Lifeswap

Spanish manners..

2007-12-05T23:29:00.001-08:00

Spanish manners

We had a fiesta for Alexander and Lara’s birthday last Saturday. It ended with a bang – a Spanish fiesta must have fireworks - but there was quite a bit of whimpering before.

The end was the best part: Pablo turned up to help set off the fireworks and did all the requisite igniting, then yelling, running and shouting to make the fireworks fun, though he came pretty close to going up in flames as a result. The Spanish are not big on health and safety and in fact I was pretty surprised the children came off OK, given that various little boys were dancing uncontrollably in front of Pablo as he lit the fuses.

Generally, things were not in control. I had the idea of inviting all the children – Spanish, English and German – and putting on a real show. The Spanish contingent arrived in one van, and proceeded to go mental – filling their pockets with sweets, stuffing down food and running off with it, nicking the handheld fireworks and stuffing those up their jumpers, and so on. The Brits, meanwhile, tut-tutted and said “the Spanish” (which is how all the kids refer to the Spanish children at school) had no manners and were not properly brought up. Jack and Becky, managing the barbecue for me, cursed at the worst Spanish girls – a trio of rather tarty witches, Fatima, Marta and Sara – in their fluent Spanish, while the latter whined that they didn’t like any of the food and didn’t I have any “lomo” or chips? When I produced ham, they ran off with it into the field and devoured it like wolves, only coming back to push themselves to the front of the birthday cake line. Meanwhile, the Brits wound them up by yelling “paella!” when there wasn’t any, and getting them all to jump up and run to the kitchen. Sara then practically snatched the cake from my hands, only just holding back while the Brits loudly made everyone sing “Happy Birthday” – drowning out “Cumpleaños Feliz” – but then holding her plate aside until the best piece of cake was about to be doled out, at which point she stuck it under my nose and gave me the evil eye. The boys were marginally better, only jumping over the bonfire and pushing a bike into the swimming pool. At the end, they all disappeared into the van that picked them up, without saying goodbye – there was quite a lot of shouting but none of it sounded like “thank you for having me.”

In the morning, I walked round and picked up hundreds of bits of exploded tinfoil and firework shreds, and rubbed the relics of silly string into the garden. Never again, I said to my neighbour, Consuelo, as we went for an evening walk on Monday. (Up and down the main road: the Spanish don’t walk on footpaths, except farmers going to their crops or with their goats.) She shook her head disapprovingly and said the children were naughty, but that it was true Spanish people don’t say please or thank you, in general. I pointed out that her children would never misbehave like that. This is true: Noella, aged 6 or so, would not say boo to a goose, and Oscar, 2, seems well enough behaved for his age. I cant imagine your children going into rooms in someone’s house and taking stuff? No, she agreed, but you know, we Spanish don’t generally let people into the house “de la calle” – from the street. We don’t do that! You have to keep the house closed up! I pointed out that the children had to go to the bathroom, but she shook her head. I don’t know how they manage it, but certainly in a Spanish house you rarely get beyond the front room – a kind of designated receiving space, which is sometimes the hall, sometimes the outside terrace. After the party, only the father of the little shy German girl, another Sara, came in and was extremely polite, inviting us over and thanking us effusively for the party. I received him with gratitude: another polite northern European, who would understand the concept of thank you, and would invite me into his house in return.

Sylvia has said to me before now that every now and then she needs to go back to France, for a dose of good manners. The English are not as well-mannered at the French, but nor are they as bad as the Spanish, who really can be appallingly rude, by our standards.

More Javier Marías

I continue to read the Javier Marías trilogy, now the third volume. Compelling reading for anyone thinking about what is is to be Spanish - Marías, himself is a Spaniard who was, inter alia, an Oxford professor, works the two cultures together so elaborately and fluently that you are never quite sure where you are.

On the dust cover of my edition of the book there are the usual “this is the best book ever” stuff, and some English journalists have compared Marías to Proust. What does this mean? It could be just a way of saying he is brilliant, or that his sentences are very long (Spanish sentences are much longer anyway, often a page long, joined up by commas). At first, I thought he was not at all like Proust, which, from my memory, shimmers like a Manet – the colour of water recollected in mirrored cupboard doors, sunsets sinking on girls’ faces on the beach – and all that visual jazz. Marías is pretty dry and abstract by comparison – no lingering at all. I wonder if this is quite Spanish: the literature I have read seems rarely to dwell on landscape and by the same token is brisk and unsentimental.

Later, I thought that perhaps the journalist meant that his books are like Proust because the narrative repeats itself, referring back constantly to one or two themes, in variation. Reading it is rather like being enclosed in someone’s brain, or maybe ego and that seemed to me both quite like Proust, but also, in this case, extremely Spanish. Human behaviour, and particularly cruel human behaviour, and how it might lead to death, are never far off: there is a lot of hands-on sadism, and there is the dark shadow of Franco, and the narrator’s father’s experiences at his hands, standing behind everything and not so long ago. It is a hard world: civilisation, empathy or sacrifice might exist, or pointless little cashmere airline blankets that only give the illusion of luxury and then slip off. Manners, therefore, are pretty much a waste of time. In the middle book, the narrator notes that a disabled toilet in a British nightclub is respectfully left empty, whereas in Spain, people would just barge in, either not noticing the sign on the door, or ignoring it.

One of the things that most struck me about the book was the repeated assertion that you should always pursue an observation or a thought long beyond the point where most people would drop it and I have not gone nearly far enough in pursuit of my cultural point; perhaps I have not been here long enough anyway, and it will take a number more runs at it to get it right. In any case, whatever generalisations I have made about Spain, it has writers like this, and journalists on El Pais, who are presumably have dinner parties, read academic books, and whose children never leave a birthday without saying thank you.

Before I gave up on the thought I was chasing, though, I did wonder, if Almeria has a thinner coat of civilisation, manners, whatever, than Kent – how much difference does that make? I am guessing the sadist in Marias would have you believe it doesn’t change anything: cruelty and death are always with us, whether you go to pig stickings, or cocktail parties, have a tumble dryer or a washing line. Is less comfort – or too much comfort a good thing?

Telebasura, y más..

When I came here on holiday, I never noticed how different that made Spain, nor how in many ways it is still a place with a small, very refined upper echelon, and, below that, thousands of people who litter, shout, don’t read, and watch more utter crap on telly than anyone else in Europe, according to an interesting article last week in El País. According to this, more “telebasura” – junk TV – is watched in Spain than anywhere else in Europe and perhaps beyond. The article linked this to the physical rubbishing of the landscape: the booming construction industry, with its harsh, insensitive development of Spain’s coasts. Why Spain, it asked – why are we so much worse than anywhere else?

Recent history, maybe: this is a country with only a small, and recent, middle class and all the things that go with that, like reading, and dinner parties. In living memory, it had Franco and the brutality of the Civil War, times when there was no time for niceties. Not that anywhere else – say Germany - wasn’t brutal, but you have the sense that the polite bourgeoisie went on giving dinner parties and turned a blind eye to what went on under the white dinner tablecloth, while in Spain, the tablecloth, if there ever was one in the first place, was pulled right off: Spaniard against Spaniard and it was out in the open in every village.

But my own sense is that El Pais might have looked beyond junk TV and construction. The Spanish engage with the world around them in a different way from other Europeans, certainly northern Europeans. They are less interested in the environment, countryside, and their surroundings, into which they routinely chuck rubbish – and more interested in human society – but it goes beyond that. You could go further, particularly on a bad day, clearing up the crap from a fiesta in your garden, and say that the indulged children they used to be makes them strong, boisterous and entitled adults, who want to impose themselves on the environment, squeeze fun from life and chuck the rubbish out. The individual man, perhaps even the ego, seems to me to loom huge and dark here, sometimes even menacing. From here, England might seem like the pale figure of a gentleman walking in a pastoral landscape, and Spain like a dark, powerful man staring into the camera like a mirror, while the family and people in the room behind him push to get their faces in the lens. Whatever maketh man, it isn't likely to be manners.

I’m not saying it’s that scary all the time, but sometimes you feel a bit too close to the bullfight.

More about donkeys

Meanwhile, Penelope and Luca, the donkeys, now have a large field and it appears they either don't want to escape, or can't. They are far more different from horses than I imagined and much less cute than the idea of donkeys I had from the English seaside, etc. Like horses, a whim or a scent will take them, and they will decide not to move, or to move at high speed, but they are far less docile than most horses. Luca, in particular, comes up behind you and bites and shoves for no apparent reason - he eats everything, from his own halter to people's hair, and jackets. We take them for a walk most early evenings, along the rambla - Luca plods along at the back most of the time, yawning, and twitching his furry ears - if they go backwards, it is a sign he has suddenly been possessed by a bad mood and will start butting you, biting his rope and dancing about: he charges into the back of Penny, or jumps into the air. Penny, most of the time, walks along placidly, unless she sees tarmac, which seems to be a signal to gallop and try to push you into the side of the road. The walk goes over the rolling low hills, through the olive and almond trees, and we wander where you like as none of the land is fenced in: farmers with goats stop and look at the strange English woman and children leading two disobedient donkeys, then usually shout "La burra!" in an exultatory way - donkeys command some kind of respect, or pleasure - perhaps because there are so few now. I come in tired, with my hands rubbed on the bridle, and at times I think they are quite unsuitable pets - but they look very nice in the field, and it seems to complete the land seeing a couple of grazing animals there. How English, indeed!

God's great plan

2007-11-23T06:18:00.001-08:00

A shit birthday

I had one of the worst birthdays I can remember yesterday. Sandy went to Australia the day before (claiming he had no choice but as I told him, we always have a choice, even if we work for the Evil Empire and a nutcase client in Sydney) and the children decided they would help me by taking the day of school – something the local kids all do on any family member birthday, including distant great uncles. It was a big mistake, and I knew it would be for some time in advance: I ended up saying we would go to Murcia, which has the only normal department store in miles, but is about two hours drive. Sandy said it was one, but that is Sandy time: 160 k/hour all the way and not counting the bit between the house and the autovia or the shop and the autovia. Since I get hugely stressed in large shops, I have no idea why I did it, except that I felt this kind of nagging guilt about the children’s party I have to organise for December 1st, also Alexander’s birthday next week. I have no idea where to get the usual trimmings: the Spanish don’t seem to sell balloons, poppers, etc – only piñatas, which are a nice idea, but when you bash them they are just full of things like packs of crisps and those peculiar sweets like foam rubber. Sandy had done his ritual “I don’t know how to buy you anything you like” chant, and ended up leaving me a pair of slippers which were two sizes too small – just as well, since I didn’t like them anyway – and some face cream, which was fine, but I could get it myself and then I would have bought a different one. Well, it’s not his fault, since some people are not good at those things, said Sylvia. I don’t agree: it is his fault. He has lived with me for long enough to know my shoe size and to have picked up any woman’s magazine and learned that slippers are not an acceptable gift. Meanwhile, my mother, when she visited, proclaimed loudly that she was leaving me “a token” present. Why? No explanation why it should be “token” – rather than normal. I told her I would give her a token present on her birthday, then. Only Jasmine and Sylvia managed to get me a card on time. If birthdays are about delivering the message: “You are special!” then this one didn’t hit the spot. Last year, when I had a lot of my girlfriends round and drank a lot of champagne, plus the nanny bought me a chocolate cake, I felt pretty special, and pissed, of course, but now that I live here I do not have any girlfriends handy, nor a husband most of the time. Actually, it is the nanny I miss the most: she might not have been that excellent at housework, but it is nice not to be the one who has to look after you.

Shutting the stable door

The day in Murcia was exhausting and the only good thing that can be said about it is that there is almost no Xmas visibility: presumably by now in the UK they are playing “I wish it could be Christmas every da-aa-ay” on the hour every hour on the radio, but here there was just a small display of baubles on the third floor of the Cort’ Ingles, and of course, some very Catholic looking cribs and a lot of bumper boxes of the rather dry, almond and nougat Spanish biscuits they eat at this time of the year stacked up in the big supermarkets. Apart from this, there are few signs of Christmas, which is a relief, but I expect by mid December I will be missing the great UK bonanza, tacky tinsel and lights everywhere and crap office parties with compilation tapes of Wizard, Slade and Band-Aid going round and round.

Here, Juan Mañas told me that the cultural secretary for the Ayuntiamento (aka Vanessa) wanted to talk to me about my donkeys, which might be needed for the Dia de los Reyes – that is, Epiphany, which is a much bigger deal than Christmas. We went a couple of years back: the donkeys process round town with baskets of sweets for the children, though in fact all the greedy old ladies snatch and pocket them first. When we got back from Murcia, I fed the donkeys, but this morning, when I got up, the stable door was open on the road side, and nothing was in the stable. I spent a frantic half hour tearing around waving carrots, until Cristóbal, the old guy working on the land, rounded them up from behind Pablo’s and brought them back. A great relief: I asked Cristóbal to mend the lock on the door which clearly doesn’t work properly. He has now put a chain on the outside, so that while this was very much a case of shutting the stable door after the donkey had bolted, at least the donkey was found and put back inside. Sometimes you do get a second chance.

Perspective on wrong turns

Moving to another country gives you a new perspective on your old life; when you are close up you can’t see it properly and it is only when you walk far enough away that you get the full picture. Quite often, I wake up at night and think: aha, that’s where I made my mistake! For instance, that I never should have left journalism and gone into PR, to which, after all, I was completely unsuited. If you wrote down the qualities of the ideal PR person on one piece of paper, and mine on another, I expect the only match would be “can write.” Other qualities, like diplomacy, for instance, must be quite near the top of the PR list, but might not appear on mine at all. I wonder now why I didn’t see it at the time: I expect colleagues were saying things like: why on earth did she go into PR, the way I often did about ex journos I knew when they took the PR shilling. Shilling being the key word here: for money, of course. Money can persuade you are well suited to quite a lot of things, jobs, ugly old husbands and so on. At least in my case I turned down two rich men; probably it would have been a step too far to think I could live with an investment banker and organise charity balls, though my day job was not far off that as it turned out.

Another big mistake was going to work for the world’s most old-fashioned engineering company, in the mistaken belief that I would be the leaven in the lump. Actually, I was the grit in the oyster, and quickly got coated in something that would stop me itching. I didn’t need to live through having men with double chins put their hand on my knee in taxis, or say “Just a moment, dear,” in meetings; nobody made me do it and my only excuse is that I thought it was a stepping stone. If so, it was the kind that wobbles when you tread on it and tips you into the river.

The trouble is I have realised my career mistakes too late – at least for that life. In CS Lewis’ The Silver Chair, Aslan, i.e. God - pulls Jill and Eustace into a dangerous other world and gives them a series of signs to follow in order to escape. At one point, they are supposed to be looking for the sign Under Me. They spend a long time despairingly wandering about in stone trenches of a ruined city, until they realise that the trenches are the letters of the words Under Me. This still seems to me a good description of life, except that there is no guarantee you will find the sign at all and not be caught by giants preparing for their traditional Autumn Feast of human flesh.

As Kirsty Alley, the evil Oklahoma beauty pageant organiser in Drop Dead Gorgeous – just after she has topped her daughter’s rival by igniting the combine harvester she is riding – “Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand God’s great plan.” I just have to hope that this time I get a second chance and don’t have to be like Kirsty Alley and resort to murder to make sure my daughter wins the second-time-round pageant on my behalf.

Platonic friendship

I had bad news from the UK. The one nice guy in my old job, Martin, has prostrate cancer that may also be in his bones. I have thought about him a lot and failed to say the right things, though I am still trying. It is hard to be warm without being sloppy, or concerned without being funereal ahead of time. I am a natural optimist about these things, so of course I am saying: “You’ll be fine,” but that’s rather like those people telling you that you’ve passed your exam: how would they know?

Martin and I worked together, which is one of the best ways to be friends with someone, and probably the only way to be friends with a man after you are married. I always spat on girls that said “I get on better with men” – H, for instance, who used to say this regularly when we were younger was actually saying “I’m extremely sexy, so I don’t bother with women.” But the fact is that the best friendships I have had were with men, particularly at work. The film When Harry met Sally claims that platonic friendships don’t exist and I used to think that was true: on the basis that friends have to be people you find attractive and if you find the man attractive, you want to be more than friends. However, this changes when you are old and married, I think: you can acknowledge attraction but contain it, like having a scary big dog on a lead. You maybe want to have a cat, too, and cream sofas, so you don’t let the dog rampage about the house. I would say those friendships are better than most with women, which lack that sense of something pulling on the lead and are too often like the worst marriages: someone banging on about trivia over the garden fence but not actually seeing you as a person, just a listening ear.
So, I thought of Martin, who is nearing fifty with great poise but some little vanity and anxiety about ageing, a subject we talked about quite a bit over a glass of wine at lunch, now being struck with something so much more serious. I am glad I have told him, several times, what a good friend he was, and also, when he was worrying about his wrinkles, that he was still very good looking, knowing perfectly well that he would never put his hand on my knee, and also that, if I asked, he would tell me I still had nice knees, for a woman in her forties. I just hope he gets better, that’s all. There are a lot of shits in that company, and Fate had to wave her scissors at this one. Indeed, sometimes it’s hard to understand God’s great plan.

More proverbs and stereotypes

2007-11-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

Juana Panza

It struck me watching her eat dinner the other day that Juana is pretty much a dead ringer for Sancho Panza, though I suppose rightly she ought to be Teresa. Like Sancho, she is a great one for proverbs and has taught me a few good ones, particularly about squeezing the juice out of things. The other day she was pointing out how much I was spending redoing the house and I said Sandy would have to work a bit harder so that we could keep it up. She liked that and went on a bit about me in the house, Sandy out at work, ha ha, then commented that men were like lemons, you had to squeeze all the juice out of them while you could. Another time, when she and Pablo were getting in the van to pick olives, I joked to Consuelo that she wasn’t bothering to go too because Juana and Pablo were there to do it: what are parents for, and Juana came out with a proverb that roughly meant: a patch of land and an old man: squeeze them while you can. I don’t know if this is an Andaluz proverb: I haven’t found it on any of the many websites dedicated to Spanish proverbs. Spanish is a language rich in proverbs, one website begins, and Juana has more or less has one for every occasion. Meanwhile Pablo is keeping his end up. We invited them to dinner the other night and inevitably a large part of the conversation was about food and drink: Pablo explained how wine was better in a leather bottle and it turns out there is a proverb for that: el vino en bota, la mujer en pelotas – wine best in a skin, woman best in her skin (i.e. naked). Subtle they are not – Don Quixote was very scathing about Sancho Panza and his strings of proverbs – his wisdom is clearly a bit too homespun and I wonder if this is still a very basic Spanish way of talking: Pablo and Juana do bring proverbs out in a way I have never heard an English person do. Juana is also quite rotund and, by her own admission, has suffered with donkeys; I can see her riding across the plains towards Madrid, swearing a bit and thinking about her next meal.

We made a big effort with the food, but they seemed somewhat cautious about it: Pablo repeated several times that it was not good to eat too much at night, making the faces of someone suffering indigestion to show what might happen, particularly to Juana who, contrary to appearances, he claimed was delicate. “La Juana, la Juana es delicada, pero el Pablo, no, Pablo no es delicada,” he said. In fact, Juana is as strong as an ox and managed to get all the food down without any difficulty, though none of them really liked the green vegetables: not something I have ever seen them eat – only peppers, and cabbage. They were very taken with the tarte Tatin I had made –Andaluz people have a very sweet tooth – but also rather mystified. Juana asked me what the fruit was and Consuelo asked me if the base was a pancake (crepes, said as if it were Spanish, not French). When I said, no, it was “pasta,” which is pastry, she vaguely recognised the concept. They don’t really bake here – though you can buy French style tarts in some patisseries – and indeed, I realise baking is quite an English thing. When I noted the absence anywhere of any kind of cake tin, or indeed, Tupperware large enough to fit a Christmas cake, the woman in the Vera domestic store explained to me that “you (the English) are much more into baking than we are.”

Pablo, meanwhile, was very interested in the sour cream, and poked it about quite a lot as if it might bite him, asking what it was. I was pushed to explain, since I don’t really know what it is, though I use it quite often and was pleased to find it in the Intermarche. He told Consuelo to try it as it was not at all bad after all. She took a small teaspoon and seemed surprised it was not disgusting. Anyway, they took all the rest of the tart home with them, with great enthusiasm, packing it away quickly as if I might change my mind. It was a good evening with a lot of jokes, and I hope they didn’t have indigestion during the night.

Donkey work

Meanwhile, the donkeys are proving a handful. The other day, Lara insisted on leading them up to Juana’s with me; I could tell from the off that they were in the mood for tricks. As we saying goodbye to Juana, Penny, who could tell Lara didn’t really have a grip of what she was doing, suddenly went loco and careered off into the rambla; Juana briefly caught her but was obliged to let go as Penny was stronger. Penny then did about six fast circuits of the rambla, while Luca strained on the rope I was holding, desperate to make a similar break for freedom. Eventually, she wore herself out, but not before I had to send a hysterical Lara back to the house; not being used to horses she had no idea whether we would ever catch Penny again. Penny looked quite satisfied after her gallop and mildly walked back to her stable. Subsequently, we have had a few energetic walks, with me pitting my weight against Penny’s – apparently a donkey doesn’t wear a bridle with a bit, but you need one with a chain and all I had was a halter – until Pablo produced an ancient donkey bridle which I am trying to restore. Meanwhile, whenever they are out of their paddock, there is always something going on. I came out to check them and found Penny tangled herself up around several trees while Luca ate the orange tree. I can’t leave them like that when I am not there to disentangle them so have persuaded Sandy to allow me to create another field at the side of the land. More work for Juan and his men who might as well have Portacabins on our land since they are here most weeks:
At least the donkeys now have a huge stable, now completely renovated with great enthusiasm by Juan’s men, who have spent a lot of time replacing the roof, re-blocking the walls and putting in new stable doors.

Stuff a mushroom

When I went to post my last blog entry, I saw from the Google home page that a “blog of note” called To Do List has become a book. Exclamation mark! I guess it is like reincarnation: if blogs are good, then one day they can become books and go from being blind, shapeless things to having a hard back and crawling about on the shelves at Waterstones. Hmm – well, I wonder what To Do List is about – I couldn’t be bothered to look but I imagined it was one of those sex and shopping books with the coloured covers, only the ones with no sex or shopping, which are aimed at the older woman and are about how busy women’s lives are, how they spend all their time juggling and then their husband goes off and shags the nanny. There is a formula for UK books these days, if they are going to get into the top ten which is more or less all you can buy in any bookshop and is made up of some of the above, a few autobiographies of abused children and a couple of thrillers that claim to be better than, or as good as, that best seller about the Holy Grail which I couldn’t finish it was so boring.

Here, I can buy books in two main places: the tobacconist in Vera, which has a weird and random selection of things like Cervantes and Virgil mixed in with modern Spanish novels, or the Mojacar El Fuente newsagent, which has scholarly editions, massive academic dictionaries, histories of Almeria and then some regional cookery and romances. At least you never know what you will find lurking behind the newspapers.

As for me, I am doing more cooking. Lots of people told me that when I came to Spain I would have time to do creative things, like write a book about coming to Spain, but every time I try to sit down and read, let alone write, I think of a job I need to do, and cooking is time consuming. You might wonder what is the point when someone is just going to eat it and shit it out the other end, but if you go down that road you would not make the bed either, a thought that has crossed my mind.

I had not cooked much for about 14 years, or about as long as I have been married, until I came here. Sandy has done it all, but now he is not here much in the week so he has passed the oven glove to me. I didn’t like the idea at first, particularly having to think up what to give the children. All I could think of was my mother’s chicken paprika and perhaps one other recipe, since I am more inclined just to eat raw food myself. More worryingly, Sandy has a lot of cookery books that require you to do things with sheet gelatine, strainers or make sugar baskets. However, now I have discovered Delia Smith, who seemed pretty damn boring when she was on telly: it seems a minor miracle that if you follow the recipe it all works out. I have begun to feel quite smug, making a meal for the children in advance, even though it still takes about an hour out of the day and there is a fair chance they will say they don’t feel like that and would like a pizza. If I didn’t do it, I would have more time to do something more intellectually stimulating, like improving my Spanish, reading, or (ha ha) writing…

Shirley Conran famously said that life was too short to stuff a mushroom: another good housekeeping tip. I guess it depends what else you have to do, perhaps writing books about not wasting time stuffing mushrooms, or a to do list, maybe.

English and Spanish friends

Wednesday, market day, is my day out – all of fifteen minutes drive and I am in the town. I am beginning to enjoy it – you always meet someone and end up having a coffee in the Bar Plaza, which is heaving with old men drinking strange spirits in coffee through the morning. Once I have picked up my huge pile of forwarded junk mail, I tour round the market stalls picking out the fruit and vegetables that look best, and then normally go to the bank – which still has a friendly bank manager. I was pleased today to meet a new person, Lynne, whom I saw from afar and decided to talk to, since she had a nice red jacket and one of those faces that look a bit like a painting – that is, one by a real artist, not a pretty-as-a picture face; she is fifty something, I would say, from Brighton, where she used to have a clothes shop. She is now divorced and living in a country house here: she said it was hard but she had wanted a life where she didn’t spend every evening drinking and socialising and had time to grow vegetables. Now, of course, she feels consumed by Protestant work-ethic guilt, though not enough to make her throw the trowel in and go back to selling rags in a town that increasingly has the same high street as any other and where small individual shopkeepers can’t afford the rent. She said she was finding it hard here, so I asked what was hard and she said: the physical work, lighting wood stoves (agreed – I have just had a lorry load of wood delivered), dealing with water that doesn’t come on (agreed: the other day we had no water – the pump had air because the hose from the well had blocked up) and all the admin (agreed). It is certainly not easy for a woman on her own, but I looked at her and expected that she was something of a steel magnolia, or whatever the English version of that is. There are a number of women of this kind living out here, whether alone or with husband trailing along behind; despite being quiet they are actually hardy, and adopt stray dogs and do the garden and the vegetables until they are 100, like those famous 19th ceEnglish women travellers.

I liked Lynne and realised afterwards that I had missed talking to someone other than Spanish builders: Sandy is in Australia for another 3 weeks now so I am all the more pleased to make friends. I also saw Mercedes, Sylvia’s sister’s best friend: she is an oddly English Spanish woman – by which I mean that she is quiet, reserved and I would say fearful: she brought her husband to our meeting just in case: he is a policeman, too – they met when she was on holiday in Vera and I wonder she was bold enough, but Sylvia says she was very beautiful when young, so perhaps he approached her. She teaches English in Vera school, speaks good English and my Spanish is good enough, but there is still a barrier, which might be personality, or might be language – hard to say. She is from Madrid and went to British school, but is now desperate to live in the north, in Asturias, interestingly – much more sophisticated than down here. I imagine Asturias and Andalucía are as different as chalk and cheese, or perhaps Mercedes and I. However, we had a pleasant talk, and I learned a few things – that there are restaurants that don’t just do meat or fish on the grill, that currants don’t exist in Spain, and that she moderates her Madrid accent or the locals laugh at it for being posh – but at the same time that the Andaluz accent is seen as rather charming by madrilenos – perhaps a bit funny, but charming. Sylvia asked me afterwards how I found her so I said, that we got on, but not like you and me and she laughed and said well, it was unusual to get on as well as we did. And that is true: I never had a Sylvia before, and it is interesting she is half and half French and Spanish, not an English girl, or even an English sheep in Spanish wolf’s clothing, like Mercedes.

There are a lot of stereotypes in what I have written, I expect – not all Spanish women are strong, fat and capable of managing a runaway donkey, nor are all English ones cool but hardy gardeners and bakers. But when you move, you inevitably think in stereotypes, because you spend so much of your time comparing what was, with what is and also, of course, wondering where you stand in it and how you are liable to change.

Spin cycle

2007-11-13T05:54:00.002-08:00

Donkey matters

Yesterday was an eventful day: there was no water in the morning and when I went to look the pump was blinking agitatedly. I reset it, to no effect, and then looked in the deposit, to find it almost empty. This meant a call to Gilberto, our plumber, and it turned out that the “pipe” (actually, more or less a garden hose) that brings our water in, had probably had a blockage, and air had got into the pump. All this meant a delay before I went to Ramblizo for donkey halters and a saddle. On the ground floor there are things like live partridges and dogs, and then there is a whole floor of bridles, saddles, halters and horse accessories where I spent a happy half hour choosing stuff. When I got back, I put the donkeys out and went to see what the men were doing rebuilding the stable: they have found me a proper stable door and fixed the fence. After about an hour, I saw Pablo yelling and waving at me from his side of the rambla: the donkeys had got away and ran into the rambla. That is, Luca, who spent most of the morning dancing about and biting, ran off and Penelope got so agitated that she followed him, managing to break the rope with which she was tethered. Fortunately, one of the builders, a South American, was a dab hand with donkeys and cut them off at the pass – actually, they came up quite docile and seemed confused as to why they had done it. They probably smelled Alberto’s mule and donkey, which are usually tethered down there. Meanwhile, Pablo came and did some equine consulting: Luca, being a male, is going to be a nuisance as he gets older, so we need either to castrate him, or sell him. At the same time, he is a nuisance now, because he is not properly weaned, and while he is with his mother, it won’t be easy to get him weaned; this drains her strength and also may interfere later with her pregnancy. And so on. Also, of course, he will try and shag her by the time he is about a year old. Well, he is very sweet too, I said, and Pablo agreed, he was “bonico” (a word they use a lot here, but which must be Andaluz, since it is not in the dictionary. The word for halter, cabezá, is also Andaluz, since the real word is cabestro – which Consuelo said was “más fino,” more refined.) A lot of local people have stopped and said how bonico he is, and stroked him, and when I suggested to Juan that he needed to be castrated at some point, he got very agitated and said it was not a good idea: there are no males round here so he could be very useful in saving people the journey to Murcia if they want to breed from their females. So that’s that, then. I didn’t mention that I was the one who had to manage the biting and the general behaviour that goes with a stallion, if donkeys are anything like horses. Well, he is not a year yet so we can cross each bridge as we reach it, poco a poco, as everyone here says all the time,

Home management consulting

Housework is still on my mind as well as my hands. It seems to fill all the available time, but shapelessly, like a huge, self-replicating amoeba. Various people have told me that “you have to have a routine,” but it is all very well saying that.

Such a routine must have existed, in the days when women taught their daughters how to do housework. In one of my childhood rhyme books, there was a poem that goes something like: They that wash on Monday, have all the week to dry/They that wash on Tuesday, are not so much awry… and so on, until the end of the week: “But they that wash on Saturday, Oh they’re sluts indeed!” Does this mean that if you wash your clothes on Monday, then you have the rest of the week to iron them, and wear them, or do other things? And since washing is cyclical, not secular, as we used to say in the City, does it make any difference if you start on Saturday instead of Monday? It is not like the roast, which you might cook on Sunday and then turn into things of increasing nastiness through the week, like Sandy’s mother apparently used to do, going via rissoles to soup until Friday, when you had fish.

In any case, I have not got the hang of it at all; how are you supposed to know when to stop? It is not as if you can even get a sense that it is 70% complete, like office stuff, or as if you have a Gant chart with columns that show you where you are. It is a shame that some smart management consultants haven’t come up with a plan you could buy in Sainsbury’s. When I worked for Accenture in Windsor, they used to we call a building, but which they called something like a facility, which had the shop of the future in it, so this would be right up their retail opportunity showcase. I expect they could offer to save you 50 per cent of your week and the marketing people would come up with a great name for the concept, something like Reengineering Residential Supply Chain Logistics: Solutions for the 21st century Houseperson. However, it would not work since no houseperson in their right mind could pay their prices.

I now recall Accenture with something approaching nostalgia: in many ways, it was the perfect workplace but for a long time I couldn’t really understand a word anyone said, and by the time I spoke the language it was time to go in case I went native. I missed things like going to lunch and gossiping. I was there for nearly 4 years, a record for me, but only because I was pregnant twice during the time so could not run fast. However, they were very logical people and the system always appeared to take precedence over the individual which in many ways is a lot better than companies that are the other way round; there appeared to be no sex or violence of any kind and hardly any windows. It had its drawbacks working for a place where everyone respected the law – like Switzerland, it was a bit boring - but it was better than being shouted at by the kind of boss who ought to be running Haiti.
Meanwhile, there is more washing to do and then at 3pm I go to make blood sausages with Juana. It is a busy life, and there is not much time for theory, except the sausage making kind. Things go round and round, like the washing in the machine, and you are back where you started. This is a very different way of looking at life than the kind you have in the city, where you see it more as a straight line, perhaps going diagonally upwards, or, if you are pessimistic, describing a J curve. I have a feeling from my faint memories of Immanuel Kant, that this is a teleological view of life, not a synchronous one – one that assumes that it has a purpose and an end towards which you progress, as fast as possible. After all, what is the word “career” if not something that a donkey does when you let it go? However, this is sense of direction is clearly an illusion: in my life in PR I must have met any number of sixty-something year old CEOs who have just been let down with a bump into retirement and go wandering around marginal drinks parties in London looking like burst balloons. Careers come to a halt and the people who were once important hit the dust, like Ozymandias, but somehow it’s one of those things you can’t take on board until it happens, like death. On this basis, however, housework is a much more sensible way to spend your time, since it clearly has no purpose other than to make you comfortable while you wait to die.

Proverbs

2007-11-11T12:44:00.000-08:00

A woman’s work is never done

Alexander's Spanish homework for some reason involved Solomon and I remembered the little rhyme: King David and King Solomon led merry merry lives/With many, many lady friends and many, many wives/But when old age crept up on them, with all its fears and qualms/King Solomon wrote the Proverbs and King David wrote the Psalms. It was a bit lost on Alexander who didnt see the contradiction in having lady friends and writing.

Proverbs have been arriving unbidden in my mind over the last few days: I rarely thought about a proverb in the office as there didnt seem to be that many suitable ones for being a PR director - but now that I am in the house, they turn up everywhere, particularly the one about a woman's work never being done.

The second day of the matanza was sausage day: having washed the intestines and bladders and turned them inside out, they were filled with meat: fatty meat for the blanquilla sausages, which are cooked, and leaner meat for the chorizos, which are not. Like the day before, a large number of people were involved: Juana and Pablo, their daughter Consuelo and “Moncha,” her Galician husband Ramon, Antonio, Juana’s son and his novia Maria, their other son and his novia, Juana’s cousin Carmen and her husband, daughter and her novio, plus Juana’s other cousin, whose name I forget, from Albox, Isa, the neighbour who needs a husband but owns the thousand year old olive tree, Maruja, the neighbour from Barcelona whose niece is married to Zidan Zidane, and a few stragglers. Sandy turned the mincer, into which we pushed dozens of dried red peppers, soaked overnight in water and then squeezed (my job, with one of the novias). Maruja, who grew up her, was impressively deft with the “tripas,” the intenstines – turning them inside out over the mincer and then massaging the meat along to the right density. They were then tied with double knots and tossed into a tub for later. In the background, someone was shooting partridges – the endless pursuit of food. I asked Maruja if she ever did the matanza in Barcelona: no, she said, I go to the supermarket, which is a lot easier. Certainly, there is a lot of work in butchering a pig and making sausages; you have to wonder why people thought it was worth it to have to wash out bladders and turn them inside out and stuff them, rather than just eat vegetables. But as Consuelo said, the point of cooking is that it takes time; you could see she was in her element up to her elbows in fat – she suddenly seemed the competent farmer rather than just the nice country girl she usually is. Clearly a large part of the point was that they need meat to eat for the rest of the year, but there is also clearly a pleasure in the ritual and the process as well as the sociable side of the matanza - at least a dozen people in the house cracking jokes and eating.

We ate paella at lunch, with various unidentified bits of pig in it, with a sweet cabbage, rather like lettuce, and the green olives I saw Juana, Isa and Maruja picking a few weeks back. I got a lesson in these too: I never realised till now that the green olives came were unripe black ones: you bash them and leave them a fortnight in salt water with a bit of the plant that looks like broom, and the leaves of the carob tree and lo and behold they are edible, instead of taking the roof of your mouth as they do if you try and eat them from the tree. You wonder who ever realised in the first place that you could eat the things.

Meanwhile, I have my own list of jobs to do, many relating to the new donkeys – it is already clear I have made a rod for my own back. Alexander and I took them for a walk; Penelope was quite docile and Luca generally followed, though occasionally he went off and did his own thing and danced about in the road then there was absolutely no way you could get him to change his mind. When I pushed him, he just bit me or pushed back, and as he is not yet wearing a halter he is hard to fight. Penelope is also impossible to push; if she decides she is not going in, that is it. Hence the expression: stubborn as a mule. They both rolled in the gravel at one point, which was pretty funny, but then Luca went mad and started biting me, Penelope and Alexander in turn, so we were quite glad to shut him up. I am worrying about him: he needs to learn to wear the halter, and I haven’t found one, though I have been told there is a place nearby that sells all that, plus also pheasants, apparently – whether live or dead is not clear. It sounds like an interesting shop. This is a job for tomorrow, along with arranging for the children’s quad bike to be repaired – they have now destroyed both lights and as I have no trailer yet I can’t get it down to the garage.

Hanging over me, too, is all the admin I haven’t done. It’s easy to forget when you are worrying about where to get a bridle, but I have to post various overdue admin letters to England in the apparently more reliable Vera post office. It is quite impossible to keep track of money – I have no idea what is in the Spanish bank accounts since the statements they send are always out of date and, to me, unintelligible, on lots of tiny little slips of paper, in no clear order. I haven’t worked out how to see the Cajamar account online – while the BBVA one appears to need a different password each time, plus after that you have to use a little plastic card to enter a code from a particular square; hardly worth the effort as when you get on there the information is equally impenetrable. (BBVA still hasn’t managed to provide me with a debit card that works: I have now had three, and every time I go into the bank they just issue me another non-working one.) HSBC, meanwhile, says it is not possible to set up any kind of standing order to a non-UK account, so I have to call them in person and go through a lot of palaver and pay a charge if I want to move money to Spain. It might be a lot easier if we were paid here, only IBM doesn’t want to do that, and no doubt it would have other admin consequences. It still isn’t clear how we get health cover, since we are resident here but don’t pay tax we are in some kind of black hole between the UK and Spain; let’s hope we don’t get sick.

There are times when I feel pretty tired though. After all the sausage stuffing, walking the donkey and then chasing Luca, plus doing Alexander’s Spanish maths homework, I had a pile of ironing left. Then Pablo came up with the tractor and we had to unload a lot of alfafa for the horses while I worried about when and how I would get Luca castrated, as he will have to be at some point, I am told, or he will become unmanageably aggressive. This means a trip to the local vet, who I am told, quite inexplicably, works in the Lubrin slaughterhouse. But the work involved in living here is a rod for my own back - which means I am not going to complain. You choose your rod – whether it is stuffing intestines or having to feed and walk a donkey. But you can see why old people decide it’s easier to live in a bungalow with a couple of armchairs and a budgie. It was a lot easier leaving the house, getting on a train to work and bossing other people about to no real effect: I had an hour alone on the way in and way out, a lot of time exchanging idle gossip in restaurants, and the right to an hour of yoga several times a week. Having said that, it was about 20 degrees today and wearing shorts in the middle of November still counts for a lot. And at least the devil will not have a chance to put me to work, since there is a fat chance of my hands being idle.

Blood lust and wish fulfilment

2007-11-10T15:03:00.000-08:00

Like many women of my age and background I dreamed about horses for a long time; they say it is a sex thing but I don’t think so; horses are better than that and I had a recurring dream about escaping on one. Fate, however, didn’t deal me the right hand; living in Purley there was no room for a horse, even the kind that appears in the bedroom after dark. I came of age and gave up riding around 21, except for the odd gallop on a holiday beach, and by the time I met Jasmine and her eight horses. I no longer wanted to ride but liked to turn them out in a field, lead them about, or bring them back in. I was never afraid of a horse, even one that had gone loco and kicked her in the arm.

Now, however, I live in the middle of nowhere. For the first time in my life, I could have a horse and of course I had been thinking about it for some time when 1 November came, and it was the Albox horse fair. I went, saying I was going to look and I looked and came back with....

Well, what could be more English than this? What do English women do in Spain: they complain about how Spanish people don't love animals and then they open a donkey sanctuary. Or maybe they go and buy a donkey. A donkey: less glamorous than a horse, but much more practical, which is the way a lot of my life’s wishes have turned out, including, one might say, my husband.

I say “a donkey,” though actually it is one and a half, or one and two halves, as it is pregnant and has a five-month old male foal, which will grow up to be a stallion and kick and bite. It could have been worse: I was looking longingly at a small fat pony too, only at the last minute I did wonder what Sandy would say when he got back from his travels.
Juan Mañas, who, for reasons of his own, apparently urgently wanted me to buy a donkey, egged me on in all this. It clearly wasn’t just to get the work repairing the stable, because he is already out of pocket on the amount of time we have spent dealing with the huge bureaucracy involved in buying an animal here; it appears to be partly an appetite for striking the deal and partly the farmer in him – as he has said before, he would really rather be farming than building. I had mentioned in passing that I would, maybe, like a donkey. The idea lodged in Juan’s head, and he periodically mentioned donkeys he knew of or had seen, to which I made theoretical noises of interest, until the day of the Albox feria, or animal fair, which of course I agreed to visit.

