Andalucia Steve

 

Posts From June, 2020

Remembering Lady Di

Personal memories including the day she nearly ran me over.
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, June 28, 2020 9:52:00 AM Categories: Celebrity
 
At the beginning of the 1980's Britain was in a fairly dark place. An economic, social and cultural transition was happening. The country was in need of a fairy tale and it got one in the shape of the much publicised romance between Prince Charles and Diana Frances Spencer, who was born on 1 July 1961. Since this is the week of Diana's birth I thought I jot down a few memories and observations. 
 
We never met face to face but our paths did cross a couple of times. By the time I first saw her in person I felt already knew her, such was the media frenzy when her relationship with the Prince first came to light. I've never seen one person so relentlessly exploited by the media before or since. It was like Beatlemania though the focus was on a single, young individual. Doubtless she had a notion that she would be 'stepping in to the spotlight' but I really don't think she or anybody had the foggiest idea of the level of hysteria that would be whipped up by the world's press. Her face was on every newspaper, magazine and TV show. From the announcement of the royal engagement in February in 1981 to the Royal Wedding in July 1981 (watched by a worldwide audience of 750 million), Diana's face became one of the most recognisable on planet earth.
 
I had no problem then recognising the woman on my first encounter. I was working in Kensington at the time and as usual I alighted from the train at Olympia from which my office, Charles House, was but a short walk. I crossed Kensington High Street using the pedestrian crossing. Although the traffic lights had changed to red and I'd taken several steps into the road, a Mercedes came hurtling out of nowhere heading straight for me. As I stepped back out of harm's way I eyeballed the driver. It was Lady Diana! She give me the sweetest apologetic look and mouthed the word 'sorry'. I think by this time she had taken to using a gym in Chelsea and was presumably coming back from her morning work out. I was surprised she was alone in the car, and that there didn't seem to be any other vehicles following her by way of a security detail. It was just her and me and a near fatal accident. One has to keep one's eyes open while walking the streets of Kensington. On one occasion I found myself within a few feet of getting mown down by TV personality and Mastermind winner, Fred Housego in his taxi. On another, I gave star of and stage and screen Una Stubbs a break-test in her Beamer while crossing the road at Phillimore gardens. The look on her face wasn't quite so enchanting as lady Di's!
 
The second time I got to see Diana at close quarters was when she came to our office. Part of the building was given over to a hospital trust and she had been invited to perform the official opening of the new wing. This occasion was much more auspicious. She had her best togs on and hair and make-up was immaculate, a far cry from the startled gym-veteran I'd seen before. There were limousines, an entourage of assistants and a legion of photographers. My office on the fourth floor overlooked the main entrance where the circus arrived. I didn't get to see her inside the building though I could hear there was a hell of a buzz coming from the next corridor. The thing I most remember was that when she left the building, she acknowledged all of us plebs rubber-necking out of the windows. She did a slow-spin waiving at all of us. Somehow she gave the impression of having made eye-contact with everybody looking down at her which I considered quite thoughtful and professional. 
 
The other strong memory I have of lady Diana was of her death. The wife and I were on holiday in Cyprus when it happened. We learned about it rather accidently from flicking through the Greek TV channels. Being pre-internet, there wasn't really any further way in which we could learn anything more about it, so we got over the initial shock quite easily. I recall going out to dinner that evening and I made a remark about it that was overheard by an English couple on the next table. We started chatting about it by way of catharsis and became friends. The rest of the week went by without being confronted with anymore information about it and in our minds it was done and dusted - out of our system. I thought that was the end of it.
 
