Put some Brits Together, and They'll Start a Newspaper

 It’s a funny world – the expat press.

Over here in Spain, there are a small number of both Brit free-sheets and paid newspapers, all solemnly ignored by the national advertisers. The free-sheets have more locally-sourced adverts (they have to cover their costs somehow, and the printed copy is about a euro a pop these days). Does anyone read those adverts, or simply gloss over and past them?

The pay-for newspapers can probably spend a bit more on copy and rely a bit less on promotions. I also don’t doubt but that their print-run is far smaller. One of them, the weekly Costa Blanca News, has a copy price (August 2022) of 2,70€. It’s been going since 1973. Another one, the daily Majorca Daily Bulletin, as the ‘Iberian Daily Sun’, was going as far back as 1969. The oldest of them all is the monthly Guidepost (since February 1958) out of Madrid and still ‘published continuously and unfailingly from then onward’.

I ran a weekly for a while called The Entertainer during the eighties and nineties, eventually learning that there is no honor among thieves and that it's hard to pay off a large mortgage (for printers bills) when there's nothing coming in.

An English-language daily started in Madrid called The Standard back in 1992. It was a serious 'European' kind of newspaper, priced I think at 50ptas. The paper, once again ignored by the national advertisers (they seem to prefer to go through media-buyers who then take an annual cash return called un rappel from their chosen publications), folded after just forty days. 

Indeed, not only do the larger advertisers stick to the tried-and-true (did you ever see an advert for a leading car company in an expat newspaper?), the so-called institutional advertising - propaganda bought and paid for by the provincial, regional and national governments (to keep everybody in line) - never appears in the foreign-owned newspapers - English, German or Dutch. The few smaller agencies that will deal with the foreign press like to pay out typically on 120 days (the printer likes his money after 30 days). 

There are quite a few of these newspapers and magazines about - some large with others being a spot more modest. On the Costa del Sol, there’s the Sur in English, a Spanish-owned freebie in operation since 1986 (it began as a couple of pages once a week in the local Spanish version, to later expand into its current dominant position). Two others of note are the biweekly free newspaper called The Olive Press which at least uses journalists and professional writers and produces some investigative journalism; and finally the downmarket Euro Weekly News (which self-importantly claims that it is known to its readers as The People’s Paper, although it’s more often referred to as The Weenie). This particular free-sheet has featured Leapy Lee among its columnists for the last twenty years or so. The notorious Mr Lee pumps out a far-right tirade about the United Kingdom each week, evidently to the approval of the publication’s readers. This paper appears to mix up its content without much attention to where or what it is on about, rarely providing much useful news about Spain, preferring to entertain the readers with a fruit-salad of filler, dogs, puzzles and lottery winners. Perhaps you read it: perhaps you wrap the fish in it. 

Put it this way - you are not going to pass the current affairs test put out by the Instituto Cervantes as a step towards gaining Spanish nationality if you only source of information on this great country is The Weenie. 

There are some glossy Costa magazines past and present (Lookout 1964 – 1986 was the best I think) and various what’s-on guides, plus a couple of English-language radio stations and, of course, lots of Internet news and help-pages, blogs, vlogs (video-blogs) and other sites.

All, with the exception of Business over Tapas and a few of my fellow bloggers, decorated with endless and aggressive advertising. At least one has to patiently sit through an advert on the radio. In print, you merely skip past it.

It’s certainly true that, these days, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper putting out one’s copy there on the World Wide Web than it is taking it down to the printers, so – I dunno – perhaps at least on Facebook we could forego the click-bait?  

Good Cheer, and Watch Those Polverones!

 Christmas in Spain. At least down where I live, it doesn’t quite ring true like the old traditions in England. There’s no holly or mistletoe (acebo and muérdago) to leave on the shelf or kiss the maid under. Come to think of it, there’s no maid either. The tree looks a bit out of place as well, and some of us settle for the dried flower from a century plant, una pita, bedecked with a ribbon or two.

I just have the one Christmas card this year to put on the – well, the chimney-piece if there was one. It’s from my old nanny from when I was a child in Norfolk (it’s almost sixty years since I’ve last seen her). It has a snow-scene and a short poem in a rather wonky metre. It was posted in late October and I gather that it must have travelled about fifty kilometres a day to reach me in Almería a mere seven weeks later. Well done our friends at Correos, and don’t forget the seasonal tip for Mr Postie!

The thing is, the old traditions don’t really have the same thrust over here. For me, Deep and Crisp and Eeeven only works with Domino’s Pizza! I suppose one can buy Christmas Pud at the English shop in our local market town, and douse it with brandy, but I’ll pass on that, thanks. The turkey is fine, although my Spanish family prefers plates of jamón serrano and gambas.

I think they may have a point.

We have plenty of cakes here though. The Roscón de Reyes is as delicious as the polverones are terrible. These floury morsels are quite impossible to swallow, even with a seasonable glass of anís. I wonder - do the banks still offer this interesting combination to its customers (usually consumed before one see one's balance)? I will have to go down and look…

Carol singing in England for me as a child was a quick couple of verses of ‘The First Noel’ followed by mince pies and some warming toddy. Then off to the mansion at the other end of the lane for a repeat. Here we are regaled ceaselessly throughout the entire season by villancicos: horrible songs pumped out all day long through the Nation’s municipal and supermarket loudspeakers as performed by cute little choristers and their noisome piping voices.

Dressing up as Santa Claus is just silly. He wears a heavy red outfit with cap and mittens, while our local temperature is in the high twenties thanks to Global Scorching.

I think just a red tee-shirt would be quite enough to go with the ho ho ho.

