Standing in line outside the grocery store (and pharmacy) to enter is the new normal here, only now they give you a pair of grocer’s plastic gloves (like you find in the produce section) to use while shopping after you have used the hand sanitizer at the front door. I understand why they give them out, but shopping with them on your hands gets slippery. I can’t tell you how many times I almost dropped things.
My daily amusement now is to find out what items people are panic buying. The panic buying of toilet paper is a global thing. I even read that there was a toilet paper robbery in Hong Kong last week! In the US, it’s guns and ammunition. In Thailand, it’s canned tuna and other canned meats. In Berlin, people were breaking the government’s lock down orders to stand in line outside brokerage houses to buy gold. Here in my little neighborhood, pasta sauce now seems to be the panic buying item du jour. I also noticed that, although the shelves of fresh meat have been restocked at the grocery store, there was no ground beef for sale. Does that mean people’s standard of cooking has been drastically reduced or that most people now have a serious lack of imagination due to the monotony and boredom that has set in during this lock down?
We are now through one week of lock down with at least three more weeks of it to go. Police are now starting to crack down on people who are outside of their homes without a reason that matches the few things we are allowed to leave home to do. My neighbor walked Lola for me earlier today and saw the police giving citations to a couple out walking. Fines can range from €600-€3000, but you can also be arrested. I read today that one man in the northwest of Spain actually went outside and tried to get the police to arrest him because he said that he cannot take one more day of being in lock down with only his mother for company. Harsh!
A friend here in Madrid told me that one of her roommates went out for supplies the other day and came back with a bag of potato chips, a 6-pack of beer, a bottle of wine, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of strawberry gin and a bottle of lemonade. You have to love a roommate like that! Now, they argue over whose turn it is to take out the trash, because it’s the only excuse to leave their apartment and get some fresh air.
Dispatches From Madrid 