Heat and Dust

Have you seen those photos of the Greek Islands? Blue and white paintwork everywhere and the boats apparently suspended in mid air on a transparent crystal clear sea. It's the light that makes those photos so stunning and it's the same sort of light that we have here. A popular late 19th and early 20th Century Spanish painter, Joaquín Sorolla, is most famous because of the way he captured the Mediterranean light. I often think of Sorolla when anyone comments on the limpid, flawless blue sky in even the most mundane of my snaps.

So, when we first came to Spain I envisaged a house with big French windows, with gauze like curtains moving gently on a whisper of warm breeze making and unmaking pools of light on the tiled floor. Obviously we would wear, white, probably linen, clothes as we Virginia Woolfed our way through the days sipping on ice tinkling lemonade or a more alcoholic gin and tonic. Nobody sweats in those images, we would just luxuriate in the brightness of it all.

Actually of course, nowadays, being good Spaniards, we walk on the shadowed side of the street, we look to park the car in the shade so that the steering wheel will not singe our hands and the seats other parts of our anatomy as we return to it and we would always choose to eat inside, in the air conditioned interior of a restaurant, rather than out with the flies and the dust in the street. It's alright to have a drink in the street but always in the shade. And whilst you're there the most important thing about a beer is it's temperature. That's one of the reasons Spaniards drink small beers and not pints (well that and the metric system). Eating outside we leave to the tourists. We're sometimes taken aback when guests want to sit in the sun or eat outside. We're not really good Spaniards though, or at least I'm not. Maggie would do the Spanish thing and drop all the blinds on the house and leave us in permanent twilight if she had her way. Windows and doors would stay firmly closed until the sun had dipped out of sight or at least until it starts to cool down a bit. I'm still for a through draft and a bit of natural light in the house. We're also lucky that, up here, at 600 metres the evening temperatures drops into the teens which makes it easy to sleep without taking to the old Spanish trick of sleeping on the terrace. Of course it's also the summer heat that means that Spanish events, like theatre or pop bands, don't start till lots of Britons are thinking about whatever the summer equivalent is of cocoa and a bedtime book.

It really is a splendid light and, as I've said before, I like the heat. Yesterday I polished my car and as I collected the various implements with the job done I noticed the fine patina of dust already on the car. I smiled. Just as it snows in Stockholm in winter it's warm and dusty in Culebrón in July.

August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk

If I were to ask you whether you'd expect summer in Spain to be warm or cool what would you say?

Exactly.

I like it warm. I like the unremitting heat of the Alicante summer. Sun every day, no rain for weeks or months, the sound of flip flops on the street and the telly full of people having outdoor parties and frolicking in the sea with orgiastic fiestas in every town and village.

So summer here is as mythical as Christmas in England. There it's snow, robins, family camaraderie, goodwill, never ending mince pies and the warm feeling of gift giving. It's sort of true, it can be true but most of it is some sort of aggrandisement of the truth.

People of course love to complain. In winter we complain about the cold and in summer we complain about the heat. This always amuses me slightly. Anyone who knows Spain knows that there are bits that are, generally, cool and rainy. The coolest (temperature wise) place I can find for yesterday was Covatilla near Bejar in Salamanca where it was just over 20ºC but Covatilla is a winter ski resort so it's at the top of a mountain. The warmest couple of spots for yesterday, in the whole of Spain, were Xàtiva and Yeste at a bit over 40ºC. Both are within an hour (or so) drive  of Culebrón. In general, Britons think of Spain as being a sunny place. White people come here to lie on the Mediterranean beaches and go, by turns, pink and then red. So my amusement is because people seem surprised that it's warm.

I know that the weather is bonkers. I'm not unaware of all that highest temperature ever recorded in Tuluksak, Tobermory or Tudela stuff but the truth is that the differences aren't that great - at least not for we humans. A temperature rise of 3ºC may have huge global consequences as glaciers recede, ice caps melt, krill do something odd that messes around with whales or jellyfish take to swimming in bits of the ocean that they haven't habitually swum in for a while but, for most people, a few degrees isn't that noticeable. We work on a sort of cold, cool, warm, hot scale with humidity and air movement added in the mix. A biting wind makes can turn the scarf and mittens pleasure of a chill winters day into a painful struggle. The crisp linen of a desert dry landscape is much more comfortable than the sweat sodden shirt and the ridden up underwear of some mangrove swamp.

The maximum and minimum for yesterday in Pinoso were 38ºC and 21ºC. Last year, for the same date I recorded 31ºC and 16ºC in my diary so it's currently a bit warmer this year than last. Usually I don't really notice. Sitting outside with a cold drink or cup of tea and a slight breeze or in the car with the windows down I'm happy as Larry when it's in the high 30s. Maggie on the other hand feels the heat much more. She likes the car or house windows closed and the air con pumping out refrigerated air. I have to be honest though. The other day when I was crawling under the car and the sweat was filling my eye sockets or today, as I unloaded the recyclable stuff, and little rivulets were trickling inside my shirt I did think it was a tad on the warm side. Much more though I thought about that word I nearly always use to describe the summer heat - unremitting. The relentlessness of the heat. The way that, for a couple of months, it never goes away. The manner in which it waits to pounce as you leave an air conditioned building, when the first touch of the steering wheel burns and when, as you awaken at 3a.m., you find yourself enclosed in moist, sticky sheets for the wrong reasons.

When the weather is fine

Summer began at six minutes to six last Friday. Just a few minutes later we arrived in Santa Pola on the Mediterranean coast. It was pure chance, we'd been nearby doing some shopping and we thought why not?

We didn't do much. We parked next to the beach, walked around the corner to an area that has been developed with bars, cafés and restaurants alongside the marina and had a drink. The sun was shining with that early evening hazy shine. Some people were wading in the water, others were swimming. The sea was sparkly. The expensive and not so expensive boats in the marina bobbed up and down and made those tinkling, ringing sounds that moored boats do. The bar was comfortable, modern looking with light filtering through blinds and awnings. It was a bit pricey with slim young servers and ice cold (alcohol free) beer. Say what you will about far off exotic lands but the Med takes some beating when it's on form. It was one of those moments.

A couple of days earlier I'd already been to the coast, showing a pal around my old stomping ground of Cartagena and, this weekend, we went to see friends near Altea. In fact, one way and another we've spent the whole weekend close to the beach. On the train back from Alicante to el Campello the night-time beach glittered with the life of small campfires raised by friendship groups to celebrate the summer festival of San Juan.

I've written before about the magic of the Mediterranean summer in Spain. It really is something. It's not just the sun, it's not just the brilliant blue skies and the pure white light. It's not the heat or even the ice cold beer but summer here is something really special. It has sounds, it has smells, it has a temperature and a way that the atmosphere behaves, how the air shimmers. It even has a dress code.

Summer engenders a behaviour, it fills the telly with adverts of people eating and drinking together but the truth is that you only need to pop to the coast to find that's a reality and not just some ad agency marketing tool.

Ninety days to the 23rd September when it all ends. Ninety days I hope to enjoy to the full.