Weekends are not normal.
In Great Britain we accept this with an easy nonchalance and look askance at those (foreigners) who believe that weekend shops should exist for customers rather than the true British way where they exist for . . . well, I’m not actually sure who they exist for in the Nation of Shopkeepers, but customers seem to come a very poor third or fourth, at best!
Shops (virtually all shops, not just the supermarkets) open until what we Brits regard as a ridiculously late hour in the evening. It means that I can get a fresh loaf of bread from our local bakery until 8.30 to 9.00 pm. As far as I am aware we have no 24 hour supermarkets and the large Carrefour hypermarket is closed on a Sunday, though the smaller one near us is open. Though not for the same hours as a weekday.
The vagaries of shop opening times was brought home to me again because I was trailing memories of the old country when I went to get some stamps and post two packages back to Britain. I have adjusted to the reality that stamps are available from the Tabac (the tobacconist) I no longer question this but merely regard it as a by product of totalitarianism. France has the same idiosyncrasy – in their case as a result of the later actions of the little Corsican.
Having consumed my home made lunch I made my way to the Tabac. This was closed. At five passed four in the afternoon. I mentally cursed myself and realised that I should have only ventured to get my stamps at five o’clock. The sign on the Tabac told me that the shop would be open at 4.30 pm to 8.00 pm. I returned home, but, foolishly I had not read the whole of the complicated arrangements for opening. On my return at 6.00 pm the shop was still closed. I then noticed the individual details for a Saturday. Rather like a pharmacy it told me that the shop I was outside would never open on a Saturday, but that another shop much further down the road would.
With a certain bloody mindedness I returned home and got the car and was henceforth a Man on a Mission. When Castelldefels began to peter out into solid rock I felt that I had probably overshot the shop. Turning around was not such an easy thing as you might imagine because Catalonia has the world’s highest concentration of ‘no right turn’ and ‘no left turn’ signs in the world.
There are far too many people and absolutely too many cars in each of the urbanisations that are sprinkled along the coast in Catalonia. The roads are usually too narrow to have parked cars on them (which of course does not mean that there are not parked cars there) and driving becomes, you might say, “challenging.”
As a way of making the four wheeled lunacy which passes for driving in this part of the world a little more tolerable, the local council has decided on a ‘traffic system’.
Once you are on this ‘traffic system’ you sometimes feel that the only explanation for the way that you are forced to drive through it is that the town traffic planner has used his ‘Big Fun Book of Mazes’ that he was given as a present by a parent hoping to keep him quiet for a few minutes as a guide to how to lay out the roads.
Often you can see where you want to go but it appears that all available approaches of an obvious nature are closed to you. So, leaving your destination behind you start searching for a more distant way of getting there. As you drive aimlessly, eventually turning randomly in the hope of serendipity getting you there, you sense the car following the pencilled route of a child, tongue firmly pressed into cheek, pencil grasped in fist as the indentation of the pencil point lurches from side to side looking for the elusive way through to the centre of the maze.
I had the sea on my left, the road was too narrow to do a U turn and all the turns to the right were forbidden. So I went to Sitges.
The coast road from Castelldefels to Sitges has the great advantage of being free, avoiding as it does the exorbitant charge of the way through the tunnels. The disadvantage is that it is composed of an inordinate number of hair-raising hair-pin bends with a sheer drop to the sea to swallow up any mistakes.
And it was dark. And I was followed by drivers who had obviously done this run since they were in kindergarten and were well able to take blind curves at 60 kph.
Well, they couldn’t because I was in front and I was doing more than the limit for the road as it was. To support me in my tackling of these automobile manoeuvres in the dark the car behind very kindly came within a few centimetres of the back of my car so that his full headlight could illuminate my way more fully. Wasn’t that kind!
I also needed diesel and I had convinced myself that the garage at the end of the coast road would allow me to kill two birds with one stone; though by the time that I arrived there I was thinking of using the stone for something else entirely.
I didn’t need to say a single word at the garage: the cashier spoke to me in English before I said anything. I replied staunchly in Spanish though she didn’t look convinced.
The Tabac in Sitges was indeed open but it didn’t have scales to weigh the packets so we guessed the amount necessary. I therefore apologise in advance if the recipients get the envelope over stamped with an amount to pay. In mitigation I have to tell them that there are philatelists who collect things like that – so they might be paying for something which will actually increase in value.
Sometimes I don’t even convince myself!
