The Water Carrier

Man, it’s hot! Apart from a strong wind in the afternoon, the air is flat, slightly steamy, and hot. No doubt the rest of Spain is hotter, since we are just a few hundred metres above sea level and only a few kilometres inland, but it’s bad enough. The weatherman yesterday told us that the hot weather we’ve been enjoying for the past two weeks is likely – to get hotter.
He didn’t look too worried; he probably has an air-conditioned home, an air-conditioned car and an air-conditioned studio. Come to think of it, he’s probably, partially, the reason why the weather is so bloody hot.
My house backs into the side of a ‘terraza’ – one of those thin flat fields that climb up the side of the hills and are built up with heavy stones that the peasants used to fashion before the water table fell and the foreigners arrived clutching wads of cash and golf clubs. Together with thick walls (it’s an old house) and high ceilings, it’s moderately cool inside.
We have mosquito netting on some of the windows – the cats are working on reducing the percentage – and a few ‘plug-ins’ here and there. The town hall claims that it has recently fumigated the area, and indeed, there are no other bugs around, except the aforementioned mosquitoes and their daytime friends the flies.
The shopkeepers are unclear as to whether they have sold more or less tee-shirts and humorous ashtrays this year (our sole commercial activity besides rum-and-cokes and apartments) although most agree that there are more visitors who, for some reason or other, spend less.
Since residents rarely venture into the humorous ashtray shops and favour their own tee-shirts (often displaying an amusing play on the word fcuk), the shop-keepers are keen to attract… yet… more turistas with plans to build a huge car-park in the village (containing a hotel, a disco, offices, apartments, tee-shirt emporia and other attractions which, together, - and let’s face it - pay more than parking spots do). Anyway, the walk will do ‘em good!
A new statue has been erected at the back of the village of Mojácar. It is the third in a line of mojaqueras draped in their finery. In fact, such mythical hooded creatures, dressed in shawls, skirts and aprons, with perfect chests covered in a brocaded blouse, with their faces covered with a shawl gripped between their teeth, would carry huge earthen pots of water on their heads up from the fuente. You can imagine how hot they used to get.
This particular one, in bronze, appears to be shaking the dust off her feet. She cost the Ayuntamiento 25,000 euros, and is the Parthian shot of our mayor Gabi, who will be handing over the keys to the petty cash to his successor RosMari Cano in two months. Whether a more appropriate statue for the pueblo would be a man dressed in sandals, hat and sunglasses, with a camera round his neck and carrying a small plastic bag with ‘souvenir’ written on it is hard to say. After all, we don’t like to recognise anyone’s efforts towards this community unless they are at least fifth generation or, at a pinch, in the air-conditioning business.

Sippin' with The Pope

One of my favourite drinks in Spain is an iced milky drink called horchata. It tastes sweetly of nut. The drink is originally from Valencia and it is made from sugar, water, cinnamon and tiger nuts. Since no one knows what a tiger nut is, we might as well stick with the Spanish name, chufa.
The plant (I discover) is a kind of tuber, very good for you and all that, and almost impossible to get rid of if it is growing in your garden. On the bright side, you can always make more horchata since the drink only lasts a few days before spoiling.
Not many people like it, which seems a shame, and the drink is low on the list of an Almerían bar’s priorities, however, after twelve hundred years or so in relative obscurity, its time has finally come. As so many things in Spain, horchata has become political.
It started the other day, with Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Valencia.
Now, as the Partido Popular has slightly lost its teeth while the government espouses its new ideas, which could be summed up as ‘all change’, the champion of good old family values, whether as a Catholic or not, have been firmly passed to The Church, and its leader, the German Shepherd.
Dressed in white for purity, and quietly ‘not connecting’ with the president, the Pope’s two days in the Levante city were a success for the faithful – those who yearn for the good and simple times of the past, a more innocent age, in short, the small ‘c’ conservatives.
It has always been told that horchata was invented by the Valencians during the time of the Moorish occupation of Spain – which lasted for a pretty healthy seven hundred years or more and helps explain all those Moors and Christian festivals and why they keep putting up statues of hard-working mojaqueras with their faces covered all over Mojacar. At any rate, such a Moorish girl had once lifted her veil just enough to take a healthy chug of some milky looking drink when a Christian king, Jaime 1 de Aragon, happened along on his horse and asked if he could have a go. ‘Cor’, he said, ‘this is gold, girlie’, or, in valenciano, ‘Això és or, xata!’. Horchata.
During the Pope’s recent visit to Valencia, now one of the hold-outs of conservatism, Catholicism, anti-Zapatero-ism and so on, the horchata makers filled the city with wheeled carts and sold the drink to the pilgrims. The Pope, following in Jaime’s royal footsteps, was graciously inclined to take an iced glass of the beverage, pronounced it delicious, and thus nailed its fate as a truly catholic… well, you get the picture.
Let me help. The drink is made by small manufacturers (not evil multinationals) and is the only thing that’s wet that cannot be mixed with any form of alcohol. It separates instantly when a shot of grog hits it. That, and it’s white.
Please contrast this refreshment with the socialist’s preferred beverage – sparkling wine from Barcelona. The ubiquitous cava!
And horchata is good, too. Perhaps an acquired taste, but I often enjoy one during the summer months. Unfortunately, come October 1st, like homemade ice cream, the tourists and (hopefully) Mojacar’s mosquito population, horchata disappears for another season.