The feria was good stuff: a motley collection of gipsies, onlookers, old farmers and stragglers collected in the dry river bed under the bridge, wagons of animals, including very decorated horses for the afternoon’s horse show, and a number of donkeys. I met Juan under the bridge; he was with his nephew David, who, going against the stereotype, has a small donkey sanctuary: strictly not for business, he said, but to breed and preserve Andalucian donkeys which are dying out in the area.. Of course, the English tourist perception of the Spanish as “cruel to donkeys,” likely has far less to do with being Spanish than being poor farmers, being nice to animals coming somewhere lower down the hierarchy of needs than feeding yourself and your family. Now that Spain is richer and more developed, I would guess that is changing, though I suspect there will always be more pride, and less sentiment, towards animals.

There were three types of donkey at the fair, I learned: the Andalucian donkey, larger and grey, with a smoother coat; the Romanian donkeys, smaller and a different colour, and the small Moroccan ones, quite furry and reddish. Meanwhile, the owner of the two donkeys we had our eye on was circling, Juan having primed him before hand. He was an ancient, tortoise like individual with a couple of teeth, accompanied by a burly son: they were dead keen to close the deal and after a bit of chat, surrounded by a circle of interested onlookers, mainly old, toothless men, we went off to the office of Agriculture and Fisheries, which is where you do these things. Inevitably, this meant waiting about and eventually the vet being called, and saying, after a bit of discussion, that I needed to get a “guia,” - a stud book (or something of that kind), which I couldn’t do in Albox but must do in Tabernas.

I went to Tabernas with Juan a few days later, and spent some time with the nice man in the Agriculture department in Tabernas. He explained in detail why I needed a book, and spent some time understanding my name and address and copying them out. He and Juan discussed who they knew in Lubrín, the vendors, and eventually the fact that he needed a certificate from the Ayuntiamento, town hall, in Lubrin, to check there was no objection to my having a donkey. What a nuisance, he said, but then lo and behold, Juan knew Domingo in the Ayuntiamentio, because his wife Maribel works in Juan’s office. Juan got Domingo on the phone and asked him if he minded Julia la Inglesa having a donkey and he didn’t, so that was good. Good, said the Tabernas man, then what you do next is you go to Lubrin and get it in writing and fax it over. He was very agreeable and kept saying nothing was a problem, said that was fine, and eventually gave me a certificate with an animal registration number I could use for any animals I bought. We then got instructions about how the lorry transporting the donkey needed to be disinfected, and how I needed a certificate of disinfection, and how I would be wise to take out insurance for cadaver removal, should my donkey die, as this was very expensive, more than the value of the donkey, if you didn’t pay the insurance of only 5 euro a year. I said I would have the cadaver insurance, and we discussed where this would be done, and what numbers I needed to put on the form. Then we went back to Lubrin and went to the cooperative about the cadaver insurance, and they also took copies of the forms and said they would see about it. Then we went to see Domingo, who said again he had no issue with me having a donkey and got a girl to type that up on a bit of paper and stamp it and fax it.

The next day, we set off for an hour’s drive to Ulula del Rio, where the old toothless man lived with the donkeys, and, it turns out, a lot of horses and other animals he trades, the plan being to go with him to Albox and do the deal. It was a beautiful day, again, and I felt pretty excited, even though it was only a donkey: I didn’t sleep that much the night before.

On the way, I noted to Juan that I assumed there was no actual Rio in Ulula, since there are no rivers anywhere here. No. Was there ever? Of course, he said, for instance, he knew it was there in 1937 because he had seen a picture. Also, he added, when his father went off to the Civil War, in the late 30s, he had to take a train from Zurgena, and they crossed the river there, where there is now a road bridge, but was not in those days. They crossed on a donkey, of course, and Juan’s father said the water was up to his waist. So the climate must have changed dramatically here: there are now only dry river beds everywhere, but sixty, seventy years ago, they ran with rivers.

Meanwhile, Juan was very stressed: he was supposed to be in three other places, and when we got there – as usual, we were meeting at a petrol station - the old man was not there. Eventually, his son turned up in a beat up truck and said the old man couldn’t come as he was elsewhere with the horses. This meant we couldn’t do the deal, and would have to meet them in Albox tomorrow instead, he said, sorry, but there you go, ok. It wasn’t at all ok: we had driven for an hour or more, and now couldn’t collect the donkeys that evening, having got the chico with the disinfected lorry on standby. This put Juan and me in sour moods in different ways; me because I wasn’t getting my donkeys that day, and Juan because he felt it reflected badly on him – and no doubt Andalucia and Spain - if the deal didn’t go as planned: we drove off sulking. After a while, and after venting my feelings about people who get you to drive an hour to meet them and then have other arrangements, I asked him if he had done business with the vendor before. Juan got excited and said absolutely not, and if he had known they were gipsies, he wouldn’t have bought a donkey from them. Oh, they were gipsies? Yes, it turned, out, and so “no tienen palabra,” he said, they don’t keep their word, or more exactly in Spanish, they don’t have a word to keep, or the concept of keeping their word.

I told him that my sister had married a gipsy, but it had turned out badly; he had turned out badly. Yes, Juan said, they are very clever and when they are young, they have something – but…. You can’t trust them, and they don’t like to work, which is why they trade horses. We drove on, thinking our thoughts.

After a few minutes, Juan suddenly spoke. Vamos a hacer una cosa – here’s what we are going to do …We would not go to Albox and try to get the vet to do the paperwork without the vendors. He doesn’t like it when things don’t work out and like many Spanish people I have dealt with, he is liable to try to find a solution to a problem rather than give up.

To my astonishment, this worked. It seems to be often the way here - you are presented with a huge and seemingly impenetrable pile of bureaucratic paper for every simple transaction, but in the end people seem inclined to disregard it and with one stroke someone, usually the official in charge of it, cuts through it with one snip.

We spent about half an hour with the vet, stamping bits of paper, and apparently issuing me with the papers I needed to do the deal. Like the Tabernas man, he seemed absolutely committed to helping us get through the bureaucracy he was obliged to impose on us. Towards the end of a lot of computer forms and rubber stamps, he realised we were missing a bit of paper, and did a lot of quite theatrical “oh no – what are we going to do?” It turned out that we didn’t have a disinfection certificate for the donkey. Yes, he said, what can I do? You need this as well as for the vehicle! We haven’t got it! What are we going to do? How are we going to resolve this? Let me see…In the end, he and Juan between them worked out that it would be possible either for Juan to arrange for a vet from Lubrin to do this, or for Juan to pick this up from the vendor, or from the vendor’s vet, when he collected the donkey, and then drop it in to him afterwards. Problem solved, and relief all round. All in all, we had about ten different bits of paper at the end, and Juan was twitching like mad. We drove like the wind back to where we had left his van, and he went off to arrange for straw to be delivered. Before he went he insisted I print out the photos I had taken of the donkeys at the fair, and give him copies, so that he could make sure the gipsies didn’t swap the ones they were selling for different animals.

I am expecting the donkeys around 10.30 tonight, and old Cristobal and young Juan are down at the stable digging and blocking up holes.

Meanwhile, at last, the visitors have all gone. Just as well: I had turned into a cross between Basil and Sybil Fawlty, with the worse qualities of both, as far as guests were concerned. The weather is still beautiful: a blue sky every day, cool mornings and evenings but T- shirt weather in the day. Perfect for riding a donkey, if you have one.

La matanza

The donkeys arrived as planned, late at night, anxious from their drive. Penelope Cruz (as we have christened the mother) was sweating and very much did not want to go into the stable; it took three men to shove her from behind in the end. Luca, the baby, followed her in reasonably agreeably, though he did give someone a bite. By morning, they were considerably better, and placated with bread and apples: they need feeding up and Penelope clearly thinks little of straw. We turned them out into the little sloping field by the stable and the next day I took them out for a walk – that is, they took me. Luca rolled in the dust and galloped about uncontrollably while I tried to lead Penelope with a makeshift halter – we still don’t have a proper one. She was fine when going in the direction she wanted, but when I suggested she go back in the field it was hands on pushing and pulling as she dug all her hooves in and lent backwards. They ate a formidable amount again: I was wondering how to get alfafa and dry feed as I still have no trailer and the cooperative doesn’t deliver, when Pablo told me he would organise a delivery from the man who does his goat feed – big relief, as it looks as if Penelope will eat many times more than Juan said she would. His approach is pretty Spanish “a donkey is fine on just a bit of straw, not much water, nothing else…” – and my explanation that I liked to spoil my pets was met with a bit of a blank look. Pablo, however, is much more of my mind: he likes animals in good condition and said that certainly a donkey needed dry food and alfafa, which I should not worry about, he would get it for me and ya esta, there you are.

After all that animal excitement, came more. Today, it was the pig matanza – a big red-letter day in the calendar here. La matanza is when they “sacrificar,” - kill the pig, and make sausages, black pudding, hams, and so on for the rest of the year. Even people who don’t raise pigs buy one and keep it for the matanza, which is a kind of fiesta. We were invited, along with about 20 neighbours, to Pablo and Juana’s, when they were due to kill two of their five huge pigs – something, Pablo confessed, that he did not like doing but which fell to him – his son in law and various other people doing the butchering, a specialist job which requires experience.

I have to say a large part of me wanted to go and see the actual pig slaughtering, which is a bit disgusting, I expect. I did wonder why – the best I could say is that it is one of the few chances you get to confront death in a bloody form – something you hardly see and perhaps shouldn’t want to. Clearly, however, a lot of people do – Spanish people at least - the matanza is all about blood. I am not sure it is blood lust, though of course we are hunting animals and those instincts don’t exactly die easy – after all, our cats carry on catching mice even though we feed them Whiskas. It is more the formidability of death: you would like to just get a bit close to the man with the sickle, to smell his breath, and see what it might be like. It is the real thing. Besides which, you ought to know where your mince and sausages come from, if you eat them, and nobody in Spain is vegetarian.

As it turned out, we got up late, and I heard the pigs squeals as they were stuck echoing from across the rambla, rather than witnessing them in the flesh. It was not long – presumably the knives are sharp and Pablo knew what he was doing. One went around eight, the other later, and we turned up mid-morning, by which time they were both hanging upside down on a wall, and being expertly carved up; blood and organs in washing up bowls and buckets, and the women outside at a table with a hose, turning intestines inside out for sausages. I had a go at this: it is not easy, rather like putting on Durex only infinitely longer. Two fingers inside, the hose, and then the whole thing goes inside out. A smelly business, but in the end, a pile of what looked like pink stockings filled a large bowl and by the end of the afternoon we had black pudding – chorizo comes tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the matanza lunch was being prepared: pig meat, of course, and a huge cast iron pan of migas, the traditional dish made from flour and fat and not much else, eaten with peppers and tomatoes. The dish came off the open fire and twenty of us sat round Juana’s front room – a concrete floor and the open fire and not much else – with the big pan in the middle on its iron legs. Everyone has a spoon and eats from the pan, then the bottle of wine goes round and the men aimed it at their throats from afar – Sandy causing great amusement in the process of perfecting his technique.

Outside, Penelope and Luca, whom I led down from their stable, were grazing below on Pablo’s grass, Penelope wearing an ancient but serviceable halter Pablo provided and Luca running about and rolling in the dust. The men teased me about making them into sausages, but there was general approval of the concept. “Que valiente,” Juana’s mother said, though like everyone she warned me I would need to castrate the male or he would bite. What do you want the male for, anyway? The male animals are generally seen as for meat, and that’s all – whereas a female, with her nice temperament, can be ridden and give you more foals – or in the case of goats, cheese. Juana argued that Luca should be called Javier, which is the name of Penelope Cruz’s novio, boyfriend. I pointed out that he was her son, not her novio, but her son, but she said that in a few months he would be her novio too, given the way male donkeys are, ha ha. There were a few jokes about donkeys after that, much of which I didn’t understand and she said it was better not to, as there were some things it was better not to hear. Meanwhile, the eighty year old neighbour asked where my husband was. Juana pointed him out and he said, oh, well, he was disappointed as when he saw me he wondered if I was single. Consuelo said he was harmless, and you could tie him to the bedpost; he was eighty, so he liked to look, but what could he do? There followed a story about how he had looked down the girls’ cleavages at the fiesta: the young men didn’t bother, he said, but he was going to look if he had a chance. In my time, he said to me, when I was in my prime, the girls used to do this: and he mimed holding your collar together at your neck. More general laughter and jokes about the donkey, and so on, until we went back late, and led Penelope and Luca into the stable, where they seemed quite ready to do and didn’t even eat much, full from grass and exhausted, like children after a birthday party.

Marlboro man country

2007-10-30T06:34:00.001-07:00

Men and women

While Jasmine was here, she got on my nerves in various ways that I concealed from myself till after she was gone: while she was here, I pretended I was having a good time and didn’t mind that she insisted on wearing 6 inch heels and a tight wool dress to walk round Mojacar, which is basically squashed onto a tiny steep hill and then complained she was hot and had to buy a change of outfit. I did try to enjoy myself: I sunbathed with her (even though I no longer want to lie in the sun) and talked about face cream, plastic surgery and outfits – though I felt I was not really contributing, not having made any investments of this kind in recent months.

(Some home gossip was worth it: excellent news that Caroline, the plain-talking surgeon mother, has told JM, the clinically obese mother, that she had Munchhausen’s by proxy, something I have always said, and that there was nothing wrong with her kids; she went mental, of course, having spent their whole lives trying to get one statemented as autistic and the other as having ME aged ten (“ten is the new 13,” as she said to me. I told her that Sally, the daughter, seemed fine, given that she was playing rounders, and she said darkly that she would pay for it tomorrow.) It seems a long way from school here: the most medical excitement is when the children have nits, which happened last week and I should think plastic surgery, at least for cosmetic purposes, is unheard of – though given the level of road accidents here I expect there is plenty of reconstruction work to do.)

Girl talk is OK for a short time, but I had a good book and I was itching to read it. We took Jasmine and Steve to a very overpriced restaurant on the beach, which I knew she would consider really nice, despite the bad food, and after about 3 shots of them as a loving couple, I got one superb photo of her and Steve: she is staring at the camera like a slightly bad-tempered diva, and he is looking away, bored. The real problem with Jasmine, though, was the fact that she really wants me to be someone else, particularly someone who did not go to Spain. She is not the only one: it turns out a decision is like a stone: turn it over and there are a lot of wriggling reactions you didn’t expect. Other people might not like change, or you changing might cast doubt on their decision not to do so, or unearth their wish that they had. Sometimes they take it out on you and I think Jasmine was. I would say, unconsciously of course, but the fact is that unconscious things are not that unconscious with her: like Katie Price she is so unreconstructed that you think maybe she is post-ironic. After all, she did admit that she had bigger boobs done so that she could have power over men.

One thing she did quite a bit was to make admissions about small things that might be OK about Spain, like perhaps the quality of the steak, on the basis that these were being weighed in the balance against Spain being foreign, underdeveloped, dirty and so on. One of the things she said a number of times was that she could see Spanish men might be quite nice – I think before she came she thought they were all like Manuel from Fawlty Towers. On our own, she said that perhaps I would have a Spanish boyfriend since Sandy was away so much, ha ha. Like a lot of Jasmine sayings, this was projection as in, perhaps I Jasmine might like to have a Spanish boyfriend. She projects a lot, which is why she didn’t like my leaving – it seemed to mean to her in some way that she was being made to leave, or that perhaps I was introducing the unwanted concept of leaving England into her life. I said, had she not noticed the locals? E.g. my builder? My farmer neighbour? She said there must be others and also that she thought one of the builder’s men was quite nice. Flirting is all she means, of course: but flirting is a big part of her life in Westerham and also her inner life.

Well, flirting is something Spanish men do; not the builder or the farmer, but the one in the bank, who seemed about 18 and got on my nerves asking me if I was ever bored when I just wanted a duplicate plastic card after 3 months of my card not working in shops. Or the commercial wine merchant who constantly follows me round the Intermarché. I thought he was going to sell me some bargain Marques de Caceres, which was quite interesting, and it turned out later I had the wrong end of the stick. I got the wrong end partly because he was quite plain and a bit camp and partly because I feel more and more like an uptight English lady of a certain age, but more than both of these because as I get older when I walk round the supermarket I am thinking about food and drink and not about sex.

Being “d’un certain age” appears to be no deterrent to the Spanish man, as I have noted before; quite the contrary, they almost appear to relish the challenge, like a bullfighter taking on a bull that has done time in the ring and finished off a few good men. Well, that is a good thing in theory, as you are on the shelf at 30 in the UK and men of your own age like constantly to remind you of the fact; perhaps it makes them feel it is one bean on their side of the scale. As I drove home from the bank thinking about the clerk, who very unprofessionally looked me up and down the whole time he was failing to fill in the form about my credit card, I thought, well, it’s not for me, but it’s one up to me all the same, and one down to men like the men I worked with for years, and one down in particular to that shit Neal and his cocktail party remark.

Neal was an MD in my last company, so dull we had a bet a few times to see if we could get him to talk about something other than engineering. “Do you like cats, Neville?” “Yes, they’re OK. So, the steel pipes on the downstream platform need to resist the counter-force, so we…” “Have you got a cat, Neville?” “Yes, I have a cat. So, we told Shell they needed to replace the steel pipes.”

He was not good at a cocktail party and as he was also overweight, from Aberdeen and ugly, with a kind of growth on one ear, it was really a miracle he ever pulled a woman, though apparently he did at an away day in a hotel in Scotland. I therefore tried to help me out at a corporate event in London by standing near him holding a glass and pretending to be interested in what he was saying to the group of men visitors, though I couldn’t follow the technical stuff and his accent was quite soporific. I was sort of tuning out when I heard him say that he fancied the waitress, who was about 21. The other man who was standing there said something about her being young, and Neville said yes, he couldn’t recall at what point in his life he had stopped fancying older women and started going for the younger ones. I am sure it was because I said that he must know young women didn’t really fancy older men like him that he knifed me at work for no apparent reason.

The point is that I have listened to this kind of crap all my working life and mainly smiled through it, including when that plonker Andrew who is now running a PR company said that Clare on reception was quite sexy till she put on “all that weight”. Clare was the size of a twiglet and the only woman present in the conversation, me, was the size of at least three twiglets. As Andrew had badly receding hair I did think of finding a time to say in front of him something like “So and so was quite sexy till he lost all that hair,” but I was too polite. A big mistake: all the things I wish I had said to sexists, anti-Semites and just general shits at work are still milling around inside me, like heavy stones in a sack.

I say all this because the gentle flirtation of those Spanish men that do flirt is like feathers gently falling into the other side of the scales of all those stones. They don’t mean anything and fall very lightly, but it is good to know that for every chauvinist pig of a receding British investment banker, there is some young Spaniard who thinks older women are hot – and there is, of course, Lolita, and Ana Obregon, and all those older women in Hola, who are still going strong. They are not pretending to be young, either, but being their age, and still sexy.

Mind you, I can see all this passing me by pretty fast, particularly as I have so much time to cook. I see that being a housewife you could get obsessed by food; in fact, I could be in danger of becoming a foodwife rather than a housewife. I remember my father saying that food had replaced sex in my great aunt’s life at about 80, and she certainly went to the larder pretty often, just for a forage and I expect was like that with men: she was quite a goer by all accounts and good looking. At the time I thought it was sad but now in fact I see the point: there are no other people involved and it is a pure relationship, like the one I have with the cat.

Real country

Not that my mind is not on higher things: it is, and it is not difficult. My astonishment at how beautiful it is here does not wear off: every time I return home it is the same. It is another clear blue day with a high wind, and a lot of birds, leaves and clouds blowing about up here. Lara and I went for a walk on Sunday: you walk for miles and see only a goatherd who calls out “buenas.” The ramblas, dry river beds cross the country everywhere, and we walked along a deep ravine, full of oleanders, rising into crags full of caves. There are groups of silent trees, everything hung with moss, as there must be underground water, and Alexander informed me a man told him he shouldn’t go in the caves because that’s where the jabali, wild boar, live. This is right on my doorstep, whereas before I had a few fields and thought it was the country: every time I walked in it, there would be a dozen people with Labradors. Whenever you talk to people who didn’t want you to come here, they say, “oh, well, we’re really so close to the country in Glasgow,” and things like that. What they mean is half an hour’s drive, or more, which, I am sorry, is not the same at all. This is real country, Marlboro man could ride into the sunset here, and probably has done: many of Clint Eastwood's movies were filmed near here, at Tabernas. My children, age 10 and 12, disappear for half a day on the quad bike, taking some food, and turning up in the local town where they wander about and talk to the builder, or the teachers, or their school friends. I discovered they know all sorts of places, and have explored various deserted buildings, caves and houses that I didn’t even know were there. We lived in a village in Kent at home but the only place they could go alone was the “recreation ground,” – there was too much traffic, even on the country roads, for bikes to be safe. Among other interesting things, we found a huge luxury villa perched on a hill in the middle of a ravine, a Wild West, untended dry ravine with prickly pears and cactuses and an unpaved track that leads through ramshackle deserted old houses and eventually to our road. Surrounded by a wire fence and with iron lamposts lined up outside, it was the kind of place you expect a drug dealer to live and I half-expected to see sharpshooters lurking at strategic points, but later on I learned from town gossip that it was a) going to be a hotel, b) going to be rented to English people, c) going to belong to Zidane, the footballer, whose wife comes from our local town and d) illegal. Who knows?

Spanish and English radio: death and fun

I have been trying to make more sense of Spanish radio and am coming to the conclusion that 75 per cent of it falls into the categories of death and fun. In the former category are road accidents, industrial accidents, immigrants that died on the way to Spain, and generally the large part of the news. There is also a general feeling of death – or at least – “life is short” which pervades quite a lot of the programming, I can’t say why. By the same token, you need to have a lot of fun, so the other large category is fun – fiestas, music, eating, and weddings. I would say between them these two categories you have most of what you hear on the radio covered – it is very black and white. English radio, by contrast, is in many subtle shades of grey, with almost everything falling somewhere in between fun and death, neither of which are really ever mentioned and in fact could be said to be studiously avoided. Of course, English people do stare at fatal accidents, too, but I think maybe the quality of the stare is different: it is “Can it really be true?” whereas the Spanish is, “Aha! Yet again!”

Good housekeeping, offending people

2007-10-26T04:00:00.001-07:00

Good Housekeeping

This was the magazine my mother always had and which I occasionally bought for that reason: amazingly, it has not “re-branded” itself despite a) housekeeping being out of fashion and b) the fact that it is only partly about housekeeping and also, like every other woman’s magazine, about diets and shopping. However, you can still imagine a farmer’s wife in what used to be Cumberland and has now been re-branded something like Lakeside, reading this magazine and it still has the Good Housekeeping Institute, which tests consumer goods. It also has quite long worthy articles about ailments and the menopause, and often features the real size16 women that dominate the UK getting makeovers in which they generally look worse than before. I admit to liking the magazine quite a lot: it is partly atavism, if that is the right word, because of its familiarity, but also the fact that it is a bit worthy and stodgy with only a dash of modernity, like M&S individual sponge puddings. Also, I am a secret housewife.

For years I have not liked the word, and as noted before, in Spanish “ama de casa” can mean something a bit like a comedy fishwife. The other day, Gary from Orange Box passed me in the town market and asked me how I liked being a housewife. My immediate reaction (as it so often is) was to bristle and say that I was doing a lot else besides housework, and of course when I was bustling about in a suit and never seeing the morning or evening, I was quite scornful of housewives who read the Next catalogue and pushed a trolley about before having a coffee. Now, however, I am officially one, and I do some of that, though I draw the line at the Next catalogue, (not least because I would be back in the land of junk mail from which I have nearly escaped – last week I got rid of a sheepskin company and, for the third time, the Amnesty shopping catalogue). I suppose there are as many types of housewife as there are career women, or businessmen: the ones whose houses smell overpoweringly of dog, ones who write novels or who lie in bed depressed, and ones who murder their husbands and bury them under the patio.

As I have no radio, when I am cleaning the kitchen floor or cooking, I spend the time thinking about what I will write, or just thinking, which I generally didn’t do at home because the radio was quite good. (Here, the radio is quite crap and also very opaque – I have no idea how the programming works and have never seen anything like the Radio Times though it is just the kind of magazine that ought to exist in Almería. RNE, which is national, seems to have 1, 3 and 5 – none of which appear to represent any particular constituency, though 5 appears to be mainly endless news bulletins about industrial and traffic accidents, of which there are a lot in Spain. On another one of the channels, you get a man philosophising about how Cervantes is like Virgil – then it skips back to some pop music. As for the local channels, Canalsur appears quite interesting when you can hear it, otherwise it is “Fiesta” channel which is a kind of manic teenage party, or the English channel which plays hits from any decade except the present; the presenters sound like they are retired ex-pats who are doing it for a hobby and are a bit slow on the uptake – the other day the man said “Clocks go back this weekend, don’t forget or you’ll be late for work.”)

Today, in a self-referential way, I was thinking about housekeeping and what I knew about the theory. I have identified five sources which make up my knowledge of the subject:
1) My mother. I don’t think she was much of a housekeeper; her mind was on higher things. However, I did follow her about while she did the housework and I do remember her telling me you should dust before you wipe.
2) Good Housekeeping magazine. I can’t actually remember any tips but there must have been some: things like using vinegar on the window, which I would never be bothered to do.
3) Anne of Green Gables. For some reason, I always remember Mrs Rachel Lynde commenting that Anne had turned into a good housekeeper, on the basis that there was nothing that shouldn’t be there in her breadbin or her scrap pail – or something along those lines. I imagine this means she didn’t waste food or keep it when it was mouldy? Wasting is a big issue these days: Jane was very disapproving of Sandy throwing out food we hadn’t eaten, but he said good chefs always do that and look at Raymond Blanc who hand makes ice cream every day and throws it all out the next. I do try to just buy what I need, but this is quite hard with children, who say they want something and then change their mind and also have become so strong-minded you can’t make them eat things they don’t like, as they used to have to eat rice pudding. Interestingly, the Spanish school comedor still has this rule: the children must eat everything on their plate, a rule which applied at my primary school and which meant we had to squash it between the stacked plates to hide it. Also, I do buy the fruit and vegetables at the market on Wednesday and aim to make it last the week, largely in the fridge as advised by my builder. Apart from that, living a way from a shop, you have to use the freezer – freezing bread and taking it out in the morning, something that would have been considered beyond the pale on Prince Edward Island I am sure.
4) The hymn with the words “A man that looks on glass/On it may stay his eye,” which are by Herbert. From memory, it says you can either look at the glass, or beyond the glass to the heavens; it then goes on to say that if we do things with the right purpose they will be bright and clean, or something like that. I can’t help it, I always think of cleaning windows when I hear this, and what work it is making the glass transparent. Vinegar is clearly the solution.
5) Farewell, rewards and fairies. Slut used to be a very useful word for a bad housekeeper, the kind who would sweep the dust under the bed forgetting that the Almighty was watching, or not bother to get out the vinegar. In the past, apparently, fairies used to reward good housekeepers – presumably these were the kind of fairies that want to live in a clean house, like hobgoblins, and not the wild kind. But as Kipling asked, “who of late for cleanliness/Found sixpence in her shoe?” Those days are gone.

Forget farthings, in the old days a good housekeeper was worth her weight in gold. Today, does any man look out for a woman who can cook or clean? Certainly not: they look at other things, and then perhaps if she had a good job. I read in Spanish Cosmopolitan the other day that when surveyed as to what they like in a woman, Spanish men, compared with other Europeans, like her to be passionate about her career. Germans, English and the rest prefer a woman to put them first, and her work second: a surprising result, if it is even partly true. I suppose our evolutionary mating criteria constantly change with society and perhaps there is a reason why a Spanish man will survive better with a career woman than without: certainly, women here, though quite overtly feminine, are not at all shrinking: they are very confident, bold and assertive, rather like Carmen, and there seem to be a lot of them in public life so perhaps the ama de casa will soon be shut in the dusty broom cupboard of the past.

Offending people

I have been thinking more about the Spanish lady telling the shop lady that she was fat, and how the latter didn’t seem remotely offended. Spanish people don’t seem to be offended by personal remarks of this kind – so what does offend them? I would like to know. There was a hint in Alexander saying that his teacher said the UK could not be a post-industrial society, because Spain was not: as I was writing yesterday, they are quite “patriotic,” though I don’t think patriotism is quite the word I am looking for. For instance, I imagine they would take offence at someone criticising Spanish food, where an English person would quite happily say that English food was shite. Noticeably, too, the Spanish here are pretty insular – and although this is Almería, I have a feeling that it is not just them. For instance, they are surrounded by English people, but show no interest at all in their culture, cooking, or anything, really: I haven’t ever heard a Spanish person here ask a question about the UK, except once about Princess Diana, the exception that invariably proves the rule. I am sure they think Spanish food – which while very good, is very unvarying, is the best, and that there is not much need to try anything else. For instance, at the food fiesta, Juan Mañas was waxing quite enthusiastic about showing me how to make migas or the strange goat’s milk dessert they have, but I know would not be remotely interested in learning to make an English dish; he looked quite vague when I said Sandy could do a haggis for the fiesta next year and didn’t ask any questions about what a haggis was. I should think it would be just what they would like here, too, anything out of entrails and blood should go down a treat. In the same way, they don’t really go on holiday outside Spain that much – and this is true of the smart madrilenos that work in Sandy’s office, just as much as the local people here. They go to Cadiz, for instance, or Grenada, in the summer, not on a plane to England or America, or the Caribbean. I suppose they have all they need here. This makes me think that they would be offended by criticisms of Spain or the Spanish way, and also if you refused to work with their uncle, or buy his not very nice olive trees, as I did the other day. You could offend a person by failing to appreciate their community, family or business, I think – whereas criticising their hair or clothes would probably just make them shrug or laugh. Perhaps they are less conscious of themselves as individuals and more as a group; they certainly relate quite differently to their family, village, town, country, than English people, who would dismiss these, at least outwardly, with ease.

Dreams, work, patriotism, this and that

2007-10-25T00:38:00.001-07:00

Morning in Los Herreras

It has been a perfect morning; chilly but very bright, with remote, streaky clouds blown about a blue sky. When I opened the side door, a flight of birds rose up twittering and a wagtail was walking about on the surface water. Light scatters from everything and everything blows about in the breeze; the white faces of the little houses of the village reflect the light back and the rambla is full of fluttering grey doves. Though it is late October, it is a very poetic, April morning, such as you are supposed to have in England but never seem to any more.

Dreams about work

I did, however, have one of a series of dreams about work: all bad. In the last one, I was working as a junior administrator in what must have been a dodgy company, with a rather shoe-string stingy atmosphere like Euromoney when I joined it, only without the buzz and sweat of desperate, youthful ambition. In the dream, it was my first day, and I was working for a woman who clearly wasn’t going to let me be promoted and suspected me of being potentially good at my job. I went back home and said to Sandy I didn’t want to go back. He suggested maybe I should stick at it, and I thought desperately of wanting to be in my house instead of the office. Well, all the years of my adult life I have not been able to be in the house and now I can I am perhaps afraid I will be sent back. In the second dream, I was working in a place that appeared to be a newspaper, with a group of bitchy women, including Julia, who actually existed and worked at the FT with me – except not “with me,” since at the time she was too grand and edited the features while I only wrote about dirty industry.

(Julia looked and sounded like Patsy in Ab Fab, only without the fun: I and my desk mate Deborah hated her. I still remember her coming over with my copy for a feature on oil in her hand, covered in red biro. It said things like: “What exactly is oil? I think we need to know!” Of course, she didn’t know what oil was, because she only knew about soft furnishings and outfits: in fact, she astonishingly managed to become pregnant at a later stage and I recall her saying to Deborah: “I keep looking at my flat and thinking: where will the baby go? Where? Over there, on those cushions?” Much later, I met her at an “ex-FT” party, which of course was full of people pretending to be overjoyed to see each other, and energetically proving how well they had done since leaving. To my disbelief, she came over and was rather gushing and nice to me: presumably because by this point my job was better than hers as she was a promoter for a not very successful luxury goods company and had also, I heard later, had a disastrous romantic history, some of it embarrassing and public. That’s the wheel of fortune for you, and also working on a newspaper, where everyone’s linen became dirty and then got washed in public sooner or later; it was only a matter of time.)

In the dream, the Julia woman told me sharply that we were not actually working on a newspaper, but providing some kind of administrative service to it. I kept trying to point out that I had actually been a journalist, but it was quite irrelevant and she looked at me as if I were wearing badly wrong shoes. So work has not gone away, yet, though it is changing its shape in my mind. I still wonder to myself it if matters having that kind of a purpose. I am sure the vicar would say it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you were good: work gives little opportunity for that as usually you do better by being bad, at least in your life time. Also, does it matter if you have one, and don’t fulfil it? Like Mercedes, and Sylvia, and all the people I know who are secret writers, but might never publish anything. I shouldn’t think being in Smith’s matters much to the Almighty.

No more visitors

One of the problems of moving to “Spine” as the Brits call it, is that people consider it a nice place to go on holiday, where it is always sunny and they can lie out getting enough sun to last the rest of the year. Well, I am fed up with it now, and when it comes to visitors, I have begun to behave like a nasty librarian – you can look but not touch and nobody better try to take a book out. Nobody will want to visit me soon, since I have become so forbidding. But I have washed enough sheets, duvets and towels to last me for some time. I was in town today – market day – and ended up having a coffee with the Brits in Bar Plaza: there was considerable sympathy for my view. One girl said she had banned visitors for a year – then said that if they came, they were on their own, mate. Another said it was a good plan to do building work, then nobody could visit you. – or say you were doing it. It was interesting anyway: I met an Australian lady who has spent years living in a van on a site outside town after her husband had a vision of the location – he has visions regularly. She said they came here because he was ill and it was closer than Australia; now she transports pets back and forth when he has to go back to the doctor. Just the transport: if the people’s pets’ documents aren’t right, they are also on their own, mate. Self-sufficient people here, and they expect others to be so, too.

Rubbish

After the coffee, I went to tell Maria in the Ayuntiamento that I finally got my large rubbish bin (two years after requesting it). The Ayuntiamento had been calling them every week since July, but in the end shouting “es inadmissible,” did the trick again. I am sorry to say that getting cross is the only answer here. The bin turned up the next day even though the rubbish men left a note telling me not to bother them any more about the fact that they collect randomly, so that I don’t know when to take my rubbish down to the road. Last week, instead of coming Monday night, they came early, so I missed them for the week, which means heaving stuff down in the car to the next village. My neighbour, and the Ayuntiamento ladies, said that the bin company ought to come down the drive and collect it from the door, the way they did when Spanish people lived there (three owners ago). Well, said one of them, but this way you get a little walk. True enough, and I could walk down my drive to the road every day and leave the rubbish down there, now I have a large size wheelie bin. If I get into another discussion with the rubbish company, I might confuse them more and after two years of waiting for my big bin, I don’t want to risk it.

I also went into the supermarket, where I overheard a rather Spanish conversation between a customer and the two ladies in the shop.

Lady Customer (to young shop lady) Come here, Pilar. (feeling her round the waist). Oh, my goodness, you’re fat!
Pilar: I’m fat?
Lady Customer: Yes, you’re fat. Were you always this fat?
Pilar: Fat? I don’t know.
Other Shop Lady: She was always like this, I think, weren’t you?Pilar: (looking at self) Well, I don’t know.
Other Shop Lady: Maybe not, maybe she’s got fatter.
Customer: Yes, she’s quite fat, how did that happen?

There is no way this could happen in England: the shop lady would either be silently offended, or deck you. I don’t know if people ever do drop hints in Spain – but it is hard to imagine.

Patriotism

I spent a good few hours or so helping Alexander do his homework: researching sources of energy in Andalucia and then revising his “sociales” – geography and demographics. Apparently, the done thing is to find things in which Andalucia comes top – this goes down very well. By the same token, it is not OK for the UK to come out ahead: according to Alexander’s teacher, the UK cannot be a post-industrial society, because Spain is not. Viva España, etc. Well, we don’t have that patriotic feeling, I explained to Alexander: there is, as says the wonderful Javier Marias, whom I am reading, no word like “patria,” in English. It is what my parents taught me was the enormous virtue of England, for them as European post-war immigrants: it could never have been swayed by a Hitler or a Mussolini. Are the Spanish subject to patriotic enthusiasm? I am not sure: I don’t know enough history yet to know how swayed the Spanish actually were by Franco – but it seems they didn’t really get the choice to be swayed, having been subject to one unpleasant dictator after another for hundreds of years. It seems to have made them sick to death of anything that might cut across personal freedom–so far I have not met a person under 50 who has a good word to say about any aspect of the establishment: religion, politics, or the royal family and I have never heard anyone philosophise, except about life, fate, birth, death and such eternal truths. In that way, they can be a bit British in their scepticism, but in fact it’s a blunter instrument. Listening to the radio today, I heard a Spanish presenter relate his experience at a German wedding and how he had quarrelled with a German friend who disapproved of his getting embarrassingly drunk. Hey, he said, I thought weddings were all about going over the top – and also, I’m Spanish: I take every opportunity I can to enjoy myself. There is a kind of anger just below the surface of the enjoyment, though. I suppose Franco stopped that for a long time: you get the sense they somehow allowed him to do that to them – they feel fooled or dishonoured, like a taciturn peasant whose clever foreign wife cheated on him – and they are saying to themselves that they will never let anyone do that to them again.

Beyond the brand

2007-10-19T06:52:00.001-07:00

Marketing no hay

When I graduated and deconstruction was still perched on the edge of being past it, it was well known that advertising stank. It made you buy stuff you didn’t want or need, and was a tool of capitalism and/or the establishment along with the media and, in fact, a lot of books, such as FR Leavis. In the intervening years, I had forgotten this eternal truth, but I have been struck by it since living in Almeria. The fact is, there is almost no advertising here. There are no posters, no bus stop hoardings (no bus shelters at all) and there are no ads on the sides of buses or taxis. Even in magazines, most advertising seems much less in-your-face, though of course Spanish Vogue has the same 25 pages of designer ads – but that’s another country altogether, that place where the internationally rich live. You could say this is because Almería is poor, and therefore nobody is worth tempting, but from memory, I don’t think Madrid is that much worse than Almería. Of course, the Lake District is not full of advertising hoardings either, but it’s a small place, and you can go miles and miles here without seeing a caption. It is a huge relief: having got into the habit of thinking advertising was clever, since so many graduates work in it, I now think that actually things like “It’s utterly butterly” are not that brilliant but more annoying or at the very least a huge misdirection of talent. I don’t except myself from this, since I wasted plenty of my life thinking up stupid brand slogans for a bunch of engineers or lawyers.

(Since everyone that did English was advised to go into advertising, a few people I knew did go into it and were quite embarrassed about taking the capitalist shilling - but they got over that pretty quickly as they got paid well and had cars. I nearly took a first job with Young and Rubicam and it has to be said that their canapés were very dinky. However, I didn’t; I did a doctorate instead, which was a fat lot of good and also quite dreadfully boring most of the time, though I quite like the fact that if someone says “is there a doctor in the room!” I could say yes, plus it was for years a good put down for anyone who called me “Miss,” and for men that patronised me in general. If I had done it, I don’t suppose things would have turned out any differently, since despite my initial aim of avoiding anything to do with marketing, I ended up working in it more or less, perhaps because all roads lead there. )

When I was still doing that stuff, I read some articles in El País about the brand of Spain, written by the brand guru Wally Olins, whom I was about to meet and who is a vague relation by marriage. Country brands, apparently, are the latest thing, and the articles were all about how Spain as a brand was undervalued – hence why all the olive oil here has to be repackaged as “Italian,” to sell to northern Europeans who think Italy is more upmarket than Spain. A few days ago I met a wine and food salesman in the Intermarché supermarket in Vera, who told me that the same is true of anchovies: people think the San Antonio ones are better although they are all swimming about in the same sea. Such is the power of marketing, but I sincerely hope the Spanish don’t get some agency to re-brand themselves – not that I really imagine that would ever happen. So far, this is not a slick, packaged country, but a rough-edged one, and trying to position it like Italy would be akin to trying to turn Clint Eastwood into Brad Pitt. Heaven forbid. The fact that you can’t find a landscape without a crane, an overflowing litter bin and no water might be a drawback, but by the same token it keeps out all the people who want a nice unspoilt green picnic spot with a view of a lake.

New words

Today I went to join the local farm cooperative, about five miles out of town on the empty road to Uleila de Campo. Here, you can buy various useful commodities such as slightly cheaper petrol, animal feed and hay. It sits next to the place where they make President cheese from local goat milk – which, by the way, is branded French and not Spanish. My neighbour’s husband works there, so I know. They used the phrase “darse de alta” for “joining” the coop – I had been using “apuntarse,” which does mean something like “to put your name down for,” but this was apparently not the best choice in this context. “Darse de alta” is also used on websites, when you join or subscribe: an alta is a medical certificate, I think. This is one of the things about learning a language that you can only pick up by doing stuff – and which makes most days interesting in some way. Before I came to Spain, and when I thought I might work in Madrid doing a proper job, I spent a lot of time learning words like “rueda de prensa” (press conference) although Spanish is very short on marketing words and says things like “el marketing” as a result. Now, most of my new words vocabulary is now words like animal feed, pickaxe and shovel, and, because of Alexander’s homework, things like “hang glider.” We had to spend one and a half hours last night classifying a list of vehicles into the means by which they move, which was educational, and the day before that we did tools.

Meanwhile, it has rained almost non-stop for two days, and the whole week has been Scottish. Now that one batch of visitors has gone, we are expecting Jasmine and family – she is bound to be disappointed in the weather and to look plaintively at the sky talking about “call this Spanish sunshine!” as if I were personally responsible. Having said that, I am really looking forward to seeing her – she may wear stilettos by the pool, but she also has the heart of gold to go with. Meanwhile, I am taking advantage of one day of freedom.

