The Print Run

I got an invite last week from Jon Clarke the editor of The Olive Press to come along to his lair on the Costa del Sol and celebrate the twentieth anniversary of that august publication.

It’s a longish drive down there from my corner of Almería, especially in my elderly banger with no heating (that early morning start) and only the one cassette to stimulate me on the in-flight entertainment. It’s a bugger actually, as everyone says that oh, they just threw out a box of them only last month.

Coincidentally, the festivities fall on my birthday which is the very day that my Spanish driving licence goes phut.

I had a newspaper once, back in the eighties and nineties. It was based in Mojácar and eventually ran to three weekly editions in English plus a monthly in Spanish. Times were harder then – the local businesses weren’t so open to advertising as they appear to be now, and the national companies didn’t want to know – even when my wife would squeeze into a business suit and do the rounds in Madrid. Turned out that the large companies exclusively use agencies who get a cash chuck-back from the newspapers and magazines where they place the advert. One lives and learns.

A second problem in those days was that no one had heard of desk-top publishing. We had to type out texts, print them up on bits of paper, cut them to size on a light-box, paste the whole thing together and fit a black and white photo here and there. Fiddly enough when it’s an article – but then along comes the client who wanted a special decoration on his advert, good for one insertion and was there a discount? That was the only income you would find from a free-sheet, so – as usual – the customer was always right.

Once the pages had been completed, we would haul the whole jim-cracker to the printers, 90 minutes away. Three times a week, usually me in the company Lada. Listening to a cassette. A few hours later, say six in the morning, the paper was ready, in bundles, to be whisked away to favoured locations.

At least, and unlike its successor, it had news, articles and entertainment within.

Then one day we got a tiny Macintosh computer, where you could create a page on the screen. Then a year or two later, colour arrived. No more blue-splash on the front and back, we suddenly had a full palette (unless the printers cocked it up). If that wasn’t enough, after a million trips taking the whole paper along to the city on a diskette, the Internet arrived (with that whizz, buzz whoosh noise as the phone was connected) and instead we could send the whole thing down the wire. It still took a long time, but the Modern Age was arriving for sure.

There were a few other problems too, employees can be crafty and a couple of them ended up with the paper, such is life.

I retired to do other stuff and here we are, twenty-five years later. Newspapers are pretty-much dead now, with the national titles losing sales every year and the kiosks closing down, with everybody moving to the Internet where there’s no limit to the page-size, or the links, or the ease-of-access or (above all) the incredible savings in production costs.

The Olive Press employs professional journalists (unlike its competitors) and produces a now monthly print-edition across Spain with a number of useful supplements. But its strength is in its Internet edition, its investigative reporting and its attention to the subject at hand: Spain.

Thus, they will be celebrating later this month, but I like to think that I was there first.      

The Camposanto

I went to a clinic at the hospital in Almería on Thursday for a check-up and got a thumb’s up (to coin a phrase) from the proctologist. So that’s good news – I hope my last girlfriend, who dumped me a while back, is reading this.

The next day, I thought I’d better have a long walk, so I wandered along the beach for a while, preferring as always to tread the bicycle lane – it’s easier on the feet, you never get hit by a jogger rushing up behind you and, generally speaking, it has better views. I’m careful of course, and keep to the left, pressing myself against the hedge when there’s an oncoming cyclist. This time, a tandem bicycle went past with a couple pounding away in cadence. Next thing will be a penny-farthing with a bloke wearing a bowler hat and shorts.

I wonder though, if a conversation ever arises back at the nest – ‘Maud, I need a packet of smokes, would you mind helping me peddle down to the fag shop?’

Nothing looks sillier, and is probably dangerous too (no weight over the rear brakes), than a tandem with no back-rider weaving down the hill: ‘Oy mate, yer passenger’s fallen off!’

Thinking idly about this and then, remembering the looming All Souls’ Day, I took myself to the cemetery to see my family and some friends.

Each year, more of my gang are to be found in the local necropolis, while less of them remain out of it (as it were).

There were a lot of cars in the parking-lot, and an old girl was there, squatting on an upturned flowerpot and selling blooms to adorn the niches therein.

We have a particularly lovely camposanto, with the Departed stacked, as it were, three stories high (just slightly smaller than some of those holiday apartments on the beach, yet far more permanent).

The graveyard is beautifully conserved, with plenty of grassy spaces and now (adopting a custom I saw in a German Friedhof last year) brooms and dustpans are present with the sign that reads (a trifle forlornly) – ‘Please put them back when you are finished with them’.

On the weekend, the camposanto was a riot of both flowers and candles.

I was cleaning the dust on the lápida of my wife, who left us twelve years ago, when I stopped to speak to a neighbour performing a similar task. I don’t think I had seen him in twenty years or more, so I made the observation that the nice thing about our beautiful cementerio is that all of us will end up here one day and it’s the only place I know which is truly integrated, foreigners and locals, side by side in harmony. As to whether blissful, I couldn’t really say.