There’s no Christmas stocking here, and indeed the whole presents-under-the-tree thing is another foreign import. I suppose that, reeling as we are (or will be) from not winning the Christmas lottery, something in gaudy paper to unwrap on Noche Buena – Christmas Eve – might be a good idea. A kind of consolation gift.

The small presents given out by the Spanish for January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany – usually falling on the day before school begins – don’t quite hit the spot.

I was once one of the Three Kings – the blond one of course. All went well as we arrived in the town square in a dumper truck but when the first, rather fat child sat on my knee to receive a dinky-toy, he spotted that under the heavy makeup lurked a guiri. He let out a quite improper shriek, even though I explained that all three of the Reyes were indeed foreigners. From afar.

The best thing about our Christmas season, and you will notice it in the photos we send to our families and friends in far-off England, is the fact that we are all wearing tee-shirts under a warm blue sky.

Could there be a better gift than that?

Madrid's Barajas Airport

 My own experience of galloping through the Madrid airport with my wheelie-suitcase last week, with eighty minutes to disembark at the international end of the huge installation, go through immigration (as a non-EU foreigner), take the underground train-link, the security inspection and then the race through the garish duty-free corridor and onward for the local flight at the other - furthest - end just in time to join the back of the queue as they boarded the Almería flight, makes me anything other than a fan of that dreadful airport. 

It seems that I’m not the only one: From El Español here: ‘How the Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas is no longer the best airport in Europe in just one year: it has dropped 30 places’. 

I remember the first time I landed in Barajas, back in the sixties. I had arrived on a flight from London on a BEA Comet. The airport was - of course - much smaller then, and certainly friendlier. They had a free cinema to while away the time before one's next flight. I shouldn't be surprised to learn that more than a few travelers, enveloped in the comforting arms of Disney, consequently missed their connection to Rio.

Those who didn't fancy the cinema could sit on a sofa rather than a metal bench, sturdily designed with arm rests to stop one from stretching out for a time-consuming zizz. Not many of us carry a book any more, and one can only stare at a mobile phone for a limited period. No wonder we untidily lie on the floor with our suitcase for a head-rest. 

They even had large paintings on the walls in those times to lull away our anxiety.

The bar was cheaper too - with prices only twice what they should have been. And you paid the waiter, not a machine. 

Security didn't exist, beyond the odd bored-looking cop. Now, and this happens in all airports, we must waddle through a metal detector while holding up our trousers: our diminutive suitcase pitifully opened by some creature with rubber gloves asking what's in this lead-lined box? It's me teef mister. 

As for flying with a proper suitcase which can hold more than a single change of clothes, well they charge extra these days don't they? 

But times change, and airports grow as they must cater to evermore clients. The Barajas airport now handles some 50,600,000 passengers every year besides me, and probably couldn't care less how happy or otherwise their customers may feel.  

So, here I am. The plane has stopped and the seat-belt light is off. Everyone has stood up, stretching after the cramped nine-hour flight and now they are now taking their cases down from the overhead lockers and standing around in that narrow walk-way looking impatient. 

Naturally, I'm at the way-back of the airplane - and there's just one hour and twenty minutes to go before my connecting flight.

More Fast Cars, Some Good Food and Plenty of Jesus: American Travels

I am  still in Oklahoma for a couple of weeks to come, staying with my son who runs the local water  company. He is fond of fast cars, when he has the chance, and we have just been for the Porsche Weekend in Arkansas, with a side trip to Missouri. 

We drove there - three of us - in three separate vehicles: an old red souped-up Corvette, a 2023 Corvette, and my son's Dodge Hell-Cat (fast on the straights, terrifying on the corners). There were around five-hundred Porsches at the hotel in the small resort of Eureka Springs, displayed with their proud owners. Later, they would drive slowly and noisily through the streets in caterpillar style. One of the cars exhibited at the fayre and for sale was a Porsche GT4: I had driven it up there last year in another adventure. 

We carried on, that second day, to a peculiar resort in Missouri (me now driving the modern black Corvette: its elderly owner, a splendid character who once invented a system to clean oil from impurities and has not drawn a sober breath from that day forward). Our destination was a place called Top of the Rock, a large and peculiar castle high in the Ozark Mountains. There's a golf course apparently, but we had parked and were bussed straight to a massive building which is built in huge rough-stone blocks. Inside there are terraces, several restaurants, a whisky bar, a museum and other wonders too. After refreshing ourselves - we are now eight - with a scotch or two, we went to a private room for our dinner.  

And so we come to food in America. Or at least, in the Mid-West. It's usually very good, huge and generous proportions, talkative waitpersons (ours was called Dan), although it ain't cheap no more like it used to be. Plus that tip, now twenty or even twenty-five percent.

I've always eaten well over in America, and will need to go on my regular crash diet when I get home again to Spain. 

The next morning, now once again in Eureka Springs, we tramped down the road from the motel to an eatery for breakfast in a nod to the Stop Oil people. The idea of sidewalks and even bicycle lanes here are still in the future: in most of America, everyone drives. 

Our drinking friend wanted to break his fast with a Bloody Mary with a bit of bacon sticking out of it (this is America folks, they've never heard of celery), while I ordered something rather more modest, along with several cups of cawfee. 

At the next table, a lone diner was seated with his back to us. Here and there, a staff-member would sit with him for a minute or two in conversation. I learned that he was travelling around the country on foot, carrying an eight-foot tall wooden cross. As he left, I went outside to speak with him. He called me 'Brother' and told me that he left his job and gave away his house and car almost four years before. Since then, he has walked across fourteen states with his cross and the clothes he stands up in (refreshed here and there by admirers). He looked good for another twenty states or so. And talking of the Lord's Work, a few nights later, back in Oklahoma, I was invited around to an old Cherokee's house for an evening of Inspirational Songs (two guitars, a drum box and a pair of singers - it reminded me in that respect of a flamenco evening back home). My daughter in law is a member of this admirable tribe. We thus joined in with some of the neighbours, singing for an hour or so - songs in both English and Cherokee. 

