186 – Lockdown in the Pueblo – Day One

It’s just as well that the Spanish prime minister is easy on the eye.  Guapo, we say in Spanish.  Just as well, as we sit glued to the television watching his almost daily pronouncements.  It’s just like those days last year when we couldn’t tear ourselves away from BBC Parliament.

179 – Escaping the Heat

Forty degrees and higher.  Really, that is too much.  The rhythm of the day changes to suit the temperature.  At the hottest time, after a lazy late lunch, it’s time for a siesta.  Late at night, after midnight and into the small hours, it is finally cool enough outside to sit on a kitchen chair on the slope of our little street and share some comfortable time with the neighbours, catching up with the minutiae of life.

174 – Growing Old in the Pueblo

Officially, I’m not old.  I’m too young to get a pension, and I’m not sixty yet.  My pueblo organises events and trips for the “oldies”, but technically I’m too young.  Technically.  But thanks to last year’s heart attack, I can sneak in. 

172 – An Educational Escape

Poco a poco, paso a paso.  I suppose it is a mark of how life here has become normal and familiar, that in recent months it has only been my “escapadas”, or escapes, that have seemed to warrant a blog post.  Daily life in Colmenar and Málaga trundles on. 

170 – Una Escapada

 

Juan-Jesús was probably about seven, though hard to tell.  He’d been staring at me in the bar earlier, where I’d been chatting to a charming old guy about the provenance of the local jamón.  The old fella had offered some useful tips about villages I should visit between Huelva and Extremadura.  Obviously the child had spotted my accent, and seemed captivated by it. 

169 – The Infinite Breadth of My Ignorance

I love my friends.  And they just know such interesting STUFF! 

168 – Space For Two Campos

“Seen through Mediterranean eyes, we English are a cautious, fussy, elderly-minded people, living without large ideas among a litter of temporary expedients: far too taken up with the problems our muddle creates for us to have much faculty left for practising the arts of life.”  Thus wrote Gerald Brenan on his return to England after the tour of Spain about which he wrote in “The Face of Spain” (1950).  Spain had captivated him, as it does so many of us, yet he at least in part fell into the trap of seeing the host country through rose-tinted spectacles, and seeing only the negatives of the home nation.

167 – The Turn of Another Year

My fifth Christmas in Spain.  I thought that must be wrong, but it’s not.  Four and a half years since I bought my house, three and a half years since I retired and moved here full-time.  Such a short time, yet it feels like forever.

166 – Catching Up

 

First of all it was remiss of me not to thank you all for the lovely thoughts and messages you sent following my heart attack.  I really did appreciate every one of them – “the kindness of strangers” means a lot.

Since then I’ve been doing a lot of catching up.  Trying to slow down, catching up with old friends, and catching up with long-delayed tasks.

165 – Irredeemably Grumpy

Some people are easy to like.  Belén, for example.  Kind, generous, pretty, gorgeous eyes, and she works more than 40 hours a week as a volunteer, cooking and serving meals for homeless people at Los Ángeles Malagueños de la Noche.  One of life’s special people.  So when it was her turn to need something, dozens of strangers who had never met her were willing to help.