My friend – who used to work in the bank in the next-door village – might have drifted to the right during the years we’ve been estranged. He now wears a wrist-bracelet of a party anxious to change the fortunes of the country in the forthcoming election. That particular party has a ‘Spaniards First’ motto and I could see a distant look in his eye as he imagined all of the foreigners being moved to the niches strategically built next to the toilets.

So, down to the café for a beer and a tapa. I did eleven thousand steps, says I triumphantly to the waiter, a convivial fellow called Pablo. He looked at his watch – one of those intelligent ones which does everything except draw you a bath. I’ve done eleven thousand as well since I started work here this morning, he tells me, and I haven’t even been out of the door.  

Well, I’m a lot older, I said weakly, and asked him for a second beer.

Touch Typing

I ghought I'd write a few wofds wigh my fat forffingef on the litgld kehpad that can be found ln my Andflid.

Just to show how aggravating it can be. Indeed, when it comes to writing something on that tiny keyboard that comes with my mobile phone, I’m all thumbs.

I don’t extend myself much on my android (‘Andflid’) as a rule, beside insulting Maga Republicans on Facebook (and most of them have worse spelling than anything my finger can manage), because of the bother of having to go back a few times to repair my text. The laptop is a far better option if I’m writing an essay – I can see the keys!

Yes, I have spellcheck, which will fix your spelling a treat, but I also like to write in three languages, English, Spanish and Spanglish (and then sometimes in a fourth, Gibberish, when the feeling takes me).

There’s WhatsApp, I suppose, for those text messages, although my younger daughter – when she wants to have a word with me – probably has the answer. Why struggle over a text when you can simply press the record-button and let fly with sixty-seconds worth!

And anyway, even with a few honest mistooks, one can still read the sentence I started this essay with.

After I left school in the UK, I went to an international college in Seville, and took English, Spanish, French, and shorthand/touch typing, so I can more or less manage with a proper QUERTY keyboard.

I have a granddaughter from the United States visiting at present (my late wife was American). To be precise, she was just here with me for a few days, time for her to get over the jetlag and enjoy a Chinese dinner on the beach, and then off she went to Granada to learn Spanish.

I told her – switch the keypad on your cell phone to Spanish. It has all the letters you need for English, plus easy access to accents, the ñ and so on.

Indeed, I said, try not to use English at all (except when sending a message home to your mom, who was born here in Almería and speaks perfect Spanish anyway).

The thing about learning a language is to learn the culture. You can’t amuse a Spaniard talking about baseball, British TV shows or the joys of Yorkshire pudding – go with stuff which is of more interest – whether it’s tinto de verano versus cerveza de barril (personally, I like the belch from a good caña), or should one put onion in a tortilla de patatas, or the best way to prepare a fabada asturiana; plus which is the best Spanish pop group, who will win the elections (and why) or what’s going on in Madrid.

The grammar will come when it’s ready.

Go to the movies, and stick to watching Spanish TV, not Desperate Housewives.

Today I got a lengthy message on WhatsApp from my granddaughter (unlike me, she has functioning opposable thumbs) to say that she is studying hard, takes the bus to class each morning, was at a student’s party last night, and is having fun.

No doubt she will find a nice boyfriend while she’s there (Spanish I hope) and then decide to stay in España forever.

As so many have done before. 

The Senior Citizens' Lunch Engagement

I invited myself to the Senior Citizens lunch-date last week held in one of our finest hotels. To do this, one only needs to discover that the town hall has its annual free treat for the over-65s and to know to drop by the secretary’s office in due time to pick up a ticket.

All rather fun, I’d not been before.

I’ve become a trifle deaf – it comes with age I suppose. At least I still have my hair and teeth, or at least, most of them anyway. Although it might go in some way towards explaining why nothing in the giant array of serve-yourself food was crunchy.

The queue outside was designed to be barged, so we all did – creating a tight-to-fit blockage at the door into the dining hall. Once past the ticket-inspector, I joined the noisy throng looking for somewhere to sit.

The first person I saw was Doña Beatriz, who had kindly mentioned me during her speech as la pregonera at the opening of the village fiesta back in August. I thanked her for her kind words. We foreigners often tend to get overlooked.

Then casting about, I suddenly heard my name hooted across the room, so found my way to an empty chair next to a British friend, who like me, is an old-timer here in our community.

Janie once worked as an airhostess for a zeppelin, so I was pleased to see her, and indeed hear her voice rise above the herd.

The Spanish are a noisy race, and their refectories are designed to echo appealingly to encourage the cacophony – hard walls, lots of massive windows and a tiled floor. According to my friend Colin, who writes a daily blog from Galicia, a ‘noisy bar’ is a tautology in Spain, he says, since there’s no other kind. Apparently, when we are young, our hearing can distinguish what we want over the roar from what we don’t – known perhaps as ‘the cocktail party effect’. Sadly, this useful skill diminishes as one gets older.

