Windy weather. Boats. And words.

I stepped out onto the balcony of our flat this morning to hang put some washing and was almost blown away by the strong wind. Fortunately the clothes drier is well anchored down. Otherwise our towels might end up blowing down the main road.

As I battled with the elements I could hear the unmistakable sound of lots of Spaniards all talking at once, a sound very similar to masses of sparrows collected in a tree at dusk. Was there a political demonstration of some kind going on? They do like a good demo around here. Had there been a fire alarm at the supermarket next door, leading to a mass evacuation? Then I spotted three large coaches. I think there must be some kind of excursion for local school children, all being seen on their way by doting parents.

Looking out towards the estuary I noticed a cruise boat coming in to dock. Quite small by modern cruise boat standards but undoubtedly a cruise boat. Probably a couple of thousand tourists trying to buy goods from H&M or Mango or Zara more cheaply than they could get them from Market Street in Manchester. I may, of course, be doing them all a disservice but I have often seen the cruise boat people on Principe, the shopping street, laden with distinctive carrier bags. And I ask myself once again if they bring a spare suitcase specifically for such purchases. And does the saving make it worth while spending money on a cruise?

I hope they have brought no nasty virus with them. I can think of nothing worse than being quarantined on a cruise boat. It’s probably pretty bad being quarantined in a hotel on Tenerife, which is apparently going on at present. Imagine the scenario: the good news is that your stay in Tenerife is being extended but the bad news is that you cannot leave the hotel. Nightmare!

Words have always interested me. Here is a new one for me: “foodification”, more specifically “street foodification”. In other words, it’s the presence of stalls all over English shopping streets selling food of one kind or another. After all, a shopping trip is not a shopping trip if you don’t walk along stuffing your face!

Here’s something to put it into context:-

“The street foodification of everything is perhaps the biggest single culinary trend of the past decade. It’s about rinsing every last inch of urban space for rent extraction, as much as what’s for dinner. London in particular is awash with street food markets. Three branches of the Market Halls chain opened in 2018-19, to go with the five Kerb sites, four Street Feast sites, three Boxpark sites, two Pergola sites and countless others. In November, Kerb London opened its first fixed, indoor street food hall in a warehouse in the heart of Covent Garden, in collaboration with multibillion-pound property titans Shaftesbury PLC, which owns large swathes of the West End.

And the artisanal-fare-industrial-complex is thriving in other major cities too: Baltic and Duke Street Markets in Liverpool, Hatch and Grub in Manchester, Brum Yum Yum and Digbeth Dining Club in Birmingham. Shipping containers feature heavily throughout. Street food has developed such a ubiquitous marketing cachet that it is often now sold some distance from the street – in pubs and restaurants and other such indoor establishments.

Supermarkets sell “street food” as chilled ready meals to heat up at home. As evidence that the trend has reached a new peak of sublime bathos, even Dairylea Lunchables is now selling a “street food” range. Words start to lose any semblance of meaning.”

Here in Vigo you mostly see it only at fiesta time, when stalls selling dough nuts and packs of little cakes spring up,like mushrooms overnight. However, I would not be surprised to see the trend here as well. I haven’t been to Madrid or Barcelona in years but I suspect that “foodification” is as rife there as in the big cities of the UK. A friend of mine recently had a weekend in Paris and reported that she and her husband did not visit restaurants but simply bought street-food and ate on benches in squares and gardens.

 I know street-food might be cheaper but isn’t it rather sad to be constantly picnicking rather than sitting down to a perhaps more elegant food experience?