And let's end where we began: Driving fast cars around the countryside. I even got stopped the other day and interviewed by the local TV as, er, 'President of the Tulsa Porsche Club' (standing in temporarily for my son, who is camera-shy), explaining why we were all driving domestic muscle-cars ('Porsche-owners have to work all week to pay for them' I explained). 

As above- there are two more weeks to go...   

Fast Cars in Oklahoma

Right now, I'm in Oklahoma staying with my son Daniel. I'll be here for the month of November, including a few days trip to Colorado in his muscle-car, and also to Porsche Weekend in Eureka Springs to the east, in Arkansas.  Daniel likes his cars, and knows people who like to race them.

That first day, we were driving up the forested hill from the local town, rounded a bend, and found a double-wide house on the back of a truck coming in the other direction and occupying the entire width of the road. In America, they usually build  their houses out of wood and then haul them to wherever they are needed. Preceded along the route - at least as a rule - by a van with a light on top and a sign saying 'Caution: Wide-load'. 

This one didn't. We had to swerve off the road into the ditch. Otherwise it might have been a case not so much of a car driving into the side of a house as a house driving into the side of a car.

My boy's car is a cobalt-blue Dodge Challenger 'Hell-Cat' which has a powerful acceleration and has over seven hundred horsepower. He picked it up second-hand, and in its favour, it can be used as a sober vehicle for taking granddad for a ride, or for some volume-shopping down at Walmart. The boot ('trunk') is massive. 

And thus it came to pass that, on my second day in Daniel's town (an hour north of Tulsa), we drove down to the track at Hallett, a circuit somewhere south of Tulsa. We were going racing. 

They give you a talk at the race-track. Drive with your window open (in case you need to be rescued). Wear a racing-car helmet. Empty the trunk of anything loose. Watch the flags. Don't do this, don't do that. There were around twenty drivers (and one passenger) taking this all in. Anyone have an electric car? No? Good. We hope no one's been silly enough to bring a Hell-Cat? (Laughs). 

There are several groups of five who will drive for fifteen minutes - the first time for practice and getting to know the track - no passengers. So I went over to the stand to watch them go.

Later, it was time for my ride. I put on the helmet in the enclosed space - it's not easy - and we drove down to the chequered flag and then, away...

Daniel is a good driver, but the Dodge weighs a lot and, as happens with American cars anyway, it doesn't do corners very well. It has excellent acceleration, but we had to slow down long before any corner to get around it. There are a couple of nasty corners at Hallett. All went well, although after the session was over, we found we had burned the brake-pads - perhaps not surprisingly. 

We stayed for lunch and talked shop with the others. I told them about my Citroen back in Spain. I don't think they were very impressed.

After lunch, Eddie invited me to ride in his new Lamborghini STO. Eddie is a great driver and once I had crawled into the car and somehow managed to put on my helmet after putting the back of the seat down to *flat*, we took off. 

A car like this holds the road and is so much lighter that the Dodge that it zipped around the corners with incredible grip. Gosh, it was fast. An amazing experience and my thanks to Eddie for the ride. 

I shall be asking Santa for one of those.         

Take the Train

 The best thing about the train is that it will take you into the centre of the city. You won’t be dumped in some stainless steel and marble airport half an hour or more – by taxi - from the downtown.

Living in Almería – one of the cities that has waited patiently for about twenty years for a high-speed train to take us somewhere, indeed anywhere… we have either had to get in the car, or on a very uncomfortable and slow bus, or take the trouble to buy an air-ticket, or climb aboard the one existing slow train – there's only one train station in the entire province, and that's in Almería City: a line which meanders across the landscape before eventually hooking up with civilization in Linares (Jaén) and so on northwards or alternatively west to Seville. 

The problem with arriving by car at your city destination is increasingly - where to leave it? 

There never was much in the way of railways in Almería, beyond a few mining routes built with foreign investment in around 1900 – now all since lost beyond the elevated rail-head in Almería City (now restored and converted into a tourist attraction) known as el Cable Inglés.

Trains are the best, because one can wander around in them – pop into the bar for a brandy and to read the paper. Even seated, one can stretch one’s legs. There’s no baggage issues either. Bring along a full suitcase, why don’t you.

Many years ago, taking the Sleeper to Madrid was, if you’ll forgive the pun, just the ticket. The carriage, built in Birmingham in 1948, was sturdy and comfortable, and one was delivered on Platform One in Madrid’s Atocha railway station at seven in the morning – the perfect time for a coffee and a bun before taking a taxi to one’s appointments.

Trains are better than airplanes, and if they are fast, then there’s little more to be said. Downtown to downtown without taxi rides to and from the airport – plus one is doing one’s bit for the struggle against Global Warming and one's Carbon Footprint production.

(A pop singer called Taylor Swift who leads the pack in air-rides with almost 8,300 tons of CO2 emissions in 2022 might want to take note. Take the train, Child, we’ll wait).

Trains then, will deliver one feeling refreshed while other forms of transport lean towards leaving one nervous, washed-out and irritable.

They say that Almería – poor forgotten province in the south East of Spain – should finally have its AVE (tren de alta velocidad española) by 2026.

Until then, By Jove, I shall be staying home on the couch and reading some well-illustrated travelers’ guides.  

Walt Was Here

I first came to Mojácar in 1966 with my parents who bought two apartments here (I’ve just found the escritura) for – apparently – 90,000 pesetas: that works out at just 260 euros per apartment.

We lived in the one upstairs with the three bedrooms and a roof terrace and rented the downstairs one to Michel for 1,000 pesetas a month, which he could never afford, and he would generally stay for dinner on rent-night instead.

