Riding the Wave, 39. It's a Lottery.

Yesterday I wondered when they were going to close Rianxo. Well, last night, I got a ping on my phone. I checked the news item, and, effectively, as of midnight tonight, Rianxo is closed. 

Today, I went out to Pobra do Caramiñal, to stock up on items I buy at a supermarket chain that we don't have in our township. Here, we only have an Eroski, which is smaller and has less content than the one I normally shop at in Boiro, and a Mercadona, which I decidedly dislike. 

The worst aspect of being shut down isn't so much the lack of choice in shopping, but that we seem to be in a gilded cage. Yes, we can leave the house, which we couldn't in spring, but we can't leave the township. So, a drive down the coast on a Sunday is impossible. I had thought about driving somewhere into the interior during Christmas vacation, taking a lunch and staying away from people as much as possible. Not any more. We aren't shut up in the house, but we can't go anywhere.

Those who like to go to the terraces now have to be quick with their coffees. Cafés and bars can only have half the normal amount of tables on their terraces, and clients can't sit inside. Closing time is five in the afternoon. More than four friends can't get together. 

At the very least, we are together as a family, not like in spring, when our daughter was caught in Santiago. We'll have a nice Christmas, just the three of us, so, in that sense, we are very lucky. Where we don't seem to have luck is, as usual, in the Christmas lottery. It's today, and I didn't have any illusion at all about it this year. We've bought even fewer lottery tickets this year since they came out in the summer; two are actually presents. I am playing two or three euros in different lotteries every other week, but there's more chance in one of those of winning something, even if it's only ten euros to help out with the food shopping. This Christmas, though, a lot of people all over Galicia have won a bit of extra cash. 

Even the draw this year is empty of joy. Every year, the night before, people line up to be among those lucky few admitted to the Teatro Real in Madrid, where the numbers are pulled and sung by the students of the San Ildefonso school, as it's been done for over a hundred years. Some of those people dress up in costume, giving everything a touch of the weird and a deliriously happy expectation. When the large prizes are drawn, people applaud. One year, a neighbor of our parish was in the theater when the first number was pulled, and he discovered there he had won the first prize. It is a tradition that ushers in Christmas, and most people call it the Day of Health, because those who don't win anything tend to say, "We have our health, at least." Those who can claim that this year have won that particular lottery. The pandemic has contrived to dampen most other joys.

The regional government has decided that, despite closing different municipalities, from the 23rd to the 25th, people can travel to visit family, without taking into account if the municipialites are closed or not. They can't stay to eat, but they can travel to visit. Are they planning in having police go from house to house to make sure of that? What will happen is that families will get together to eat. If necessary, some will sleep over. to avoid curfew. How do they plan to enforce this new permission? Will they ask drivers to hand over their (notarized) family tree? Given what's going on, wouldn't it simply be better to tell everyone to eat in their own home and stay put?

I get the feeling our township, and various others, are going to stay closed well into the New Year. Oh, well.

Life continues.