The Cult of the Child

Views from a foreign correspondent

Alzira —Valencia Nord, 08.02

Today felt like a jeans day, with the comfy stretchy bit of my hand-me-down maternity pair pulled over my ballooning belly, worn with flip flops, naturally.

We have left the September mini heat-wave behind, named after another Saint, I forget which. All weather phenomenons here seem to have a religious name or explanation. With the arrival of temperatures to a more sensible mid-twenties I can now embrace my normal British summer attire: keeping the feet cool in flip flops, with jeans to keep my legs warm and lots of layers for the upper body that I can take on and off as needed: this is the only sensible way, surely?

The train to Valencia is packed today with all sorts of folks: business people, teachers, students (school and Uni age), drifters, arty types, techy types, normal folk I can only guess about, a few tourists. Women I notice tend to fall into two categories: those in impossibly high heels, hair coiffed and wearing designer gear and the kind of dresses and accessories I’d pull out for a wedding versus those with a pair of converse, (or flip flops), comfy jeans and backpacks like me. The men similarly are either the European metropolitan-chic type, sporting ironed chinos and button down short sleeved shirts, slip on shoes, and man bags versus the slouchy universal uniform of jeans, T-shirt and trainers. I don’t think this is probably any different to any large, modern city commute: save for a slightly less oppressive air and sense of drudgery on the train that a sunnier climate brings?

I grab a flip-down chair near the door, my pregnant state pretty obvious now. Would people give up their seat for me here if I needed them to? I think so. Children and it seems anyone or anything linked with pregnancy and birth is considered sacred in Spain. The way that strangers reach out to touch my growing belly, congratulate me in shops asking when the baby is due, is it a boy or a girl? I watch as babies are cooed over and picked up from their prams and passed around like communal property by gangs of clucking older women. I tend to find this funny rather than an intrusion, which could of course just be the novelty: ask me again in a few months time.

Related posts:

Time is the greatest luxury. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most wasted resources. No, I’m not talking about lazy Sunday afternoons with your friends, but about the time you are supposed to…

Do you want to delete invalid phone numbers from your database? If the answer is yes, you should use an API! You may not know; but almost five percent of the numbers that are registered each year are…

Today I would like to share an example of How to create and use the model scope in laravel Eloquent. I will guide you to create a custom query function in model eloquent using the scope in laravel 6…