The Phone Cut

The phone had been out for a few days, but the internet was working. It may not last, but that’s actually an ideal state to be in. The children can’t whack up the phone bill, you can still receive calls and you can surf on the web – or indeed write rude and regular things about the carpetbaggers on your very own website.
It can’t last though. Sooner or later the electric company, Sevillana, is going to have one of its click-clack power shorts which is apparently caused by birds taking off from the line from Vera and has nothing to do with the poor maintenance on the equipment or the splendid cars operated by the share-holders.
So, it happened. The brief thunk of the power stopped the internet connection, and I was once again obliged to deal with Telefonica. That, or to ceremoniously disembowel myself on the kitchen floor, which is generally considered less painful.
I started yesterday, in the office, by ringing Telefonica on 1004. I then tapped in my phone number. I then listened to music. I then met Alfredo, who rather thought it was a technical problem and not a mere overdue bill. After trying to sell me a special summer telephone deal, he passed me to a colleague who was of the sound opinion that there was nothing wrong with the line and that, indeed, coughing up something in the billing department would do the trick and, oh, by the way, could I press a button to tell the company if I had been treated politely. A number one, if I would be so kind.
The new billing lady, after making sure that I knew my telephone number and wasn’t in fact carrying a false residence card number – which I was as a matter of fact, as the phone is in somebody else’s name – finally gave me a price.
You can only pay your old phone bills at the Banesto bank. There’s one in the village.
I drove up the hill, past all the parked tourist cars, and then down the other side for some distance. It’s hot and dusty and a pull to totter up to the top again, just to pay the 100 euros and eight cents that the Telefonica company wanted.
The Banesto bank in the pueblo is a small room with two tables, one computer, a few concerned looking ashtrays, and a sign saying that you can only pay Telefonica bills on Tuesdays and Thursdays and before 10.30am. And an air-conditioner. It’s Thursday midday and I’ve spent enough time on this. But, on the bright side, I'm cool.
The bank flunky tries to send the wretched company a transfer anyway. But the computer won’t accept it. ‘Come back on Tuesday morning, early’ suggests the fellow. Or, perhaps he said ‘wear something light and get the morning off from your work. Another five days without phone or internet will put you in a splendid mood. Your walk up the hill, past all the accordion players and elderly beggars will place you in a happy frame of mind and when I finally take your money you will be pleased to consider that, in a mere 48 hours after the transfer, your phoning and surfing rights will be fully returned to you’.
I went into the bar next door. Carmen is nice. She set me up a beer as I rang 1004 on my mobile phone. Typed in my number. Listened to music, diddle di diddle di dee… Our operators are busy, please call back another time…
So I was talking to Carmen while holding the phone to my ear after another attempt, when a voice suddenly came on in… English!
‘Yess, how can ay help you?’ ‘Lissen, girlie, I wanna pay my phone bill and the stupid bank says that the figure is wrong and I’ve spent the whole morning farting about and I…’
‘Yes sir. The computers are down here. Call again later’.
So I will.

A Sporting Update

I was raised on the fine novels of H. Rider Haggard with his heroes like Alan Quartermain and The Elephant Hunter. Here we see an example of such an intrepid person as he pursues the common sparrow, a regular invader of our birdcage.The sparrows somehow get in, and make themselves at home. The regular tenants, the lovebirds, aren’t too taken by this invasion of gatecrashers. Step forward – the Great White Sparrow Hunter.