When we flew into Gatwick a week later though we found out it had just been the start. With the same intensity the media had paid her way back at the announcement of her engagement, the press and TV had been relentless in the coverage of her death. The nation's grief button had been massaged daily, imbuing in people a much more profound sense of loss than we had because we hadn't been exposed to the media. I'm not saying we didn't feel anything, but what everyone in Britain was feeling was just out of step with our own experience. It was like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Even the sort of cynical folk who would normally have a sick joke at the expense of a regular celebrity death were weeping into their handkerchieves. The whole business made me realise how powerful the media are when it comes to manipulating hearts and minds. The mood of the nation might not be created by the media but it certainly can be amplified and polarised. 
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Dead dog story

The tale of how I came to bury my canine friend
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, June 21, 2020 10:33:00 AM Categories: pets Spain

I mentioned in a previous post that I preferred cats to dogs. I have had several dogs in the past, one of whom, Leon, got a mention, so I thought I'd tell you a little about him here.

Leon came with the Spanish country house my wife and I bought in Murcia in 2003. The sellers were elderly people downsizing into a townhouse and it was thought with Leon being an outdoor dog in the country that it would be unfair and frankly a bit of a gamble to expect him to adapt to life in the confines of the indoors.

When I first met Leon he barked his head off as the estate agent pulled up to the gates of the property in her 4x4. He was just alerting the owner to our arrival. I later learned visitors could tell whether anyone was home or not because if someone appeared at the gate while we were out, Leon wouldn't bark. Why should he? Leon was a clever guy.

We got to know the previous owners quite well. For the first few years they would visit from time to time to see Leon ask how we were getting on. We learned that he was a purebred German Shepherd they had got in Barcelona. Apparently their son worked in Barcelona and they used to visit from time to time. It struck me Catalan was his first language, Castellano his second, yet he still seemed to understand me in English.  He was more familiar with the area than I was and guided me on many a long walk on the tracks and hills where we lived. Like I say, was a clever guy!

Not long after we moved in, some builders had to replace the old bathroom so I built a crude commode with a bucket and an old chair with a hole cut in it. On one occasion I dug a hole in the garden and poured in the waste for burial when Leon leapt out of nowhere, picked up a piece of poo with his teeth and ran off with it, chewing away as best a dog can. I was more cautious about letting him lick me after that.

Leon's appetite never failed to amaze me. I visited my neighbour Manolo one day when he happened to be eviscerating a freshly killed chicken. Casually he pulled out the various guts and tossed them to Leon who had obviously played this game before. Seeing him chomping down on hearts, lungs and the giblets made me feel kind of queasy but Leon was as happy as Larry, his big bushy tail whipping up a minor dust storm in the dry sandy yard.

Leon was getting pretty old by this time. One day I got a phone call to say he had died. I was working in the next village and couldn't get back until late afternoon where I saw my wife sat on the patio next to poor old Leon covered with a sheet. It had been very sudden, probably his heart gave out. I thought we better get him cremated or something so I popped into town to see the local vet. When I asked him if he could arrange for the disposal of the body he threw me a puzzled look and explained they don't do that sort of thing, at least not in this part of Spain. Just bury him in the garden.

"Oh" he said "Leon is a big dog. Make sure the hole you dig is deep enough". The vet knew Leon, having had many previous wrestling matches with him in the past for inoculations and on one occasion a little dentistry.

I went back home and got my 'azada', a sort of sturdy, square shaped hoe that the farmers use to dig holes and trenches here, and tried to dig. Well it was the middle of July, the ground was bone dry and rock hard. There was zero chance of me being able to dig a hole even vaguely big enough and time was not on our side. Burials are traditionally performed quickly in Spain before, well, things start to go off.

So then the hunt started for help. I made a few phone calls but no joy, then we were joined by an English neighbour who recommended her gardener, Ginez. I knew him vaguely as a farmer with a property not far away from me and I had spoken with him once or twice at a few social events. It turned out he had a small mechanical digger which was just what we needed to dig a grave. I made the call...

"Ginez, my dog died. Can you dig a hole to put him in"

"Yes, but I'm out of town" he replied.

"I'm working in Caravaca. I'll come when I've finished"

Caravaca was the next town along, only a couple of miles as the crow flies so I was hopeful it wouldn't be too long.

Well we waited and waited. The wine came out and a few more neighbours came to see what's up. It started to turn into a wake for Leon.

Some hours later I phoned Ginez back and asked if he was still coming.

