A rather different Good Friday. Escaping. Masks. Reading matter.

Good Friday!

Some thirteen, maybe fourteen, years ago we were in Salamanca, Spain, for Easter. Our pensión looked out onto the main square, a typically beautiful Spanish square. We were woken very early on the morning of good Friday to the sound of a funeral march as a procession carrying the statue of Christ Crucified through the square. Impressive!

It won’t be happening this year!

Usually there are three crosses on the top of the hill overlooking our village, erected I always assume by the local church. They stay up there until Ascension Day.

None of that is happening this year either.

It’s highly likely we won’t have the Whit Walks or the Whit Friday Band Contest either judging by the way things are going.

The year that we went to Salamanca for Easter we had flown to Madrid for a few day first and travelled to Salamanca by train. That train journey was more problematical than expected. The tourist office in Madrid had assured us that there was no need to book in advance. Well, they were mistaken! The early train we planned to catch was fully booked and we just about managed to get tickets for a later one. We arrived at Salamanca in the late evening on Maundy Thursday so an early morning dirge-call on Good Friday was not really welcome.

The full train was, of course, really to be expected as Madrileños like to escape from their city for the Easter weekend. I hear that many have had a good try to do so this year, despite the restrictions. Too many on the move for the police checks to stop them all. Crazy people!

And I suppose many are trying it here too.

As a result the powers that be want to bring in measures to check up on people’s movement. One report I heard had a high-ranking police chappie declaring that they were not planning to check people’s supermarket shopping to ensure that they had only bought “essentials”. Not yet, anyway! But apparently 26 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales have launched dedicated online forms allowing people to report suspected breaches of the lockdown, such as large gatherings in parks. Oh, boy!

Debate continues about the advisability and usefulness of wearing masks, the general public wearing masks that is, not medical staff. My homemade masks have seen quite a lot of use, not that I am in shops very often. We don’t see many people wearing them when we are out and about, rather more in Uppermill, which is bigger than Delph, though.

I am not sure of the situation in Spain and Italy but I have read that officials in some French cities are making it mandatory for people to wear masks when they leave their homes. The mayor of Nice has said that all inhabitants will be sent a mask within the next 8-10 days that they can reuse for a month, and other cities have promised to do the same. It’s one way to help people deal with the problem. 

Radio news and commentary programmes continue to offer advice on how to occupy your time during lockdown. Yesterday they discussed reading, asking “experts” for advice on what to read and how to obtain reading matter as bookshops and libraries are closed. (In fact, libraries are offering on-line services, at least around here.) Somebody mentioned re-reading. I think it was Marielle Frostrup who declared that nobody wants to re-read a book. What’s the point, she pondered, when you already know what happens? I beg to differ. A good book is always worth reading again. Perhaps not too soon after the first reading though. But there are some books that I go back back to again and again. After all, we all listen to pieces if music over and over again. What would become of our collection of CDs if we only ever listened to them once? Perhaps Ms Frostrup was never the sort of teenager who drove her parents mad by playing the same current favourite record again and again and obsessively again! 

The fine weather continues. It’s positively balmy out there today. Maybe this is the day we cut the lawn. Or rather, Phil cuts the lawn and I look on, maybe pulling up the odd weed or trimming back the bushes.

On the menu today is tomato and basil soup followed by some kind of egg dish and the inevitable salad. Life goes on.

Stay safe and well, everyone!