Spain in lockdown - Day 46

Awoke to find the Spanish de-escalation plan continuing to be the talk of social media and to be honest, 46 days in under stringent regulations that's hardly surprising.  My approach is to take it a step at a time and massively hope that we can go out to exercise sometime soon but that's as much as I want to realistically think about at the moment.  In any event, central government has said that the Canary and Balearic Islands can handle their own phases of de-escalation.  Formentera and maybe Menorca will go directly to Phase 1 as outlined in yesterday's blog; Ibiza and Mallorca will be on Phase 0 until 11th May.  Restrictions will be lifted very slowly and carefully and once we are allowed out it's very possible that children, vulnerable and elderly people will have specific times to go out to avoid cross-infection from the rest of us.  Anyway, let's see what happens.....

The day started here with the usual Wednesday morning online gym class and then a 2km run on the running machine.  While I was doing this Ian was off to the dentist as he's had a tooth giving him problems for about 3 weeks.  And on return it turns out he needs a root canal treatment at a cost of 400€ - yay, just what we need whilst I'm furloughed 😩 Ah well, that's life!  After that he went off to Eroski to get the things we can't/don't get at Lidl so he won in the lottery of life today.  Mind you, given that next week he's going to have a root canal treatment I think he deserves it - rather him than me!

I've also made some progress today on my latest jigsaw puzzle and even managed some of the ubiquitous blue pieces - go me!  We also spent a bit of time on the roof terrace although, as is often the case here in the afternoons, it got a bit breezy so after an hour or so we retreated for a nice cuppa.  But it's definitely getting a LOT warmer 🌞 And I've been playing online Scrabble with one of my daughters.  So what with all this and another teaching webinar, the day has flown by.  

As Ian was the lucky one doing the Eroski shopping, I took the dogs for their lunchtime and evening toilet walks.  At lunchtime the sun shone in a cobalt blue sky and I took this picture:

But......do you know where it was taken?  Let's see who knows!

Both of us have also done some more work on our Spanish.  This lockdown has been brilliant for Ian who has done more on his Spanish during it than in the entire rest of the time we've lived here 😎  I'm missing my weekly chat in Spanish with my friend Elvira and also my twice weekly classes at the town hall but the lockdown has been a good opportunity to work on the less glamorous aspects of Spanish like grammar, although if the truth be told I do quite like the grammar side of things.  I think it's the teacher in me!

In other general news, the council is finally out and about cutting the grass etc which is good to see.  And they've been keeping the beaches raked over throughout.  I just wish they were responsible for the grass down at the carpark by the marina on the seafront where we take the dogs for two of their three toilet walks, but sadly that is the responsibility of the Port authority and they leave it to the last minute at the best of times.  Currently the grass is practically waist level (ok, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea) and there is so much dog poop there, that quite a lot of it has literally biodegraded.  Which I suppose is quite helpful.  We continue, of course, to poop scoop but it's hard to stay motivated with so much other poop around; if we were to scoop all the poop there, we'd need a dustbin bag 😳

And on that rather unsavoury note - stay safe and hasta mañana!