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, laid-back town, encrusted in shabby elegance. Famed for flamenco, sherry bodegas and horsemanship, we have somehow managed to avoid all three so far, favouring our patented “wandering around the place and eating things” approach.

This time we drive in to the old town past the recinto ferial, the grounds where the famous Feria del Caballo is held each year, a burst of equestrian and celebratory noise and bustle. It’s wound down now and empty – the casetas not yet disassembled, awnings flapping about in a hot breeze. The streets tighten and acquire cobbles as we reach the hotel. We’ve splurged so there’s a welcome drink at the bar while we’re checked in and aircon in the room which overlooks a walled, fern-laden garden.

We wander.

We find the streets of Jerez breathtaking every time. Astonishing. Mesmerising. Shocking, even. Choose your superlative. As we walk we are slack-jawed and open-mouthed. It isn’t the elegant facades or the little plazuelas, nor is it the orange trees or cooling fountains. Truth be told, Seville is more regal, Granada has more drama, Córdoba more history and Cádiz is more striking to the eye.

No, it’s the emptiness.

It’s a Saturday afternoon. Even taking siesta into account you would expect, wandering from one end of the old town to the other, to see more than the dozen or so people we stroll past. Where is everyone? We still don’t know the answer though it’s a question we ask each time we come here.

You’d think it might be boring, but it isn’t. It is soporific and gentle and quiet, the perfect antidote to a noisier Spain when you need it. And – let’s not forget – in its modest, shambling way, it is beautiful. The Art Deco clock that overlooks the Plaza del Arenal, the handsome half circle of the Gallo Azul building, the sturdy cube of the Alcazar’s corner, the slender and seperate cathedral tower.

We poke around the few shops that are open and return to our lovely roof terrace to take a shaded seat. It goes against the grain with me not to be tramping up and down every street in the city, photographing every corner, but we’ve had a sad time of it and we came for rest. I sit and read. K sleeps.

That night we sit in La Cruz Blanca looking over a terrace that sprawls messily across an irregular little plazuela. Our favourite place to eat, here and possibly in Spain. The trees overhead are blue and strike bailaora poses. The flowers that rain from their fern-like branches form a carpet for our feet so the blue is above, below and all around.

We leave it at a couple of tapas as we have other places to try this time, recommended by the dueña where we’re staying. We’re eating early (it’s between eight and nine) and most places are just opening up. The next on our route is a name chef affair – all black and white seating and artwork, over-keen waiters in floor-length aprons. We’re the first in, and they pounce; in the course of eating three tapas we find ourselves dealing with at least four of them.

They send the new guy, a young man with a friendly smile, to take our order. I have questions about the menu. He doesn’t have answers; he has to return to his colleagues three times to retrieve information.

“Is similar…crab.”

“Is like this.” Hands gesturing to indicate size.

It’s pleasantly comical and puts a smile on our faces. The food is accomplished – asparagus tempura, crab lasagne and so on. The service could have been written by Samuel Beckett. There’s a little receptacle of tapa-sized cutlery on the table that has three knives and five little forks in it. A waiter comes by and replaces it with another. This new one has four knives and three little forks.

Perhaps the most descriptive detail of our visit this time is the fact that the following morning, despite our room being right in the city centre, we are woken by a cockerel. A persistent one. We have breakfast and head for the Sunday market.

Overlooked by the bastions of the alacazar, the market is a pleasure each time we come. We have seen wonders here – illustrated editions of the Thousand and One Nights, whole households laid out on trestle tables. Social history up for grabs. We meander up and down and although nothing appeals this time round we are absorbed as usual.

For every picturesque item, every polished antique, there is a different order of merchandise. Some of the stalls here are an illustration of life’s fragility, windows into the reality of people living without margin, without safety net or consolation. The lucky ones sell things – naked plastic dolls, tacky second-hand shoes, old paperbacks. Then there are the lowest orders, selling not things but – quite literally – bits of things. Half a spirit level here, a broken hinge there.

When we’re finished we stroll through the alameda. The jacarandas have followed us; the leafy green canopy is interspersed with their particular blue. It is a blissful setting and we are not remiss in feeling fortunate; recent tragedies and ongoing worries notwithstanding, we’re doing ok.

Another nearby park has an art market going on and we take a shine to one of the artists. Goaded by a need to seize the day we fork out more than we usually would on a little painting. It’s a bailaora in acrylics, striking a jacaranda pose. It’ll hang on our wall and remind us.

To live.

