I do like a good ‘Bazaar Plastico’.

They have, over the years, acquired a near talismanic standing, a journey’s benediction.  First day of a Latin trip and the quest to replace the previously discarded plastic boxes; the last day the troll for a roll of sticky tape.  

Bazaars Plastico are caves of wonder.  Take a standard £/€+ shop add a bit of big-box hardware store, some garden centre, and top off with the potential of lost time.  Squash it all together to create a maze of winding aisles.  To wander through is to be assaulted by a miasma of colour and late-form capitalism.  The mantra of ‘stack high – sell cheap’ meets incomprehensible logic.  A Jenga tower of wooden stools beside flashing Santas, a wall of hand tools beside a glass cabinet of drinking mugs.  Plastic boxes behind bubble wrap, sparkling party stetsons beside flowering plasti-cactus.  All is ChinaBuild.  

We’re here today not for a journey’s ordination but to effect a partial closure; more ‘end of a beginning’, a journey’s mid-life crisis.  We need sticky tape.  

Our journey to our first proper international house-sit in Madrid has taken a distinct swerve for reasons that might be summarised as a medical hiatus caused by bit of self-inflicted, unthinking stupidity.  We’re still heading for that ‘sit’, just not by bike.  

We’ve decided to experience the dubious pleasure of ‘send-my-bag-home’.  Unaccompanied baggage exported from the EU to a third country.  Essentially importing goods into the UK that carry the potential of tariffs and import duties.  (Yes it’s the b-Brexit yet again).  

We’ve retreated back to Burgos, a place we know will provide all the elements required to pack up and ship two cycles and their associated paraphernalia alongside camping’s impedimenta.  

We’re going to need two large cardboard boxes of a precise shape, I’ve already mapped nineteen cycle shops, so at least there’s a potential source of bespoke second hand boxes. We’ve already noted that the town’s council collect waste on a daily basis so those small cycle shops are unlikely to store bulky and valueless card, we would need to be lucky.  We also need to buy two rucksacks.  

Step forward The Decathlon.  I honorific it with ‘The’ for its ability never to disappoint; it sits alongside the other ‘The’. Of government, church and wife.  It’s saved us before, it saves us again.  

A half-hour tramp to the outskirts of town to find this emporium of hope.  A vast warehouse; a lower/ midrange sports shop that spans horses to snow, yoga to racquets, running to bikes; lots and lots of bikes.  

On the grounds that we are trying to scran, scarf and beg a freebie, we show willing and first buy those two rucksacks. (Not a wheeled suitcase, not after a previous diatribe), and approach the cycle sales person.  On presenting our unusual request we are immediately told ‘conmigo’ and follow him to the depths of the storage area.  Not such an unusual request after all.  

We have two boxes, and our guardian angel their first bonus points.  We start the caterpillar march back to town, to the bemusement of the local shopping pensioners.  

Partway back that cornucopia of mercantilian paradise materialises and the Navigator disappears inside like the proverbial ferret.  I settle to wait, to protect our treasure trove from the authority’s waste collectors.  She returns, arms filled with three tapes: duct, clear, and measuring, a length of rope, and a sheet of plastic.  Our guardian angel smirks, and adds to their bonus scores.  

First re-construct the boxes to the precise dimensions and de-construct the first bike.  A major dismantling, but it goes as it should; the second not so much.  There was always going to be a balancing of luck. The wee gremlins have arrived, the seat post is seized.  Seized solid, it’s going to require hammers, stillsons and probably surgery.  However a bit of judicious repositioning shifts the problem to another place, another time.  

Time to truss the beasties, time to tape the boxes, print labels and return to that Bazaar Plastico

for more sticky tape. Twice. I do like a good Bazaar Plastico.  At this rate I’m expecting to be offered a loyalty card.  

I’m sitting in the narrow, draughty foyer of our hotel composing this piece, awaiting a ‘collect’, one that comes with a nine hour window, and to further pass the day, counting delivery vans.  We’re on a narrow cobbled pedestrian street that has vehicular access controlled by rising bollards to prevent rat running. 

In a world of ‘anywhere is everywhere corporate high streets’, we’re on its antithesis.  

‘Street of the Independents’, it’s only 240 metres long yet can score:

Convenience shop:  1

Photo studio:  1

Herbalist:  1

Fast food:  2

ATM:  2

Hotel:  2

Furniture shop:  3

Clothes shop:  6

Café Bars:  12

Not quite the twelve days of Christmas as there’s no roosting partridge, just a lady selling roasted chestnuts from a wee wooden booth.  With all these establishments, it’s of little surprise that my stick-tally of white vans comes in at 122.  All those places are requiring stock replenishment.  Which leads to a puzzle.

Eight hours stuck in that foyer, cold and ignored still guarding the uncollected boxes, we find we’ve been listed as ‘missed pick-up’. Why? “Because it’s a pedestrian street therefore the van couldn’t get in… “. Duh?

Evri would be proud.