Out and about on the streets of Vigo.

A school bus disgorges its teenage cargo onto the street. Not a single one of them looks to see if there is anyone on the pavement before hopping off and walking away. We are almost mowed down in the process. 

Two elderly ladies, deep in animated conversation as they walk down the street, suddenly stop to go into some important point in more depth. Coming up behind them I am almost disemboweled by the pointed umbrella one of them carries. 

Man with a mission charges off a crossing and continues on his way, almost knocking me off my feet as he hurtles along. 

Just another normal walk along a Spanish street. 

I walked into the town centre to go to the library this morning, not that I'm really short of stuff to read but just to see what they had to offer and whether anything had changed. That was a bit of a waste of time; the library is closed until next Monday for renovation and, I'm pretty sure it said this, air conditioning! It certainly needs that, so maybe I am mistaken. 

The rather smelly passageway through from Puerta del Sol to the library was having work done on it last time we were here. That has now been completed and it all looks very good, apart from the fact that it's already been decorated with graffiti. The shop to the right stands empty and the reconstructed building above, now nicely refitted with what look like hardwood window frames is up for sale or rent. It's rather a shame as the area now looks a lot smarter. There are still a lot of dodgy looking people hanging around the square though, which may explain the empty premises. 

My library visit may have been unsuccessful but I did manage to call in the Novacaixagalicia bank and put some money on our Vitrasa green cards. These get us cheaper travel on the bus, and more efficient entry to the bus as you just need to click your card in the card reader. Last time I tried to recharge these it was only possible to do it using a bank card. There was little point in that as the bank would have charged us for using our English debit card, thus removing any benefit from our having the travel card at all. Today I found one that took cash. A small success! 

On the way back I called in at the supermarket. At the checkout, the rather bored looking young man asked me, ¿Quiere bolsa? I replied that no, I didn't need a bag. He continued, "¿Coche en el parking?" No, I didn't need to validate a parking ticket. And finally, with a fairly straight face, "¿Cola cao?" No I didn't want a chocolate drink, either. We both grinned. 

 I suppose if you work on a till you must do something to relieve the

Assessing things!

Sunshine today. So the weather witch, the lady in the bread shop who predicted good weather for today (and the day after and the day after that), was right. 14 degrees at 9.30 this morning on the billboard at the end of the road. 25 on Calle Florida at 12.45 - with a name like that you would expect nothing less. 19.5 at the bottom of Gran Vía at 3.30. This is more like it. Let's hope it continues for a while. 

We were on Calle Florida because we went out to Lunch with our friend Brendan today. One of the things we talked about in our catching up was the progress his sons have been making at school. He told us about his eldest son, Rafa, coming out of school with "bad news" (the child's words). He had been given1/10 for "conocimiento". 

The Spanish assessment system gives children a mark out of 10 for each subject, grading them "sobresaliente", excellent, "bien", good, "suficiente"' acceptable, "insuficiente", unacceptable, and "deficiente", poor. 1/10 is definitely "deficiente". How does a child who is bright and lively and achieves well all round suddenly become "deficiente"? Well, it turns out that most of the class were, if not actually "deficiente" in "conocimiento", were certainly not much more than "suficiente". So what was going on? 

"Conocimiento" basically means knowledge but as a school subject apparently covers ability to express himself and also assesses his use of Galego, the regional language. Minor mistakes in his Galego take marks away. The child's father was understandably more than a little annoyed. Things like using the Castellano "y" for "and" instead of the Galego "e" took away all the marks for an otherwise correctly composed sentence. Now, this is a child who switches from Spanish to English at the drop of a hat! Not a stupid child by any means! Also, he is only seven years old! 

Regardless of the language problem, more disturbing is the fact that at seven years old he was aware that a 1/10 was bad news for Daddy. A seven year old should not even be aware of being assessed and tested, in my opinion anyway. This is a debate that has taken place regarding SATs, Standard Assessment Tests in the UK. There have been calls for more formal testing for primary age children. Surely the teacher of a class of small children should be able to assess the children's progress informally without putting pressure on! 

Anyway, there it is. 

Looking at newspapers online yesterday I came across items about another, even smaller, child: the little Prince George, who is accompanying his parents, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, on a visit to New Zealand. There was much comment about Kate's outfits, as you might expect, some of it quite negative and all of it rather unnecessary. Sartorially, my only concern was why a little chap who isn't walking under his steam - he was only born last July, after all - was pictured wearing shoes!!! This is one of my personal bugbears. Babies don't need shoes until they learn to walk. It can actually delay learning to walk.

