There’s a roadside café between here and Granada which serves Basic, but good food. The menu has been translated into English and whoever did the translation thinks the English word for “huevo” (egg) is yonk. There’s a whole section of the menu dedicated to yonks. Yonk and chips, yonk salad, scrambled yonks etc. Personally I think it sounds like something a dog might do. “Oh no, the dog’s done a yonk on the rug again!”

Whilst I’m on the subject of menus, can anybody shed light on this little gem? In a Chinese restaurant we used a lot in Granada there was an item on the menu called “ants up a tree”. Any ideas? I know we could have asked one of the waiters, or more daring ordered it, but it was fun not knowing. However…what makes it even better, is that the English translation said “happy family up a tree”.

I’m off for a yonk.

Dew on a banana leaf.

I’m useless with jokes, I can never remember the punch line, and if I do remember it I usually slip it in before it’s due. Anyway, if SofP can do it, so can I. Warning: Bad joke coming up!

Fred walked into the pub with a black eye. “What happened to your eye?” asked the barman. “Well” said Fred, “I was sat in church on Sunday, in my usual place behind old Miss. Smithe. When we stood up to sing I noticed her skirt was stuck in her bum, so I carefully pulled it out for her. She spun round and punched me.”

A couple of weeks later Fred goes back into the pub with a new black eye. “What happened this time?” asked the barman. “Well” said Fred, “I was back in church with Bert and we were sat once again behind Miss. Smithe. When we stood up we noticed that Miss. Smithes skirt was stuck in her bum. Bert leaned forward and gently removed it. I said “NO! She don’t like it like that, and poked it back up.”

I tend to keep what I write here impersonal and light, I’m about to change that.

I’ve just been reading Susan’s blog and she was talking about photographs. I was overtaken by a huge wave of sadness. It wasn’t because what she said sparked a memory, this is something bigger than that, something which has become part of me, a sadness which I have to deal with regularly because it won’t go away.

Cutting a very long story short; when we left UK to live in Spain we rented out our home to two “friends”. We left the house furnished, and put a few personal things in a big cupboard under the stairs to be collected at a later date, included in these was a huge bag of photographs. These “friends” devised a way of not paying their rent. They were very clever, we were very trusting. We were in regular contact with them, but it was six months before we realised something was wrong. It all came out during a phone call that they hadn’t paid any money into the bank and didn’t intend to. I remember asking them why they were doing this. “Because we can. We’re here and you are there and there’s nothing you can do.” It was the first time I’d ever experienced evil, and yes I know that’s not a word to use lightly.

I booked myself onto a flight back, but had to wait three days. When I got back I let myself into the house but they had gone. They had taken every stick of furniture, cleared out the cupboards, they had even taken the light fittings. I can’t begin to describe the hate I felt as I walked from one room to the next looking at empty spaces. I felt as if the bastards had not only stripped my home, but stripped me too. I had to get out. I remember lighting a cigarette and going through the kitchen and out to the garden. There, in the middle of the lawn was a pile of black ash. The insult to the injury, they’d burnt the bag containing our photographs.

I still don’t know “why”, “because they could” isn’t a good enough reason. When I think about it now, which I do often, I can only think it was evil. I still hate them, I always will, but along side that hate there’s sadness too. It’s a sadness which makes my whole body ache.

So, tomorrow is “National Do Without The Car day”. I’m told we’re a few days behind the rest of the world, but nothing new there. All public transport is going to be free, which I think is wonderful!

For me that means I can either take a train to Ronda at 8.45 am and return at 8pm, or I can take a bus to Algeciras at 7.45 am and return at 10 am. Seeing as my appointments are all in “Pleasantville” in the afternoon it makes no difference to my life. Shame.

After lunch today I took Asha Miró onto the roof and fell asleep with her on my chest. Well, obviously not *her* but her book. I’m not sure if it’s translated into English, but if you see “The Girl From The Gangese” anywhere it’s worth a read. However, I woke up looking decidedly pink. Bugger. Not only am I going to be noticeable tomorrow as the rogue driver, I’ll be the driver they’ll all point out as the over exposed on.

