Rolling Stones in Spain: Solo Loco

The title has no connection with the famous music group, but I did get a lot of ‘satisfaction’ from  transforming an old stone hut (called a caseta) into a liveable space near our Spanish village. Hence, I wanted to share what was a challenging and fascinating experience for Margaret and myself by creating a short video which compresses five years of hard graft into fifteen-minutes. That took some doing, but it’s now available on YouTube and friends who saw the rough cut really liked it. I truly hope that you will watch and enjoy  and pass it on.

The release coincides with the launch of the second edition of my book of the same name. Yes, Rolling Stones in Spain: Solo Loco is now available in these formats: Paperback, eBook and Audio

I’m really hoping that this video will stimulate interest in the book which, in addition to the building work, encompasses the human side of this crazy venture. Many in our village helped with advice and encouragement whilst  welcoming us into the social traditions of the community. And that’s not to forget the help freely given by a number of expats living thereabouts.

Have a look at the video, it might persuade you to buy the book , and if you enjoy it do a review. I need reviews!! Here's the video link again.

https://youtu.be/6QSEwMoDzs0

 

I’m finally a yesterday’s man

Many years ago at the tender age of sixteen I began work as an apprentice telephone engineer. I started on “poles and ‘oles”, which meant learning about the business of connecting the telephone in people’s houses to the telephone exchange. There calls were steered to their destination at the touch of a dial. It was all very physical in those days, but much has changed. I was part of that change as were thousands of workers throughout the UK and the world.

Just today, as I write this, the final nail (copper I hope) has been nailed into my career coffin.  I have gone over: I have a new router and have plugged our two old fashioned analogue telephones into a little thing moulded onto a conventional electricity plug. Henceforth my calls, the few that I do not make or take on my mobile, will be carried across the Internet in packets.

I have many tales about my early experiences during those long-forgotten bygone days, but they will be safely lodged in the growing list of word files that I have titled ‘Remember Me’ and I will someday bequeath to my offspring. They will know what to do with them.

So, very briefly, I have enjoyed the journey from clunky old electromechanical switches carrying analogue telephone calls, through to the miniature chip-based switches carrying digital calls. After that came the integration of telephony and computing and, believe it or not, I wrote the first book on that, yes, and the only song! I then ploughed my furrow through the introduction of the new mobile telephone system that could carry goodly quantities of data as well as voice and  finished up by writing a book about the beautiful film star Heddy Lamarr who is sometimes claimed as its inventor.

Tiring of treading down the upward escalator of technology I switched and became an Oxford tour guide and an author of books on many different things, anything but technology. Along the way a marketing-oriented friend once asked me why I didn’t write books that people wanted to read. Dumbfounded, I did not reply just then.

Whoops, sorry, got to finish here, my analogue telephone connected to the lump on an electrical plug is ringing. Maybe this is the call from the Internet that will provide me with the answer.

The warmth of a Spanish village

What do people think when I let slip that we have a place in Spain? Sun, sea, villas, sangria and tapas perhaps. However, an overriding feeling that comes to mind when I am in our village (which is nowhere near the sea) is warmth. Not of the climate, which is quite variable and sometimes vicious, no not that: I mean the warmth of the people.

Well, our village of La Fresneda is small so that could account for the residents open friendliness, something you could hardly expect in a city. However, we often overnight in villages on our travels and reactions to the presence of strangers such as ourselves can range between outright suspicion, wariness, ignorance and just the occasional friendliness. In La Fresneda it is the norm to warmly greet a passing stranger. The locals even tolerate the crowds of Spanish visitors that teem out of coaches below, then struggle up the steep hill on their way to the church and tiny ruined castle. Those visitors usually pass our house along the way and some of them pull the cord that rings the bell in the shrine to Santa Agueda just outside our main windows. I have plans for that cord.

Of course, having visited regularly for 25 years and despite my declining ability to speak or understand Spanish and their inclination to converse in their own local language, we do know quite a few people by sight and association. On this trip “the man who looks like his dad” was surprisingly friendly, even inviting me to steal beer from the tap whilst Vincente, the bar owner, was busy in the kitchen. By the way that man’s dad passed away some time ago so we are thinking of renaming him.

