Day 42 "Killer Prawns and Jeremy Clarkson"

Day forty two, Killer Prawns and Jeremy Clarkson. Life behind the police lines in Lockdown Spain for a British couple and their three good legs cat.  

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Day 42 Killer Prawns and Jeremy Clarkson

 

It is day 42 of our Spanish Lockdown and Jen and Jack have sent us a picture from their balcony showing a little girl excitedly whizzing down the road on her tiny scooter.

 

For the children of Spain, today is a red-letter day.  They are now allowed out once a day for a short exercise period.  For many who live in the small flats that are dotted along this coastline, it must truly feel like freedom.

 

The news gets better, cautiously the curve seems to be flattening, so much so that Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will allow us all out for a short exercise period from Saturday May 2nd 

 

Last night we watched Jeremy Clarkson with a YouTube live edition of Drive Tribe, the previous night I had a strange unrelated dream about Jeremy Clarkson, he was demanding all sorts of things that I had to do and was asking me to edit some books he was producing, then weirdly yesterday evening we fired up YouTube and found the first recommended live event was a Drive Tribe live interview between him and the recently recovered Grand Tour and former Top Gear Producer Andy Wilman.

 

Loath him or love him, he made thirty minutes of live lockdown TV that was far better than the uncomfortable Children in Need, Comic Relief affair this week from the BBC.

 

Andy Wilman had chosen to swig Corona Beer during the whole interview, and we got to learn a candid, maybe too candid behind the scenes view of what it is like to work with Amazon. Andy looked very pasty faced and had clearly had a rough time with Covid 19, whereas Clarkson looked like he had been at the port, but the reality was he was badly sunburn from sitting in the back yard of his Cotswolds farm.

 

It was funny and raw, quite rude in places and maybe the future of TV?

 

I don’t know a lot about cars, back in 1997 I was Producing a Car Maintenance Show for LBC and decided that the Expert we had on air didn’t really know enough about cars either.  He was a nice enough guy, I liked him as he was a short arse like me.  So I sacked Richard Hammond from the show .. I often wonder to this day whatever happened to him.

 

Day 42 and the morning was dry.. no rain and the sun was trying to peak through the cloud.  An opportunity to clear up the mess the dirty rain had made the previous day.

 

For some complex meteorological reason, sometimes when it rains, it rains Sahara sand – a dirty brown sticky mess that dries like glue all over everything and everywhere.  It is a bugger to get off the terrace.  My Spanish neighbour José uses his Karcher, I prefer a mop, so spent more than two hours this morning cleaning everywhere down, finishing by putting the little plastic robot tank cleaner into the pool to clean that up.

 

We naively thought that we were leaving outdoor dirt behind when we came to Spain.. as of course it was always sunny and every hotel we stayed at had immaculate grounds.

 

How stupid could we have been, first hotels have an army of staff that clear up all the time and secondly it does rain and here we do get a lot of wind. And a lot of mess too.

 

The devils plant also grows here in abundance – Bougainvillea – oh yes you might be shouting at me that it is a beautiful plant.  But it is an absolute horror, apart from the really sharp thorns it has, it grows like a bloody weed and its sodding beautiful flowers constantly fall off and almost instantly dry into a paper thin, drain blocking, pool pump wrecking menace.

 

Then there is Oleander another ghastly and very poisonous toxic plant, ingestion of any part of this plant can make you seriously ill and even cause death.  Burning the leaves is equally toxic too.  Sorry to be so brutal about two of the most loved plants in the Mediterranean but neither of them are going to get planted in our garden.

 

Day 42 and the weather has changed back to being cold and windy, Chris is cooking the three good legs cat his fish.  He can no longer digest ordinary cat food, he can manage his little biscuits, but wet cat food has a most unpleasant effect at either end of his body, so he has frozen Panga fish from Vietnam for his breakfast and tea.

 

 

My mother’s visit to see us a few years ago in the village was delightful but hard work.  We were living in a little flat and had managed to rent another flat in the same block on the first floor for her visit.

 

My mother and Brian are old folk and set in their ways and there were more riders than a pop star diva for their visit.  A list of English food was required including English butter, cheese and my stepfather Brian’s favourite – north Atlantic Prawns.  He specifically said that “I don’t want any of those Spanish prawns Stephen.”

 

We found some frozen ‘prawn cocktail’ type prawns in the local Hypermarket they were nearly 8 Euros for a small packet. Anyway, my mother and Brian were on holiday, so we bought them for their arrival, put some in the freezer and a serving in the fridge to defrost.

 

My Mother and Stepfather have very prescribed eating times, and I am afraid to say under Lockdown we are the same too, looking forward to and eating meals at pretty much the same time every day now.

 

So, Teatime was at 5.30pm our time, and my sister was in charge of helping my mother prepare their tea in the ‘foreign kitchen’, as my mother described it.

 

There was a lot of drama around every meal time, I think I am very much the same as my mother and can create quite a lot of drama over nothing.. it must be something in the family DNA.

 

Half way through the week Brian surprised me by ordering a large plate of Gambas in a restaurant and finishing the whole plate off with great gusto.  “Those were lovely Stephen.” He told me, “But I thought you didn’t like ‘Spanish’ prawns.”  “Well I do now!” he chuckled.

 

At the end of the week, I asked him if he had enjoyed his English prawns.  “No,” he said in a very matter of the fact way.  “They were very slimy, so have not eaten them all.”

 

At nearly 8 Euros I wasn’t going to waste them so a few days later we fished them out of our freezer, having moved them back down to our flat. And I looked at the defrost instructions. It said in Spanish “This product must be cooked before being eaten.” ..woops