]]> http://alotofwind.com/2012/05/29/jacaranda/feed/ 5 robingraham Jacaranda http://alotofwind.com/2012/05/20/v/ http://alotofwind.com/2012/05/20/v/#comments Sun, 20 May 2012 15:36:01 +0000 robingraham http://alotofwind.com/?p=3167 ]]>

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.

They always seem to leap up and respond with lightning precision when attacked in their beds and indeed, as soon as my stumbling hand had found its way past my little pile of non-fiction to the switch for the bedside lamp, I did too. Problem was, initially, I had no idea what I was reacting to; one minute I was lost in floaty bye bye dreamy land, the next I was halfway to the bathroom, blood streaming down one side of my face. The cat had leapt into the open wardrobe and from there under the bed.

“Poor thing”, said K from the bed and no, she wasn’t talking about me.

“He must have got an awful fright!”

I blinked at her with my one eye.

“Yes.”

I crouched at the end of the bed with my head near the floor, peering underneath it at a very startled looking felid. I tried to appear pleasant as bright red, generously oxidized blood flowed from my head wound and formed a puddle on the white tiles beneath me.

“Come on lil fella”, I cooed. “It’s ok. Come on lil fella.”

“Eh, I think we both know that it is not ok”, said the perfectly circular pair of eyes staring back at me and my blood. “And I am not coming anywhere near you, since I suspect that you would then kill me.”

Right. I wouldn’t actually; in fact I found myself feeling bad for the little guy but I could see it from his point of view and so I left him to it. Strange to be so concerned for something that had damaged me, trying to reassure it as I bled. Is that what fatherhood is like?

A couple of nights later, before we fell asleep, we spotted him on the bed. His head was whirring round improbably as his eyes tracked a mosquito and the penny dropped. He had been hunting, and in the tunnel of his predatory vision had forgotten about me completely. So, as always, there’s a silver lining – another reason to hate mosquitos, and there’s little I love as much as loathing mosquitos. Valentín: blameless.

Indulgent parents that we are, we have decided that the little chap should have a shot at being let out front into the big bad world. He’s only had the back patio till now. We can’t bring ourselves to remain calm in the house when we let him out, so we go out with him and follow him around. The neighbours will no doubt have concluded that we are utterly depraved, as we herd a single cat up and down the street outside our house, utilizing a classic pincer formation.

Neighbours. We didn’t really have any when we lived in the old town. Our apartment was in a building of three but the other two were empty for most of the year and occupied by (frequently very annoying) tourists in the summer. Here, we have neighbours. It’s a neighbourhood. My plants have a chance of being watered when we next take an extended trip. Even if they think we are bonkers, I think I could get one of them to water the plants.

It’s good – we’re that little bit more embedded in life here, what with neighbour on one side (forget name), and neighbour on other side (forget name). Our new Spanish teacher wants to get us out and socialize with some people she knows so that will be good too.

Despite becoming a teacher of English I have retained my penchant for drinking wine I can’t afford, and this has led to our patronizing Tarifa’s poshest wine shop – Vino Divino. The guy is Italian in actual fact but Spanish is the lingua franca so we get a bit of practice as we chat with him, and this week we were invited along to a wine and cheese tasting he had arranged for around thirty people.

I was a little nervous because it would mean a whole evening of socializing busily and entirely in Spanish, in addition to which I was now sporting a fabulous gash on my forehead, but the venue alone was enough to rope me in – the mysterious Casino de Tarifa. Just opposite our local shop, we’ve seen Tarifeños go in and out of this magnificent 18^th century building but never foreigners.

It’s the kind of place where you have to be a member of some kind of association to get in and where some members can probably trace their families back to the founding of the town. That kind of thing. We’d only had glimpses of its chandeliered salons through the large sash windows. So was I going? You betcha.

The interior was labrynthine – the kind of floor plan you only got before we gave up on aesthetics when building and plumped for expedience.  Through a vestibule with multiple rooms off to each side and into a little bar, from there into a covered courtyard and behind that the games rooms – felted tables with leather arm rests for the serious player surrounding a billiards table and numerous more private niches.

We sat in a splendid room, an oil painting of good old Guzman El Bueno looming over us. The wines were very good. The cheeses were very good. Best of all though was the evening; we were all to chip in the princely sum of eleven euros to make the degustación possible but no money appeared to be changing hands. K, an accountant and a German, was keen to know when we should pay.

“It doesn’t matter”, said R, the organizer, with a shrug. “Whenever you like.”

She couldn’t get over it. It may be difficult to extract her from Tarifa and small town Spain if and when it’s time for us to move on. Coming after some bitterly sad events for us it was an enormously welcome experience – cordial and inclusive, and not a tortured facial expression in sight as we conducted ourselves in Spanish as best we could, understanding almost everything and enjoying the opportunity to give our language skills a good run-out amongst some patient, understanding Tarifeños.