One of the stories I heard (when not in school in the UK, polishing my Latin) was that a local woman had fallen into disgrace around 1899 and had taken ship to the Americas to hide her shame. She ended up in Chicago and found employment with the Disney family and after she died giving birth, the child was adopted by them.

A mere 25 years later, Walt Disney’s climb to fame began.

This seems unlikely as she wouldn’t have written home saying – I’m about to give birth to Walter (not an easy name to say), who will one day be a household name.

Furthermore, the Mojaquero version has it that the child was called José Guirao Zamora and that his dad was the Mojácar doctor of that period – who also apparently suffered from prescience.

Not that the family hasn’t always strenuously denied the tale.

We would tell of the two FBI agents asking to see the Church Registry sometime in the fifties, so as to keep the matter secret (why we would think that they must have come for Disney if it was a secret, is a secret). The twist is that all the documents were destroyed in the Civil War so no one could prove anything one way or the other.

It was all a good story, and while the Disney Corporation would tremble in outrage at the suggestion of their Founder being a Mojaquero, there wasn’t anything much to prove that he wasn’t.

Well, except for a birth certificate (which has never been found) or a Certificate of Baptism currently on display in the San Francisco Disney museum (‘Walter Elias Disney: 5 December 1901).

The old mayor of Mojácar Jacinto Alarcón once told me the story of Walt Disney. In his version, he and Diego Carillo (the village doctor) were once reading a magazine which had a picture of Walt Disney in it. ‘Coo’, said Jacinto, politely dropping the ñ, ‘he’s the spitting image of you. I bet you’re related to him’. 

Thus, after another round of Anis del Mono, was a legend born.

All Good Stuff, one might say, and we can’t dine out on Gordon Goodie the Train Robber (he had a beach-bar in Mojácar) for ever.

When asked if he was from Mojácar – so the story goes – Walt himself replied ‘Who knows…?’

Despite the fact that if he was, he certainly never came back – unless he was one of those FBI agents, of course.

So, fifty or sixty, or probably seventy years later, the Mojácar City Fathers have decided that, well, yes: Walt Was Here.

So now we have two enormous murals in the village, vast wall paintings of Mickey Mouse welcoming the tourists to come and buy some souvenirs. There’s to be a Plaza de Walt Disney and even a Walt Disney festival to be held in late November (unless they hear about it in San Francisco).

One little town in Andalucía has painted itself blue to accommodate the Smurfs, and now another has grown a pair of huge mousey ears – to please the shopkeepers.

The Curious New Laws Regarding Pets

 

I imagine that most of us have had a pet in the house since we were of the tenderest age all those years ago.

I certainly did.

What was yours called?

No, don’t tell me, or I’ll have your password figured out.

Now we read that, while some of the Animal Welfare Law hasn’t yet been ratified thanks to a conspicuous lack of government, other bits of it have. We don’t need to take lessons in how to entertain a pooch (which we have done, as above, since we started. After all, one is pretty much there with Walkies, Din-dins and Down Boy!).

But, let’s see – one can no longer take the dog out to go shopping and leave him tied to a post outside while we pick up a box of milk, some chocolates, a tin of dog-food and a free English-language paper (to wrap it all up in).

There’s anything up to a ten thousand euro fine if you are caught. More, probably, if your mascota (the Spanish name for pet) bites the nice policeman during the inevitable altercation.

To cure this problem, supermarkets have beggars which sit, slumped, outside the entrance. For a small consideration, they’ll be happy to look after Fido and you will be able to shop at your leisure.

Maybe throw in an extra tin of Chum for the hobo’s dog, or indeed a frosty can of beer for the deadbeat himself.

We must now take more care and not leave our dogs in the house alone for long – or chained up outside either.

Felines have a bit more liberty, as is only proper, but run the risk of returning home through the upstairs window a few grams lighter that when they left having been caught by one of those peculiar catch-neuter-release people that are always leaving food out for the feral cats.

There is also a list of pets which we just flatly aren’t allowed to keep. It’s easier just to note the few one can – which pretty much comes down to dog, cat, ferret (who on earth keeps a ferret for a pet?), tropical fish and that thing you shouldn’t get wet or feed after midnight.

All this, plus the looming dog insurance at around twenty-five euros a pop (while a very good idea as any postman will tell you), which may be beneficial to our furry (or scaly) friends as the legislators provided; although I rather think that there will be more than a few accidents or inexplicable losses of surplus critters of one sort or another reported in the inside pages.

Some causes in Spain remain sacred, and hunting dogs and fighting bulls, of course, need not apply.       

 

…

El Comercio has an exhaustive list of the new Animal Welfare Law do’s and don’ts here.

Not Facebook Prison this time, not yet

I haven't posted anything - purposefully - on Facebook for the past week. You see, there's nothing I wanted to say or show of particular interest. 

However, the Facebook dweebs have wisely not dropped their vigilance and today I was warned that my comment didn't meet Facebook community standards. The message read: 'We removed your content. See why'

Which happens now and again (the Facebook censors are evidently poorly-paid foolish creatures with no better prospects in life than reading other people's opinions). 

Only, you see, I hadn't posted anything.

 

As is - vaguely - shown here (the exact notification is unavailable), I have taken one over the knuckles. However, the particular post I allegedly made has not been shown as 'Exhibit A' by the Thought-Police for my edification, so I can't share it with the Gentle Reader. 

Indeed, I have no idea what it was that offended these idiots, unless not posting anything in a week is itself an offense. 

I think sticking something on Facebook is an enjoyable enough pastime: showing points of view or a funny joke or a picture of one's pet: and these days, God knows, one needs all the endorphins one can get. 

