So, it’s about 21 months now that we’ve been living within a pandemic. I remember when it first became serious I was giving classes and my students in Madrid were telling me how things were getting more and more scary – and that was just before we had our big lockdown. After that, their situation was really scary with one of my students living where she saw hearses lined up in the street outside her house as the hospitals couldn’t cope.

And then this time last year we had our night time curfew – which didn’t affect us other than it stopped the early morning drummers (which was one good thing to come from all this 😉 , but sadly they are at it again this year!!)

Since the start of this year, it’s been pretty much living the ‘new normal’ and everything seems to have settled down pretty well. Spain hasn’t yet had the new surge that other countries are seeing but it’s relatively early days with the new variant and we are already hearing warnings about exponential increases in cases, and while the numbers of hospital beds taken with Covid are less than this time last year – they are rising again.

I am sure the high % of vaccinated people has helped up to now, with third doses being rolled out and children from 5 being offered the vaccine. The other thing I am certain that has helped is the mandatory wearing of masks. Whether or not the actual mask works, it acts as a visual reminder that Covid isn’t over – it’s still very much here. While I am certainly not a fan of wearing masks (and I am sure I would have a different opinion if I was wearing one 12 hours a day when it was hot), and I don’t wear a mask if I am out in the country and there’s no-one around (but I always have a mask with me), however being masked up always reminds me to be aware that we are still living in a pandemic.

I will be interested to see if mask wearing becomes more the norm when this is all finished. My student who is a scientist told me that flu cases were down significantly last winter which was put down to mask wearing and social distancing. It gets very dusty here in the summer, and when we are out for a walk, if a car or tractor passes, there is quite a dust storm created which is compounded by dust from the cement works. I’d often thought about wearing a mask as breathing in all that cementy dust can’t be good, but I’d always felt a bit silly so didn’t. I think that stigma will have gone now.

I also wonder if the very hard lockdown we had is still relatively fresh in people’s minds. Not being able to go out for 3 months, not even for exercise was pretty tough, so I imagine doing all we can not to be in that situation again is pretty key to most people!

We’re also seeing appointments being required a lot more now, much less turning up and milling around for a while waiting to be seen. And we still have hand santizer in shops and in the vet it’s still one person per animal. The jumble sale in Portugal had to change venues so it had an in and out with a directed flow of traffic (which thinking about it, must be a Portuguese requirement).

I wonder if we’ll see new travel restrictions in the coming months. I know that some provinces have covid passes already in place for attending large events (we don’t here yet, I guess we don’t have very large events!!) and I can certainly see provinces putting in restrictions for people entering who aren’t fully vaccinated and perhaps the super-local lockdowns implemented when there is a cluster in a village.

We’re getting close to the two year anniversary and I wonder what I will be writing then!

We had to go to the vet in Zafra, and we stopped for a picnic at our new favourite reservoir. HERE’S some photos I took of us there for a picnic last year when the water level was a lot lower. Currently only the top two steps are above water.

This is Barry the Lovebird who has been busy dismantling a lovely woven nest I bought her and she has been using the pieces to make a heap of rubbish (AKA her nest) on the floor. She seems to have missed the nest building gene!

In our experience, having a little sight for a dog is actually the worst of all worlds. At least, being born that way is. Because they have a little sight, they don’t develop the senses that a completely blind dog has. Charlie is a great example of this, although she is completely deaf too – but her little bit of sight means she has enough sight to be dangerous! Both Charlie and Queenie both see only shapes and shadows, and poor Queenie would get upset if Ian came in wearing a hat or carrying a bag as she wouldn’t recognize his shape. She doesn’t act that way now, she’s probably used to Ian the amazing shape changing man!

We’ll soon see what sort of sight Percy has, and being small, he won’t have the same impact on our legs that Charlie does as she charges into us not being aware we’re there!

Percy was looked after first by a nice family who kept his brother who is more sickly.

He is very tiny and I was trying to remember Pixie at the same age – but then I remembered that Pixie had been living at the vet for a few months before we got her and I think she must have been about 6 months when she came to us and Percy is about 2 months.

