Posted by: puebloman | February 3, 2010

Ratzi the Nazi

So. Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Alois Ratzinger, “the Rat”,  is up to his old tricks again. Having tried to interfere with Spanish democracy over the abortion bill, and having been courteously told to piss off by the Cortes, he now writes a snivelling self pitying letter to his British cardinals, encouraging them to interfere with the British equality bill presently going through parliament. He tells them that while Britain’s “firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all” is commendable, it runs contrary to what he calls “natural law”.

Someone should tell him that there is nothing natural about law, or about justice. These things are unnatural and are what make us better than the dumb animals the pope would like us to be. Britain is rotton with religious apologists who claim that modern democracy is based on christian principals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Law and justice based on reason was gained through the sacrifice of decent people who in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were burned at the stake , and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were deprived of liberty, employment, social position and family life by the christian establishment for their sincerely held freethinking convictions.

Of course the lack of freedom which the Rat laments refers to the fact that the law will limit Catholic bigotry towards gay people. In his opposition, the pope is out of step with his priests, who largely understand and sympathise with same sex sexuality. They like it,  even find it irresisible – especially when the partner is under age.

The pope as a nazi youth

transformed by the love of Jesus

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Posted by: puebloman | February 1, 2010

The Weathermen

Is there anything more pointless or useless than pretending you can forecast the weather? My auntie Lil used to hang a piece of seaweed outside the back door and so did my auntie Win,whose husband “Old Ted” (as opposed to “Young Ted his son), used to bring it back from Portsmouth Harbour where he was a docker. It was a long flat flabby sort of leaf, and would curl up if it dried out and flap back down in humid air and always let you know whether or not to put on a mac before you went out.

Aunt Lil and aunt Win are the real weather forecasters. The “professional”,  “scientific” weather forecasters of “Forecasting House” on the other hand are nearly always wrong. More often wrong than if you flipped a coin.  Having forecast a “mediterranean” summer and a “warm” winter in the UK they have recently been forced to accept that their long-range forecasts are unmitigated bullshit and not worth the hot air upon which they are bourne. Previously we were expected to regard forecasts as “science” – evidence based and therefore not to be  questioned by we mere mortals. So it seems that they can’t short-forecast and they can’t long-forecast but they know all about climate change.

We non scientific experts love to gossip about the weather. So do the weather scientists, which is why most “forecasts” are ninety per cent descriptions of how the weather was. We are all superstitious and secretly think we can control the weather just by talking about it. I thought we English were obsessed by the weather but that’s nothing to the obsession here in Spain.

It has just stopped raining here in Cutar. From June 2009 to Dec 17th 2009 we didn’t have a spot of rain. Auntie Lil’s bit of seaweed would have been as stiff as a board. All the old boys in the village had been forecasting slow progressive climate doom for as long as we have lived here. Visiting Dutch botanists would take it for granted that the Axarquia was turning into a desert. Needless to say we have never had a hose pipe ban here – not like my Dad, who lives in Hampshire where there’s always a water crisis and where it’s always raining.

Anyway, after seven months of unmitigated drought it rained and rained so you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. It rained solid like that for two weeks and then turned Welsh. You know the thin relentless rain that soaks you to the skin while not appearing to touch you. Fortunately all of our self-lets were occupied by Canadians who are the last of the world’s great pioneers, don’t give a damn, and sat under a dripping roof in their shirt sleeves through Xmas and New Year saying “Well, its minus fourty in Saskatoon, what do we care about a bit of rain?”

God bless them. What do we know about climate change? We are poor little monkeys and are dead almost as soon as we are born. How can we possibly see the big picture when the little picture keeps us guessing?

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Posted by: puebloman | December 5, 2009

Git pisseder, live longer!

My Dad is 88 next birthday and can still drink our entire family under the table. He could also smoke us all under the table too if any of us smoked. I have to keep pinching myself and remembering that although he hits a bucket of golf balls twice a week, keeps the minutes of the local Lyons club, stands in the middle of the road to stop traffic during the annual 10km run season, chairs “wine and wisdom” nights, is treasurer for the annual bonfire night event, sings in the church choir, performs Stanley Holloway monologues for any event that will have him, is in a barber shop quartet (he is known as the “chocolate bass”), he could have done so much more if he hadn’t thrown away his life on these excesses. When I am in my cups, planning my next step towards abstinence, I try to remember that his entire generation is dead – no doubt from dreadful diseases relating to drink and drugs.

Everyone that is, except his older sister, who will be 90 next year. Let’s call her “Aunty Dolly”. Well, actually that is her name. She lives down the road from him in sheltered housing. She has not smoked for about 20 years, but for the first 70 years of her life, would always smoke while working, only stopping when she took her 15 minute tea break. Most ordinary humans smoke the other way round, connecting smoking to leisure. She puts her long life down to this habit.

When she first entered sheltered housing she saw that not much was going on and decided to do something for the “old people”. She started by organising “events”. She would emerge regularly, descending on her Stanna stairlift, a crate of mince pies and sausage rolls (hand made, no shop rubbish) athwart her thighs, like Juno in a Jacobean Masque.

Her best coup was to organise a 50p bingo session once a week that rendered profits. She hid these in a tin. She bargained with the local chippie and secured a free fish and chip lunch once a month for all gamblers, running them forth and back (free) in the local yellowbus. She now staves off the final stages of arthritis by crocheting stupendous dolls – gardener dolls for example with potted flowers in their hand and birds on their hat. My father auctions these at charity events for excessive sums of money.

“Aunt Dot” as her family calls her,  used in her youth to be no better than she should be. She was the port and lemon type and wouldn’t say no to a babycham. She and her partner,  “Uncle Joe”, a thin toothless beer drinking butcher with a combover, would in their younger days steam from pub to pub in a 650 norton motorbike. Later they had a car. “It’ll find its own way home” uncle Joe would say as he poured himself into the drivers seat after a heavy lunchtime session.

These days  Aunt Dot has a liking for sweet white wine and sometimes it has to be said drinks more than is good for her!

I say this only because a recent  study that looked at Spanish men and women (15,630 men and 25,808 women) from 29 years to 69 years of age (youngsters) over a 10 year period produced (to us) predictable results. Those that drank one drink a day were 35% less likely to suffer from heart disease.  However, those that drank the equivalent of 4 to 11 measures of spirit every day were 50% less likely to develop heart disease.

In Spain many people consume large quantities of wine, but this study showed that the type of alcohol made no difference to the reduced risk of heart disease. Beer is as good as wine. Ask Dad and Aunt Dot.

The reason for the health benefit of drinking is still unknown, but spanish scientists have hypothesised that drinking larger quantities of alcohol raises the HDL type of cholesterol (high-density lipoproteins), which is the good cholesterol that protects our arteries (LDL being the bad cholesterol).

This of course is bollocks. “Man cannot stand too much reality” (T.S. Eliot) . It’s the great pleasure of other peoples’ company, drunk and divorced from reality, or your own solitary state, trousered and divorced from reality, that makes you want to stay alive.

Of course my family has always known this intuitively. It has been literally staring us in the face.  We’ve been worried that it will come to the attention of the press and now it’s happened! What of the future now that everyone knows how to stay alive? Nonogenarions preserved in alcohol with a rising baby boom and nowhere to put them? Rising gases from a composting older generation, and what other implications for global warming?

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Posted by: puebloman | November 30, 2009

kissed by rain

The foothills of the Sierra Tejeda, where we live,  were this morning kissed by rain. I can’t remember the last time we had rain. March I think, or perhaps April. Last year we had tormentas (storms) from the beginning of September. This year it’s nearly December and – nothing.

Plumes of smoke that rise in the early morning or sit like flat cloud vapour across the valleys are one of those icons of autumn that signify the annual pruning of the vines and the general clearing of the annual agricultural rubbish. This year hill farmers impatient with the seemingly endless drought,  have begun the annual burn without waiting for the annual downpour – that insurance against hill fires that if they caught hold of the dessicated scrub would threaten everything.

Well, trial by water has spared us from trial by fire. We drove through spattering rain this morning into torrential rain, to the point where we could not see our hand before our faces and had to pull the car over.

Everyone in the village is relieved. It’s as though we had all, individually and collectively, been spiritually constipated. As though syrup of figs and suppositories had been ineffective for months and then, just when we had all forgotten about it and had unconsciously resigned ourselves to a life of bloat, blessed relief !

Everyone is unaccountably smiling!

I bought twenty little chard plants, twenty lettuces and a dozen asparagas seedlings that will crop in three years, so you can understand that after this long parched drought, I am once again a man of faith.

I raise a glass of pure water to you, water that is the fount of life, and trust that you will do the same for me!

Salud!

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Posted by: puebloman | November 29, 2009

Four years on

On the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, right-wing politicians are predictably queueing up to justify the war. Tony Blair in Madrid last week was briefing the Spanish press. Predictably, he sidestepped the “weapons of mass destruction” issue, declaring to El Pais that he was comfortable with the decision to “expel Saddam” – as though western democracies ever gave a damn about expelling dictators. The UK traditionally sets up and supports dictators – it doesn’t expel them.  The Chilcot enquiry opened last Tuesday. We all remember how keen Blair was on enquiries. He would appoint as chair, a pillar of the community whom he knew personally and who he was sure wouldn’t rock the boat and step outside of his remit. Blair was very aware that it was “loose cannons”, especially among the judiciary, that brought Nixon down. He would then sew up the enquiry like a kipper. Its remit would be so narrow that witnesses would come away feeling they had not been able to give their evidence. While a Blair enquiry gave all the signals and tokens of transparency, they were in effect gagging orders. Chilcot will be interesting because it will reveal whether or not the British ruling class feels that enough time has passed to make the truth ineffectual, and therefore whether it’s yet time to tell the truth.

While Blair was dealing with the Spanish press, ex Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar (Partida Popular) of Spain was in Australia arguing that his defeat in the election following the Madrid bombings was a “victory for terrorism”. The temptation for Spain’s political right to hook itself onto the coat tails of the American Imperialist right are easy to see. This was the first multinational military expedition that Spain had undertaken since the battle of Lepanto. Readers will recollect that Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, fought at that battle and he was a contemporary of Shakespeare.

The difference between Spain and the UK in this respect is that in Spain the voice of democracy has been heard. Not so in the UK.

Since this is its fourth anniversary, let’s pause to consider the cost of this war. Three thousand five hundred western troops have lost their lives. This doesn’t count the maimed and disfigured, and it doesn’t count those psychologically maimed traumatised and dehumanised by being caught up in sanctified mass killing, including the killing of women and children. These service men and women are among the best people our countries can produce. Had they been allowed to live or remain whole, they would have undoubtably contributed greatly to society as responsible citizens concerned for the welfare of others and for the betterment of their communities. Many of those killed and maimed were teenagers or in their early twenties. Those of us who are parents feel each of their deaths with empathy and horror. There can be nothing worse than to lose a child in the flower of its youth and on the very threshold of adult life.

As for the Iraqi dead, who gives a damn about them? The UK and the Americans, disgracefully, haven’t even bothered to count them. There are six hundred and fifty thousand dead, not counting the maimed disfigured and destroyed, and not counting two million refugees. These are not necessarily the best of their society because their deaths have been utterly arbitrary. However someone, of course, suffers for and mourns each single one of them.

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Posted by: puebloman | November 28, 2009

Market forces

Last Sunday Jude and I drove over the Campo to see our friend Vanessa. She came to stay in our house years ago when we were still middle managers in London and we used the house as a holiday home for us and our friends. Vanessa fell in love with Manolo, who manages the co-operative in Almáchar – a lovely man. She and her ten-year-old daughter Lara now live with him just outside Almáchar. Vanessa’s life has developed from being an artist and stage painter in London to being that, plus an avocado orange and grape farmer in Almáchar.

Anyway, when we arrived at 5 pm Manolo was still asleep. He had been driving all through Saturday night in a coach with his compañeros who had spent all Saturday in Madrid, standing up for food production in Spain. These demonstrations (twelve and a half thousand people on Saturday) are designed to convince the Spanish government that Spain is still an agricultural country, part of Europe’s bread basket.

Two years ago farmers in the valley of the Rio Velez dumped their crop of lemons into the dry river bed, declaring that to do that so would cost them less than sending the lemons to market. Two years later matters are more organised. Demands of the protestors include issues about climate change (southern Europe is likely to become a desert by 2080), the agricultural ineffectiveness of the CAP, the fact that food producers from cattle farmers to lemon farmers can’t make a living that is not supported by social security.

Manolo arose and joined us for a coffee and a chat because he is un español educado – a well mannered Spaniard. He is particularly exercised by “Fair trade” issues. He wants “third world” fair trade principles to be developed for Spain. He wants his fellow farmers one day to receive a living wage, achieved by consumers paying something like what it costs to produce, process and deliver their food. He would like to see a greater percentage of the retail price of food go to the people who produce it. He argues that what happens to coffee in Columbia happens in exactly the same way to cattle, pigs, lemons, olives, grapes and mangos in Spain.

He’s right, isn’t he? Haven’t we, the disgusting obese, over fed,  fat “first world”,  spent our lives subsiding agricultural produce in our own countries by money gained from the manufacturing and banking industries? And haven’t we done so, so that so that the relatively slim “third world” should starve because it can’t compete with us?

And shouldn’t we stop blaming the supermarkets? After all, food supply is just about market forces, isn’t it? So it’s like prostitution and the drug industry isn’t it? Shouldn’t we start blaming the user rather than the supplier? Surely the supermarkets are only “food pimps”. Surely they are the “food pushers”? They cut the throats of farmers on our behalf. When are we going to learn to eat less and better? When are we going to start buying direct from the producer? When are we going to take personal responsibility for the food we eat?

