That was the headline of a recent article in The Daily Telegraph, which went on to say, "Teenagers lying in at the weekend might seem like laziness, but it will actually help them stay slim and healthy, claim scientists, who studied children aged five to 15, and found that those who slept in on Saturdays and Sundays were much less likely to have weight problems.." Obesity has become a major health problem in 'developed' countries (the under-developed only having a problem with starvation), Spain included. In this country,>one of whose most important exports has been the siesta, obesity is rampart. The siesta is no longer the premise in this fast-moving milieu, where the urge to catch up with other European countries regarding office hours (and where lunch-hours still stand at about 3 hours) is commonplace.
In rural communities such as ours, however, it is soon apparent to visitors that the only way to survive the seemingly sleepless nights, particularly in summer, is to have a good snooze in the afternoon. Otherwise, how do we explain that children can often be seen playing in the square well after midnight, their parents with energy enough to carry on their ceaseless chit-chat as they watch over their charges?
The famous Mediterranean diet, for which Spain is known worldwide, is rapidly being supplanted by fast food 'a la Americana', particularly in the larger cities, as the result of this need to 'catch up' (with whom?).
But to counterbalance all this 'hurry-up and wait' chaos there is something called The Slow Movement, which had over 9 million visitors on Google up to this morning.
(Prospero Note: This item has made me sleepy, so I shall slow down and do what I came here to do, that is to 'do as the Jimenatos (used) to do'.)
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