Deaf as a Post

I may have given the impression over this long and normally enjoyable life that I was a little distrait with my family, my friends, my immediate circle and (now that I come to think of it) with that nice policeman who wanted to breathalyse me the other day: at seven in the morning on the way to the airport.

The thing is, like many people over the age of, let us say fifty, I am stone deaf.

My grandmother had an ear trumpet which she would point towards whoever interested her. The result was that the whole family tended to raise their voices which in my opinion is a good idea, especially here in Spain where ‘the dog that doesn’t bark doesn’t get fed’.

And thus, like many a slightly vague senior, I eventually gave up and admitted to myself that I am a trifle hard of hearing – a bit like the Twelve Steps:

‘My name is Lenox, and I’m deaf’.

‘Speak up, we can’t hear you’, they shouted back.

I happen to have a Spanish connection. These are very common between our hosts, but quite rare for Johnny Foreigner. There will normally be a sister-in-law who is a judge, a brother who works in the city hospital, a school friend who is now a Guardia Civil and so on. Almost everybody has a useful contact either through the extended family or by happenchance. They like to say: ‘It’s not what you learnt at school, it’s who you sat next to’.

A very fine system it is too. In Spain, everyone is in with a chance.

For we foreigners, this is a lot harder, but I’ve been here for a long time: almost sixty years (cough cough!) and, anyway, where I’m going with this is I know someone in the hearing aid business, or rather I did as she has since moved to Tenerife. Long story short, I got some staggeringly expensive pinganillos for a song. Fifty percent off the listed price.

Spain is very noisy, and one may be tempted to soldier on without a listening device (sorry, that’s the best the Thesaurus could come up with apart from ‘a vacuum-tube hearing aid’). The ambient noise, the drills, the shouts, the tricked-out mopeds, the horns and sirens. It’s not so bad when you’re deaf, for sure, but then you need to hear what your darling says too.

The main drawback to my hearing aids is that they faithfully pick up all kinds of noise that I would rather not hear – the folk at the next table, the coffee-grinder behind the counter, the television and the waiter shouting ‘dos cañas y una Fanta limón’ to the woman working the bar. I can always take one out of my ear, unplug myself on one side as it were, to better hear what’s going on the other side where my neighbour is seated. Unless it’s not interesting, in which case I can more or less manage what my grandmother used to do with her ear trumpet, which was to point it the other way.

Spain is the second-noisiest country in the world, only behind Japan – and that’s because they have paper walls (useful in an earthquake) whereas ours are made of machimbrado: thin brick and plaster. The sound travels through them, and once it has arrived, it bounces off the tiled floor and naked walls.

Which is why I like a carpet and a painting or two in my quarters.

Hearing aids are not as easy to remember as glasses. I will have reached for my specs right from the start, while clambering out of my pit, but I may be behind the steering wheel before I remember the hearing aids, blast them.

Still, I probably won’t need them just to do the shopping and to have a beer and a tapa afterwards. Deaf people are very good at saying ‘fancy that’ and ‘well, I never’ when they can’t hear you.

I’m feeling better now. Barman, bring me another caña!  

 

English as She is Spoke

Aren’t we lucky speaking, reading and writing in English? We either managed to be born in an English-speaking region, or we learnt it as a child (easily) or as an adult (more difficult). There are those who don’t speak the language, and they doubtless will have found themselves at a disadvantage as they go through life in the West.

 

Like Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Santiago Abascal for example.

English has become the lingua franca, the common tongue, even though it’s not the first official language in any country of the EU-27: and then only in Eire and Malta, which make up between them just 1.3% of the European Union’s total population. Nevertheless, around 43% of the EU speaks English, led (after the aforementioned Eire and Malta), by the Netherlands, Croatia and Austria.

Probably using subtitles rather than dubbing on the films and TV shows is a help.

Disappointingly, around 77% of Spaniards, says the INE, speak no English whatsoever. Yes, despite the tourism.

General Franco didn’t help, banning all languages to be spoken other than Spanish (hence the subtitles). This included Catalan, Euskera, Galego and even signing for the deaf.

English of course does better elsewhere, thanks to the USA, the UK, Australia, Canada, and a host of other countries around the world. If you are thinking of going into business, the hospitality sector or politics, it’s a vital tool to acquire.

Which brings us back to Alberto Núñez Feijóo (not an easy name, and I say this in sorrow, for English-speakers to remember on indeed pronounce).

Feijóo was on a TV chat show the other day – on one of the commercial channels: needless to say, he won’t go on the national TVE. He told Pablo Motos on ‘El Hormiguero’ that he doesn’t speak English at all (he blames his childhood school rather than Franco) but he says that he can always translate something, when necessary, on his handy mobile phone.