Note: no sparrows were hurt in the making of this photograph

Concert in Cartagena

Without doubt, it’s the oddest city on the Spanish mainland. Cartagena (New Carthage, Cartago Novo) is a navy city about 60 kms from Murcia.
Imagine two mountains, with the sea flowing in between them. A third mountain stops the sea’s progress further inland. This third mount has massive fortifications and is topped by a castle. Around and behind, the city stretches, in most cases old, bombed out, collapsed. Narrow streets with boarded up shops and ornate nineteenth century fronts held up by builders’ supports. Old bars – the type that looks like a garage, you can pee out the back. Arab tea-rooms (no booze, but good lamb dishes). The occasional massive colonial structure or military barracks in mothballs. We walked down one narrow street (in the Arab quarter) which decanted apologetically into the ground floor of a ruined house. Wire on the left held us from a crag with a tower on it. The track continued through the wall of a vestibule straight into a small room with a virgen in it and a dozen lit candles, and out, left, into the sunlight again.

Cartagena has a political party (currently just one councillor in the ayuntamiento) which wants independence from Spain. In 1873, The city not only had a majority for the Partido Cantonal, it actually declared UDI and, worse still, declared war on the rest of Spain. It took an incredible six months before Spain’s forces could overrun the rebel city (in January 1874). These days, they talk about leaving Murcia as, perhaps, a good place to start.
The city was an important naval port. With the end of conscription and a new professional navy on the passing of Francoism, Cartagena went downhill. Never a pretty place, with the money turned off the city took a powder. Today, European funding appears to be re-awakening the ancient city from its recent slumbers and a new (and apparently pointless) toll route is being built between Cartagena and Vera.

We were there for a concert. To get to the castle, you have to walk around the mountain from the main avenida, then, you can only climb the hill by taking a ho, in your face, modern glass zippy-lift up to the top, then along a stainless steel structure with lights… onto the castle forecourt. Dozens of peacocks were sleeping there, perched high in the pine trees or on ornamental bridges. The port far below between those two mountains, illuminated by the full moon.
The concert tonight was Abdullah Ibrahim (as Dollar Brand calls himself now). Dollar Brand – I knew him back in 1975 – is a wonderful pianist from South Africa. He led a trio with a two-hour concert in front of a narrow tower up on the high mountain. Just a piano, a double bass and percussion. And the odd cry from the peacocks…

The walk back was spooky. No one on the streets. Hardly any lights.
The hotel was modern and ho-hum. The air conditioning leaked drip, drip, every second or two. It was their carpet.

Oldies but Goodies

I’ve got the record somewhere, featuring that song which goes ‘black ees black, I wonn my babi back’, the smash hit for Los Bravos in 1966. Not bad, that, as it was a rare foreign pop group that made the US charts (Nº 4 in the top 100) and the Brits (Nº 2 in the fab fifty, our pop songs always being worth twice as much was theirs). Los Bravos had a German singer, little Micky from Berlin, but the rest came from Spain. Micky was the youngest, born in 1945. He’d be 61 now.
Los Bravos are coming to play a concert in Vera on August 11th. I hope that the concert hall is wheelchair accessible.
Better still, Los Puntos are also billed for the occasion. Los Puntos were a band that produced an endless supply of Beatles-like smasheroos in the mid to late sixties. They came from Cuevas (the next door town to Vera) and still perform on occasion. Pepe Grano de Oro wrote a song (anthem) for Mojácar a few years back.
About ten years ago, while enjoying a rare holiday, I saw Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders on a cruise ship. I think the bassist was a replacement (he still had all his hair), but the rest were very much the original line-up. Wayne wore a hat.
Typically, the group would perform one of their hits (Groovy Kind of Love, The Game of Love and so on...) and then, at its conclusion, would hold on to their instruments for mutual support and attempt to recover their breath. Whoo! Thank goodness songs were only three minutes long in those days! Wayne would tell a joke as the others took their pills. We didn’t care, we knew what it’s like to pant and wheeze.
I hope little Micky from Berlin will be OK up there on the Vera stage, as concerts here tend to start rather late. Los Bravos might be on last, after Jeanette, Tony Ronald, Los Puntos and the rest of them.
Vera August 11th Oldies Concert. Vera bullring from 11.30pm