The hostess with the leastest

2007-10-18T06:01:00.001-07:00

A guest and a fish

“A guest is like a fish: they both begin to stink after four days.” This is apparently a Polish proverb, or so my father told me. Whatever, I find it’s true, though I daresay a hostess also starts to stink. I suspect, in any case, that I stink as a hostess, which is a shame, since I have this big house and keep asking people to stay. The fact is, I am like a librarian – I like the library but I don’t really want anyone to take any books out, and if they do, they had better not write in them or turn the corners over.

We have just had a family staying for seven nights, which obviously means they have outstayed their welcome by nearly double time. It is, as my husband pointed out, entirely my fault: we met them skiing, their children and ours hit it off, and we liked them, so I casually said they should come to visit us in Spain. This was last Easter, but it seemed like five minutes later that Louise had emailed me to say they could come in October half term, was that OK? It seemed OK at the time. The second email said they had booked for seven nights, hope that was OK, by which time obviously it was too late for it not to be OK. By then, too, Sandy had found out he had to be in Australia for over 2 weeks, one of which was the week of their visit, plus her husband was working, so it would just be Louise, me, and the children. Distinct aroma of kipper by the time the third email came. “Am really looking forward to some sun.” Oh, are you? I thought to myself. Well, maybe it won’t be sunny. After all, this is not a holiday resort, particularly as I am not on holiday. In fact, it poured with rain most of the time they were there. I felt quite bad for them, but at the same time, I admit I was thinking, hah! This is not Torremolinos, you know. Also, although the kids were actually really sweet and most of the time I indulged them, I found myself getting a bit impatient when they refused to go outside because of wasps, pointed out that there were flies in the house (as did Louise) and said they were travel sick on the bendy roads (as did Louise, who made me stop several times and said “Oh my God!” every time we passed another car). I said briskly things like “Well, this is the country you know!” and “This isn’t England, you know!” and generally felt a mixture of guilt and irritation.

Louise is very nice, probably a lot nicer than me, and certainly more laid back about house tidiness. Her children are nice, too, and probably better-behaved than mine. However, someone else’s mess is worse than yours, especially if they don’t shop, cook, or pay. I mean, she did buy one meal, but I did about three big loads of shopping, and what’s more, she wandered off to read a book while I unloaded the lot out of the car. I am sure she meant to help; in fact, she kept saying “Can I help at all?” but somehow that doesn’t work: someone just has to get on and do it, the way Sylvia would. When she went, she didn’t empty the waste paper basket in her room, but just left me a big bag of rubbish. I think she’s just an untidy person, but as I am borderline obsessive compulsive, (but without the skill set) it was a bit stressful. Plus, the children were at school, with homework, and trying to keep their noses to the grindstone while other children ambled about with Playstations, was not that easy: as usual, I was the bad guy. Perhaps I really am the bad guy. Occasionally, I looked at Louise and wondered what she was thinking. This hostess really stinks, perhaps, or, “Let me see, why did I come here? The other thing was, that she wanted to sit and talk quite a bit, or maybe she didn’t actually want to, but felt she had to. The fact is, I don’t really like talking to people much – I would rather read or write. Correction: I don’t mind having a laugh with my neighbours, or talking about the weather, but I don’t want to sit about and talk about my relationship with my sister or how to bring up children: it seems like a waste of time. I kept thinking: who cares what you think, or I think – why do we have to sit about and exchange uninformed views on stuff? Louise would be talking away about her mother being OCD (probably hinting to me that I should unbend a bit) and I was thinking about how I wanted to go out and weed the path. What was really weird was she kept saying that she was “not a people person,” whatever that means, to which I was thinking, well, what are you doing here talking then? Also, she didn’t wear any make up, and made a point of saying that she didn’t, and that she didn’t wear high heels ever. Well, fine, and after all I have moaned about Jasmine and how she wears stilettos round the pool, but the fact is that Jasmine is decorative, and Louise is not, and if you are in someone’s house for a week, you should be pretty some of the time, or they will get fed up looking at you. As my father said to my mother when she used the excuse: “Well, they’re only for the house, nobody’s going to see me,” for wearing her M&S slacks that had seen better days: well, we can see you.

When it comes down to it, there is something intensely disruptive about people from “home” coming here. However much you like them, and would not mind them wearing no lipstick if you were in a hotel with them, it’s like having someone keep trying to dress you in an outfit you are trying to take off. Life here is so hugely different – far more than I anticipated – that we need to concentrate hard, get down into it, and shed our old skins. This is particularly true of the children, who need to think Spanish to survive in school. For instance, the school here thinks handwriting and setting things out neatly is very important: they have to use a green biro for bullet points, a red biro for underlining, and so on. Handwriting is very much more decorative, and you have to learn it. Alexander is crap at handwriting, and what is more, very slow at writing in general, being more a number boy: while the guests were here, the headmistress gave him 22 pages of copying – rows of maths problems - to do over five days. Pretty boring stuff, but I suppose the idea is to get him into the habit and make him realise it matters. Plus, as he had a mate here, he didn’t remotely want to work, so got very tearful, at which my guest said she thought it was ridiculous and his teacher must be a bully. Well, whatever. It isn’t helpful, though – we live here, and we have to play by the rules. You don’t get to pick the nice weather and the outdoor life and the music of David Bisbal live in Almería ( I would definitely run off with him) and leave the old-fashioned school rules, the Junta de Andalucía curriculum and the fact there is a shed-load of pointless bureaucracy involved in doing anything official. Swings and roundabouts, what you lose here, you gain there: lo que pierde aquí, se gaña alla.

The end of Mimi

Anyway, apart from that, Spotty-Mimi, the premature goat, died. I had said to Lara that it was her goat, and she damn well had to look after it if she kept it, although looking at it, I suspected it wouldn’t last long. She swore she would, but the second night she woke me up at 1 a.m. shouting that she needed to shut that bloody goat up, what did you have to do to stop it bleating? I said she would make a great mother one day, and put her back into bed, while removing the goat box from her room where she had insisted on keeping it. The goat did not look at all clever, and when I tried to give it some milk from its bottle it just lay there with its head flopping about. You are not long for this world, I thought, so much for Louise’s forecasts that I would end up looking after it, and her wondering how I would manage. In the morning, it was stiff, and I took it up to Pablo’s once Lara had gone to school. On the way up, I passed Maria, Juana’s mother, and showed her the goat. “Muerto,” I said. “What are you bringing it up here for?” she asked. “Just put it in the rubbish bin.” I said I felt maybe I shouldn’t do that. “A ti que te importa?” she said, or something like that, something very Spanish like – “Why bother – put it in the bin, and when you’ve put it in the bin, you shut it and you forget it, it’s not your affair any more! She added that the goat had been born too early and didn’t have the strength to live. I left it with Juana, who ticked her mother off for the idea of putting it in the rubbish bin, and said she would give Lara another one, but bigger and one that could eat properly. Well, ok, but no hurry, I said, since I think Lara’s experience of being foster mother to a goat may have dampened her enthusiasm. This is, after all, the child known as the Evil Empress, who, aged about five and before showing any interest in where babies came from, asked me “how do you stop yourself having a baby, Mummy?”) on the basis that babies cry and are a nuisance. I can see her point, but it’s too late for that.

Self sufficiency

2007-10-14T02:10:00.002-07:00

It has been over a month since I wrote anything. Before, when I had a job, I used to wonder what Liz (the nanny) did, and was often heard to say that I believed she was watching Oprah and/or shagging the local DIY man, Tony. I take it all back. Now that I am a housewife… (Housewife: this is no longer a word any woman believes applies to her, and it has lost all uses that are not ironic. In Spain there is a comedy accent that is “ama de casa”, a housewife accent, which my old tutor demonstrated for me: it was amusing as he was a very English, very camp Spaniard.) Anyway, now that I am a housewife, I quite see there is no time for shagging, watching daytime telly etc. I even regret taking the piss out of Vanessa, 4x4 mother, for claiming her day was so exhausting she could hardly face her tennis lesson.

Blonde flamenco dancers – a future generation

The children started school in mid September. The term runs through to 21 December, no half term, though there are a scattering of local and national holidays and, even better, “días de puente,” or bridge days – the day between a holiday that falls on a Thursday, and the weekend, is also a day off. Friday was a national holiday, the Día de España, and Monday was a holiday in the local town. This particular holiday was a food fiesta: all the local ladies prepare their special dish and then stand at stalls in the town square so that everyone can try. Of course, it is a scrum as everybody has to push to get there before it all goes, and the old ladies are the best pushers. As always, there are free hats, and the little girls from the school do a flamenco demonstration. In the line up, there were 3 little blondes, visibly English, wearing the very Spanish leotards, flower hairpieces, and flamenco skirts and speaking, of course, perfect Spanish. On the sidelines, the blonde parents look on proudly, not speaking more than the odd “gracias” themselves.

There are eight children in Alexander’s class, three Spanish children, the rest are different nationalities. There are quite a few German families here – you can tell, because they sell fondue cheese and sunflower seed bread in some of the supermarkets, and one child is Dutch. Lara’s class is all Spanish, a gaggle of rather wicked looking girls, whom I first saw wearing bright red lipstick and little high heels in the main street: there is no school uniform here.

As I have found out, going in and out of school, up to the football pitch on the hill, in and out of the local shops - this a strange place – stranger than it seemed at first sight. To all intents and purposes it is a little, whitewashed Spanish town, with the traditional housewives, the local bakery, market and so on. It isn’t quite that- it won the lottery a while back so there is money and there are also a lot of Brits –some that drink, some builders, some eccentrics – and the young parents, after a better lifestyle for their kids. They mixed somewhat uneasily at the village food fiesta: there is some backslapping between the races, though mostly the groups divide neatly, and there is, interestingly, an English lady selling her scones alongside the paella. They go down well – I notice one Spanish old lady with six on her plate, laden with jam and cream. But there is also bad feeling: in the British bar, they moan about the Spanish and have a go. There isn’t enough work for some of this lot – mainly builders, plumbers, etc- and they spend the time drinking and bitching. When I see Juan in the square, he greets me with great friendliness and gets me some food to try, but clearly doesn’t like one of the other women, the rather rough and ready mother of Lara’s friend, whom he later tells me drinks too much. “There are some good English, like you, senores, y senoras, but there are some mala gente, bad people,” he says.

But what will it be like in a generation, when those little English, Spanish flamenco girls, and their dark, rather small, stocky Spanish classmates, presumably, intermarry? How will this town be transformed, from a town divided between the dark, sturdy, conservative, traditionally dirt-poor Spanish tradespeople, and the fair, red and bony adventuring Brits who came here in search of the sun and sangria? What kind of mixture of brown-haired, bilingual, small-town children with a streak of adventure is going to result? My neighbour, Consuelo, commented to me that she personally didn’t go into Lubrín because she didn’t like the people – and she meant the Spanish. She said they looked down on her for being a country person, and they never said hello but walked past with their noses in the air. “Y tu también vas al mierdo, coño,” were her words, or something like that. She is a country person, in the best way: in the supermarket today she had no handbag, only a purse, and explained she was not used to carry a handbag and felt she looked ridiculous. I suggested to her that the “Britanicos malos” would breed with the “españoles malos” that she doesn’t like, and produce a really unpleasant generation, but she said that in Spanish there was a saying that “loco” parents produced sensible children. The world is certainly an interesting place.

Crooked line accounting

Nothing is simple here. Presented with a long list of things each child needed – including odd items such as a cardboard box, I was instructed to go to Maria Perez, one of the local shopkeepers, in town and buy them. A queue of other people was doing the same thing, but she had run out of various critical items, such as recorders and boxes. Each time, Maria contemplated the list for a particular class with care, before saying she would have to order the stickers, or the notebook, or the dictionary. You would think, given that the school makes the list, they could just give it to you in advance, I suggested, when it was my turn. She thought for a bit, then shrugged. Yes, she agreed, but they like the parents to use the local shop. Well, they still could, but it would be better if the school ordered them in advance? Yes, but they don’t.

Later, I realised I could have got the whole lot cheaper in the big supermarket, but the point is to support the local shop. It certainly can’t support itself: most of the businesses here are woefully old-fashioned, but people prop them up, and they don’t close. Even the café in Vera, where the South American ladies who run the place cannot take an order, ask you to write things down for them, always break the coffee machine and run out of ice cream, seems to survive, simply because of its pretty location.

The school bus comes at about 8.15, goes past the house and picks up the final child on the road, then comes back to collect ours and the couple in the next village before returning to town. The children take a “merenda” – the 11.00 snack and can eat lunch at 3.00 in the school dining room, before getting the bus back and arriving about 4pm. There is, therefore, no school run. Thank you, the Junta de Andalucía. I was supposed to fill out a complicated form for the benefit of the dining room and the bus, including bank account details and family income. I told the teacher I didn’t want to, really, and she agreed and pointed out that I could just make it up, as nobody would know anyway. I drew the line at making something up, so I just left it blank.

.. and administration…

Later, I had to do emails to Inma, etc, re various bits of admin, like health cards. This is a big mystery. Having inquired at the Ayuntiamento, I pitched up at the local surgery on the right Friday, to apuntarme, register, sign on. The place was full of fat ladies and old men who helpfully directed me to the doctor (wrong) and eventually to the social security lady (right). I spent fifteen minutes in the queue, then half an hour with her, explaining that Sandy and I have Spanish NIE numbers now, but the children don’t, and trying to find out how to get a health card. She said I needed a social security number, but in the meantime she would register the children if I went back to the Ayuntiamento and photocopied their passports and EU health cards. I spent a nice twenty minutes with Maria and the copier, and then returned. This time, the lady gave me some forms for the children and an address in Huercal Overa, near the bus station for me. Later, I called them up, but there was no answer. Inma said the lady was wrong, you can’t have a social security number if you don’t work in Spain, you have to phone Nocastello. This turned out to be Newcastle. I have no idea who I have to phone or why, but perhaps this will become clear. Meanwhile, if one of us needs emergency treatment, I daresay we will be able to cut through the red tape: a doctor comes to a mystery location somewhere near us every Thursday. I asked Inma if she could set up a meeting for the kids to get a NIE number. For the fourth time, she asked me to send me their, and our, passport numbers, which I duly did. When I’m not doing this, I pick up the post in town (we have given up getting it delivered as it is quicker to collect it), and go and negotiate with various tradespeople about the problems in the house such as non-working satellite disc.

Later it’s time to wind down the hill for my weekly argument with BBVA about my bank card, which doesn’t work. It is my third such card. In the bank, there is no window or glass – you stand at a desk and everyone listens and watches. The BBVA man doesn’t apologise because my card – apparently the latest thing in cards - doesn’t work for the third time. He asks me which shops in Vera it didn’t work in, and suggests it may be because they are trying to put it through as a credit, not a debit card, perhaps. He says his own card works fine, and shows it to me. But mine doesn’t, which is damn annoying when you want a vegetable rack. I say Ill have to transfer money into my Cajamar account. He’s fine with that, and points out it will cost 30 Euros, so better if he gives it to me in cash. He gets it out, 10,000 Euros, in an envelope, and I walk off to pay it into Cajamar.

I prepare to go home, via a couple of shops. I buy a present for Phoebe in Lara’s class – fail to find acceptable, non-Disney wrapping paper, and wander about, looking for an exciting retail experience. I never buy anything in Vera, though. It’s just not that big a thrill looking at expandable washing lines and plastic stacking baskets. I arrive home, do about an hour of housework – hovering up beetles and spiders - which makes no impression on the house - and deal with junk mail, ringing Laithwaites for the xth time to say we do not want any more special offers on claret from their Horsham shop.

Spanish long division
When the children return, I do about two hours of homework with Alexander (like pulling teeth), trying to translate laws of physics or ratios for measuring population growth from Spanish, then explain how to answer in Spanish, copying diagrams, etc. As we work, we regularly have sorrowful conversations about how hard it all is. He has to do quite difficult work in a language he doesn’t speak, he points out, tearfully. He is anxious about falling behind, how he will not get a job. He puts his head down on the desk and I feel overwhelmed with guilt. Most of the English children have to repeat a year. Yes, but in Spain this is not really a big deal – does it matter if he goes to university a year later if he speaks Spanish? I say this, but can see he is still unhappy: he wants to keep up with his old class and life, he likes maths and science but has to work on a language. These moments are diminishing, but still happen, as he is still betwixt and between – he still carries anxiety about the future on his shoulder. Meanwhile, I have to spent a lot of my evening doing homework: translating forwards and back, which tests my love of language and of translation, particularly when the subject is population control methods.

Some things are backwards, al reves, here. Later, I lie in bed, thinking about Spanish long division, which Lara – by the way, as happy as a sandboy in Spain – is learning. Why does it have to be backwards- how can 3956 go into 22? Not possible: even after Ramón, my neighbour’s husband, came round to explain it to me. I feel exhausted from housework: the ironing was finished about half past midnight. No Spanish housewife with a cortijo could ever have time to have a shag, or only if she were a slut in the original sense of the word, I imagine. (I mean, as in “and now foul sluts in dairies/Do fare as well as they.”)

Donkeys and other animals

Driving over the hill to Mojacar the other day, I passed 3 cars in 30 minutes, and one of them was a donkey. Also, two South American looking women with baskets of vegetables. Every now and then, though, you see an old man toiling up a road with a mule or a donkey, and you wonder about the life they lead, walking up the hill when everyone else is in cars, going to sell some vegetables in the market. They wouldn’t know about the Internet, would they? They sometimes look at you, as if from another universe. We inhabit the same place, but in ways that have nothing in common. How do they feel – as if they have been left behind in a past that no longer exists, except in small pockets – living a life that most people no longer even remember? I suppose we all get stuck in time, but some more than others. I have decided to get a donkey: very Marie Antoinette of me, no doubt, but I always wanted one, and it was not realistic in Sevenoaks. Juana looks at me and asks me what I will use it for – surely not to go to Lubrin? I say Alexander would like to go to school on the donkey, and she tells me it will take two hours and that she has suffered a lot with donkeys: they are stubborn, presumably, as mules, and then when you poke them, they take off like rockets, or like Sancho Panzo’s donkey, of course.

At home, I find out we have a goat, or Lara does. Pablo gave it to her – it is about six inches big, and its mother rejected it as being too small- something I can see the logic of- there are a lot of mothers in Sevenoaks who would have done that if they could. It is black with a few random white spots, and has been named Mimi, despite my attempt to call it Spotty. I expected it to die, but it has not. It is tottering about squeaking and no doubt will grow into a huge, ugly she-goat, which I will have to feed for the rest of its natural life. However it is very cute now, and smaller than the cats, which is quite funny: they eyed it with disgust and ran off. Sandy is away in Australia for nearly three weeks: he sounded philosophical about it on the phone: we have to hope so.

Good grooming: Spanish hair

We went together to the hairdresser in Albox, where Consuelo went to a convent school. My idea was to be less blonde and English, and Consuelo recommended I go there: she has been going there for eleven years. On arrival, however, it looked pretty dodgy, rather like Yvette’s of Purley about 30 years ago – a pile to tatty “Semana” magazines, and girls with rather blotchy complexions. Used as I am to the smartest salon in Sevenoaks, it seemed a bit short on ambience and I started muttering to Consuelo about just having a trim, eyeing her out of the corner of my eye and noticing that she has a burgundy curly perm. She clicked her tongue at me and said a change was good: she changes her hair all the time. This is true: she has been permed and straightened, dark red, blackish, mauve, and auburn. I sidled into the door behind her.

Ana, the hairdresser, started on Consuelo, then suddenly grabbed me and said I was going to have a “gran cambio,” a big change: I had a lot of grey hairs to cover up, and my colour needed to be different. OK, then. I just gave in as there seemed not much point giving my opinion. She pushed me around the room, bouncing from me to Consuelo, while a tall skinny woman in a denim micro-mini washed her own hair in a basin. If this wasn’t Albox, she would have had to be a hooker, but all the daytime clothes here look designed for a Croydon nightclub in the 1970s so you never know.

During the process, she talked animatedly about how the Spanish like to be more “arreglada,” than the English. Arreglado – arranged - being “soignée” in French, but of course, there is no English equivalent. They like makeup, nails, hair, all to be done properly, whereas, she pointed out, the English go to the supermarket in bikinis, pyjamas, and the men in bare chests. I said feebly that not all English were like that. No, she agreed, clearly I was not, for a start, I spoke Spanish properly, which is generally seen as making me a freak of nature around here. “Don’t cut off too much,” I pleaded, as she grabbed the scissors. “Yes, yes,” she said, crossly. “It’s necessary.” She didn’t take any shit: there was none of the “what would madam like?” business. At the end, she whisked me out of the basin and said, Julia, you are going to be very pleased with this big change. Do I look Spanish? I asked. “Yes, much more,” she said, satisfied. I was darker and definitely more arranged, with flicked up bits bordering on Farrah Fawcett Majors, but in a good way. It certainly was one step up on the straggly ends tied up with bulldog clip that I normally favour: for once in my life, I looked like a grown-up lady. The question is, will it stay that way? I can see myself buying Carmen rollers, and putting them in at home. Carmen rollers – a concept that takes me back to my schooldays. But after all, what was Carmen, if not Spanish and, without doubt, “arreglada.” The whole colour and cut thing cost 52 Euros, which is about £30 I guess, compared with the £195 I was paying in Sevenoaks.

Mala gente in pursuit of work

After the fiesta, Juan took me aside and warned me about Fiona, the mother of a friend of Lara’s who he says has a drink problem and I must be careful with her, she might be mala gente. Her husband used to work with him a bit (though usually he doesn’t employ Brits: they turn up too late, and then stop for a beer all the time). Then she had an affair with this Spanish guy, and a drink problem. Well, she seemed a good time girl to me, but there was a jagged edge to her partying – and she hangs out in the English bar at the top of the hill. There are always a few stray men with bad chat up lines in there, always in search of a bit more money, another opportunity. One of them slagged off my builder, saying he underpaid his workers and treated them badly. He’s in with the Mayor, that’s why he gets work, he said. But I stuck up for Juan, who has been a good friend. I’ve never seen him anything other than polite to everyone. The Brits don’t like the fact that he undercuts them, I suppose. They are all running out of work, and, as Fiona said, after 3 years most people find their savings have gone. What did they expect? I left the bar pretty promptly, particularly when one slimy character started trying to buy me a drink. It was like re-entering Eden being back in the village – peace, and the good people of Los Herreras. It’s only a small town, but to us, Spanish or English, it’s the wicked city.

Last night, wild boar apparently attacked the solar heating for the pool, biting 4 big holes in the tubes and obliging me to get my builders to put a fence round it, which they did, in one day. Not without a bit of a run-in with the pool man, a Brit, who did the usual thing of wanting to have the “what’s wrong with Spain” conversation (the shops shut at 2pm, what a nuisance, they don’t turn up on time, etc etc.) I refuse to enter into it, and watch my Spanish builders put the fence up double quick. Juan tells me he thinks maybe it wasn’t wild boar, but bad workmanship, the pressure wasn’t correctly adjusted (as it would have been if he had been in charge). I like Juan a lot – he gave me his hat at the fiesta and is going to teach me to make migas, the local dish which is basically fried breadcrumbs, but very good. However, I sometimes feel he is trying to control me: he wants me to buy five olive trees from a friend of his, which I don’t really like: we had to drive to go and look at them and saying no was painful. We drove in silence for some minutes before I apologetically said that maybe later….Juan perked up and we started to talk about other things, like the donkey I want to buy. This is the way the world over but especially where it’s poor: everyone wants the work, everyone says someone else did a bad job. Wild boar are a picturesque excuse and certainly do come in search of water, but I suspect neither Juan nor the pool guys are right: I think it was Cheeky Uno, my neighbours’ dog, inspecting a new installation.

Hard sell in a ghost town

The next day, Erelia, one of my neighbours, turned up. Like most of the women of a certain age, she is in a black housecoat, and looks old, though she probably isn’t. She points out that I have made the house very nice: perhaps I would like to buy an olive tree? She is very persistent: it is a thousand year-old one. I say I don’t think so, but we end up driving cross country along the ramblas to look at 3 trees that she owns. They are huge, and there is no way anyone should dig them up – not least because they would die. Erelia is, however, very insistent, and says her brother can do it in his reto. I prevaricate, being English and polite: later, I moan to Juana that I feel like a bone with dogs fighting over me. I visibly have money, because of what I’ve done to the house, and everyone is trying to get me to spend it at their stall. Juana tells me I should just say, no I don’t want your bloody tree. “If I turn up at the house and asks for 2000 Euros, are you just going to give it to me?” Erelia also takes me to see her dead mother’s cortijo in Los Dioses. She says it needs a little work: in fact, it is not much more than a tumbledown stable, with a few wires running round it, and a couple of tiny religious pictures left on the walls. She points out how big it is and what a nice house it would be, hoping I will find an English person to buy it. Her sister, who is very small, with large warts, and extremely sweet, accompanies us – she appears about a hundred. I wonder about whether someone would want this house, but can’t imagine anyone living here, not even a writer in search of silence. The street is completely hushed and I ask about the neighbours. They have all gone, apparently – the young ones have left and the old died, she said. It is only her in the whole street, except for a couple of summer visitors from Barcelona. Around Los Dioses, I see four or five “Se vende” signs – some of them on completely neglected buildings. With one little old lady in black tottering down the alley, it is like a little ghost village, with the bougainvillea and the odd palm tree failing to hide the sad, vacant look of the place,

Self-sufficiency

English visitors arrive a few days later: very nice people, but somehow hard work for me, as I am trying to establish a Spanish routine and find every reminder of England forces me out of step: they are on holiday and I am not. And part of me resents having to talk English – not just the language, but the whole shebang. When I’m with an English person, I have to discuss stuff – school, life, relationships, materialism, her father, my mother - whereas with Consuelo, or Juana, we just potter about and do stuff with the almonds. I thought I might miss talking, but it’s quite tiring, and pointless, especially if you see someone once a year and maybe dont have much in common except your children. My English visitor is surprised that I don’t worry about the children vanishing on the quad, about the wasps and flies, the fire smoking all over the house, or about the winding road, which makes her scream. She asks the usual questions about whether I like it, how long we are staying, what am I going to do? What do I feel about this, that or the other? In a nice way, I mean, but my mind goes a bit blank: I no longer really think about that stuff. Perhaps I never did, anyway, but I had to make polite conversation whereas now I dont have to most of the time: the Spanish don't appear to do that, at least, not round here. I would like a bit more time to write, is what I actually think, but apart from that I seem to have lost the capacity to think ahead: most of the time I have no idea what the time is. Soon, I suspect I wont; be able to make conversation either. You would not expect a place to change you very much, very quickly, at this stage in life – after all, I worked in London all my life until July. From my room, I stare out at the hill opposite, terraced with the grey olives and the greener almonds, a little misty as the early sun rises and watch the farmers at work, being self-sufficient. You can live here on very little – I suppose if you were prepared to, you could live on your goat and chickens. You can’t buy anything really, but you don’t need to, and you don’t need to leave the village much. In London, I was always surrounded by people and stuff – and it tired me out, the way too much choice in a shop tires you out, or Christmas, which no doubt has already begun in the UK.

On our day off, we discovered a cove you reach through a tunnel in the rock and a climb down a rough path in the cliff. Nobody except one naked young man with dreadlocks listening to a radio - white shingle, turquoise water, fabulous snorkelling. It is mid October, and the sea was just the right temperature. It makes up for anything you care to think about. The times Alexander despairs of working in Spanish are getting fewer, I have more Spanish hair, and although I still have a pile of undone admin, and a constant undertone of worry at the back of my mind about working – none of that seems all that bad on a day like this.

Is Andalucía backward? Frontier living

2007-09-23T02:53:00.000-07:00

Es atrasada, Andalucía? Is Andalucia backward?

In the bar Lopez the other day, the conversation turned to guns. Where would we get a licence, I asked Pepe? The thought was brought on after Sandy bought an air gun for the children: he pretended he was going to use it on the local guerrilla cats, Jack and Mabel. “Maybe I would like a gun,” I suggested. I started to whine: “I never get anything – you all get quads and guns, what do I get? Anyway, I can shoot.” Not true exactly, though I have had a go. “It’s very remote where we live: what if someone tried to attack me?” Sandy was quite amenable and informed me that, in Spain, you are entitled to shoot intruders, and even if you kill them, it’s ok. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The subject of guns made us instantly popular in the bar. Pepe is an enthusiast, as the boars’ heads on the wall, testify. He showed us a plaque with several boars’ teeth mounted in gold, and his name underneath. His wife, brother and father in law gathered round the table. The brother offered to take Sandy’s military ID and exchange it for a gun licence – how, was not quite clear. There are lots of wild boar round where we live, he said, he would take Sandy out if he wanted to go. What if I want to shoot? Pepe said I could do a 3 day course in Arboleas. In the old days, he said, you didn’t need any of that, but now they want to make sure you don’t shoot someone by mistake. I can’t imagine anyone checks what you do up where we live. The conversation moved on to laws in Andalucia: there are more than there used to be, but not that many. Yes, it is “atrasada” he said, backward. We had the first wave, which was construction, people coming to live here. Now we need the second wave, infrastructure. Apparently, in two years there will be a fast train to Madrid from Almería, stopping at Vera – things are on the move.

I heard various other opinions on this subject last week, a large part of which was spent trying to get the residency sorted out. The last I had heard of this was early in the month, when Inma had told me to call her back on the 12th, when she would be back in the office. I called.
“No, Inma isn’t here,” the man on the other end said. No surprises there: she is usually out having a coffee when I call. “She’s still on holiday.”
“Oh,” I said. “When will she be back – next week?”
“No, the week after.” Hmm – after my date with the Almería, which she arranged, and for which she and I need to do the paperwork. I got a bit irritable while explaining this.
“She told me to call her on the 12th – I need to do all this paperwork before Friday,” I said.
“Well, what can I do, she’s not here,” her sister said. “She’s on holiday.”
In the end, I called Pedro, the lawyer, who had introduced me to Inma, and got him to call them. A woman called back and said Inma would call me later that day, not to worry. No te preocupes. If I didn’t worry, nothing would happen, would it? What would have happened if I hadn’t called Inma? Would she have called me? I explained to the lady that Inma needed to ring the house number. She usually likes to call the mobile, but it doesn’t work in the house. Fine, fine, no te preocupes.
Inma didn’t ring that afternoon: I knew she wouldn’t. In the morning, Pedro rang and asked if she had called. No. A bit later, Inma finally called and said she had left messages on the house answerphone. I explained that there wasn’t an answerphone; she must have called the mobile. She insisted it was the house, so I agreed there must have been a mistake. Anyway, we got a meeting for Wednesday in Albox, famous for its hundreds of illegal houses, occupied by Brits.

In between, we had the people who sold us the pool heating over: Johannes is German and Marianne Dutch. They have lived here for four years and don’t speak Spanish, so are very much ex-pats. They talked about the things that were wrong with Andalucía – how long it all takes, how the banking system is insecure, how the whole economy is a house built on the shifting sand of the corrupt construction industry, which will fall away before long. How Zapatero isn’t really clamping down on it at all – how Vera is full of the Russian mafia. (True, you do see a lot of women wearing gold and leopard-skin skirts and a lot of bling in the day - apparently Russian). How the train to Almería will never be built in two years, more like ten! During all this I got a bit bored. I mean, it may well be true, but they came and lived here, didn’t they? They like the climate, presumably, they like the way of life. Complaining about it is like marrying a girl because she is beautiful and temperamental and then moaning that she doesn’t keep time and isn’t a good housewife. I suppose that often happens, particularly, I imagine, if the man is German and the woman Spanish – not that I have ever met a couple like that. It is unlikely, like a horse mating with a zebra. Being an ex-pat is a strange way of life – you are neither one thing nor the other. This is always going to be the case, even if you learn the language to a high standard, but I can’t imagine it is comfortable, long-term, if you don’t – like always travelling and never arriving.

Frontier country

I went to Albox on Wednesday – the first time I have driven there since we lived here. It was an interesting drive – the shortcut had road works, so I ended up on a dirt track, as so often happens, then hit more road works in Arboleas, and drove a way in the dry river bed before finding the road again. There are times when you wish you had your husband’s 4x4. This all contributed to the strange, Wild West feeling of going to Albox, which is a bit like a cross between Hurghada, where we used to dive, and the Hove, with a bit of Alabama thrown in. The main street looks to me very like the main street in a cowboy movie, only bigger. It also has that feeling of being on the frontier, of rednecks and pick-up trucks, and dust. There is construction everywhere, and mis-spelt English signs hanging on one chain, saying things like “All your legal needs HERE!” in different colours. There are quite a lot of large people with tattoos walking about, but there is an alternative life too: for instance, a health food shop, run by a nice lady who reminded me, weirdly, of the deluded woman in Catherine Tate who obsessively dates people on death row. I used to think Albox was just an armpit, but now I see there is something about it. The Brits who come here come here because it is cheap and sunny, but you have to have guts to get up and go, and you can feel that in the air. They are rough round the edges, but at least they have edges. More importantly, for the Spanish, they are the mainstay of the local economy. The Mercadona supermarket in Albox is one of the most profitable in Spain - and almost all the shoppers are British - living on the profits of the house they sold in the UK, their pension or savings, the income they can make shuttling back and forth to the UK to work, or, Sandy cynically suggests, to sign on.

I did all the paperwork for the residencia – it took a couple of hours, including waiting for Inma to walk to the bank and get the paper stamped to show I had paid 6 euros for the process. She was very sweet, and I felt bad about getting cross with her, especially as you can hardly be cross with someone who has a jar with about 50 pencils with fluffy things on the end, and a lot of pictures from kids saying “Inma I love you” all over her desk. How long will it take, I asked her. Oh, months, she said, there were hundreds of Romanians and Bulgarians coming in, which was slowing everything down. We would have to wait months for the certificate, which we would have to return to pick up later, once notified. We had a conversation about Andalucía; I asked her what she thought about the corruption. She said it was getting a bit better: before, you could just build a house anywhere – in the middle of a rambla, dry river bed, if you liked. Now, it was a bit stricter.

Afterwards, I bought the children’s stationery for school. The process here is that you get a list of what the children need on the first day, then take it to a shop. The list has odd things on it, like “a cardboard box”. I had started in Lubrín in the local shop, Maria P, who was out of a number of the things required because there were more children in the school year than expected. I asked her if it wouldn’t be easier if the school gave her the list in advance, and she agreed, but said they didn’t do it like that. The Albox shop had everything you could think of, but needed to be paid in cash, as did the health food shop – presumably because you can’t trust a cheque in Albox.

Slow, slow, quick again

More experience of the Andalucian slow, slow then quick rhythm. On Friday, we went to the “Office of Foreigners” in Almeria, to complete the residency process. We turned up, clutching the email confirming our meeting, and the passports, photocopies of passports and forms. The office was modern, surprisingly smart and quite empty, with an electronic queuing system, and a few people sitting waiting for their numbers to come up. However, my heart sank when the man on the desk said that Sandy had an appointment, but not me. I envisaged another few months bureaucracy. Go over there, he said, pointing to another desk. There, the lady briskly consulted the computer, then told me to give her the paperwork. She looked at our forms, and processed them in about five minutes, handing us back our residency certificates. I looked at her in disbelief. Is that it? Yes, she said, these days we don’t bother with sending out cards later. You just get a certificate, and that’s it. Take a copy and don’t lose it. That’s amazing, I said. She said it was quicker, and with all the hundreds of Romanians they had every day, they needed to be quick. What do they do here, I asked. She shrugged and grinned. Some of them work, some don’t. Now they are in the EU, they can live anywhere, whether they have work or not. I wonder if it’s as quick if you are Romanian. I suspect it is – in this way, the Spanish are much less finicky than the English – they didn’t give a damn what animals I brought in when I arrived whereas DEFRA clearly requires you to fill in forms in triplicate for months before you can bring your dog back.

Some things come into focus

Things are slowly resolving themselves, and while we are still on the frontiers, the dust of the language is beginning to settle. In Almería, I found I could buy Epson printer ink in the Alcampo supermarket, which is the size of Bluewater, and I found out from Sylvia that the reason you can’t buy answer machines is that Telefonica have an automated service like BT Call Minder. I managed to get this without difficulty – and was pleasantly surprised that I understood the conversation and the instructions of how to set my personal message. Learning a language surprises you that way – just when it seems you are not getting better at all, you suddenly realise the focus has improved, like a fuzzy picture slowly becoming clearer and more detailed. The children, too, are beginning to speak Spanish surprisingly fast – what sounded like a foreign language is now at least partly familiar, with the landmarks of words like “pencil sharpener,” “scissors,” and “cardboard box.”

Sylvia was on the phone from Madrid the other day, and overheard me talking to the electrician who was on his way out. His accent is about as thick as they come. How on earth do you understand them? Sylvia asked, having a French moment and sounding rather disapproving. I expect I’m getting used to the Andaluz accent, I said, soon I’ll be leaving the “s” off the end of words. Sylvia tutted, but I pointed out the people were very nice. “Nice, well yes, I am sure they are nice,” she said, dismissively. But you can’t dismiss it. Long ago, when I worked at Savory Milln, my secretary, Anna, a large lady who would have fitted in quite well in Albox, had a notice on her desk that said “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” It was aimed at all the bankers she worked for, who were all a lot more important than they were nice, and I don’t miss them a bit.

I dont know how different Andalucía is from Spain, but it probably is "atrasada", at least here in Almeria, the poorest and shabbiest part of the province. You do queue up and wait for ages in shops. People don't necessarily do things when they say they will; their sense of time is more elastic. The legal framework is probably less rigid. There is illegal construction, and corruption in local government and no real evidence that they will capitalise on the money flowing in from British immigrants. What happens when people stop buying in Albox, when the construction stops? According to Johannes, the economic plans put forward by the local districts largely involve plans to double, or triple, the number of residents they have. There is little evidence of sustainable industry beyond agriculture, food processing, and some low-end tourism. In the middle of all this live the British, shopping in the Mercadona but largely using UK plumbers and electricians, and the Russian mafia, laundering money through the developments on the coast. You have to wonder where it will all end. Whether you like it here or not is another matter - down to whether you like it hot, rough and ready, and don't mind the scruffy construction and tattoos, or you prefer it picturesque, professional and elegant in Florence or Provence. There are no sights here, no horse riding, or country walks, except those you find out for yourself. Most people dont like it enough, which is why our Spanish builder can't attract English money to buy his old farmhouses. Could I help him, he asked me, find some English buyers, preferably with money? I'm in two minds as to whether I want to do that. I'd like to help Juan, but the fact is, I like it the way it is, not the kind of place Tony Blair would ever go on holiday.

Women's work of all kinds

2007-09-11T10:28:00.003-07:00

Bad office days

Work is always on my mind. It must be guilt, but it's time it went and I started to feel relaxed and Andalucian. Not yet, though: I keep thinking about it, even when I try not to.

You can't win. When I worked, I used to get annoyed by Daily Telegraph “research shows” articles proving that children of working mothers grow up weird. My mother worked, and I don’t feel that weird. Or if I do, it’s for different reasons. What about if a woman works part-time – are the kids only part weird? Anyway, I had to defend my lifestyle. Therefore, I used to believe in the right to work, and probably even the dignity of work because I worked. Now I don’t, I have to defend not working.

But the fact is, work wasn’t that dignified, and I ended up with the right to too much of it: at least a 12-hour day including the commute - plus the finances, nanny and child management and weekend housework. Secondly, the work itself was not exactly a mission you could be proud of, like being the first woman in space. Or even the first dog.

Worse than that, my recent working life made me so unhappy I used to cry in the toilets at work on a regular basis. I would be inclined to think this was just me being pathetically un-adapted to the workplace, but Teresa in my team, plus my friend the company lawyer, admitted when I left that they thought I had been constantly bullied: for being a woman, younger, and different from the rest of the management team. Well, I can’t prove it, and I wouldn’t try, which is sad. Some poor woman has succeeded me, and if she gets the same shit, I won’t have warned her. If she’s meek and mild, she’ll be fine, but if she tries sitting in the wrong chair in a meeting, woe betide her. “That was a bit assertive, sitting in that chair,” the commercial director told me in my second week. “What do you mean – it was free, and the closest, ” I said. “Opposite the boss – obviously you’re sending a message. You’re a bit aggressive,” he told me. In the end, I think I was the one on the receiving end of the aggression. This commercial director is a man who was known to leave his wife locked in the car on occasions, with the window rolled down an inch, the way you do for a dog. He also used to boast that he travelled third-class on the train, or took the coach. This was supposed to save company money, except that it used to take him so long to get to places that he arrived late for meetings, sometimes so late they had finished.

“Why didn’t you do something about it?” someone asked me, probably a journalist. Well, nobody would believe it, for a start. This was an apparently respectable FTSE company, but in a board meeting about recruiting female engineers, a director said “that’s half the student population we’d like to penetrate, ha-ha! And everyone laughed, or smirked. The same director spread a rumour that I was having an affair with my boss – presumably the only reason I could have done well at work. This was followed by speculation that I was having sex with every male I was friendly with – which in a company that was 90 per cent men meant I was very promiscuous, allegedly.

When I joined, the HR director personally came up with a tape measure to measure the size my office could be. He said there were rules about the maximum size. I protested weakly that I would like a table and chairs for meetings, but gave in when he went bright red and shouted at me that this would mean my office was as big as the Chairman’s! (The Chairman, in fact, never turned up to work, so his office was pretty spacious under the circumstances.)
Later, I realised my office was the smallest management office, bar that of poor old Neil, whom everyone ignored. All this is without the anonymous letter, and so on. Allegedly. I couldn’t prove any of it, because I didn’t tape my time there. I wish I had, except that I couldn’t bear to watch the tapes.