There’s the memory of Mariano Rajoy refusing to answer a question put by the BBC in English at a meeting in Brussels back in 2017.

The lack of English in (most) Spanish politicians came to light back in 2013 with Ana Botella, the mayoress of Madrid (José María Aznar’s wife) and her promotion for Spain’s capital city with a: “Relaxing cup of café con leche in Plaza Mayor”.

Today, with the departure of Alberto Casado from the PP, no one in that party particularly speaks what the Spanish fondly like to call ‘the Language of Shakespeare’ (not many of us do either, but that’s another story). Over at Vox, Feijóo’s putative partner Santiago Abascal speaks a little broken French (apparently), but that’s as far as it goes.

Thus, once again, Pedro Sánchez and his team have the advantage in Brussels, at the UN in New York and elsewhere. Sánchez speaks good English and French; the Minister of the Economy Carlos Cuerpo has English, French, plus adequate Mandarin and Japanese. The Minister for the Environment Sara Aagesen Muñoz is fluent in English. The Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares Bueno has fluent French and English. The Defence Minister Margarita Robles Fernández has ‘good’ English and French. The Minister for Hacienda Arcadi España García has some English (and presumably a lot of Math). The clever Minister for Transport Óscar Puente also speaks good English. 

And so on (Thanks to Google AI for the foregoing). 

Returning to Feijóo, who won’t remain the leader of the Partido Popular for much longer (says El País), we can look at the two leading rivals for his position.

The president of the Madrid Region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso speaks some English (she worked as an intern on a radio station in Dublin), but she has acute political problems with her boyfriend now finally coming to roost. The other is Juanma Moreno from Andalucía, who says he is currently taking lessons from ‘a native teacher’.

Thus, once again, the difference in professionalism between the current government and the competing PP/Vox politicians is evident. 

The Pope, the Bunny and the FIFA-Cup

 

I’m told the FIFA-Games begin this Thursday. Gracious me, what a time we live in: Pope, Bunny and now footie. All very exciting, I’m sure. Since the Spanish are playing, then they are of course my team (Go Spain!), but then I’m told that little Cabo Verde is doing well (they play Spain on June 15th) and that they will need our support.

Indeed, may the odds be ever in your favour.

I’ve never cared much for soccer (as you will probably have guessed by now). The sports master put me on the left wing at my first school, since I was tall and fast, but as I learned out much later, when trying to ski in a straight line, my left leg is a fraction smaller than my right, which meant I kept missing when shooting at the goal (that, and crashing into a tree). At my second (and last) school, they made us play rugger, and my inclination was to keep as far away from the ball as possible.

Since then, my only sport has been walking around in giant circles.

I’ve only ever watched one soccer game as an adult, when I was dragged to an Almería – Granada game after attending a political rally in the city bullring (you see how useful these things can be?). I genuinely thought they were teasing me, all the way to my seat high above the pitch, and this in the days before Facebook. God, it was boring.

Me centre with my dad (left) and Charlie Braun

I did join a game on one interesting occasion just after I had finally left school. I was seventeen and the foreigners (we were neither called either ‘expats’ or ‘immigrants’ – or guiris – in those days) decided to play against the cream of our village in a ‘friendly’, the losers to stump up for a jolly barbeque following the adventure.

Their side took it a bit more seriously than ours, with a final score of 11-1 (I think the Mojaquero team scored an own goal just to cheer us up). I remember that, as the final whistle went, five of our stalwarts were seen to be standing off the pitch and surrounding my mum who had at that moment arrived with a freezer-box full of beer.

But enough of this, the gentle reader wants to hear about the World Cup (Yay!).

It’s being played in various stadia scattered across Mexico, the USA and Canada.  It’s apparently very expensive to go there, to stay there (while not being arrested or deported by Trump’s goons), and to travel from one game to the next, if the inclination to do so should tempt you.

For me, having just watched a full week of the Pope’s visit to Spain on the telly, plus listening to Bad Bunny on the radio (he’s still performing in Madrid), it’s now six weeks of endless footie (104 games says the webpage). No news, just penalty shoot-outs.

Luckily, I’ve just loaded up with some thrillers at our English library.

This may all be good for Pedro Sánchez, as the attention of the electorate is swung to other distractions, and it may even be good for Donald Trump (the American 250th celebrations will be held on July 4th, half-way through the games).

So, if you like soccer, have a great time, don’t drink to many beers or eat too much popcorn, and may your team make it to the finals.

If you don’t, I could lend you a book about fishing once I’m through with it.