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. It’s exhausting. We are partially absent to the people around us as we labour to make our loved one present, and to preserve his presence.

J, on the other hand, was anything but serious. To be with him was to be laughing, frequently to the point of tears. He didn’t do misery, never really seemed to sulk. He couldn’t abide bullies or aggression. He was never snide, never bitter, and always seemed to me to be incredibly principled in his dealings with people. You’d almost have wanted him to be just that little bit less principled at times; a scene or two might have been avoided.

But a quiet life wasn’t for J. He did a lot of his living at night – drawn to the noise and distraction of the club, the pub, the festival. He wanted to be where people had to shout to be heard, dancing in the din. It was his safe place. If you ever found yourself having a nice cup of tea with him mid-morning it was probably just because you hadn’t been to bed, and it was more likely a can of beer.

There were quieter times but he didn’t seem to like them much. J was high-octane; he fed off people, he had fun around them and they had more fun when he was around. Humour was a constant. It was his best weapon, perhaps, against the fear we all know in our darker moments. Because he loved people, he met a lot of them; as I write, I am merely one of a great crowd of mourners. A mob of those who loved him.

His demons were not mine but we both had them, and we were able to talk once in a while. To say something that meant something, once in a while. I felt that he could see me, and that I could see him. He laughed at my jokes and I won’t lie to you – I think that’s a great quality in a person. There are certain jokes I think of to this day that are just for J. They require eye-contact with him to be truly funny. They will hurt now, whenever they come to mind.

And that’s an almost daily occurrence. For all the time that has elapsed since I last saw him, between pints is where I always assumed we were. The sour grapes I had been feeling towards him for not keeping in touch more seem ridiculous now, shrivelled up on a silly vine. The keeping in touch was necessary because myself and K had moved away, but although we have felt a little isolated out here from time to time we have never really felt alone.

Whenever we’ve seen something wonderful over here or done something fun, been somewhere beautiful, we’ve enjoyed it twice. Once for ourselves and once for our “audience” – for the people we’d want to share it with, to get over here and show it to.  A lot of that has been about J. We wanted to make him welcome here, as he used to be in Smithfield and Leixlip.

I may not have the spiritual capacity to look forward to that next pint “on the other side”. J did though. I hope he’s right about this one. I know he’d appreciate the remark about doing things for an audience because he adored showmanship, and it turns out was a consummate showman himself – leaving us all, as he has done, wanting more.

A curse on the river that has divided him from us. A curse on any suffering or fear that got into him. A curse on the past tense, and a curse on my complacency – that I didn’t enjoy that last drink more, savour it more. That I didn’t say anything that meant anything.

A blessing on him, from one who is blessed to have known him.

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 as I step forward, alternating a manic stare between one and the other.

“Why? You haven’t seen him, have you?”

My head bobbing and weaving as I look for Jesus behind them.

“Hm?”

They’d have taken a step or two back.

“Never mind, never mind” I’d mumble, retreating into the doorway in my dressing gown and my Friday-to-Sunday beard, “I’ve got his email address.”

One of them – the brave one – might risk a last lunge forward to thrust the literature through a narrowing gap.

“Oh christ, I mean, ah yes, The Watchtower. Great. I’ll be sure to look it over…”

You don’t have to go too far, do you? Front porches are where the good stories start, and they often come to you. Of course the above is imaginary, but still.

You might say the threshold is where travel begins, the beginning of our encounter with the world. Our doorway has been a bit of a hot spot for encounters, though not the kind we’ve been looking for. It would appear from a brief chat we’ve had with our landlord, Jesús, that it isn’t just our world that begins in our front garden – pretty much every stray cat in the neighborhood was born there it seems, fed and cared for by the nutty nutbag bonkers cat lady that lived here before us.

The smell of the garden – and indeed of the house – when we moved in would corroborate his story. A mop and a few buckets of bleached water later the house was sorted out but I have been working on the garden – with its rich deposits of cat waste – for months now.

Not without success – I have turned the soil over and laid down chicken wire, installing a range of the aromatic herbs which are said to repel felids. I make psychopathological hissing noises and pull some pretty demonic facial expressions whenever I see a cat in, or indeed near, our garden. I have sprinkled the thing with coffee and lemon, and cayenne pepper. It’s better now, I suppose you could say.

Better, but not yet good.

