‘Er Indoors

(Cake decorations in a shop window)

Went to the supermarket at around 5pm, and it was all right, but everything you do now is determined by the searing heat. I asked one of the locals working with us what they did? “We go to Europe,” she answered.

So the weekend is spent indoors, attempting as best you can to amuse yourself. Have accepted that I can’t walk home from work any more, which means I have to use the gym in this apartment block. Great that we have it of course, but after only eight minutes on the treadmill, I start getting familiar pains in my ankle. Will have to build up slowly again. Cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could go willingly to a gym, but will work out a plan to get super-fit again by the autumn.

All sorts of small problems this week. On one afternoon, walked to another supermarket, on the way home from work, only to find that it had been shut down. The health and safety people had come at 10 o’clock and closed it down. In the newspapers, you will read that a restaurant or a shop has been shut down, but they are never named, nor is the offence cited. So the problem could be a family of rats running riot or a couple of yogurts past their sell-by date. A fortnight later, the shop or restaurant will re-open and you still don’t know what it is all about.

This particular supermarket is the one frequented by Westerners. You can get decent bread and good muesli there, plus soya milk, which is a staple for me. Finger’s crossed it does open again. In the more local one, I rarely see a Westerner and the range is less good. Cheese is all processed, for instance, and amazingly, they don’t have fresh hummous. Fruit and vegetables are cheap enough, though often packed on thick styofoam trays. I can live comfortably on Eu45 a week; biggest expense is phone cards, for which you have to pay a ‘validity’ charge if you want to keep them working. So when I bought a card for Eu11 (which would cover 20 minutes to home off-peak), over two- thirds went on renewing my ‘validity’ – and now, as I attempt to ring home, the phone is telling me to renew my account. Then at the supermarket, my bank’s ATM isn’t working; need to check my balance, plus get some money out so I can buy another mbile phone credit card. Very annoying and it’s the small things that drive you mad.

I find it hard to get to grips with life here. Maybe it’s the fact that I can’t move around. It truly is the most frustrating aspect of living in this place. Not that there’s much to see or do anyway, but a couple of long walks a week can do wonders for the spirit, as I recall from the two separate weeks I spent in Dover, surely one of the dullest towns on earth. Being able to go for a run was a great help (as was the good company).