And finally the hoe

Maggie told me the other day that she hasn't read my blog for ages. I may be putting words into her mouth but I think the suggestion was that I'd really run out of material. Being pragmatic I wondered if I could start again - talk about the differences in bar or restaurant etiquette or why Spaniards think we're odd drinking coffee with a sandwich. So I started to look back at the early blog entries.

I see that, in February 2006, I brought a hoe from the UK to Spain. I took the handle off and just brought the blade part back. I remember I was surprised I didn't get more grief about the hoe head in my bag. On that very trip a jar of marmalade in Maggie's bag was dealt with much more harshly. Being singularly unimaginative I was hard pressed to envisage the damage that a jar of marmalade, even Olde English thick cut, could do to a Boeing 737 but the security staff at the airport seemed to be well aware of the destructive potential of the orange preserve. On the other hand they did not pre-judge the innate violence in grubbing out weeds with a well honed hoe.

Our garden has a spectacular and never ending ability to grow weeds. Lots of other things grow too but weeds seem to grow much faster and stronger than the oleander or the figs. I brought the hoe head back because Dutch hoes are not on general sale in Spain. Spaniards use something called an azada, more like a trenching tool, to grub out the unwanted greenery. Basically, with an azada, you have to bend, strike and pull whilst, with a Dutch hoe, it's a much more upright stance and more push than hack. I find the hoe easier to use.

Next time spade sized forks. No, not really. It took me a while to locate one but you can buy garden forks here even if they're not common.

No summer lawns to hiss

Both Maggie and I worked this Saturday morning so, by the time we got home and ate something, we considered the day a bit of a write off. As always, when we have nothing more exciting to do, I suggested the cinema. I wanted to see the French film El gran baño which I think is called Sink or Swim in English. The reviews I've seen, and particularly the cinema themed radio show I listen to, said it was a must see. I enjoyed it but of the five films I've seen, so far, in 2019 it was actually my least favourite. I much preferred (English titles) Vice and Life Itself and I probably preferred both Aquaman and the Memories of a Man in Pyjamas which is a cartoon! Vice we saw in English because the Yelmo cinema chain now has an original language showing of at least one film, and often several, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. It wouldn't have been much use going to the Tuesday showing of Le Grand Bain in its original language as my French only deals adequately with pens and aunts. The Spanish dubbed version was the one we'd left for today.

I've grown to quite like the radio show about the cinema. If they say a film is worth watching I've tended to enjoy the film. They were less than glowing in their report on Vice, the film about Dick Cheney. I thought it was a good film and I wondered if part of their problem with it might be that the version they would have seen wouldn't have had Christian Bale, Sam Rockwell or Steve Carell (or anyone else from the original cast) speaking. It was one of those films where the timing, the phrasing and the pronunciation of the specific word were all important to the plot. The radio critics would have heard dubbing actors trying to get the same meaning and intonation into a rewritten version of the screenplay. They heard different voices working to a different script written to maintain lip synch and Spanish meaning. So they were reviewing a film with different actors and a different script. We all know that Ingid Bergman didn't actually say "Play it again Sam," to Dooley Wilson in Casablanca but let's just pretend she did. For a Spanish audience, read Elsa Fábregas asking José María Caffarel to "Tócala otra vez, Sam." Immortal.

A couple of months ago we saw a really nice, but slight, film called A Family Recipe to use its translated Spanish title and with either Ramen Teh or Ramen Shop as its international title. It's a film from Singapore and it centred on food. Singaporeans eat noodles. Spanish dubbing artists seem to like overemphasising the slurping and sucking sounds associated with noodle eating. It was really noticeable and remarkably annoying.

Anyway, that wasn't the thing I meant to post about. I had a thought about our garden as I waited by the car, by the gate, for Maggie to lock up the house just before we set off for the cinema.

In our garden there are plenty of trees and shrubs and stuff, particularly around the edges, but the majority of the garden area is bare earth - bare, bare earth - soil. I have to be constant in my attempts to keep the weeds down but the low temperatures of the last few weeks have slowed down the growth and made my job easier. I get the same effect in high summer when the heat keeps the little treasures at bay. The lack of weeding left me time for pruning and one of my jobs yesterday was clearing some of the smaller twigs and what not left over from that process. While I was tidying I noticed the blossom coming out on the almond trees. I was pleased that my inept pruning seems not to have killed anything of note. As I waited my gaze wandered towards the trees with those first signs of blossom and it suddenly struck me how un-English the bare earth looked and yet how ordinary and everyday it is for us.