"Yes I'm on my way now he said"

What he didn't tell me was that he was driving the tiny digger on its sluggish caterpillar tracks all the way back from where he'd been working! By the time he pitched up it was gone half ten in the evening! The digger slower came through the gates and we showed Ginez the dog and started to scope out possible burial sites. Ginez removed his John Deere baseball cap to scratch his head, revealing that a farmer's tan is a universal thing among the tractor driving fraternity.

He explained the problem was there was nowhere to bury Leon inside the property. Although the grounds measure 1500 square metres, half of it was given over to a white gravel drive, and the other half was an orchard. The drive would be a pain because we would have to scrape back the gravel and replace it, and would probably have water pipes going through it anyway that could be an issue if we hit one. The trees in the orchard were all too close together. Although the digger is small it needs room to manoeuvre so he couldn't dig a hole there unless we removed several trees.  

We went and look outside the property. There was an unfenced area just to the right of the front gate with a hut on it that belonged to a local goat farmer, who had fortunately given up the goats quite recently and now lived in Caravaca. He came back to potter from time to time but I figured if buried Leon there and 'covered our tracks' well enough he probably wouldn't even notice.

Ginez got to work and in half and hour or so we laid poor Leon to rest, covered the hole, said a few words and then started scattering grass and bracken over the grave to disguise its existence. It was quite an inauspicious end to a loyal security dog and friend but in the years that followed I realized I felt quite comforted by the notion of Leon in that spot outside the main gate, guarding the property for eternity! RIP Leon.

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Happy Birthday Donald Trump

..but why are you so unpopular?
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, June 14, 2020 11:49:00 AM Categories: politics Racism Sexism
 
When Sting released "If I lose my faith in you" in 1993" no one could have imagined this line from the song would be so prescient:
 
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me
 
Yet here we are in 2020 and there is both a game show host in the Whitehouse and in 10 Downing Street.
 
(In the case of The Whitehouse, Donald Trump was the presenter of the US television reality TV show The Apprentice, that adjudged the business skills of a group of contestants. Boris Johnson was a guest presenter on the British topical news quiz 'Have I Got News For You' on four occasions.) 
 
Today, the 14 June 2020 is the President's 74th birthday and for weeks now the good people of Twitter have been conspiring to flood the service with pictures of Barrack Obama just to piss Trump off. Despite his media popularity prior to becoming president, Trump's average approval rating is languishing at 40% which is the lowest of any president in modern times.
 
Obama Portrait 2006 Yougov puts Johnson's popularity at 39%  and, in another poll specifically related to his handling of the COVID crisis, the Daily Express reported on Jun 9 that Johnson had "the lowest approval rating worldwide" 
 
Why then have they become so unpopular? Could it be that they share certain flaws?
 
Both men have a number of things in common. They both bat for their respective country's mainstream right-wing parties, the Republicans and the Conservatives. They've both achieved media popularity through a lot of self-promotion, cultivating a somewhat roguish images with colourful personal lives. Both know how to showboat for the cameras, whether it be Johnson waving Union Flags while hanging of a zip line, or Trump putting his hair on the line in Wrestlemania 23. 
 
Also somewhat sinisterly, they have both dodged accusations of links to foreign interference in the democratic process, with Trump narrowly avoiding being impeached and Johnson so far refusing to publish the Russia Report by the Intelligence and Security committee which may contain details of outside meddling in the Brexit referendum in 2016.
 
The more one considers the parallels between Trump and Johnson, the uncannier it becomes. Both have been in charge of their respective countries during the 2020 fight and against Covid-19 and both have failed spectacularly to contain the disease by delaying lock-downs that were in any case insufficiently comprehensive nor were they enforced with much vigour.  Both are still failing to implement the most basic tracking and tracing that many countries have had in place for months.
 
Both have a tetchy relationship with the press, preferring to address the nation directly through social media or prerecorded video. When they are forced to appear in front of the press, they have both banned journalists of national mainstream media outlets who have previously dared to report them in an unfavourable light.

