The Ice-cream Tart

The Spanish have so many wonderful things going for them, that I can only lament that I spent the first thirteen years of my life living elsewhere.

My parents felt the same way, and loaded up the car in Norfolk for what would become a one-way trip south back in 1966.

And he we are - or at least, here I am (my parents having duly succumbed many years ago, surrounded by friends, to one of what used to be Spain's greatest attractions - coñac at five pesetas a tot).

I live quietly, having learned a few vital lessons about life here:

Never lend your money to friends, or start a newspaper - which comes pretty much to the same thing.

Steer away from brandy.

Never keep the nub end of a joint in your car's ashtray (long story).

Always order the tarta al whisky after a good lunch.

Spain's Whisky Tart is a sort of vanillery helado thing, with a few crushed nuts and a bit of sponge, and a miniscule squirt of hootch to add flavour. Imagine that - an alcoholic ice-cream!

When you order it in one of this country's one million better restaurants, then the maître will bring a bottle of scotch and either baptise your desert in that generous devil-may-care way so typical of the Spanish, or even leave the bottle next to your plate for you to drown your bowl of ice-cream a tu gusto.

As a young 'un, I used to have the flan with a tinned peach for pud; good in its way, but nowhere close to a whisky tart.

In fact, I think I'll indulge myself right now - the essay needs a picture, right?

Hot Summer Nights

 Gosh, it ain’t half hot.

It’s so hot I’ve got a towel wrapped around the pillow. The window is wide open and the screen has been checked (somehow, the little buggers still manage to get in to the bedroom and bite. They probably carry wire-cutters within their dental array – the mosquito’s answer to the Swiss Army Knife).

The noise from the passing traffic and the odd summer concert drifts through the curtain and refreshes me – it’s come that I can’t sleep until I’ve heard that particular summer song at least twice.

It’s dark, apart from the moonlight and the little red and green glows from the television switch, the extension cords, the mosquito plug-in and the electric clock which winks throughout the night (it’s more trouble to get up and reset it following the regular power-cuts that plague the barrio). If I wake up for a pee, which I do around 3.30am, the room glows like the approach to a small provincial airstrip: and I half expect a small follow-me airport vehicle to escort me to the loo.

Maybe detour past the fridge to drink some cold water on the way back to Runway One.

I pull the fan a little closer to the bed and fall back into my pit, now damp with sweat. Try and get back to sleep, but maybe check the Facebook first. Maybe read for a spell (I much prefer books to the television). Maybe spray the room and scratch for a bit.

So hot. I’ve taken to having two (or even three) cold showers throughout the day. I haven’t done that since school all those years ago. At least there’s no one here to flick me with a towel.

An hour has passed, so I’ll try and sleep again. The concert has stopped, but there’s an owl on a nearby tree that lets out a liquid hoot every fifteen seconds. I noisily shut the window – maybe he’ll take the hint.

I look again and now it’s 7.00am. I’ll get up and make myself a toast and coffee.

While that’s going on, I’ll have another pee and brush my teeth.

I’m told by the fellow on the TV that I have bad breath, so I go for a quick gargle of mouthwash, making my tongue look like I’m a lizard-person. The product has a child-proof lid on it, which means that it won’t fall open by chance in the shopping-bag, or indeed in the bathroom. I too need both some wire-cutters and some patience, hard to do when I’ve just heard the toast-launcher eject my breakfast onto the kitchen floor.

Outside, it looks like it’s going to be another nice day.  

Dodgy Phone Calls: Spam, Whistles and Con-artists

For some reason, we are getting lots of telephone calls in these times from unknown numbers. My Android phone is good enough to say: ‘watch out, this is probably a spammer’ which is ammunition enough for me to press the ‘refuse call and block number’ button.

It used to be someone from a cheap-energy company wanting you to switch out of Endesa, or maybe a salesperson from some dodgy newspaper or magazine hoping for your business. These days, it’s likely a robot which is checking to see if anybody is on the other end of a phone-number. If you do pick up, it lets out a cheerful little beep, and hangs up.

Yes Boss, we’ve got a live one here.

The numbers are collected and sold – either to spammers, crooks, thieves, con-men, or that fellow who wanted to sell you a cheap health insurance.

In my phone memory, I have several calls refused by me in the last few days as ‘Llamante no deseado (sospecha)’ and others as ‘Fraude (possible)’.

There’s a new service I’ve found, a kind of reverse phone number directory for fraudulent callers called ListaSpam. They say they have a list of over a million crooked phone-numbers between Spain and Latin America. You can download their app – free – and your phone will automatically bounce any of these bogus callers.

ListaSpam is a simple dot com, so let me look up some of the calls I’ve had recently:

The number 951125163 from Málaga has been checked 22 times by unwilling victims.

The number 624156344 has been checked 205 times, and has four complaints.

The number 613592067 has been checked 297 times, and has four complaints

The number 613889843 has been checked 337 times, and has two complaints.

The number 625028220 has been checked 504 times, and has seven complaints.

But the prize goes to 951823073, checked 5,835 times, with seventy-one complaints.

All these numbers, plus others, have called me in the past week, even though I’m on the Lista Robinson – a useful register of numbers not to be called by importune sales-folk or telemarketers. It has saved me a large number of calls, and if they get through to me and I say I’m on the Lista Robinson, they’ll say they’re sorry and hang up. If they don’t, then I hang up. It’s evidently not fool-proof, but it helps. If you do speak to them, tell them that you intend to make a denuncia to the AEPD – the Spanish protection of data agency (they are acting outside the law). They’ll disconnect soon enough.

So how do they get my number? Maybe someone at the electric company or the town hall is making a few euros on the side selling a list of phone-numbers to people with wonky accents.

These spam calls are something new, probably starting – in my case – about a month ago.

Right now, between Facebook (‘Oh, I do love your posts, would you please be my friend?’), sundry texts about small debts I’m said to owe to Tráfico or the electric company or my bank (what was your pin number again?) as sent to Messenger, and then the email spam (I now get 20 or 30 of these each day – usually to tell me I’ve won a prize), I’m getting more junk than real calls from friends and family.  

Today (Saturday) I got a call at 2.00pm, as I was settling down to a sandwich, and then another at 3.00pm, just as I switched on the news. It’s like they have a sixth sense to call at an inconvenient moment. The phone warned me both times and I blocked the numbers at once.

Say, that wasn’t you calling was it?