I noted, in passing as it were, that they are also accompanied by the little fellow's nanny: María Teresa Turrión Borrallo. Yes, I checked; she is Spanish. However, it's OK. She's not just a Spanish au-pair. She was trained at Norland College, the posh place for proper nanny training, where they teach them to push proper baby carriages. 

I just wonder if she speaks to her small charge in Spanish; this would be a perfect opportunity to bring up the third in line for the British throne properly bilingual!

Into unknown territory!

Last year we bought a street map of Greater Vigo. It’s an excellent map except for one thing: the area just behind our block of flats, San Xoan do Monte, is covered by the key that tells you what all the various symbols on the map mean. Clearly, whoever put the map together decided that no-one could possibly want to go up there or if they live there they don’t need a map. 

So that is precisely the area we went exploring on Sunday afternoon. We’ve been up there a few times before. You can’t really get lost. You just know you have to go back downhill towards the sea. So no problem. Unless, of course, the fog comes down! However, Sunday afternoon, although cloudy, didn’t seem about to lose us in the fog. In fact it was positively warm – there’s that tropical weather again! We had gone out with just-in-case umbrellas, in view of the clouds, but really should have taken water bottles. 

Off we went, up Rua de San Xoan do Monte, past the point where I turn off to the left on my morning run, round to the right beyond the funny little roadside shrine that looks as though it’s been there since the Middle Ages and past the Bouza Brey School. At this point we often turn left, which brings us out eventually somewhere near the Carrefour shopping centre. This time we tried a new route to the right and found ourselves going up and up and up, with no turning off for some time. Eventually we seemed to reach the top of the “monte” where there were some fine views. 

We went past a huge “depósito de auga”, some kind of water treatment plant. Oddly, there was a small rowing boat outside the building. I wonder why. Did they expect floods at the top of the hill? Or do they occasionally have to row about to inspect the depósito”? 

There was also quite a substantial forest, almost all eucalyptus trees unfortunately but I suppose you can’t have everything. 

Right at the very top, one of the fine houses was called “La Cumbre” – the summit – which seemed appropriate. 

After taking a look at the view from the other side of San Xoan do Monte, we tried to find a way down that would not involve retracing our steps, something we really prefer not to do. This proved quite difficult and did at one point involve us turning back from a dead end. 

By now we were looking down on the promontory of A Guía: pretty high up! 

The views out over the bay were impressive. 




Looking “inland”, we could have been out in open country, not on the edge of a large city. There were horses tethered on open land. Almost all the grand houses were equipped with large, loud dogs that kicked up a song and dance as we went past. 

Eventually, following the earlier mentioned principal of heading down towards the water, we found our way back onto familiar territory, along Rua da Fonte das Mozas (Maidens’ Fountain Street – how picturesque) and onto Camiño da Pouleira (Henkeeper’s Road), where there was a drinking fountain – much appreciated. By then we could see out twin blocks of flats sticking up. It’s always reassuring to see where you are aiming for. 

Back home to wash our hot feet and have a cup of tea. Enough exploring for one day!

Not seeing things.

Rain again this morning. In fact, not so much rain as a huge great cloud that came down and settled on the city of Vigo. I took these photos at around 10.30 this morning. 

One looking left towards Vigo centre: 

The other looking right towards A Guía: 


Five minutes later that level of visibility had even further reduced. 


All day the cloud has come and gone. It’s not actually rained much since then, just been rather grey. 

On the other hand, it’s not at all cold. At 9.30 this morning the temperature gauge on the billboard down at the corner registered 15°. Maybe we’re turning tropical: rather warm and steamy. When we walked down to A Laxe shopping centre at the end of this afternoon we found that they had their heating turned up to winter levels still. We left fairly quickly and later took refuge in a cafe where everyone is excited watching football but apart from that the temperature is much more pleasant. 

Last night we decided to get ourselves a bit of culture and went to a concert at the Centro Cultural Fundación Novacaixagalicia. We heard quite a lot of Haydn, a bit of Hindemith and a rather amusing piece by Charles Ives, which the orchestra seemed to take great delight in playing. The conductor Christoph König was one of those who jumps up and down and practically dances on the podium. It’s nice to see someone really enjoying his work! All this cost us €13 apiece. I find this amazing. To listen to a similar performance in Manchester would cost us at least £30! 

