Archive for 2012|Yearly archive page
humor, Jacaranda, Jerez, market, tragedy, travel
In Practice on May 29, 2012 at 10:02 am
We go to Jerez.
Up the N340, onto the the A396 at Vejer and onwards towards Medina Sidonia looking for the A389 to Arcos. Not finding the A389, we bicker and then we switch on the satnav bitch and let her guide us onto the A381 towards Jerez. It’s too soon to be there though and we have a day trip to Arcos planned so we slip onto the A4 and then eastwards on the A382. Jesus Christ, it’s like algebra. One moment we’re whizzing along on a grand adventure, the next we’ve missed our exit and it instantly becomes an exercise in failure and inadequacy. Anyway, we get to Arcos. Jesus.
We enjoy Arcos, a town draped over a couple of heights along a sandstone ridge and very well endowed with pueblo blanco charm and tourists, and after a couple of hours we find our way back to the car and head for Jerez. Arcos facts for the interested; it used to be Berber, it’s very big for a pueblo blanco, it does indeed boast many arches (arcos).
It is impossible for us to near Jerez feeling anything but carefree optimism. We love it. We came to Spain more excited about places like Seville and Granada, Cádiz and Córdoba but we have never had a bad time in Jerez. It is a sleepy, More
casino, Cat, humor, mosquito, Neighbours, Spanish language, Tarifa
In Practice, Production on May 20, 2012 at 3:36 pm
So, Valentin has attacked me in my sleep. He has pounced at my face and clawed me above my left eye. There’s a deep red gash that is very long and that I kept having to explain to the kids at school.
“Mi gato.”, I would shrug. “Yo estaba dormiendo anoche y……yo no sé….algo asustó a mi gato o….algo…ah…lo ha asustado?…yo no sé…una mosca…eh…cualquier…”
Such a pleasure for these people, to listen to my assault on their language. To stand by and watch as I single-handedly ruin it. They do quite well, generally, it has to be said, under the circumstances, in terms of remaining polite.
Please, please stop, their faces beg. We don’t want to know your stories, or about the things that have happened to you, if it means listening to this.
But I needed them to know. Apart from the fact that I didn’t want the gash on my forehead to be quietly attributed to some sort of alcoholic mishap, it had been a first for me, being attacked in my bed. It’s as though a rite of passage has been successfully navigated. In a way I feel as though I’ve shared an experience with the James Bonds and Chuck Norrises of this world. More
isla bonita, like a prayer, ray of light, take a bow, vogue
In Uncategorized on May 13, 2012 at 2:06 pm
The River Liffey describes a bowed shape through the centre of Dublin city – almost a straight line but not quite. Dark water divides the north of the city from the south as it widens towards the port and the Irish Sea.
None of the bridges that span it – Sean Heuston, Rory O’More, James Joyce, Father Matthew, Samuel Beckett – can dilute the divisive power of the thing. For many generations now the blue collar inhabitants of the northside have considered their Dublin a different place to the leafy, Georgian southside. The city is founded on the river, and cursed by it.
They pulled a body out of the water this week that used to belong to a friend of mine. I have been crying with K, who loved him too. We are far away. We are no help, no comfort to his family. We cannot squeeze more tears from our mutual friends. We are no help.
We sit and squeeze each other, and the tears come.
The heart is a busy organ – and very serious – when bereaved. Remembering is difficult work; our emotional mechanisms shift up a gear and we bend inward with the strain – replaying the scenes, mouthing the words, laughing the laughs. More
humor, Jehovah Witnesses, Richard Dawkins, Spray bottle, Threshold, travel
In Plenary, Presentation on May 6, 2012 at 4:08 pm
The next time the Jehovah’s Witnesses knock on our front door they’re in for a surprise. I don’t suppose they get many; never had a stab at it myself but I imagine their days are full of rejection, don’t you? Everything from polite but peremptory acceptance of the leaflet (yes, yes I’ll be sure to look it over, thank you) to profanity.
It can’t sit too comfortably with them that the words they’re most likely to hear when they rock up to introduce the belief that theirs is the one true Christian faith are “oh christ”.
They’ll have hit the jackpot when they ring our bell to ask if we’ve been thinking about Jesus, though probably not in a manner they could have foreseen.
“Thinking about him?” I’d spit, eyes raging.
“I’ve been thinking about nothing else all morning. That lock on the back door still needs sorting out properly and the rust spot in the bath isn’t getting any smaller. What is the point of having a mobile phone if you never pick up?”
At this point there’d be a glance exchange between (the inevitable two of) them, perhaps the deployment of a pre-arranged “safe” word More
Augsburg, Dublin, Hampshire, Maps, New World, Seutter, Tarifa
In Presentation, Production on April 29, 2012 at 1:01 pm
This is a map of its route. It began, as an idea perhaps, in Augsburg in 1678. The idea container became a brewer of beer. I would have liked that. He didn’t. And so, the idea and its container went north, through heavily forested country and farmland, over the Donau, to Nuremburg, where Johann Homann taught him to engrave.
He returned to Augsburg with the skill but it wouldn’t be till 1744, towards the end of his life, that the idea would find expression on paper. From there who knows how many journeys, how many copies, how many owners, till in the latter half of the 20th century it was picked up in an antique shop in Dublin, Ireland and found a home with us in leafy Lucan.
Since then it has been restless. Before long it was gracing walls in Madrid, baking in the summer heat of Spain’s central meseta. After that a return to blustery Ireland, to Dublin, then Dundalk. It crossed the Irish Sea by boat and might have settled in the gently rolling country of Hampshire, England. But it wasn’t to be.