So now, I am doing housework. Broadly defined, that is, since it includes the land, and the admin. There’s more of that than I expected: balancing the huge, dusty house, with the huge, neglected fields, and the endless washing, ironing, with the administration of our Spanish life, with teaching the children Spanish. “You’ll never get any credit for anything you do in the house,” Jasmine told me bitterly. True, but as I’m not being paid, I don’t really want credit. It’s better to be without credit than to be at the mercy of a lot of middle-aged men that bully you, something I never, ever want to go through again. I said before that Jasmine had objected to my stopping work, because she thought I was giving away power. But when I explained the work experiences I’d had to Jasmine, she said: “Oh, I see. You didn’t stop working because you didn’t like the work – you stopped because you were being bullied. Well, I understand that. Men are all bullies, I’ve found that out. It’s why I wanted the boob job – to have more power over them.” The logic is she needs to be able to warn her husband that, if he doesn’t appreciate her work, she can go elsewhere. Sadly, this wouldn’t work in the office: boobs only get held against you, as proof that you are either a) stupid b) available or c) having an affair with the boss. I thought things had moved on, but they haven’t, or at least not in some parts of the working world. The same director used to comment on my clothes, as in “I can’t sit opposite you when you’re wearing that blouse,” even though I was always meticulously prim at work, and never showed an inch of flesh or gave an inch of encouragement. I think that was what galled him: if I’d been a jolly barmaid type, or snogged him at the office party, he’d probably have been my biggest supporter.

People say I’d have had a better experience in a more female environment, like the media. But hey, I worked in the media, and in PR and I still didn’t see women owning any shares, or making any money, except the lucky one or two who were in at the beginning, or made it as someone’s PA. So I guess I’m bitter and bruised. I wonder how to advise my daughter? Be a journalist? A housewife? Start your own business and get rich? Marry a rich man, then kill him? Be an astronaut? Go into space?

Magazines and junk mail

Moving house has been one of the hardest jobs I have ever done. There is an endless daily grind of tasks that never seem to let up; I am still moving house, even though I have been here for nearly 3 months. In particular there is the job of dealing with junk mail which arrives in large batches from the town post office, weighing down the poor Spanish post lady.

I would advise anyone moving house to start thinking about junk mail about a year in advance. There is a lot of it, and if you forward it, you will get car insurance flyers for the rest of your life. It takes about 3 goes (annoying, from Spain) to get the companies to cancel the mail, and even then, they warn you it will take another 3 months before it stops coming. When you call the car insurance people, they often say it wasn’t them that sent you the mailing, but someone else – that is, once you have got through their call centre and listened to their recorded messages about how they record the calls for training (what training?) and how they may pass your details to third parties (yes, right, tell me about it already). I thought I was being efficient setting up a mail forward system for a year, but in retrospect, the best thing is not to forward any mail from the UK – after all, the important people will always find you and this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to escape the clutches of the junk mailers, which I visualise as large vulture like creatures cackling evilly crouched over heaps of Boden and Past Times catalogues.

Home news from abroad

Much nicer to get the Sainsbury magazine, which I never read at home but now seems pleasantly nostalgic, with recipes for things I couldn’t or wouldn’t cook here. I called them to ask them to take my new address: they were happy to keep sending me them magazine and the lady told me that someone in Texas had written in to say how she likes reading the recipes when she feels homesick. I can see myself, before long, writing in letters whining about how I can’t get proper seedless grapes or icing sugar in Spain (you can’t).

I also read a Marie-Claire which one of our visitors left; it has already begun to feel strange, like a foreign magazine so that I feel a bit like an anthropologist reading it. Yet again, this was the “green” issue – and the editor had written something like: “It just isn’t cool to be seen with a plastic shopping bag any more.” Well, maybe not in Soho, or wherever media ladies hang out, but let me tell you, lady, in Almeria, carrier bags are still in. They are used to carry your shopping, and then you use them as a bin liners afterwards. It’s another world, and there wouldn’t be many takers for that not very nice Anya Hindmarch recyclable bag: it isn’t shiny or made of nice colourful plastic, so who wants it?

As an anthropologist manqué, I can view UK environmental hand-wringing dispassionately. Maybe it’s a weird cleansing ritual, because people are guilty about being so rich and wasting so much stuff. But what gets me is it’s so parochial: it’s as if nowhere outside the SE of England exists – as if there aren’t places where people are too poor to worry about whether it’s ok to carry a plastic bag. The word “global” appears all over the place, but maybe that means smiling, cocoa farmers that supply Starbucks, not trailer trash in Alabama or only-recently lower-middle people in Almería.

Holidays

The electrician came round to do the rest of the light fittings in the house. He is like a farm boy, very nice and almost unintelligible, though I am getting better at the Andaluz accent. His mother has almonds, and he spent most of the holiday harvesting and shelling them, he said, rather pitifully. I don’t think people here have holidays, much, although Pablo told me his son and Maria, with a couple of others, have rented a house somewhere not that far away. They don’t go abroad, anyway. Even the rich people in IBM Madrid just seem to go to smart Cadiz, and Sylvia, who is cosmopolitan, goes to chic Agua Amarga, not far from here. Why go away when you have sunshine and beaches on your doorstep? It’s hard being an almond farmer here. But it’s also hard being British: you might be a professional but you live in the rain and if you want to go away, you have to pay up hard-earned cash for two weeks trying to get enough sun to last the rest of the year.

Signs and symbols

2007-09-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

Setbacks… and recovery

We have been here for the best part of two months. In some ways, it feels as if the hardest part is over: the cardboard boxes have gone, we have cars, and a Spanish calendar on the wall shows the various feast days as well as school start date – September 17 running right through to December 21 as there is no half term. Sandy has found a way of living with the travel and while we don’t – and apparently can’t – have broadband, we are managing with the dial-up connection. In other ways, though, I know the hard part – making proper friends, fitting in to the community – not the English one, but the Spanish - is yet to come. We are in limbo: we have left the UK but not yet arrived in Spain. I have tried to explain this to the children, when they had their homesick moments: you know what you have left, but you don't yet know what you are going to find.

Autumn on its way

The weather has begun to change for autumn, although it is only September. The over-40 degree-days have gone – days when the air coming in through the windows was like a hairdryer on full power. I can leave the shutters open most of the day; the air is cooler in the morning and evening, and we have had a night storm, with tremendous thunder and lightning. It only ever seems to rain here at night, and then in the morning the scent of the jasmine is more powerful, and a different, fresh air hangs over the courtyard – just until the sun burns it away an hour or so later. The back of the house is cooler: this is the "levante" side of the house, while the front is the "poinente," side, where the sun sets and the wind is stronger. Sitting out on the terrace every evening, we observe the sky for clues about the morning, but it seems unpredictable. Mysteriously, cloudless, starry nights turn into cloudy, heavy days and cloudy nights into completely blue mornings. Probably Antonio, who drives his hundred-odd goats back and forth every day and night, could decode the signs but I can't. We have already acclimatized to the heat enough to feel cold in the morning, even though it is probably still warmer than noon on an English summer day. I have bought various books on the trees, plants and birds here, but am still not sure what most things are: I know the agroroba, the carob tree, which sheds long, sweet-tasting brown pods all over the slope at the back of the house, but can’t name the desert trees Lara likes, like bare monkey puzzles or giant, half-naked cow parsley stalks. Swallows and martins fly low over the pool and live in the garage, having been exiled from the roof, and there are doves, or something like doves, all over the village. Having looked up its call, I was ecstatic to see, at last, a dramatically coloured and crested hoopoe at the side of the road, walking about casually the way the book says it does. It seemed quite miraculous, seeing the bird from the book, just where it should have been, after many days getting out of bed and peering out of the window to try and spot the owner of the distinctive cry.

Thoughts of Marcel Pagnol

Meanwhile, we have tried to get to grips with the land. Juana has helpfully instructed me in the right times to pick higas chumbos - prickly pears (in the morning, when the spines are softer) and figs for bottling (when the white streaks appear) She told me about the prickly pears after Sandy had already been seized with enthusiasm for harvesting the produce and had, despite gloves, covered his whole body with prickles. Sensibly, he was not wearing a T shirt, but sweating away on the hot track that runs past the house, using a stick and a ladder. Afterwards, Lara sat beside him and pulled all the prickles out, patiently, like a devoted servant. Meanwhile, I was toiling away, moving stones for about half a kilometre of path down the side of the land, dragging out the coarse and very persistent grass and weeds and cutting back the trees that haven’t been pruned for a couple of years. It took about a week, much longer than I expected, to do one side of the path, heaving stuff down into the rambla and coercing the children to help move stones on Alexander’s quad. They entered into the spirit of it when offered a percentage of the going hourly rate for the work and managed to lift quite enormous stones, arguing constantly about who should do what and buzzing around the field int their little helmets like wasps. By the end of the first part of the work, I had no nails to speak of, and my arms were grazed all the way from wrist to shoulder. Then Alexander and Sandy took on the almond tree nearest the house. It took them two days of bashing it with a cane pole to get most of the almonds (four large bags) down and out of the green outer shell. It was quite funny seeing them sitting there under the tree like a couple of peasants, only less efficient. Alexander had his usual financial fantasies about selling them almonds at a vast profit to the Zurgena factory. Later on, Pablo came over and remarked that he had noticed it had taken them two days to do one tree, and did I want him to do the rest? I asked him to leave Alexander a few, as we thought it was good for him to get the idea of working on the land into his head. At least it’s a change from the computer screen. Pablo turned up with the local hired machine, an amazing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang type tractor which backs up to the tree, opens a circular wing all round the tree and then bashes the tree till all the nuts fall off before unloading a huge pile into the trailer. Pablo and I had a beer while watching the man do the field: he told me he gets 15,000 kilos of almonds from his trees. Some years the price is higher, if there are less nuts, but one way or the other the price to the farmer is always low, and the profit is made somewhere down the chain, when Tesco or whoever flogs the little plastic envelopes of ground almonds for making cakes. Pablo appeared to have no real interest in where the almonds go: I told him how much the packets cost and he just shrugged: nothing is likely to change how much he gets paid for the rather gruelling task of cultivating and harvesting the nuts.

Scratching away at the hard surface of the land, or somehow capture the over-abundant fruit that spills off the trees daily, I have had very vivid memory of the beginning of Jean de Florette, when the naïve city hunchback toils up to the old family house, laden with furniture and Marie-Antoinette optimism about country life, only to fail consistently in all his attempts to breed rabbits or grow cabbages. I can only hope my neighbours are nicer than Ugelin and aren’t going to block up my well- or, more likely, inflate the price of water. We have already had one attempt to sell us an hour’s extra water at 9,000 Euros when the real price should be 1,500 max- but in this case my neighbours act as the good guys, warning us about the opportunist who owns the water rights and needs to make some money to offset the losses he has made on his own finca. However, there have been some successes: I have made several bottles of figs in rum from the many black fig trees, using Nigella Lawson’s recipe. The trouble is that there are so many. It’s sad to think how much they would cost on a plate in London, when I can’t even manage to pick up the windfalls.

Under the bonnet

The Landrover is ready, after three tries at the paperwork. The very charming young man from the concession in Almeria kept meeting us for coffee, but then slapping his head and saying he hadn’t got the right papers, or needed something else. The last attempt was the most tortuous: he turned up at the bar in Lubrin, as arranged, to take Sandy to Almeria to pick the car up – apparently now ready and registered. When he turned up, miraculously only half an hour late, he admitted that the tracker, which insurance requires, had not been fitted. I pointed out that we couldn’t drive it without the tracker, as I had explained to him on the phone, because the insurance was not valid. He made a “really? You don’t say?” face, although we had had a long conversation about it, and suggested he call the insurance company. We could take the car now and have the tracker fitted later, maybe? No, I explained, BECAUSE THE INSURANCE IS NOT VALID WITHOUT IT. You don’t say! Think of that! In the end, when I got to what I think of as the “¡es inadmissible!” moment, he started to take it seriously and call round to locate the tracker, which he had previously told me had arrived and was being fitted. It turned out it hadn’t even been delivered, but miraculously, when I started the process of hitting the roof, he found it and organized the fitting – after lunch at 3pm as the mechanics couldn’t work before then, of course. This is one of the lessons I am learning: it is necessary to be extremely assertive if you want anything done. Saying it in a normal voice or in passing will mean you are ignored. Unfortunately, this means engaging in constant bollockings – but weirdly, nobody seems to hold it against you. On the contrary, they seem to expect it, and to behave a lot better after you’ve shouted than before. The same thing happened with my Ford. After 6 weeks, I still don’t have a second key. On various occasions, I turned up at the garage, asking vaguely and politely for it. The son, a languid, gangling twenty-something, would wave a hand at me from behind the desk. “Hola, Julieta!” No, no key! Why not? Well, these things take time. And by the way, he said, could I drop him some more paperwork? He asked, for the third time, for Sandy’s NIE number and the padronimiento, the certificate that shows we live here. I pointed out I had already given it to his father, and he shrugged, saying his father forgot stuff all the time.

Eventually, I went down and asked for the father, or alternatively, the boss. Suddenly, father plus another, bigger boss, were there, and with every sign of energy and enthusiasm, were talking on the phone to the key people .It turned out the key hadn’t actually been ordered at all, but now they would order me two, and register them with the police, a process they were supposed to have completed anyway. Father wrote me his mobile on a card and said if I brought the car in he would also check it over for me, no worries. I played my pathetic woman card, and said I was worried about being up in the country with only one key, if something went wrong. Don’t you worry, mujer, they said, if anything goes wrong you call us and we’ll come and get you in a car. Don’t worry, it will all be sorted out this week! Well, we’ll see. I just know I’ll have to call them on Friday, and they’ll have forgotten about it. Then I’ll have to go and give them another rocket, and finally they’ll order the key.
Bad car week

All in all, we had an unbelievably bad car week. We went to Vera beach with the Adkins, who were staying, and, about 50 yards away, the same, one-key Ford car got broken into – apparently by passing hippies/gypsies who forced the lock and nicked the navigator. Vera was invaded with them, apparently – a change from the usual retired English people and pleasant Spanish hairdressers and supermarket workers. A few days later, when we went to Almeria to pick up the Landrover, tracker and all, the Ford started to smell weirdly of burning rubber. Lara, ever the drama queen, stalked out and said she couldn’t stand to sit in that smell. We ended up under its bonnet at 9pm in a garage by the roadside, having left the closing Ford/Landrover concession some half an hour earlier. It was dark, and we had to try to read the Spanish manual, then rush into the massive supermarket which fortunately sells everything, including brake fluid, and buy something (in the end, a kind of kitchen funnel with a hose, the actual purpose of which remained opaque) that would work to decant water into the radiator, which is stuck in an inaccessible position. The manual said nothing about how to reach it.

The same day, earlier on, Sandy had brought the new quad back, and it had broken down in the middle of the campo, leaving him and Alexander to walk back. Profusely apologetic, the very nice family at the quad shop came and shook their heads in disbelief, took it apart, and said it must be a “tonteria” (something stupid) like dirt in the fuel. At 9pm yesterday, they came up and took it away, shaking their heads again, and said it would be sorted out by the end of the week. In this case, I believe them: how complicated can a quad engine be? Also, they really are buena gente: a father, son and daughter who spent ages teaching Alexander to ride his small quad and gave him a free helmet into the bargain.

At home, meanwhile, the fancy new coffee machine broke down. I took it back to the Electrodomesticos in Vera – which involved driving round the narrow one-way streets on a Saturday, leaping out and dropping it off while trying to avoid more damage to the car. The girl in the shop and her colleagues spent some time poring over the manual and attempting to make coffee in the shop. Then she said she would replace it with another on Monday, which she duly did. I pulled up in the one-way system, leapt out and took it home. The next day, it broke down again, in a different way. Of course, I had to shout a bit on the phone. She said to bring it in and they would solve the problem. Another one-hour round trip to Vera, in which a van nicked my parking space and I ended up parked in a dusty alleyway on a pile of stones which was the only place I could find. The girl said that actually, this Taurus wasn’t a very good machine and perhaps I could change it for another, better quality one? A la tercera vez, va la vencida, third time lucky, she said, and laughed. I have to hope so. I have brought it back and so far, it works, but I am looking at it out of the corner of my eye, wondering how long it will last.

It is not that nothing broke down at home – on the contrary, things always did. However, here, I am not working, so I am not just going to go and buy a new one, which was my usual easy way out of things. Also, I had a Mercedes at home, and there was no point looking under the bonnet, because there was a big sign that told you not to touch it, but to take it back to the dealer. I haven’t looked under the bonnet of a car for a long time in fact, probably not since before I had my Toyota Carina, which was the best car I ever had – cheap, and never went wrong. Life is less automated here, and there is a good and a bad side to that. You don’t need a dryer: the washing is dry within five minutes of pegging it out. But there are times when you don’t want to learn to fix it yourself.

Children's worries

We had another terrible day, too, the day after the Adkins family left. The children had two weeks of fun with their friends, and then felt grim and desolate. They were both in tears: Lara because she will miss her best friend Natasha (“I will NEVER have another best friend like Natasha, why did you split us up?”) and Alexander for more complex, nearly-13 reasons. He spent a day looking miserable, then finally erupted in tears and protests of “you don’t understand.” It emerged he was worried about a number of things:

1) He wouldn’t make any friends here, it was too remote and there were no people. Yes, there are English people, but they aren’t my type, they don’t think like me. This is true: most of the Brits here are, not to put too fine a point upon it, a bit basic. Alexander, his social sense already finely honed by his massively snobby UK school, has picked up on the fact that he is now among the sons and daughters of failed plumbers and pool engineers, not bankers and lawyers. Hmm.
2) He would fall behind with school work. The school is not a proper big secondary, it’s like a primary, there isn’t anything to do. Yes again. It is a rural school: there will not be a massive IT facility and a music studio. The school work will be different: primary is behind the UK, though it all evens out in the end.
3) There is no big town here, he is cut off, there isn’t even broadband. True again.

After he’d said all this, I felt terrible and assailed by doubts. I wondered if I had been really selfish bringing him here, and depriving him of the benefits of a more sophisticated, expensive school. Would he become a village idiot, zooming around on a quad and forgetting how to do quadratic equations? At the same time, I knew perfectly well that a lot of the doubts had been put in his mind by the friend who had just left, who is still at the snobby school, and doesn’t have the quad, either. He probably wanted to even the ground out, by telling Alexander it was all very well having a quad and riding around the rambla, but he wouldn’t get a good job later, and would have to have a squat local barmaid as a girlfriend, instead of a glossy Sevenoaks model.

Night doubts

It was a bad night, though. My doubts extended themselves to myself: will I be cut off? Have I done the right thing stopping work? What was the point of all those years invested in my good career and earning potential, now I have thrown them away? And, more subtly, isn’t it naïve to think of escape to the country when the people here spend all their time trying to improve their lot, and their children’s, so that they can aspire to being lawyers and bankers and escape the tyranny of bashing almonds off trees for a few euros? I felt as if I had a succubus sitting on me all night, and woke up exhausted, not least because of the hours toiling away with the rake.
Books, signs and symbols

But the morning is always different from the night before. I took my coffee out to the back, where you look over the threshing circle to the mountains and see the sun rise. Since I have been watering the garden every day, all the flowers have begun to bloom: the jasmine, the mimosa tree, and a pale purple tree something like a bougainvillea, but with trumpet-shaped, paler flowers. The tree next to the garage has orange, trumpet like blooms; the roses are coming out in the flowerbeds near the house. A small amount of water has an astonishing effect. Alexander, engaged on the almond tree, appeared to have forgotten the day before. Later, we went down to the school, and confided Alexander’s concerns to Doña Isabel. Yes, she said, a lot of the English children were “fatal.” They had no support at home, and they struggled. But the Spanish children were good students, and plenty go to university. The state system here is standardized, so what they learn is a required curriculum: the children just need to work on their Spanish. We took away books: I promised them I will make sure they know the content in English, while they catch up with the Spanish. But by this time, Alexander had already lost interest in his future and education, and was lost in fantasises of a safe he wants to buy from Amazon to keep his earnings in. He spent most of the day bargaining with me: how many Euros if I move those stones? How many Euros if I get the figs? Well, maybe he will be successful in business, in which case, he won’t need education at all. As I have often reminded him, many of the most successful entrepreneurs were thrown out of school, anyway – (it was a mistake telling him this though, as of course he went and repeated it to his teachers, along with the fact, also imparted by his mother, that Einstein’s school report allegedly said “this boy will never amount to anything”.)

That night, we continued reading My Family and Other Animals, a routine that stopped when we had visitors. I pointed out that Gerry in the book, who turned out to be a top naturalist, had no real “formal” education, and apparently only mixed with local peasants and his family on Corfu. The children were not convinced the book was actually “true” – and wanted to know why the other children in it didn’t appear to either go to school/university, or work. I had no answer for that, but in any case, I found it reassuring, even if they didn’t. Books are a great comfort, serving this useful purpose of shoring up my decisions. There is always a book that makes your own mad, irrational choices seem likely to turn out well, so all I need to do is read plenty of books about people who have left riches for rags and turned out fine. Kind of the opposite of Cinderella, I suppose.

While waiting for these to turn up, I have continued my way through Don Quixote, but have added some other titles to my list. Sitting in the Bar Plaza, I was approached by an old man who looked rather like a sailor, or at least, wearing a cap. I was reading a day-old newspaper: they are kept on the freezer in the bar, and he cracked a joke about how they were not actually fresh, despite living there. He noticed Lara, reading a Puffin book of jokes (very easy, and she had read it about six times) and said she should be reading Don Quixote. I said maybe it was a bit hard, but I was reading it: he said, she should have the children’s edition, which I could get in Almeria. He then instructed me to note down various other things I should read, including specific poems by Lorca, which I duly did. I must read them in Spanish, he insisted. He had been married to a Frenchwoman he said, and things were not the same in other languages. Of course: I look forward to seeing him again; he is one of those characters that haunt the Bar Plaza, so no doubt I shall.

Meanwhile, the conversation with Doña Isabel was reassuring, and, what is more, the books she lent us belonged to someone I have not yet met, called Julieta, perhaps a teacher in the school. I thought maybe this was a sign: I have always been inclined to feel warmly to other Juliets, as there are so few. I am bound to make a few friends, but in any case, it doesn’t bother me that much, as I am really quite happy on my own. The trouble with so many people, as the children found, is that they can easily make you doubt your own mind. Books, on the other hand, make you surer of it.
As does religion: well, I have to think I am being guided, or I wouldn’t have done this in the first place. When I had my conversion experience, about twelve years ago now, Martin Waller told me over lunch in that French restaurant in Charterhouse Square that he likes, that my synapses were misfiring, probably. I recall it clearly: he is an atheist, of course, and we talked about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, which we had both just read. The synapses might have misfired; I wouldn’t be surprised, but then love might just be a chemical reaction. Or, it could be both a chemical reaction, and a transforming experience. I’m not with Martin. Materialism doesn’t tally with my experience and it’s too depressing. The fact is, the conversion experience, all of five minutes, has lasted with me for the twelve years since, and being religious, I see symbolism in everything. If I pick up a book, it often has a message, and this helps to stop me doubting the path I’ve chosen. And living out here, surrounded by mountains, and plants that burst into life after a few days’ water, the post may not come for days, and the broadband may not work, ever, but you are never going to run short of messages

Dealing with wasps

2007-08-31T06:15:00.000-07:00

A 700 year old olive tree

We went to Hortiflor, the Vera nursery, to look for some more trees for the land, which still looks rather bare. The main field is mostly almond trees, but a lot of them have a bug, which turns them black; they bleed a kind of gum, which attracts wasps, so it’s double trouble. I have had to cut a couple down (not personally, you understand, but by asking my neighbour to come round with the mechanical saw). A large part of the nursery has rows of large trees, including olive trees, some of which are enormous; these are the most expensive trees they have, at around 1,000 Euros. They grow very slowly, I am told, so it can take hundreds of years for them to mature and develop the thick, twisted trunk that looks so picturesque. One of the trees, not for sale, is 700 years old, the nurseryman tells me, from the Middle Ages, really. It has a certificate of its history and used to live in a monastery. Strange to think what it has seen. We chose a smaller and more modestly-priced one, to plant by the house for the future. I suppose it will outlive the children and grandchildren. I had similar thoughts when I hung the painting of my great-aunt and grandmother on the wall the other day: I collected it from Frankfurt when my great-aunt died; it has also lived in Switzerland, America, and the UK and I imagine will continue to travel long after the descendents of the people in the picture are dead. I am not sure if it’s reassuring or not, but it calls to mind one of the few lessons I remember from school, when our English teacher told us we would always remember the poem she was about to read. This was, inevitably, a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the poem was The Poplar Field and I still remember it almost in its entirety: the first verse is the one that was supposed to stay in our head: The poplars are felled; farewell to the shade/And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade: The winds play no more and sing in the leaves, Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. The last verse was the one the olive brought to mind: “’Tis a sight to engage me if anything can/To muse on the perishing pleasures of man/Though his life is a dream, his enjoyments I see/Have a being less durable even than he.” How true, except that in the case of the olive it is the other way around. Nobody cuts the trees down here, or nobody did: now they are being put into pots for people like me to plant elsewhere, at a price, but at least, unlike women, their value rises as they age. I can’t remember the teacher’s name though I can picture here: but she achieved what she intended, which is more than most.

Meanwhile the almonds are ripe, and Juana suggested to me I pick them. They are worth about 7 Euros a tree, so no, I thought. I suggested to her that she could have them to add to hers, which were lying out drying on big sheets, and she accepted. We wondered what happened to the kilos and kilos of almonds that grow here: they sometimes cook with a kind of almond flour, but what else? Then Johannes, a German gentleman who moved out here to start a jojoba plantation, turned up. He said there was a European shortage of almonds, which are needed to make marzipan, and for decorating cakes. This is because the Spanish, for instance, don’t grow them properly, he said, the way they do in California. They have all these little fields, like ours, with the farmers harvesting them with a cane and some nets: it’s just not efficient. In California, there are rows upon rows, proper, commercial orchards. He sighed. I don’t know if his jojoba plantation is efficient yet: he used to work on the marketing side in Germany and came out here to give it a try. We sat and chatted with him and his wife, Marianne, who is Dutch: He commented on how things here don’t work, or sometimes work and then sometimes don’t and on how different it was in Germany. We could agree with that; then there was a bit of a silence. We discussed marzipan –which, having central European parents, was part of my upbringing, and particularly the making of marzipan mushrooms, and potatoes, for Christmas. My father always made mushrooms; they made potatoes (much easier, I have to say, since a potato is yellow and has no features whatsoever, whereas the mushrooms have to have brown caps, coloured with cocoa.) We talked a bit about the Tirol, and he said when he went back to southern Germany, he wondered why he didn’t live there any more: it was so beautiful. And clean, of course, people don’t chuck their rubbish on the side of the road the way they do in Spain when they find a beauty spot. More sighs and silence. The thing is, he said then, is I can’t live anywhere else but here now. It’s the climate you know – I don’t like anything else any more. Yes, well. Spain isn’t efficient or clean a lot of the time, but there you go. It has something you don’t get in Southern Germany, cuckoo clock pretty though it is. But they do make good marzipan in Germany: it is too sweet here, when you can get it, though Johannes let us know that at Christmas you can buy proper German marzipan in the Lider supermarket in Vera which is of course, a little piece of Germany in Spain.

A moral issue: Michelle, and the wasps

Michelle, the other Inglesa in Los Herreras (well, she is Welsh, and as I noted before, also originally something else, I would guess, West Indian), came over half way through the day. She said she needed a favour: could I drive her to Vera. I haven’t met her before but once – but the boy, Guy, constantly pitches up looking for the kids. He is nice, but a bit slow. Very slow, in fact – shouldn’t matter, since he is clearly kind, but I do get bored. Michelle said she needed to go to Vera to pay her Endesa bill as she has no electricity in the house: it has been cut off. I didn’t at all want to go to Vera; it is an hour plus round trip, without the time you spend there, minimum, and it was roasting hot. I asked if they were open in the afternoon – a lot of offices aren’t in August. She didn’t know. Could she phone? No, she had no phone, because no electricity. She also has no car (broken down) and no moped (broken down). Basically, she has no money, whence all her troubles, and also not much common sense – the two things being related. She came out here from Cardiff, never having been to Spain (“I always liked the idea of it, see”) and thought she could rent out teepees in her back garden to holiday makers. There aren’t any holiday makers up here, though, and if there were, you couldn’t charge the much: Oliver and Helen, who used to run this house as a Casa Rural, went bust, as far as we can make out. You couldn’t realistically charge anyone more than a handful of Euros to stay up here – and that’s if anyone wanted to come up here, where there isn’t anything except a bit of rough walking and bird watching (hoopoes, eagle owls and so on). The teepees have disappeared, but Michelle still has six dogs (disapproved of by neighbours) and a satellite dish. She just stood there while I tried to hint I didn’t really have any plans to go to Vera today, feeling guilty, but really not liking the idea of sitting in the car with her for two hours. Sandy could drop her off the next morning (he had just left for Vera about an hour before she arrived). She said she yes, but the taxi back up would be very expensive, she didn’t know what she would do really. She doesn’t speak any Spanish, so that makes it worse for her; she has no real friends here. Part of me thought I ought to give her a lift – the idea of being without car or electricity up here is pretty appalling – but part of me was really pissed off with her, a) for being so useless in the first place –and b) for expecting me to sort her problem when we don’t even know each other. It’s not like borrowing a cup of sugar, going into Vera. In the end, I said I’d let her know if I was going in later on and she wandered off. Afterwards, I felt continuing irritation and guilt. If she had been Juana, whom I very much like, I wouldn’t have thought anything of taking her into Vera; in fact, I’d have enjoyed it. But it’s Michelle, who sits about in the same Vera market kaftan, looking like a lump. This is completely unchristian, since I well know the vicar would say that I get no Brownie points for being nice to Juana whom I like, only for being nice to Michelle, who gets on my wick. I thought about this, and thought the right thing to do would be to take Michelle to Vera. But then I asked Sandy and he pointed out that if I did that, she would keep coming back and expecting me to give her lifts. I told myself this was a good point, though it clearly didn’t make me any more in the right, morally speaking.

Later on, I killed about 20 wasps in the kitchen. It is late summer, and apparently they fly lower and are more intrusive just before they die off. Anyway, they keep coming in and stinging me: one was in my bikini bottom when I put it on in the morning and I got a huge and painful bite on the bum, much to the amusement of Sandy and the Adkins, who are visiting. I felt pretty vengeful to the wasps afterwards – and killed a lot in the way Sandy had demonstrated – wait till they settle on the one window that is not shuttered, then squash them with a wineglass. The amount I killed is nothing: when Edouard was here, he went on a mission to kill all the wasps in sight with the pool net (breaking it into the bargain). He laid them out in rows by the pool and we asked him if he was going to make them into a pie. I pointed out he could not kill all the wasps in Almeria, and he said in a mad voice that he intended to do so. Wasps get you like that. However, while I was massacring them and they were collapsing in heaps all over each other and crawling about in dying throes, I felt as if I were a Nazi in a concentration camp. It didn’t make me stop, but I did feel pretty appalled. I don’t really like killing things: I normally rescue spiders, beetles, etc, but I draw the line at wasps. No doubt this is bad, but what is more, I had this weird feeling that the rest of the wasps round the pool knew what I’d done: a few got very aggressive and swarmed round me in the afternoon, perhaps in revenge. I thought about Michelle, too, who was having a large bonfire out by her house in the dark, and wondered if she would have revenge of some kind. Maybe in the next life, all these things will come back to haunt me. I have to hope not. But the fact is, even though I thought all this through, it didn’t change anything. Christianity just does not account for the fact that some people are deadly dull; if you are just put on this earth to be good to everyone it is like the point of going to a party being just to behave well while you were there. In which case, you wouldn’t got at all, particularly not if there were wasps, and people like poor Michelle.

Learned Helplessness
I am driving faster and faster down the twisty road to Rambla Alhibe and am generally developing a new skill set: fixing things that break in the kitchen (previously done by the nanny), and so on. This is a good thing: while snorkelling at the Villaricos beach yesterday, I was thinking about how I had learned to dive despite being scared every time I went down. Even snorkelling is potentially scary, though you couldn’t keep me out of the water and I will stay in for hours: sometimes there is something spooky down there that makes you head for shore. But if you didn’t do these things, you would end up like Mrs Mercer, whose daughter Penny was at school with me. Rodney, her husband, did everything, including the driving: when she drove the car, she leaned forward and clutched the steering wheel, stopping if anything came on the other side of the road. Actually, my mother did drive rather the same way, holding on with a grim face and set teeth 1as if the car was a bucking bronco. It would be quite easy to get like this if you didn’t drive often and let your husband do it: in fact, before we lived here, Sandy always drove the car in Spain, mainly because he likes driving and I don’t. The first few times I did it, I thought it was hard; now it is easy. So you have to keep doing new things to avoid forgetting how: a lot of the women we know, in particular, have said they couldn’t come here on their own because it would be too hard to drive the car. No doubt men think things like that, but they are not allowed to say them, they have to get on and drive that car. I think about this whenever I feel wimpy about being out here; it sometimes feels strange, and I get a nameless anxiety that I will end up like Michelle, a fish out of water. Will I ever get the hang of all the things I am supposed to know how to do on the finca - like picking the prickly pears, which we did all wrong. We should have gone out in the morning, when the prickles are not so sharp; instead, Sandy got them all over himself and had to make Lara pick them out while he sat there like a large hedgehog. I had a long lecture from Juana on when to pick the figs: at one point for drying, another for bottling. The stem must twist right off easily if they are mature, they must be really mature to bottle, but can be "a punto" for drying. I expect I will learn this stuff by next year. Will I, more importantly, find a purpose other than picking fruit? Maybe, but in the meantime, least I won’t end up forgetting how to drive, swim, or ride a bike.

Jamon, the food of love?

2007-08-25T01:50:00.000-07:00

Spanish ham

We went for a massive meal at La Tasca in Lubrín. It was not meant to be massive at the start, of course, but we were with six-dinner Sandy, who keeps saying things like “just a light lunch” and then serving up an enormous haunch of meat. It turned out to be very good, despite the line of silent old men at the bar, who all turned to stare at the obvious foreigners. There is a restaurant at the back, one wall of which is the wall of the rock behind, decorated with local rustic artefacts. The set menu was 15 Euros though we didn’t eat off it: Lara had a steak the size of her head, for instance, but the mistake was to eat the huge plates of garlic mayonnaise bread, tomato bread, and jamón, before embarking on the main course. Of course, the children have two stomachs, one dedicated to ice cream, so were not even groaning on the way to the car like me, and that was with my jeans undone. At about ten, after Sandy had said the place would be mainly for tourists as it was too expensive for locals to eat out, in came a group of local Spanish: the nice lady from the supermarket, who looks like a friend of Miss Marple, very smart, with a man and another couple. Ten is normal restaurant arrival time here: we are sometimes too hungry to wait though at home we often don’t cook till ten and eat around eleven. The food was excellent, including the wine, Ribera del Duera which is apparently a la mode, more than Rioja, for about 20 Euros, which is more than five times what we normally pay for nice supermarket wine, usually Albariño, from Galicia, which costs £8 upwards at home.

The point of all this about food is to talk about Jamón Jamón, so good you say it twice and with a capital, like the movie. Jamón seems to me to be close to the essence of what is Spanish, particularly when you compare it with Ham. I am not knocking Ham, but Ham is not a good word, for a start. In literature, oafish people have faces like hams, and fat ladies have legs like hams. It is fat and pink, making you think of Henry the Eighth, and large, arrogant noblemen riding through Yorkshire and exercising droit de seigneur on the local kitchen maids. It is a bit uniform: Jamón has streaks of meat in a lot of fat, particularly the best Pata Negra (black foot) jamón. The meat is dry and succulent at the same time – in fact, you are best to leave it out before eating as it often starts a bit dry but then starts to get greasier. I am making it sound revolting, but it is delicious.
In fact, Sandy has always been a Jamón man and in the past, used to smuggle legs to the UK in his suitcase, or sometimes in mine, hidden among the underpants. It caused consternation among people who visited, finding a large leg with a hoof in the larder, particularly when it had been there a while and was not so fresh.

Food has always been uppermost in Sandy’s mind. He was about three stone lighter, I would say, when I first met him, but he was already working on plans to get fatter. When accused of being fat, he sometimes agrees, and says he can get quite a bit fatter in the next few years, and starts pointing out people he views as targets, like the man on the beach whose wife had to roll him over, because he couldn’t do it himself. Other times, he denies it, and points out that his jeans (or his kilt) still fit him. I have pointed out that they are not the same jeans; they may be Levis, but they are not the same ones, and the kilt has an adjustable waist, or place where the waist would be if you had one. But Sandy just smiles complacently and says he is not fat. In fact, I have suggested to him he may have reverse anorexia, where you look in the mirror and think you are thin, even though you actually are very fat. I am sure he is trying to take me down with him: it is not easy when you are constantly made to eat “light” meals, but fortunately age has improved my metabolism and what with all the heaving stones about I am sure I have got thinner again since the “kilos” which Pablo and Juana pointed out I had put on. Either that, or I have got reverse anorexia too and soon I will be out of the jeans and into a housecoat (there is a nice selection in Vera market).

When Sandy and I got married - in Grand Cayman, which sounds romantic but was actually so we could spend the wedding money on three weeks’ diving – not very romantic although it does look it in the photos. Our two divorced diving instructors were witnesses and a bit unsure about the whole thing: Sandy had been deep diving on the day and was a bit high. I had been to the hairdresser, at the insistence of a Texan girl called Leanne staying in the hotel, and been given a plait like a poodle, which I took out under the shower afterwards, plus had had quite a few cocktails. I had also been marched to buy some “lingerie,” having admitted I only had a T shirt with “The bigger the Johnson, the deeper the dive” on it, Johnsons being the fins I used to use. “You got to get you some wedding night lingerie,” she shrieked (Leanne was a great shrieker and could whistle between her teeth: she also told me “if anyone comes on my land, I shoot ‘em). She made me get a kind of baby doll affair, very nylon, which was doomed from the start. The service was conducted by the Reverend Vernon something, who said in a heavy Caribbean accent that “Juliet and Sandy, love is a beautiful ting.” This is the only line I can remember, although Sandy always claims I promised to obey him, which seems unlikely and anyway I haven’t. We had the wedding ceremony at about 4 in a pretty sunset and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening drinking and dancing in hotels: I can’t remember much about this at all for obvious reasons. On the way back from the dancing, Sandy had realised he was hungry and started to moan about chicken. He was staring out of the windows, looking for a rotisserie, but everything was shut, and his moaning got worse and worse. When we got back to the hotel (the lovely, very Caribbean, Spanish Bay Reef (little huts, boardwalks, fans, but no mod cons and certainly no 24 hour food: you ate round one big table with the hosts and other guests), Sandy started pacing about like a tiger and said he had to find some food. He got the phone directory and started looking for a takeaway – ages later he found a pizza delivery place and ordered a huge pizza. Meanwhile, I had retreated to the bathroom and put on my lingerie, feeling rather ridiculous. “Quick,” Sandy said. “We have to go up to the front, in case the delivery man can’t find us.” I put on my rain mac over the top and we went and sat at the front. Sandy pounced on the pizza when it arrived, and soon after fell asleep with the relics on his chest. In between, I had opened my mac and demonstrated the outfit. “Yes, very nice suit, " he said. This set the tone for the future. Food has come between us, I remarked to Sandy, and if he gets fatter, it might in practice. But in fact, I do prefer a man to be quite fat; it is more reassuring and of course they can’t run very fast, though Sandy, with his military past, is deceptive – like those large animals like rhinos and hippos, he appears immobile but can suddenly move quite fast, particularly, of course, if food happens to be passing. The other day I looked at him trundling up the road on Alexander’s quad bike, with his new short haircut – his face has got round like a bear’s or a cat’s so that really he should have some whiskers, and he made me think of that story in the paper about the Russian circus bear who used to ride a bike and then escaped and then knocked a postman off his bike and rode off on it into the woods, never to be seen again. Anyway, the fat face is quite sweet, and actually I prefer it to the lean and hungry one he used to have.

It is not, however, more capital R Romantic, something that fooled me when I was young and stupid, or stupid-er, I should say. But all that is water under the bridge and it is quite a relief in most ways. What worries me is that it makes writing this quite boring; diaries are supposed to be about love. My last surviving diary (age 11 to 15) had plenty, even if large parts related to whining about having to play hockey in an aertex shirt, and I know my university diaries did: however I threw them out some time ago because they were too embarrassing. What is more, I couldn’t even remember some of the incidents, down to the names of the men or the events. On my nineteenth birthday, I got so drunk that I had to be carried home and I actually remember lying face down in a gutter. It was down to pina colada cocktail, which I have never drunk since. Now, I am lucky if I have two thirds of one bottle of wine, and then I have to lie down with my zip undone to recover, and I have Sandy, who will drink the two thirds anyway and leave me with a third, or perhaps a quarter.