Also, and rather unfortunately in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent avalanche of 'Black Lives Matter' protests, both men have been accused of racism, claims which they of course vehemently deny. Johnson wrote in the Spectator in 2002 that "..the problem with Africa is that we are not in charge any more". Referring to Blair's visit to Africa in the same year, Johnson wrote in the Telegraph  "What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies," he wrote, referring to African people as having "watermelon smiles." In defence, Johnson dismissed the words saying they had been "taken out of context." Trump meanwhile has a lengthy Wikipedia entry entirely devoted to cataloguing his racial views making it as easy to find evidence of his racism as shooting fish in a barrel, from calling African countries shitholes to calling Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. 
 
Both Johnson and Trump have a similar track record when it comes to the LGBTQ community, with Johnson calling called gay men 'tank-topped bumboys' in a 1998 Telegraph column, while Trump has just distinguished himself by rolling back Obama era healthcare protections for transgender patients two week into Pride Month.  which is the latest in a series of rollbacks of transgender rights. You couldn't make it up!
 
Almost inevitably then both men are similarly accused of sexism. From Johnson's long career in journalism there is a seemingly endless source of quotes where he demeans and patronises women, from advising his successor at the Spectator to "Pat her bottom and send her on her way" when referring to the journal's publisher  Kimberly Quinn, to once claiming that "Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts". 
 
Trump of course was famously caught on tape speaking of "grabbing them by the pussy". His history of sexism and misogyny is longer than Johnson's. 'The Week' has a list of "61 things Donald Trump has said about women" which is staggering! The guy just doesn't have a part of his brain that audits whether what he is saying about women is appropriate or not. One of my particular favourites was the time when he and his daughter Ivanka were interviewed on 'The View' and he cringingly said if she wasn't his daughter he'd probably be dating her. Eew!
 
So many happy returns Mr Trump but you know what? If Marilyn Monroe was alive today I don't think she would be seductively singing you happy birthday!
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Views on Spanish Cuisine

What's the inside track on the food we eat in Spain
Posted by Steve Gould Sunday, June 7, 2020 3:03:00 PM Categories: Cusine Spanish Spanish culture
I'm on comfy ground writing about food. I like it. I eat some every day. In fact I'd struggle to live without it. So here I'm going to dispel a few myths about Spanish nosh and probably make myself unpopular with the tourist board into the bargain.
 
Or maybe not. In the village in Murcia where I lived until 2009 there was a chap who worked in the tourist office called Santi, who was born and raised in the Basque country. While chatting one day I asked him what he missed about being so far away from home.
 
"The food" he said. His face was a picture as his mind drifted away in deep culinary reverie. Now I'd heard the reputation of Basque cuisine first hand since my neighbour Manolo and his wife had not long returned from a gastronomic coach trip touring eateries from Galicia to San Sebastian. Santi confirmed what they'd told me, that the food in the North of Spain is a cut above the food in the South. He put forward a bold theory that the high temperature experienced by the South of Spain for much of the year was a deterrent against cooking. Who wants to be stuck in a hot kitchen all day? In fact the kitchen is often purposefully kept away from the house. I'd been working with an estate agent at the time and I'd noticed a trend for houses to have 'summer' kitchens, often in a separate building. One old lady giving me a tour around her property showed me a pristine kitchen that looked as it had been totally unused, and probably it hadn't, because she then took me to another hut four doors up the street where she said she did most of her daily cooking!
 
Another consequence of Santi's conjecture is that simplicity is a common characteristic of the culinary art in the South. Generally the dishes here are prepared with as little fuss as possible, again as a conservation measure in the battle with the heat. I'll cover a few dishes I've encountered while living here, all of which will be noted for their simplicity.
 