Or wait, could it have been a post last week I made complaining about the adverts that Facebook keeps showing - hats (in particular), and tee-shirts and leather jackets. All on special one-day-only going-out-of-business sale, adorned with thousands of 'likes'?

If you check these 'sponsored' advertisers up on Scamwatcher, it will likely say something like - this company is very dodgy. Try it for yourself and see... 

(No - it wasn't that - I just looked and my post about the rogue fashion-outlets is still there...).

So what could it have been that tipped them again? 

Anyway, and once again: fuggem. 

 ...

Later. The message over at 'Notifications' has now been replaced with 'Your account looks good! Thanks for sticking to the rules and making Facebook a better place'.  

It's the only apology I'll get... 

A Short Break in Foreign Parts

 Well, there's an experience: I’ve just been to the UK for a few days.

Since almost everyone who reads my Business over Tapas (a weekly review of Spanish news) will know the United Kingdom better than I do with my modest current score of just thirty days there in the last forty years, there’s probably not much I can add about the place, beyond noting that I never saw a single electric scooter in the local towns and villages in West Sussex - although I did notice that there are lots of expensive cars around, if not enough road for them all to share. I spent much of our time with my host on the country lanes stuck in long and tedious traffic jams.

That’s Conservatism for you, I thought. A fancy car in a queue.

I was staying in a place near Chichester: a genteel sea-village with a pebbled beach and a few fishermen dotted about selling dressed crab, and where some batty old dear knits woolen cosies and puts them on the lids of the letter boxes. To keep them warm, I suppose. The photograph of me posting a letter into one of these wholesome treasures unfortunately didn’t come out (due to the ill-placing of my chum’s thumb).

I did, however, pick up a joke:

A high court judge and his wife are returning from a very jolly dinner-party when they are stopped by the police.

‘Who are you, sir, and where are you from?’

‘I’m a high-court judge and I’m from Bognor’ said that worthy gentleman.

The policeman let them continue on their way.

‘But darling, we live in Chichester’ said his wife.

‘I know’, he answered, ‘but try and say that when you’re pissed’.

My old school friend and I had some distant memories to recall, a few local sites to explore, a decent curry to enjoy and a pint or two of local brew to quaff. Apparently, they hadn’t had any summer this year until I showed up. I expect they were glad to see me arrive. The temperature was high and the sky was sunny the five days I was there, but now it’s gone back to overcast with a chance of hail.

There are things about Blighty, you know, that never change.

Some travellers – the non-aggressive British word for gypsies, and I believe that’s now out-of-date as well – were occupying a field by the beach in the village and the local bars had all promptly closed with ‘gas-leaks’ and other tiresome issues, no doubt to remain firmly shuttered until the group had been moved on to pastures new by the local constabulary.  

They do like their doggies, the Brits. We had a meal in a Turkish tapa-bar (sic!), with the next table’s two customers in charge of no less than three dogs, the table behind with two more dogs and another table nearby with yet another pooch. All fulsomely excited, as only the canine-race can be, to meet new friends.

That wouldn’t happen in Spain – but then I suppose, neither would a Turkish tapa-bar.  

Of course, I had a good time munching pork pies and once a scotch egg in an otherwise rather boring art museum and, now returned home and suitably refreshed, I’m quite ready for una caña de cerveza and a decent tapa.

The Pueblo Home

 During the fiesta in the small pueblo of Tahal in Almería, which falls in the early part of October, many local people who have moved away over the years to the City in search of jobs, wealth, comforts, distraction and a decent restaurant will return to the family home for a few days. They will be a bit better dressed, probably not wearing those ubiquitous carpet slippers, and will politely park their Mercedes down near the fountain to not unduly upset the locals with their old Renaults.

The pueblerinos will feel a little uncomfortable by their richer cousins but then they will reflect that – Bueno, they’ll soon be gone once again.

And so it is. Those villages more than an hour away from nowhere will have a small population, but a far larger number of maintained homes. The folk who moved to the city will keep an eye on the old property, fix the roof maybe, put in a proper cooker and a TV, and will visit once or twice a year (probably bring a hamper with them). There will be no tourism and the shop, if there is one, will be in the back of the bar. A van will regularly drive up the hill and honk its horn – the fish-man is here!

These villages are technically moribund, and there should be houses for sale there for those who crave a quiet and lonely life.

But few people want to buy, and the villages stay quiet – except for the annual fiesta with its enthusiastic band, its tin bar with tapas and draft beer set up in the square and the fireworks to round things off.

Those in the City will tell you of their home in the pueblo and enthuse about the tomates or the higos which can be found there.

The prettier pueblos nearer to the coast may count on foreigners buying property there, but again won’t see much tourism. A couple of shops and a bar or two, but most of the remaining Spanish population will be living on pensions.

Other pueblos, happily located nearer to Civilization, will have become dormer-towns and Goodness knows, they might have become perhaps a little funky over the years, but they’ll be full nonetheless.  

The Covid evidently brought about a modest renaissance in the pueblos, after all no one wants to get sick and if one owns a place to keep one’s head down, then why not – but that’s over with for now. Maybe, to extend that thought, they’ve been joined – in the harder to reach ones – by a few survivalists turning their backs on modern life.

But when you can’t get decent coverage on your Internet, then being a hermit begins to lose its shine.  

The Snails of Palomares (reworked)

 

A USAF B52 was taking on fuel from a flying tanker somewhere over Vera (Almería) on January 21st 1966 when something went wrong – the two aircraft touched, and exploded. Debris rained down on the fields and coastline below, including four unarmed nuclear bombs.

I mean, ‘four bombs which hadn’t been armed’, rather than ‘four defenceless bombs’. That would have been cruel.