It would have satisfied the container, I think, to see his idea take its longest trip yet, over the blue curve of the Atlantic to the New World. More
Dog, Germany, Gloria Estefan, humor, Pet passport, Tarifa, travel
In Presentation, Production on April 23, 2012 at 10:05 am
So you know that (not always apocryphal) story people tell about having a tomcat or a dog for years and years and years- something called Tiger or Rover or Leon or Dasher. Then they tell you about how it goes missing one day.
The owner/couple/family search(es) high and low, desperately worried and anxious for their four-legged family member. Little Timothy is beside himself. There’s a vigil in the front room and neighbours pop by to offer pre-emptive condolences. Hours, days pass and then they happen upon the animal in some unlikely spot right under their noses – behind the shed, in the shed, whatever. Only it isn’t an animal now; it’s a whole new family, and it turns out they’ve made a fairly serious error in naming their pet.
There they are, five new puppies/kittens to take care of and one messed-up, deeply gender-confused parent. After all, if you’d been known as Butch your whole life you would probably have started believing it yourself. You might even have begun to explain that secret yearning to be called Lady or Princess to yourself as some sort of psychological disorder.
But no, you were right all along – just as you suspected More
Christ, Easter, Granada, humor, Ku Klux Klan, sevilla, Tarifa
In Practice, Presentation on April 10, 2012 at 8:38 am
“So is this the Royal and Very Illustrious Fraternity of the Holy Christ of the Expiration, the Virgin of the Greatest Pain and the Piarist Brotherhood of Jose de Calasanz”, asks K, “or is it the Ferverous and Penitent Brotherhood of the Holy Christ of the Good Death and Our Lady of Love and Railworkers?”
I can’t help chuckling to myself at her schoolgirl error.
“No, no you silly bean”, I gently chide, patting the back of her hand.
I’ve been brushing up on the processions in my little Semana Santa booklet, complete with timetables, recommended viewing locations and little illustrations depicting the various get-ups that would identify the cofradias, or brotherhoods, and their penitent, pointy-hooded nazarenos. Apart from the colour of their costumes there would be nothing to distinguish one nazareno from another; all of them covered from head to foot, their identities concealed by capirote, capa and capuz. I recognized the conical yellow headwear and black túnica that we’re looking at now immediately.
“It’s the Pontifical and Royal Confraternity and Brotherhood of our Lady of Solitude and the Descent of Our Lord.” More
Archaeology, Claudius, garum, humor, Marbella, Roman, travel
In Practice, Production on April 1, 2012 at 1:51 pm
The place is unfinished and long since ruined, the smell of fish has faded away and the archaeologists have arrived. It’s blustery and I turn my collar up against the wind that blows down where the land slopes gently to the water. On this hazy day the Rif mountains can only just be made out to the south; even the big Bolonia dune – close by – is a little shrouded.
Long since ruined – this old city saw its heyday under Claudius and was already a pile of rubble fifteen centuries ago. I walk along the wooden walkway, reluctant to linger in the cold. The emperor occupies his pedestal amidst the columns of the Basilica. Down onto the slabs of the decumanus maximus and past the Macellum and the baths – then up to the half moon of the amphitheatre and its tiered stalls; half a bull ring on the hillside.
After that the three temples – to Juno, to Jupiter and to Minerva and after those another, to Isis. The gods overlook the forum, the tabernae, the curia and Tabularium and further down – right where the sand starts – is the rather prosaic reason for all this Roman fuss; the factory that churned out the product that produced the wealth that produced the temples. Fish sauce. More
Cat, Garden, humor, Insect, Tarifa, travel, Wind
In Presentation, Production on March 25, 2012 at 1:07 pm
So I’m ambling down towards the Batalla de Salado a few days ago, all headphones and shades, when one of those hoppy things (cricket, grasshopper, whatever) collides with the side of my face. I wouldn’t think anything of it, to be honest, if it wasn’t the size of a trout; as it is I almost fall over.
Hours later, I will still be reeling.
By the time I recover awareness of my surroundings sufficiently to continue on my way, I am in the middle of a pedestrian crossing and surrounded by tooting car horns.
I’ll be on the alert from now on, I’ll tell you that.
Fucking huge.
It was flying, actually; not hopping. It had these ridiculously under-sized wings that just about kept it airborne, though not in a dignified way. I doubt it chose to smack me in the face. It didn’t really look like it had a great many choices at its disposal, trajectory wise.
Here’s a question. It’s for both creationists and evolutionists. Play nice, though.
Anyway, it’s this; More
Big Dipper, Dublin, hunt, K, Orion, Tangier, Tarifa, travel
In Plenary, Production on March 16, 2012 at 11:51 am
Across the rippled silver sand and down to the water, the sky vaulting above me and teeming with stars. I can see the band of moist sand before my feet get wet; a strip of shine where the waves wash in.
I’ve been to this spot before but not at this time. It’s a second viewing; the kind of revelatory glimpse of a place you only get once you’ve seen it a thousand times, and then see it anew. Out in front of me a succession of cargo ships navigate the Straits, twinkling like a chain of fairy lights.
Beyond them the fainter flickering of Tangier, its lighthouse and medina. And spanning my field of vision from the Isla de Palomas on my left to the huge dune up at Valdevaqueros on my right, the black Atlantic. Sand, water, lights; the world is made of these long horizontal layers and of the noise the waves make.
And of the vertical sky. Orion stands over me, high in the sky and dead ahead. When I first knew K we would stand out back of the house we shared in Dublin and I would point it out to her; Mintaka, Alnilam and Alnitak, the three stars of his belt; Hatsya, the tip of his sword. She would humor me by listening. It was the only constellation I could see from our yard that I could name. More
