Self sufficiency

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.