There is one cat, one bold, persistent cat. I’m fairly sure it’s one of those born here because having a quick poo in some corner of my garden isn’t enough for this little fella. Oh no. Once a night, every night, he sidles into our porch and right up to the door – for a piss.

Every night. Haven’t caught him yet, just the stench. He must be doing it at one of those times you don’t get to see even when you stay up late or get up early – three in the morning or something silly like that.

This and the daily swarm of flies that hover over the shit-strewn space out front has led to a bit of an arms race at the front door – the tools of war; heavy-duty insecticide for the flies, mop and bucket for the urine, a plastic spray-bottle full of water and lemon oil for the smell and our latest acquisition: a pump action water gun for the cat.

I’m not yet so deranged as not be aware that flailing away with a can of fly spray out the front will have made me a figure of fun for the neighbours. Nor will my deodorising efforts with the plastic spray-bottle have failed to amuse them. I can feel eyes on me whenever I mop the garden path.

But it’ll all be worth it the day I catch the little bastard at it and I get to use the gun.

And it may not end there. K suggests a potential addition to the arsenal by the front door one evening as I potter around Youtube, watching a debate in which Richard Dawkins is taking part. The Jehovah’s Witness of atheism. I can’t remember the last time I saw K in a church but she certainly does loathe Richard Dawkins.

“God help him if he pitches up”, she says.

I can see him in the porch – backing up slowly and not sure how to feel – as K levels her weapon of choice at him: another pump-action water gun.

I’d flap around behind her, trying to warn him, pointing at the gun, mouthing the words holy water frantically.

“Look here”, I might interject, fixing him with the mad stare as he continues to retreat from my dressing gown, my stubble, my armed girlfriend.

“You’re actually…you see, the thing is…you’re actually putting us in a bit of a position.”

My head bobbing about again, looking over his shoulders. Then all of a sudden I’d be in close, his lapel in my hand.

“Jesus could be here any minute…”

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 20^th 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. It would have fired his imagination to see it on a wall in the California he depicted so inaccurately. It would certainly have amazed him to see it return to Europe by air and, having spent a little time there, fly once again; this time on a journey south, to Spain for the second time, to Tarifa and to me.

This is a description of it. At top centre the words Planisphaerium Coeleste and below them a spherical inset of the night sky and illustrated constellations. At bottom centre its counterpart – the southern sky.

At the four corners the four hypotheses are charted: Ptolemaica, Copernicana, Decarta and Tychonica. Between them at top and bottom four ellipsoid cartouches. The name of the maker and descriptions of the artifact, themselves the very music of antiquity; Diversi Globi Terr-Aqvei Statione variante et Visu intercedente, per Coluros Tropicorum.

And if you like those apples, try these: Quibis Addite pro Mutatione Horizontis differentis Sphaerae Positiones Earumque.

The largest area is taken up with the double hemisphere. Americas to the right, everything else to the left. The compass points, the latitudes, the meridian.  The colours, altered on my copy from the original – lilacs and dusty greens have been swapped around, joined by sandy yellows and marine blues. Antarctica is called the Unknown Australian Regions.

Australia itself is the strangest shape.

California is an island.

This is what it is. In 1710 Matthaeus Seutter finally got to set up his map-making and publishing business in Augsburg. Born in 1678, he was no spring chicken. That he went on to become perhaps the foremost map publisher of his time and to be honoured with the title of Imperial Geographer by Emperor Charles VI is a testament to second chances.

I like the guy.

In 1744 he published his Atlas Minor, from which the map I have been describing is taken. My copy is not the original page but then Seutter himself wasn’t an original – he lived and worked at a distance from any universities or scientific communities so he based his maps on previous work by others.

He didn’t work alone. In the margin at bottom left of the map is the name of his son, Albrecht Carl, also an engraver and the inheritor of his business on his death in 1757. At bottom right the name of Andreas Silbereisen, another Augsburg engraver who I think may have been delegated the engraving of this particular page.

This is what it really is. I can’t remember a time before the map. It has been there forever. It hung on the wall in the first house of my memory and was my introduction to the world, to other countries, to the idea that there was an elsewhere.

It fed my childhood appetite for atlases. They were my literature; I would turn the pages and amaze myself with the knowledge that there were places called Tanliyé, and Madhya Pradesh, and Llanbrynmair. That Timbuktu was real and its whereabouts known – that I could go there if I wanted (I wanted) and, travelling from it across the border to Hodh El Gharbi, somehow feel the transition from the warm yellow to the colonial pink of the page on my lap

The mouthing of a place name, or the tracing of a line with my finger; these were the best of stories. I believe the map was the origin of my interest in the world and my desire to see it. It also connects me to my father, lost to me at an early age. I share his yen for travel, for maps, for the antique. It feels good to have inherited something from him apart from genes.

I’ve etched my own routes across some of those pages. I haven’t been everywhere that Seutter engraved but I’ve seen a bit – I could have told him, for example, that California is not an island. Both I and the map have been travelling for a long time, together and separately. We have weaved a web, drawn our own maps. Now it hangs on my wall, in Tarifa at the southern edge of Europe, which Seutter coloured yellow. He was from K’s neck of the woods.

Its arrival coincided with our move to a new house and since we know we will move again at some point, the map will continue to travel with me. We’ll etch out a few more routes through a few more colours. I’m a long way from where I started out and so is it, but reunited the distances seem smaller. Home seems closer. Right here, in fact.

It was sent here because my parents, Mum and S, thought I should have it and you know what? They were right.

Thanks Mum. Thanks S.

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 when you were getting to know Bronco, the dog from next door. Now, he was the real deal, as you can testify from first-hand experience.

Well, we’ve had something like that, only not along gender lines.

Yesterday the animal shelter bunch turned up to (finally) hand over Valentín’s European pet passport. It was the last step in what they have been referring to as the “monitoring” process. We’ve been quite impatient about it as we’ve just wanted the whole thing to be settled, and I’ve had the additional anxiety of knowing that were anyone to deem us unsuitable as cat parents and try to take the little chap away from K, there would likely be quite a scene.

I don’t mean “awkward” scene; I mean “crime” scene.

S.W.A.T. team, forensics, the lot.

I was expecting somebody with a clipboard. What we got was a very young woman and what I can only assume was her (unintroduced) boyfriend. What a thrilling Saturday morning for him. Once invited, they bustled in noisily and Valentín naturally made his way (very quickly) to under the bed upstairs, staying there for the duration of the visit (not long).

That was it for the inspection. Fortunately there didn’t seem to be any kind of issue with handing over the passport and once we had it in our hands we ushered them out, unceremoniously I think it would be fair to say. Yes, thank you, bye bye. Now we no longer need fear that anyone will take him away from us and nor, I suppose, can we hope that someone will.

As soon as they’re gone I sit down and leaf through it, taken aback by how stressed I’ve been about this and glad that it’s over. They make them look just like real passports and I search for a mugshot of Valentín inside, but there isn’t one – just the dates and rubber stamps that confirm he’s had his rabies jab, tapeworm treatment, leukaemia vaccine and so on. He has a chip in the left-hand side of his neck.

They really seem to be on the ball, these people. All i’s dotted and t’s crossed. I read through the list of his characteristics: Common European, name Valentín, sex male. Coat, atigrada (tiger) and we even get a date of birth for him – the first of September, and honour he will share with Nicu Ceaușescu – son of the infamous dictator – and Gloria Estefan of Miami Sound Machine fame.

Auspicious beginnings.

Characteristic No.2 is Especie, or species, and it isn’t in English of course though the word looks somewhat familiar – canina. Something doesn’t seem quite right and I look it up to be sure. The online translator confirms my worst fears.

It would appear that, officially, we have adopted a dog. K, ever the pragmatist and imbued with a profound Franconian pessimism, begins to worry immediately.

“What if we need to travel with him?” she asks. “They’ll never believe he’s a dog. Look at him!” she says, her head shaking.

He does look awfully like a cat. On the other hand this would explain his insatiable penchant for playing fetch.

“I’d imagine they’d be sensible about it,” I try to reassure her. “Common European refers to cats, and they could hardly expect to see a tiger coat on a dog. They’d understand it’s just a typo, I’m sure.”

“Except for the Germans, of course” I tease.

“They’ll never get their heads round this. We can probably take him anywhere, but never Germany” I conclude, throwing a crumpled receipt across the patio for the umpteenth time and watching as Valentín trots off to fetch it.

I shake my head sadly.

Then duck to avoid K’s manual disciplinary measure.

“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.”

We are blanketed in a hovering layer of incense and the city air is a holy din as drum and brass play a marcha de Semana Santa –  crazy, lazy harmonics that evoke the spaghetti western. The first paso carried by the Pontifical and Royal Confraternity and Brotherhood of our Lady of Solitude and the Descent of Our Lord represents the passage of the body of Christ to its sephulcre, and it’s quite something to see it navigate a street corner I can tell you; the anxious, encouraging calls of the capataz direct the white-shod, shuffling feet of the costaleros as they sway and sweat beneath – burly young men who will get to carry the ornate platforms just once in their lives.

Once aligned it advances at a strident pace, followed by another company of hooded nazarenos. When they pause again there’s an incongruous air of informality. Members of the crowd pop chewing gum into the mouths of those whose hands are full of incense thuribles or the candle holders beneath which children linger to augment the blessed wax balls they will collect tonight. Then the second paso, the dolorosa, candle-lit and gold-embroidered. Then more nazarenos. We move on, squeezing through sardine streets and trying not to think about the Ku Klux Klan, too much.

All a far cry from yesterday at the motorway services. On our way here we have stopped for a tostada and a café con leche and as always the TV is on, blaring out over formica table-tops and paper napkin dispensers, the tinkle of spoons in saucers, the buzz and jangle of the fruit machine.

Infuriatingly we find ourselves watching a procession, live from Sevilla. It’s the Macarena – a gitana singing a saeta lament to the Virgin on this blue sky day; one of the main Good Friday events. There couldn’t be a more iconic representation of Easter in that city and it’s infuriating because we have just spent two days there hunting high and low for a procession and to no avail. All we got were the lines of empty, soaked seating and the odd lone penitent wandering about, head bowed under a soggy capirote. Rain has put a stop to it all and costaleros – grown men – weep in the streets.

We console ourselves on our way home that Tarifa – where we live – does a mean Semana Santa itself, but the rain follows us and when we go into town the cobbled streets are shiny, wet and empty – not a penitent in sight. It’s beginning to feel like a practical joke. In the early afternoon of Good Friday we arrive in Granada and it’s raining. We linger later that day for a scheduled procession on the same street as our hotel but nothing happens. It seems as if we will have travelled all over Andalucia in Holy Week, to three separate sites of semana santa celebrations, without so much as glimpsing a procession; a unique achievement and a story I mentally prepare to be telling for years.

But it isn’t to be. Tonight, when we bump into the Venerable, Ancient and Illustrious Sacramental Brotherhood of the Our Lady of Peace and Penitent Fraternity of the Holy Christ of Favors and Crowned Holy Mary of Mercy, it’s the third procession that has blocked our way, and all we’re trying to do is get back to our hotel.

Once again Granada – our favourite city – delivers where others disappoint. We went to Sevilla for the full Semana Santa monty but we’re getting it here. The streets are packed and cordoned off at key intersections; sweet and snack carts are wheeled back and forth to occupy the best positions at the right times.  Television crews, police, everything.

We duck into a bar we know because we want to see the look on the parents’ faces. We find ourselves in the cramped front room beneath the TV screen, having swapped the Holy Week masses for a bar themed on…wait for it…Holy Week. The walls and ceiling are covered with iconography and religious kitsch, the smell of incense as strong here as it is on the streets outside. A brassy dirge comes from the speakers. My mother is speechless. Enough said.

For a second time we watch a procession on the TV, but this screen is nestled amongst the bric-a-brac of Easter itself and the procession it’s displaying is right around the corner. After a few drinks we will intercept it. We are full of noise and music, religious theatre, tapas and wine. We are reminded that even today Spain is just that little bit different.

On Sunday we leave for home and I sit hypnotized, as I always do, on the road out over the vega. It is lined with derelict houses, car dealerships and workshops – the detritus of the outskirts. The distances though are snowy mountain tops and just behind the suburban commerce the plain here is planted with poplars in perfect rows; the country behind them a flickering animation as they flit past.

I always like to tell people that this road is beautiful in the Autumn but the truth seems to be that the colours here are autumnal all year round; yellows and browns and the silver of the tree bark. I look forward to seeing it as much as I do the Alhambra these days and I hope it won’t be too long again as I mutter an hasta luego.

]]> http://alotofwind.com/2012/04/10/granada/feed/ 10 robingraham Granada http://alotofwind.com/2012/04/01/garum/ http://alotofwind.com/2012/04/01/garum/#comments Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:51:10 +0000 robingraham http://alotofwind.com/?p=3039 ]]>

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.

If you’ve ever used a crushed anchovy fillet to flavour your food then you will get garum. The factory is largely an array of salting cones – the condiment was made by salting the intestines of small fish and leaving them to rot in the sun. For months.

Yummy!

It was by all accounts a luxury to the Romans and pricier than the salt used in its manufacture. And if it was more expensive than salt – the great preservative – in those days, it wasn’t cheap.

Unfinished – as I trudge back uphill on a newly laid gravel path the forum and its row of shops provide an opportunity for me to mutter the word “portico” to myself. We visitors are outnumbered today by workers. There are two kinds – the men and women who are labouring on a new circuit; the gravel path and wooden walkways, chrome handrails, benches and well chosen viewpoints. Clean lines and contemporary styling to guide the curious.

Then there are the archaeology crews. They aren’t digging; they are working within some of the half-height structures, distributing gravel and identifying the limits of the intrinsically valuable. Consolidating, the notices say. Archaeologists always manage to make archaeology look urgent – like they are an emergency crew at the scene of an accident. They’re the last people one would expect to be in a hurry, I would have thought.

Maybe it is urgent. The past is a place that is slipping away from us, just as the galaxies are diverging, just as our own fugitive memories are constantly disappearing over the horizon of our cognitive reach. And we don’t want to let it go. There we are now – scurrying around the barest traces of it to secure them for the future. We work hard to preserve the past and archaeology is our salt.

My niece and nephew are just behind me as we make our way to the ultra-modern visitor centre (my favourite structure on the site if truth be known). They are grown and I haven’t spent time with them for so long, but the weather is inhibiting conversation as we huddle in our coats. I don’t know what they think of all of this; if it fascinates them or if mine are the preoccupations of the no-longer-young. I’m pretty sure we would agree that it’s cold though.

It’s good to get inside and divert ourselves with the exhibits. Every window in the building is designed to frame the exhibit outside – not just the Roman town but the land and sea; the world. We spend a little time there and then we leave.

A few days later we find ourselves sitting at long tables along with another twenty-five or so of our extended family. It is a birthday gathering and we are in a restaurant in Marbella. People have come from around the world to honour E, who will be thirty-plus tomorrow. Even if I didn’t now live in Tarifa I wouldn’t see these people in the same room very often. This kind of gathering is rare; we are scattered.

It is especially good that R and R are here.

That’s a little confusing, isn’t it? To clarify – R is my nephew, whereas R is my niece.

Theirs is the youngest generation represented and it is good to see them amongst their gene providers. Evidence of their belonging here is written all over their faces. I wonder if it means more to me than it does to them – if I am maybe over-egging it a bit. The older I get, the more distance I put between myself and my origins, the more interesting they become. The more they pull at me, like the cheese strings that pull harder the further the slice gets from the pizza.

And on the subject of Italian food, there is no garum on offer this evening, thankfully. We have to make do with salt. Plenty of fish though; the owner seems very keen that we try the fish. He must have a lot of it, and of course it doesn’t keep. On at least three separate occasions, he recommends the fish.

Once bellies are full and belts loosened, there are speeches. There is a need to mark the occasion with words. Cameras flash with the promise of visual reminder. We document the evening because it is special, intrinsically valuable. Later we will perform our personal archaeologies via kodak galleries or facebook or whatever it might be.

E is presented with a photograph of Dublin’s Custom House, an historical image that we all sign to inscribe our presence here. Our signatures and the photographs we take are an attempt at preservation, of course, but I wonder if what is truly valuable in all of this can be kept. I hope no one spends too much time behind the cameras, or reminiscing about the past; it is enough to be here amongst real flesh-and-bone people for a short time before we disperse again and return to other places.

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; what is the point of something being able to fly if it isn’t able to fly properly. What kind of evolutionary caprice or divine mischief is at work when an insect is granted the gift of take-off but not the ability to land. Or an insect that is bestowed both gifts – take-off and landing – but can’t fly straight.

We’ve all seem them. Some of us have been punched in the face by them. Grasshoppery type things, big fat beetles that bang into walls, daddy long-legs; they’re all…well they’re all a bit shit, aren’t they?

What is the point?

It won’t be flying around today. I’m safe today. The wind is back in full force and nothing is airborne if it knows what’s good for it. On top of that we’re in the house, not going anywhere in this hair dryer of a day.

It’s the third day of levante. Like any two responsible adults who’ve been holed up indoors for longer than they are accustomed to, we’ve been bickering like children. The cat must be wondering what’s going on. Mind you, he hasn’t been quite right himself; the wind has given him a distinct case of the jitters.

It gets to everyone, one way or another. K and I have struggled to be civil at times.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Her eyes are a little wild, a little wired.

“You’re so tense! I just don’t know what to do with you at the moment. Why are you so tense?” she yelps at me, nostrils flared. I think I can see steam coming out of her ears.

“Maybe it’s because you’ve looked so pretty recently” I quip, trying to lighten the mood, “Maybe I’m tense because you always get to be the pretty one.”

She snorts.

“And the clever one. Yes, it must be difficult for you.”

Then she pouts. She’s a great pouter – one of the best. I desperately want to get on with the-thing-I-am-getting-on-with but I can’t resist a pout.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m old!”

“You’re not old.”

“I am old! I was looking at those photos of us in Israel yesterday. That was five years ago. Five years!”

“You look better than that now. You look younger than you did five years ago.”

A brief pause while she absorbs the suggestion.

“You don’t.”

Not an easy opponent to spar with. And not an easy person to make sense of at times. A few days ago she matter-of-factly informed me (I forget the context) that she wasn’t all that keen on trees.

Not keen on trees! What have I gotten myself engaged to? The apocalypse??

It’s a word that comes to mind easily on a windy Tarifa day. And oh, what timing! My family is about to descend on us over the next couple of weeks and we’ll have the first of them as house guests in just a couple of days. I’ve been busy in the garden and on the patio, planting aromatic herbs, bougainvillea and shovelling the cat shit away.

I had visions of greeting them on the patio when they arrived, sitting in a sensory explosion of blossom and scent. I’d be at my laptop in some kind of smoking jacket.

“Welcome, welcome,” I would intone, “to our little haven. Please, do help yourself to some tinto de verano,” I would gesture towards the pitcher and the iced glasses. “I’ll be with you just the moment I’ve polished off this novella.”

It isn’t going to be like that. The front garden is a mess of leaves, junk mail and ice-cream wrappers. A few very frazzled looking stray cats are taking shelter in the corner. When they aren’t mewling they are defecating.

We’ve had to put some of the patio plants in the shed to protect them. For others it is already too late; the wind has snapped their spines. Maybe it’s a good thing. Not the broken plants – they cost me four euros. Each. But the fact that the wind has come to blow away my pretension. They’ll just have to take us as we come; slightly dishevelled and wild-eyed. The explosion of colour has been temporarily packed away. At least they’ll get some scent; a tom cat has been spraying our front door.

I don’t suppose we ever get to choose how we are seen, especially by our nearest and dearest. We construct comforting fictions as we go along, trying to beat a path through all the bluster. Then the fictions crumble or are blown away.

There are times when it appears that we don’t have all that many choices at our disposal, trajectory wise, but if we are lucky enough to be able to choose between being the grasshopper or the face it smacks, then better to be the bug.

Just about airborne, though not in a dignified way.

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.

I may have been a little repetitive about it.

Jupiter and Venus hug the horizon, low in the western sky. They are the brightest lights but it’s Orion’s show – he hunts at the centre of everything I can see. I feel the requisite tininess, and turn around.

More horizontals. The undulating sand now reflects the orange-tinted lights of the promenade – the central stripe made up of the apartments and urbanizaciones that have grown out of Tarifa’s casco antiguo and spread out along Los Lances beach. There is nothing high rise and the development stops where the bird sanctuary begins to my left.

The dune and the lighthouse of Isla de Palomas are still at either end of my sight, but each has changed position from right to left and left to right. The expanse between – the central, eye-level band of light and architecture, is a handsome sweep. By day, modern Tarifa is just a little shabby and ramshackle; a work in progress – unfinished concrete structures side by side with peeling paint.

Tonight though it gleams in the soft focus of the promenade lights. In the sky above their glow the Big Dipper is clearly visible. I’m being spoilt this evening – I can see both of the constellations that I can recognise and name. The Big Dipper orientates me as it indicates north; pinpoints me in the cosmos.

I can see the little bull ring, the bullfighting school, the castle, the ridiculous 20^th century merchants house built in such an overblown “Moorish” style that has become one the town’s emblematic landmarks. I can see the red lights on the wind turbines that loom over Tarifa on the mountain ridges.

In the middle of it all, just at the top of the sloped bank of sand that leads down to the water’s edge, I can see K, backlit against the barrios, her hair wisping in the breeze. I can just make out her bemusement as I step back towards her, her eyes gently mocking the foolish, romantic grin on my face.

I’m full of Orion and the sky, the sea and the Straits. It doesn’t take much to get me going – a walk down to the water at night will do it. I must have stopped her every few feet on the way down here to squeeze her hand or hold her eyes with mine. Childish look-at-that’s and wouldn’t-it-be-wonderfuls.

I’ve been trying to lift her mood a little. She’s hard on herself. Like me – like you, I imagine – she still hasn’t found it. The thing. The perfect cup to pour herself into. The prey. I haven’t found mine either, but I have someone to share the hunt with. She forgets at times how exceptional it makes her that she hasn’t given up the chase.

I want her to know that she is strong – strong enough to have saved me, strong enough to guide me. Perhaps our preys will always be fugitive, our prayers unanswered, but I want her to know that I am exactly where I need to be as I take her hand – the huntress at the centre of everything I can see.

I feel huge.