I shouldn’t be sat here doing this, I should be shopping, but I can always think of other things to do rather than go shopping. Choice: I can go to one of the small shops within walking distance, but due to a small mishap which I’ve mentioned before I’m a bit embarrassed to do that. I could drive to the local big (ish) supermarket, but that place does my head in. We went there on Saturday and decided I’d get veggies while the other Mr. Andaloo queued for meat. “We only need mushrooms” he said.

“A kilo of mushrooms please”

“Do you want parsley?”

“No thanks.”

“Yes you do.”

“No I don’t.”

“Anything else?”

“No thanks” I went back only to be told “sorry, I forgot, we need carrots too.”

“Hello again. I’d like half a kilo of carrots please.”

“A kilo or half a kilo?”

“Half a kilo please.”

“A bag is a kilo. Do you want a bag?”

(Getting angry now) “YES, give me a bag.”

“Parsley?”

(Through very tight lips) “Yes please, give me all the parsley you have.”

OR, I could drive for an hour and go to a proper supermarket on the coast. By proper I mean there’s choice and the whole shopping process can be done without saying a single word.

Well, I can’t put this off any longer.

GONE SHOPPING, back in three hours.

When did warm food become fashionable? I was listening to a radio programme recently where a woman has the job of visiting as many restaurants as possible, trough out and report her findings to people like me who can’t afford to eat in these places. Anyway, I was smiling to myself while she wittered on about the marriage between table linen and cutlery, the overall atmosphere of Neo Minimalism in this “busy” restaurant and the fact that the menus have no prices because “hey let’s face it, the sort of people who need the know the price are the sort of people who would feel uncomfortable eating here.”

Her starter arrived amid “oooh’s” and “ahhh’s” and she described it as; “a bowelette of warm oyster soup.” It seems the chef took some fish stock and dipped a truffle into it for a millisecond before chucking in the oysters. Now if, like me, you’re wondering what a bowelette is she explained it as a large porcelain spoon big enough to hold a mouthful of food. She ate. I waited. She professed to have just eaten the best oyster (please note oyster, not oysters) in her life. The chef said the secret was in the temperature of the soup. It MUST be served warm. I stopped listening.

The other day we went to one of my favourite places to eat and they’d changed the menu drastically. Gone was the WYSIWYG honest menu, replaced by various ingredients cohabiting on an unmade bed of warm salad, their modesty saved by being caught in a shower of dressing. My heart sank. I asked the waiter what exactly a “warm autumnal salad was”, and he replied “mixed lettuce.” It looks as if in future I’ll be eating in really old fashioned places where salad is cold and soup is either hot or chilled.

I’m reading “The Unbearable Lightness Of Being” (Milan Kundera) and wondering how I haven’t come across this book before now. It’s wonderful.

I keep going back and reading passages for a second or third time. It’s a bit like taking two steps forward and one step back, but that’s OK because I just don’t want it to end. It’s been ages since I read something which totally pulled me in.

Has anybody else found this jewel?

Just a quick pre-breakfast post.

Steph is Welsh. She's a lady of "a certain age" who speaks softly, thinks the best of everybody and has a heart of gold. We were talking yesterday about Ivan and the mess it made of The Cayman Islands. "Fred and I once went there" she said. "The poeple were lovely and treated us like royalty. We stayed in a condom on the beach".

Bless!

There’s a place close to here, we’ll call it “Pleasantville”. It’s a very wealthy area, lots of European Royals can be spotted there at weekends playing polo. It’s not a place I visit often.

I was talking to a friend last night who works in Pleasantville giving Spanish classes to the foreign kids. She often has a funny story or two to tell about the goings-on in Pleasantville, but what she told me last night was so sad. She went to a regular student’s house for a class, he’s eighteen. As she went into the house he asked her if she’d like some coffee. She said she would and followed him into the kitchen. He just stood there looking at her and eventually said, “help yourself”. A bit surprised she told him it would be nice for him to make it for her. “I can’t” he said, “it’s the maid’s day off”. His lesson that day was how to make a cup of coffee.

I was just driving home from the shops when I caught myself doing another mirror check. That’s at least three times now, obsessive compulsion is setting in. However, it reminded me of a beard story and seeing as I have a few minutes before I’m due to look in the mirror again I thought I’d write about it.

Many moons ago I had a full beard, a great big thing that looked ridiculous and made me feel dirty. I only grew it to see if I could, and when I knew I could I decided to shave it off. It was around Christmas time and we’d been invited to a fancy dress party on New Years Eve. I had the brilliant idea of going to the party as Black Beard. I could colour the beard black and then shave it off the following day. I bought the hair dye (blue black) and in no time was sporting the blackest beard you’d ever seen.

The following day I shaved it off. BUT the one thing I had completely forgotten about was that hair dye stains skin. To my credit, when I’d put the colour on I hadn’t missed a spot, because as I shaved the hair fell into the basin but where the hair had been I had the perfect shape left on my face in black dye. I tried soap, shampoo, Stain Devil’s and even a Brillo pad. That baby was going nowhere. It took two weeks for it to fade, and several months for me to live it down at work.

Just recently I’ve noticed that our mail is arriving at odd times, even to Spanish standards. One morning I was woken up at 6am as a letter was pushed under the front door, the other day I met Chico (the postman) at 10pm as I took out the rubbish and took a bundle of mail from him.

One of my neighbours is having a new bathroom fitted and she invited me in to take a look at the work in progress. The room had been completely gutted, and there, up to his waist in rubble was Chico. It appears our postman is also the village handyman (makes a mental note), and juggles the two jobs. He explained the mail was all kept safe and he did his best to get it delivered as soon as he could.

Life is best when it’s kept simple. At times like this I can feel my roots growing, I love living here!

I’m not a person who spends much time infront of the mirror, but that’s not to say I’m the kind of man you see in the street and wonder if he *has* a mirror. Usually I look into a mirror once a day, when I shave, and then it’s to concentrate on a small area between ears and throat. On Saturday morning I stood there, razor poised, and looked properly at my reflexion. It was time for a change.

Thinking about it, I guess it’s much easier for women if they feel like changing their appearance. Hair colour, make-up etc can totally change the way you look, but for blokes it’s different. (Yeah, OK if we’re being PC men too can do that, but it’s not my thing.) What can we do if we want to alter the way we look? Different haircut? The choices aren’t exactly vast. Grow a beard? Hmmm it’s been a while since I had a beard…I decided to give it a go. So, instead of broad sweeps of the razor I sculpted round and made the start of a goatee.

On Sunday morning I was checking the beard in the mirror (two mirror sessions in two days, could this be the start of an obsession?) and decided my hair needed to be shorter. Without giving it too much thought I got the clippers and cut my hair short. Well, we can safely say I’ve changed my appearance. My first reaction was that I now look like a very old G I Joe. Oh well, I can always shave one bit off and wait for the other bit to grow.

Remember in “The Beach” when they go to the outside to buy rice? Here in Spain we do something similar, but instead of going “outside” we go to Gibraltar, and we don’t buy rice we buy sausages. Yes I know what goes into them, and I know they’re hardly the healthiest thing to eat, but if I see my stash getting low I get twitchy. To be honest there are other things I *need* from Morrisons in Gibraltar (orange and grapefruit shower gel, Thai red curry paste), but mostly its sausages.

Yesterday we decided to do a sausage run. Getting over the border into Gib’ can take hours, because of the political situation the Spanish side tend to hold things up and make life difficult for Brits going through. As we got close I could see a queue of about sixty or eighty cars waiting, it wouldn’t take long to get in. We edged forward and were soon at the Spanish passport control. The two Guardia were more interested in their cigarettes than us and didn’t even look at our passports, we drove through. The other Mr. Andaloo was driving and was doing that “thinking” thing that BadAunt does so well. He claims he didn’t see the British passport control. As we accelerated whistles were blown and a barrier was pulled across the road to stop us. I put on my sun glasses and slumped down in my seat, EVERYBODY was watching us.

