Easter Monday. A bit of nostalgia. Some birdwatching observations.

The year we spent the Easter weekend in Salamanca we left the city on Easter Monday, which is, of course, just Monday in Spain. Our pensión did not serve breakfast and so we stopped in a cafe en route for the railway station. There we took a look at the local newspaper, with a big photo of the “re-encuentro” on the front page.

I had watched this re-encounter from our balcony. From one side of the square a “paso” brought in the statue of Christ resurrected. From the other came his mother Mary. As the two came close to each other, the front men carrying the “pasos” crouched down, while those at the back remained upright, and so Jesus and Mary bowed to each other. Very cleverly done and probably requiring a fair bit of practice to prevent the statues from sliding off. After all, the statues are usually rather old and rather valuable.

And there it was, in the photo on the front page of the newspaper. And there, behind it, was our balcony. And there I was, on the balcony! How we laughed! How my A-Level Spanish students laughed when the new term started and I told them about it. My only regret was not getting hold of a copy of the paper. And this predated the era of all the papers being available online. So it goes.

We were heading for the railway station to catch a train south. Mérida was our next destination. The museum at Mérida, built of small Roman-style red bricks, impressed us. As we wandered around the museum I happily snapped pictures of various exhibits, not with my phone, my mobile phone at that time being far too basic to incorporate a camera, but with my then favourite toy, my small digital camera. After about half an hour, maybe more, a museum employee tapped me on the shoulder to tell me, “Está prohibido sacar fotos”. Oops! So sorry! But it was too late. Most of the photos I wanted to take were already in my camera.

From Mérida we went on to visit my sister and her Spanish family in El Puerto de Santa Maria, across the bay from Cádiz. As I remember, this involved a bus ride across Seville from one railway station to another. In El Puerto we stayed in a small, family run hotel, where they served us toasted bread with olive oil for breakfast. We asked for butter or margarine and they scratched their heads in bewilderment, emerging a little later with an industrial-sized tub of margarine. Clearly they were not used to catering for the likes of us! But that was a while ago and no doubt now they are more cosmopolitan.

Right now, of course, they will be in lockdown and their business will be suffering. Hopefully we will all emerge from this nightmare and resume something like business as usual.

One of the lasting memories of that visit to Spain is the storks. We seemed to see them everywhere, nesting at the top of buildings all over the place. We even saw one feeding its young. Impressive!

Around here we regularly see a heron. I swear there used to be two but nowadays I only ever see the one, usually on the other side of the millpond on my morning run, and occasionally frightened into flight if he is on my side of the water. Last week, my daughter told me she had seen herons nesting in a tree in the park near her house in Ashton. Do herons nest in trees? Somehow I had imagined them nesting closer to the water. Phil suggested they might be storks. Do we even have storks around here? Well, I suppose there must be some or we might not have the stories of storks bringing babies. Anyway, we looked it all up in our trusty Book of British Birds.

Storks do indeed count as British Birds. And herons do indeed nest in trees close to water. We decided that the nests our daughter saw were most likely herons’ nests, and the large birds she saw flying around more likely herons than storks. But anything is possible.

There you go, a whole post with barely a mention of coronavirus or lockdown.

On the menu today we have leftovers: leftover noodles, leftover tortilla and, of course, some salad. 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone.