Saturday, sandwiched between shop closures caused by Easter. First duty, hit a food shop to lay in supplies for three days. Since neither of us could face an early start and since Jalón on Saturday gets heaving with visitors to the rastro [best described as flea market], we chose to go to another nearby supermarket in Orba. That was also heaving, of course, since everyone in Spain now has the same 3-day catering puzzle.
Catering puzzles such as this are relatively economically solved in Spain ‘cos you can buy an excellent pollo rural [free-range chicken] weighing 2kg+ for a mere 8€. One such bird is quite large enough to feed two of us for three days. We’d got two days worth of a chicken languishing in the freezer. Of course, it’s nice to throw in a bit of variety, just in case one gets fed up with chicken. [Can one get fed up with chicken?] The heaving masses soon got too much for us so we bailed out but not before we’d thrown in a net of local mussels for said variety, which I think are called glochinas but don’t quote me.
Undaunted, we returned with such purchases as we had and Francine declared that I could treat her to lunch out. We stashed our food and headed for Calpe in search of chiperones/chopitos [baby squid]. Calpe was heaving; so heaving that all our usually reliable parking spots were taken. We drove around several areas, all without success – even the illegal spots were taken. 😀 Daunted, we bailed out again and returned home for lunch on the balcony. Bloody religious festivals.
Actually, our balcony is often the best lunch choice. At midday, most other inhabitants of our little development have gone out for the day so, not only do we have good views across the valley to the mountains beyond but we tend to have the place to ourselves. Relatively bliss.
There are now far too many people on this planet. When I began work, the world population broke 3 billion. It now stands at 7.5 billion. The most populous bird on the planet is the Red-billed Quelea (Quelea quelea) with an estimated breading population of 3 billion, admittedly all in sub-Saharan Africa. We are very quick to declare that wildlife species “need culling” but the truth is that Homo sapiens is the worst scourge on the planet and the only population that really needs culling is ourselves.
I could make some politically very incorrect suggestions as to where to start. Current world politics may beat me to it, though.
Remind me to avoid Easter next time … if there is a next time.
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