Village life in Andalucia

I will arise and go now, And go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, Of clay and wattles made. Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee loud glade. (from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by William Butler Yeats 1888) Oh what a […]

The Cat will mew, and Dog will have his day (Hamlet 1602 Shakespeare) Let us bang these dogs of Sevil, These children of the devil! For I never turned my back upon Dog or devil yet! (“The revenge”, 1878 Tennyson) When I was a child we weren’t allowed a dog. Every so often I’d suggest one. Mum would […]

There are no police in Cútar so you had better get on with your neighbours.  Cútar can’t afford a policeman, so it will be your neighbours and their neighbours who will say what goes and what doesn’t go, who’s in the right and who is in the wrong and whether or not you are a nice person. Offend […]

When I was very young and lived in Portsmouth, me and mum would go to Charlotte Street market when she wasn’t at work or being a post-war housewife, and insult the market traders. She took me to the market to show me what would happen to me if I didn’t work hard at school. Mum […]

  In 1970 I was an officer under training in the Royal Navy. In my second year I was posted to HMS Eagle, docked at Gibraltar for refit. Gibraltar is the Croydon of the Costa del Sol, boring as hell and remarkable only for duty-free fags.  The captain decided to send us on “exped”. We […]

According to Keats, September is the season of “Mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Not here in the Axarquia though, where we small farmers dream every night of mists and mellowness. Any time of year will do. Now in September we are experiencing the worst drought in 150 years and the hills, usually green all through the […]

We are bringing in the summer fruit,  Summer harvest, like the winter harvest reminds me of childhood Christmases in England. Our fig trees are heavy with higos, the second crop. These figs are the little sweet fruit, very different from the fat watery brevas of spring. Judy sterilizes them in boiling water for a few seconds, […]

I thought you’d like to see these baby chickens. A month ago I ordered two dozen fertile eggs from Lugo in Galicia, north west Spain. They arrived the following day, 27 eggs packed tight in sawdust. I set 24 in an incubator, 5 were clear (unfertilised) and from the remaing 19, 14 hatched. Piñeira are […]

In 1974, at the beginning of my working life, I joined something called a “co-operative” , based in Kentish Town. It was run by an elderly (we thought so anyway – he was in his 30’s) American gentleman who described himself as a Maoist. He paid University graduates £6 per week – but only if […]

I grew up In Portsmouth in the 1950’s. In those days on each of the four corners of the street square was a shop – usually a family grocer. There you could buy everything you needed to live a respectable English life. Tea, butter, sliced bread from the “aerated” bread company (ABC), marmite, cabbage, smoked […]