A decent innings

When Spaniards talk about electricity, in the house, they talk about light or at least they use the word whose principal English/Spanish dictionary translation is light. Or take tyre; there is a Spanish word for tyre but the commonplace word translates as wheel. It's pretty normal that a word we'd use in English has a direct translation into Spanish but the Spanish and English usages are different. Sometimes we have one word - slice for instance - whilst Spaniards have several and sometimes it's the other way round.

I was talking about this with my online tutor this morning. We got onto how words change with situations. It's unlikely that you would use the word piss directly with your doctor and equally improbable that, down the boozer, you'd talk about urine, micturition or passing water with your mates, though you might use the last if you were talking about a drive through the Lake District. The tutor said that he always found funerary language difficult. The way that, in both languages, we find ways to avoid words like body, dead and death. I said that one of my English language favourites, for avoiding plain talking, is the phrase that he or she had a good innings. It means that someone lived a long time. I should have kept quiet and nodded sagely.

To explain this phrase I needed to talk about cricket. Bear in mind that the majority of Spaniards know nothing about cricket. Well, in the same way that I think that American Football is a bit like rugby, Spaniards think that cricket is a bit like baseball. It's not the first time that I've talked about cricket with Spaniards. When I say that it's the second most popular game (fans not participants) in the world they never believe me which leads to a bit of a conversation about the size of the Indian population and a cricketing geography tour. Next comes a bit of a disposition on the bat - not just a club, like a baseball bat, but a carefully engineered bit of  kit. I could make the mistake of trying to explain leather on willow as a way of describing something traditional. I might even mention other cricketing phrases - on the back foot or on a sticky wicket. All of this so I can explain about an innings. I don't think there are many games where the length of a persons participation in a game is quite so elastic - though I suppose tennis and chess games can go on for ages too - or where a game lasting three or five days is normal.  Obviously I have to mention the one day game and the fixed over game too just for completeness. Along the way I may need to describe stumps, bowlers, fielders, umpires and goodness knows what else. And this from a man who, as my old pal Jim Buchanan used to say, could write all he knows about cricket on a small post-it note.

This happens a lot. I manage to tie myself in linguistic knots by walking into the ambush of difficult explanations. Explanations that would be difficult in English without the background of a shared culture. Do people from the US know about a long innings? Are sandwiches only made with sliced bread or does sandwich encompass rolls too? Pies and pasties are tricky to describe and differentiate as are cakes, buns and pastries. Explaining why we drive on the "wrong" side of the road, why people weigh themselves in comparison to rocks, why socks and sandals make sense and why not all beer should be served ice cold are just more snares that I have passed through in the past. No doubt I will again.

Singing along

I heard a news item that said that someone had died. The name sounded, on first hearing, to be Mujica but in fact it was Múgica. The first, José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica, is an ex Uruguayan president, who has YouTube video after video overflowing with avuncular socialist wisdom and the other is Enrique Múgica Herzog who was, in Francoist times and during the transition, an important Spanish politician. The Uruguayan I knew in the same way as one knows Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Steve Jobs. The Spaniard I didn't know at all.

I've mentioned a pal who lives in el Cantón, a small village just over the border into Murcia, a couple of times in the last few blogs. His village seems to be being pretty "solidario" at the moment and they've made a couple of videos; the together, as a team, we can win sort of videos. One of the clips, the second part of the video, shows people from the village singing along to Resistiré, a song from the 80s which has become a familiar song again, all over Spain, in the past few weeks. It's a Spanish version of the Gloria Gaynor song "I will survive". It was originally done by the Dúo Dinámico (Dynamic Duo) with similar sentiments but completely different lyrics to the original - When I lose every game, when I sleep with loneliness..., I'll stand firm, like the reed that bends but doesn't break. It scans better in Spanish but, even then, it is not something that Lope de la Vega would be proud to have written. Now I know Resistiré, no idea why but I do. My pal in el Cantón didn't so whilst everyone else sang along as they clapped along he was participating from a different starting point.

When we first came to Spain we used to buy an English language newspaper called the Costa Blanca news. There was a small section on the weeks Spanish headlines. I remember carefully writing down the names of the politicians mentioned in that roundup trying to get up to speed with my new home. I still try to keep up to date but I've never been good with remembering people and I seem to be finding it more and more difficult to assimilate Spanish names. For instance there's a power struggle going on within the managing board of Barcelona F.C. at the moment. A new president has to be elected soon and it looks as though the "crown prince" has turned on the present boss and, amidst allegations of corruption, resigned and taken other committee members with him. The first two names are the important ones but look at this lot - Josep Maria Bartomeu, Emili Rousaud, Enrique Tombas, Silvio Elías, Josep Pont, Maria Teixidor and Jordi Calsamiglia. How does someone brought up on names like Jackie Charlton, Margaret Thatcher and George Alagiah deal with remembering names like those?