I used to be a Linesman

I’m obliged to balance my life around football this month – as if the last eight months had never happened. The endlessly televised sweep of a team of over-paid egoists regularly proving to the world that the best thing to do with your head is to beat a ball with it. It certainly beats learning something, even if it’s as ephemeral as the weather program on Channel 87. My associate on the paper is from Valencia, so we have had to close early over the winter and spring on the nights that his team was playing. Or carry on working I suppose at a kind of half-speed. In fact, close early and have a whisky with the Russian girls over the road. It has its positive side.
On football night, the whole town would be quiet, apart from the bellow of a million television screens and the occasional shriek from the viewers along the lines of ‘shoot the ref’ or ‘kill the tropical gentleman playing wing for the other team’. This being a loose translation, but one that, I hope, manages to maintain the sentiment.
Eventually, two things would be bound to happen. The first would be a dozen heavy explosions as Pedro, the town pyrotechnican, blasted skywards a few rockets substantial enough to have given Werner von Braun a flutter of pleasure, regardless of who won as long as somebody did (Werner’s sentiments exactly), and, secondly, the final whistle would invariably presage a great outpouring of voluble football fans into the streets, bars and knock-shops of the community.
But, with Barcelona apparently winning every cup ever cast, plated or pressed, with ‘their foreign team-maters’ beating ‘our foreign team mates’ (assuming you’re a Real Madrid, Valencia or Seville supporter), I had kind of assumed that the whole season was finally washed up for another year. Actually, another three months, but, even that’s a start.
It’s our own fault, of course. The game was invented by the English – apparently as an economical way of keeping warm. It was later introduced by the Scots (who had previously been prospecting in the hills and run out of porridge) into a small mining town in Murcia in the later part of the nineteenth century. In fact, the oldest footie pitch is still there. In Aguilas!
Spain’s most famous commentator is English. He’s called Michael Robinson and he used to play for Osasuna (who did rather well this year). If you know him and David Beckham (who he? – Ed) then you can usually get a drink or two out of it. Of course, if you know Ronaldihno, you might get a full dinner…
Now, to my recent surprise, the world cup has started. Trinidad and Tobago against Finland. Most unfair, Finland should have teamed up with Sweden and given them a good thrashing.
Catalonia wanted to field its own team – after all, in the Reino Unido we have Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England and the Scilly Isles all fighting their corner, so why shouldn’t the really-jolly-nearly independent republic of Catalunia have its own chaps? Spain (or if you prefer – the lumpenspain) is in fact quite in favour of the idea, considering that any Catalonian player found in the Spanish team would probably score an own-goal just out of spite.When another country’s team plays, even if we couldn’t find it on a map, we roar with pleasure or rage. Pathetic. Personally, if Ethiopia beats Cyprus or not, I can truly claim not to care – as long as the office doesn’t close early again.

I was probably dreaming all along

Two pictures from last night.
The truth is, the first picture is posted here for the pleasure of a ‘statistically appreciable minority’ of those that visit this site – namely, myself.
Well, you are welcome to marvel at the picture (a rare portrait of your guide to this site, taken last night in a natural pose in, for some reason, the Almería bull ring, where, as you can see, I was not entirely alone). If there’s a point to this posting, it’s that you can always find something peculiar, interesting, remarkable or unforgettable if you tear yourself away from the television, the football and your English neighbours and go and try something different. That and… it’s best to take a camera.

No Spitting on the Bus

So, you can see what happens during the World Cup. Between the fans staying either at home, or at least in front of the TV set inside, together with the still far from calm weather (it's mid June and still snowing), there's not much action on the deck.

Today, a number of cars are supporting little flag-poles together with their national emblems stuck to their back windows as they motor past. Quite embarrassing for the ordinary folk - especially those who had carefully ordered one from Trinidad and Tobago. In retrospect, it's just as well that they arrived late at the post office...

Meanwhile, as an occasional shriek filters out from the bar inside - either a free kick or one of the Russian girls dropping a beer down the neck of a punter - the terrace is peaceful and calm.

Like the old days...

Medieval Market in Mojácar

It's a surprisingly overcast weekend, with some rain over Mojácar and lightening up in the hills beyond. This morning, the second day of the three-day Moors and Christians bash, I staggered and wheezed up the hill from the Campo de Fútbol - converted into a parking lot - to have a look at the medieval market and the street musicians.