So that was the bright spot of our week – the negative is that the house sale is not going ahead. This is amazingly frustrating and it was horrible timing. Ian had gone to look at houses in La Palma (small Canary Island to the left of Tenerife), he came home and we were sat at the kitchen table discussing them and quite literally the next sentence was going to be ‘so we’ll go for this one’ when I heard a buzz, looked at my phone and had a message from the buyers saying they had a problem with the bank. They had suggested they would talk to the bank but not a lot really happened since then, so last week we tried to push for a yes or no answer, which came back unsurprisingly as a no.

So we’re back at square one again!

In other news, an increase in Covid has meant that a night time curfew has been introduced again in some areas. Bars need to shut at 12 – which given the funny semi-nocturnal life people lead, will affect life more than might first seem to be the case! Spain is currently vaccinating over 12s, with an aim that they will be fully vaccinated before returning to school in September.

Last week I had even gone into a shop to buy a pen to rewrite our ‘for sale’ sign as it had faded in the sun as we were expecting it to be there for some time more.

We’re selling to a family from the village so it will be nice that the house becomes a family home. They originally said they would be looking to move in 6 months, however we’re hoping it will be shorter than that, as I don’t want to be moving in winter for a number of reasons – one being I know that there are suggestions there may be further flare-ups of Covid in the winter, and I don’t want to be in a position where we are trying to move in a lockdown. End of October / early November would be perfect.

So now the fun starts! We’ve created a spreadsheet with everything we need doing – and which gets bigger by the minute.

Next step – find somewhere to live 🙂

So… we’re a year on from our when words like ‘pandemic’, ‘border closure’, ‘mutant strains’ and ‘lockdown’ became a normal part of our vocabulary.

This time last year we were in our national lockdown – and Ian saw an armed policeman in the street on the first day, which was sobering. 

As everywhere, we found it difficult to get flour, however we found we could buy flour direct from the mill – and this is something we’ve continued to do. While it’s a little cheaper than what we can get from the supermarket, the quality is significantly better, so there really wasn’t any reason to go back to  getting flour from the supermarket again. Plus we learned a lot more about flour than we ever really needed to know!

And of course, when we had purchased the big bags of flour, we had to decide how to actually keep it

The other thing which was difficult to get – and remains so – is the multivitamins I liked to take. They went out of stock and the price  of vitamins and supplements skyrocketed.

We learned to embrace online shopping and found that one way or  another we could get (almost) everything we wanted and delivered.

Our lockdown was hard – I’m not aware of anywhere else where people weren’t allowed out even for exercise (we did spend the first few days debating whether asparagus picking would be allowed). 

We took to running in the back yard and in the barn. The red scribble below is the GPS record of our run in the back yard. This is what a 3km run looked like!

But I do wonder if it had a positive effect later on. We’ve been fortunate that since our lockdown was eased last May, we’ve not had a further national lockdown and schools and businesses remained open since September. I can’t help thinking that the threat of another lockdown spurred people into responsible behavior! Since then, we’ve just had the localized lockdowns and measures restricting the opening hours of shops and bars.

Plus, of course, we have had a nighttime curfew in place for several months now – but that’s not something that’s effected us.

During the summer people were allowed to travel although because of water shortages, many villages didn’t open their swimming pools and this acted as a disincentive to travel.

However, later the data showed that ‘social travel’ had been responsible for increased cases, and the main emphasis from there on was on stopping or at least controlling social travel. Those restrictions were lifted a while back, but are reintroduced at holiday weekends. People entering Spain have been required to provide test results since last autumn, however there are discussions now about how and if that will continue as the pressure is on to open tourism again (and people’s view on that appears to be very much dependent on whether their livelihood is affected) – and the border to Portugal is closed except for commerce and essential visits. I’m not sure what the French border is doing, but I guess similar.

I do remember watching the figures rising.

The level of data we get has been excellent and is something I personally have found reassuring. When the health authorities can pinpoint outbreaks and where they have come from so accurately, and share that information promptly, it at least gives the feeling that things are as under control as they can be in an out of control situation.