But I can’t see that writing can be that interesting without any romance in it. It is that bright unpredictable thread running through the everyday fabric of life even though, it is all bound to end in tragedy. Passion only goes one of two ways: middle age or violent death: you either get poisoned and stabbed like Romeo and Juliet, or you end up sitting the dances out, like Mrs Bennett, and trying to marry off your daughters. I was worrying about this, as clearly I am still alive so must be Mrs Bennett (thankfully,
I have only one daughter and before we left for Spain, Sandy had already told the school we would not bother about secondary school but just apprentice her straight to Stringfellows, given Lara’s propensity to take the stage in skimpy costumes.) Rather depressing, sitting on the sidelines, with romance vanishing down the corridor like the last guest at a fancy dress ball.

Having said that, it strikes me that while I was not looking, I had been with Sandy for nearly 15 years, and something had happened that I had not noticed, which was not exactly either death by poison or being a wallflower in the dance of life. I hesitate to describe this: it seems rather like the tiger in the fridge – it vanishes when you open the door. The tiger in the fridge was often evoked by my father, who convinced me there was one in there when I was young and it seems appropriate for Sandy, who is certainly a tiger just outside the fridge. The tiger is part of the family, but always at the edge of your vision. It gets larger every year, from eating all that food in the fridge, and yet because the door is closed, you often forget about it. It’s a kind of passion, but I suspect you don’t notice it is gone, until it isn’t there.

Meanwhile, back to Jamón, as I am supposed to be writing about Spain. At one point in the film, Penelope Cruz (so famous here that she is just called Penelope in magazines), is marching down the road in the nightie-like outfit she seems to wear in most of the film, trying to shake off the man who is pursuing her, I think on a motorbike. The man works in a jamón business, and at various point, tries to seduce her by offering her ham – you know it is an aphrodisiac, he says, though Penelope brushes him off and is clearly in no need of ham to get her started.

Is it? Maybe. In any case, in the land of Jamón, I think there is probably more passion than there is romance, more death by poison than sitting out the dance. I am not sure Spanish women ever sit the dance out but carry on seducing younger men and doing what they feel, like the older woman in Jamon, Jamon. Only in a Spanish film would the climax be a fight to the death conducted with legs of ham, which is somehow not funny but dreadful, though too melodramatic and not real enough to be exactly gruelling.

We used to go to a beach near here at a place called Rodalquilar, where there is a weird pink hotel in the middle of the desert landscape. The other day, Sylvia told me that the story on which Bodas de Sangre, Blood Wedding, is based actually happened there, here in Almeria.: a dance in which fate and tragedy bring individuals to an inevitably, bloody consummation; people almost seem to long to die. Sylvia also suggested we go and see a bullfight in Madrid. I pointed out it might be rather cruel (poor bull) and she agreed, sort of though I am not sure she got the “poor bull” bit - but said in a matter of fact way that it was also very beautiful. There is only really art where there is blood: you just can’t imagine a Spanish Four Weddings and A Funeral: there would have to be at least a bit of violence and some explicit sex. Light and ironic though it may be, the wonderful Volver has a body in the deep freeze before long, and off goes Penelope, with that switching, get-away walk she does.

Meanwhile, locally in Almeria, there is plenty of drama. In Rambla Alhib e, there is the always sulky Vanessa in the bar, who looks as if she might end up battered to death by a leg of ham at the side of the road: in fact, the whole family are straight from Almodovar: Pepe with his, alleged, fancy woman in Mojacar and Virginia, angrily squeezed into her denim skirt, appearing breezy but harbouring a bitter grudge. If they don’t provide some entertainment, I shall have to look further afield or use my imagination, such as remains to me sitting here tapping my fan at the edge of the ballroom.

Don Quixote, being Spanish

2007-08-23T09:33:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Don Quixote, in English, I admit, on the basis that I will read it in Spanish once I understand it, probably rather a Quixotic thing to do. I started it after we had driven through La Mancha, because Alain had told me you could only understand Don Quixote once you had done that. So once I had done the journey, I just had to read the book. Well, it is pretty long, but it turns out it is quite hard to put down, though I can't say why. From what I remember of Chaucer, it is a bit like Chaucer - the characters are ridiculous, but have great dignity and likeability despite it - like Chanticleer, or Basil Fawlty. It is not remotely like Dickens, which is what it says on the back of the book. I hate Dickens, really, it makes me think of those horrible Victorian cards of cats wearing bonnets, or Struwelpeter, cruel and cartoonish, though I did enjoy the TV adaptations.

Wondering about what Don Quixote might be like made me wonder whether Spanish and English have some deep similarities. After all, a lot of Brits live here (though not many Spanish in the UK and who can blame them, this is a much better place). The sense of humour here seems much fiercer, but there is a kind of persistent irony about the human condition which I recognise from Britain - seeing it as ultimately doomed and ridiculous, but still dignified. I am not sure the French would admit it was ridiculous at all, for instance.

The children's Spanish is beginning to take, interestingly. They have good accents, not yet Andaluz, which is probably a good thing since my tutor told me it was a comedy accent, and they are picking bits up. I am jealous, as I can see they will speak better than me, despite all my work. Being an adult is so hard, like not being able to bend. They say language is fixed in the palate by about age 7, I think; how unfair is that? You can change in other ways, but not in this. Does this mean I can't really be Spanish, but maybe they can?

I discussed this with Penny when she came. Is it because the Brits are white, or red, with dyed blonde hair and tattoos, that they look British? Penny thinks it is not just that; it is the way they dress and walk. My neighbour agrees: she has commented scathingly on the fact that all the Ingleses walk around in "tirantes" (straps) and shorts. Well, they think they are on a permanent holiday: they have dirty flipflops, etc. By contrast, the Spanish are smart, with the women's little feet in rather dinky decorated sandals, and fitted, frilly blouses, whatever their age. By contrast, the middle-aged English tourists in their floppy linen look drab and shabby, while the younger ones in their straps and red shoulders look what we in Shoreham would call pikey.

I have therefore made an effort to make sure I dress properly: I do not go out in shorts, but a skirt and sleeves. Also, in Vera, I went to the shoe shop intending to get some suitable shoes: there was a two for one offer, which meant you could get two nice pairs for about £50. I ended up buying Lara totally inappropriate silver glittery shoes, with a heel, which I pointed out to her she would never have been allowed in the UK. She said yes, but we are not there, are we? Good point. Children in Spain are spoiled, we know (hence the chaotic holiday camp, no discipline at all, not like Club Med, for instance, which is French and a bit like military service) and we are already caving in to it. However, I rather like the way they spoil girls. Everyone makes a point of telling Lara she is guapa, pretty, which I suppose is good for you in the long run. I dont know what the Spanish proverbs about bringing up children are, but I doubt they have "spare the rod and spoil the child" in any case.

Garden and house work, Heidi-style

2007-08-23T08:21:00.001-07:00

Breaking stones

A couple of days with a spade and various sharp implements, trying to make a tropical shrubbery, ha ha. The earth is red, very red, and hard, with a lot of stones, more stones than earth, really. I had an idea in my mind of what I was going to achieve, but the stone moving took a lot of time and I misguidedly did it in a bikini, thinking I could improve my tan at the same time, and instead got a lot of scratches on my stomach, as usual. I was also rather aware that my neighbours would think I was mad: what I really need is a stout tabard of the kind sported by Juana.

The thing is, it is not really "gardening" in the English sense of the word: a kneeling mat from the Lakeland catalogue would not do you any favours here. Perhaps Spanish mountains are harder than Lakeland ones: the bit of kit I bought to try and solve the Spanish washing machine + "mala agua" (bad water) problem (clothes come out with same number or more stains) has not proved remotely equal to the challenge. It very quickly went fluffy (a bad sign, according to the instructions). Mind you, the Lakeland stairbasket did come with us: my neighbour was quite mystified as to what it was and had to prod it a few times to understand why you would want a basket that sat on the stairs. She looked at me as if I were a bit wanting, and I could see her point; I explained to her that our house in England was tall, and we used it to take bits and pieces upstairs at the end of the day, but she just shook her head and changed the subject.

Then I went to the Viveros (garden centre) to get some plants, which in fact were trees. Trees are good value: three large palms for 90 Euros. Two men with a pneumatic drill (confusingly referred to as a hammer, un martillo), came and dug holes for the palm trees; it took about two hours. The man commented that the earth was good, although hard, and he also tested the well water by drinking some of it and said it was good, although very hard. This is in fact true of everything around here, goats, people. I was told that I must water and water them: they need a lot of water at the outset, then they put down their roots, and no longer need water, because this is almost a desert, and they are desert plants. Well, the beginning is the hard part, as we know, weedy white plants trying to harden up and get stuck in.

Mother rang and asked what we were doing. I think she thinks we are doing interesting things, like sightseeing, but we are not. I am doing a lot of housework, which I quite like. Before I left, I had a lot of warnings from people, including old boss Peter. "What will you do? You'll be bored!" I was thinking about this at length, while doing the stones. It was not exactly fun, since it was hard work, particularly when I ended up heaving wheelbarrow loads of small stones from one side of the field to the other. You have to put down small stones, on top of plastic, to stop the weeds coming up in the winter. I know this, because Consuelo told me, in no uncertain terms. "Yo te lo digo!" she said, several times, which is, literally, I tell you it. I would say she was saying something like, you better believe it. If you don't put the plastico down, then the weeds, the mala yerba, the bad grass, comes up and comes up and you will never get rid of it, she said, very firmly.

Is this boring? I am not bored, though I suppose the job is potentially boring. I am not sure I ever feel bored, in fact. I was pretty bored at work, sitting in meetings, listening to people talk about the pension plan, or the tax charge. I would be bored on the train without a book, if I was not tired enough to go to sleep, but I am not sure I ever experience boredom during the day, if left to my own devices. (Unlike Alexander, who constantly approaches me and says "I'm bored.") I think my mother could be bored here: there is no culture whatsoever. But for me, this is a definite plus. Having been to China and interviewed the man from CITIC who had to break stones in the Cultural Revolution, I realise that I am about to say something massively insensitive and trivial if I say this is my little cultural revolution. I dont know how long it will last but for now I would much rather move stones in my field than have to sit in a company meeting, or for that matter go to a Van Gogh exhibition (Sylvia tried to make me in Madrid, but I wriggled out of it). No, I am not bored, not a bit. What is more, it is quite interesting housework: washing down the terrace like the pool boy, every morning, watering the plants, and running endless pool towels through the washing machine. Ironing has always been my least favourite job and it is not very necessary: if you peg things out tight they come out quite flat, and I have given up ironing bed linen or anything the children wear. There are different challenges: even with the mosquito net stretched on frames on all the windows, a lot of varied insects come into the house - hornets, wasps, beetles, huge woodlice - and large amounts of dust. They don't favour hoovers here - Isa, who came to help clean up after the builders, looked at mine with suspicion - but a broom and a dustpan on a stick. You have to wonder where the dust goes; I think it is just being moved from place to place, but I am falling in with the system; brushing is more therapeutic than hoovering, and a lot quieter. The next thing is to give up fizzy water: this is very English, I am told, and what is wrong with flat water? In this case, maybe flat is best.

Speaking of weedy, white people, I was reading Lara Heidi. We had a tear in our eye when she and Clara left Frankfurt and went back up the mountain to Grandfather Alp. Well, of course Clara was not going to get better in an international financial centre: enough to put anyone in a wheelchair. Now here we are, just like Heidi, down to the goats. I have always thought there was no point to a place without mountains and after all, what does "flat" mean?

So it's uplifting, though I couldn't say why, exactly. It's like what the man said about happy families: it's much easier to write about shit happening than it is about things being excellent, not least because it irritates other people to hear you are having a good time. I noticed a few relieved silences on the other end of the phone when I said I was leaving London: of course, this could just have been because people were thinking: thank God, that annoying cow is off. But I chose to think it was the feeling of the rats when one leaves the race. One less to compete with, and outstare across the maze. This was particularly true of the women rats, but there were a couple of male ones who made remarks like: "You'll still be doing something worthwhile, just in a different way," or in other words "Aha! That's you marked down to zero!" I care less about this than I did a month ago, and even less than a month before that. At this rate,my concern about not being employed in a job will be fully depreciated by year-end. After all, I was thinking as I moved large stones round the field the other day, this way my work directly benefits me; I don't even need to do yoga to make up for sitting at a desk, because I am not stressed. On the other hand, when I was in the office all day, it was sometimes hard to recall the relationship between the large pay cheque and all the mentally poisonous stuff Iike being polite to old men who put their hand on your wrist and say "Just a minute, dear," when you try to talk. Yes, you, you nasty old ex Company Secretary.

Having said that, being white and weedy was not easy either. Life in the office was like Heidi's when she went to Frankfurt: there was a reason, but it didn't in any way offset not being in the mountains. Now, even if I have to survive my selling my almonds (which I am due to harvest next month), I am not going back. I am in a permanent state of excitement and disbelief which I suppose I am susceptible to just because I find being abroad to exciting. I remember this when I went to Asia for Euromoney: hiring a car and driving into the rubber plantations around KL, or wandering round the Great Wall and buying a rabbit hat .This is not as exotic, and the hats are not as good, but I have constant butterflies all the same. Driving down the hill in the hot sun yesterday, the radio playing some kind of flamenco, I had to pinch myself again and say: this is where I live. I don't have to go back at the end.

Meanwhile, the cats are clearly extremely pleased with the extent of their territory, lying about like tigers. The space means they don't squabble any more - this does not seem to apply to the family, unfortunately, but maybe that will come with time.

Visitors from the past

The postwoman told me her great grandmother used to live in our house. She is therefore related to Remedio, whose mother lived here, though I am not sure how. Remedio's daughter is the one who walked round the house with me, telling me where the pigeons used to live, and where the almonds were dried, remarking on how it had changed. Everyone round here has lived in the house, or knew someone who lived here, but then, everyone is related. Sid, my brother-in-law, said all being related, either by blood or by being a godparent, etc. is a way of making sure people in small communities don't top each other - their interests are entangled. This is what we are doing when we give Pablo our old car, or advise the postlady on how to deliver a letter to someone with an English name: getting sufficiently entangled. I hope by the time my children are teenagers, their roots will be deep enough that they will not know they got transplanted.

Slow, slow, quick, slow, slow

2007-08-15T03:09:00.000-07:00

Talking of tempo, it took me about 3 hours to publish my last entry. I have got used to walking away and doing something else while I wait for an internet page to appear, praying all the time. At first, it was pretty frustrating, but now I think to myself that I haven't actually lost any time. I am doing other stuff, even just thinking, or staring out of the window, while I wait. I dont know when I last did this: in London, about a year ago, there was a poster ad for the Economist magazine at train stations. The message was something like: you won't get anywhere by staring out of the window. I suppose the creatives sat around saying, hey, let's tap into the Calvinist guilt thing but in fact I am sure people are supposed to their best ideas in the bath, or staring out of the window, and not reading the Economist.

Time has changed. My first ever job at Platts, which was excellent, because a) it was well paid and b) involved one long day's work talking French to some oil traders, maybe half a day taking them to lunch and then sending a newswire late in the evening. What is more, our boss, a laid back Australian who sat with his feet up on the desk, did not take issue with the fact that all the recent graduates he hired did their job in one day and then spent the rest lolling about in the Dover Street wine bar or enacting fantasy soap operas in the office.

At that time, we had no email and I am not sure if we had a fax; we had a telex, which produced a lot of long strips of paper, and transmitted our market reports. Until about 9.30, when the post arrived, you didn't need to do very much: after you opened the post, you did your job and didn't write to anyone, or answer letters.

About twenty years later, in my last job, email had piled up by the time I got in at 8.30, and I spent most of my day trying desperately to clear my inbox out, having arguments with people by email or reading cross emails sent to people in my team. I am not sure I had much time left to do my job. I felt like Sisyphus, trying to roll the boulder of too much communication up the hill, but what has actually been gained by all this communication and everything going so much faster? I ask Sandy this question, since he is supposedly an advocate of technology, but he doesn't seem to have an answer. I expect it has made the UK more productive than a remote Pacific island with seashell currency, but we all, with the exception of some nutcases at Goldman Sachs, know where we would rather live.

Slowing down is not that easy. I still can't sit still for long, but I will keep trying. I just hope Spain doesn't change in the meantime: there was an item on RNE radio the other day about a campaign to get Spanish people to read more, specifically on the beach. Apparently, people here don't read as much as other Europeans, and it is true you don't find that many bookshops, nor do you see people reading, mainly because they are having a good time outside. I am not sure this ought to change: it is much better staring into space, and too much reading makes you anxious.

Love is blind

2007-08-15T02:39:00.004-07:00

Love is blind and looking back on some of the boyfriends I thought were sensitive and talented when in fact they were just pillocks, I see that is true. Well, there is not really anything wrong with trying to see the good in someone, but you can take it too far, especially as there are shrinks for that. But now I suspect I am doing it again. Before we left the UK, I irritated Sandy by only playing Spanish music and watching Spanish films for about a year.

Me: How about this? Jamon Jamon, it sounds good.
Sandy: Silence
Me: Jamon is ham in Spanish, you know. You like ham.
Sandy: OK, if you like. Watch what you want.
Me: It has Penelope Cruz. (In a short nightie, most of the time: this is the movie that made her famous.)
Sandy: Silence.

Later on, Sandy suggests we don’t always listen to Spanish music.
Me: What do you want on – Queen, I suppose. Or Meatloaf. (These are the only 2 bands Sandy really likes, except perhaps the Doors, though he has been known, under my influence, to listen to some country music.)
Sandy: What is the world’s best selling album ever? (I know the answer to this: we have been here before).
Me: I don’t know. The Beatles?
Sandy: No.
Me: The Rolling Stones?
Sandy: No, it is Meatloaf.
Me: I don’t believe it. I don’t know anyone who likes Meatloaf.
Sandy: Well it’s a fact. It’s in the Guinness Book of Records.
Me: I don’t know anyone who reads that, either.

On the drive down to Madrid to visit Sylvia, and pick up the children, the garage attendant flirts with me. That is, he feigned astonishment at the sight of me, offered to come with me and banged on the window as I left to encourage me to return to the garage on my way home. I think this was flirting: it could be, given that I was wearing my 5 Euros top from Lubrin market (brown glittery chiffon), that he just thinks I am a tart. Later, when I arrive in her huge, tasteful flat in Madrid, Sylvia takes a breath and says: “Well, now you look like a Brit in Almeria!”
“That doesn’t sound good,” I say, suspiciously. I am not wearing shorts, for a start, though I do have something like flip flops on, and they are not particularly clean.
“In a good way, of course,” she adds quickly.

Well, I should have worn something more urban: Madrid is not San Jose, after all. But the point is, no garage attendant has ever flirted with me in the UK. For a start there are no garage attendants – in Spain they still generally fill the tank for you - and if there were, they wouldn’t flirt, they would say something like “you want to see to that oil, love, before you have an accident.” OK, so he was five foot tall and presumably not very successful but hey, I went on my way feeling pretty lively.

Other good things about Spain: space. Space, and no traffic. I drove for five hours non-stop (apart from the garage), and saw about 3 cars. There is nothing on the road: the countryside (except it is not countryside, it is really land) turned from the dry brown mountains of Almeria into the greener, huge boulder like rocks that rise out of flat land around Murcia, and then into the yellow, flat plains of Castilla La Mancha. I got by mistake onto the new toll road to Madrid: it was like entering a parallel universe. There was nothing but the road cut in the red earth and, I swear, about 6 cars in an hour. Then suddenly there was Madrid, appearing in the middle of nothing and nowhere and in some way seeming part of the huge nothing and nowhere of Spain. How unlike Paris, ringed neatly with peripherique, or London, merging outwards into suburb after vague grey suburb. Well, how could you not love it: it is somehow incredibly normal and at the same time, like the weirdest, most David Lynch road movie, set in mid-west America.

On Friday morning, I sat with Sylvia near the Plaza Santa Ana, eating a medialuna. The sun was hot, the houses around us were eccentric with balconies, frescos, pink bits, Moorish bits, bits of everything. It is not stylish like Rome, or grey and elegant like Paris, and it is not wacky and untidy like London, but there is a bit of all of that, and then it is Spanish. It seemed there was somehow both shouting and formality, chaos and manners. It beats my description, at least for now.

On the way back, I stopped with the children at the Parador in Albacete. It is a restful, ranchlike building, appearing isolated in the flat yellow fields. A smart wedding party gathered at about 11pm. It seemed as if they were following some well-oiled ritual as they emerged, in evening dress, the women patting their hair a bit, into the central courtyard, where flowers were floating in the fountains. I walked round the cloister with my small, dirty children: the clothes were not the smart clothes at a Brit wedding –bought for the occasion outfits with obvious labels or imitations – and tags saying something about wallet or personality. The people – well dressed older men and women in particular - looked to me like characters from a film, in costumes that expressed the occasion, and were therefore somehow impersonal, clothes that a director might choose for a classic matron, rather than something with a price tag. The elegance looked knowledgeable and experienced but not cold, like French elegance – and unlike the UK, nobody was remotely drunk. Sylvia says there is a hard side to Spain but I still refuse to see it; in these early days of my ignorance of where I live, what I sometimes see is something very old, very mature and knowing, like a middle aged woman after many lovers, that maybe could amount to being hard.

I put my foot down all the way back: nobody appears to observe the speed limit of 120 and most cars seem to be driving at around 180. This is a function of space, I suppose – like Montana not having a speed limit until recently: it is easy to feel you own the road. My heart lifts as I drive down the Autovia del Mediterraneo. There is Almeria, the hills papery brown and dry and hot, patched with scrub, and as I drive towards my turn off I feel more and more happy. The road climbs into the scratchy desert-like hills: the heat gets more intense. It is not at all pretty, but then, love does not really fall for pretty, for Austria, for instance, which is fine for skiing and then you get bored. We are nearly in Africa in Andalucia after all, and with its cactuses, its desert, its different pace and its big dominant spaces, it feels like verging on the times and rhythms of another continent.

Not that idols don’t have clay feet, or at least the odd clay toe. One of these is the paperwork here, which is quite something. I never thought of the UK as un-bureaucratic, but now I see it is. Nobody asks to see your passport, or indeed anything except the colour of your money, before you buy anything, but here, it is quite different.

A while back, still trying to get to grips with the paperwork and before I realised it is easier to let things slip through your fingers here than try to grip them, I called Inma, our lawyer’s very nice and patient admin lady, about our residency cards. It was like this:

Me: Inma, now we are living here, Pedro said I should call you about our residency cards.
Inma: Oh, residency. Well, you need that if you live here.
Me: We are living here.
Inma: Oh, are you? Well, She said, oh yes, you have to go to Almeria office.
Me: Do we both need to go?
Inma: Yes, you do. It is personal, you need to go by the office.
Me: OK.
Inma: You want me to fix a meeting for you?
Me: Yes, please.
Inma: Well, send me your NIEs, your name and surname, all that, which I’ve forgotten.
Me (thinks: surely Inma (her actual name is Inmaculata), knows our names?) And our passport numbers, do you want those?
Inma (as an afterthought): OK, give me those, send me everything.

After I got off the phone, I wondered about the NIEs. I looked through our official papers here, which amount mainly to the escritura (official documentation of the purchase of a property). In there, among a lot of legal language, were various numbers, including one that called itself a NIF. I rang Sylvia and asked: what is a NIF and what is a NIE? She said, a NIF is a Nacional Identificacion Fiscal and the other one is a Nacional Identificacion de España. Or something like that. She said we couldn’t have NIEs yet as we weren’t resident, but Sandy appeared to have one. I sent all the numbers to Inma and waited. After a while I rang her. Chulia, she said loudly and clearly to me, I will try to call the office in Almeria, I call you back. Eventually when I did, she said that the office was moving address, she was waiting to here what address they would be at. She would call me back. We didn’t hear for a while. With a rare flash of insight, I said to Sandy: I bet she fixes a meeting without asking if we can make it. Later that day, we, I got a message on my phone saying we had a meeting for Friday, a day when Sandy was travelling and I was in Madrid. It went like this:

Ima: You call me back tomorrow as this afternoon the office is closed.
Me: (next day) Can we ask for another meeting, maybe on a day we could do?
Inma: No, you can’t ask for a meeting. It doesn’t work like that, you can’t ask for a meeting, they give you one.
Me: Well, that will be hard if Sandy isn’t here.
Inma: Maybe Monday, Tuesday.
Me: He isn’t here, he’s travelling. He has to work, you know.. Friday?
Inma: Well, I’ll send a mail to Almeria and say Friday, or the next week, then I’ll have to wait and hear back.

I called back a few days later. The secretary said, as she always does, Inma has just gone out for a coffee, call her back. Can she call me back? No, she’s very busy, best if you call. When we spoke, it went like this:

Me: Inma, I just thought I’d find out about that meeting in Almeria.
Inma: Yes? I have sent them a mail. But it’s fiesta this week, on Wednesday in all Spain and on Thursday in Albox.
Me: Yes, that’s why I thought I’d check about Friday? When we requested the meeting?
Inma: Oh. Well, maybe they won’t have time before Friday, or perhaps they’ll give you the meeting.
Me: But how will I know? You’re closed, aren’t you?
Inma: Yes, maybe the police will be closed, and we are closed. Then maybe it will be the week after.
Me: (giving up) OK! Bye!

While I was in Madrid, Sandy cheered himself up by buying a quad bike, which is the thing to have round here. Clearly, it is not going to get him to Madrid, or even Almeria airport, but it evidently made him happy. However, before long I had the lady from the shop on the phone. She said they needed his NIE number before they could “matricular” the bike. I said I wasn’t sure we had it on an official piece of paper. I offered her the “empadronimiento” which is a different piece of paper, in this case issued by the Mayor, which says we live at our address. I think, from what Sylvia said, that it’s a kind of census document. We certainly managed to buy the car with it. She said she would try that, meanwhile, I called Pedro, the lawyer, and asked if he had anything with the NIEs on it. He was on holiday, but said he would look and leave something at his parents’ house in Vera. Meanwhile, the quad lady said no, the empadronimiento would not do, it was out of date, and we needed to get her a “hoja de trabajo” – an official piece of paper of some kind – updating it. It is fiesta, so no go until Thursday, when I will have to go and queue up at the Ayuntiamento again.

Meanwhile, I found a letter from September, which mysteriously turned up, having been lost in the post until now. It was from the insurance company, cancelling our insurance. I called them and asked why; they said the bank had rejected the direct debit for no apparent reason, meaning we have had no insurance since June. I rang BBVA (ring us with any inquiry, it says on our statements), to ask why. The call centre said, you have to go into the branch for that. Later, I tried to buy some new insurance. No, you have to go into the branch, the call centre said. Hmm, but as it is fiesta, that will have to wait. As Sylvia kept saying to me, sarcastically, “African rhythms, African rhythms.” She is half French, half Spanish, and a fast, clever ex- journalist, so she has her perspective. I also love her: she is like me, only more so when many of my friends are like me, but less so, which makes me feel like hard work. Sylvia knows the answers to things, or looks them up at speed on the Internet, and she is the first person, I think, who tells me what to do and takes over – because I am the foreigner, and she is the native, but she is also a native who has been a foreigner. It is excellent: I can do what she says and stop worrying. “Tu tranquila,” she says to me, on more than one occasion.

When I got back, the painters were still at work in the house. They seemed to have done one window, maybe two, in a day. I mentioned to Juan that at this pace, they would be living with us for months. He said yes, they have their rhythm, but they do a very good job, which they did: the windows were a work of art. The rhythm is slow at times: nothing seems to happen for ages. You feel out of control and want to push things ahead, but you can’t. Then suddenly, it all happens very fast. The fiesta is over, the workmen appear, they work like crazy and it is all finished. And then it slows down again.
I feel maybe I am slowing down too, just a fraction. Sylvia ticked me off for not being assertive enough on the phone. “You don’t sound rude at all in Spanish,” she said. She taught me to say “¡Es inadmissible! firmly, (which I did, later, with Vera Gas who had failed to deliver gas bottles on either of the two days they said they would deliver.) I thought about this: it is true, I am not as assertive, or rude, as I would be at home. But then, I am still in the courtship days, and astonished at my luck. I am surrounded by this intense landscape, saturated with light and heat – you can hardly expect it to work like Madrid, let alone London. I got up at 7.30 and swam in the pool, surrounded by the mountains, which at that time are already swimming in the coming heat, the vines and the olives and almonds already sunlit. I feel astonished, and also grateful. After all, it is their remarkable country. Nothing gets delivered when you expect it, but the delivery, when it comes, is often quite breathtaking. It is hard to be rude, when I feel I might simply be missing a beat, not catching the right rhythm of the dance.

2007-08-15T02:39:00.002-07:00

Peace on earth and in Almeria

2007-08-08T14:13:00.000-07:00

I went to Lubrin market with my shopping trolley today and met Pablo in the bar Tasca; basically, wherever I go, there he is. I suppose unsurprisingly, since there are only about 3 places to go in Lubrin. I felt the usual sense of regret driving down the hill; I would really rather stay up there, but I had to get catfood. Of course, there wasn't any in the Spar, or none the cats would eat, so I had to grit my teeth and drive the extra 20 minutes to Vera, but at least I met Pablo. I told him I was thinking of renting a little office space in town, where I could put broadband. This was Sue's idea: she said other people would use it, especially if we had coffee and also the old Tourist Information office was empty and the Ayuntiamento would likely welcome it being occupied. Pablo seemed pretty keen on the idea, as always, one of his cousins is the owner of the building and he said he would ask. Meanwhile we had an interesting conversation with the various old men in the bar about thyme, tomillo, but not tomilla, a female version with larger flowers, or something of that kind, until another chap came in, who Pablo introduced as his brother. Again.
"Es buena gente," he told me, as usual. Everyone is, I pointed out, and he laughed and agreed with me. There are no bad people here, he said, firmly, and all the old men nodded sagely.

In Vera, I trolled round Mercadona buying weird things like ironing water, which I never bought at home. My consumer instinct has been diverted but like an underground river, it must out, even if it means deciding between rose and lavender flavour ironing water - plus "sabores del mar" cat food and then went back. I still cannot quite believe the drive home. My drive home used to be alright, once you got onto the Shoreham road, through a pretty valley, but it is nothing like the miracle of my drive now. It starts in citrus groves, with oranges and lemons lying on the ground, and then opens into the mountains, completely lonely, with only one house, apparently always closed, on the drive up. Strangely, it looks rather like Scotland, only dry - vast moorlands with the hills in a ring round the road, till you hit the upper valley and Rambla Alhibe, where Pepe's bar is. The first time we drove up, I thought we must have gone the wrong way; in the dark, it feels like the back of beyond or, as the man on the industrial estate said the other day "donde Cristo perdío el gorro," where Christ lost his cap, I think, which means, roughly the same thing. We saw two large chamois, or deer, the other day, on the slopes, and there must be herds, but usually nothing moves. Beyond Rambla Alhibe, it climbs round the hill again, quite steep and nerve-wracking until you are used to it and have to compete with your husband to see if you can do it in less than 8 minutes. Then you reach the upper plateau, and it opens into the almond orchards, some olives, and the rather tumbledown houses of Los Dioses, then Los Herreras. It is, as my neighbours say, very tranquilo, like peace on earth. I used to think of peace on earth when I went into the Shoreham valley after Sevenoaks, with all its flipping roundabouts and Tesco, but it is nothing like up here, where space is enormous, and you could wander for miles on a track without finding anyone or anything much, except maybe Antonio's goat farm. Well, it is a long way to the shops, but that's the point. Also, the bread van comes up on Friday, and fish and frozen stuff every other Tuesday, so if I were efficient I wouldn't even have to get in the car.

However, tomorrow I am off to Madrid for a couple of days, to see Sylvia and collect the children. It will be strange, and I feel an odd foot-dragging, even though I do want to see Sylvia, my best Spanish friend, and go to a bookshop. Though amazingly, I found one in Vera that sold some good Spanish stuff: I got a Carlos Ruiz whatever his name is who wrote the Sombra del Viento which I read last year, and more interestingly, Heat magazine, which I was concerned about missing. Having said that, when I picked it up with glee I suddenly felt uncertain about whether I wanted it. The English headlines somehow looked flat and boring, like the old life, and anyway, how much do I need to keep up with Kerry Katona? Maybe she is not so funny when you don't come into work and have a bitch about her? I don't suppose anyone knows who she is in Spain, and certainly there is no Iceland. Well, I got Hola, which has a main feature about Princess Stephanie of Monaco's daughter, and somehow seemed more attractive, with minor royalty looking tanned in nice sequinned evening dresses, rather than pasty English people who used to be on Big Brother being sick with no knickers on in a taxi, but I did get Heat too, just to check, but have not opened it yet. I also bought El País, the first paper I have picked up in weeks, although I have listened to Radio National de España a lot; most of the radio headlines are about fires, road accidents, Liza Minelli singing in Malaga and the rubbish strike in Almuñacar which means I am thankfully none the wiser about world events, except for the Tour de France and a Liverpool football match of some kind. I have also not opened El País yet, though I looked at the front: maybe later. When I read it in the UK, I noticed how little, excellently, there was about the US; far more about South America e.g. Mexican elections, which you hardly read about in the UK media, except maybe on about page 20 of the FT after a lot of columns about hedge fund regulations, etc, etc.

I was going to bed early to prepare for my five hour drive (must not go over 120 km/hour, or overtake any lorries according to husband's instructions) but Juan Mañas was due to come round to talk to me about the building work. He said, maybe 9 or 10, which might have meant 11, so I felt bound to stay up till now, nearly 12, which is probably safe; now he will not come either till I call him again to ask him, or until he thinks of it, maybe next week some time, or when I am out somewhere. Peace, or what?

More marital discord

2007-08-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the storm, but I had to storm off from dinner the other day and scream in the bedroom. I screamed at Sandy, but I am not sure it was him I was screaming at: it could have been myself, my mother, or anyone. It made a change from Telefonica, anyway.

It was all Xtina's fault; she started it by saying Sandy should have whatever car he wanted (a Landrover of course) as "he's made so many sacrifices," she said. She and Edouard have been staying here, looking for sinks for the house in Spain (150 Euros from the industrial estate here, £650 in Fired Earth) and things have been a bit heated from time to time; everyone is tired, it is very hot. I drove around translating "limestone, without a plughole" even though I didnt want to; I wanted to stay at home as I usually do, and ended up having to talk to Clemente, the very nice sink man who insisted on taking us on a bar crawl, about how you had to live life for now in case you died of cancer like his brother, while standing in a crowd eating kidneys of a toothpick. Anyway, we had a few glasses of wine, and the discussion about the car started and then she says that. Sandy had been silent most of the day, having arrived late on Friday (fiesta night) from the US; of course the logistics had all gone wrong and the body language all day was "you made me come here and put up with having to get back to Almeria instead of Heathrow", or at least that was how I read it. The fact is, he has not come out with any thing like "this is nice," or "lovely day," for a long time, not that he says things like that, being Glaswegian, but you would think he could acknowledge the good side of being here, even if he is having to travel a bit more; it is only four hours to Madrid if you put your foot down, after all. The silent Sandy body language got to me all day: as a result I did not lie about on a lounger like Xtina and Eddie, but chopped up wood and piled it up, getting the usual injuries, hung out washing, cleaned the terrace, watered trees etc, getting more and more angry/tearful to myself. So when Xtina came out with this, it was the proverbial straw and I ran off. Sandy came after me; I had hidden in the bedroom but clearly not very well as I was just behind a box. I was a bit (a bit!) hysterical and said I had spent months packing and organising the move and it was not fair for him to imply he was a victim who had been sacrificed as he knew perfectly well I had not made him come here and it was not my fault he had not looked at the logistics properly, I was not lying about on a lounger, it was very hard dealing with Telefonica, what about the children and their better life, I wish I hadn't come, I wish he hadn't come back, I would get a job in town and then he could go back to the UK, etc etc, this went on about ten minutes non-stop; meanwhile Sandy was just looking at me and not saying much except eventually, to BE QUIET. He said he could not remember why we moved, which was no good. I said he had to be clear I had not made him do it and eventually he did admit that it was not possible for anyone to make him do anything, and also that he did not wish he hadnt done it, but all the same you got the feeling that he thought maybe I had drugged him with that date rape drug or something. It was the same when he got married the first time: whenever I asked him why he had married Stephanie if he didnt like her, he said she had arranged it all without asking him and then it was too late. Seemed pretty unlikely to me, but maybe this is how he sees it: he does nothing but agrees with things for a quiet life and then finds out too late what he has done. Anyway, we had a tearful kind of make-up, but I was still angry underneath and I suspect Sandy was still whatever it is he is being, sulky, perhaps. The next day I kept giving him ideas of what he could do (flat in Madrid, give up IBM, etc) none of which were any good; it was like feeding an angry tiger with little flies. He did admit in the evening that the stars were beautiful; I went to take the dustbins to the gate and the sky was spectacular, but when I asked him to go with me and look, he said no, he knew what they looked like and was reading. As a test, I asked him about six times, but he kept saying no, which just shows there is no way I could have got him out to Spain without him wanting to go, if I cant even get him as far as the bins.

Anyway, he seemed a bit more sanguine yesterday; we went to the Viveros (garden centre) and bought 3 palm trees, a sort of banana and 4 jasmine and bougainvillea trellises. This would cost about £1m in the UK, but here it did not: the jasmine and bougainvilleas, which were about 7 foot tall, were 7.5 Euros each: it was fantastic, like being in a tropical paradise and I got excited about the garden. Even Sandy stirred himself to buy a lemon tree. He has now gone to Germany and the UK but is back in 2 days as I am the one driving to Madrid to pick up the children. He has no confidence I can do this without an accident, but I am going anyway, to see Sylvia and have a break from all the household stress: the sink was blocked yesterday but thankfully I poured caustic soda in it, no doubt illegal in the UK, and it seems to work again, though possibly only in the way Sandy and I are working out the "living in Spain" argument, until the next blockage or, with the passage of time, a proper plumber.

Julia, la Inglesa

2007-08-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

Trials by telephone

It has been a week of storms (thunder and lightning), and of dodgy technology, and if one is evidence of the gods, then the latter is almost sufficient evidence of Satan. Anyhow, as all other methods have failed, I have resorted to prayer as the only remaining way to connect to the Internet; it seems to have worked. It is an indictment of my faith that this was a last resort; but there you go, with religion, there are so many ways to fail.

About a week ago, I called Juanjo, the Telefonica engineer. Hallo, remember me, Julia, la Inglesa. A cautious yes. Well, the Internet here isn't working really, I said. Had I tried turning the power off? Yes, turning things off and back on again is about the only technology trick up my sleeve (as taught by my husband, the technology whizz). Are the lights on, he asked? I wasn't sure which lights; there are 3 sets. He said it was probably a question of power, if not. I said there was plenty of power in the house; the washing machine was on. Go and look at the little box, he said (I think it was "little box," but the "ita," "illa" endings can be confusing. The cat flap is a puertacilla, but the little wooden shutter on the door is a portigo, there is also a puertita somewhere about.) Well, I could have looked at the box, except that the phone goes dead when I walk in that direction. I said I would look at it and call him back, but he said, no, he would call me back. I forgot to ask when, not that there is much point here. Times are very vague, today can be tomorrow, and 2 can be 4, or even 2 tomorrow. Eventually I called him back. Hallo Juanjo, remember me, Julia, the Inglesa. Yes, he did. He had tested the line he said, there was nothing wrong with it. (I wonder why he didn't tell me this before I called, but this happens quite a lot.) It must be a problem with the computer. I said I had to work, did he have any ideas for fixing the Internet? He said he was very busy at present, but he would try and call by the house. Would he call first and let me know? I have learned this one - people like to turn up randomly when you are out. Of course, he said. So far, he has been once, when I wasn't here; Pablo called round yesterday (when I was in the bath) and said he had seen the Telefonica van come and go.

This morning and last night, the phone was very dodgy. I called Juanjo this morning, on the same number. A lady said they didnt know where he was and this was not his mobile (or something to that effect). Weird. I called Technical Assistance. They insisted, as they do when they hear an accent, on putting me through to the English speaking service, who speak worse English than I do Spanish. I sort of managed to report the fault. "Lady," she kept saying. "Lady, I report this. Give me your mobile number.," I explained that the mobile would not work in the house, meaning there was not much point in giving it to her. Aha! the lady said, you need to call another number; this is not the mobile technical assistance number. "I KNOW, LADY," I said, as politely as I could. "I don't want to report a mobile fault." Silence on the other end. "I want to report the fault on the fixed line, the one I am talking on." "OK, lady," she said eventually. "I report it, maybe somebody get back to you. Later. Goodbye!" Or something like that.

Telefonica is, apparently, the most profitable telecommunications company in the world, but it is hard to see why, though the way the ladies in the call centre appear to have a goal of getting rid of the call as fast as possible may have something to do with it. Meanwhile, our efforts to get wireless broadband have been thwarted: there is no signal in Saeti, our area, or not till Telefonica put in the long-awaited mast, definitely due this year, next year, some time, or never, according to everyone I have asked.

Fiesta

On a more positive note, it was the village fiesta on Friday. Pablo told me about this in advance: there would be a lady with an accordion and importantly, the food and drink, or most of it, would be paid for by the alcalde, the Mayor. In the event, it was a good do: the accordion lady, who looked a bit like Miss Piggy, with the tiny feet Spanish women often have, was done up in sequins, and did not look promising, but turned out well; her voice was massive, and she somehow sang and played various instruments and the accordion at once. There was a lot of meeting everyone's cousins and aunties, including all the people from Barcelona (there was a big exodus to work there in the 60s, but they kept their houses and land and come back at fiesta), and a lot of pasadoble style dancing, with skirts and heads held up very high. It went on till 5 in the morning, though I gave up after being exhausted in a kind of line dance which is apparently a standard fiesta exercise. I lay in bed at 4, listening to the music which by then was less Carmen and more the Birdie Song.