Margaret has a much better memory and much greater interest in the reproductive side of the place than me. She can identify adults who were toddlers when we first came and seems to know their lineage. This time our grandson and his very nice girlfriend came to stay and we dined in the wonderful Mataranya Restaurant: wonderful both in its architecture and décor plus its unusual menu which owes a lot to the fruits of local hunting. I had jabali which is wild boar. The original owners and waiters were still there, and we regard them as friends, and they now employ their sons as servers and probably future inheritors. Many years ago during the village fiesta, one of those sons was the guilty party in inducing our then fourteen-year-old grandson to imbibe some “special water” thus sending him home to us quite drunk.

On this trip we visited many French and Spanish villages on our way to and from our own, but none so warm and welcoming as ours. That aside the main memory of the two thousand plus mile trip was the colours.

October is a great month for autumnal forest glory, and we observed the most outstanding greens, browns, yellows, orange and reds was as we crossed the Pyrenees on our return journey. Stunning, though the photos barely portray what we saw.

“Pubs aren’t only about food, you know.”

 

Did you know that? It is a quote from a visitor’s review of a ‘pub’ that’s not that far from my Cotswold home, though not too near, thank the stars. I am hardly likely to go to a pub started by a rather mouthy media personality who was sacked by the BBC for thumping the producer of Top Gear. However, dogs are welcomed there, I gather. The following picture of a pub sign is not from that pub, but I like it and the Two Fat Blokes kindly gave me their permission to use it here. You can find more of their excellent signs at https://twofb.com/.

Now, I really thought I knew what a pub was, after all I have spent a significant proportion of my adult and teenage life in them. Why, I even came quite close to running one once, and both my wife, Margaret, and I have served behind bars. Ha!

But perhaps I’ve got pubs all wrong, so I looked up the definition in that source of all knowledge: Wikipedia. And this is it:

A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises.

Hmm, so perhaps the reviewer is correct and pubs are not all about food. Following that the Wikipedia article quotes from CAMRA, an arcane organisation that started in the 1970’s and which should know a little about the pubs of today. It states that a pub has four characteristics:

• ·        is open to the public without membership or residency
• ·        serves draught beer or cider without requiring food be consumed
• ·        has at least one indoor area not laid out for meals
• ·        allows drinks to be bought at a bar (i.e., not only table service)

I would add this to that last point …and perhaps consumed there whilst chatting to the bar staff, other customers, and anyone else willing to indulge in alcohol-infused conversation.

Often when I am in non alcohol-infused company the conversation turns to pubs and I listen to these interchanges very carefully. The basic format is something along these lines:

“Have you been to the Loyal Oak at Aylesbury?”

“No, what’s it like. Is the food any good?”

“Its really nice, the chairs are comfortable and the service is good.”

“And the food?”

“Excellent, they have a famous chef there now, you know that chap who comes on the telly talking about grilling acorns.”

Then someone (me) intrudes on the conversation by asking:

“What about the beer? Do they have handpumps? Did they have a guest ale or are they tied to a brewery? Are dogs allowed?”

They both look at me shocked and, after a puzzled silence, the person who had been to the Loyal Oak in Aylesbury replies:

“Well, I don’t really know. We don’t drink much – driving you know. Just a glass of red or white with the meal perhaps. Oh, and we don’t have a dog.”

It is odd to recall that most pubs did not serve food in the past - bag of crisps or a pork pie if you were lucky. Eating out for most people was a rarity and took place in a restaurant or a hotel or a café often for birthdays or a wedding anniversary.

When we first moved to the Cotswolds (actually back to the Cotswolds for Margaret) the nearest pub was the Cold Aston Plough, and my wife informed me that in the 1960s this was the first pub in the area to serve food: that much remembered delicacy called chicken in the basket. By the 1990s, when I briefly became a local there, it was very much a food destination until we drinkers arrived later in the evening. The then landlord told me that it was a soulless place before the drinkers arrived, no sound to speak of except the clinking of cutlery and muffled conversations.

So what did that man who wrote in his review, “Pubs are not all about food, you know,” refer to? No, it wasn’t beer or alcohol or dogs. Pubs, he claimed, are “about how they make you feel”.

Now, I thought that this was what the alcohol was for! It makes you feel good, gets you talking rubbish to other drinkers and lets you go home happy. However, I must now concentrate more on my feelings, or get a dog.