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…