It is strange to think that not long ago, under Franco, the village - which is more or less one family, everyone is related - was divided. Pablo told me that his father and cousin had to run away across the fields and eventually to Madrid on one occasion, when the other side came hunting them; his mother was pregnant and told them they weren't there while they ran out of the back way. The cousin came back later and was shot. In my imagination, this time is coloured, horrifically, by the most frightening and nightmarish film I had seen for years when I watched it earlier this year: Pan's Labyrinth. I had nightmares afterwards, matched only by the ones I had after mistakenly going to the Saatchi gallery and got trapped in ghastly exhibits of headless bodies like Medieval hell. (Not that I like any gallery; the last time I went was in Madrid, to the Thyssen, where it gave me the creeps watching everyone walking around like a funeral cortege, muttering reverentially and staring at graven images in frames: most of them of powerful dead people, or tortured saints. Everything started to look like something on a butcher's slab: even the baby Jesus looked peculiar: much better to be outside, where there are some quite nice plants out the front. Anyway, I was hungry: I sat outside and then I thought of Walter Savage Landor lines I learned at A Level "Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art, only in my mind it was "Nature I loved, and next to Nature, food," which luckily was Sandy';s view too, so we went and stuffed a lot of tapas and recovered.) All the more reason to live here: there are no galleries for miles in any direction, except for the kind selling some Spanish town scenes by a local artist, probably a Brit.

Pan's Labyrinth, however, was good as well, and set in sierra not so different from this, now so peaceful and friendly it is hard to imagine the bodies that are, presumably, not far from the surface.In the same way, everything you read tells you there is a harsh, ruthless side to Spain, but it is hard to sense it; perhaps, having reached democracy late, they are determined to forget anything else existed.

I went round yesterday to see Antonio, the man in the wheelchair who brought me the tomatoes: I had a tin of Scottish Tartan biscuits , which I thought suitable exchange; however, he had gone out to see Consuelo so I was left talking to Juana, his wife (another Juana, another Antonio: everyone is related.) A lot of the discussion was about his illness; people generally like talking about illness here, but I suppose as most of them are retired, that is not surprising, but some of it was about her daughter, Maria Juana, but thankfully called Marie, whom I met at the fiesta. Juana said Marie had told her she had met the Inglesa (me) and she also knew everyone else I had met and spoken to. I said I would be pleased to get to know Marie, which I will. As I walked back along the rambla, I reflected on being "Julia, la Inglesa," clearly a different person from Juliet S, or Juliet A, both of whom I had been before. It is rather like the opposite of Cheers, "the bar where everyone knows your name," this is a village where nobody knows my name, or if they do, it is something like "Juli," or "Julia," (of course in Spanish it sounds quite different with the "ch" of "loch" for a J). I prefer it that way: it allows you to be anyone, or nobody - you are first and foremost defined by being the foreigner. I remember my great aunt Beate, who lived the last fifty of so years of her ninety six in a small village in Switzerland, telling me that the neighbours still referred to her, after forty odd years, or more, as "the foreigner:" now it seems I am somehow in the same place, and maybe always will be. Well, I know enough shrinkology to work out the appeal of that: after all, my other great aunt actually was a shrink, and everyone else in my family seems to have either been something like one, or else a mental patient. It is much easier not to have to live with the expectations of your society, peer group or family. This is why "only gay in the village" Neville told me he was only able to be gay when he left South Africa (well, not immediately, given that he was married to Moira at the time, but that didnt last and then slowly out went Moira and in came Jamie, black leather and earrings). It is a big relief not to have to be a success, earn a certain amount, look pretty - but only be a foreigner. It explains away a lot - basically, anything daft I do can be put down to the fact that after all, I am Julia, la Inglesa. And if spending an hour a week on the phone with Telefonica is the price I have to pay, then so be it; it is probably worth it.

Stressed - but in a good way

2007-08-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

Tuesday

I am still not that tranquila. "Tu, mucho estres," Pablo kept saying to me. We were on the way to Albox, to have the ITV (MOT) done on the old Hyundai. I called the ITV centre in the morning to check my appointment and found out it was for 12, (doce) not 2 (dos). I dashed over to Pablo's - he was in the goat shed - and asked him if he could make the time. Sin problemas, no problem. But there were, of course. Just as I was about to drive round to his house, the Hyundai wouldn't start. This was despite the fact that I had left the battery unconnected (you have to, because the door warning light won't go off, and drains it). Pablo came round and asked me if I thought I would pass the MOT with "that"? Hmm. We jump started it and went across country to Albox - a nasty place full of ghetto British people. I explained to Pablo that I needed Consuelo, his daughter, to colour my hair dark so nobody would know I was English. He pointed out that I would still have an accent, so I said he'd better improve his teaching.

Amazingly, the car passed. The MOT cost 30-something Euros, and that includes road tax. It lasts for 2 years. A bargain. Pablo explained that the MOT centre in Albox is better than the one in Vera, which is state-owned. It is private, therefore more flexible. Excellent. There was no way I would have got through it on my own, though: you have to queue in the right queue and then follow a lot of instructions over a loudspeaker - though I might have been able to play the stupid Englishwoman card, of course. On the way back, Pablo and I had a drink in a bar - as usual, he knew half the people in there and they were all related to him. One old guy, Augustin, told me what great people the British were. I looked doubtful; afterwards Pablo told me he makes money selling them houses. But he does like them, he added, they are "buena gente." Everyone here is always "buena gente;" on the way back, Pablo explained that he was doing me a favour taking me to Albox, and that was because we were friends; it would not be friendship if he charged me for it. I agreed with this, and said maybe I could do him a favour, but I didnt know what. He laughed and said: take me to England. I said Sandy could do that any time, but Pablo said there were the goats to think of, and when I said I could look after them, he just laughed. I was quite persistent though; in a year or so, there is every chance I will be able to keep my eye on 250 goats.

The decorators, meanwhile, were finishing the ceilings. The four efficient Romanians from the day before had gone; they spoke good Spanish and also cleaned up with the mop and broom after themselves, something they told me the Spanish builders never did. Romanians are everywhere in Europe, they said - can't be bad, if they are all as smart as these. The Spanish lot did a beautiful job, but left a huge amount of rock on the floor. Maybe it's not the done thing for men to use the mop. I cleaned up till about 10.30, then sat outside on the terrace and listened to the animal noises. Something got Cheeky 2, the next door dog, barking all night.

Wednesday

Went to Lubrin market this morning but forgot my old lady wheelie trolley so had to trot back and forth from the car with my plastic bags of vegetables. This involves quite a steep hill up to the church from the main road. When I think of circling Sainsbury's car park to get close to the door! Met a few neighbours - Maria, Juana and Pablo's son's girlfriend from the Ayuntiamento and went into the legendary post office, where the lady always says there are no parcels, without looking. There was no parcel. I had a drink with Pablo and Maria from Los Fuenblanquillas, the next village- they entered into a long discussion about the guy who had tried to charge us 9,000 Euros for an hour of water, and how it was "una locura," crazy. The whole irrigation water thing is very complex: extra water for the land, as far as I can understand, is owned by individuals or societies and is bought and sold either with or without land. I want some - not that I'm going to irrigate anything, but it's a good thing to have; however, at 1,500 or 2,000 top whack, according to Pablo.

This evening, my neighbours Consuelo and Isa came round to look at the house and be friendly. They joked about having a glass of weak Lambrusco and how it would make them drunk, said I had to find Isa a "novio", boyfriend, and talked about the fiesta that's being held on Friday in the village; it is paid for by the Ayuntiamento and features a lady on an accordion and free drink. Absolutely, I will be there. They asked me to join the group of women that walks round the village at 8.30, chatting. Absolutely. I am very flattered. "That way, you'll learn a lot of Spanish," Consuelo said. She has already taught me something that evening: the teenage years are know as the "edad del pavo," the turkey years. Most suitable: at nearly 13, Alexander is just beginning to be a bit of a turkey.

Finally, the broadband man came up to day. Though Iberbanda is Spanish, it was an English guy that came up. He didnt even get out of the car to deliver his "no way, love," speech. Bugger - but later Sandy pointed out that if we go for 4 megs, we might get a big satellite and this could work. Not that I really care for me - I actually could go off the whole online thing and just read books, but Sandy is still suffering logistics stress, and if broadband makes him happy..

A little reflection

This is a big change from my old life, and it should be hard, but it isn't. Is this because it hasn't gone on long? Will I wake up one day and miss London Bridge station? Will I stop feeling happy just to be walking through Lubrin market with a trolley on wheels, shopping for tomatoes and chorizo? I can't imagine it ever wearing off, and if I could, I need only remind myself that my neighbours, who have always lived here, constantly say how good life is here. "It's a great life here," they all say: carpenters, builders, housewives, everybody. Who ever says that in the UK? Is the fact that they don't just the famous British understatement or irony - or do they mean it? In any case, they mean what they say here: it is good.

When we decided to come here, quite a few people said to me "oh, you're brave." Not really: I don't miss commuting under grey skies at all and doing what you want isn't brave. Anyway, I do feel scared, constantly. I was scared about the ITV test, scared about the flipping broadband. I'm a bit scared of driving to Madrid, but I'll still do it. I think I read somewhere that people mean by "brave" is not that you feel less scared, but that you are prepared to act rather than not act despite being scared and I suppose this is true.

Some things don't scare me: like ghosts. Consuelo said she was too scared to be on her own in the house, but I feel completely safe in this old farmhouse, in this remote village. The noises outside, whatever they are, are part of the landscape. What frightens me is newspapers and their terrible stories, depression and bad weather, and not Cheeky 2 barking at the old boar trundling through the olive trees, when it is pitch dark outside.

Sunny side up

2007-07-30T13:22:00.000-07:00

The great insight I have arrived at today is how much difference the sun makes. I seem to recall from my study of 18th C English enlightenment writings that there was a theory about that people's character was a function of the climate and topography: therefore Scottish people are hardy and warlike because they have had to conquer mountains in the cold, while your Italians lie about eating tomatoes and so on. Anyway, this was all rubbished of course, but the fact is, I am beginning to see something in it, in particular, how negative the British are, something I didnt realise particularly before, and which in my mind is now linked to the fact that the UK is under several metres of water, according to my mother.

I notice nobody here is at all bitchy. For instance, when I mention "el dueno anterior," the previous owner, Oliver, who seems to have started and screwed up endless projects appeared to owe everyone money and then disappeared, nobody jumps at the chance to say what a tosser he was, as they would at home. No, actually the neighbours all say, as they do about almost everyone, that he was "buena gente," "like yourself," adds Isa, the cleaning lady, though I can't see where she gets that from. The fact that Oliver isnt really by most standards, buena gente, escapes them, or maybe they just see his good side: friendly, amiable, a bit absent minded, meant well, never mind he allegedly ran off without paying the Vera gas bill or Juan Manas. I think they are just more positive - yes, that cupboard will get up those stairs, and that bed will get down, we'll just saw it in two. About two minutes later, they've done it. There's no sucking the teeth and saying, no love, that'll never happen, and no bitching, except about the other Inglesa, the lady from Cardiff, and that could be racism because she is black, or could be because she doesnt speak any Spanish and has a massive satellite dish and six dogs.

Anyway, my point is, I feel as if everything in the UK is based around moaning, even the humor. Dinner party conversation, newspaper articles, etc, are basically all one long whinge about everything: the mortgate rate, the bins, other people - and I am not excluding myself here as I put my back into the process when I was living there. There is no way anyone would say, as they do here, this is a great life, life is good. You don't really hear anyone complain - or I haven't, and if they do, it's more localised. Maybe it's a town-country thing. Maybe the wet flood of whinging is a South East, urban thing in the UK, and it's not like that in Grasmere, or Fort William - who knows? Or maybe it is the sun . It's hard not to feel good when the sun is on your face As Juana's father said, when he was telling me he didnt need anything from Sorbas, all we need is to have a good time with family and friends, that's all. The sun determines all that: sitting outside, feeling relaxed, going to the beach, just as being up to your knees in water makes you feel pretty pissed off.

Anyway, this is what I have spent today:
28 Euros for a full tank of diesel: my car will run on this for ages.
2.10 for a rosca, a round ring of bread in a bit of paper
2.20 for a coffee and a mineral water, in the square, under the palm tree watching all the little dogs and the old men
34 Euros - big spend- for two bead curtains to keep the flies out.

A good day, all in all.

Mirror, mirror, not on the wall

2007-07-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

About to go to bed (midnight, early!) think about having a bath and the think I am not sure there's a point if I'm going in the pool first thing. Is that disgusting? There is a lot of chlorine in there, after all, but I suppose it is not a recommended beauty routine.

I have not looked in a mirror for two weeks, if you don't count dark ones in public toilets. There are some mirrors in the house, but it is pretty hard to see in them. I have to wonder what I look like, as Xtina will be here on Thursday and will be quick to spot any downward trend on the path to a Greta-like state where I will not be able to fit my feet into my shoes.

Mind you, Juana and Pablo will be the first to point it out. They came round after a few days to say hello and after looking me up and down, Juana nodded sagely and said, well, you have put on a couple of kilos.
"Oh, really?" I asked, looking unconvinced.
"Yes," she said, firmly. "Why is that?"
I said, perhaps because I had stopped working.
"Aha!" she said triumphantly, as if that rested her case. "Anyway, it makes you look younger, about three years younger," she said.
Well, that's ok then. The weird thing is, I didnt mind at all. I didnt mind being told, and I dont mind putting on a few kilos. Who's looking at you, anyway, as Anita's mother says. Nobody round here.

Meanwhile, the removals, which I feel I have handled more or less single handed, give or take a few burly men, have taken their toll on my beauty regime. I have not painted my nails, and I am injured in various ways. I have a cut on my toe (broken glass - I have broken about 7 during the move, maybe it is now good luck) a bang on my head (trying to get plaster off the stable door), and various bruises on my arms from bumping into things (somnambulently walking around trying to unpack at 2 a.m., moaning at Sandy for sitting outside with a cigar). Fortunately, mosquitoes don't like me so am not bitten, though I have a wasp sting on my foot; unlike Sandy I did not make a huge fuss and claim my arm was swelling up to twice its size. You need to shave your legs about twice as often here, too. It is clearly going to be easy to let myself go; even now am relaxing my grip. The only good thing is that once I can actually leave the house and stop unpacking, I can get a suntan which will cover some of the damage.

Looking back at my past post, I now know I will not be getting any more Creme de la Mer, or any of that truck. Ha ha! I will be far too Almerían before long! Already, I have trodden down the backs of my Camper shoes, and it is only a matter of time before I am using Mercadona beauty products. It is a mystery where you get most cosmetics - all I have seen so far is nail polish, which they sell in the various local shops called Bazaar and "Mira Que Précios!" (Look at the prices!), along with hairslides, folding beach chairs, toasters, and so on. Why bother? The only people I have seen today are goats, and tomorrow it will only be the decorators, though mind you I do like Juan, who has had an interesting conversation with me about Princess Diana (she was not murdered, that was just the newspapers), Franco (his grandfather's experiences; though not religious he was shopped by someone for something religious - I didn't follow this entirely) and the Spanish royal family (they breed like rabbits "crian como conejos" and cost too much.) He has also advised me on how to clean the floor (not with the hoover and on your knees with a scrubby thing, but with a brush, then a mop. They don't like the hoover here; it is always the broom) and has told me a lot about the old style of Spanish farm, like our cortijo, with the wood, cane and plaster ceilings; they are rare now and it has been a labour of love or as he said "un trabajo de chino" - a Chinaman's job - to clean them up, taking off the old plaster and varnishing the cane and the beams. In the old days, they used lime to clean them and keep them white, apparently, and some thing called "azul", which is blue, and is now a huge nuisance to get off.

The whole effect is very dark and traditional, contrasting with the still rather rough white walls. So, there are no mirrors. I could get some bright lights, but it wouldn't look right, so it's probably better if I just do without. It is a hard business, trying to become local, like an elaborate camouflage, or disguise, where you rub down all those features that stand out. When I hear the echo of myself talking, which you often do on our phone, I try harder and harder to lose the English intonation, that so characteristically English way of swallowing words. I try to get the right tone when I say "por nada," (no trouble? it's nothing? ok? - a way conversations about someone doing something often end) or "y ya esta," (there you are, that's it, that's all), as they do. It isn't just accent; it is a whole way of being, and I imagine the process is rather like a sex change, like trying to turn yourself inside out and reverse what you did before - helped so much by the fact that however perverse the work is, it is your heart's desire to do so. In this context, what's a mirror more or less?

Journey from Hell, First Week

2007-07-29T12:19:00.000-07:00

Journey from Hell

Well, we are here, but only just. Getting here was like Frodo going up Mount Doom and I did wonder if it would ever be over. The last few days in the UK, when we were living out of one cardboard box and I was majorly stressed, behaving like a mad, inefficient Monica from Friends, everyone kept saying, don't worry, it'll be fine when you get there. I did doubt this at the time; it falls into the category of advice like "of course you're not fat," and "of course you'll get a First", i.e based on no evidence whatsoever.

In the event, the nasty premonition that the arrival would be all wrong, was actually right.

Firstly, there were the cats. I do love them, but it would have been a lot easier (and cheaper) to shoot them and buy new ones at the other end. They went mental, producing dreadful deep caterwauls and hanging their sad little paws out of the grille of their enormous, deluxe travel box. People kept turning round and staring in the airport, as if they were crazy celebrities. I kept saying things like "don't worry Shrimpy, we'll soon be there," but they clearly didnt understand and having had four days locked up before we left (if not, they would have run away, as they knew what was coming), they were completely nuts by the time we got to Heathrow. Alexander claimed when he went to the loo he could hear them in the hold and I wouldnt have been surprised. Nobody looked at the endless cat travel paperwork I had so laboriously procured; they were all very relaxed and just shoved us through, though only with about five minutes to spare as we had to go to a Special Needs bay and wait for the poor things to be loaded up. None of this process is explained by BMI, as I pointed out to the nice lady.
"We didn't really know what to do," I said, plaintively. "I couldn't get anyone to give me any advice."
"Oh, I expect you were talking to Bombay," she said. "It's not on their question list, so they don't know how to answer. The best thing is just to nip down and see us." In Heathrow, that is, an hour away on the M25, but if I'd known, I might have done it.
"You could put some advice on your website," I suggested.
"No, they don't tell you on the website," she said cheerfully. The cats looked at her pleadingly, wanting to be let out.

At the other end, they came out on the conveyer with the luggage, yowling fit to bust. Actually, we are not talking yowling, really, but dreadful, agonized, tortured screeches. They had upset their food, been sick and crapped in the box, so it was a choice of the air conditioning and the smell, or windows open and the heat.

Later, I noticed that my Spanish neighbours generally ignored the cats, while the English people treated them like temperamental royalty who happened to be travelling with us. Well, I knew the attitude to animals was different (Daily Mail donkey stories, etc) but of course they do have pets. The word for a pet is a "mascota," which is interesting: a mascot in English being something lucky you hold up during a sport match or an exam, whereas a "pet" is something you call someone up North. A lot of men around here have little dogs, the type with a smile and a curly tail; you see them walking them in Vera. It is always men, usually old men, not women. The other day in the square I heard one talking about his dog to another man, pointing out its attributes. I think dogs are something a man has in the way he might have a particular car, in any case, there is no way anyone here says "oo, de little sweetie darling, did he want some Whiskas?" the way, or treats a cat as if it were a baby, only better.

Anyway, the journey from hell continued. Oh well, I thought, we'll soon be there and it will all be lovely, because of all the work Juan Mañas has done since May. At the back of my mind, I thought: or has he? I had texted him a week ago, although I knew I should have called about a month before that, but I sort of didnt, because I didnt want to face the fact that I know what he's like, and I think I knew what he might have done, or not done.

When we got to the house and opened the door, there were three men there with the radio on. Half the ceiling was on the floor, the furniture was all in piles, and all the beds were covered in plastic. The sitting room floor was covered in rocks and cement. The cats were yelling in their box. It brought new meaning to the expression "I could not believe my eyes," because it actually couldn't register what was going on. Sandy and I just kind of looked at each other, and then sat down and felt like crying.

I shouted at the men, who looked bewildered. Juan gave me his word he would do all the work in June! Why are you here! There is a whole lot of furniture arriving on Wednesday! (this was Monday) Where are we going to sleep! The builders looked at me a bit vaguely and said they had just been called a week ago. Jose, the boss builder, said that we could probably go to a hotel, or one of Juan's houses. I said no. He said, maybe the furniture lorry could come another day. I said no, it had to go back to France. He said, well, it'll soon be finished. I said, how soon. He said, oh, two weeks perhaps.

In the end, I called Juan and sort of held back., trying to be Spanish and relaxed and think that mañana was another day, as I shrieked hysterically at him. He turned up about an hour later in his van, as he always does, and was very friendly and grinned at me. I kind of grinned back and then I asked him what he was doing to me, what happened to him giving me his word? He was a bit sheepish and gave me some rather useless explanation to do with him having done his bit but not the decorators. Anyway, he said the men would get it all tidied up by Wednesday and then come back later. Don't worry, no te preocupes. Tu tranquila. You hear these words a lot "no pasa nada," and "no te preocupes/no se preocupe," don't you worry. Also, my neighbours always say "tu tranquila," which seems to equate to, "just relax."

I was not at all tranquila, but there was not much I could do and in the end, the men worked from eight till ten at night and got it tidy enough to get the furniture in, sort of, only most of it would not go up the stairs. Fortunately Gary was there; he is a great guy and a total optimist, not at all British. The fat one, Dean, that works with him kept saying, "No way luv, there's no way any of that will get up them stairs," as if he was pleased about it (this is so typical of any UK workperson), but Gary was very positive and managed to get a lot of it in and take it back and forth and stay for hours trying to work out where it could go. We worked non-stop and had nothing but Fanta orange all day, and then fell asleep on our dusty beds, surrounded by little bits of rock.

Really this was the story of last week; get up when men arrive at 8, make coffee (getting electric shock from machine), have no time to drink it, move boxes, lose things, try to find them, can't find any paperwork needed, chargers, etc, drink Fanta, move more things, fall asleep among dust and rocks. The men were quite jolly; they sat down outside at 11 or so to have their breakfast and went off at 2.30 for lunch, but came back on the dot and worked till late, even waiting till 9 with me for a furniture lorry when it had got lost. (This was new furniture we had to buy for upstairs; the chico who delivered it was so cross at how late it was and how far away we lived, and that he had to get back to Roquetas del Mar, that he had left half the bits behind and didn't assemble it).

The first week

We had a list of things to do, all very boring and to do with banks, cars, and so on.

It was all predictably chaotic - nothing we planned in May had worked out, no surprises there. However, I did manage, finally, to get the papers for the old Hyundai from Pedro, our lawyer - after about a year. One of the decorators gave me the number of the ITV (MOT equivalent) place, and amazingly I phoned and got a time to turn up there. The conversation lasted about 5 seconds and is a model of me being English and the man at the ITV being Spanish:

Man: Digame! (this is how everyone generally answers the phone; a bit unnerving when it is briskly yelled at you - it means, tell me, talk to me, and seems the equivalent of "Yes?" in English, only presumably not so rude).
Me: Hello, I wonder if you can help me, the thing is, I've bought this house, and there's an old car, I havent driven it yet, but the thing is, I think I need to get it a test... ramble, ramble.
Man: Registration?
Me: Er (working out what "matricula" means).. hold on a minute.. Oh, I think this is it. Reads out number.
Man: 2pm, Tuesday the 31st. Hangs up.

My neighbour, Pablo, has kindly agreed to go to the place with me, which is a relief, as I can just see it probably won't be simple; the Hyundai is ok but you have to disconnect the battery when you're not driving it as the warning light won't go out and it drains it. Tu tranquila, Julia, he said.

Meanwhile, we bought a new car, a Ford Focus, ex showroom, good price. Mysteriously long and opaque transaction, during which the men kept disappearing for half hours without explanation, but it all worked out int he end. He was a very jolly and nice salesman who Pepe Lopez assures me is "buena gente", a good guy and he seemed to be: he explained it was in n his interest to give us a good deal as we might come back and get another car, which he would prefer. We met Pepe in the garage, having his 4x4 repaired; normally he is on a quad, as they all seem to be in Rambla Alhibe. He showed Sandy a lot of pictures of him racing it in Morocco, getting Sandy all excited about buying a Landrover and then hammering it around the desert. There is a big car race of some kind every other week in Vera, it seems; clearly will be on Sandy's to-do list. Clearly, having a 4x4 sends a different message in Rambla Alhibe than in Sevenoaks.

I called Inma, our lawyer, Pedro's, admin lady and failed to reach her a few times. I asked her about residency; we have a letter from the bank saying we need to renew the non-resident status on our bank account, but perhaps not, given that we will be resident. She finally says Almeria office is moving, she will find out where to and get back to me. She hasnt, yet.

Meanwhile, the broadband saga continues; we are managing with a dial-up line and a wire hanging across the stairs, which we keep tripping over.

I tried a number I found in the Ayuntiamento, claiming to call Gloria and get rural Internet, but it was Telefonica again, who were no help at all. However, I found a leaflet from a company called Iberbanda, and spoke to them in Madrid, then in the local Sorbas office, to a nice man with the wonderful name of Eulogio. Names here are great; the lady in the furniture shop is called Luz Divina. Eulogio said we had to put in an application and then they could find out if we could have the service; they won't know this till they come up here.

Meanwhile, it's down to the Lubrin library if you need a fast connection. – possibly the only practical way of getting online. The chairs are quite small; everyone else there was four years old and playing a game with a penguin; but that was OK. I can't say I've exactly missed being online, but it did give me an anxious feeling. I have always pitied those people who said they felt as if they had lost an arm when they lost a mobile phone (how is it similar, really?) but I do now see that being completely cut off from the online world is a bit unsettling. Mind you, I could get used to it easily. When the lady there finds out Sandy works for IBM she asks if he can advise them on putting wireless into the whole town; he recklessly agrees and says he can get her a free router which seems to delight her.

We go to collect our new cheque books. I now have one and BBVA in Vera have enlightened me as to why I couldnt use my passport number to access my account online. It seems they had used some other numbers from another part of my passport. No pasa nada, she reassured me, it won't matter. When we have our residency cards, they'll maybe switch it over, or maybe not.

Later in the week, the pool man, Tony, says he is having it put in in Rambla Alhibe so if Iberbanda doesnt work we can try that. He has been doing a good job on the pool, especially as he has a wasp phobia and there was a big nest under one of the loungers, and also the almond tree nearest the pool has some disease that makes it gummy and attracts wasps. We called Pablo to cut it down; his goats then came up to eat the branches, which they did in about 5 minutes flat, like a lot of locusts.) The fact is, however painful the transition has been, however much cement is in the house, and however many Spanish call centres I have to negotiate, it is quite impossible to be anything but happy sitting on the terrace in the warm, 10pm evening, watching the goats come home while the sky turns turquoise, then green and the moon rises. This is the most wonderful place I have ever been. I can't quite believe I am here; today I did about five hours of cleaning but at the end of that I dived into the pool and came out into 40 degrees and a chair with a view of my date palm.

A little reflection

I have not read a newspaper for two weeks. did read El País in the UK, but I am nowhere near a newspaper shop now. In fact is it is not high up my list; I feel much better for not reading all the depressing stories about murders and floods. This is considered to be a pig-ignorant approach but I don't care. I have always wondered about "need to know" - on what basis exactly do you need to know something? What about needing not to know? It is not as if anything happens if you don't, though no doubt my mother would point out this is how Hitler got into power, since both she and Sandy think my lack of interest in history, politics, etc, is deplorable and I am one step off Jade Goody.

I have not watched TV. (I did listen to the radio for the first time today; it was a Spanish phone in about people's psychological problems, which I partly understood though I had the feeling I was missing interesting nuances. Hmm, Marie Carmen, you must just carry on with your life.. etc.) We don't have TV yet; question whether we will, or not. We did bring the Sky box, because Sandy kept threatening me "you know, the only way you can EVER get Sky is if you bring the box with you". Well, it is in a cardboard box somewhere in the house; we'll see if we actually need it.

I have also not used a tumble dryer. It is just so great hanging out the washing, something I have not done since I was a graduate student, I don't think, when Mrs George, the bonkers landlady, used to come out from her lair with her cherry brandy and tell me I was not doing it properly and must peg things from the very edge, not fold them over; this lesson has now come very useful and I have passed her wisdom onto Lara. There is something very satisfying about hanging out washing that you just don't get from a drier/ The sun dries everything in about 5 minutes and it is an excellent thought that it would have taken me hours of electricity to dry the same stuff at home. This has nothing to do with me being environmentally aware; one of the huge reliefs of leaving the UK is not having to hear the words "carbon footprint" again: I dont think anyone in Almeria has a clue what it is, in fact, I am not sure they have got to the concept of environment really. However, here they are drying stuff on the line, and eating organic tomatoes - our neighbour in the wheelchair came up and gave me a bag the other day as a welcome gift and told me they were "ecológicos" (guessing the accent goes there) and they were certainly delicious. He also made a very nice speech about how all the "cariño" of the village would be open to me, and compared me favourably to the other Inglesa who does not speak any Spanish and has six dogs!" I will have to go round with some presents soon - it is hard to know what so I generally fall back on Tartan shortbread biscuits from the airport; suitably British though actually Scottish, as when you look there are never any traditionally English things, except a roast dinner, which you can hardly present to someone.

It is still hot at 9pm, and just now out of the window there is a beautiful sunset; on other nights the sky has been pale green beyond the hill, with a crescent moon and the evening star but today it is a pale orange; the moon moves mysteriously around the sky and changes size, but the whole sky as far as I can see is full of hundreds and thousands of stars, far more than I ever saw at home. There is no light at all, except the free street lamp stuck on every house by the council and these hardly disturb the darkness. Once it is dark, wild boars are out and about, apparently - Sue says you can tell from the smell if they have been, and certainly a patch of the garden stank the other day - though that could have been anything.

Now I am sitting here, waiting for my chorizo and patatas a la pobre to cook. There is a party of tomcats somewhere on the hill; the goat man, Antonio, is just crossing the corner of our field on his way home; the goat bells are ringing. Am home alone; kids have gone to Madrid and Sandy is on his way to New York from Madrid tomorrow. It is very peaceful; I feel more at home here than I ever did anywhere else, though I do wonder where Shrimpy is and if he has joined the cat party; he has walked further every day, and is doing new and interesting things like sleeping on a pile of boxes in the garage, climbing almond trees, and hanging by all four paws outside the upstairs windows because he hasnt worked out they have mesh outside: it was an odd sight looking out this afternoon and seeing a furry stomach pinned against the glass.

Last day

2007-07-15T00:42:00.000-07:00

Today is our last day.

I am sitting in the kitchen with a slight hangover - mainly from lack of sleep but also from last night's goodbye party. Tomorrow is D Day, moving out day, our last day in the UK: everyone kept asking me if I felt excited, but I just feel exhausted. It is like having a baby - you are excited when you find out you are pregnant and after that it is all downhill. You forget why you did it, and in the last few days you are enormous and bad-tempered.

It is clear that the house and my body both know something is up. Over the last few weeks, the appliances have all acted up and gone wrong, and then a week ago on Thursday, I was about to go to Lara's school play and suddenly didn't feel well. This turned out not to be my sub-conscious trying to get out of seeing Oliver again - I was then violently ill for a week (you know what violently means in this context) which many people ascribed to stress; however as my mother-in-law had it too, I don't think so, unless she is having phantom removal pains.

It was then D-Day - 4 and I had missed a week.

D-Day-4

At half past eight, three removals men arrive: our mate Fred, one a bit like a less attractive David Essex and a very fat one. They tried to get their lorry next to the house, but the green camper van was parked outside our gate, again. Movers asked, could I get that moved, love? Hmm. Went to the pub to ask Shirley whose it was; someone at number 3. Girl answered the door, and said it was the lodger, but he wasn't there. He stuck his head out and said he was, but he was in bed. I asked if he could move it in the next half hour or so. Went back; the boxes were piling up on the pavement. Movers asked for a coffee.

Half an hour later, lodger had not moved van. Went back: he said crossly that he was just dressing. Eventually he moved it; Fat Mover told me the leather sofa should not have been wedged under the stairs and is scratched; I explained I didn't care; I liked it that way and he looked at me as I were barking.

The lady who is moving in, called to say BT were saying I hadn't put a stop on the phone line. I had, but I had to call them again; the call centre said they were very busy at the moment, and I thought, what do you know about being busy? When I spoke to someone, he said they had cancelled the stop on my line. Why was that, I wondered. It says, customer changed their mind, he said. I said I hadn't changed my mind. He said that it said on his notes that I had. I said, well, can I change it back? He sighed. I mentioned my tenants moving in two weeks later. The man got cross, and said it had been done all wrong! If tenants were moving in, I did not want a stop now, but later! He said someone should have a slapped wrist for doing it all wrong, but he would now change it and put it right. Thank you for your patience.Movers said "Another coffee would be great, love".

Went round the house losing the packing tape and scissors, finding things we had forgotten to pack; there were about 500 boxes and no room to walk. Fat Mover had a hard time squeezing through. Biffy was mewing and clawing the boxes; Shrimpy had vanished.

The post came, with various letters from financial services who had been asked not to send any more mail. I called their call centres, which were also very busy "taking calls from other customers." Is that supposed to make you feel better? Option 1, 2, and 3 never include asking not to be sent junk mail, but I eventually got a rather camp, helpful man, who called said, "I can provide that address for yourself, if you like."

I called the organisation that is supposed to help you stop junk-mail. The call centre options have recorded messages that tell you to write a letter and request an information pack. I try it a few times, then give up.

I talk to HSBC about Spanish account; it turns out that despite massive global multicultural ad campaign about being everywhere in the world, they are not in Spain. The woman says, yes, it is odd, isn't it? Instead, I set up a form to transfer money to our BBVA account; have to read IBAN numbers, etc, many times. Have got very good at "Bravo, Bravo, Victor, Alpha," stuff. Move money, apparently, then try to get on BBVA website but cannot sign in with my passport number. Call BBVA, who say I have another number registered. What can I do, I ask? They don't know - I can call the Internet help number. Decide instead to call back a few times and eventually get a man who gives me the passport number, which is quite different from mine. Go online, try to change the address, but need another number to do this. Ring up, and go to automated service to get number, then go back online. The system says I have been sent a one-use pin, which I need to enter and change on the site. I have not been sent this, or if I have, it will have gone to Spain by post and will take a week to arrive.

Went downstairs to see how men were doing. Fat Mover heaved a heavy sigh and said another coffee would be great. I pointed out the kettle, Nescafe etc and suggested they help themselves.

When they finally went, I saw they had gouged two holes in the £2000 redecoration job in the hall. Called Barry to get him to fix this and the smoke alarms. The kitchen tap wouldn't turn off; Sandy had tried to fix it with a bit of tape, but clearly that didn't work. Called Keith to see if he could fix it. Went out to get cat harnesses, the idea being that we can walk them round Spanish territory before releasing them into it. I know this will not work, but do it all the same.

Later on, Shrimpy appears, looking wary, and sniffs about. We decide we have to shut the cats in till we go, or Shrimpy will run away. He knows what boxes mean - they mean cattery, and he usually vanishes for 48 hours when he sees them. We try the harnesses; he goes very flat like a snake and growls, then nearly strangles himself. Biffy goes mad trying to get her harness off; anyway she is too fat for the waist part. We try to get Shrimpy to walk down the road, but he alternately lies down flat and then charges under parked cars.

All night, the cats yowl their heads off; Shrimpy produces a horrible deep roar that is nothing like his usual mew. Sandy comes in and says the massive cat carrier does not fit in the car. I had asked him to check it fitted 3 times; he said airily that it would, and because he is excellent at spatial awareness and I am crap at it, I had let it go.

In the night, Biffy wees on Alexander's mattress. I get up, put it in the washing machine, and get him another quilt.

D Day -3

Get up early to drop children at mother's, so I can go into London for laser eye check up with Dr Dan. Am nervous about some cells apparently growing on my eye - it will be a real nuisance if I have to come back from Spain - at the time, this seems a worse possibility than going blind. In fact, I am generally likely to take major medical risks to avoid minor inconvenience, like when I had the ganglion and could not cope with keeping the elastic bandage on by the pool and having a big white ankle mark on my tan.

Stop at Sainsbury for cat litter, drop kids off. Mother says sadly that it would be nice to have time to talk before I go. Sandy is getting a bad cold and says he has a temperature; we buy Lemsip. In London, go to my glamorous doctor Gill for valedictory Botox; she is looking slinky as usual, has run off with much younger man but sadly lost her place in Spain in the divorce. I think: I would rather have a house in Spain than a young man, any day.

It takes me 45 minutes and £20 to get to Dr Dan in a taxi. I sit there for 45 minutes eating up market chocolate biscuits and reading Vogue; it is the most rest I have had in a month. I read about ex-model Lady India or Savannah somebody who lives in the jungle in Kenya and shops in London once a year. She is feeding a warthog; I try to relate my move to this. Sandy and I are about twice as fat as them and our house is not in the jungle but we do have wild boar. My eyes are fine; I go to Liberty to try and get some fabric remnants to make things with in Spain; their remnants all start at £65 and vintage ribbon is £45 a metre. I give up and go to meet Jane for a drink, then go home.

We get kids, then go to Pets at Home to look at smaller carrier. Sandy has to go home to get the big one; meanwhile Lara runs around yelling "Mummy! Look at this!" and nagging me to get a chinchilla, rabbit, etc. We swap the carrier, go home and try the cat-harness business again; I tell the children it is a question of perseverance, but I know I will give up shortly. David, kids' godfather, has arrived to say goodbye; I am cross and sweaty and take Shrimpy to the allotment with Lara, where he continues to lie flat, or drag us into people's cabbages, then mews complainingly before making mad dashes to try and escape the harness. When we get back, Sandy has gone to the pub. I phone and yell at him about not being a maid; he says, why don't I come to the pub myself? I yell at him some more, then have a shower and decide to go over. As I leave the house, Alexander runs after me and says one of the cats has done a poo on the hall carpet.

We go to bed: Shrimpy continues the weird, deep mewing at regular intervals. I lie there, listening to it. Eventually, I shut him and Biffy in the kitchen and conservatory area, where they go quiet. Upstairs, Sandy is snoring very loudly so I go down to Lara's room but can't get back to sleep. The futon smells funny; I try not to think it is cat.

D-Day-2

Shrimpy and Biffy are sitting in the larder, on different shelves. They stare at me balefully and start to mew. Sandy takes them off to the vet. We decide to put them in the coach house for the rest of the day; it is too horrible listening to them asking to go out. Amazingly, they go quiet and fall asleep on the sofa, although Biffy does do a poo on the sisal matting.

Sandy takes the kids to Harry Potter movie. From 11 to 5 I clean and pack the rest of the stuff, which has expanded overnight. Then get changed for farewell party. This is good fun, though like all these events, you end up saying the same thing to everyone: yes, I am excited (I am not, actually, I just want it to be over), yes, the weather will be a lot better in Spain, yes, do visit us. If everyone we have invited actually visits us, we will have a full house all year, but they won't; we know that and so do they. The kids and their friends run riot round the streets. Go to bed at 1.30.

D-Day -1

I think to myself that I need a holiday, not in Spain.

Bulk up on Creme de la Mer?

2007-07-08T02:32:00.000-07:00

I have been deferring to the last minute the decision whether to buy a large pot of expensive Creme de la Mer moisturiser to take with me to Spain, on the basis that you can only get Astral and things like that in Vera. Well, this is a philosophical question. Jane very astutely pointed out to me, when we were talking about my getting a job in Spain, that I didn't want to replicate my life in the UK. I don't: I don't want to be a communications director, even in Spanish. I would rather be in the estate agent in Vera. At least that's what I think now. The charm of our Spanish life has always been the lack of crap - no carpets, no curtains, wood stoves, no TV or PC, not much stuff and I am going to have to make sure we don't turn it into our English house; it is already a risk, even though the weather keeps you outside much more.

Does this, however, extend to moisturiser? I am not sure. There are three dimensions to this a) does it matter getting old and wrinkly and b) being unsure that C de la M actually makes any difference anyway and c) blenching at the thought of the price, which is immoral, when £27 buys a poor family a goat as I read in one of the charity marketing flyers I got recently.

I thought I would just stop having Botox, which I have had in my forehead for ages, and which has got rid of my deep frown line, thereby, perhaps, briefly deceiving people into thinking I am not a stressed out, worrying control freak. However, when the line began to surface after about 6 months of withdrawal, I thought I would just nip to the doctor for a quick booster. I have booked this in for the last day, but the question of whether I will come back for more, or start to age "gracefully," remains an open one. I will, however, buy the goat, though part of me was thinking about the 500 or so that are constantly having babies in Los Herreras - no doubt I will soon have them to give away.

I constantly wrestle with this problem. (I mean, of course, at the back of my mind; it is not an all-consuming Blakean tussle). Is it superficial to care about looking nice, or does it not matter?In the red corner are people like Xtina and Jasmine, who think it is bad manners, lacking in self esteem, etc, to let oneself go, and even Jan pointed out that it is really depressing dealing with social workers who never wear any makeup. In the blue corner is the figure of Death with a sickle, reminding me that all remedies are pointless and that we are all going to be old and ugly. I suppose God is also there saying things like Handsome Is that Handsome Does and Fine Feathers make Fine Birds. I vaguely recall that this is a perennial philosophical question to do with the body and the soul; are they like an onion or is there an unimportant box with something valuable inside it?

