Modernity in Spain

I wouldn’t have guessed that you would hear that phrase at our dining room table. This is partly because we don’t eat at our dining room table, so you're pretty unlikely to hear anything there. We sit on the sofa in front of the tv. One of us (usually me) says “this is really bad, isn’t it? We should sit at the table and talk to each other instead of watching rubbish tv.” The other agrees, and we both tuck into our meal. It’s kind of like saying grace.

A couple of Fridays ago, however, we did sit at our table and the phrase Modernity in Spain was uttered. Not by me. But it was uttered at our table. Yes, I thought you’d be impressed.

It was like this. Somebody had suggested to me, if you want to find friends, the best thing to do is to try getting to know new arrivals. They will be in need of friends. People who’ve lived here for ages aren’t. This seemed like good advice. So when Husband mentioned that a new person had pitched up at work, and that she and her husband were living very near us, I said “invite them round”. I didn’t say “invite them round with no notice at the children’s bedtime on a day when the children are particularly hyper, the place is a tip, there’s no food in the house and not even a bottle of wine”. What I did say, knowing that the other husband was Spanish and called Manuel, was “we’ll have to be careful not to make any Manuel jokes”. Husband said “I already have, but he didn’t mind. He knows about Fawlty Towers, and he’s not from Barcelona”. So that was OK then.

You know, actually, it is a very sneaky strategy to have no food in the house (although the no wine bit isn't so clever). This means that instead of having to expend effort thinking about, shopping for, and cooking dinner, you can simply say to your guests “we’ve got no food in the house, let’s get a take-away”. This is much easier. Even the children’s bedtime thing can have it’s advantages – the guests go and get the take-away on your behalf. And the bottle of wine.

So there we were, children in bed, wine in glasses, take-away served. They were very good company. They even made nice comments about the take-away. I thought that was very polite.

I really liked them. And you know, once in a while, it's nice to have Modernity in Spain discussed at your table, rather than whose turn it is first on the playstation after dinner. We’ll have to have them round again. Trouble is, I can’t invite them, because then I’ll have to bother to cook. You can’t pull that no food in the house trick twice. Meanwhile, I must get one of those clever Blogger tracker tools sorted out, because it would be fun to know just how many people have googled Modernity in Spain and ended up with Domesticity in the Midwest instead.