Coronavirus lockdown and last time enjoyments

Our local sports club, usually a centre for people and pleasure
Now abandoned for the duration

The streets are emptying here in Spain.

We had two friends from France staying with us last week and took them to Valencia’s main station on Sunday, for the first leg of their trip home. That was the day before the start of the full Coronavirus lockdown across the country, but already the streets were deserted.

Valencia, capital of the fiesta, now nearly a ghost tow

Particularly striking was the five-mile long park that runs along the old riverbed. It is one of the city’s most impressive resources, with its football pitches, its rugby ground, its baseball diamond, its running tracks, its cycling paths, its athletics stadium and, above all, its green spaces where people meet to dance or to chat, to party or to sunbathe.

This time there was no one.

That was the culmination of a strange week. Circumstances changed gradually, day by day, but anything but slowly. And we had to adapt to stay in step.

On Monday, we were still expecting the great Fallas fiesta to start on the following Sunday, though anxiety and anger was climbing against the authorities for not cancelling it. Hundreds of thousands thronging the streets? It seemed irresponsible at best.

On Tuesday, the fiesta was cancelled.

Then we had a whole string of ‘last time’ moments. Obviously, we hope they won’t be truly last times, that the epidemic will end and we’ll get through it, so that we can start doing all these things again. But these were the last times before the lockdown.

At that time, Danielle was in the Madrid region. She’s been travelling there weekly for some time now, to look after our new granddaughter Matilda so that her parents could go back to work. What we didn’t know was that last week would be the last time she’d do that until the end of pandemic.

She came home on Wednesday with our French friends. Her last railway trip for the foreseeable future.

On Thursday, we took our friends around Valencia, wandering the streets and popping into various places we felt they ought to see. That might mean somewhere cultural or just pleasurable, such as the Museum of Modern Art, or a restaurant we’ve come to know and love, or the main square with its masked Fallas sculpture, or our final port of call, the glorious Café de la Horas which serves the best Agua de Valencia in the city.

Fallas sculpture dedicated to women
now with an anti-virus mask

Danielle disagrees that it’s the best, but she admits it’s pretty close to the top. And, for those who may not know this fine beverage, let me say that the word ‘agua’ (water) is misleading, as is the fact that it’s made mostly of orange juice. It isn’t the orange juice that provides the kick.

The Cafe de las Horas
Not just splendid for its kitsch but for its outstanding Agua de Valencia

All these visits were last times.

On Friday, we took our friends on a walk with the Community Walks group we belong to, partly for the exercise though mostly for the company. We even began planning another walk for the following Friday, not realising that this too had been a last-time occurrence.

On the way back, we decided to have lunch in a local restaurant. I phoned ahead to book a table. “For now?” they asked and when I confirmed that it was, “oh, then, no problem,” they replied. I realised later why they’d hesitated. The local government authorities had closed all bars, cafes and restaurants throughout the region, from that evening. Lunch had been our last chance to eat out.

And finally, on Saturday we took our friends to one of the local beaches. That was something I didn’t expect to be forbidden any time soon. I was so wrong. The axe of the nationwide lockdown fell the following day, so our walk along the beach – which I’m delighted we enjoyed – turned out to be the last of our last time pleasures.

Last beach walk.
We even had a pair of acrobats to admire

Our friends are back home in France, just in time to beat the lockdown. We took advantage of taking them to the station to pause a moment in the old city. For the last time.

We’re now adapting to an indefinite period of confinement. Apart from work, medical needs or basic shopping including food, the only reason we’re allowed out at all is to walk the dogs, and we’ve even had a loudspeaker van touring the area to warn us that it’s one person with dogs, and it’s take them out, take them back, no more.

It looks like we’ll be catching up on a lot of reading over the next few weeks, and binge-watching a few series. We just have to hope we don’t go stir crazy.

Still, if it minimises the impact of the pandemic and helps us through it, that’ll be a price worth paying. 

Even though it’s a pretty high price.