It strikes me that this is a version of the same question as the one about language that has been on my mind - I am sure old Saussure or Chomsky or even that frightful Jacques Derrida used to bang on about the idea not being separate from the expression: the way you talk determines what you say, just as you cannot say "bossy" or "I am stuffed" (after dinner that is) in French, presumably because French people are not bossy and don't overeat. It will be interesting to find out what you can and can 't say in Spanish. For instance, Luis already told me that you don't say you catch an illness, it catches you, because the Spanish are more fatalistic and don't blame themselves for things happening.

I might have already said this, but I think they have a better attitude to age. I have noticed that the older Spanish woman can still be sexy, and I suspect has a lot of home-made remedies such as olive oil which work just as well as Creme de La Mer. This will save me a lot of money, and if it doesn't work, I can always not see anyone from the UK any more.

One ans wer is not to have a magnifying mirror, but the

Disposing of pickles and other tasks

2007-07-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

Today I looked at the list of jobs I have been keeping on the task bit of my Outlook. There were about 350 crossed out jobs, going back to March, when we decided to go. I expect if I were a different person, someone entrepreneurial, I could turn this into a product and market it to people about to move house. It feels as if it is something like this:

- Get cats their rabies jab. Go back to check antibody levels. Speak to airline about cats, book flights for cats, pick up cat passports. Go to Pets at Home to get cat carrier. Pets at Home say ask airline what is approved carrier. BMI say get approved carrier from shop. Order carrier, it is not in stock. Call back airline, they want cat weights and dimensions of carrier. Give rough ideas as cats will not stand on scale.

- Weeks later call back, carrier was not actually ordered as manager did it and ha ha he is not very reliable, just like a man! Well, please can I have one? You better come over and look at them. Go and get massive carrier, maybe it will not fit in car. Give measurements to airline who say they will have to get back with confirmation as these are different. Do I need fit to travel health certificate? ask DEFRA? DEFRA say ask vet? vet says ask DEFRA. DEFRA say ask airline. Airline say no, not sure though so book cats in. Vet calls to say I see your cats are booked for check, vet is not in that day. This is Saturday before we go and check must be 48 hours before travel. What do I do? Vet does not know, suggests I ask DEFRA. Get cat litter tray, bowls for travel.

- Invite agents round to see house to rent. Many agents come round, all very nice, your house is charming. Do a lot of paperwork, using sticky address labels. Order more sticky address labels. Nobody comes round to visit. Call round agents and chase, take photos of house and shrink to email size, email to all agents. Have anxiety attack about house not being nice enough. Put house on websites. Change price of house. Agents say get permission from HSBC to rent house. Ask permission, they send me forms, ask for £3000 for permission. Am about to swallow this when I think, hmm, it's a lot of money and ring to check this is right. Woman laughs sheepishly and says, well, how long are you renting for? I say not sure, she says, ok then, it'll only be £250. I say that's a bit bad, I nearly paid it. She giggles and says, yes, it's awful really, they try it on.

-Agent advises to get hall decorated. Hire decorator, he does estimates, says he will do it all while we are away on May half term week. Is this certain? (it is March now). order Farrow and Ball paint. Go away for half term to Spain. Decorator calls, says job is worse than he thought. I say he came in twice before hand to look at it, why is it worse now? Life is like that, you don't know what you're going to find on a project till you do. Yes, I know this from AMEC. He suggests we just cover it up with some heavy flock wall paper. I say no, I don't think so. Why not? It is not my taste. OK then, we'll talk when I get back.

Get home Sunday late pm to find lights are all off, there is no power in house. Wardrobe is in bathroom, hall is half plastered, doorbell is off, etc. Avoid hysterical call to decorator till Monday, then make it. Wait in for decorator, he says he is on another job till mid next week. Also, plaster has to dry. Argue with decorator (why is my job not priority? why did he say it would all be done last week of May?) Evntually get decorator back. Painting work starts.

Have nervous breakdown symptoms because only three weeks' viewing left and decorator says F&B paint has not stuck to wall properly, it is all patchy. He says he has never thought much of F&B, we argue about it as I have used it lots of times before. He gets his mate on the phone for advice and says loudly "Yes mate, F&B, I don't think much of it myself, either." We speak to F&B on the phone, they say plaster probably not properly dry. Decorator says this is a big problem, does not know what to do. In the end, he paints over it in F&B emulsion and it works. He finishes it all off then I ask him to hang the clock back. I explain I would rather he put the fixing in as you can't just tap nails into the wall. He says you can. He does it, and a big piece of plaster comes off. He says he will come back and fix it later.

One agent puts up board without asking. Ask about board (this is when they put it up without asking). She says it is a good marketing technique, so board stays. Neighbours all say: "I see your house is up for rent!" and "Haven't you rented it yet?" No.

Am advised by one agent that I had too many agents and this could be the death of my property. Says she once knew a house that took a YEAR to go, because it was on with too many agents. People think this means there must be something wrong with it. Ask her why she can't tell them there isn't. Ask Xtina for advice. She says this is cynical ploy, but also, maybe true. I drop agent. and some others, stay with two. Change the price again. Sandy says not to panic and he does not want to subsidise tenants, but I do it anyway. Phone them constantly, driving them mad. . ake up book with all appliance information, find appliance information, find utility information, find plumber, electrician and all other supplier numbers, find meters and stopcock, fill in book.

- HURRAH, we have tenants. I knew only non-Brits would appreciate my house; he is French. Take nice lady round, show her all appliances and how they work. Coffee machine breaks down when she is gone, call Miele, book engineer. Call tenant about taking on allotment, take her round to allotment. Fix security light, buy new bulbs for security light, SHIT light not working, call decorator, try all fuses, photo light and email to decorator to replace chase agency for rental agreement, organise cleaners, book cleaner in to do estimate, put cleaning into rental agreement. Get gifts for agents who got tenants, wrap and take round. Get weedkiller to do patio, call tree company to take out dead tree that may be Health and Safety risk. Tree people cannot come for a week, then come, will have to come back to take out tree. Cleaner does estimate - cat wee patch on carpet is big problem and needs fitter to come and replace underlay. Big job, suggests I get someone to do it. I suggest he could do it. He says he will get back to me. Agency have not yet sent rental agreement, chase it up. Call insurers to advise of new conditions.

- Pack up house, order boxes from online site, order more boxes, order bubble wrap, order tape, order more tape, SHIT next day delivery not arrived, on phone, phone does not answer, call back, call back. It is on the lorry madam, no we can't say when it will arrive. No, delivery is next day, that does not actually mean it is next day guaranteed. If you read the small print, you will see. Chase orders that have not arrived, pack, pack, pack, pack. Run out of bubble wrap, order more. Go to get Arctic root and St Johns Wort tablet stocks to take so I do not revert to unmedicated self when in Spain. There is no more Arctic Root (wonder drug) in stock, order it. Go to get cat discs engraved and collars for cats, batteries for scales to take to Spain in case they don't have these, plus bayonet fitting light bulbs for our lamps (no bayonet fittings there).

- Go through kitchen, emptying and washing about 100 jars of pickle which are past their sell by date, sometimes by about 3 years.

(I pointed out to Sandy long ago that he ought to join Pickles Anonymous: I remember him when he thought the Millenium Bug would mean no food in shops: he stockpiled about 3 cupboards of Ambrosia Cream Rice and Macedonia Fruit Salad which I said I would rather starve than eat and then after there was no Millenium Bug I had to throw all that out; even school Harvest Festival would not want it, they expect nice Twining Tea and Bonne Maman jam. I have to hope that in Spain, we will not have access to so many pickles and also that people will not take it into their heads to give them to us for Christmas. It is all down to people not knowing what to buy for a man, which has meant that for years, we have been being given small jars of pickled beetroot or chutney (which I have seen it lots of times but never eaten it; chunks of vegetable in brown sauce doesn't appeal to me). They come with a little checked cloth over them and quaint writing but the fact is they are just Branston pickle more or less and they move slowly to the back of the cupboard, where they go off. Fortunately, the Mercadona doesn't have much pickle, only olives and small white onions, which Sandy doesn't seem so compelled to collect.

I am not joking when I say Pickles Anonymous I actually think it's a psychological problem he has. Women bang on about diets and read novels about them but actually men have just as many food issues, only different ones. The way they manifest stress is different. Recently, Sandy has started behaving like a marauding bear, one of those ones that invade people's bins in Canada which are called "rogue" bears. The other day, he approached the fridge as if he were going to claw it open, and he is even looking more and more like a bear. I told him maybe he had reverse anorexia, where you look in the mirror and actually you are fat, but you think you look thin. He just laughed and said he was planning to see how big he could get.)

- Take jars to bottle bank, several trips, using a lot of petrol (plus water used to wash them out, which takes a long time, especially sticky Chinese sauce which will not come out of the bottle even if upside down in sink).

- Fill boxes of soft toys, apologising to the bears as I compress them down, plus random clothes, and about 1 million computer games. Keep telling the kids "you won't be on the computer all the time in Spain, you know." It is true, they play outside a lot more, and now Alexander thinks he can get a quad bike, I don't think we will see him for dust.

- Make Sandy get rid of many shirts left in cupboards "too gay" (ie they fit and are not baggy enough to pull up round beer belly). Go to Oxfam with bags of shirts. He has never thrown anything away in his life: the only reason we don't have more is because I have removed university rugby shirts, etc. on the sly. Run out of boxes, order more. Throw things, throw things out, pack. Order missing chess pieces from Alexander's talking chess set he has never used because of missing pieces, so we can take it with us. Go and get books because you can't buy them in Spain, pack them.

- Go on Royal Mail website to try and work out how to get post forwarded. Can't understand site - it seems only to cater for moving in the UK. Call them, listen to call centre music. They can send me a form in the post. I order it, but also get one from the post office. The one I ordered turns up about 5 weeks later, after I have had the reply from the second one. Meanwhile, go through files to find all people who send us post, make a list of them. Call them to tell them we are moving. A lot of things like phones and his credit cards are in Sandy's name because that's his domain. They say things like, due to the Data Protection Act, we cannot speak to you as your name is not on the account. Where is your husband? He is in Australia. Get irritable and say spitefully, well, you'll be the ones writing to the wrong address!

- I make a list for him. I call the numbers I have and get automated call centres. Option 1, 2 and 3 do not include moving to Spain. I use cunning ruses to get a human being, and when I do, they pass me around a bit. Someone says, "Right, give us the new address." I try to explain Spanish address on the phone. People say "What?" and "What's the postcode?" L-A-S that is LIMA, ALPHA, SIERRA... I say. "Is that LOS?" No it's LAS. I have a lot of chats with people about how super, moving to Spain, I bet the weather is lovely out there. It takes about 2 whole days to make the calls; a lot of them say, you have to put it in writing. I cannot even reach half the people who send us junk mail; they do not have phone numbers or addresses. I call some of them several times; they say we are on a number of lists which is why we keep getting more post.

- Cancel store cards. Ask for all bills to go online. Listen to "ANOTHER GIRL, ANOTHER PLANET" on Vodafone helpline about 6 times, till nearly driven mad. Girl on the other end says, yes, we are thinking about changing the music. I point out also they could tell you where you are in the queue like everyone else. She says they are thinking about that too. Cancel more cards, call Sevenoaks council re poll tax. They register I am going and am in credit with them. They say they will stop all paperwork and pay off the account. A week later they sent me a paper bill for next year.

-Call Trevor (garage man) about selling Mercedes. He gives me dealer's number, I go and see them, they make an offer, I sell the car. We now only have one, which means Sandy and I have to negotiate all the time. Call Landrover about selling the car back to them. Sandy has claimed this is not possible as we are on a 3 year contract. I am not sure; anyway, we have nowhere to park it in the UK as tenants will take both parking spaces. Landrover are great. Nice guy called Darryl says we can return it and there is enough change on the contract to hire a car. We hire a Passat and let the side down on the school run. Lose the cheque from Landrover and have to call them back to reissue it.

- Resume driving responsiblities. I now have to: leave at 7.30 to go to Alexander's busstop, then back to Lara's school. If Sandy is working in town, go to station in Chelsfield first, or afterwards. Get home, do all other stuff, then do same in reverse from 4pm, or 3pm if school has kindly decided it is school play so children can go home early for a rest before hand.

- Get big stock of fishfood for fish, arrange for fish in tank, orchids, freezer and microwave to go to Jamie and Neville, and Jan respectively. They turn up in the drive: large lady in purple (Jan),tattooed cool skinny guy in khaki fatigues (Neville) and larger guy with jewellery and cap (Jamie). Keith (policeman neighbour) is fixing his bike in the garage, we are chatting. It's the first day the sun has been out for weeks; it all feels a bit Lily Allen. There is some banter:

Me: Here comes my team.
Keith: Team of pikies, you mean.
Neville and Jamie laugh.
Jan: Anyone want some lavender?
Keith: Or Little Britain, more like.

I start to feel sad about going. I have some cool neighbours here, I really do. I tell Neville and Jamie to name the 4 fish (bred from eggs in our pond) after the family. Neville says if one dies we'll decide which one of you it is and let you know. Then they relent and say they will send me some photos of the fish. Jan takes my orchids. It is all a bit final as they wheel the stuff away.

Different ways of working

2007-07-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Juana's mother's career advice

When I first went out to Las Almendras, I walked round the rambla and met my neighbours: Juana, Pablo and their family. I was actually a bit scared, as I have never stopped being when I meet new people, and particularly as I was the estranjera, the foreigner. As I went up the track, I felt conspicuous in my shorts and sunglasses when everyone else was in a shirt and trousers, long skirt, or in Juana's mother's case, a black widow's outfit. But, of course, they were incredibly friendly and kind, as they have always been. It was on this first trip that Juana's mother asked me why we didn't just live in Spain.
We have to pay the mortgage, work, I said. I wish we could. We need to work, though.
There was a pause. Then she pointed at the fields.
"Plenty of work here," she said.
After a minute, she looked at me and had second thoughts.
"You're educated, you could probably get a job in an estate agent, in Vera," she added.

(Career counsellors have never done much for me. At Oxford, the Careers Service lady ran her finger down a chart. "English degree ...Advertising!" Since then, I've been advised to: run your own business, work in a big company, work in a small company, go into PR, go into marketing, and (from Sandy) go into IT, work with some crazy journalists I know who've started an online business or work for BarCap because it's a lot of money. They all seemed to have some validity as ideas, but the problem was I didnt want to do any of them and in most cases wasn't fit for them either. That's the thing with advice, like horoscopes, it's OK if it tells you what you want to hear, but not otherwise, and it really ought to come from someone clever who sees you from on high, like God or a good shrink, and not a friend or colleague who is just saying the first generally applicable thing that comes into their head. In fact, I would say the only one time in my life I have had good advice was in church or from the shrink from the Priory I saw twice when I couldn't sleep.)

I laughed, and told quite a lot of people the story of Juana's mother. But now I come to think of it, I think she saw me more clearly than I saw myself. I just thought of myself as a "professional" who worked in an office, ignoring the fact that the only thing that matters is if you enjoy doing something. This is often the way: Sylvia and Alain said, when we bought Las Almendras, that we would be living there within a year, and we are. And after all, though I didnt know it, being an estate agent in Vera may well be my destiny, or part of it.

No, Minister

It is, of course, always easier to know what isn't your destiny, especially once you've tried it, like Tigger, and don't like it. This was what happened with the government contract I tried. People told me it would be a different culture and it was: the secretaries were not glamorous but old and fat and you couldnt say someone was crap, you had to say their skill set didn't match the project, or something of that kind.

While I worked there, I never got a desk, a phone and a PC at the same time. Before I joined, I asked Sarah, the boss, about where I would sit, and she said something like we wasn't sure. I asked her about my laptop and she said I should phone IBM's helpdesk. IBM's helpdesk said I should ask my local IT consultant, who came a few days later and said personal laptops wouldnt work in the government building, nor would Blackberrys. In the end, sometimes I got one of the three things I needed, sometimes two, but never all three. I did ask at the beginning, and it went like this:

Me: Hi, Sylvia, good morning.
Sylvia: Oh, good morning.
Me: Where could I sit today?
Sylvia: (looking round very vaguely as if she didnt recognise the office). Ah... Ah, well.
Me; Over here?
Sylvia: Er, no, not there. Sue's sitting there later.
Me: Over here?
Sylvia: No, it's Friday. Jackie's in on Fridays.
Me: Well, where can I sit?
Sylvia: Well...you could sit next to Ann..only she doesn't like anyone sitting near her.
Stuff that. I try the desk next to Ann, but the PC, which takes 10 minutes to wake up, has no internet. Also, the phone doesn't work.
Me: Paul, is that desk next to you free?
Paul (heavy sigh at the idea I might sit next to him) Er.. I don't know. it might be.
I sit down. The phone is forwarded to someone's mobile. The PC works, but I can't load Yahoo mail, which I am mainly using, because there isn't enough memory: I have to opt out of the Beta version and into the old one. I work for a bit, using my laptop, transferring stuff onto a flash drive and then mailing it on the office system. Then the system goes down. I listen to the conversations around me:

Paul: Sylvia?
Sylvia: (staring at the screen intently as if going to catch a mouse) Silence.
Paul: (more loudly) SYLVIA!
Sylvia: (starting) Yes? Yes? What is it?
Paul: Could you possibly copy these for the meeting?
Sylvia (looks blank) These?
Paul: Yes, the agenda.
Sylvia: Oh, well.. I was just.. Yes, alright, leave it with me.
Hours pass. Sylvia takes most of the morning going back and forth to the copier, which bleeps intermittently as if in pain.
Hours pass.
Paul: Sylvia, did you do those copies?
Sylvia: Er, ah...I think there must be some problem with the machine, it seems not to be working.
Paul (with frustrated tutting noise and sotto voce) For heaven's sake! He heaves a sigh and goes over: there is no paper in the machine.
Paul: Sylvia, this is where the paper goes..
Sylvia: Well, I'm just off home now, it is 4pm .... (Takes lift down to ground floor).

In the end, I come in, then say I am going to Starbucks as there is no desk, phone or PC. Everyone ignores me and carries on working. I

People don't really like change, especially not in the office. The IR director in my old job did not like change. Once, when I suggested that instead of emailing tens of powerpoint files around the office during results, they could be stored on a shared drive. There was an intake of breath and a silence. "That would be a whole new way of working," he said, in shocked tones. We used this phrase as much as we could in my team after that, about moving the stapler and things of that kind, which was quite funny ("Shall we move this stapler? That would be a whole new way of working"), but it wasn't really that funny. In fact, I am quite bitter and upset about my UK work experience, particularly since 1989. Is it right that, in that same last job, the Company Secretary, when I said things in meetings, would put his hand on my arm restrainingly and say "Just a minute, dear." Offices are full of conventions, and old men, and the worst of it is that, whenever you have a bright idea for change, you end up feeling like the schoolgirl who spoke out of turn.

I have had a lot of advice about how moving doesn't change your problem, but it allows you to imagine yourself differently, do things that you would be scared to do at home. There is no way I could go and work in an estate agent in Sevenoaks, but there are many days when the estate agency starts to look quite appealing.

Education, education

2007-07-07T04:34:00.001-07:00

Miss Mackintosh and me

I had a row with one of Alexander's teachers over the phone the other day. A month ago, I would have held back, but I am getting a bit demob crazy. Her name is Miss Mackintosh, and in my mind's eye she has a large backside, a bit like my old Latin teacher, and is wearing a mackintosh. I had called to ask if Alexander could study Spanish instead of doing SATS tests, since he isnt going to need them in Spain. This is what happened:

Miss M:(very loudly and clearly in ringing posh voice which goes up and down on stressed words) Now Mrs Aitken, about this idea of Alexander doing Spanish homework (said as if I had suggested he use the time to download porn) during the tests, I' m afraid we can't possibly have that.
Me: (with cold suspicion) And why is that? (I could have added "pray?" but I didnt actually).
Miss M: We can't possibly make exceptions for individual children. If we did that, every parent in the school would be ringing to ask for the same treatment.
Me: (thinking, why would they do that, the rest of them are not moving to Spain). Well, it's a bit disappointing. You don't seem to be very flexible..
Miss M: (interrupting). You say that Mrs Aitken, but most of the parents are perfectly satisfied. You must understand, Mrs Aitken, the school is geared up to provide what most of the parents want..
Me (interrupting) Which is? Exam results, I suppose.
Miss M: Of course they want the children to do well and to have Choices!
Me: It's a shame they couldnt do Spanish, when it is the world's 3rd most spoken language whereas French and German...
Miss M: (Over the top of me). Well, Mrs Aitken, I am a linguist, and I have been teaching for FORTY YEARS and I am afraid I DO NOT AGREE WITH YOU.
Me: I dont think we're going to agree.
Miss M: (booming and onto the next thing) I'm sorry to hear that Mrs Aitken, and I do wish you very well in your future life. Goodbye!

I can see I was being pretty annoying from her point of view, but all the same her listening skills weren't that great and she got a C-for customer relations. I told this story to Jan who said in the public sector she would be expected to provide individual programs for children and in fact does, for at least a third of her class, most of whom are special needs, statemented, or have parents that make Kerry Katona look posh, who come up to the school with a large posse of relations and say "You fucking lay off my kid, you hear? I don wanna hear the word OMEWORK you fuckin ear me?"

It seems pastoral care is better in the state sector, which when you think about it is not really surprising. I basically fell for the middle class folly of thinking that if I paid for something it would be better. It may well be, if what you want is Oxbridge, but in other ways, maybe it isn't. Certainly, they seem to apply a ruthless capitalist ethic to the customer: put up or shut up if you want results.

A bonnet? I don't think so!

And by the way, it pisses me off that while I am in the middle of packing, which as we know by now is a never-ending nightmare, that the school sends me a note asking me to provide Lara with a garter, a black skirt, a feather boa, a cape or jacket, a blouse and, to cap it all, A BONNET. Where am I supposed to get a flipping bonnet? The note helpfully says that I may find it useful to go round the charity shops in Sevenoaks. think I am supposed to make it. Hmm, there is a lot of stuff in the Sevenoaks charity shops, but given that most of them are full with the good burghers' cast-off Armani (not to mention all the stuff I dumped in there since packing fors Spain) and given that most people stopped wearing bonnets about 200 years ago, I don't really think I am likely to come across a bonnet.

The point is, what happened to the dressing-up cupboard? Every year, the school puts on the same play, more or less, and every year the parents are asked to go and look for bonnets. Ie expect I will get a "slack mark" , the latest invention of Lara's school, which has a whole range of ways of punishing the children. Ha ha, I think to myself. You may give me a slack mark if you like! I'm leaving!

La Directora

At the end of May, I met Isabel, the lady who runs the children's new school. Registering was no sweat, as I may have said before - just an email with their passport numbers. We went into the school, which is the only one in Lubrin - at 9.00. Not a 4x4 in sight, because people a) walk or b) take the bus. The bus picks up every child in the villages from their front door; I expect this used to happen in the UK. Isabel was charming; other ladies came in and out and kissed us on both cheeks as we were talking. We had a chat about what year the children would go in.

"Some of the English children fall behind in their Spanish, so we put them back a year," she said.
I said I'd prefer them not to fall behind.
"The trouble is, they work hard in school, but they don't do their deberes, homework." School ends much earlier, 2 for Lara and 3 for Alexander, after which there is lunch, and then the bus back. So homework is important.
"Why not?" I asked.
She sighed. "Well, you know, it's the English mothers... They don't really make them work.."

Later, I asked Juan Manas (builder in Spain) about this. He said it was true, most of the English women sat around in the square getting drunk and letting their children play in the street. Oh dear. I have seen them, actually; there are a couple of blondes with the leopard-top, dirty feet kind of look, with their beers lined up on the table. I assure Isabel I will not be like this. Later, Jane tells me maybe I will. Maybe I will have my fag and flipflops and let the kids play on quad bikes all day. Maybe not, though. I can be a rebel when Miss Mackintosh is on the phone, but then, any good middle-class girl can do that.

Marital tensions, call centres

2007-07-06T05:52:00.000-07:00

Sandy acts weird around logistics

Sandy did something pretty weird when it came to this move, particularly given that he used to be in the military and is supposedly Logistics Man. When we were talking about moving, one of the questions was whether he could work from the Spanish house or not. We are, after all, in a small village which is long on goats but not much else. Working out there required two things: broadband Internet access, to allow Sandy to get onto IBM Starship Enterprise HQ - no small undertaking - and an airport which could fly him to meetings in Ankara or Munich, or wherever.

He decided it was all hunky-dory: Oliver, the previous owner, had told him there was broadband, and Almeria airport was all he needed. That was in March, when we decided to go to Spain. This is what then happened in about April:

Sandy: We have to sort out that broadband, you know. (We, in this context, means, you).
Me: I thought it was sorted out.
Sandy: No, it's not connected up. We need to get the software to connect it up.
Me; (Glazing over at thought of technology) How do we do that?
Sandy: You have to get it from Telefonica, we have to get them to come round to the house and fix it.
Me: (Heart sinking) Oh? How do you know we've got Internet?
Sandy: Oliver showed it to me. I saw it working, and there is a satellite on the side of the house, and a router. It's there, it just isn't connected up.
Me (thinks: what is a router?)
Sandy: Yes, you better call them and arrange it.

A bit later, he says in a very grouchy way:

Sandy(Staring at laptop, in usual position on sofa. When Sandy is sulking, he sits on the sofa hunched over his laptop. In fact, inasmuch as quite a fat man can, he starts to actually look like a laptop.): This is a real problem with these flights. This is going to be a real problem.
Me: What is?
Sandy: I can't fly anywhere from Almeria. There are basically no flights except to the UK.
Me: Well, didn't you know that? You must have checked the flights.
Sandy: Well I did, but not in depth.
Me: What do you mean, not in depth?
Sandy (banging away on the laptop): I looked at it, but now I look at it more, I can see there are no flights.
Me: Well, we'll just have to work it out.
Sandy: Well, I can't fly from there. I don't know how I'm going to work it out.
Me: Can't you fly from Alicante?
Sandy: Yes, but it's an extra hour on the journey. (tap, tap)
Me: I dont understand why you're just looking at this now.
Sandy: Silence (Tap, tap). Frowns.

Later on, he points out that if there are no flights, this would mean I Cant Work, which would mean I Would Have to Fly to Madrid, Never Be at Home, never see the children and they would be very sad (I was not mentioned as never being seen). He is clearly majorly stressed: he stares at the laptop all the time although it clearly has no answers.

I then call Sylvia, my friend in Madrid, and ask her to call Telefonica for starters. She is very obliging and tries, but it turns out Telefonica say we don't have an Internet account. We then try Movistar, since we also seem to have a bill from Movistar, which Sandy thinks might relate to the satellite dish on the side of the house. Movistar (which is kind of part of Telefonica, but kind of not - not entirely clear in the call centre) don't do Internet.

At about this point, Sylvia suggests I speak to an engineer, Fernando, she knows in Agua Amarga. Why don't I call him and get him to sort it out? Maybe, but I decide to have another go at working out whether we have an Internet account.

I speak to Movistar and have several nice conversations with people in local mobile shops in Vera who offer me little cards and things. Then we realise I am after Internet and they don't do that. I have to call Telefonica from the UK. It takes me a while to find a number that works. I then get Telefonica Movil (not Movistar), and am in the wrong place; I have to speak to Telefonica Fixed. After a while, I do. A lot of Spanish call centre people are very patient. "Mira, Dona Juliet, this is no good, you are in the wrong place. No, they have no Internet registered on this phone number. Dona Juliet, you call this number..." I start to bang things on the floor.

Sandy calls and asks me if I have sorted it out. I shout at him, he says:
Sandy: Well, we have to sort it out, or I Can't Work.
Me: What am I supposed to do?
Sandy: I don't know, but we have to get it sorted. If I can't get online, I will have to go back to the UK. I will not see the kids, they will be upset.

Back to Telefonica: we have to speak to Telefonica Fixed, not Telefonica Mobile. I speak to them. No, you can't have Internet where you are, they say. But I think I do, I say. No, you don't, they say. But I have a dish on my house, I say. We don't know what kind of system you have, they say. Can an engineer come and look? No, not if you haven't got an account. Bang, bang.

In the end, one lady (I have spoken to most of Telefonica's call centre by now) says that I can have some kind of Internet and do I want to contract it now? But it is not ASDL something, it is something else something. I am stabbing in the dark now. OK, I think, I'll have it anyway, on the basis that something might be better than nothing. I organise to amend the account to take whatever it is. Will we now have broadband? I have no idea. I call Fernando and say I'll call him from the house if it doesn't work. The nice lady, Maria, gives me a magic number which she says I need to input to the computer to link up. I am pleased to have the number: in my mind this is the code that will solve all our problems. I ask Maria if I can just put it into any computer: she says yes.

Later, I am not sure. I call back to ask about the number: Telefonica then tell me to call their technical team. I do. They put me onto some local technical office, who say the number hasnt' got the right number of digits, also it is not for broadband, which would connect automatically. Can they come out and look? No, they don't do that: I need to speak to the main Telefonica number.

We go there in the last week of May, accompanied by Lizzie, the ex-nanny, Jane and her girls. Xtina and Eddie are going to join us, so there will be lots of witnesses to the marital discord.

We get there: Sandy logs on, spends a lot of time doing stuff and none of it works. It goes tlike this for a bit:

Sandy: You had better call Telefonica.
Me: But they wont speak to me.
Sandy: Well, we have to do something.
Kids: Can we have an ice cream? Can we go to the waterpark?
Other adults: How about a glass of wine? Cor, this is great, being on holiday!

I call Telefonica again, this time I can use the Spanish number. They ask me what kind of Internet I have: I don't know. I tell them they have just sold me something so surely they know what it is? They say, they don't know what system I have, they are just the billing people? They point out that the phone line is very bad and needs fixing: they will call me back. Bleep, bleep.
Nobody calls back. I call back several times.

Eventually, I speak to a nice marketing man who says I need a new satellite dish, that will just be for the Internet. It will cost a lot, 2000 Euros. I dont care: by now I wouldnt mind if it cost 10,000. I feel I am finally getting somewhere. Does that mean I will have Broadband? It is very important for my husband's work! By now, all the Telefonica people know about my husband and how he needs broadband to work, but I suspect they don't actually give a toss. Why would they?

I call Fernando and he says he could also supply this satellite dish for me, but with another operator. He will come out, but it will cost about 1000 Euros to come out. I say I'll call him back a bit later. Bang, bang.

Just as I am about to give up, Telefonica, miraculously, calls me back. Things like this happen in Spain, I have noticed. They are sending an engineer out to look at the system. At last, a human being will come and see what we have in the house.

He turns up the next day. Everyone else is by the pool: I am walking about attached to the phone and Sandy is on the laptop. The engineer is quite silent: he does a lot of things on the laptop and realigns the satellite dish. He says it is nonsense to have a new dish; the two signals would get confused and our village is too far from the satellite, that is the real problem. But the marketing man told me, I said. He sniffs: these marketing people don't understand the technology, he says. Shocking, I say, from the depths of my PR experience. I haven't understood most of what he said, but the dish is now nice and straight.

What do you suggest? I ask. He says we could go down and work in Lubrin. Yes, there is broadband there. It seems odd to me that the satellite is millions of miles up in the sky and yet it makes a big difference if you are in Lubrin or in Los Herreras, 15 minutes away. We are facing the wrong way, apparently. No chance of broadband in the house? No, all we have is a dial-up line - it is ok for email but not more than one computer. Oh.

Sandy is still sulking. He goes out in the car to buy a phone card which may let him do 3G or something. He goes all the way to Vera and the shop is not open. He waits for it to open, but has left his passport behind, which he needs. He has to come back again, then go again. The shop is then closed. He goes back later, with his passport. Eventually, the girl does the paperwork and says it will be sent off: come back tomorrow. He is very silent by the pool.

I go over to the neighbours. Juana's son's novia, girlfriend, Maria, is also there: she is also our plumber, Gilberto's, daughter. I explain my trials with Telefonica: they all agree it is very hadrd dealing with Telefonica though they look very vague when I mention "banda ancha", Broadband. What is that? I can see them thinking. The Spanish are very switched on to e-commerce, but maybe not in Los Herreras. Maria, however, works for the Ayuntiamento - she says there is broadband in Lubrin and also that they are going to put up a new mast in Saeti (our area).
Oh, when? I say. "Soon, quite soon." This year? Maybe, could be. Maybe next year. Anyway, they have written to the residents about it. You don't want to go and buy a satellite dish now and then find they've done it all free.

I try talking to Sandy. It is uphill work: he is like Eeyore. I point out angrily that it is not my fault he didnt check if there was broadband or not. If it was that important, why didnt he check? He says Oliver told him. As Oliver was, on a generous interpretation, absent-minded, and on a less generous one, a bankrupt, financial disaster who scarpered back to the UK leaving lots of unpaid bills, you could wonder why Sandy Oliver saying anything was gospel. Sandy goes back down to look for his 3G card. The girl has forgotten to send off the paperwork: he will have to come back again.

After a while, I talk to Jane. I explain Sandy's unreasonable behaviour and like most people she seems to think it was my decision to come to Spain and somehow Sandy has been corralled into it. Is that what he told her? Not exactly, but clearly while his mouth said it was a joint decision his body language was saying I Was Pushed. I didnt effing push him. I gave him several get-outs - the last few times I was approached about jobs I asked him if he was quite sure and he said, yes, though on reflection he used words like "we 've made the decision now, we have to stick to it," and "it's the best thing for the children." He is in a foul mood: I hate him and want to leave. Jane and I wonder if he ignored the information about the flights and bloody banda ancha until it was too late because subconsciously he really wanted to go to Spain, so was ignoring any logistical obstacles. I think this is right. He has been quite unhappy at work for some time and I think he wants to escape - but he has to burrow his way out backwards and with his eyes closed, as usual, rather than just picking up the spade and going for it.

The fact is, it all ended OK, the way things do in Spain. You try for ages to do something through the official channels, and then, as if by magic, someone helps you. We went down to Lubrin to se the school's headmistress and stopped by the Ayuntiamento. There was Maria, who gave us a password and user name. We logged in, sitting in the bar, and lo and behold, there was free broadband and Sandy got onto Starship Enterprise Flight Deck. A cloud lifted; he was suddenly connected with the Mother Ship. He became a different person and started talking to me about car brands, having not spoken to me for some days.

At the same time, Juan Manas, our builder, was in the bar. I had told him about the Internet problem and how we might have to rent a small office space somewhere in Lubrin. All smiles, he offered us a desk in his office there if we wanted one, where there is also working broadband. Sandy said Juan Manas was a sharp operator, and was going to charge us a fee that would cover his own internet costs, but I didnt see it that way. Besides, Juan Manas himself had told me that he liked helping people, not for the money, but because he wanted them to be happy living in his town. And I believe him. Yes, Sylvia - who was liaising with him because his Andaluz accent can be hard work on the phone - had given him an earful about not leaving the house tidy and not putting the glass in the windows yet. But he wasn't just guilty - he was being a Mr Fixit, which is what he likes.

Before we reached this happy conclusion, we had some very dark moments. On the Villaricos beach, Sandy was silently lying there, exuding resentment. There might as well have been a bubble coming out of his head saying: You made me come here where I can't work and have no broadband. When Jane and I were talking about what I was going to do (everyone keeps asking me that), I said I didnt know yet but wanted to take some time. She agreed and said, of course and I said, I do have a year's pay off. Sandy then raised his head slightly to say that the payoff had been spent. Subtle message: you should get a job!

I was so angry I nearly exploded; instead I walked off down the beach and didnt come back for a bit. Nobody knew it but I was crying to myself and thinking about leaving Sandy. I felt there was no way I could go out to Spain and embark on this adventure with him if he had that attitude. I He had a real cheek: the money was paid off the mortgage which meant we could afford to live on less, so it was contributing just as much as if it were in the bank. I could only think he said it to make a point about how I ought to get a job. He kept pushing me about it, even though we both know that would not be feasible when I am spending all my time talking to call centres. I don't even know what is behind it as if you ask him he denies it and says he doesn't care (note the language) what I do, it does not bother him, he does not think about my job. On the beach, I was stomping along trying to think of how I could leave him, complicated by the fact we were going to Spain. I thought probably I could share the house with him and just not speak to him. When I got back, all the other adults had "handle with care" faces on and were trying to be extra polite and constructive and probably thinking how annoying it was to come on holiday and have to see us have a big row. I downloaded a lot of my views to Eddie who was in the kitchen trying to cook up a huge meal. He wasnt generally listening as he was focused on the squid but he did agree with me that now was not the time for Sandy to think of reasons why it was not logistically possible to live in Spain.

I blame a lot of it on IBM. Their Human Resources HQ - which is some giant evil computer in Hungary - kept saying Sandy had to be based in places like Germany, based on some computer analysis of where he had worked in the last 6 months. He pointed out this changed every 6 months but the Hungarian computer was not interested. All this followed a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about whether he could, or could not, be based in Madrid, during the course of which Sandy changed his mind several times and peed off the partner based there because he didnt accept a local job on a local salary. In the end, it has all worked out and he is going to be based in Madrid, but we have had several evenings of Sandy head-in-hands, sighing and giving me his "this is a big problem" speech. He always expects the worst and is very black and white about it. One minute it will be no way, there is no way this will ever be resolved and my career is going nowhere; then suddenly some bloke in IBM will call someone and suggest Sandy joins some other team and it will all be hunky-dory again. Whatever I say during these interludes is rejected due to the fact that I don't understand, which is quite accurate.

All this has taught me a couple of things.

1) You realise how badly you speak a language when you have to go through a call centre in it. I spent three and a half hours on the phone to Telefonica, and have just spent another 30 on the phone to BBVA, the bank, trying to sort out Internet access to our Spanish bank account. Mysteriously, they have a wrong passport number for me: it bears no ressemblance to my own which means I can't input it to the Internet which requires this information.

2) In Spain, if you try hard, it don't mean a thing, as the Specials said. It's when you give up and take it easy that some nice person suddenly just solves it for you. After about 3 calls on the passport, a man just gave me the number they had and told me to use that.

3) People are not logical, even my husband. On the surface, they may seem to be, but underneath, they are being driven by hidden psychological motivations. I know this about myself, but I always assume that everyone else is completely rational.

So we dont exactly have broadband, but we know where it is and the good news it is in a bar in the square and it is free. Later on, some time this year, maybe next year, there will be a new mast, and maybe we'll get it in the house. In the Ayuntiamento, I saw a sign that said to call Gloria at Telefonica for information about rural internet, which I will do when we get out there.

Meanwhile, there is a new boiler, and I managed to read the Spanish instructions and light it, and the electrics appear to work. This will not be the end, but at least we have broken the ice.

Travel and narrow minds

2007-07-05T00:36:00.000-07:00

Of course, now we are leaving we are meeting nice people.

Recently, we got to know the parents of one of Alexander's friends, Luca. A big shame we didn't meet them before; she is Italian and he is English but they have spent most of the last ten years living in Africa. I would say that there is no doubt that travel broadens the mind but equally it might be that broad-minded people are the ones that travel in the first place.

What is for sure is that people have quite different sized comfort zones. There is Di in the village who has never been further than Orpington, and the various people who ask me if Spain has proper schools and generally have this feeling that outside the UK, it's a jungle.

(Though it can change. Take David, who used to work for me, and whose comfort zone was about one metre around his desk at work. He hadn't been abroad, and then suddenly he got a job working for a mining company whose operations were in the Congo. It was quite good fun reading him information about all the poisonous snakes, and telling him it wasn't like Islington, but weirdly he seemed to take it all in his stride and apparently has now been to the Congo without ill effects.)

For some people, the concept of moving somewhere easy like Spain is daunting. for others, travelling to Baghdad, or Sakhalin, is just all part of the day's work. You have to wonder why the human range is so huge. Look at soldiers, or journalists who go to war zones, and then look at our friend Tony, who has stopped taking the train from anywhere except Eynsford station.

Caterina has the most remarkable job, advising what is left of the British Empire - 14 territories, mostly remote, small islands like St Helena's or Pitcairn. It can take a week to sail to some of these places, where a handful of people, descendents of the original inhabitants, still live. The people on St Helena's put their foot down at the idea of opening the shop because a cruise ship has come in after 4 on a Wednesday, or something like that but soon there won't be anywhere like that left. Soon, maybe, people like Di and Tony will die out, and everyone will have a large, borderless comfort zone. Or maybe not.

What does strike you is that the idea that the UK is the centre of the world and still has a huge empire, is still part of our psychology. The fact that Britain is a small, eccentric island, where most systems and services have fallen behind, and which is viewed as a quaint tourist stop by large numbers of people, hasn't registered. In our minds, we are still ahead of the game.

"Oh, it's all mañana out there," said Barry from Crown Road who has the inevitable house near Marbella. The implication is that in the UK, builders are supremely efficient and turn up on time and get the work done to a high standard whereas in Spain they are semi-natives who loaf about lying under trees having a siesta. No, it is not, guys. Our builders in Spain have worked twice as hard and efficiently as anyone we have employed in the UK. Yes, they did lie down for an hour at lunchtime, but when the boss whistled an hour later they all sprang up and got back to it. They did not have any teas or the radio, they just worked, not least because they are mainly South American labourers being paid eight euros an hour. When they lay down, they just put their heads on the ground; one of them even had his head in the shower tray, so I had to go round and put cushions underneath them, which rather surprised them.

Yes, in the 1970s, Spain was well behind. It is now 2007, mañana has come, and most of us didn't even notice it. It is like being stuck liking Chris de Burgh or the Doors because that's what you listened to when you were young; our perceptions of the world are always out of date.