In Great Britain we accept this with an easy nonchalance and look askance at those (foreigners) who believe that weekend shops should exist for customers rather than the true British way where they exist for . . . well, I’m not actually sure who they exist for in the Nation of Shopkeepers, but customers seem to come a very poor third or fourth, at best!
Shops (virtually all shops, not just the supermarkets) open until what we Brits regard as a ridiculously late hour in the evening. It means that I can get a fresh loaf of bread from our local bakery until 8.30 to 9.00 pm. As far as I am aware we have no 24 hour supermarkets and the large Carrefour hypermarket is closed on a Sunday, though the smaller one near us is open. Though not for the same hours as a weekday.
The vagaries of shop opening times was brought home to me again because I was trailing memories of the old country when I went to get some stamps and post two packages back to Britain. I have adjusted to the reality that stamps are available from the Tabac (the tobacconist) I no longer question this but merely regard it as a by product of totalitarianism. France has the same idiosyncrasy – in their case as a result of the later actions of the little Corsican.
Having consumed my home made lunch I made my way to the Tabac. This was closed. At five passed four in the afternoon. I mentally cursed myself and realised that I should have only ventured to get my stamps at five o’clock. The sign on the Tabac told me that the shop would be open at 4.30 pm to 8.00 pm. I returned home, but, foolishly I had not read the whole of the complicated arrangements for opening. On my return at 6.00 pm the shop was still closed. I then noticed the individual details for a Saturday. Rather like a pharmacy it told me that the shop I was outside would never open on a Saturday, but that another shop much further down the road would.
With a certain bloody mindedness I returned home and got the car and was henceforth a Man on a Mission. When Castelldefels began to peter out into solid rock I felt that I had probably overshot the shop. Turning around was not such an easy thing as you might imagine because Catalonia has the world’s highest concentration of ‘no right turn’ and ‘no left turn’ signs in the world.
There are far too many people and absolutely too many cars in each of the urbanisations that are sprinkled along the coast in Catalonia. The roads are usually too narrow to have parked cars on them (which of course does not mean that there are not parked cars there) and driving becomes, you might say, “challenging.”
As a way of making the four wheeled lunacy which passes for driving in this part of the world a little more tolerable, the local council has decided on a ‘traffic system’.
Once you are on this ‘traffic system’ you sometimes feel that the only explanation for the way that you are forced to drive through it is that the town traffic planner has used his ‘Big Fun Book of Mazes’ that he was given as a present by a parent hoping to keep him quiet for a few minutes as a guide to how to lay out the roads.
Often you can see where you want to go but it appears that all available approaches of an obvious nature are closed to you. So, leaving your destination behind you start searching for a more distant way of getting there. As you drive aimlessly, eventually turning randomly in the hope of serendipity getting you there, you sense the car following the pencilled route of a child, tongue firmly pressed into cheek, pencil grasped in fist as the indentation of the pencil point lurches from side to side looking for the elusive way through to the centre of the maze.
I had the sea on my left, the road was too narrow to do a U turn and all the turns to the right were forbidden. So I went to Sitges.
The coast road from Castelldefels to Sitges has the great advantage of being free, avoiding as it does the exorbitant charge of the way through the tunnels. The disadvantage is that it is composed of an inordinate number of hair-raising hair-pin bends with a sheer drop to the sea to swallow up any mistakes.
And it was dark. And I was followed by drivers who had obviously done this run since they were in kindergarten and were well able to take blind curves at 60 kph.
Well, they couldn’t because I was in front and I was doing more than the limit for the road as it was. To support me in my tackling of these automobile manoeuvres in the dark the car behind very kindly came within a few centimetres of the back of my car so that his full headlight could illuminate my way more fully. Wasn’t that kind!
I also needed diesel and I had convinced myself that the garage at the end of the coast road would allow me to kill two birds with one stone; though by the time that I arrived there I was thinking of using the stone for something else entirely.
I didn’t need to say a single word at the garage: the cashier spoke to me in English before I said anything. I replied staunchly in Spanish though she didn’t look convinced.
The Tabac in Sitges was indeed open but it didn’t have scales to weigh the packets so we guessed the amount necessary. I therefore apologise in advance if the recipients get the envelope over stamped with an amount to pay. In mitigation I have to tell them that there are philatelists who collect things like that – so they might be paying for something which will actually increase in value.
Sometimes I don’t even convince myself!
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