Thus, many of us ancients were sufferers of hearing-loss. Two hundred or so pensioners bellowing across the tables at each other. Even my friend from the airship, who had once long ago been trained to project her voice across forty metres of companionway, was obliged to give it her all as she asked me politely for the salt.

We went to fill our plates, after all, a free meal at a buffet means ‘pile them high’.  Three times to the trough and back. I bumped into the mayor on the second visit (he was the only person there who was underage) and thanked him for the lunch. One of the racier old girls filling her plate next to me asked who he was: ‘he’s a handsome looking cove’ I think was what she said.

A merry session, a hearty scoff and a glass of wine (one must be careful these days) and so I took my leave, slightly nonplussed as to what was the point of this luncheon. 

There were no speeches or prize-giving or a raffle for a brand-new coffee-machine from the local white-goods emporium or maybe a colourful painting of our village from the schoolchildren.

I went outside – ah bliss! So quiet I could hear a pin drop.

Wassat?

I’ve been noting a few mistakes – probably from a lack of schooling – in the written Spanish that sometimes appears on my feed on Facebook. This comes down to breaking – or perhaps not knowing – a few simple rules. 

For example, using ‘ll’ (the double L used to have its own section in the dictionary) for a ‘y’. One I saw this week: Está cerca a la plalla (shudder!). 

Another one showed up today: yo te apollo.  

Then there’s the common use of an ‘h’ where there never meant to be one: haber si te entiendes. (rather than: a ver). 

And our favourite, a ‘b’ for a ‘v’ or vice versa. Bamos a Varcelona as it were… 

Spaniards also suffer from el lambdacismo, the confusion some citizens have between an ‘l’ and a final ‘r’: calol for calor, amol for amor and so on.  

And don't get me started about el andalú... 

All of the above, and that’s before we foreigners take the chance to mash the language… 

La Indala, the True Goddess of Peace, Bounty and Child-bearing

 There are just a few seminal icons that we all recognise, because of their simplicity, their reputation or their attraction. 

I can think of the Mercedes symbol, which began in 1909; the swastika (it goes back over twelve thousand years - even if it has unfortunate significance today); the yin and yang sign (the version we know comes from 9th century China); the peace sign was introduced by a British artist in 1958; the red heart comes from 1250ad (and there was I thinking it was from Facebook); the Crucifix goes back to the 4th century and the Star of David dates to 14th century Prague. Who have I forgotten?

Oh yes, the Indalo. 

The Indalo came into being at a late stage. The Almería group of painters who called themselves Los Indalianos after Saint Indalecio, an early Christian bishop of Almería (The name can still be found in this province today).  

They were a group of artists led by Jesús de Perceval, Luís Cañadas and Miguel Cantón Checa going back to 1943. They introduced the figurine in an exhibition held in Madrid in 1947. You can see some of their work in the Museo de Arte Doña Pakyta in Almería City.

The story goes that the Indalo is a prehistoric daub found in the Cueva de los Letreros in Vélez Blanco, although no one can tell which of the various stick men adorning the cave is the Indalo, neither where the name comes from and nor yet that it was revered. A 1908 - 1930 Encyclopedia by El Espasa (I found this 72 volume reference at La Voz de Almería) had lots to say about Mojácar for example - but had no mention of 'Indalo'. 

My own opinion of the Vélez Blanco claim is that it's a hoax (not that it matters). 

The Indalo became the symbol of Mojácar, and it's without doubt a special sign. It was brought to the village in the fifties by the Indalianos who recognised the artistic opportunity of the narrow streets, the white or earth-coloured walls, the dramatic mountain setting and the warm sea below. Primary colours rich in texture. The old Mayor Jacinto built them a studio in the early sixties, just below La Fuente. 

The totem was transferred to the Diputación de Almería (the provincial council) in the early nineties for no very good reason. Perhaps politics played a hand. At any rate, the Indalo became the symbol of the entire province. 

Piqued by this loss, one Mojácar jeweller, a Frenchman called Bernard, designed a new drunken Indalo, which now does service as the town's identity. Perhaps it's rather more Bohemian than the old one. 

By tradition, Zeus and his pals were the male gods, warring, fighting, raping and getting drunk. They were without doubt a handful, often destroying towns, civilizations and even the odd champion or two. The female inhabitants of Mount Olympus, the goddesses like Hera (Zeus' wife), were in charge of the fields, the forests, shelter, art and nurturing the young.  

Which is why the Indalo must be a female symbol. An Indala. She protects us with her arch, an umbrella that keeps away the elements: the rain and Zeus' lighting flashes. She stands firm on the ground and, excuse the familiarity, her legs are open for procreation and childbirth. 

I think we should celebrate La Indala. The Tourist Office claims protection, good luck and other benefits to be found if you buy one from the nearest souvenir shop. But they still seem to be male. It's time La Indala took over.