Shopping!

Mad dogs and Englishmen may go out in the midday sun but they’re wasting their time if they’re going out shopping. The reality of the Spanish long lunch break – like who’s minding the store when the shopkeeper’s snoozing – had never really seemed real to me. Until now.

Even in a major city like Madrid, life here centres around the barrio, and in the barrio are all the little shops that have more or less died out in the UK – the butcher, the baker, even the religious artefact maker – each offering traditional service. Customers are called by their first names and everyone stops for a bit of a gossip. If the shopkeeper doesn’t know you, you’ll be called “guapa” (beautiful) or “joven” (youngster) – in my case usually followed by a “yes, you” as I look around for this mysterious beautiful, young person. However, traditional service comes with a price, and in our case that price was getting out of bed early enough.

Our first few months living here have been a wonderful indulgence of late nights and even later mornings. Bliss after the hectic life we lived in the UK but hell when it comes to buying such essentials as bread! You see, while the supermarket may stay open all day, it can’t compare with our barrio’s baker – who doesn’t. Off I would go, gaily swinging my bag in the glorious midday sun like a true mad Englishwoman, only to pass La Terraza and see the baker tucking into his menu del dia as he started his two-hour lunch break. Back I would go, bag dejectedly slung under the arm, wondering how to make an exciting lunch from two potatoes, a carrot and a tin of tuna - and the cats would be getting the tune.

Eventually the baker took pity. “Guapa, you just can’t get here early enough,” he told me, “Shall I save you a loaf every day?” And now, after he finishes his lunch, I have mine – with the best bread in the barrio.

However, all that is about to change as we embark on a full working life. We’ve just been for our first interview. It was my first in five years and Ged’s first in 12, so you can imagine how nervous we were. Off I trotted, in my beloved Manolo Blahnik shoes, an expensive but wonderful reminder of my former life, pulling my skirt down over my hips and regretting having spent the summer enjoying every Spanish pastry I could find. I love high heels and overlooked the fact that my Manolos were so high they made me walk like Tina Turner. But then, disaster. The pavements here are very similar to cobbles, making walking in high heels the Spanish equivalent of doing an army assault course - and my Manolos certainly weren’t army-issue. Five minutes to the Metro station, and twenty-five minutes away from our first interview, I stepped down and the heel didn’t stop. It kept going down and down, snapping to the metal bar underneath. I tried to fix them, but nothing could be done. Besides, there wasn’t time. I needed smart shoes and I needed them fast.

Luckily the Spanish love shoes almost as much as I do, and I dashed into a nearby shoe shop to find a pair with low heels. The shop was empty except for an elderly sales assistant and a young salesman, who were checking over figures. I grabbed a shoe, tried it on, and staggered across to the two men.

“Excuse me,” I began, in my very British way of over-apologising for wanting to buy something in a shop, “I’m sorry to disturb you but I’m in a hurry. I’m on my way to an interview and my heel has snapped. Can I try on the other one to this, please?”

The assistant looked at me, pushing his glasses up onto his forehead, and peered at the shoes. Then he wandered off, leaving the salesman checking the figures at a much quicker rate than he had previously been doing. I watched the assistant wander into the back room, where thousands of shoes sat in boxes like the shoe shop that time forgot, and disappear. What seemed like an age later, he returned with my shoe’s partner and I slammed my foot into it.

“I’ll take it.”

He nodded, slowly. “Si, joven, of course. Because they are very pretty shoes and make you look very pretty too.”

The salesman nodded and was about to join in the discussion before I reminded them of the interview. I left amid calls of “Buena suerte (good luck)” and ran across the Manolo-murdering pavement and into the Metro station, cursing everything.

When we returned, the sales assistant was shutting up shop. “How was your interview?” he asked. I told him it had gone well. “Of course, because in those shoes you are ‘muy guapa’.” And then he went off for lunch, leaving me grinning.

It might be old-fashioned, it might be slow, but when you’ve just lost your Manolos, there’s a lot to be said for shopping in Spain.