“Can you explain sir why you didn’t stop?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you”.

“And the stop sign?”

“I didn’t see that either”.

“Well sir, you see it’s important to stop so that we can check your passport. For all I knew you could have been Russians”.

“I see. I’m sorry”. With that we drove off trying to work out what was so bad about being Russian.

We knew if we wanted to beat the rush out of Gib’ we had about an hour to do the sausage thing and get back to the border. As we drove back to the border to get out there were no queues. We sailed through the British side, no problem. Then, believe it or not the other Mr. Andaloo drove straight past the Spanish passport control. More whistles, he reversed back.

“What’s your rush?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you”

“Hmm, anything to declare?”

“No, nothing”.

“Open the boot please”. At this point I had visions of them slashing open all eight kilos of sausages to look for drugs. Instead the woman smiled, “you know we do make sausages in Spain too?” Not sure what to say I did what I’m famed for and said the first thing to come into my head. “We’re having a barbeque”. She doubled up laughing and waved us through. Just how much stupidity can you fit into three hours!

I have a picture in my mind’s eye:

A woman is sat at a treadle sewing machine, a half eaten can of tuna by her side. A cool draught passes through the window frame and kisses the flame of the scented candle. That kiss fills the room with a golden glow for a second, but to her it seems to last for hours. She bathes in its glow. Closing her eyes she feels transported from the dimly lit room to the open seas. She sails. Piles of fabric become dolphins by her side, cutting through the water their colours merge like an oceanic quilt. She speaks but the words go unheard. She knows she has a lot to say so tries again. Henry puts down his glass of wine and reaches out to her. He tilts her head, as if to kiss, and slowly removes the gas mask. “What was that Hon?”

In the eleven years I’ve lived in Spain I’ve been back to UK just a handful of times. For the first seven years I didn’t go back at all, and since then I’ve limited my stays to just a few days. I don’t know why. So when my sisters, one from UK and one from Australia decided to come here for ten days it was both the first time together in Spain and the longest amount of time we’d spent together since childhood.

We had a great time, but what was interesting was the way we behaved. Doing the dance of the gathered siblings was fine for a while, but then it was as if the choreographer took a coffee break.

In the first few days we fascinated in the differences in ourselves, our homes, our lives. It was a pride fest. I know that sounds cheesy but I think we are all proud of the people we’ve grown to be. Maybe we crammed too much into the first days, maybe it was because the choreographer took a break or maybe somebody switched the music off I don’t know, but by half way through the first week the air started to change colour. It wasn’t anything major, infact the other Mr. Andaloo didn’t notice at this point that the dynamics were moving in another direction. There were sideways glances, body language which spoke volumes and comments. Comments between siblings can be delivered with missile accuracy.

By the time they left we’d reverted to behaving like children. Arms folded we jibed, sneered and pushed the buttons we knew would have best impact. We all saw the funny side of what we were doing but couldn’t help doing it, we were the kids we used to be scoring points from each other.

Airport goodbyes are always sad, but we spent their last hour here laughing at ourselves. I’m sure that today, like me, they’ll be looking back at the antics of the past ten days with a wry smile and looking forward to the next time we meet.

Quote of the holiday; “I went to a sex shop in Sydney. What are you supposed to do with a gas mask anyway?”

Just a quickie;

I’ve had a great week with my sisters and hope to sit down and write about some of the laughs we’ve had, but that’s going to have to wait a couple more days. It took them a couple of days to settle into the pace of life here, but they’re now thoroughly unwound and relaxed. The highlight for me has been the long warm evenings spent outside working our way through a case of wine and catching up on two years worth of gossip news.

We worked it out that we hadn’t spent a Christmas together for thirty years so yesterday we DID Christmas. We had turkey with all the trimmings, exchanged gifts and even sang along to all the tacky Christmas songs which no doubt confused the neighbours.

Only two days left before we slip back into real life again. I’ll be back then.