Well, I didn't know that!

I've recently been in one of those linguistic slumps where I feel that my Spanish is so deficient that self flagellation seems appropriate. These dark moods are brought on when I come away from some film without having understood the plot or when I've no idea what the people in the queue behind me are talking about. It happens too frequently. This time my response was to give up on my one to one online, italki, Spanish lessons. My penance began just before Christmas.

It didn't last long though. I've spent years and years trying to speak Spanish and I'll be damned if I'm going to give up now. Well, that's today's position statement anyway. Tomorrow it may be back to deep despair and a retreat to comforting chocolate treats.

So, I'm online and nattering to Miriam. On my insistence our sessions don't have any structure. I just wander from this to that topic. It has been suggested to me that my thought patterns are a bit random anyway, which must be particularly trying for a Spaniard attempting to decipher my linguistic deviations in mis pronounced non sequitur conversations peppered with dodgily translated idioms. 

I was talking about the walk I went on in Elda last weekend. I went to collect firewood for the Hogueras de San Antón. Miriam wondered what I was talking about. "You know, the bonfires for Saint Anthony". She apparently didn't.

The event itself was interesting. A group of around 60 people set off from a little chapel dedicated to Saint Anthony in Elda to another little chapel on the Barranco Gobernador, behind the Campo Alto Industrial Estate. About a third into the journey a mule cart joined us. When we arrived at the destination chapel, and after the obligatory pause to eat a late and extended breakfast, people began collecting twigs and branches as symbolic firewood for the bonfires which are one of the traditional ways to celebrate the Saint's day next weekend. The firewood was handed to the cart driver who stacked it neatly. The whole collection routine was serenaded by a dulzaina and drum band. With the wood collected the band took to playing dance music and a group of women improvised a version of a traditional dance. Then I walked the 7kms back to the car. 

Miriam asked me why we were collecting wood for San Antón. I was a bit surprised. This particular event is, obviously, specific to Elda but, so far as I know, celebrations for San Antón are pretty widespread. We've been with a cart collecting wood in town for the same thing in Villena and I know that there are bonfires in Úbeda down in Anadalucia. There are more up at Forcall in Castellón. In fact Forcall looks about as pagan as you get with blokes dressed in overalls, daubed with devilish symbols, harassing a couple of people dressed as Saints with blacked faces, big hats and mandarin fruit necklaces. The devil's crew also bounce pigs bladders on sticks in front of pretty girls and they all dance around a huge town centre bonfire. Very Wicker Man. Whilst there are no bonfires, or misplaced bladders, in Pinoso for San Antón we usually have the horses on the street and the local priest blessing animals in front of the church. When we lived in Ciudad Rodrigo they dressed the door of the church with sausages and black puddings, as well as blessing pets. There was something in Cartagena too when we lived there, I forget exactly what but it involved choirs. The point is that there are San Antón events of one sort or another in every corner of Spain but Miriam, who's smart, she's doing her PhD, didn't know what I was talking about.

Fiestas conversationally forgotten we went on to talk about fibre washers. I wanted to know if it were a direct translation from English to Spanish - arandela de fibra. Washer is not a common word but we had no problem in agreeing that we were talking about the same thing, the small flat rings that go between two joining surfaces to spread the pressure or act as a spacer or seal. Fibre was more difficult. I tried suggesting that it was a bit like the old "cardboard" suitcases or like those storage boxes that we used last century for document storage and which got a new lease of life at IKEA as hip storage solutions. We never got there; we abandoned the conversation. I said it didn't matter anyway because, always, in an ironmonger's, you end up describing the use of the thing as you never know the technical term. "I don't know what it's called but you use it to get the juice out of oranges" Miriam agreed; she said she too had to describe things in ironmonger's and told me the tale of wanting a support to put on her gas cooker so that her coffee maker didn't overbalance. She didn't know the word. Obviously. Nobody does. She went on to suggest that sometime the technical term was useless anyway because, often, it's unshared knowledge. She gave me an example. She was cooking and she asked her boyfriend to pass her the espumadera. Apparently an espumadera is a big slotted spoon, the Spanish presumably comes from the idea of skimming off froth. Do you know the technical term for that sort of spoon in English? I don't.

And the point of these ramblings? Well, living in Spain I have less back catalogue than I had when I lived in the UK. I can't sing along to many songs here, old Spanish films mean nothing to me, when someone aged 85 dies and Spain goes into mourning I wonder who they were, why they were important. I feel that I'm sort of failing to "integrate". When Spaniards ask me if I've ever eaten a paella it suggests that they can think of us a breed apart but I'd like to be equally offended when someone asked me if I enjoy the work of Leticia Dolera. The truth is though that it's just normal to not know everything about anything. Otherwise how could we keep on learning new things till that moment we draw our last breath?

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P:S. If you're thinking of trying the online learning thing and you decide on italki if I recommend you and you take up some sessions we both get a discount of some sort. It's easy to message me.