The wearing of masks was mandated pretty early on and while it seemed odd and alien to start, now feels very normal. 

I wonder if we will see a significant increase of people electing to wear face coverings after the restrictions are lifted. Certainly given how dusty it is here in the summer, I can see me wearing a mask more often. The only thing that’s really stopped me before is the fact I’d look odd!

The vaccine is being rolled out, with vulnerable people and key workers, including teachers and support workers, being prioritized. There are concerns about the AtroZeneca vaccine, and the government has said it is up to the health districts to decide whether to stop or continue. I’m not sure what Extremadura has decided – as we’re pretty far down the list, I’ll probably pay more attention when it’s near our time.

Financially, it couldn’t have happened at a worse time as far as the shop in Alston is concerned(or the other way around). The previous tenant had said they were interested in extending their lease for another year – and then the pandemic hit and they didn’t. So we’re responsible for the business rates now – which are quite hefty for a small shop. We finally got the whole building on the market, so fingers crossed something happens there.

I was also wrong about the fact that the pandemic might encourage people to leave cities and that we may see some interest in the house. Even dropping the price to under 200k euros didn’t do the trick – but maybe people just aren’t in buying mode at the moment.

I was looking at the data from my website and we realized pretty early on that we were going to be badly hit – both from the website and from the shop, although I had hoped we might have got the shop sold during this time.

 I am surprised looking back that we weren’t in a bigger panic. I can only assume that things were sooooo awful and so much out of our control, we didn’t know what to worry about first! Our site visits dropped by about 70% overnight and our revenue by even more – people were obviously much more focused on googling stuff about pandemics than looking for things to print. We had changed the ad provider on the site just before we saw the downturn, so we also had to see whether the problem was the ad provider (it wasn’t) or the pandemic (it was).

Once the initial shock wore off, I made covid themed coloring pages and other printables for the site – and we saw things pick up as people were looking for activities to do at home.  

I had been working on a website with numeracy games for preschoolers, and if I had known that lockdowns in the UK were going to continue for as long as they have, I would have stepped up getting that launched as I am sure parents would be looking for educational games for playing at home.

As a family we learned to embrace Zoom  – and importantly, I learned how to turn myself into a smurf for zoom chats.

So looking back on a year living with a pandemic, I remember the initial shock followed by a surprising acceptance of where we are and the ‘new normal’. I wonder what the next year will bring…

The situation has been improving – which is good news.

Spain has kept schools and businesses open since the first lockdown – much to the disappointment of students who feel most hard done by! Where possible, students are encouraged to work from home, so where many students go to the library after school to do their homework, they now have to do that from their house, and many universities have distance learning programs which they are running.  Extra curricular activities were stopped for a while, but they are starting up again.

The restrictions that were applied to big towns are also being lifted. So I believe now we could go to Llerena for a coffee now, but the cafe or restaurant isn’t allowed to  play music to stop people shouting. We also have to wear a mask except for the point of food or  drink consumption – which could get very messy!

The mini lockdowns will continue and appear to work well. I had wondered how sustainable it would be – having a small village under lockdown  whereas in the next village people were roaming free! However, like everything else, we just get used to it 

As I’ve mentioned before, the feeling here is that we are learning to live with the virus – I don’t think that Spain is particularly vaccine sceptic, but the message that the vaccine isn’t the key to the ‘old normal’ is very strong.  For example, although all care homes residents have had both doses of the vaccine now, restrictions aren’t being lifted because of fears there will be variants which residents aren’t protected against. However, the situation in Spanish care homes at the height of the first wave was truly horrifying, so I imagine that a super-abundance of caution is being applied.

I won’t be surprised to learn that there are new recommendations regarding masks soon. Research is being done into the effectiveness of ‘double masking’ – wearing two masks. At the moment we just have to  wear face covering without there being any quality specifications, but I think we’ll see that change.

I am guessing this will be another year without fiestas. Already the Easter parades have been cancelled -they were last year too – and towns have been told not to hold carnival  events. The key to keeping the latest wave under control appears to be keeping people local and stopping mixing between towns – so I imagine that’s something we’ll see certainly through the spring fiestas.