Nevertheless, in my picture, the new Morales leasure centre and business emporium has stolen into centre-stage (that's the massive crane above the hulk). I'm told they've all got a small hallway each where they will soon be able to sell teeshirts and humorously shaped ashtrays to their heart's content.

The market is fun, with the vendors dressed up in sacks and selling plastic key-chain witches, oulde bed-side lamps and other memorablia from a byegone age. A rather good street-band hops past playing an old Malicorne number on whistles, bagpipes and drums. A Rumanian accordianist twitches into 'O Sole Mio' outside the Indalo to the faint horror of the tourists. Spare a shilling, Guv?

A Mojaquero decides to drive his car through the square and up to his eyrie. Outta the way, he honks at the tourists. It should be fun tonight.

A Trim Little Number in Yellow

The phone rang. One of the kids had been messing with the damn thing so I wasn’t immediately aware what was going on. The CD was belting out some fine blues and there was this thin weepy sound running below, just on this side of conscious. A mild arrhythmia over my heart finally helped me put it together – the damn mobile phone in my shirt was vibrating and… yes… actually crying to be answered.
Which was a relief in one sense, I’m not going to keel over the steering wheel with a cracked pump and disappear with the old banger over the cliff. At least, not today.
Talking on a mobile phone is illegal when you’re driving. Like many other agreeable activities which one can get up to behind the wheel, yes… many agreeable activities (dreams for a moment)… Whoa! I almost left the road there. Jeez – that was close.
So, since I don’t have a chauffer like the head of the traffic department, a political oaf called Pere Navarro, and therefore can’t answer the phone and plan my next piece of business; and, unlike Mr Navarro, who is concerned about the heady mixture of saving lives, pissing people off and furthering his brilliant career in the PSOE, I just want to sell another set of encyclopaedias… Shit! I'll have to pull off the road.
There’s a handy lip on our roads, called the arcén. That’s where you go when you need to stop the car and do something else. You don’t want to spend too long on the arcén as it can be quite dangerous, with truck drivers thundering past your narrow ledge of safety or perhaps, nodding off as the tachometer clicks into the red, they drive straight in, through and over you. The sod never even noticed.
Then, there’s the road-cops, los primos. The cousins.
You can’t loiter with your vehicle on the arcén unless you have your emergency lights on, are wearing a kind of psychedelic pyjama top and have placed your warning triangles both fifty metres before and behind.
Unless it’s a motor-bike. They haven’t figured out where you can carry the triangles yet.
If they show, the cops are going to want to see if you carry spare light bulbs, a driving licence and the rest of it – and they will be looking for illegal immigrants hiding under the spare wheel, traces of narcotics in the ashtray and an illegal radar trap apparatus stuffed down your jumper.
Pere Navarro has introduced the ‘points system’ now. You start with twelve on your licence and the police are under instruction to start the carving. Aggressively. They take any more and, shit, I’m walking home. It’s all right for Pere, he can always get another chauffer.
All this to answer the phone, which has stopped ringing by now anyway.
So, I pull the stupid yellow day-glo number on, over my head. The price tag is flapping on my chest so I wrench it off and (no one looking) throw the bloody thing into the undergrowth.
To the boot of the car to get the triangles. You need to carry two of them – one for ahead and the other for behind. They had better not blow over, the cops might think I just threw them onto the road in a petulant rage.
I take the first one up the road and pace out fifty metres, forty-nine, fifty. Then back to the car and repeat the same process the other way. I will have walked over a quarter of a kilometre by the time I'm through with this but, anyway, I’ve dumped the second warning sign on the ground here on the curve and I've brought the phone and am now gonna…
-Eh Oiga!
There’s some bloke up-road from me. He’s standing a hundred metres away, just by my front triangle. It trembles in the slight wind. –You wanna buy this thing off me, he shouts.
-You fuck the fuck off, bastard! A huge trailer rumbles past and the triangle, grateful for the distraction, is blown off the border and flitters down into the valley below.
I’ve picked at the phone now for the re-dial and am walking back to the car, one eye on the gypsy and the other out for the cops. I’ve got my surviving triangle tucked under my arm where it gently rips my pyjama top.
It was a wrong fucking number. But you knew that.