The first thing I was taught to cook here (by my neighbour Jose - he of the Swimming Pool Saga post from last week) was chicken in garlic. If you've not had this you must try it. The same process can be used to cook rabbit and works just as well. Fry the chicken in oil on a medium heat for 15 minutes until it is nearly done, then near the end of the cooking process, throw in a handful of chopped garlic. Let the garlic cook for a few more minutes, then just as it threatens to brown, pour in half a cup of vinegar. As if by magic the vinegar boils, taking the garlic flavour into the meat and leaving a dry saucy residue. Plate it up and eat. Couldn't be simpler! I understand this technique was popular in Portugal, and was taken by Portuguese sailors to India during the Age of Discovery where it was adopted and developed into Vindaloo (from Carne de vinha d'alhos meaning meat with wine and garlic).
 
Another friend gave me a good lesson in cooking garlic prawns (Gambas al Ajillo). You can Google the recipe. It's pretty simple and widely available online. Tips I got from her was that she heated the individual sized clay dishes (cazuelitas) on the stove top - I'd always assumed they were heated in the oven. Also she used the cheapest olive oil called suave or refinado. I thought it would be all extra virgin but no, with the strong flavour of the garlic, the prawns and the cayenne pepper pods, you'd be hard pushed to tell the difference between the flavour of the oils so use the cheapest!  
 
Of all the dishes Spain is famous for however, seafood paella must be the best known. Strangely I don't think I've ever had it once since I moved here. This is probably because I live inland. Don't get me wrong, they get the paella pans out here and cook rice in it, but I've rarely seen fishy ingredients. Rabbit yes, vegetables yes, chicken yes, snails oh yes!! Again, it's an easy way to cook and a a rabbit and a kilo of rice will feed ten people from a one metre pan. Rabbit with rice (arroz con conejo) was therefore a popular choice during the summer fiestas of the towns in and around the North West of Murcia. Another popular fiesta treat is tortilla in bread. I found the doubling of carbs in having potatoes in a baguette quite heavy going but they serve them by the hundreds at the local feria. 
 
Tray of chicken straight from the bread oven
 
If you've never been to a Spanish feria, these are local events where a town or part of a city takes three or four days to party, with food and drink forming a big part of the celebrations. My best feria food-fest was in an office I worked in. The boss's extended family turned up in number to the office and on this particular day they brought with them a huge kitchen tray, about a metre wide and a metre and a half long. They filled the tray (pictured) with dozens of chicken quarters, added potatoes, tomatoes, lemons, onions, garlic, oregano and lashings of olive oil. Then half a dozen people ceremoniously picked up the tray and proudly marched it to the local bakers where it was cooked in the bread oven. I don't think I've eaten anything quite so delicious made from such basic ingredients! This has influenced the way I roast a chicken - now I always add the same ingredients and it tastes much better. 
 
One disappointing note about the cuisine in Southern Spain is the lack of vegetables, making it tricky for vegetarians and vegans to eat out. I find many restaurants think of meat/fish first, then add chips and maybe a little salad by way of a garnish. If it's a posh place and you're lucky you might get some goo that consists of a few varieties of seasonal veg boiled to death in tomato sauce for a couple of hours so you can barely identify what you're eating. Bread is served with everything, which together with the obsession with chips and dearth of vegetable makes me very sceptical about the merits of the so called 'Mediterranean Diet'. As someone explained to me recently, the chap who came up with the notion (Ancel Keys) did so after visiting the island of Crete, noting how fit and well-aged the population was. Apparently he visited the island during lent so had a rather skewed view of what was being eaten and he neglected to take into account his visit took place just after WW2, a period of harsh austerity when food was scarce and the population aged artificially because of the younger members of society being killed in the fighting. Untroubled by such facts, Keys got it into his head that the diet was the cause and went back to America creating his famed Seven Nation study to prove his idea, the results of which have since been widely discredited. However the myth that the food in this part of the world is some kind of panacea persists to this day.
 
If however your appetite has been whetted by all this talk of grub, I suppose it would be fitting of me to offer you something for afters to finish with. Many of the desserts in Spain are things you would find elsewhere, ice cream, flans, rice-pudding etc. One that was new to me which I took a liking to was fresh peaches soaked over night in red wine - yum! By experimentation I found this works best by adding a little brandy too and by soaking the peaches in the fridge it makes the perfect supper for a hot summer evening.
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