We have to go to the vet for Pixie’s blood test and Horace’s hair cut soon, so it will be interesting to get a feel for how things have been in Zafra. We haven’t been there since before Christmas when we did our cheese shop.

I wonder what I will be writing this time next year – what will have changed and what will be the same. In particular, I wonder if mask wearing will have become a normal part of society. It gets very dusty here in the summer, and I’d often thought about wearing a mask when we were out for a walk in the morning on the cement road, as if a tractor goes by, a huge cloud of cement dust is raised.  I wonder now it mask wearing will have become more normalized so even if we aren’t wearing them because of the virus, it becomes more normal to wear one because of pollution or dust – simply because the unusualness of mask-wearing (here, I know it is different in big cities) has been negated.

In other news, poor Sam is showing his age. I’m not sure how aware of things he is now. Hopefully the warmer weather will be good for  him – but we’re just taking it day by day.

So since then she’s been under strict lockdown so we can confirm whether she is cycling between getting better and then deteriorating naturally, or whether it is something she is eating / getting exposed to.  The plan will be when we have established that when she is in quarantine that she doesn’t have problems, to start letting her into the rest of the house bit by bit.

Sam has been a worry again. He had a couple of seizures, and we said we’d not put him through that again, however they stopped and he came round reasonably quickly. He’s been sleeping well and deeply, which is good as sometimes he can’t settle after a seizure and that is quite distressing all round. He’s very wobbly, but he’s eating and drinking and seems OK (relatively), so we’re going to see what the next few days brings.

Nothing much has changed on the virus front, at least, nothing has changed for the worse. It seems like the very local but hard lockdowns appear to have worked, but it’s an ongoing thing. There was a long weekend earlier this month and travel between some communities was banned.  We still have the curfew, but from midnight to 6, it probably isn’t inconveniencing too many at this time of  year! It does, however (hopefully) mean the awful night time drumming won’t happen this year in the build up to Christmas.

Ian and I have agreed to limit our spending on presents for each other to 5 euros in total. I have my ideas all planned – but I can’t write about it yet on the extreme off chance that Ian should read this!  With no charity shops to hand, we’re going to have to be creative 🙂 

The Spanish government issued a state of emergency yesterday which allows principalities (ie Extremadura) to set overnight curfews and to implement local measures. There are a number of criteria that are taken into account before a town or village gets locked down – the % of beds in the ICU taken with coronavirus patients, the % of cases which are found through track and trace (the goal is 70%, if the number of confirmed cases which are not found through track and trace is less than that, this triggers a worry warning as it means there are ‘rogue’ cases out there which can’t be tracked) – and of course the % of cases in a hospital area.

My guess is if there are many more cases in the village, we will be locked down insomuch as we won’t be allowed out for non-essential visits. After our mega lockdown earlier this year this doesn’t fill us with much concern as we got very much into the swing of things. Time to order another few tonnes of flour… 😉

As we found in the first wave earlier this year, communication continues to be excellent and really can’t be faulted. We received notification as soon as one person was confirmed in the village. We were told that the person had received a positive test – but not told who the person was for privacy reasons. Four people were tested positive at the weekend and again we received notification – and we are also given updates as whether these cases become serious and need hospitalization (which is thankfully no at this time). This helps very much to keep things in perspective while also making it very clear that the virus is here and part of life.

We were a little shocked to find out that Bobbins has canine coronavirus. She had had extremely volatile diarrhea and was being treated for gastroenteritis, but the treatment wasn’t working so we had to go back. The vet said she’d run some tests and I thought I was hearing things when she said she had coronavirus. Often at  the vet I need to listen carefully for words, as although many medical terms are similar, they are pronounced differently. I thought that my mind had played a trick with the coronavirus, but it transpires that poor Bobbins has the canine version. It is highly contagious, so we are currently trying to keep her quarantined.

Our follow up with the vet will be via email. This is a first and I think it’s where they are trying to cut down on in person visits where possible.

