De Perros y Limones

Hunkering Down

Well, that escalated quickly.  Last Friday we were teaching as normal, go home and are then told that all schools will be shut.  A week later we are told that we are on total lockdown and only one of us can go out to go shopping – we can still walk the dogs on the beach if we leave at dawn. 

The beach isn’t all beauty and nature

Interesting times.

I have to say that Morocco aren’t mucking about here, unlike the shitshow that seems to be the situation in the UK at the moment.  Schools there are shut but, actually, most aren’t actually closed if your parent is a key worker and so you have to go to school to be taught by someone who hasn’t got a clue what, exactly, they are supposed to be teaching nor how you will be fed if you are on free-school meals because they don’t seem to have been arranged for anyone to do the required meals.  My teacher friends in the UK are currently bewildered and angry at what they have been told to do. 

Fight!

By the way, a key worker in the UK is defined as someone who has been treated like shit by the Tory government and the right-wing press for over a decade, has been allowed no pay increase for ten years, has been subject to increasing scrutiny by bean-counters and been asked to work to increasingly tedious targets in order that they can be seen to be ‘value for money’ but who are now to be treated as so vital to the country and groups that can have charities dedicated to them as ‘heroes’ and to which we should all be so grateful after being bloody horrible to them for most of their working lives.

Luna thinking she can scale a ten foot wall just because she’s Luna. You’ll notice the look of total indifference from the guard dog.

The staggering hypocrisy of those in charge and those who voted for them is the biggest single thing I have taken from observing things in the UK.  That and the fact that a large number of people there seemingly don’t know what social distance is, think going down the pub is still okay and thinking that this whole thing is just an excuse for a day out at the beach.  Do not get me started on the hording of bog roll – apparently having coronavirus makes you poo ten times more than you would normally.

Meanwhile in Spain, the situation continues to be pretty dire.  One interesting aspect of their government is that they haven’t ‘done a deal with private hospitals’ like the UK have done.  Nope, the government just turned round and told private hospitals that “we’re taking over mate, we need the facilities”.  But then Spain is a foreign place where they do foreign things like put people before profit.

Here in Morocco, amidst much confusion, various European countries have arranged and completed repatriation flights for thousands of their nationals stranded here.  The UK is still ‘working hard’ to do so with the ambassador admitting he hasn’t got any idea of what is going on. 

It’s pitiful, it really is. 

I think it is fair to say that I am not enamoured of the UK government at the moment nor some of the utterly selfish people that live there.

For Sonalee, this lockdown has brought back troubling memories of a similar type of time back in her youth in Sri Lanka during the civil war there. This is not easy for her nor for her brother to deal with.

nature’s patterns

Luckily she is married to me.

nature’s patterns

What?

We’re the lucky ones.  We have a nice house and a nice beach to stay in and we are being paid by the school.  Some schools around the world have stopped doing that.  Some may not have a choice.  If you’re a parent and your child is receiving ‘virtual schooling’ would you really be willing, during these volatile times, to keep paying school fees for your child to attend an international school?  Some will, naturally, be asking what exactly it is they are paying for if the school promises ‘outstanding facilities’ cannot actually be used for half of the academic year. 

This is just one of many things, it seems to us, that people will be rethinking their priorities about during what can only be described as a bit of a crappy time for millions of people.  No one can be enjoying what is happening.  It sounds great, teaching without actually having to deal with children, but the reality is that it is extremely unsatisfactory and not a little bit boring.  I can’t do football coaching.  That’s boring.  I can’t rip the piss out of the student who calls me ‘miss’ instead of ‘mister’.  I can’t do that smile when one of them finally – finally – gets what it is I am supposed to teaching them.  And, yeah, I miss some of them because some of them are really nice kids and it’s a pleasure to teach them.

