Put into mothballs

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I learn a lot about the country I live in by prying into the private lives of my students. Sometime last Autumn I asked the inevitable Monday lesson question about what a student had done at the weekend. The young woman in question had spent some time putting away her summer clothes and bringing out her winter clothes. I was impressed. Such order.

Come Spring I asked the same student if she had liberated her summer clothes from their Winter storage yet. A couple of weeks still to go she said.

I was relaying the story of this, to me, remarkable behaviour to another group of students as a prelude to a similar question to them. I didn't get very far. They all thought it was perfectly normal behaviour. They did it too.

Today on Ondacero radio there was a mention of one of their more well known presenters, Carlos Herrera, talking about this very phenomenon on his show last week. Obviously this is a nationwide event in Spain. I'm pretty sure that we Brits don't do go through the same palaver but, then again, what would I know about household ritual?

Despite the title of the blog I've never had any olfactory clue that Spanish people still use the old fashioned camphor mothballs.

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