It is a bit cloudy and windy here today. I cycled to the gym and had a reasonable session while watching last nights football game on the large TV screen. It made a change from the gyrating girls and iron pumping music. But I was wondering how they could bear to watch it again knowing that Barça lost. Surely they weren’t Madrid supporters??
On the way home I saw a large black plastic bag flying high above the tallest flats, filled with air and heading purposefully towards the river. I wondered where it would end up and if anyone would ever take it to the recycling bins that dot the city.
Cycling against the wind meant I had to half close my eyes to avoid the small bits of gritty dust that seem to permeate the Granollers air.
Just as I got closer to home, cycling on the pavement to avoid crossing to the other side of the road, I slowed down for two children with their grandparents. Both boys were on little bicycles and the bigger one – perhaps 4 years old – was wearing a plastic bag over his head!
I was so intensely schooled in the idea that PLASTIC BAGS CAN BE DANGEROUS that I almost fell off my bike in surprise. Noone seemed troubled by this small head totally enveloped in plastic. Was this yet another example of how over protected British children are? When I was young I remember my mother putting holes in all plastic bags in case we suddenly got the strong urge to put one over our heads and take a sharp inbreath. For me it spelled INSTANT DEATH but for them it was obviously only a pretend helmet.
Plastic bags
(Visited 22 time, 1 visit today)
I have to confess, I can’t see many people here letting kids put plastic bags over their heads…but I do know what you mean, there isn’t a rubber band at the bottom, they should survive, no? pretty gritty here too……the unadvertised side of Spain….
I’m sure most people here wouldn’t let plastic bags be playthings for small children. It is more a sign of how wary I have become of expressing my British worries about ‘dangerous’ things eg dogs eating cooked chicken bones, electric cables in the bathroom, driving at speed through built up areas, putting on seatbelt while speeding off from traffic lights etc etc. I think todays scene was very unusual. But there were so many things I learned to fear – running while sucking a loppypop(bound to fall and choke to death) – that I see people doing perfectly happily. And the children survive! K x
Maybe it’s a Catholic thing, that everyone has a guardian angel? My Dutch mother-in-law told me once that when she was young she was at a farm in Brabant, the predominantly Catholic part of the Netherlands due to various French and Spanish invasions, and she saw the children doing really dangerous things. She rushed to alert the mother, but she just shrugged as if to say they are protected and it is God’s will either way.
I also remember the fuss about plastic bags and not running with lollies when I was a child. My own daughter put a whole olive in her mouth once at a party when she was about 18 months old. We all sat terrified watching to see what would happen (not wrenching open her mouth to get the olive because she would probably have panicked and swallowed the thing) and being so relieved when she just reached up and elegantly took the stone out of her mouth and put it back on the plate.
There has to be a happy medium somewhere!