THE GREAT AND THE GROTESQUE

When I tell my British friends some of the goings on here they seem a bit shocked and ask where the hell am I living. Spain doesn't have an obvious class system. We live in the centre of the town so it is a rich mix of people from all walks of life yet sometimes it probably sounds like we are living on Skid Row. Take today for example. None of us are supposed to leave the house unless we need to buy food or medicines. It seems the vast majority of the 46 million occupants of the peninsular have done this but there are always arseholes. Out of boredom one neighbour serenades us all at a reasonable hour with his guitar and well chosen songs. Everyone happy, so far no complaints. Then it was suggested we all play bingo and again everyone thought this was a good thing until the anti social ones on the left rocked up as a threesome in the street just as we were about to start. Oh it's alright for you to make noise one of them said as he banged a can of San Miguel on the window of some unfortunate bastard's car. There was some injustice he said when we were all making a racket and he can't ever play his let's face it, shit music without someone complaining. Someone pointed out to the dickhead that there was a big difference between messing around for an hour at 4 o'clock in the afternoon playing decent music during what feels like a prison sentence at times and him playing shit music at seven in the morning all year round. You could see he was gunning for a fight but was a bit dense and was not sure how it was going to pan out seeing as we were all on our balconies and he was on street level with a raging virus lurking God knows where. One of his mates starting moaning to us all that they, the three clever dicks, had just been fined by the police for going out in a group and not for essentials. A woman two doors down told them that beer was not an essential item and why didn't they buy their booze the day before like the rest of us. Much more was argued and in the end one of the girlfriends came roaring out, pushing them inside saying that we would all call the police if they didn't get in like the rest of us. Bingo continued and about ten minutes later we heard a crash of broken glass. There was a pause and then bingo resumed. My other neighbour out the back texted me to ask what the hell was going on what with all the music, bingo, arguing and so on. I was just texting back to say that it was the usual shennanigans when two police cars arrived and an ambulance. The anti social one with the can of San Miguel, you know the type, one shandy and he's anyone's was led out with a slashed wrist. Just the one so don't think he wanted to end it all completely, and he needed one hand free to drink I guess. As the emergency services drove away there was a round of applause from all the residents. Who needs Valle Inclan when it is live and direct during a quarantine. All that was missing was the parrot.