Los Moros y Cristianos

The Moors and Christians is a fine old traditional fiesta which dates all the way back to 1988 when somebody decided to dress up as a Moor – a north African warrior – and following this sartorial decision went on a three day bender in Mojácar, finally waking up in the holding cell of the Almería immigration Police where only a bent and slightly moist Spanish identity card stood between the hung-over celebrant and a one-way trip to Casablanca.
His shoe-prints can still be found on the inside back door of the Mojácar paddy-wagon, next to the dent caused by Peter Honey’s head as he engineered his daring escape on a steep hill approaching the Huercal Overa hospital after being taken, unconscious and just in time, from the gentlemen’s lavatory located, vaguely speaking, somewhere behind the Bar Indalo.
Times change, and now thousands of people will dress up as Moors (a sheet, a pair of slippers and a readily available ID card being the main features) or as Christians, where an all-weather suit, an orange tie, brogues and a trilby hat is the obligatory dress. It's theoretically the celebration of an agreement made over a glass of blackberry juice in 1488 by the local mayor (a Moor) and the leader of the besieging Christian forces who was anxious to carry on towards Granada (where you could get a decent beer).
The three-day jag ends on Sunday afternoon (June 11th) with an endless procession through the main square of our town and off, away down the hill to the awaiting busses below. Six well-represented guilds, in full and exquisite costume, will make the march-past, with a ambulatory band between each one to keep the peace and provide musical refreshment for those onlookers too foolish to have found shade and shelter in one of our agreeable if slightly over-priced bars. Although no tomatoes are thrown, no bulls are loosed and the paella has usually all gone by the time you’ve found a plastic plate and scraped it clean, the Moors and Christians is a festival that is certainly worth visiting.
Tell them I sent you.

One of those Concerned Citizen articles

This is a picture of a bit of road. Yes, yes - prize winning stuff. This portrait of a piece of the King's highway is just below the Mojácar fuente and is taken on the first bend going towards Turre. It's a highly travelled road, with the one-way traffic through the pueblo returning on this section, plus the through traffic going both ways. It's serpentine, narrow... and is heavily used by pedestrians who live in the barrio down below, or who are walking to and from the cemetery, preferably dressed in black. There's never been a side-walk here, but there used to be a kind of narrow way for walkers which, with the nice new metal traffic-guards, has now been made redundant.

Previously, you would merely fall to safety if a bus was coming up behind you or, at a pinch, you could tangle yourself with a cyclist panting up the rise in his purple acrylic outfit and silly hat. Now, to avoid the increasingly speedy and dense traffic, a pedestrian needs to be able to - hop - leap over the balustrade before dropping several metres to safety.

It's not that easy, says the town hall. The road belongs to the diputacíon - the county council. They won't consider a side-walk here (until somebody presumably kicks up a stink). However, the town could incorporate this stretch of road (it's within existing city limits) and create a pavement, probably at the cost of some minor expropriation.

Or, how about this. They could put up a 30kms speed sign...

The Cold Cut

I was in Pamplona last summer when I was suddenly taken short by an urge for a haircut. You know how it is – by this time of life, you are not too keen on being wrapped in a sheet and seated in front of a huge mirror for twenty minutes contemplating your fallen chin while a flunky clips away at your head, but, on the other hand, you’ve just broken (or mislaid) your comb.
The somewhat gabby hairdresser lady established that I was a tourist, had once ‘run the bulls’ (madness!), loved to eat fish à la Navarro and pointed out that there was nothing like a trip to the ‘pelu’, the hairdresser, to pass some time. She motioned to Brad Pitt on the wall behind her and we agreed that, yes, I’d like to look exactly like him.
I had a ‘Number Four’. An electric clipper thing with a bit extra on the top (in case a future barber or member of Brad Pitt’s family reads this).
There’s a lady in Mojacar who seems OK. She looks like Lisa Minelli. She runs a hairdresser just downstairs from the office. I sometimes belch, break wind, sneeze, hoot or yap as I pass her office. It’s nothing personal, it’s just next door to a popular bar. Sometimes I inadvertently surprise her as I groan from a cold beer or snort from some minor blockage caused by a shrimp. It has occurred to me to be embarrassed by these small yet regular dramas, but I reckon it’s her move first.
Lisa once cut my hair, in the days before I knew about choosing a number for my grooming pleasure – now that I come to think of it, a convenience similar to dining at the Chinese (Numbah Foll - and easy on the MSG).
Normally though, I go over the way to this gloomy fellow called Pedro. The idea will come to me (must cut hair) as I pass his shop and, if it’s empty and Pedro is evidently immersed in his newspaper, I’ll go in.
Numero Cuatro I told him today. Easy on the top.
Walking back to the office, surrounded by flies attracted, I suspect, to the hair-gel that Pedro has slapped onto my head, I was visited by a violent sneeze. The kind that shrieks. Yaaahhh!
Just at that moment, as a bullet of snot ricocheted across the empty walkway, I saw a startled looking Lisa Minelli having a smoke on the terrace. I’m not sure, but I don’t think she was very impressed.