The gerfuffle as the remains of the aircraft, blobs of raw plutonium and the four bombs were re-secured by the Americans are well known. Two bombs landed on the ground in Palomares (‘falling open and melting everything in their path’ according to unverifiable reports) and the other two fell in the sea, where one was soon found while the forth was finally located in a deep trench off the coast several months later by Alvin, that cute little mini-sub that starred in the National Geographic magazines of the period. Antonio the wise old fisherman with the 150-metre ice-blue stare suggesting fully-fledged insanity may have helped. He was certainly cheaper to fuel.

Franco was on board the Fifth Fleet American destroyer for a brief visit and toying with a complimentary Easter bunny as the bomb was fortuitously hauled aboard.

A suggestion from the time was that the last bomb was in a very deep hole in the sea and was impossible to extract, so a plastic reproduction had been lowered off the other side of the ship to be triumphantly raised in front of the mad Caudillo to cheer him up.

Fraga Irribarne the Minister of Tourism, perhaps unaware of this sleight of hand, famously took a dip in the sea with the American ambassador at the time to show there was no radiation. On the other hand, they carefully enjoyed their frolic in front of the Mojácar Parador, some ten kilometres down the coast.

The Marines removed 800,000 tons of topsoil, fertile and safe, and took it to South Carolina, because, you see, there was no radiation.

It's now used to grow terbacca.

Roberto Puig, an eccentric architect, was meanwhile putting the finishing touches to his Hotel Mojácar located in the village of the same name (many, many years later, Pedro Sánchez, the future president, bought an apartment within the since-converted hotel). Roberto hired a van and drove over to Palomares and managed to secure part of a wing from the bomber, which he proudly affixed to the wall in the cave-bar under his hotel. The local wags said it had an unearthly glow.

A small desalination plant was built in Palomares by the Americans for thirty million dollars as a kind gesture (it was quickly closed down after the resident engineer moved to Mojácar to open a beach bar and, seeing that he wasn't coming back, the Catalan caretaker sold the guts of the building for scrap). A few rusting Geiger counters were left to record the ambient radiation level – if there was any – and new construction extending from Vera Playa into Palomares and Villaricos was given the go-ahead by forward thinking planners (see, I could have written ‘greedy capitalists’).

A recent test on Palomares snails (please pay attention here if you count gastropods in your carefully balanced diet) has shown a higher than normal level of radiation. Their stomach is their foot, so what they walk on, so to speak, they eat. Snail poop, we read somewhere, might spread radioactive dust.

Of course, a light wind, common in that corner of dusty Spain, will spread a lot more dust, radioactive or otherwise.

But one has to start somewhere.

The American Department of Energy, together with the CIEMAT Spanish atomic agency, eventually bought ten hectares of land which had been previously cleared by speculators ready for some building, although the dust already raised and blown to the heavens by the tractors and… no, I’m not going there.

Local ecologists have reacted to the news by saying that a much larger area needs to be sanitised.

The half-life of plutonium is a lot longer than ours.

For the meantime, my advice is, don’t eat the snails.

The Quiet Life, Free from Tourism

 

I always wanted to go to visit Machu Picchu.

And just stand on that hill.

The famous picture, rendered for once in black and white, occupied a wall in a Peruvian restaurant in Madrid that I used to go to. Unfortunately, the Pisco Sours were so damn good, that it was hard, after enjoying two or three of them, to remember if one had eaten yet. The crestfallen face of the owner as we asked for the bill just as the chupe de camarones was arriving…  

While I didn’t remember eating much there, I still remember that photo – the one of the bent mountain high in the Andes, with the abandoned Inca settlement tumbled down below.

I travelled a lot as a young ’un in the seventies, at dollar-a-night places in Mexico and Central America, a few bucks more in the USA, and so on, as one could. The Americas, unlike Spain, hadn’t quite caught on to the idea of foreign money (except Yankee-green) in those far-off times and it was hard switching a ten pound note or a thousand pesetas into the local currency.

The thing was, there weren’t many travellers, or tourists, much beyond the crowds heading for Disneyland, Chichen Itza and Key West.

Now, of course, there are.

I missed my chance to visit Machu Picchu and now I'm told that it’s so full of visitors that I couldn’t imagine going there. Like the inspiring Mezquita in Córdoba or the Alhambra in Granada, their time as places to visit has passed. Santiago de Compostela or the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Don’t go. They are done; cooked; crammed; despoiled.

There are too many of us, all wanting to take a picture as we finally, after a long and impatient queue, make it through the doors. We talk, we crowd, we flash, we hold our souvenir pamphlet and we smile at the Japanese tourists with their extendable selfie-sticks.

Next time, try Jaén or Ciudad Real. They may not be much, but they’ll be more enjoyable. By far.

In Mallorca, the locals have put up signs in English saying ‘Don’t bathe here, it’s dangerous’ and underneath, in the local tongue: ‘Don’t worry, we’re just fooling the guiris’.

Well fine, don’t live in a place with lots of tourists, why don’t you?

Forget Florence, or Venice, or Barcelona, or Benidorm, or Marbella or Mojácar – buy a house somewhere quiet, with little or no tourist potential.

Because if there is one, the temptation is high: rack up those rents and open a souvenir shop.

Now my town is on the coast, it’s a suburb of Almería City. It’s ugly and has no tourism whatsoever – frankly, there’s nothing to see and the beaches aren’t worth visiting. Which means that I rarely have to take a picture, except once a year when the local saint, looking a little pale, is hauled along the main  drag on a waggon pulled by a pair of bulls (relieved, no doubt to be spared other more onerous duties).

So, I was lucky. I got my travelling in early. Nowadays, I can see the world for a few pennies, from the comfort of my own armchair and with a pile of second-hand books from the charity store.   

