The long and the short and the tall

-
I'm not exactly tall. About 1.80 in my stockinged feet. It's tall enough to be an advantage here though. Spaniards, at least older Spaniards, tend to be on the short side. In a crowd, to watch a parade, I'm lofty enough to have the advantage. Young Spaniards are taller but, fortunately, they have more interesting things to do than to go to parades. My theory is that Francoist policies were so successful that older Spaniards went hungry in their youth.

Last year, or maybe the year before - time passes in a blur nowadays - we went to IKEA and bought a new duvet cover and pillow cases. The pillow cases were too small for our English pillows and the cover too roomy for our English duvet. Money well spent.

I've been researching an article for the TIM magazine on Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara and Inditex. The third richest man in the world. Zara was in my mind. Equally it's been colder recently - maybe 13ºC overnight. Maggie is a bit fidgety in bed, she hogs the duvet. It's a thin goose down affair and it's easy for her to drag it over to her side. So, chilly nights and Inditex coalesced as we passed the Zara Home store and I popped in to get a new duvet. After sorting through lots of identical looking bags stuffed full of quilts I relented and asked an assistant for help. "I'm looking for a 180x180" I said. "The smallest double we've got is 220x180" she said, "180x180 isn't a standard size, at least in Spain." Her tone was almost gleeful.

OK, so I'm happy enough with the idea that those tall Swedish types need a bigger duvet both to stop their feet sticking out of the bottom and to keep the arctic draughts at bay. What I don't understand is how longitudinally challenged Spaniards get roomier duvets?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit bigger than 12 gauge

-
Image
If you ever feel the need to launch armour piercing shells weighing 885kg and loaded with 18 kilos of TNT a little over 35 kilometres out to sea then I know where you can find exactly the device to do it. 885kg by the way is about the weight of the current Fiat 500 car. Just down the coast from us at Azohía there is an abandoned, but well maintained, fortress that houses two rather fearsome looking cannons. The fortress was constructed between 1928 and 1936. The guns themselves were built by Vickers. Their barrels are 17 metres long with a calibre of 38cm. Not quite wide enough to launch that Fiat but pretty big nonetheless. You're going to need 20 pals to help you fire each gun and you'll probably need to fill in some official paperwork, this being Spain, but it would make you the envy of anyone who thought they were pretty cool because they owned a pair of Purdeys. Fabulous location too. Nice bit of the coast.
Read more

Shopping

-
Image
Closing in on 30 years ago now I went to a Spanish class in Peterborough with a teacher called John Richardson. On the first night he asked us why we wanted to learn Spanish. I said that I wanted to be able to buy a beer. He lied to me and said that would be easy. I still have trouble getting a beer. Other people in the group said that they wanted to learn the language because they had just bought a house in Torrevieja and wanted to be able to talk to their neighbours. I distinctly remember John saying that it seemed that half of Peterborough had a house in Torrevieja. So there have been Britons in Torrevieja for over 30 years and it shows. We went there to buy specs. We went to Specsavers because I had heard that they were cheap. From the initial phone call to the final fitting everything was transacted in English and the only Spaniard I encountered (to my knowledge) in the whole process was the optician. Specsavers is in a shopping centre and the principal language throughout the...
Read more

Second class citizens

-
Image
We have house guests at the moment - some of Maggie's family and their lovers. Generally all we've done is to walk, eat and drink with the occasional museum stop to imitate cultural longing. Yesterday we boarded the Tourist Boat for a gentle tootle around the harbour. It's a while since I've been on the boat so I was a bit surprised when there was no recorded "to the left the such and such fort and to the right the old fisherman's quay" - commentary. It used to come first in Spanish and then in English but now all is silence. Anyway we stopped at Fuerte de la Navidad - Christmas Fort. Non Spanish speakers were directed one way and Spanish speakers another. We got to see an English language film extolling the virtues of Cartagena and then we were left to stroll the fort at leisure. As we walked and nosed I realised that the Spanish speakers were getting a detailed introduction to the fort. I joined in. Interesting stuff I thought. Lots about the de...
Read more