What to do?  Well, like everyone, it’s time to make the best of it.  The doggies, needless to say, are absolutely loving it – mummy and daddy at home all the time!  Yeah!  Daddy buying various meat-related products in tins that he thought might be nice but are actually minging so he can’t eat them, yeah!    It was interesting that the first panic buy we did was that of dog food.  And then vet clearances should the border situation with Spain change.  There’s definitely something not right with that. 

We tried to panic buy fresh mushrooms.  Didn’t happen,  although we did pick up fresh Brussel sprouts which was a pleasant surprise – it’s a roast dinner tomorrow peeps.  Panic buying salt and vinegar crisps was a winner though!  You really do have to sample the crisps they make here – as good as the Spanish ones, I kid you not.  We did ponder buying tons of  bog roll but the both of us stood there in the aisle and could not consider one single scenario where we would require anything more than the pack that we have at home at the moment that normally lasts two months. 

Neither of us get it!  Nor do Moroccans, apparently – there’s loads left on the shelves.  The only aisles where there was little left were the sugar and flour ones.  The vegetable oil shelves were a little bare but not empty.  Maybe, and this is just a guess, the lack of outright constant panic here is because Morocco is a net exporter of food – much of it to the EU – and that staple foods are fairly easily available all the time.  Some of the fruit and veg you get here is just amazing, so fresh and so tasty.  I’m thinking that, maybe, a country like the UK which has become a net importer, is more susceptible to freak events like this and so people react accordingly.  I dunno.

Dora

But, now, here is my shout out to one of the greatest British exports and institutions that the world has ever known – the BBC.  I am telling you now, it isn’t until you move abroad that you realise just how fucking amazing it is.  I do not use the ‘f’ word lightly, for once, possibly the only time in my life.

They’re incredible.  Thanks to the power of the internet, we get a news service that is second to none at any time of the day.  After you get sad about the latest crappy situation the world finds itself in, you switch to BBC Sounds and listen to Radio 6 for some brilliant and eclectic dj’s who really know their stuff to listen to tracks that come from proper musicians; move over to radio 2 to listen to Graham Norton interview famous authors and go over to Pointless on BBC 1, which never fails to entertain. 

Bindi

There are many things that I am lucky to have known as a UK citizen – the NHS, football fanaticism, Yorkshire Puddings, the English Language, Stephen Hawking, Prawn Madras, a pint of London Pride and The Beatles amongst many other things but if I had to one name one thing that makes me the most proud of being British, of being a part of some kind of collective from the UK, it is the BBC.  There is nothing else like it in the world and you should, wherever you are from, cherish it. 

Luna

Even when you finish watching it, you go onto their website and you cook from their repertoire of recipes, read from their reports of football and teach from their treasury of resources.  You do not know what you have until is gone, something we are all finding out about so starkly at the moment.  In these pretty crappy times we have to hold on to what is important. 

You also have to remember those good times because they offer some comfort.  Check this video out and go to about 5min30 on it.  Watch the goal from Darren Anderton.  Watch the reaction of the 15000 Pompey fans behind that goal.  See that seething mass of unbelieving bodies going absolutely mental?  I was in there, as was my sister and my best mates.  We were Pompey, we were not supposed to do stuff like that to Liverpool.

It remains the greatest explosion of unbridled joy I have ever experienced in my life.  No matter what happened afterwards, it still remains as that moment, that single moment that lives with you for ever and that one of those that you remember in the bad times such as these because it brings a smile to your face.

The next few weeks are forecast to be a bit tough.  The both of us worry about our friends and families, especially our mothers and we wish we could be of any assistance, do anything at all really.  But we’re stuck here.  We are so much luckier than most, we know this.  We will be thinking about you and hope that you can all find something to make the present situation slightly less crappy. 

Dante

Ayubowan,

hasta Luego,  inshallah

Mr Paul

Listen to this.  And then listen to this.  And then listen to both again.  Oh, yeah.  Thanks to Radio 6 for cheering us up in the past few days.

FFS Luna

Paul

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