The Hidden Challenge of Living with a Talking Parrot

We've just spent the last goodness knows how long trying to decide how to teach Ludvig to ask for something.

He's still quite young, but we ought to be able to teach him how to ask for things - but what words do we use!!! I thought of 'give me', being short, however that just sounds so rude and impolite. As indeed does 'I want' which I also thought of. The thought of having a little voice shouting 'give me a sunflower seed' might sound a bit demanding.

Ian suggested 'may I have', which is much better and is only one extra word.

However, we've settled on 'I'd like' which is more polite and hopefully will be easy to say.

The plan will be we'll teach him to say 'I'd like' and then start giving him sunflower seeds and finishing the sentence for him so he'll say 'I'd like' and then we'll give him a sunflower seed and say 'sunflower seed'. And then move on to other things one by one.

Who'd have thought that having a talking parrot would mean that we need to consider his politeness as well as his volcabulary!

why we don't need to worry about flour!

Lockdown Life - Light at the End of the Tunnel

The government has laid out the plans for de-escalation which will start next week sometime, assuming there's no increase in cases requiring ICU beds. The government is very concerned about a second outbreak and their focus is equally about ensuring they are ready to handle a further outbreak as well as controlling the situation now.

The plan seems pretty logical, with there being four phases, and each principality (and perhaps even more finely tuned than that) being on a given phases, depending on the situation.

Every place will start on Phase 0 - which is allowing people out for exercise, shopping and business where you have to make an appointment (to keep overcrowding under control), and family units can meet in houses as long as they are in the same town or village.

Each phase will last for two weeks, and assuming that there's no increase in cases and the ICU bed situation remains good, we'll move onto the next phase.

I think it sounds a pretty good way to handle things - of course, islands like the smaller Canary islands with no cases will need a plan which is very different to Madrid, which will need much longer to move to the different phases.

Our area is one of the low risk areas, so although we'll start on Phase 0, same as everyone else, hopefully we'll move through the phases quickly.

The big concern is people coming into the area and bringing the virus with them but this program of continual testing, watching and assessing means that they ought to be able to keep on top of things.

While the government did make some pretty big mistakes to start off with - they let the Women's Day march go ahead in Madrid at the beginning of March - and although there were few known cases in Madrid, it was pretty clear from Italy what was happening. And they also were completely unprepared for the terrible damage the virus did when it got into care homes, which overwhelmed the hospital system, since then, I feel that the impossible situation has been handled well.

I really like the de-escalation plan which allows areas to move at their own speed and I think they are much more likely to get public support rather than have a one-size-fits-all approach which generally ends up fitting noone.

In other news, Sam has started having seizures again. He started at the weekend and they continued for a couple of days, however I think he's gone 48 hours without one, which I hope is the end of this little lot. Although the seizures were quite big, he came out of them really quickly - in just a couple of minutes - which made a big difference as he wasn't quite a 'punch drunk' as he was at Christmas.

The one constant thing with Sam's seizures is the lack of consistency! He's had little ones, big ones, none for three or four years, clusters, singles...  He's had seizures that have taken days to come round after, and ones where he's at the fridge waiting for his post-seizure piece of frankfurter within seconds.  Hopefully though, he'll have no more, but we'll see....

Lockdown Life - Day 40

As we near the end of the 6th week of lockdown, we're beginning to notice some changes. We can still no longer get flour (but the good news is we are buying some direct from a mill, which will actually work out pretty much the same price as buying from the supermarket, but I wonder if we'll see a difference in quality).

I also noticed that vitamins I normally buy for 2 euros are now 4.75. This was the first thing that we've found which has really been inflated in price.

And then our very old and under used exercise bike broke. Ian has pulled a muscle in his calf, which is hampering his running, so he was looking to use the exercise bike instead, however it sort of fell apart. So he looked online, and exercise bikes that were around 60 euros in Carrefour are now over 200!!! And there's virtually no exercise equipment in any of the big online stores. Of course - with no one allowed out to exercise, people are buying what they can do do exercise at home.

So, while the majority of things are staying pretty stable, there are some things we have seen change, and I guess this will continue.

There are some other things we need to consider too - the car now hasn't been used for 6 weeks. At what stage do we need to do something about it? Do we need to run it to keep the battery or whatever alive? 

We are very lucky that Dia do an excellent delivery service and what we can't get from Dia, we can get from Amazon.  We even managed to get big sacks of dog food from Amazon. Interestingly, I noticed Amazon is selling sheep food. I am absolutely certain I would have noticed this before if it was something they regularly stocked, as I buy Horace's food from Amazon so check the animal food section quite often. I wonder if they have started stocking this for farmers and shepherds who can't go out. Although they would be allowed out to buy animal food, many will be older and would be in the vulnerable group.

Talking of the Dia delivery - they didn't have the big tins of tomatoes we normally buy, so the delivery man came with some alternatives for us to choose from, which was certainly great service!