El Corte Inglés

Spain’s only surviving mega department store has now got all permissions to start work on its latest shopping experience, the El Ejido Corte Inglés. The store will be four stories high (according to the plans) and will have a 7,500m2 supermarket as the ground floor. So adiós to Miguelito’s corner sweetie-shop.
The Corte Inglés used to have a competitor, Galerias Preciados, but this was owned by a rather nasty enemy of the first PSOE government after Franco kicked off, and Felipe Gonzalez’ government simply… expropriated it. There’s a rather full exposé of the giant shop at http://www.nodo50.org/elotropais/n3/corte.htm if you're interested.
It includes this quote from the president and main shareholder, Isidro Álvarez, "no hay quien pueda con nosotros" (‘no one can beat us’).
The chain eschews advertising in the foreign language press (except the Diario Del Sur’s ‘Sur in English’) and, is the kind of shop that, this reporter at least, tends to go to as little as possible, usually making a U-turn just after entry.
Practically every city in Spain has at least one Corte Inglés and Almería is quite put out that the province’s second city should have stolen the march to become the first one in this hitherto rather forgotten province (Almería City still hopes for its own outlet).
The last one built that I know of is the one in Pamplona’s old-town. This particular one is nine stories high and is executed, for some ghastly architectural reason, in grey iron chapa. ‘Hideous’ is an understatement.
The department store is a kind of Bourgeois status symbol, with millions of Spaniards going about visibly holding their iconic shopping bags with the green triangles on it (even if they contain produce from other cheaper commerces).
The great debate about El Corte Inglés - or for that matter WallMart, is whether a super-store like this adds convenience to the shopper or whether it freezes out the small commerce ‘down-town’. Like anywhere else, it’s a debate where the Shilling decides.

Blimey!

I had to meet some people in a hotel on Mojácar beach, the Marina Playa. Which is full - judging by the number of cars surrounding it. The town hall, which had forgotten about the necessity of a good parking lot, having ploughed up the grass park in front of the hotel a year or two back...
Anyhow, after I found my friends, we went to the bar which used to be called 'The Drowsy Duck' and is now, I think, called 'The Irish Bar'. Very atmospheric.
And quite large, at least 200 metres worth of merryness. The ceiling, as you may see, is decorated entirely by newspapers. The whole lot, and this is the unnerving bit, by old 'Entertainers'.
Now, like anyone in the free-newspaper business (that's quite a chunk of people these days), I don't like to see hard worked and well-produced copies of my newspaper doing service as wrapping paper, floor driers, or blocking out shop windows or perhaps sitting in out-of-date piles somewhere. It's not really why we bothered, don't you see?
The 'Irish Bar' papers on closer inspection date from the time when... (*the rest of this article has been removed by an injunction from the Vera Court).

Whining

This is the season for mosquitoes. Around here, they fly around in large and voracious clouds that are said to be able to drain a person dry in under five minutes. The sound of their trillion wings beating is like a distant Japanese motorcycle race where the really frightening part, rather like the doodlebugs sent by the Germans over London in 1944, is when the sound stops.
The mosquito, male, is a dull kind of fly that sips nectar all day long at some flower with its legs crossed and smoking a cigarette, come to think of it, rather like the rest of us. Only we put gin in ours. It’s the female that causes the trouble.
Which just goes to show, once you wrench the fur off, how similar to each other all of The Earth’s many species are.
The female will land apologetically onto an exposed piece of flesh and inject a portion of saliva into the bite, a tonic that causes a moment’s anaesthesia, followed by a quarter of an hour of itching. She needs your blood to nourish her fertilised eggs. You need the saliva to catch Malaria and Dengis Fever. The mosquito considers the operation a fair trade.
Our mosquitoes are well-fed and voracious. Yet, despite their weight, they can still fly. They may need to take a run at it, wings flapping furiously, their cargo of blood churning and slopping around in their stomachs, but they can usually take off in the space of a few feet. However, there is a second variety which breeds in the giant un-drained swamps of Garrucha and Pueblo Laguna. Here, the insects are so heavy from generations of over-feeding, their wings have atrophied and these creatures have in fact lost the power of flight. They are about the size of a squash ball and are obliged to gallop across the land in the search for any exposed ankle. When fully refreshed, they can be easily, if messily, dispatched.
Our own observation is that neither mosquito pellets nor spray slows them down much, or, at least, we note that they can get in a few bites before they die. Sometimes they do both simultaneously, which can cause embarrassment to both parties. The only alternative to becoming an involuntary intra-species blood donor is to close the window at night (which has the added advantage of closing out the sound of those who don’t have to get up in the morning). The drawback to this is that it’s getting very hot now… very hot… ver…