Pop Goes the Walter

It was a hot and steamy night - they always are, aren't they? - and I was wondering where the Jack in the Box came from. Perhaps I was asleep after all. Maybe I'll look it up when I get up in the morning.

Google was a trifle disappointing, as it only seemed to know about a cheap American fast-food chain operating under that name. Perhaps your hamburger is delivered to the table within a box, and when you unfasten the lid, the whole thing is abruptly lifted, bun, tomaydo and patty, to all go flying across the joint with a satisfying ¡Splatt!

I do like a novelty meal.

I later find, and thanks to The Cambridge Dictionary, that this artifice is defined as ‘a children's toy consisting of a box with a model of a person inside it that jumps out and gives you a surprise when the top of the box is raised’.

Which reminds me of a birthday I once attended in Dallas, where the figure inside the cake was not only real, but was found to be wearing just half of a bikini.

No doubt the top bit had gotten caught in the icing during her dramatic entrance.

It’s bound to be a popular thing, surprise visits from somebody are invariably interesting – if refined a bit by my fellow countrymen, who have ingeniously taken the concept one step further, as Facebook regularly tells us.

See, the Brits are always 'popping' into some place or other.

I imagine we are all sat around a table, chugging a beer, when, de repente, a small bubble appears on the floor to expand quickly and then, 'pop!', there's a Brit standing there, just like something out of Harry Potter.

We popped into Joe’s, they write, and we had a sandwich.

The half a pound of tupenny rice doggerel ends with ‘pop goes the weasel’, which, on further application to Google, tells me that the meaning of this Cockney song is to ‘pop’ (pawn) granddad’s ‘whistle and flute’ (suit) to pay for the groceries.

Which is what will allegedly happen to some of the Brits here if they don’t pull out their finger in Westminster and put up the pensions.

Those imported Bakewells don't grow on trees you know.

In Spain, the nearest thing to a Jack in the Box is a Caja Sorpresa, a similarly explosive receptacle, if only to be used once, to fire confetti into the air. Which sounds like we're at a wedding.

Maybe they could put someone inside the cake, make it even more of an event to remember.

Everything That’s Runny Contains Water (except my wife’s gravy)

 I saw a billboard today while driving along the main road towards the playa on my way for a swim – it was the local ice-cube company advertising its product and it said: ‘Probably the best ice-cubes in the world’.

I’m pretty sure that a couple of examples from Señor Freezer are rattling around in my iced-tea right now, gently melting and turning my beverage into watery-iced-tea.

Which is doubly refreshing.

Come to think of it, I suppose all the drinks we enjoy are made pretty much from water. Which they are always telling us we must drink lots of. So, are all drinks, essentially, just water with flavouring?

Starting of course with water itself (flavoured with salts and minerals), and finishing, by a circuitous route, with beer, which is after all merely bubbly water with some boiled hops and barley along with a judicious squirt of alcohol (don’t tell the Germans I wrote that). Indeed, the sober answer is this: ‘According to The Brewer's Handbook, most beer contains about 95% water, and the remaining 5% is alcohol. Beer, in short, is mostly water but this is barely noticeable because of the flavour of other ingredients’.

The taste though, whether in beer or in whisky, depends on the water, so a distilled H2O won’t give much taste to the finished product, whereas a nice ‘fresh mountain stream’ might be just the ticket.  

Let’s see. Sweet sticky soda drinks are 90% water (we know what most of the rest is). Milk is about the same. Tomato ketchup is about 70%. Wine has 85% water and soda water is 90%, while sparkling water is 99% made up of our old friend agua, with a bubble or two added to help make us burp.

With all of the above, it’s clear that whatever one drinks (or sloshes on one’s chips), it’s all mainly down to water.

So, and sorry for asking, but why is beer cheaper than water in most bars? And with a free tapa thrown in for good measure!

Of all of these endless libations, only the stuff commercialised by the plastic water-bottle companies has a breakdown of the water and its minerals and salts printed on the label. No beer ever said ‘this brew has calcium, magnesium and sulphates’.

So, what is water?

Well, lessee, it takes two haitches and one oh, or two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. A simple formula we all learned in school.

But with all of the free hydrogen and endless amount of oxygen in gas filling up the space around us – why doesn’t it all club together and turn into water? It’s no doubt just as well that it doesn’t, otherwise I’d be writing this piece while wearing some manly-looking water-wings.

The reason, apparently, is that most of the hydrogen around is already in the water anyway. The other reason is metastability (here if you insist), but I’m sorry I asked now.

Another puzzler about water – if it’s made up of inflammable oxygen and explosive hydrogen – why doesn’t it detonate every now and then?

It would certainly keep us on our toes if it did.

Mind you, you can always nuke it for an interesting reaction. Of course, rather than playing with steam-engines, I boil mine for a nice cup of tea twice a day. Boiling your water is a good idea as it kills anything that shouldn’t be there anyway.

Which I suspect is how we did so well in India.

Returning to the plastic-water-bottling industry (Motto: We do Our Bit for Pollution), an estimated 6,500 million emptied litre water-bottles will be obligingly cast into dustbins or chucked out of car windows or left on the beach or in the countryside this year in Spain (up 3% from last year, says the pwbi proudly). I don’t know how much of that is recycled, the plastic I mean (don’t worry about the water, it will return all by itself).

The good thing about beer (and the reason I drink it) is that it comes in either cans or in bottles made of glass, never plastic. Or better still, on draught.

Although I suppose it’s a pity that they can’t make beer-bottles out of cardboard.

The ice has now dissolved in my drink, adding its own secret chemical make-up to my beverage. I think I’ll chuck the dregs and go and get a brewski from the fridge.