I'm still producing activities to do at home for our website, with mixed success ('stay safe' coloring pages still are doing well), and Google has picked them up - which is good news and at the moment, Google is the largest referrer to the site. Of course, this is a mixed blessing as we know through bitter experience, what Google gives, Google also takes away. But we'll enjoy the increased number of visitors to the site while we can.

Children will be allowed out of the house from Sunday. Many people have been surprised that children have had to stay in, as they are less vulnerable to the virus than others. However, that's not the reason they are being kept in - it's because of fears of them introducing the virus into their household without them showing symptoms.

When I talk to my students in Madrid, they feel that things are changing and there's light at the end of the tunnel. The big ice rink in Madrid was turned into a temporary morgue, and this has now been closed, which they think has had a tremendous positive impact on moral as it was quite a powerful symbol of how terrible the situation was - and correspondingly  - how much better it is getting now.

So, here's to hoping that we'll all be seeing light at the end of the tunnel soon.

Training With Daisy

Our Couch to 5k running program is part walking and part running, so during the walking bits, we have used the time to do some Daisy training - specifically fetching a ball. We don't do this during the running sections as having Daisy bounding around between our feet would just be too dangerous and we'd both like to avoid the hospital at the moment if possible!

So the sequence of commands I've been teaching is 'sit', 'fetch' and 'good girl' (when she brings the ball back).

Just three simple commands - but you just wouldn't believe the problems these cause.

'Sit'

'Fetch'

'Good girl'

Really - how much easier could it be...??

But every single time there's one problem or another.

Of course, Daisy has got it all perfected and she is sitting, fetching and returning like a star. The problem is Ian!

For some reason, he is unable to get those three commands in order - or indeed, most of the time unable to get the three commands uttered at all. Daisy has got the ball and returned by the time he's mumbled some random command.

The problem, I believe, is seeing a cricket sized ball has bought out Ian's latent cricketer's spirit, and instead of throwing a ball for Daisy, he is bowling for England!! The concentration that this takes appears to knock everything else out of his mind...

Still, we're getting there. Daisy and I hope to have Ian trained with these simple commands by the end of the lockdown :)

Below is a picture of Ian throwing the ball, if you look closely you can see the ball under the cloud (Charlie is busy looking at the lavender, her sight isn't good enough to see the ball so she has no idea really what is going on).

And in this picture Daisy is training Ian to do the 'fetch' command.

And Daisy bouncing into the grass after the ball...

And last one because it makes me smile - Daisy in disguise :)

Lockdown Life - Day er....

Bobbins gave us a worry yesterday when she had a lump appear on her leg. It was the other side to the ones she had removed, and it was soft, not hard. I got in touch with the vet and sent a picture, only for the lump to disappear overnight! It was an insect bite! I confirmed that with the vet, who said there were a lot of insects around at the moment. I'm not clear if this is a side effect of everyone staying in or whether it's a time of year thing.

We got a note this morning saying that people can go to their huertas (kitchen gardens) - I'm not sure if this is something they've been able to do all along, and they are just clarifying now - or if this is a new relaxing of the measures. Anyway, a step in the right direction.

It's been confirmed this week that schools will not start again before September, however schools can open in July and August if they and parents so wish. Students will continue to get homework to do at home and teachers are giving online classes. There's currently debate as to whether students doing the equivalent of A levels will have to sit an exam in September or if they'll get graded using predicted results.

My student who's an infant teacher says he is in a routine now where he sets the school work on a Monday, then speaks with the parents during the week about how to teach their children - in effect, he's teaching the parents! The school had private areas on their website where the students can submit their classwork back, but given his students are so young, I don't think he gets much involved there.

We weren't able to get any flour this week, which is the first time. We've actually taken a look at flour mills so we can grind our own flour, but I'm not sure how easy the wheat will be to get. We'll see. The main problem will be if I can't feed my sour dough starter. It's almost a year old now and is very lively, so it would be a shame if I couldn't keep it going.

So we've been looking at getting flour direct from a mill and it's not as expensive as we'd thought. In fact it works out a similar price to buying from Dia, but we have to buy 25kg sacks! It's quite an eye opener looking at all the different types of flour available - including special churros flour!!

I wonder if we'll see a loosening of restrictions soon. I think the hospital situation appears to be more under control now. There are some hotspots in Extremadura (one care home was infected early on), but in areas where there are less cases of the virus, I imagine could have the restrictions loosened without any ill effect. There are still tensions in Madrid and a lot of people are fearful, but I imagine that will remain the case for a while.

On a happy note, I made some 'stay home' colouring pages for our website and I got an email from a fire department in America thanking me and asking if they could share them with the children in their town! I am surprised and pleased when anyone takes the time out to get in touch and say thank you - but I was super surprised that a fire department did.