I do not speak as some rich shit who doesn’t have to live to a budget. I know that higher food prices endanger the livelihood of the poor. But I don’t believe that poor people are weak and stupid.

We are not rich. Jude and I have only just earned enough after four years of trading to be able to go to the dentist, but surely most of what we stick into ourselves doesn’t feed us?

Lets have labels on all non Fair trade food that says  “Unfair trade food” and let’s be the sort of people who respond to labels.

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Posted by: puebloman | November 25, 2009

Fishy business 4

We are in our weekly Spanish class and have been given an article on professional football, high fees to top footballers and the lack of women executives to read and discuss. I have suggested that any game that can be played by trained dogs isn’t worth discussing.

La profesora: Well John, you don’t like football. Do you like any sports?

Me: Yes fishing, but I can’t get a licence. (I rave on about fishing being the same as hunting in Andalucia, needing to get insurance, needing to take a test – see Fishy business 1, 2 and 3).

The Lake Vinuela ex pat campo sub group look at each other blankly. Eventually the teacher interrupts me by putting up her hand. She usually works with children.

She: No. That’s not what you do. All my friends go fishing. My family too. No one has a licence. You fish, when a policeman comes along, you run away.

(The Lake Vinuela ex pat campo sub group bristle at this “lawlessness”).

Me: But I don’t want to run away. Fishing is supposed to be peaceful.

She: OK don’t run away. Just stay there. Here is your rod. (she mimes). You are here, having a cigarette (she mimes). You don’t smoke? OK! You just sit here. Now, if a policeman came along(she takes the opportunity to re-explore the imperfect subjunctive. i.e. “were a policeman to arrive” and so on . .)

Me: Yes but I’d get fined and my rod taken away (she is putting up her hand)

She: It’s not your rod The Lake Vinuela ex pat campo sub group bristle with indigation

“Well officer – here’s a rod and here’s me sitting behind it!

Who’s rod? You can’t take that away, you don’t know who it belongs to!”

(we discuss whether “to whom it may belong” throws us into the arms of the subjunctive. Of course it does.)

She: Pretend to be a foreigner! the best is to “Tocarse las narices (We discuss the idiomatic expression “to do bugger all”)

Me: But its so un-English!

She: But here you are in Spain!

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Posted by: puebloman | November 23, 2009

Reicht you are!

Readers will be concerned to hear that the well-known British MEP and ex Nazi, BNP boss Nick Griffin has through no fault of his own found himself involved in an unseemly punch-up on the anniversary of the death of General Franco in Madrid last week.

How Nick found himself at this anniversary party is hard to say. His public denials of his nazi past lead us to believe it must have been a mistake. No doubt he was on holiday in Spain and unaccountably found himself in Madrid on the anniversary of Franco’s death and was accosted by a bunch of nazis he didn’t like who dragged him off to a party against his better judgement.

The party was apparently organised by the Spanish “National Democracy Party” (fascists). Many European Fascists attended including Roberto Flore, the leader of Italy’s Forza Nuova party (fascists), and Nick of course who only used to be a nazi but was unaccountably let off and still allowed to attend.

Well, the “National Democracy Party” had thrown out some of its nazis for being too cruel, and they formed themselves into a party called the “Patriotic Socialist Movement” (fascists). And they were outside because they weren’t allowed in and they started fighting and the police moved in and . .well . .sometimes I wonder whether the Spanish right are capable of organising themselves. They seem to split and split, with the splinter groups all at each others throats. Are they capable of governance?

Other incidents occurred as they do every year on the anniversary of Franco’s death at the “Valley of the Fallen”. The name of the valley does not, as some might think, indicate sad bastards and failures though many of those are buried there. It is in fact  the monument to “El Caudillo”. Massive, like the pyramids, but entirely lacking the decorous restraint of Egyptians, it is supposed to glorify the fascist dead of the Civil War. Increasingly, however,  it serves to immortalise the slave labour used to build it – a nation of opposition to Spanish Fascism.

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Posted by: puebloman | November 23, 2009

Better a few minutes late . . .

. . .than dead on time.

"Recuerdos de tus amigos" - your friends remember you. Spray-painted onto the Velez-Malaga bridge

Our villages are accessed by windy precipitous mountain roads, studded with an array of control signs – “watch the bend”, “mountain road, pay attention!”, “40 kms per hour” and so on. Theoretically two cars can pass but only of course if they are on opposite sides of the road. I suppose it’s only a matter of time ’til I pitch over a bend and into oblivion. Two years ago I took a bend wrong and slammed into one of those concrete blocks that line the outside edge of the road. It was near El Borge at “Rush Hour”. A queue of traffic quickly formed until half a dozen big men got out of their cars, picked mine up physically and placed it in a lay by. No one seemed to think my “incident” was in any way remarkable. The local policeman who eventually turned up told me that my offside tyre had blown and swung my car off the road.

