My poor little girl

TODAY I’d just like to say that my little girl (she’s only 20) has been very poorly. Minimama, as we call her, on account of her being a younger, more clever, more beautiful and slimmer version of me (I know, I didn’t think it was possible to better the present, but there you go – wrong again hey) has been smitten by a nasty bug over in Ecuador where she’s living right now.

She’s had a fever, cough and flu-like systems as well as a dodgy digestive system. She's felt very rough, but the worrying thing is she was at a wedding with another girl who has been diagnosed as having swine flu, or whatever you want to label it. Luckily Minimama is on the mend and the hospital she went to doesn’t think she has the same problem, just a touch of a stomach infection. I felt quite useless half the way around the world.

Here are some get well flowers just for you… And a kiss from the Hockey Star, the Artist, Kitty, Sockiboloski and Tom. Hope to see you soon!

PS - Just seven days until San Fermin starts in Pamplona - I'm getting excited already...

Weather today: Hot and sweaty - High 32ºC/90ºF Low 23ºC/73 ºF. Not a cloud in the sky. Light southwesterly wind 12km/h. Pressure 1016 mb. Relative humidity 56%. UV index: 11.

Plum season

THIS year our little plum tree has surpassed itself and yielded almost 2 kilos of fruit. I’d like to take credit for this – having nurtured, watered it, and catered for its every whim. But I’d be lying. The plum tree has adapted to my brand of organic – thrive or die. There is no special treatment as I’ve no time. All that is left, quite naturally, is a garden of survivors. So, well done plum tree and let’s be seeing an extra kilo or two next year.

And while I’m on the fruit subject – I''m already looking forward to lots of apples this autumn - the tree is positively groaning while the grapefruit tree struggles to give fruit every other year. This spring it was covered in blossom but the vicious winds in April knocked most of them off, which is a good thing because the poor little tree looks barely big enough to stand up – and it is ancient so it must have been planted on some pretty poor soil.

Weather today: High 32ºC/90ºF Low 22ºC/72 ºF. Not a cloud in the sky. Light southwesterly wind 11km/h. Pressure 1012 mb. Relative humidity 55%. UV index: 10.

Ayyyyy, they’ve axed my Aquagym

Just got back from the gym. Yes, me. Incredible I know but two months ago I signed up to an exercise programme, under careful medical scrutiny. Not a doctor as I had thought but a chap in a white coat with a degree in sports. In any case, my Not Doc was very thorough and as soon as he heard my knees crackle like crisp packets he sent me off to Aquagym classes which was probably all the Fitness Centre’s insurance would cover me for.

Aquagym is a small group of ladies of a certain age and girth, who perform aerobic-like exercises (that’s the theory) in a waist-deep swimming pool to the thump-thump-thump of disco music while a young, svelte slip of a thing yells instructions from the pool’s side. It must be an attention-grabber because we inevitably draw a sweaty audience from the upper floor gym. For The Artist, who is at least as athletic as me, this whole thing conjured up images of the dancing hippos from Walt Disney’s Fantasia. How rude…

Actually it’s probably worse than that. We go red in the face too which the hippos didn’t. I thoroughly enjoy the whole thing, except perhaps the ladies’ communal showers. My legs no longer feel like cement blocks when I get out of the pool after our class and I feel so much fitter.

I even thought I was on my way to becoming thin. Not so, said Not Doc who soon clarified that a little water-bouncing was never going to make me thin, just tone me up a bit.

He must be right. Since then I’ve met several girlfriends who swear they go to the gym every day from Monday to Thursday to do excessive, masochistic exercise routines. Rather disappointingly they still sport their usual porky silhouettes.

But today I heard crushing news. The FC management swines have wiped our Aquagym off the timetable - changed for the summer while the Fitness Centre is overrun with kids – out of school for the three-month academic break. Ayyyyeeeee - How frustrating. I mean it’s OK for me not to go because it’s not convenient/I’m too tired/I’m too old/too busy/got to have a tooth pulled etc. But for THEM to cancel our class until October – How could they?

I have come home and opened a bottle of cava to commiserate with myself. Now I shall be forced to spend my summer evenings with my feet up, quaffing chilled white wine and enjoying some splendid Spanish cuisine … life is tough.

A little history of Chefchaouen

A LITTLE history of Chefchaouen, courtesy of http://www.chaouen.info/ and unedited, arrghh it was tough but I think it is much more charming in its original form.

A little history of Chefchaouen
The city of Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 by Mulay Alí Ben Rachid. Located in an enclave difficult to access it dominated the mercantile route between Tetuan and Fez and served as a base to restrain the entrance and influences of the Portuguese of Ceuta.
During 15th and 17th century the city prospered and grew in considerable form with the arrival of the moriscos and sefardíes who were expelled from Spain. Until nowadays the district Andalúz is one of the most popular of the medina.

The Kasbah was constructed by Mulay Alí Ben Rachid and soon recovered by Mulay Ismail at the end of 17th century to defend the city. First of all the Portuguese tried to attack the city then later the rebellious tribes Bereberes and after that the Spaniards tried to attack.
The city was closed to all the foreigners, especially to the Christians, until the beginning of the Spanish occupation in 1920.
However, at the end of 19th century the first travellers arrive: the French explorer Charles Foucauld, disguised as a rabbi; the English journalist Walter Harris as rifeño, and William Summers, an American missionary, who was poisoned and died there.
Between 1924 and 1926, during the war of the Rif, Abd-el Krim was able to expel the Spaniards, but these did not take long to occupy Chaouen again in September of 1926, this time they remained until the Moroccan independence in 1956.