The other thing that continues to surprise me is the fact that the venue has no bar. During the interval, people mill around and chat to friends. Some pop out for a drink in a nearby bar but that’s it. There’s a lovely big open area but no facilities for providing refreshments. Someone is missing an employment and moneymaking opportunity. At a similar venue in the UK you would be able to pre-order your interval drinks and in some cases have something to eat before or after the show. Another aspect of this is the fact that the lovely premises (and it is a fine building) is closed except for performances. The ticket office opens half an hour before the performance. Otherwise you have to buy tickets on line or have a season ticket. 

I compare this with the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester. The place is open all day while rehearsals take place. Or even when they don’t. People wander in and out, buying stuff in the theatre bookshop, the souvenir shop, the fancy handmade jewellery stall and so on, as well as booking tickets for performances. Friends and I often meet there for lunch, without any intention of going to the theatre. The same sort of thing goes on at the Bridgewater Hall. 

Someone should whisper in the ear of the people who run the Centro Cultural Fundación Novacaixagalicia. There are development opportunities there.

Nostalgia

Reading Proust, as I suppose you have to do eventually, a number of things struck me. First of all, old Marcel is even better than the Spanish at creating sentences full of minor clauses, parentheses, semi-colons and so on which go on for well over a page. Then there’s the nostalgia thing. I was listening to Bizet at the same time as reading and it got to that bit of Carmen that Esso once used for an advert (anyone who was a child in the 50s and 60s will know what I mean – “The E-e-sso sign means happy motoring....”). And suddenly there I was, thirteen years old and marching out of assembly with other green clad girls at my school while the orchestra played Carmen ... badly, it has to be said! So that was my “madeleine” moment! And then this morning, progressing into “Un Amour de Swann”, I came across the character Odette saying, “Je ne suis pas ‘fishing for compliments’”. So even Monsieur Proust was in the habit of sprinkling his French with bits of idiomatic English!

Phil and I have been indulging in our own nostalgia trip since we arrived here last week, visiting some of our favourite places in snatched moments when the rain let up. On Saturday we walked up to A Guía, the promontory at our end of Vigo with a chapel-cum-lighthouse on top. 

It’s a lovely walk and it didn’t feel too cold (we even took our jackets off at one point) but the photos came out looking very wintry

Yesterday we walked up to the other high point at the other end of town, the Castro with its fortifications. It was very pleasant in the sunshine. We particularly wanted to look at the point where there used to be an abandoned hotel/restaurant. You used to look down onto the very fragile-looking roof where some foolhardy person had painted TE QUIERO in big red letters.

Now there is just a sort of stain on the ground where the hotel was dismantled and moved to somewhere in England to be rebuilt.

We found we couldn’t leave the fortifications by what I always think of as the back door, past was probably the stables back when the place really was a fortress. The door was padlocked. A local told us it’s been locked for weeks for no reason that she has heard of. So we had to go the long way round. And even so the old pathways and steps that formerly went past the hotel were all blocked off. Signs told us that they are doing some kind of archaeological work on the site.

The Castro looks much more like a fortification from that end now that the hotel has gone.

I hope the rich man who took it away to re-open it as a restaurant in England is enjoying his bit of Galicia.

The building was not especially beautiful, in my humble opinion, but there’s no accounting for nostalgia.

Clashes

As we left the Failde cafe last night there was a news report on the TV about two boats colliding in Vigo Bay, out near the Islas Cíes: a fishing boat from Marín and a big container transporter ship. In one way I’m not surprised. The visibility out there yesterday seemed to be dire; the great Atlantic blanket just kept coming down. And yet, I always thought that modern boats had sophisticated equipment to help prevent that sort of thing. After all if cars can have devices to stop them backing into things, surely it’s even more important for boats to be equipped with something similar. 

Today is calmer and brighter. It still rained on me first thing but it wasn’t serious rain, more a bit of dampness in the air really. And since then it’s got better. So the washing has gone out on the balcony to dry. On the subject of washing, I continue to be amazed at the way people here hang washing out of windows where it bangs against the side of the building. Surely it must come in dirtier than it went out! 

Mind you, the Galicians are a bit like the British where washing is concerned. Some nationalities regard a fine day as an opportunity to arrange excursions. We just react with an urgent need to wash everything in sight! 

Where my sister lives down in Andalucía, they hang the washing on the roof to dry, the flat roof that is. They all have a designated area and as a rule the washing is baked dry rather than blown. This probably explains her need to iron everything in order to get rid of the baked in stiffness. Me, I rarely iron. It’s one of those things I really dislike. 

