young Scot for the Vuelta. He has the unlikely name of Tao Geoghegan Hart. Tao sounds positively foreign. Geoghegan sound like a good Celtic name. And I suppose Hart is pretty Celtic too.
It will be interesting to see how the Spanish commentators get their tongues round his name though.
Today the sunshine came back. Here's a view from the promontory of A Guia.
Spanish schools do have free bus systems. They service their area from one kilometer beyond the school. Those students you saw on the Metro probably went to a school outside their area and therefore didn't have a free bus service.
ReplyDelete