And it struck me, listening to Caterina, how very sheltered and narrow my life has been. There is a whole, huge world out there, and all I've done is work in one square Mile of it, absorbed in its local politics. I have been like a goldfish, thinking its bowl is the universe, or like a person who, owning a whole huge mansion, has only ever sat in one room and looked out of the window. Yes, I lived in Bangkok a bit as a child, and I travelled as a journalist, but I have hardly scratched the surface. Now, I think once you take the first step, maybe you can't stop. Maybe in a few years Spain will seem dull and familiar, and I'll have to go to the Congo. Maybe I'll be like the unsatisfied old woman in the story, whose husband catches the fish that grants wishes. She wishes for a bigger house, then a bigger one, then a bigger one, until the fish gets angry and the whole thing falls around her ears. Maybe that's how I'll be, only I'll be greedy for experience, wondering how to cram the whole lot in before I die, which can't, after all, be that far off.

Mind you, having said that, show me a delay to the baggage arriving off the carousel and my comfort zone is suddenly not that big after all.

Greta's shoes

2007-07-04T08:41:00.001-07:00

Don't let yourself go!

People have been giving me a lot of warnings about letting myself go. When we were at the house at the end of May, Xtina started, using her one-of-the-three-Fates voice - "You know, you're going to have to be very careful." This was prompted by my commenting on the fact that she had heels on to go and look at some stone for the house they are doing up in France. Dear Xtina, I do love her but she does go on. "Well, I like to look nice, it's important you don't go out looking a mess, etc etc, it's a matter of self-respect, oh, I think it's dreadful when women go out all anyhow, etc etc."

Unbinding your feet

Xtina then told me the cautionary tale of Greta, Eddie's sister, who apparently since she moved to the country from Paris has a) got much fatter and b) worn flat shoes for so long she is now unable to get her high heels back on her feet. I was a bit struck by this. Firstly, I remembered Greta as being rather beautiful, I said to Xtina who said, yes, she used to be a model, she was very beautiful; however, now she put on all that weight and her shoes don't go on. This seemed to me not such bad news; if you don't want to be a model and wear high heels, but Xtina was very disapproving and I know Jasmine would back her up. To me, it seemed rather like a reverse Cinderella story, reminding me of the bit in Local Hero where he symbolically forgets his flash watch in the rock pool to show he's left the city behind - or like footbinding in reverse. I feel I wouldnt mind spreading out a bit, after all those years of tottering among the skyscrapers. But Xtina and Jane were looking at me a bit disapprovingly, and Jane said I would have to work out a new "smart casual" wardrobe.

Hmm. Clearly everyone feels that Nora Batty stockings and apron like Juana is not an option. I made the effort to put on some make up in the evening and was told, "See, now you look nice!" I pointed out I have spent the last 25 years looking nice for work so it is hardly surprising I know how; the fact is I might now prefer to let myself go. However, it is just like being pregnant; these days you are not allowed to spread, either because you are old, or live in the country, or are having a baby. The question is, will I continue to care what they think- and put my high heels on once a month to check I still can - or will I just go native? Watch this space.

Blondes in 4x4s

2007-07-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

As we get closer to going, I am looking around me with a more and more critical eye. It is as if all the things I didnt know I didnt like about life in the UK have suddenly crawled out from under the carpet and banged me over the head with a baseball bat. Noticeably, I have started irrationally hating middle class English people, as personified by the parents of my children's classmates at school, which is a bit rich since I am one.

Of course, I am still suffering from shock at having to do the school run, which I never did before. The other day I emerged from a huge tailback in the village to find the school car park full of 4x4s, just like in the Style magazine descriptions. Highlighted, well-groomed women were jumping out of them or leaning into each others cars and chatting loudly, blocking up the road. One had a convertible Mercedes which Jasmine told me was new - I dont know how everyone knows these things about each other. I felt a huge surge of hatred for them and passed this on to Jasmine who said that if you thought about it I also had a 4x4 or did, until we sold the Landrover back a couple of weeks ago, and a convertible Mercedes, now also sold, and blondehighlights so if you thought about it, people could say the same about me. I stuttered as I tried to explain the huge spiritual gulf between me and them. I pointed out that my Landrover was dirty and I was not well groomed, but apparently this was not really material and in fact I do realise that quite often people have made faces at me in the car and appeared to be mouthing things like "out of my way, you stupid stuck-up cow" which I also mouth at the school mothers.

Listen, inside I am not like that. First of all, I did not buy the cars; one was a company car from IBM and the other was Sandy's car which he chose for various spurious reasons such as it was big, because he used to be in the military and Jeremy Clarkson recommended it for driving up a mountain. For a long time I was very fond of my Toyota Carina, and before that my first and favourite car, a red Triumph Spitfire which leaked. Now that the Merc and the Landrover have gone, I plan to have a van, though what I would really like is an old cloth top Jeep of the kind we used to go to school in in Bangkok - I am not allowed to have that because apparently it will not be practical in the heat and also because there will be no spare parts and I will be stranded on a mountain road when it breaks down. As usual, Sandy likes to think of the worst case scenario and to paint it in vivid detail for me in case I don't get the point.

I am not saying I am not a style victim because I am, but my style is, I like to think, more alternative. What I really wanted to say to Jasmine was that none of those women have ever felt different, or poor, or excluded - ever. Not that I exactly have, but I've come a lot closer. Let's face it, I have worked in shops in Croydon. Anyway, I felt a great sense of relief when we got rid of the cars; like almost anything except cats, the cost of maintenance pretty much outweighs the pleasure. In fact, the more stuff I have got rid of, the better I feel; it is a great feeling cancelling direct debits, particularly when you find ones you did not even know you had. I was reminded of Snufkin in the Moomintrolls and what a nuisance he thinks possessions are and was starting to feel poor and virtuous as though I could go through the eye of the needle when I realised that I still had about 100 boxes full of stuff to go to Spain. On top of that, as Lara keeps reminding me, we are going to get other stuff, like goats, which will then have a baby which she will keep. It's not quite the simple life, yet, but perhaps it still can be.

Nothing is simple, though. All the time I was at work I held the view that women at home sat about having coffee but I now eat my words and admit that being at home is significantly more stressful than being in the office. A while ago, Trisha asked one of the posh mothers, Vanessa, who was talking in a loud voice about how busy she was, exactly what she did during the day. We all did impressions of her pushing her fringe back and saying "Well, as soon as I've dropped Holly off, it's time for my tennis lesson, then it's lunch, then Sainsbury's and by the time I've done that it's time to pick Holly up again." The fact is, she may drive a 4x4 and never have been poor, but she had a point. It's a round of boring jobs; will they be different in the sun and on empty roads? How long will I last before I have to hire someone to do the ironing, and go back to work?

Postscript: Went to a party on Sunday where I saw both my two sisters - unusual for this to happen but I expect to see them more once we have moved. Clare said that in Peckham it is the thing to do the school run in your pyjamas and not only that in general all mothers have the same ones from Etam with teddy bears on them. Clearly, there are whatever the cultural equivalent of microclimates is in the UK - it is just quite unimaginable that anyone round here to turn up in their pyjamas, let alone shop at Etam which I have to say I thought had gone out with C&A but is clearly alive and well in Peckham.

It's like having a baby

2007-07-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't written for over a month because all I have done is pack and administer the move. I have always wondered about the received wisdom that moving house is the most stressful life event there is. This seems unlikely: surely losing your husband, parent or child is a lot worse than losing your house, especially as you get paid for the house. Maybe other major life events are more tragic, but less stressful, whatever that means. Also, surely having the builders in is at least as bad. However, it does strike me that both these events are rather like having a baby in the following ways:

1)There is a huge long build up which feels like 9 months in which you want it to be over, even if death is the only way out
2) During that period, people keep saying: "So you haven't had it/rented it yet?": When it was a baby, this was pretty annoying and invited the answer "What do you think this is, a growth?" Waiting to rent the house gave me the same feeling of massive irritation. "I see you've still got the sign up - not rented the house yet, then?" "Yes, actually I've rented it, but I thought I'd go on marketing it." Meanwhile I was completely hysterical with anxiety about whether I would manage to rent it before getting on the plane.
3) You get offered lot of the same kind of homespun wisdom on how to deal with wind/how to make your front door inviting. A lot of my time has been taken up ordering and then chasing, large numbers of boxes and rolls of bubble wrap: there are many sites on the web called things like boxesrus that do this. They also offer you tips on moving like: "Make sure you have plenty of packing materials!" Spot the subtle marketing ploy, anyone?
4) You start off trying to do things properly, then become very sloppy because you're tired, leaving the milk by the bed instead of in the fridge, etc. I read the tips about "Label each box clearly!!" and started off with good intentions. At the beginning of the packing, wine was in a box labelled wine (and I even started noting the vintages) but by last week, that had all gone out of the window and the boxes have got scribbly messages that say things like "some stuff from kitchen, Lara's clothes, other stuff." Since I am just going to dump them in a room in Almeria and then rip them open randomly in the hope that there will be something exciting I've forgotten I don't suppose it matters. To make it more interesting, I have bought some new items and distributed them in the boxes - mostly things we dont need bought on the basis that you can't get them in Almeria, like a cake stand in the sale at Laura Ashley. This is what stress does to you: at least divorced people only have half the stuff to deal with whereas our house appears to be a kind of Tardis, about 5 times larger on the inside than it looks outside.

5) You can't think beyond the birth
The other thing people say a lot is "You must feel.." I remember this from the baby business: you must feel excited! Actually, I felt mainly fat and uncomfortable: you can't see beyond getting the damn thing out. This is also true about the move: I just want it to be over. I can't think about living there at all - it's as unreal as my children were when they were just lumping great growths that squashed my bladder.

The other thing people ask me all the time is what I will miss. The short answers to this is "nothing," or "I won't know until I do," implying I may develop a craving for Marmite, only you can get that in the English supermarket: it is a core product line along with HP Sauce.

The truth is that I am not someone that misses things - and I am not sure many people that I know really are. I am not sure missing things exists any more: perhaps we have too many to take their place or perhaps you are never really far enough away to miss them. Do people in the 21st century really sit about reminiscing about things like the English weather, cricket or Radio 4? You can download all this, anyway - it is not like the war when you went seven years without getting your paws on a banana.

There was an article in one of the Sunday magazines about how sad it was that manufacturers stop making your favourite things and of course I can see that. I have had to go round Boots and buy up a lot of Clarins colour rub which is being discontinued and my favourite Gas jewellery is not going to be sold in L'Artisan Parfumeur any more. But this is not nostalgia, is it? It is an irritation, but in the end I am not going to sit about and pine, I will find something else and Move On.

For most of us, it's on to the next thing. There are some people that like to hang onto old stuff: those people that kept their LPs and have a record player, not an iPod, or a Goblin Teasmade, even though they dont work. I think I could spot them in the street; people who buy from the back pages of the Telegraph magazine, have the handy spider catcher and rubber kneeling pads out of the Innovations brochure and spend a lot of time on their festive Christmas lighting display. Most people are not like this, are they?

Then again, maybe they are. The fact is that no quintessentially English pleasure - whatever they are - could in any way compete for my attention when it comes to the monumental excitement of waking up in Spain and speaking Spanish. Shopping, I always used to stare enviously at those English people who clearly actually lived there, instead of just being on holiday. I remember very clearly when we were looking at houses, the estate agent pointing out a family, similar to us, and telling us it was their first day actually living in Spain. I was tremendously jealous; it was incredibly hot and they all looked dazed and thrilled. Now it's me. I keep waking up and thinking about waking up in Las Almendras, with the sun coming up behind the mountain and all the birds twittering outside the window in the grape vine. I have to pinch myself.

When you get to this stage in life, most of the big, exciting things are over: getting married, having children, buying a house, getting a big job. You have realised that none of this stuff is quite what it was cracked up to be, particularly not when you have the flipping builders in. There is a lot of admin and politics. Yes, I know that's everywhere, and I know the line about your problems following you wherever you go. However, I do not buy this: it is frankly bollocks. First of all, it is just unbeatable getting on a plane and not having a ticket back. And secondly, I am sure problems are just as culturally relative as anything else: it is like those books about making sure you don't offend Japanese people by sneezing in business. Something that is a big problem in the UK may well not be somewhere else.

Thanks but no thanks

One reason I get excited about moving is that I am enough of a language anorak to be really interested in what's different about the way people speak and think.

My neighbour, Juana, regularly gives me food presents, mainly large carrier bags of a small orange fruit which I had never seen before and which is called nipeta - interestingly, I have since noticed we have a tree in our UK garden. It has large, leathery dark green leaves which I always liked for their exotic look, but no flowers or fruit here in the cold. I was being typically English and thanking her effusively and she was just looking at me impatiently. She interrupted me and said something like: "¡Deja tu vergüenza a la puerta!" - "Leave your embarrasment at the door." I could see what she meant: I felt I was sounding incredibly English and embarrassed. Although it is the only word most of the English know in Spanish, Spanish people don't actually say "gracias" very much - certainly not all the time, like the English. When we bring Juana our regular offering of a bottle of whisky from Duty Free she kind of whisks it into the kitchen without really doing much other than nodding and perhaps saying something like "Good." However, I was still a bit unsure so I asked her what Spanish people said when they were given a present such as the nipeta and she thought briefly before saying (in what seemed very ungrammatical Spanish) "Cuando como estos, volveré." ' "When I eat these, I come back for more."

Interestingly, I have already begun to feel uncomfortable with the English thankyou. Is it really about thanking someone, or is it actually, as Juana saw it, about being embarrassed to receive something? Spanish is a much more direct language which may be why I like it; I am constantly putting my foot in it in the UK.

English people would never, ever, come out with the kind of things my neighbours say. Once, I went to get some oranges from Isabel, the old lady who is Juana's aunt, I think, and who looked at me very sadly like a dying dog when I asked her how she was. She told me a lot about her various troubles and showed me where her husband had fallen off the wall and died, and how. At the end, I said I hoped I would see her again, but she shook her head and said possibly not, she might not be here. I asked where she would be, and she jerked her head upwards a few times. When I didnt get it, she spelled it out: "With the angels," she explained. She always makes the same very sad face, but somehow she strikes me as the creaking gate that doesnt fall down. I sat down and apologised for the children, who were yelling their heads off on the other side of the rambla. Isabel's neighbour, a friendly fat lady, shook her head vigorously and waved away the apology saying that children were the happiness of a place. "We don't hear enough noise up here," they said. "Children are the heart of the house."

Catch my neighbours in the UK saying something like that. Not only would they not agree with the sentiment - their children might be the heart of their house but they definitely don't want to hear your heart beating. The old man in his wheelchair who pushed himself all the way to our house to welcome us on our first visit told me that if you opened your heart to the village, the village would open its heart to you. I think in Shoreham the translation would be something like: "Perhaps we'll see you for a drink one of these days, once you've settled in," (or more likely, "If you can drop in your subscription for the allotments society when you're passing.")

You could argue the difference is just one of style, not substance. But I think the philosophers say style is substance - if you can't say it, you can't think it.

Then, there is the business of animals. Up where we live, there are a lot of animals; you can here them pottering about at night. Something certainly polishes off anything that's left out - and there are jabalí, wild boar. I asked Pablo what kind of animals they were and he shrugged. "Los animales," he said - the animals. It didnt matter how I tried; I couldn't get any more specific inormation. "Zorros - foxes?" I asked. No, not zorros, or maybe, yes, zorros, but other things. When I asked Luis, he thought it was funny. "You English people are so interested in all your animals. What is all this about hedgehogs on the radio? They're just animals, animales.."

I heard a Spanish radio podcast that bemoaned the fact that the Spanish were so vague about the classification of plants and animals. The speaker said this was leading to the names of things being forgotten - because people were sloppy and just said: "that stuff" instead of being precise. Is this a particularly Spanish trend? There are far fewer words and the same ones do more work. But it is also an attitude - "el campo" is not "the countryside". It is where you grow crops, not where you go badger-watching, because you don't do that stuff. How long will it take before I think this way? At some point will I, or will my children, go back to England, having forgotten what that prickly thing that curls up is - and not caring either, unless you can eat it?

My final thought on this subject is that changing a place can allow you to be yourself. It gives you a different vocabulary. Look at Neville and Jamie, the only gays in the village. Neville told me he couldn't be gay in South Africa, only when he came here, when, by the way, he was married to Moira. Luis is the same - he is clearly not mainstream Spanish. He is artistic, maybe a bit effete, and has odd hands - and London clearly suits him totally. When he goes home, his aunties prod his clothes and say, "¡Que inglés!" How English you are!" I can see how he might find London forgiving; its irony welcome after the directness of Spanish. So the only question is what exactly is going to come out of the bag when I get there? Apart from forgetting what to call hedgehogs, and not saying thankyou, exactly how am I going to change?

Hot properties

2007-05-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

I have had a lot of dealings with estate agents this week and last. It is all very stressful; it appears tenants these days are very picky and are insisting on double garages and lawns, never mind my beautiful handmade limestone tiles. I called Xtina and asked her view: she is always buying houses, doing them up and selling them on. She said most people had no taste and it was the same with their beautiful period house in Leigh; people did not appreciate handmade Belgian floorboards but were fixated on cupboard space. It was a question of waiting for the right one. But how long could that take? What percentage of people have taste? Anyway, the agents are mostly female and very charming, they have said things like "you have a lovely home."

Mind you, they can hardly do otherwise; they can't come in and say, "Well, this is a crock of shit, isn't it, Madam?" It would be like that Julie Walters sketch of the Mellow Birds ad where a woman subtly buys her neighbour a tin of Mellow Birds to hint that her coffee is like shit. In the Julie Walters sketch, Woman 1 drags Woman 2 to her sitting room, where she has grafitti'd huge signs all over the walls saying: YOUR COFFEE STINKS".

As we went round the house and I pointed out the advantages I realised it was really very nice and pointed out to one of the agents that it was a bit of a shame to leave the house when I had just finished doing it all up. The agent laughed and said this always happened: people did all they could, then they moved on. Maybe they even do all the work because they know they will want to move on?

Mind you, Vanessa, who used to own this house, didnt move because she had done it all up; on the contrary, it was in a right state, and she moved because she had run out of potential husbands in Shoreham and thought she would have better luck in Tonbridge. She had had 3 husbands before that, I believe, and was still quite strong-minded and optimistic, though quite mean with her money, hence why the house was in such a pickle.

After that, a couple came to see the house and I noticed they did not talk to each other at all: he followed me round the rooms and made a few comments and she followed him and said nothing and I interpreted the relationship as being dysfunctional and thought probably he was a bully, and she was not allowed to choose her own wallpaper.

The agent later said she liked the house but he was not sure. I knew they wouldn't come back. In any case, more people are coming tomorrow, so we are eternally hopeful that the right ones will come along; it is rather like looking for a man; it appears more logical, as you can consider factors like proximity to station, storage space, etc, but the fact is, people either fall in love with it, or look at it and think, hmm, not really my type, and that is that. This is why Xtina is stuck with Eddie, her unreliable French partner, despite his practical drawbacks; he is not at all near the station and does not have any underfloor heating, but she loves him.

Heimatschmerz?

2007-04-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

However much I pack, there seems to be the same amount left, however many boxes pile up and however much I throw away. Like one of those magic purses in fairy tales, only less useful, the house seems able to generate more rubbish from nowhere. It has always been like that in this house; you hoover the stairs and half an hour later, there are bits all over them. Maybe it's not the house; maybe it's us.

Or the cats, perhaps. Shrimpy just ran past me with a mouse in this mouth, uttering a low growl when I tried to chase him. A bit later he came back down without the mouse; who knows where it is now. He seems to know where to find an endless supply of mice; perhaps he is also bringing other stuff into the house.

At home in England, or not

Alexander said the other day that he would not miss England because (in sorrowful tones) "I have never really felt at home here, anyway." He is 12, so this is a bit odd, and possibly but I said I could understand that, as I have never really felt at home here either. When I am feeling pretentious, I put this down to not being English - which "technically" as the children say for almost everything, I am not. But it is more likely temperamental, or perhaps nobody feels particularly at home anywhere. Heard some artist on the radio the other day who had returned to his native Yorkshire as an old man and was on about how this was the only place he could really feel at home. I stood there with my tea towel wondering what he meant and trying to imagine feeling like that about anywhere.

The fact is that although I always cry at the "Edelweiss" bit of the Sound of Music, and anything like that (especially anything about the Nazis or Czecho, which makes me think of my father and mother's family being exiled), I don't feel remotely like that myself. I wonder if, if the Nazis took over Shoreham, I would start to feel very passionate about staying here? I am not sure. It is one thing missing the mountain snows and Edelweiss and quite another feeling a terrible longing for the M25 or Otford Homebase. Here, it is quite small, and crowded, and it is hard to feel an Wordsworthian surge when every time you step outside your door someone is trying to park their van in your space,. Indeed, it is as well Romantic poetry happened in the 19th c for it would not in my view have a chance of evolving in Sevenoaks 2007. People always say Brits are not very patriotic and maybe there isn't enough landscape left for that.

The fact is, as I have got older I don't feel attached to much, and perhaps that is just practice. After all, things let you down. I remember Jane telling me that after all her jewellery got nicked on Milan station, she never got that attached to stuff again and when Penny's house burned down with everything in it, she had no choice. You think you'll die without your photo albums, but you don't. Of course, the logical conclusion of this is being desensitised like a child soldier- no longer caring about anyone or anything because you can't know they won't desert you, which clearly is no good. But there is something to be said for a middle way: you don't want to lose the will to live because your Zoffany curtains went up in smoke, and some boyfriends were actually not that great when you look back on them.

Maybe I am deluding myself when I say I will not miss anything about life in Kent. It's not that it's that bad, it's just over, and is starting to seem a bit small and grey. It certainly doesn't stack up that well against the huge open spaces of the Sierra de los Filabres. So far my list of things I will miss is this long:

1) BBC radio

I'm not saying it isn't fun going to the Crown and having a drink and a banter, but you can do that anywhere. I'm not knocking it here, but you don't miss something just because you did it for a long time, particularly not if what you do afterwards is better. However, when I am 80 maybe I will come tottering back and fondly reminisce about where Tesco used to be. I was talking to Juana's father in May and he said he had been back to the mill where he grew up; it was a big expedition, although it is only in Albanchez which is a few villages away. The thing is, I didnt grow up anywhere really worth revisiting and while after a few beers with Ralph we can reminisce about Cinderella Rockefellers and the Bingo that used to be the Orchid Ballroom, the Red Deer Disco Pub and seeing the Boomtown Rats at the Greyhound, the fact is that Purley, which was once a bit like Sevenoaks, is now like Catford, or any nasty suburb, and Sevenoaks is not even like Sevenoaks any more. Still, I can see myself, very wrinkly and in black because I have been in Spain for so long, clutching my grandchildren and saying: "And here, here is where the shopping trolleys used to park up..."

Power struggles

2007-04-22T14:56:00.001-07:00

More angst about not working

An exhausting day. My sisters, with children and the remaining husband, turned up for lunch and the rummage sale. As they made off with a lot of dolls houses, beds, chairs, ladybird costumes, etc, I felt a great sense of relief. Meanwhile I still have an adult fairy costume with wings, adult sexy Santa costume (from our Christmas party, mistakenly ordered in fit of festive madness from American Pin Up Girl website and designed really for someone 20 years younger. Still, I learned a lot about Xmas US-style – clearly lots of housewives surprise their husbands by wearing fur-trimmed Santa lingerie on Christmas day – or do they wear it at other times, too?), assorted judo kit and Brownie uniform parts, plus bag of portable umbrellas. I have spent many rainy days hunting for the latter over the past years, and now, when I finally will not need them, they all turn up like buses, or boyfriends.

Controlling men

I was already tired after last night with Jasmine and Steve – one of those evenings that was superficially enjoyable – bottle of wine, joking - but actually not. The main reason it wasn’t is that Jasmine not only really doesn’t approve of our going to Spain but also cannot accept the idea of me not working in my “high-powered” job. It seems to be upsetting her world view in some way – perhaps I was a proxy for her?

I suppose I might be upset if she suddenly took a job in an investment bank, because I find her restful the way she is, with her big garden, her glamorous clothes and done nails and her horses. I only thought of that now, but at the time I was somewhat fed up and in fact tearful in the car home. I rather turned on Sandy, pointing out that he had not stood up for me in any way when Jasmine did her routine about how hard it would be for me not working or as she puts it, “being a lady of leisure”. She had also added to this a line about how Sandy would now boss me about and tell me what car I could have. What is more, she had been on at me in the week about how men respected and were scared of working women and if I didnt work I was going to lose all my power and just be a housewife like her, whom nobody would take seriously.

I said I want a jeep. This is true, I do. I have always wanted something like a Mini Moke that you drive on the beach, ever since I thought they were cool about 20 years ago. However, I would settle for any kind of convertible jeep. Sandy has some practical and technical objections to this which are quite boring, so I don’t listen to them, but let them go in one ear and out the other. The fact is, I know he will choose the car, because he chooses technical things, and I reminded him on the way home that he had not chosen the car we had and that I had never been able to choose a car. I was playing up a bit because in fact I don’t particularly care about cars. However, the idea that I wouldn’t be able to choose if I wanted to was not a good one.

“Don’t pay any attention,” Sandy said. “Don’t take it out on me because Jasmine’s got an issue.”
“Fine,” I said. “But I’m not happy that because I’m not working, you’re going to hold it over me.”
“I’ve got absolutely no issue about you not working,” he said.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because it isn’t an issue for me. Look, J, we’re a family – we’re in this together,” he said, which made me feel better.
“But I want to feel I’m making a contribution,” I said. Clearly my massive guilt is not subsiding, since I had to justify myself to Jasmine and Steve by pointing out I had money to last at least a year before I was technically “not working.”
“You are making a contribution,” he said.
“Well, I think I am. I mean, we couldn’t go if I hadn’t given up.. someone has to settle the children, sort everything out..” I am beginning to be bored of hearing myself say this. “Anyway, in a year or maybe 6 months, I’ll have a job.”
“Look, don’t be silly, “ he said. This isn’t an issue between us. This is all about the power issues they have between the two of them,” he said.

I wonder. Jasmine and Steve got married when they were about 20, and she has never worked, plus he has made all the decisions. Recently, she has begun to assert herself, she told me, and not let him decide everything. We are not talking about anything radical like getting a job, but more traditional methods or assertion, such as flirting with a local guy that has the hots for her; these strategies amount to baboons showing their bottoms, or something – they are sexual defiance.

When Steve suspected he had found out something, he bought her a Cartier bracelet. Jasmine was quite happy but said she liked the idea of a young, not very well off man, because it meant she could be the boss for once. I asked her if she’d actually like to be with someone like that and she said no, it was just to have a change.

I can relate to this: I had quite a few control-freak love affairs before Sandy but actually would probably bite anyone that actualyl tried even to help me across the road. In fact, Sandy is very laid-back and wouldn’t ever try and control anyone. i explained to Jas that in my view sometimes you like the idea of a change –and, in the way that you can be drawn to food to which you are allergic, it can be very compelling, until it brings you out in spots and you choke on your own vomit. Mind you, it really annoys me that Sandy never says “I’d like it if you gave up work” or indeed helps me across the road, but in fact walks several paces ahead of me talking on his phone and appears to forget I am there at all.

So Sandy is right, I should not listen to Jasmine, who after all has admitted she likes the attention she gets in hospital and may have her boobs made larger again because it gives her power over men.

We met our old friend Johnny in Obergurgl; he has just retired. He said when you give up work you have to let go of a lot of things. I am finding this true, but hard. In fact, I think I am clinging on by my fingernails to the rock that never yielded to me in the first place. I spent a long time trying to prove I could make it to the top, but feel I have realised I am in fact am hanging on half way there, and now have to let myself back down again. The fact that the top wouldn’t have suited me, that I am a better diver than rockclimber, or that rock climbing is pointless, are all arguments beside the point. I still feel I should have made it to the top. Is that feeling of something slipping through my fingers the feeling of losing my power?

De-clutter your life, UK schools (1)

2007-04-21T23:50:00.003-07:00

1) Feng Shui my life

There are only 17 weeks to go. This seems ages, but it is like Christmas; it creeps up on you at the last minute. I started off thinking I was quite well prepared - as during the last year, I have made what I now realise were sub conscious efforts to prepare for leaving, by tidying my cupboards and chucking some stuff out. I have also organised a rummage sale for my two sisters, though as Sandy points out the word "sale" is being used loosely as neither one of them will bring their purse; as the eldest, I am the Great Provider.

There is an art to all this de-cluttering, I have learned, and it is not easy. There are a lot of articles that give you advice to do things like take Polaroids of all your shoes and put them on shoe boxes. This is strange as a) nobody has Polaroid cameras any more, except me - I have one which I am not sure I can work any more, and which I may have to Feng Shui, ie, throw out, in the move and b) who has got time to go and take photos of all their shoes? It is just like selling things on eBay, a nice idea which people keep recommending, but too time-consuming. Everything now seems to involve taking photos of your stuff, which is not that simple: they will keep falling over or not stand out against the background.

It is all very well the Bible saying it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to go to Heaven, but getting rid of your stuff is not easy either.

What is interesting is that it is quite addictive throwing things away; it makes you feel pure and virtuous, even if you are not sure Oxfam really want an incomplete Hornby train set or on-sale Jean-Paul Gauthier silk shirt with inbuilt corset. I can quite see how it could become obsessive, and how you could become one of those people in America - they are called Cheeseparers or something like that - who make a way of life out of re-using tea bags. It is a 21st century religion, like composting or recycling, even if they do not work, and all the worms escape all the time, and the stuff stinks to high heaven, like my Wriggly Wrigglers compost bin which I have now had to Feng Shui.

My father kept many tins with half an inch of old glue or paint, small pieces of string, and odd metal bits in boxes, in the garage, for about fifty years, on the basis that they might come in useful. They never did, in general, and if he had needed glue, he could have gone and got some, but I suppose perhaps whereas now we are quite happy to get in the car and go and buy new, he was not, and people weren’t then. He was, of course, also a refugee and had gone without, so it was understandable, but Sandy is just as bad, keeping dirty old T shirts from university or old parts of cameras, for no apparent reason. Now is the big chance to get rid of all the things I have not already surreptitiously binned. I am already up to about 24 boxes and that is only the stuff we don’t use.

2) School's out

One of the main reasons I give people for going to Spain is so that my children can learn proper Spanish. This doesn't seem possible in Kent, where it is still French or German. Why is this? French? I mean, is it because it is close? Or so that they can hold parties for the French ambassador, offering Ferrero Rochers about in a faultless accent? With all due respect to it, only a few people in places like the Congo where you are unlikely to have to go for work, speak it. As for Germans, they all speak good English.

My first disagreement with Alexander's school was on this subject. Could he do Spanish, maybe? No, only the top French students could opt for Spanish. Why? They said they didnt have enough Spanish teachers. Out of the world population of Spanish people? Maybe it is only when the old French and German ones die off they will start looking around for them.

Anyway, this is not the only problem. As I prepare to take the children out of school have made me realise I probably never should have put them in there in the first place.

Ever since Alexander started school, it has been a tale of woe. It is true he can behave a bit like Squirrel Nutkin at times: does not come when called (even after 6 times shouting at the top of my voice up the stairs), takes a long time to get dressed (one sock on while pausing to construct a Lego artefact), and acts the fool (making up stupid songs about chickens),I am assured by friends this is quite normal.

However, ever since he started at our local “nice” (ie expensive) school, we have had a stream of notes and letters. “Alex must try harder.” “Alex forgot his homework.” “Alex distracted another child.” “Alex daydreams and does not come when called.” And so on and on, including visits to the school where I have sat on an uncomfortable sofa while teachers have stared at me accusingly as if I had personally put him up to it using a remote control. The fact is if I had had a remote for Alexander I would have put it to good effect long ago, sending him on useful errands for me, making him tidy his room, etc, so this is all a bit beside the point.

At first, I accepted all this in good part. This is partly because I was at school myself once and am inclined to behave when called to the headmistress’ study , and partly because the dreadful fear of my child being expelled and having to wander the streets of Sevenoaks (on drugs) before ending up in some local sink used to pass before my eyes. The school seems, in retrospect, to have deliberately cultivated this feeling that your child was lucky to have a place and they might take it away if you didn’t behave.

More recently, I have looked askance at all this. Who is the customer here, I have asked myself. Me, surely! I am the one paying over a massive monthly direct debit, am I not? I should be the one threatening to take my business away, shouldn’t I? In what other business does the supplier threaten the customer, albeit in a veiled way, with refusing to supply the service?

Having said all this, almost everyone round here firmly believes that school in the UK is tip-top, as it was in the days of the Raj, and that if you are abroad you would send your children back home to a boarding school. Conversations have gone like this:

School Parent: "Oh, you're going to Spain!" (said as if it were Borneo, Ulan Batur, etc)
Me: Yes
SP: Oh... how exciting (said as if knell of death)... But what about schools?
Me: Well, they have them in Spain.
SP: Yes... is it an international school, then?
Me; No, it's Spanish. (Thinks: that is the point of going to Spain, fathead)
SP: Oh.. are they good?
Me: What do you mean by good?
SP: (Thinks: expensive, with right kind of children, leading to job at Goldman Sachs). Well, er.. you know.... do they get good results?
Me: (airily) Don't know.. they don't have exams, you know.
SP: (looking horrified). Oh! Well, you can always come back...

If I had a Euro for every time I've heard those words, I could offset a nice lump sum against all the fees I've paid out for the school to nag me and give my children detentions for asking too many questions, or forgetting their cookery trays.

I hope my children will be very happy in their local school in Spain. I hope school will be fun, and about learning interesting things, not about tests and passing exams and getting results. I hope they never go to a "good" UK university, or work at Goldman Sachs, but do something wild and interesting, whatever it may be. I hope it opens the door to a whole continent to them, and that they travel to Guatemala, and Chile and Argentina. If nothing else, they will have two cultures, and two languages, and so, I believe they will be two people. And two heads, of course, are better than one.

To work or not to work?

2007-04-19T00:53:00.000-07:00

Time is already ticking away towards D Day, the day we move to Spain. The first few days after we made the decision I was so excited I could hardly wait; all I could think about was wandering down to the beach in bare feet and shorts. But now my normal anxiety has reasserted itself and I keep thinking about the whole "I am not working" thing.

People ask me "what are you going to do in Spain?" and I am finding myself using feeble words like "Well, of course I'll work but initially there will be a lot to do, you know, admin.." If people keep asking me what kind of thing I think I might do, I am saying "oh, consulting, or maybe something local.." It is all a bit defensive.

Well, for the last x years of my life, I have been shouting at "research" in the Mail and Telegraph about how women should give up work and stay at home. I have all the arguments as to why I should work at my fingertips. But now, for the first time in my adult life, I am about to stop working and I have forgotten all the research in the Mail that proved why this was an excellent idea.

I am not saying I am exactly sad about this. People have kept asking me how I felt, as if I were sick, but the fact is that the last job I really enjoyed was Euromoney, in 1989. This was a great wheeze; travelling around South East Asia, staying in the Shangri La Kuala Lumpur, meeting a few bankers, picking up knock-off Gucci bags, and then bashing out a feature; things were downhill after that.

However, it is a bit unsettling and the worst thing about it is that I keep worrying about how it will affect my relationship with Sandy. The other day I heard an item on Radio 4 that said marriages often break up when the woman stops working, because she can only talk about nappies and the man gets no attention any more. Actually, I mean I keep worrying it will mean Sandy can boss me about. He already says things like: "I was thinking of buying you a van," and when I correct him and say "You mean, you were thinking WE could buy a van for me," he says it is the same thing, which it is not.

We have had some conversations like this:

Me: I’ve worked very hard of course. I did work right through having the two children. (I may make a point about being sick daily on the M40 when I had to drive to Windsor for work. The car was full of liquorice allsorts which I mistakenly thought would stop vomiting.)
Silence from Sandy who is on his laptop.
Me: I feel really bad about it. I’ve always worked, I was brought up to work.
Silence.
Me: On the other hand, I have just earned a year’s redundancy, so I don’t need to start working for a year.
S: Yes, that’s right. (To the computer) Shit!
Me: Are you pleased we’re going? We couldn’t go of course if I wasn’t able to settle the children in. I’m doing a lot already, getting the teacher organised.
S: Good. (Fiddles with laptop)
Me: It’s good they’ll learn Spanish, isn’t it?
S: Yes, very good.
Me: But are you pleased we’re going.
S: Yes, very pleased.
Me: You don’t sound very pleased.
S: Well, you know it won’t make that much difference to me – I’ll still be working.
Me: That makes me feel bad. I feel bad if you’re working and I’m not.

This conversation which is a version of others we have had at regular intervals through our marriage potentially goes on for hours and is repeated regularly. What I am getting at is I want him to say “I don’t want you to work” or “you don’t need to work.” I have been trying to get my husband to say these words for the last 15 years, but to no avail. I would like his permission not to work, and he stubbornly refuses to give it. The closest he will come is “You do what you like, it doesn’t matter to me.” I’m not sure what this means: does it mean "I am easy either way," or does it mean: "I am not going to risk expressing a view"?

When challenged when he is in a good mood, e.g. in the pub, Sandy says he genuinely doesn't mind if I work or not. At these points, I wonder if this might not be an argument I am having with him but with myself.

These are the arguments I have always used for working:

Argument 1: Independence.

It was good for me to work, because then Sandy and I are equal if there’s an argument, and he can’t use money against me. This has always seemed a good argument, but when I think about it, it implies I dont trust my husband (or anyone). Maybe it's time I tried.

PS: I am not good at taking money from people though; I like to have my own, and I don't like people buying me stuff. Ex boyfriend Timothy, now so rich he doesn't work, used to offer me money and clothes. (At the time, I felt he was trying to control me but it could just be a matter of taste; after all, he doesn't eat anywhere less smart than the Savoy whereas I really am much happier in somewhere with metal tables.) He bought me three Hermes scarves; I have been debating whether to take them to Spain because I could wear them like Grace Kelly on the beach –but knowing me I would look like a peasant woman - anyway, nobody on Vera beach is going to be checking out my look. The alternative is to "flog them on eBay" (people keep advising me to do this).

Argument 2: money.

Yes, jobs earn you money, but I have ploughed back a significant percentage of said salary into clothes, shoes, makeup, etc. I have been into Space NK a lot and got a lot of scary spray on foundations that made me look like a flight attendant, Botox fillers and dinky eyebrow stencilling kits I couldn't work. Sometimes I think I spent about 75% of my salary on maintaining my lifestyle, depending on what you count. Of course, if I had stayed at home and not worked, I might have spent even more on gym membership and Zoffany wallpapers.

Argument 3: health

Working is good for you – or is it? As my children say in their most sinister voices. “Or is it?”

If you don’t work, like people with private incomes and layabouts, your personality doesn’t develop because you can do what you like and nobody rubs the corners off you. There may be an element of truth in this - look at celebrities - but equally you don't want to rub off so many corners that you go out of shape. Look at Jasmine, my friend who did not do well or go to university but married young. Whereas I have spent the last x years stressing about office politics, she has worked at home with her horses, and the fact is she is sweet and laid back and I am a nervous wreck with anger management issues.

Argument 4: work is fun

Sandy favours the “you know you like it really" argument (you know you like housework/ you know you prefer driving an old car, etc.) “You’d be bored if you didn’t work – you would soon get fed up (implication: You’d have to take pills and we'd have to put you in a psychiatric unit.”) Possibly, but we don’t know till we’ve tried it, and as I have pointed out, it is not as if work has made me well-balanced and we have the evidence to prove that it has not.

(Jasmine supports Sandy's view, largely because she doesn’t want me to go to Spain, only her view is also affected by the fact that she has delusions about what working is really like. She thinks my job is a bit like Rebecca’s in Hotel Babylon, which I wish it were because I would certainly like to be Tamsin Outhwaite.)

As part of her anti-Spain campaign, Jasmine keeps saying things like “I can’t see you with your high-flying job doing nothing in the middle of nowhere.” I can see a mental picture of me, dressed in an Armani suit, standing in the middle of a turnip field and crying that I miss Christophers. I protest that she doesn’t know what I am like, but it is clear the business suit is interfering with her vision of the real me. When I see myself, I see myself in my old shorts and bare feet, but it is no use saying this to Jasmine, who wears high heels on the school run. She sees the tractor as a threat, whereas I see it as salvation.

In summary, I might be worrying about not working but it is nothing to do with having enjoyed my job, and also it is not bad enough worry to even make me consider a U turn. Instead, I am wondering why, if I never wanted to do all the jobs I have done since 1989, I ended up doing them. I hate to blame everything on low self-esteem, which is the answer to too many questions, like ADD or autism but I do think a) that I was a scaredy cat, and that I thought something frightful would happen if I didnt get a proper job and b) that I didn't deserve to do what I wanted.

According to the shrink from the Priory I saw once, I didn't feel entitled to do anything I wanted, or accept gifts such as Hermes scarves (although I have to say I think I don't like gifts because I am dead fussy and I know I will be disappointed if they don't come from L'Artisan Parfumeur or Liberty: as I keep saying to Sandy, House of Fraser Bluewater is just not the same thing, however convenient it is.)

The long and short of it is, I am sure I’m the one who locked the door and took away the key. That being so, I am now going to unlock it and see what happens. As for the fact that, as people keep saying to me "You can always come back," no, I don’t think so. THis is bollocks: going back is almost always a mistake; look at Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. There is a Rubicon, and I have definitely crossed it.