 Other things? 
1. people who push in at supermarket queues. 
2. parking on the pavement, thus forcing pedestrians to walk round. 
3. people who stop to talk on the corner, where there is already a car parked, blocking everyone else’s way. 
4. cyclists on the pavement – they should be on the road, for heaven’s sake! 
5. men who spit in the street – this is something you used never to see, even though I remember buses with NO SPITTING signs long ago, but nowadays it seems to be coming back. 

And then there’s Michael Gove and his plans to solve the education problems!!! His latest is a pledge to abolish illiteracy and innumeracy in the UK. Very good and laudable, I’m sure. What does he think teacher’s do? Here’s a quote: “We want at least 85% of primary school pupils to reach a level of literacy and numeracy that means they’re on course for good GCSE grades.” Apparently in 2012 46% of pupils failed to secure a GCSE pass (that’s a fancy way to put it) in Maths and English. Almost half never studied the subjects again afterwards. Are we surprised? First of all for everyone to “secure a GCSE pass in Maths and English” it might be necessary to lower standards a little. It’s in the nature of things that some people find stuff hard. We can’t all be above average, after all! And as regards studying Maths and English post-16, I think he may find it has been thus! They have tried again and again to introduce some kind of post-16 assessment and they’ve not managed it. Until the UK has a system similar to the French/German/Spanish/Italian/probably other nationalities baccalaureate system where there are obligatory subjects such as Maths, your own language and literature, and a modern foreign language (don’t get me started on that one) it’s not going to happen. UK students choose the subjects they want to study at post-16 level. 

It’s not perfect but that’s the way it works – at the moment anyway!

A pretty average Monday

I walked into the town centre yesterday, looking for a chemist where I could buy the Spanish equivalent of Lemsip for Phil and something for his sore throat as well. Between the cold wind in Buckinghamshire and the up and down, "now it’s raining, now it’s not" weather we’ve had since we arrived here he’s been snuffling and sneezing and taking to his bed. He blames it mainly on having forgotten his woolly hat and therefore walking around with a cold head when we were out and about with our son. So it goes. Anyway, although there are chemists closer to hand I walked into the town centre. 

In the short stretch of Calle Urzáiz that goes from Gran Vía to Calle Colón, no distance at all really, I spotted no fewer than three shops that offer to buy your gold and, presumably, any other valuables you night have that they might consider worth buying. I have no valuables worth selling and I found myself wondering once again who are these people who have gold to sell. Have they ransacked the jewellery boxes of their grandmothers and their aged maiden aunts? Are they professional or semi-professional thieves? Are they good, respectable bourgeois people down on their luck? 

One who looks like a respectable bourgeois gent down on his luck is the old chap who still seems to be camping in the doorway of a closed shop in that same stretch of Calle Urzáiz. He’s been there for over a year now. I was quite relieved to see him still there, glad the winter had not seen him off. He has quite a heap of “stuff” with him. I wonder how he drags it around with him if he needs to sally forth from his den. Maybe he never sallies forth. Or perhaps the neighbouring establishments keep an eye on it for him. One thing I am fairly sure of is that if he were camped in a shop doorway in any town centre in the UK he would have been moved on by now. 

Spain, well, Galicia anyway, is perhaps a kinder and in some ways more innocent society. I thought this on Friday evening as I walked back from the Nuevo Derby cafetería in the middle evening. Children were still playing, unaccompanied, in the dark street as I walked along Travesía de Vigo. At one point I was accosted by a little chap of about eight years old who asked me if I wanted to buy a poster from him. What was that about? Has no-one told him about “stranger danger”? This is the term used in UK schools when they warn children not to speak to strangers. Maybe it doesn’t figure highly here. 

Vigo’s main pedestrianised shopping street, Príncipe, is little changed. Shops have changed hands but mostly remain open: a good sign. I can think of a very sad posh shopping mall (a horrible term but the only one appropriate here) which is like a mini ghost town. A lonely security guard stands amidst the empty shops. A couple of cafes are still open but they won’t last long if there are no shops for people to visit. In Vigo centre there are more fancy sweet shops than I remember. Maybe that explains the increase in rounder people as well. 

The street musicians are out in force, continuing to learn their trade at the expense of the public, as are the people who try to sign you up to donate to the Cruz Roja, to Cancer Research and even to an organisation loosely connected to the Islas Cíes and conservation in general. 

Returning home, having successfully bought cold cures for Phil, and a woolly hat, I noted that our supermarket beggar has disappeared again. As she wasn’t around on Friday but popped up on Saturday, I begin to wonder if she has a job during the week.