Me: I was going very slowly you know. . .

He: Oh yes I know, If you’d been doing any speed you’d have gone straight over. These blocks are only really for show.

The roads get better each year. After heavy rain you can expect rock and rubble on the road, though good storm

"Recuerdos tus amigos" seen just before the bridge at Benamargosa

drains are now being channelled under the roads to take the brunt of the surface water. White lines now profile the road edge, and the road surfaces seem to be regularly maintained. However, death on the road here, though terrible and tragic is taken with a degree of philosophy, even fatality that we might find shocking.

Road matters are somewhat casual in the white villages. Kids have to get around and you can drive a small motorbike at 14. Whether you have any insurance may be another matter. The same applies with high premium quad bikes and suped up cars driven by young adults. Accidents often occur at bridges – the only straight stretch of road for miles. Although buses here are driven very safely and professionally, lorry driving is very inconsistent. Our friend recently had her car sliced down one side by a lorry who’d forgotten to put the support foot for his crane back before driving off. She was thankfully unharmed though the driver didn’t stop.

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Posted by: puebloman | November 21, 2009

Floored!

We are just about to finish our fourth “floor” project. First we floored the kitchen, then the sitting space, then the big outside terrace and now the last space, a workshop cum office. When we bought the cottages in Cutar, they came with four large rooms beneath them, which we decided to convert into a flat for our permanent use. Before that, every time we let a property we had to move house and we always had to leave one place empty for our own use. We moved into this space about 18 months ago, but the building was by no means finished.

When we started, our nice neighbours put a bottle of Cava on ice for us for a mini housewarming party. Three years on they sold their house and are moving back to the UK so it will be ironic if they get back to England with the Cava before we finish the flat.

It looked a simple project, as these things always do. There were four rooms, a supply of electricity and water. Everything was more or less neat except for the weird painting on the doors and walls and cylinder locks on each of the internal doors, which gave the impression that the rooms had been lived in by the family lunatic (or four family lunatics) like Mrs Rochester, whose ravings had been confined to a cellar rather than the loft.

It took about a year for me to summon the courage  to to knock out the flimsy internal wall that joined the first two rooms, after advice from builder friends artist friends and architect friends, all given “without prejudice” had proved unhelpful. When I finally took the sledgehammer to it and the one bedroom cottage didn’t collapse into where we’d planned to build a kitchen, Jude and I gathered our collective confidences together and started laying floors. Eight tons of concrete later (the Andalucian kitchen built by Jude the back terrace built by me and the FLOORS) and three years of part-time work done in between the lets, we are on our last floor. After all this time our supportive friends have run out of platitudes, and even enthusiasts from England who used to gush “You know you’ve come so much further than you think . .you’ve done so much . . . ” Are now thankfully reduced to a thoughtful “Um”.  As in –  “I’m glad I’m not them”.

Anyway. Floors. Ours are laid with “rusticos”. These are hand-made biscuit fired tiles, a good centimetre thick. Don’t gush, theyre cheap as chips and less than a euro each. Hand-made, however, is a double edged quality. It means you can’t guarantee the thickness, let alone the actual size of the tile. Last week having bought 60 tiles to finish our fourth floor, I took one back the local merchant I’d bought them from:

Me: Hi, you said these tiles were 30x30cms

He: Tha’ts right

Me: But these are 29×29 – look (I measure it)

He: That’s right they’re hand made.

Me: But I’ve laid half a fllor with 30×30’s!

(The entire family emerge from where they were boxing dried figs)

Father: Sometimes the clay shrinks in the mold. You never can tell . .

Brother: Come over here (he takes me to some concrete lintels) Measure that (Ido so)

Me: 65 cms

Brother: That’s a 75cm lintel! See? Hand made!

Me: What can I do?

He; Well, bring this stuff you bought back, I’ll give you your money back. Go to the shop where you got all the 30’s and hope they’ve got some more.

Well I did, and they did. The lesson is to buy all the tiles you need at once for your whole floor even if it wrecks your car.

Our floors are like a City and Guilds course in flooring. You walk through all the mistakes, idiocies, bad choices and compromises until you get to our FOURTH FLOOR, which is PERFECT!

Well, obviously the room isn’t square. . .and it slopes . . still . . !

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