Estrella Morente (in the cream dress) doing her stuff - Look her up on YouTube if you want to know more...
MID August is feria time in our village. Any hope of a normal routine is useless. Anyone who is someone, and let's face it we'd all like to think we are, will be out until the wee hours dancing flamenco, downing fino sherry, paying small fortunes to let the kids ride on bumper cars and generally behaving as if the end of the world will arrive tomorrow, which it will - for those who've overindulged - the next morning, but that's another story.
You might detect a note of envy - regarding the all night partying - and you'd be right. Some of us have to stay on the straight and narrow and go to work.
But last night being Saturday we did manage to get to the village flamenco festival - the start of our annual festivities.
Flamenco has a bit of a reputation for going on into the night. And this it did - until just gone 2am.
I'd faded a while before (well we were out the night before too - as in Rome etc) and was having serious trouble trying not to fall asleep while sitting on the cement seating of our local bullring. Ayyyy,y ayyyyy, ayyyyy, something unintelligible, ayyyy, sang Estrella Morente, who is actually quite good but by the time she got on stage it was past my bedtime. Still it was good to go out and there was something rather special about sitting under the stars in a bullring high above the Mediterranean, the sea below glittering and the gypsies guitar chords drifting off into the darkness while Estrella ayed and ayed a bit more. I must go out more often....
Night.