Chaouen here we come...again

MARCH is here at last and our mini trip to Morocco is getting closer. I'm so looking forward to going back and to introducing the Hockey Star to a new culture. I want to see his face as his senses are assaulted with so many new sights, smells, sounds and sensations.

If his globetrotting sister was with us she'd be fascinated - there again so would the locals - with her.

This trip will be different of course -it's not the first, so it won't be as intense, but it will give me the opportunity to see things in a more familiar and relaxed light. I shall take fistfuls of batteries for my camera and dither outside little shop entrances trying to convince myself that I don't need to buy anything. What I will buy is orange blossom oil - just smelling it relaxes me instantly. And this time I will buy the rose petal cream - how did I come back last time without it?

Weather today: High 16ºC/61ºF Low 12ºC/54 ºF. Overcast with sunny spells. Moderate westerly wind 39km/h. Pressure 1017 mb. Relative humidity 47%. UV index: 4

Living on three euros a day

WEEKDAY mornings usually start off with a wrestling match to tune the car radio in as I drive the Hockey Star to school. It’s a fight for either the local thump-thump-tonka-tonka rock station or the news analysis discussion programme. No guesses for who chooses what. The Hockey Star has the advantage of not having to keep his hands on the wheel and, quite frankly, I’m not much up to a fight before my second coffee. So we have the seat-vibrating stuff on the way there and the political post-mortem drone on the way to the office.

Today, after ten minutes of button-pushing even My Boy admitted there was nothing worth listening to, so I got lucky. We tuned in just as they were asking, what would you spend your money on if you had to live on three euros a day? Ho, I thought, a coffee is one euro – and I need two to get operational – which would leave me with a euro to eat something – one euro of food for the whole day? I’d have to cut out coffee so I didn’t fade away. Gone would be the days of dribbling industrial quantities of olive oil over a toasted bread roll and a steaming hot coffee for breakfast. That costs over two euros.

We listened some more. A lot of people interviewed said food, many others would rather starve and buy cigarettes. One hygienic chap couldn’t live without a toilet roll. It started us thinking. Bonzo said he sometimes buys a bread roll and a couple of slices of something porky from the supermarket next to school during break time. That costs 60 cents. You can get a 1.5 litre bottle of water for around 25 cents. Not much of a breakfast but it will keep you alive and leave you with 2.15 euros for the rest of the day.

On the home front we’d be sleeping in the street on and under cardboard we’ve found in the rubbish containers – so no costs there. We could also get one free hot meal a day and an occasional shower at a homeless shelter. I don’t think there are any costs for showers – but there might be. I told the Hockey Star that I’d seen a programme where a reporter lives rough for a month. She’d filled up a small plastic bottle she found with liquid soap from a public bathroom (so don’t say you don’t know now). Same soap will do for bod and hair. So by now we’ve had breakfast, showered and had lunch and still got 2.15 euros. Free meals involve a lot of queuing but we can cast our eyes over a library book or a discarded newspaper. Both are in abundance and keep us culturally up with the best of the property-owning capitalist bunch, err like you and I for instance.

I think you get the gist. Clothes from the bin or from the church and so on. It can be done if you pare life down to barely an existence. Sadly millions cope like this every day.

Street sleeping and a tramp’s life means hardships beyond my imagination but I think the idea of trying to work out how to live in Europe on a ridiculously small amount of money is an instructive exercise that can highlight just how much we spend on unnecessary things. And talking of unnecessary things, now that I think of it I shall do away with Bonzo’s pocket money. What’s he need it for anyway?

Weather today: High 18ºC/64ºF Low 9ºC/48ºF. Sunny. Light southerly wind 11 km/h. Pressure 1017 mb. Relative humidity 73%. UV index: 3

I’ve felt like a dog this week

OVER THE last week my companions at work have heard me coming well before I get through the office door. The elephant-bellowing nose blowing that precedes me is a hint. And try as I might to be discreet, I just can’t get my atomic-blast, brain-lifting sneezes down to a polite kerchu, kerchu. Some women can. I can’t. And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, I accompany the above with a range of sniffles, tragic sighs, croaky voice and a cough that masquerades as a St Bernard’s bark. I also look very sorry for myself. At the risk of cracking a cheap joke, and I can’t resist it, I’d say I was well in touch with my male side. Sorry chaps.

However, this bout of gungy germs – my first this winter I can proudly claim – has its bright side too. It means I can finally doze and do dying-maiden, err correction, I mean dying-matron, impressions on the sofa with a clear conscience and not feel lazy or under pressure. Real colds, or imaginary, are also amazingly good at keeping the old gaffers at bay and my cheeks free of toothless kisses which are almost all I can expect these days.

The vicious microbes that have knocked me rather more off my feet this time than I expected are still with me a week down the line. I had hoped they’d be on their way to another bod by now. It must be an age thing, but it serves as an excuse, or reason even, to apologise yet again for not ‘blogging’ more often.

In fact, truth be told, I’ve hurried back today because my amigo El Funcionario (http://www.yasoyfuncionario.blogspot.com/, where you can practice your Spanish) has linked me once again to his increasingly famous blog, not as a favour you must understand but more as a whipping to get my act together. At least I can be consistent in my constant apologies for not keeping this blog up. And being consistent is a good thing, so I am told.

Weather today:
High 17ºC/63ºF
Low 7ºC/45ºF
Sunny
Light southerly wind 11 km/h
Pressure 1017 mb. Relative humidity 55%. UV index: 3