In other news, our internet connection has been updated. No longer do we have speeds reminiscent of a hamster driven 1998 dialup and we are now definitely in the 21st century. While my clipart has been selling quite well over the summer, I had not published any new clipart as it was taking forever to upload – and often the upload would fail and I would find it difficult to work out what had loaded and what hasn’t – so I am looking forward to getting new clipart sets done and uploaded in a painfree manner!

Oh – and lovebird update: They are both in the same cage and while they sleep in food bowls (most odd – why…?) at either end of the cage, they do seem to be relatively comfortable together!

While the number of cases has been rising steadily in Spain, there hasn’t been too much of a panic as the key measurement figure they are using here is hospital capacity. However, things have changed for the worse in Madrid where the hospital capacity has gone ‘into the red’, which means the % of beds used by coronavirus patients has increased to a worrying level. I am expecting to hear that new measures are taken in Madrid while they get things back under control.

Measuring the state of the virus by hospital capacity does seem an easier way for people to understand what is going on. The overall ‘infected’ figures don’t really tell us very much – particularly given that a high % of recent cases are people without symptoms (at least, that’s the case here). We know that currently 6% of beds in our hospital district are taken by coronavirus patients, so that’s a very meaningful figure to watch. 

We got a message from the council this week saying the tests had come back negative. I have no idea what tests and whether that was random testing (of which a lot is going on) or whether someone had symptoms. But at least it indicates that the council will keep us informed if the virus gets here.

I’d had high hopes that someone would want to buy the shop/flat to get away from things – however according to the BBC (which is just plain depressing reading) it looks as though Northumberland is under new measures – and given how close Alston is to the Northumberland border, I guess it’s not going to be as appealing as I had hoped. 

We’re off to Llerena today to find out about upgrading our Internet connection. Hopefully that will be something available to us soon!

Barry doesn’t seem to be pining too much for Gary. I put lots of things in her cage to act as a distraction, so she’s been busy sorting that all out which hopefully will take her mind off him not being there. They are very fussy birds, so like to organize things in their cage (generally by chewing them up!). 

There’s a very real concern that the health service in Madrid will get overwhelmed as we move into autumn. However, there are differing views about this, as the huge majority of new cases are in young people who are not showing symptoms. The worry, of course, is that they will infect more vunerable people.

It’s difficult to remember, sometimes, what’s going on, as we adapted to the ‘new normal’ very well. The only real difference is we now continue get our food shopping delivered. 

Last week we went into Zafra for the first time since March which wasn’t for a vet visit. We went to a couple of shops and again – didn’t really see much difference – other than hand wash at the entry of one shop.

Schools start back in a couple of weeks. Again, I think it will be easy here as for a couple of months at least, they will be able to give classes outside, and the class sizes are so small anyway, it will be pretty easy for them to social distance. But it will be a lot more challenging in the big cities.

In other news, Sam is much better after his last set of seizures. There’s something about us saying ‘I think it’s time we took him to Antonio’ which seems to work its magic and Sam seems to snap out of it! This must be the 4th or 5th time, we’ve braced ourselves to say goodbye, only for him to come round quickly. Of course, he’s very frail and is a very old dog now, but he’s first out for his food, joining in any mayhem, albeit in a shakey way, and at the moment, seems still to be enjoying life.

Another reason why they seem quite relaxed is that a lot of the cases that are being found are asymptomatic, and this is a larger than expected proportion. There’s quite an aggressive track and trace system in place which is why they are uncovering this large percentage of asymptomatic cases. 

As before, the vast majority of the cases are in the big cities although two villages in Extremadura did go back a phase last week because of infections.

Worryingly, there’s been an outbreak of Meningitis in Seville, which is a strain that has come from Egypt. This isn’t anything to do with the coronavirus, however one of the fears is what pressure these two together might put on the ICU units.

On the plus side, telefonica has been working hard upgrading the network in rural areas in Extremadura and we should have improved connectivity soon. Which will be nice. We pay a huge amount for an extremely poor service at the moment, so the new service will not only bring us forward by two decades will also give us a lot more for the same or less money – which will be nice. 

I’m attending a virtual conference this weekend. This was in the details I received and I thought this was funny – apparently this has been quite a thing with people forgetting that they are on camera!