Tuesday, August 09, 2016

Forgetting Lionel Richie

Spain is in full fiesta season. Our local town, Pinoso, has just finished its fiestas or, more accurately, is about to finish in a couple of hours. The fairground has already left town, the barriers will be taken down tomorrow and all those temporary road signs removed. I would say we'll be back to normal but after so many days of non stop action lots of the town's bars and restaurants will be locked fast for a couple of weeks as will a lot of other businesses and we won't be back into the usual routine till September.

When we first got here I was keen to go to most of the various types of fiesta from the tiny village celebrations, where the fun might be a foam party or a bouncy castle, through to Moors and Christians, Semana Santa, Carnaval, Three Kings and all the other big events with thousands of people, late nights, lots of revelry and long, long processions. It would take ages to go through the various types of events we've been to. Maggie got tired of fiestas ages ago. She wasn't, for instance, for bothering with Romans and Carthaginians as long ago as when we lived in Cartagena.

I'm a bit underemployed at the moment. The real problem with not working is not earning. Time rich, cash poor as we used to say in the nineties. Maggie is working - all summer. So, if I do anything it costs money, which I don't have, and I have to do it alone.

I did think that I'd take advantage of the local fiestas this year as a cheap and easy to access form of entertainment. The truth is that my unwillingness to speak Spanish coupled with my increasing churlishness and a good dose of been there, done that means that I simply can't be bothered. I took one look at the children beating each other with the sausage dog shaped balloons at the village fiesta and turned on my heel. I grimly resolved to get involved in the Pinoso celebrations but I took the insinuation that I was some sort of sex offender quite badly and decided that a beer in front of the Spanish version of First Dates on the telly was a much more entertaining option.

I promise I will try to get out and about to a few more fiestas in the three weeks left of summer but I'm not guaranteeing anything.

No comments:

Post a Comment