It's Not Unusual

 Have you noticed how many people have taken to recording every scene with their telephone-camera? I suppose it's one thing taking a video of your baby to send to your family, or a short of you on your horse, or your new bicycle, but to record Tom Jones live... when you're there at the concert-arena... having just paid eighty euros? 

C'mon, you know you are not going to watch it later, curled up in bed with the squinty picture and tinny sound from your phone.

What would be the point of not enjoying it at the time, in full and glorious presence-vision, when you are part of the gigantic crowd of fans? Where's the drama, where's the excitement?

Many of your fellow concert-goers, admittedly, are spoiling your view of the event by waving their blasted iPhones in the air in front of you. 

You know (don't you?) that no one is going to watch your amateur and wobbly twenty-second cut on Facebook, and if you want to tell us about how marvelous is Tom Jones or whoever, then send us to YouTube (I've chosen Tom Jones here, because I have no idea what most of today's pop singers are called).

I could have written instead about Córdoba and its astonishing mosque (converted into a Catholic church a number of centuries ago). It's full of people all taking pictures with their phones - instead of feeling, for just a moment, the majesty of The Creator. 

I travelled a lot at a tender age, and have a few boxes of slides from here and there to show for it; and even went to a few pop-concerts (not Tom Jones, thankfully), but I was lucky: there was no social media (or mobile phones, or even a land-line at home in Spain) in those times. In fact, no one besides me knew where I was unless they happened to receive a surprise post-card out of the blue.

Dear Mum and Dad, having a wonderful time. Send money. Besos.  

A good memory should be treasured, not peered at over the years. Besides which, how many photos, clips, archives and scrap-books have been lost or mislaid since they came back from the camera-shop, or since I moved digs? Yes, I know I've forgotten lots of things I've seen or done, but I'm all the richer for still having the memories (I think) of the important events.

And anyway, life is about collecting experiences, not 'likes'.

The Usual

It’s always nice to see when a new café opens near where I live. Sometimes, I even make an effort to visit there and have a coffee or a beer and a tapa, depending on the hour.

I live in a working-class neighbourhood, so the cafés are open early, five o’clock early, and generally call it a day by one in the afternoon. The bars will last a little longer, perhaps closing around five – after the lunch trade, or even staying awake until the wee hours of ten thirty or eleven at night on the weekends.

My tap-room habits aren’t what they were, and I tend these days to stay home and raid the fridge or put on the kettle according to my inclination.

In the morning, I might drop in at the café opposite and have a coffee and a tostada. Since this order never varies, the girl will smile when she sees me and shout through to her partner who will cut a small loaf length-ways in half and put my bit in the toaster. He'll then cover it with shredded tomato and I'll round it off with salt, pepper and lots of olive oil. Good stuff. 

Of course, if I wanted something else, maybe a tostada with tomate y jamón on it, or with butter and jam (locally called 'un mixto'), then it's easier to go to one of the two other nearby establishments, who will know exactly what I want, because I always have the same when I'm there. 

It saves on the conversation.

It used to work the same way when I was younger - that place for gin & tonic, that one for a beer and, oh my, that one for a beer as well. Well, sometimes you have to order, but with training, they'll just plonk down the right drink in front of you. 

I remember Diana, an elderly and eccentric British lady, coming into the Sartén (a famous bar in Mojácar) one evening and arranging herself on a bar-stool. 

'The usual?' asked Simon, by way of greeting. 

'Oh yes, rather', answered Diane. 'By the way', she said after a short pause, 'what is my usual?'

'Creme de mente you silly old cow', said Simon, reaching for the bottle.

So today, I crossed the road for my breakfast coffee and tostada, to find a new girl behind the bar. 'Café con leche', I said, 'y una media con tomate'. 

'You want that in a glass or a cup?'

'Warm or hot milk?'

'What sort of bread do you want?'

So many questions. I wonder if she'll charge me the same as the usual girl does - which is just 1,20€ plus the few bits of straw from the stables that have collected in my pockets during the morning. 

Brenda Lee keeps giving me a mental nudge as I write this. 

But Brenda, it's As Usual!

I think I've got the record somewhere. 

It beats watching the television.        

Smoke 'Em if You've Got 'Em

As Colin over at his blog 'Thoughts from Galicia' will tell you, our friends the Spanish sometimes fail to tune in to what is happening around them, which explains their approach to roundabouts, queuing and indeed smoking. 

And, I suppose, feeling any embarrassment. 

I was in the pharmacy for what was probably just a few minutes, locked in a queue behind some customers, one of whom was loudly telling the rest of us about her aches and ailments. The one at the head of the queue was taking a long time and, I confess, I lost patience, gave up and left.

There’s another chemist just around the corner and, well, nobody was there. I got my packet of aspirins from them and felt that some progress had been made after all.

The printers, the main reason I had come all the way downtown, was closed. It apparently shuts on Saturdays. Bloody thing – I needed to get some photocopies made.

But, come to think of it, back near the house, there’s an estanco, a cigarette shop – and they have a printer which would do the trick (kind of, I would need to aim a little lower and just print up a few photos).

Another queue, this time outside as I stood behind a couple of elderly ladies – one of them without much of a voice: more of a shrill pant than anything else.

Makes me glad I gave up the gaspers a long while back.

We finally boiled into the shop, the two old girls and me. There, things suddenly slowed down as the inarticulate lady wanted some smokes, but wasn’t sure which ones she was after.

‘Marlboro… Nobel… Ducados…?’ asked the stringy-looking attendant.

‘No’, she managed, ‘the pic-picture’.

‘Let’s see. I’ve got a fellow with his throat out; a rotting leg; no teeth and a dead baby’ said the shop-keeper checking through her stock of fags, ‘oh and one here of a collapsed eye’.

The two customers conferred as I wondered which one they’d choose.

‘The gentleman with his throat out’, they decided, passing across a 20€ bill.