Lockdown Life Day +/- 28

The restrictions have been lifted slightly, insomuch as manufacturing and construction workers can start work again. I think agricultural workers have been able to continue working since this all began, so I don't suppose there'll be that much difference in the village.

We had to get our food order early last week as Thursday and Friday were holidays. There were just a couple of things we couldn't get - and nothing particularly important as I can't remember now what they were.

So all in all, the food side of things is OK - although one terrible shock we had is that we are nearly out of marmite and brown sauce! We had both intended to visit the UK in March and do a stock up on essentials then - but of course, that was impossible, so here we sit, first time in our lives, potentially Marmiteless.

But, I suppose in the overall scheme of things, if that's the worst we face, that's not too bad.

Sam has continued to improve. He is very weak in his back legs, but he can still get onto the sofa or clamber onto the bed (which I actually wish he wouldn't do, as he did fall off a couple of weeks ago and hurt his leg). However, his legs must go to sleep or get achey, because when he gets up after a good long snooze, he yelps.

So - needless to say, we now have a yelping parrot!

We've been giving Sam glucosamine, which we also give to Wilbur, and his legs do seem to be easing and he's not yelping when he gets up, so I think that it's working - or time is doing the healing. We said the same with Wilbs, his legs got stronger after we'd started giving him the glucosamine, so we are assuming that it helped - but we don't really know for sure.

We're continuing to run in the backyard.  We did see that a family of birds, maybe swifts, were teaching their youngsters to fly by where the passionflower is. It was quite sweet to see the baby birds. There was one little one who'd grabbed hold of the wall and was obviously gearing himself to let go to fly. It was very sweet to see.

Ian's worked out it's 'only' 60 up and backs to run 5k. We'll see!!! The second pic is of Daisy looking unimpressed with running up and down!

Lockdown Life Day 22

We noticed for the first time flour is being rationed. We were limited to three bags of white 'baking' flour. We actually buy relatively a lot of flour as we make our own bread, but even with the rationing, we're still OK.

The was only one tiny change with last week's food order in that we got sent a mango instead of a grapefruit - which means we had an odd Sunday breakfast. I think that was an error at their end rather than some form of rationing.

The food delivery driver was wearing a visor this time - but we still were signing for the order.

I ordered some stuff from Amazon - including Horace food and his pee-pads, a new cafetiere, as the glass in our old one broke, some coffee and some tennis balls for Daisy. Amazon sent me a message to say delivery times would vary depending on the importance of the items being delivered. And Horace's food and pee-pads are apparently the most important in that order, as they are coming tomorrow, which is pretty much normal delivery times. And the coffee is coming last!

I try to keep Horace on the same food, as he's difficult to feed  and it takes him a long time to get used to new food - and the same with his pee-pads. He's great, but we will never be able to train him to go outside.

Talking about coffee - we didn't get our normal coffee last time and got Dia own label. I didn't think it tasted very nice and Ian thought the same. It transpires, that our normal coffee which is traditional Spanish coffee (which we've never really thought about or made a conscious decision to choose, it was just all that was sold in the local shops), is a completely different type of coffee made by a different process. It's called 'torrefacto' and the coffee beans are roasted with sugar, which is why they are shiny and sticky. I'd noticed that before, but never really questioned why.

The technique was used during the Civil War, to make coffee go further and last longer - and never stopped - so that explains that!

Of course, all Semana Santa parades have been cancelled and there will be no Easter celebrations this year. It's very common for Spanish people to go their country houses during the Easter weekend, so I imagine we'll be getting reminders soon about staying at home during the Easter weekend.

Lockdown Life - Day 18 - We enter a new phase...

Earlier this week stricter measures were introduced in Spain which don't really affect us too much, but are tightening things even more.

Fines have been increased for people breaking the measures and now basically everything other than a few key businesses is shut. In Madrid, the police, apparently, are very visible as they are trying to contain the virus.

Sadly, funerals (services and vigils) can no longer be held and no more than three people can attend the burial. Non essential operations and procedures at hospitals have been cancelled - including cancer screening programs.

I was asking my student in Madrid what it was like there - as obviously they are so very badly hit. She says it is difficult to tell - because they have to stay in, they don't get a sense of empty streets or seeing normally busy tourists spots being empty.

However, she did say that tensions are rising and her sister, who's a nurse, has had insults shouted at her and things thrown from balconies as people see her in the street and believe she is breaking curfew.  She now goes to work without a coat, so people can see her uniform.

It snowed earlier this week in the Mid/North of Spain - which is unusual for this time of year, however the bad weather hopefully made staying inside a bit more palatable for people.

Although we can go out for a walk with the dogs - it's very much about taking the dog out to do his business, rather than going for a walk. So, in an effort to keep/get fit, Ian and I have kept up our 'running' - and had to do it in the barn earlier this week when it was raining.  This is Daisy keeping up with Ian - that lasted another few minutes before she realized that this was going to be nowhere near as exciting as she hoped - so she just sat down!