Giving stuff up for Lent. And quarantine. And building work.

Everything stops for Shrove Tuesday, presumably so the sardine can be buried and carnival can be finished off (although I did see one small boy yesterday morning resolutely dressed up as a traditional carnival clown) but on Ash Wednesday things seemed to get back to normal and the supermarkets were open again. The local school was still closed however but today, Thursday, it’s back in business and the back street where I run was back to being a rat-run for parents dropping offspring off.

I did a bit of research into stuff I probably really knew already but had forgotten. According to the internet, “'Shrove' means being forgiven for wrong-doings or sins. Shrove Tuesday is also known to the non-religious as Pancake Day. Long ago this was a day for feasting and having a good time. People would go to church to confess their sins and would be 'shriven' or forgiven before the start of Lent. Since rich foods such as eggs were forbidden during Lent, one way of using them up would be to make pancakes. Typically, only those who are Catholic participate in confession or what's sometimes also called reconciliation. The practice is meant to help those shed their sins and be forgiven by God.” So there it is.

Growing up as a protestant child I knew nothing about confession but did have a collection box into which I was supposed to put money, presumably what I did not spend on sweets and so on as it was Lent, and then hand in to the church on Easter Sunday. And what about those eggs? If eggs were too rich to be eaten during Lent, what happened to them all? Were they just thrown away? It seems an awful waste, one of those odd things, on a par with being told to eat up all your dinner because of the starving children in poor countries.

How many people who join in carnival fun and games all over the place think about any of this? Certainly in the UK it has probably been largely forgotten and it’s just another excuse to have fun.

I read yesterday that a number of schools in the UK remained closed after their half term holiday as they had students returning from skiing holidays in “coronavirus-hit northern Italy”. Some students have shown “flu-like symptoms”, leading to a bit of a panic. Is it just a cold? Or is it bog-standard, but still not very nice, flu? Or is it coronavirus? So pupils are being quarantined just in case. School life is being disrupted. Apparently the government says it is all under control and that measures are in place, prompting a friend of mine to declare himself very scared ... not so much of the disease as of the government declarations! And a friend here tells me her in local supermarket sanitised hand-gel has sold out. Panic buying has set in!

Now for another little oddity of the modern world. I read that the National Farmers’ Union has criticised stars such as Joaquin Phoenix who use their celebrity to promote veganism, claiming the growth in meat-free living is fuelling a rise in mental health problems among British farmers. Joaquin Phoenix made a speech at the Oscars about veganism.

The NFU president said, “Celebrities have to be careful [because] there are real-life consequences for others … Joaquin Phoenix, he’s had a really challenging life, and you really feel for him and a lot of the things he was saying, but he has to remember there are people at the end of this, there are small family farms and they get hurt too.”

As an almost vegetarian, eating occasional chicken, quite a lot of fish, but no red meat, I still sympathise with the farmers and their problems. However, I don’t think we can really blame the celebrities for the bulk of the problem. Farmers will need to find a solution and I doubt that opening a section of your farm as a petting zoo and serving cream teas with home made scones really compensates for reducing meat sales.

Here in Vigo, as in many places in both the UK and Spain, and probably other European countries too, it’s small shopkeepers who appear to be being squeezed put of business. Many of the traditional “bajos”, the ground floor sections of blocks of flats, remain unoccupied, boarded or bricked up, even close to the centre of town. And yet work is steaming ahead on the construction of a huge shopping centre in front of and above Urzáiz railway station, the town centre station. It looks as though it’s the size of a small town.

So what does the future hold for the old shopping street, Príncipe, a pleasant pedestrian area, a good place for a stroll and a bit of window shopping? Squeezed between the ugly A Laxe shopping comp,ex down by the port and this new venture, it’s going to have a hard time of it, I think.