The cultural stuff. The Resistiré type song is even more difficult. I can have a crack at remembering the names of people in the news because I have a source but think of the of the tunes that make up your own musical knowledge. You can sing along to I Will Survive, Someone You Loved, Wonderwall, The Magnificent Seven, The Long and Winding Road and another zillion songs. You know another how many actors? And writers? And celebs? The learning of a lifetime.

It's a complicated business recognising a name or being able to sing along.

Down the bar

I was in a bar this morning. The bar is called Arturo but the boss isn't; his name is Salvador or Salva to his friends.

Arturo is a nice bar, an ordinary bar. Plenty of Britons use it but we tend to be mid or late morning users. Earlyish morning it's a pretty Spanish environment. Clientele wise it's for anybody and everybody from pensioners and office workers to parents on the school run and working class blokes.

From what I can gather lots of Spaniards seem to leave home without a decent breakfast. I get the idea that most shower the night before so they're ready to go in the morning. It seems to be up and out rather than dawdling over toast and cereals. But regular food stops, and a real interest in food, are very Spanish traits. Anytime between nine and eleven in the morning overall wearing blokes down tools and open up their lunch-boxes. In a similar time slot bars the length and breadth of Spain fill up with people getting something to eat as a sort of more substantial mid morning breakfast.

Back in Arturo's it's around ten-o-clock and I'm sitting at the bar waiting for someone who never turned up. The noise level is high, I mean high, really high. Spaniards are not particularly quiet people as a rule, especially where they feel comfortable. It's not class related. The after show hubbub in the theatre lobby and the noise level in a truck stop transport cafe are pretty much the same. In Arturo's, every now and then, laughter, raucous laughter, breaks through the general din. The young woman who's only been serving here for a couple of weeks looks a bit shell shocked. Salva is working like some sort of machine handing out bottles of wine, bottles of vermouth, cans of soft drink, finger spreads of wine glasses. Ice chinks, the coffee machine hisses, the door bangs. Salva can I have more bread?, What's that there Salva?, Salva give me some of those red chorizos, Gachasmigas Salva, Three with milk and one black when you can Salva, Toast with cheese and tomato today Salva, Salva, how much is that?, Go on then Salva I'll have a brandy too.

A group of four men hit the bar at the same time, two of them have their shoulders against mine, they all have that sort of workshop smell - oil and grease. They're talking to each other, they're asking for things. Salva is answering all four of them and talking to the cook in the kitchen at the same time. I marvel. It's not something new, it's not something unknown, it's not even surprising but I did notice it and it did make me chuckle.

Sorry about the snap. I didn't have any pictures of busy bars and none of the Google ones were any better.

Peace and Love

Back in 1993, in a football game between La Coruña and Sevilla, there was an incident between Diego Maradona and Alberto Albístegui. The physiotherapist for Sevilla went out to help Maradona but by the time he got there Maradona was back on his feet and no worse for wear. The La Coruña player, Albístegui, was bleeding though, so the Seville physio gave him a hand. Back on the touchline the Sevilla coach, Carlos Salvador Bilardo, was incensed by the behaviour of his medic. He was shouting the equivalent of "For God sake Domingo (name of the physio), who gives a toss about the other side!, the ones in the coloured shirts are ours, Pisalo, pisalo!" Now pisalo means something like stamp on him, stamp on him. It was one of those football stories that became legend.

As a result, during the nineties, it was not unusual to hear chants from the Spanish terraces of “Pisalo, pisalo!” when the fans thought a certain type of play was called for.

1994/95 season Cup-winners Cup. Chelsea against Zaragoza. Chelsea aren't doing well. The terraces turn to fighting. The Spanish police wade in truncheons a go go and the uninvolved Zaragoza fans begin to chant "Pisalo, pisalo," in support of the police action.

The legend is that the Chelsea supporters heard the Spaniards chanting and thought they were saying "Peace and Love!, Peace and Love!". Suitably shame faced the Chelsea supporters settled down. It was in the British newspapers the next day so it must be true.

Thank you Alex for that little gem to add to my cultural knowledge of Spain from his language learning podcast of this week.