The Birdies

I bought Barbara four of these 'Love Birds' when we were courting way back when. They were such a success that we built an aviary for them, with lots of nesting boxes. They bred with such unabashed enthusism that the aviary was soon filled up with these inseperables. Eventually, we cut a narrow tube in the roof so they could stroll out into the wider world, without anything being able to get in - short of an ocasional sparrow. I now have once or twice a season sparrow hunts with a butterfly net.
The Love Birds appear to keep their inside numbers at around eighty, with various more living outside.
I feed them on a basic mixture of all-seed ('mijo') and sunflower seed ('pipa') with the odd bit of bread or celery thrown in. They are happy to nest (if they have a small-entrance box) and will put bits of appropriate nesting material - such as spikes from the ferns and palms - which they carry tucked into their back or tail feathers. I put in clumps of palm leaves occasionally which they happily take to pieces. A friend built what could only be described as council-boxes... about forty of them in two rows hung on the wall.
The weather is right for them here. A birdie expert from the UK drops by our house on his annual visit to Mojacar in the summer and invariably marvels how they breed so well. He says that he has to put little heaters into their nesting boxes back home...

I was at an exhibition this evening at the Monte Paul Beckett, a galery down in the valley near my house. The paintings were by an artist staying at the Fundación Valparaiso, an art centre just a bit further down the lane.
These events are usually fun as I get to see some of the 'old timers' who I knew in the 'sixties, 'seventies and so on. One chap came up and said '¿me conoces?' and it was the British Honorary Council from Almería from those far off times, Gaspar Cuenca. A pleasure to see him and to remember some of the old stories. Gaspar partnered up with 'Cheap Pete' and opened an antique shop in Almería in the mid seventies until Pete ('Pedro Barato' - he built El Palacio in Mojácar) dropped dead after winning a Royal Flush in a poker game.
I gave Beatrice Beckett, the widow from Paul and owner of the art gallery, a cartoon of her drawn by Win Wells in 1982. That's Win and Silvio (Narizzano')s house, the Moño Alto, in the middle of the picture.
It's always fun meeting the art set at these functions. Sometimes they even look at the pictures... 

Something Different

It must be getting harder to come up with a new cuisine around here. We are spoilt for choice. We have Spanish restaurants, British, French, Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, Argentinean, Columbian and Thai restaurants. We have German. There are a number of Dutch places. We have nouvelle, hunt and fish restaurants. Beach-bar grub. Pizzas and burgers. There’s a Donner Kebab. We shall sooner or later even have both the Colonel and Ronald Macdonald, lucky us, probably situated behind Garrucha. We have tapa bars and bocaterias (submarine sandwiches). You can dine on Tex-mex or munch on paella. There’s still room here, I grant you, for both a Greek and a Suchi restaurant. In fact, and here’s a suggestion, you could even combine the two.
Not bad. In the old days, we just had chicken knuckles, lamb lumps, crotch-meat and sardines. All that at fifty cents a head with a bottle of wine thrown in for good measure.
Sometimes even a full one.
I was thinking that there is space here, however, for a really good off-world diner. Besides Dibbler’s rat-on-a-stick and the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, it’s a hard fact that the world is remarkably thin on decent alien eateries.
I imagine being served something colourful (tastes like chicken) by a waiter with an over-indulgence of fingers. Perhaps a decanter of (tastes like wine) darfle-grog. Pictures of the Planet Clunk would decorate the walls while squirty-music played. Perhaps my friends would come and throw bits of clump at each other.
So, it’s just a suggestion, but it could play well to the gallery, don’t you think?
Good Lord no. I haven’t had a drink all day.
Not even a darfle-grog.