Saturday, March 29, 2014

Catetos and country bumpkins

There's nothing going on. A pretty typical Saturday but, lost for anything to write, I hatched a cunning plan. I'd talk about nothing.

This plan came to me just after I'd collected the mail and as I washed the car, Maggie's car to be precise. We have a post box on the house but deliveries in the countryside are a bit haphazard. Safer a PO box in the town Post Office. We also have water and space to wash a car at our house in Culebrón. Today I was just being lazy. For many Spaniards though the Sunday morning car wash ritual, beloved of so much of suburban Britain, is unrealisable. Most people here, after all, live in flats, not everybody, but the majority. So getting a bucket of water to your car isn't easy. Anyway several towns have local bye-laws prohibiting street car washing. Pinnoso being a typical example. This means that there are lots of car washing bays in petrol stations all over Spain. In contrast to the UK where I remember that the tunnel wash with rotating brushes was the most common here those lance type power washers that lift off paint are the usual offer.

The car freshly washed I went  to buy some gas - in a bottle. We country folk don't have piped gas. Butane in 12.5kg cylinders is the norm. I bought the gas from the shop at the local co-operative bodega which has a decidedly agricultural theme. Safety footwear and parts for irrigation systems rub shoulders with tinned sardines and chocolate bars. I asked if they had any liquid for killing the picudo rojo, the beetle that wants to eat our palm tree. They did and I bought some. I got some cashew nuts too and a bottle of brandy.

I shouldn't have needed the insecticide. I know a man who has some, a man that I've hired twice already to douse the tree in some nasty chemicals that apparently mash up the neural pathway of the beetle beasties. Approximately six weeks ago he and I made a vague arrangement that I would contact him before the weekend for the "every 45 days" treatment. Do it via a message he said. It's easier for me. I loved him. Messages in Spanish are so much easier than phone calls. I sent him a message. I sent him a second. He didn't reply. I phoned. No answer. I phoned again and this time he answered. He was specific but vague - Saturday morning, I'll confirm the time on Saturday. He didn't phone to confirm. He didn't turn up. 

I know that plumbers, carpenters, gas fitters and insect slaughterers all over the world fail to turn up to the majority of their appointments. There is, though, something fatalistically Spanish about the process. The non answered messages and the vague phone call are a routine stratagem. 

On a separate tack I have been trying to find out how long in advance I need to book a trip for the oversubscribed visits to the Cota Doñana National Park. The company that runs one of the trips has a website with a "contact us" online form. I've used the form, I've had the confirmation of receipt of the message but I've had no reply. I resent the message, just in case. The third time I asked them why they bothered with a contact form if they never responded. I asked if they were public employees and consequently out for breakfast (this is a Spanish joke.) The truth is I wasn't in the least surprised. It was just a first sally. I knew that I would have to phone just as I know that there will be a vagueness about the eventual booking. We will have to trust to luck as we set out for a destination 700kms from home. 

So, back to today, I climbed up the ladder, which wasn't quite long enough, weighed down by a back pack type spray gun that weighed in at around 20kg and requires both hands to operate. I wobbled and sprayed the tree. I had to do that with 45 litres of the stuff. It took over two hours and it nearly killed me. The chemicals were running down my arms, soaking my back, dribbling into my hair. I was wearing a mask, gloves and overalls but I felt the need for a change of clothes and a shower afterwards. Ah!, country pleasures.

Anyway, as it is a typical Saturday now for the telly. I usually end up watching a programme on La Sexta in which pundits and journalists shout at each other and especially at an economist with a strange accent. It's compulsive viewing particularly with a packet of cashew nuts and half a bottle of brandy to hand. We country folk are easily amused.

Saturday, March 08, 2014

Finger dribbling fat and a diet coke please

To mark International Women's Day a local group - Pinoso against gender violence - organised a showing of a film, La fuente de las mujeres, which is about a group of North African women who, fed up of having to slog up a difficult path to collect water whilst their men folk sit around drinking tea, go on a sex strike until they get the water piped to the village.

The projector was one of those things you use to do a Power Point presentation so the image was small, very dark and affected by stray light. The sound wasn't great either so, although it seemed like a decent enough film, my understanding of the details of everything, apart from the main plot, was pretty rudimentary.

It used to happen to me as I wandered home up Huntingdon High Street and it happened to me tonight. Some sort of fat lust would draw me, inexorably, towards Bunter's. I fancied a kebab or kepab as we Spaniards usually say.

I'm not often in Pinoso at 11.30 on a Friday evening so I was a bit surprised at the long queue in the kebab shop at the bottom of Constitución and I went to the one in Colón instead. Even then I was, like Lady Louise Windsor, tenth in line.

In some ways it was just what I'd expect. The décor was characterless and basic. The man slicing the meat was a tad overweight, wore a striped fat stained shirt outside his trousers and had a close cropped haircut. His assistant was one of those young men best described as a youth. Spaniards were having trouble with his Spanish just as he had trouble with mine.

I've usually had my doners in versions of pitta in the shopping centre kebab houses I've been to here. When I asked for the 5.50€ Doner menu he waved hamburger rolls at me, which I declined. I realised I didn't have the faintest idea what the bread I wanted was called - neither pita nor tortita worked but, by a process of elimination, we got to a wrap. I thought the ones in wraps were called Durums but who knows?

Meat, if that's the right word for the stuff they put in kebabs, comes in either chicken or beef flavours - no lamb. I asked for beef but he gave me a mixture anyway which was what everyone else had asked for. It wasn't shaved into nice long slices, more torn into shreds. So the meat was spread on the circular wrap, the usual brown tinged lettuce and sad looking cucumber was loaded on. Sauce? Yes please, white and red sauces from those plastic bottles that make a sucking sound before they glug and spit - Chilli sauce? Yes please. That was squirted on with a flourish from at least a metre away then the whole thing was rolled very tight and wrapped in silver paper which proved remarkably effective at stopping all the filling from falling out as I ate. The chips got the same sauce treatment and, because I'm being careful about my weight, I asked for sugar free Coke.

The other diners were wearing coats because the door was open and it was only 3ºC outside, the lighting was fluorescent tubes. The table wasn't exactly clean, the plastic chair was very hard, the various coloured sauces oozed onto the polystyrene dishes through my fingers whilst the telly appeared to be speaking Turkish.

An authentic kebab experience.