A Wonderful Family Week

It's just the two of us for the rest of today and until we leave to head back to England tomorrow; my daughter and her two children have driven up to Glasgow and fly back tonight to avoid a very long car journey. The weather has been mixed, but the pleasure has been total. Particularly interesting is to see L and N enjoying the self-same activities that absorbed their mother and aunty some forty years ago when they holidayed here at much the same ages - scrambling on the rocks, playing on the putting green and the children's playground, visiting the lifeboat shed shop, spending their money in the amusement arcade (maximum stake, 2p), enjoying watching the farm animals in the field adjoining the cottage, and, of course eating out, especially the fish and chips. Probably I and my two brothers delighted in similar things many more years earlier on our own seaside holidays, and so did my wife. However we try to fit them into the current fashionable educational straitjacket, children - if you let them just be children - don't change from one generation to another.

A Long And Winding Road

One way to deal with the August heat of Frigiliana is to go somewhere else. Which is how I come to be sitting in a conservatory in southern Scotland looking out across brilliant green, sheep-dotted fields to the cliff edge and the Irish Sea beyond. The remedy has turned out to be more painful in many ways than the illness, as it were. Instead of a ferocious sun shining out of a cloudless sky and inflicting temperatures of 35 to 40 degrees upon us, it’s heavy, grey clouds cud dins across the sky at breakneck pace, dumping frequent heavy showers on us and driven by winds of 40kph gusting frequently to 80kph. All this to the accompaniment of 14 degree temperatures, and yes I am talking about daytime. And yet…. I’m delighted to be here where the story of Frigiliana began. Back at the beginning of the 1970s we had recently moved from Oxfordshire to Ramsbottom, north of Manchester. WE had two small daughters and an uncomfortably large mortgage, and holidays did not feature on our list of spending priorities. Then my wife’s parents came up with a suggestion; if they rented a suitably large holiday cottage, could we afford the petrol to get to it? We gratefully said yes we could and they rented a cottage on a farm two miles south of Portpatrick in the extreme southwest of Scotland. That cottage is no more than 200 metres from where I am writing this, although I cannot see it as it sits into the side of the hill. The welcome we received from the farmer and his family, the surroundings, the harbour in Portpatrick ensured a fantastic holiday, and as a family of four we came back and back, sometimes with family members, sometimes with friends, and sometimes just the four of us. Then one year we were late booking and the cottage was already let. This was a terrible disappointment because my wife and I had concluded that it would probably be our last visit; the girls were getting to be that bit too old to be happy stuck on a farm two miles from what passed as ‘the action’ in those days. But fate was on our side. We chanced upon an ad for a holiday apartment actually in the village, yards from the harbour and so Portpatrick took on a new life. We also became friendlier with Eric, the farmer who insisted that we should join him at The Old Mill House, a bar restaurant on the edge of the village, popular with locals and with families from the nearby caravan sites. That, in turn, introduced us to Pat and Judy the owners and good friends of Eric. Pat had spent his working life in the advertising industry in the creative departments of several major London agencies. He was also a gifted water colourist and his paintings were displayed throughout the restaurant. My life at the time was in market research and involved a good deal of contact with ad agencies and so we had much in common and became good friends. Then Pat and Judy, who hitherto had spent the winter cruisingg, decided that they would rather invest their money in something that would give them a holiday facility, but would also be an investment. The outcome was that they bought an old village house “La Casa De Los Arcos” in the Andalusian village of Frigiliana. Shortly afterwards they invited my wife and I and our two daughters to visit them in Spain so we could spend proper leisure time together - Portpatrick for us was holiday; for them it was the busiest time of the year, and so they really didn’t have much time to pause and chat. Well, that first visit, back in 1983, worked its magic on us and led eventually to us coming to Frigiliana to live. Portpatrick turned out to be the unknowing progenitor of this blog. I have just been handed a gin and tonic. I shall go and sit with the others in the conservatory, look out across the grey Irish Sea, and raise my glass in gratitude to the place where it all started.

Friends

I’ve been writing this blog for six years now, and I’ve covered a lot of ground - local and national fiestas and public holidays, fairs, festivals, and other cultural events. I’ve written about the village, the surrounding countryside, and further afield. I’ve blogged about politics, employment problems. I’ve told you about Spanish food, and wine. All sprinkled with a fair number of photos where I could, to add interest. But there is one hugely important area that I don’t believe I have ever written about. Friends. Well, it’s about time that I put that right. What prompted me to think of this omission was the imminent departure - next Monday - of two of the first people that we got to know when we arrived in 2008. They, like us, have young grandchildren and they miss not seeing them more often than they do. They are aware that young grandchildren don’t stay young for very long and they want to be part of their growing up. So they have sold the house, sold the car, packed up the stuff they want in England and next week they wave goodbye to the August heat and head for the next stage of their life close to family. We shall miss them. If my wife and I were living here in isolation, on nodding terms with our Spanish neighbours,but otherwise just the two of us, I suspect that we would have been off back to England long before our friends. But Frigiliana is not like that. It has a large expat community - around a quarter of the population - with people drawn from the UK, large parts of northern Europe, and further afield; US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa. So we have Dutch and Scandinavian friends, as well as English, Irish, Scots and Welsh. Yesterday for instance we went down to the weekly market and then met up with an English friend whom we joined for a coffee and a chat, and then were joined by her Aussie friend, and so stayed chatting longer. On the way home, we came across another group of friends enjoying a drink outside one of the bars, and paused to pass the time of day. That’s the way it works. A couple of weeks ago we arranged to meet up with a friend one evening for tapas and a glass or two of wine. We sat there chatting and then along came two more good friends who sat down and joined us for a really enjoyable evening. Once a week we pop across the road to a local restaurant, and there we always run into a whole crowd of friends. But the friendships I have found here go deeper than that. This time last year I blogged a number of times about my diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer, which I took pretty much in my stride. I couldn’t have done that alone. A number of friends - if they read this they will know who they are - had already trodden the road I was called upon to walk. Their experience, their support, but most of all their concern gave me the strength to know that I could deal with that episode in my life; I couldn’t have done it without them, or without the others who didn’t share the experience but still showed the level of their concern for me and my well-being during that difficult time. I’ve just read this over and corrected a couple of typos. Reading it, I can’t imagine how I’ve managed to blether on for so many years without touching on this subject before. We’re off to England on holiday very soon. I look forward to seeing all these lovely people again on my return.

Lethargy

….that is the word which sums up the prevailing mood right now.I have spent three days intending to sit down at the keyboard and get on with this, but never quite summoned up the energy until now: worse, I’ve known the theme since last weekend. But then, it’s nearly the end of July and August is bearing down fast, and it does make a difference. Everyone agrees that it is hot. Some simply frame it as a bald statement, “It is hot!”, whilst others dress it up as a question, “Isn’t it hot?” However it is expressed though there is agreement; it is hot. There is, though, an unspoken word, on no one’s lips, but implicit in their tone, and that word is, “unpleasantly”. Thereafter, the heat being the only common topic of conversation, differences of opinion begin to emerge. There is the camp which asserts that this year is hotter than last year, and there are those who insist that it may be hot (of course, it’s hot; we all agree!), but it is not as hot as last year. I have to admit that I don’t have the detailed memory necessary to join one camp or the other. I just know it’s hot. If you want an idea of how hot, my Accuweather app tells me that right now in Frigiliana (16.00), the actual temperature is 32 degrees, but the real feel is 36 degrees. Sorry, it’s just too hot to write any more today; I shall now sink back into lethargy.

A Night To Remmber

The week began with high drama as a nearby mountain went up in flames, and then on Friday we had drama of a different kind. Although Frigiliana is only a small village, the town council is at great pains to promote the cultural history of the area as well as provide a rich cultural programme of events for the residents. Friday evening saw us seated in the patio of La Casa del Apero, the cultural centre, in eager anticipation of an evening of flamenco. This being July, we had ample opportunity to eat before setting out, as the first part of the evening, a talk on the history and development of flamenco, was not scheduled to start until ten o’clock when the heat of the day had died down. And this being Andalucia, ten o’clock was not to be taken literally, but at ten thirty, Sebastián Navas, a well-known and highly respected cantaor of the region mounted the stage to give the history of the art. It is often said that flamenco is the gypsy music of Spain, and it is true that its origins can be traced back to the cities of Cádiz and Sevilla, both of which have large gitano communities. In fact, flamenco is far, far older than this. It dates all the way back into the pre-Christian era when the city of Gadir was founded by the Phoenicians, who brought their music with them. That music represented the roots of flamenco, and the city became Cádiz, the longest established European city still in existence. Into that root stock were grafted the music of the Jews, who arrived shortly afterwards, and of the people of the Maghreb who came trading from the southern shores of the Mediterranean. The arrival, reign and ultimate expulsion of the Moors - Muslims from Arabia, the Middle East and North Africa - allowed further development of a distinctive style of vernacular music over a period of 800 years. Of particular significance at the end of this period were the sung laments or quejidos of the dispossessed Muslims, bringing the characteristic harsh and plaintive, tone which is the hallmark of much present day dante, especially the dante hondo (deep song). Sebastián then proceeded to treat us to a selection of different forms and styles of cante. The joy of this part of the evening was the fact that this was no specially designed and sanitised show for the benefit of the tourist trade, but the authentic voice of a true, dedicated cantor, singing from the heart and the soul. A brief pause while the stage was reset, and then another wholly authentic performance was delivered by dancer Joaquín Ruiz, accompanied by a guitarist, two cantaorasi(female singers) and two men on palmas (palms - clapping) who formed the percussion section. Another electrifying hour that passed all too quickly. For Joaquín, three dances required three costumes, not just for theatrical effect, but to cope with the sweat that his energy and attack generated, especially the final dance which just went on and on, endlessly varied in pace and posture, and seemingly unending. But sadly, end it finally did and we left for home at one in the morning - fortunately just a three of four minute walk away. One final piece of explanation of how flamenco developed to what it is today. It began as song, pure and simple. The rhythm that carried the song was provided by the foot tapping and clapping of the listeners. To this also were added the sounds of the bastón, a staff or walking stick pounded on the ground, and the cajón, a box used as a drum, though a box which has become more and more sophisticated down the years. The guitar did not appear until well into the nineteenth century and served two purposes - to provide the rhythm accompaniment and also to provide a counterpoint (but always a subsidiary one) to the singer’s voice. Not until the middle years of the twentieth century did the guitar become a solo instrument of flamenco.