Save Me…… from the wheeling out of “tradition” as a defence for the indefensible

Imagine a boxing match between two equally matched heavyweight opponents – let’s say Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali (they don’t have to be from the same era).

But before the bell goes for round one, let’s put Lewis in the ring with Ali and George Foreman at the same time, just to get him warmed up and to test him out, take a few hits here and there, maybe a few hard ones to the jaw too. A couple of rounds like this and Lewis should be well and truly warmed up, if not a little light headed. Ok then, let the fight begin!

No, hang on a minute. Let’s now put Lewis up against Mike Tyson. Just a couple more rounds before the big fight kicks off. A few more rock hard punches to the ribs and jaw, maybe a bit of blood showing on Lewis’ face by now as one of his eyes starts to close up a bit, because of the swelling.

Ding, ding, Round one! No, wait, we need to loosen him up a bit more before the big one-on-one starts. Let’s get Wladimir Klitschko in to knock a few shades out of him for a couple more rounds. Lewis is looking a bit tired now, a bit beaten down, a bit light on his feet, a bit bloodied. Oh well.

Now the big face-off can finally start. One against one. Titan against titan. Legend against legend. This is sure to be the fight of the century. After all, Ali and Lewis are equally matched. It’s a fair fight between two of the ring’s true legends!

Oh dear. Ali, wearing the red trunks and for some reason carrying a red cape too, finishes off a weary, tired, bloodied Lewis in less than three minutes. The bell doesn’t even ring in time to save him.

This, dear reader, is the honourable, classical, traditional and fair sport of bull fighting.

But something is happening in two days that might just begin to re-balance the odds. In two days it´ll be January 1, 2012. A big day in the history of bull fighting. For in two days’ time, bull fighting becomes illegal in Cataluña, the first region in Spain to ban it outright.

It is my sincere wish that the rest of Spain will follow this example quickly so that we can banish this “sport” to the dustbin of history forever.

Some people say it’s tradition and so it should be protected.

Some other people say that while they don’t support bullfighting, banning it will only encourage those that do support it to fight for its survival even harder, and that we should let it disappear naturally and gradually.

Yet more say that, well, it brings the tourists in and that’s good news for the economy and you can’t argue with that.

Others even suggest that the decision by Cataluña to ban it is no more than a political two-fingers to the rest of Spain designed to push the region’s growing independence movement that little but further. These people, while actively opposing bull fighting, are opposed to the ban on political grounds alone.

Well, let me be absolutely clear where I stand on this subject, so that there’s no suggestion I’m sitting on the fence.

Bull fighting is barbaric, disgusting, cowardly and inhuman. There is no bravery associated with it. I might have an ounce of admiration for the matador if he were to get in the ring with the bull by himself from the start without anyone else’s help, instead of letting the banderilleros, picadors and the horses all loose on the stricken animal as well. Cowards, the lot of them. And I’d say it to their faces as well. I bet they don’t even ask the horse if he feels like going in the ring or not.

Here’s a shocker. I truly believe that the more matadors are gored and injured the better, frankly. It might seem a shocking thing to say, but I don’t care. If it means that people who support it now generally start to question its safety then fine with me. I don´t want to see anyone hurt or injured – but that includes the bull too. I always cheer for the bull whenever it’s shown on TV here – and thankfully that’s not much anymore, although they still show it on Andalucia’s regional channel CanalSur on Sunday afternoons during the season.

The sooner we banish this pathetic excuse for a “sport” to the history books the better. And if a few matadors getting hospitalized along the way helps speed up that process, then the sooner the people who defend this disgusting spectacle might actually realise what a bunch of shameless idiots they’ve been all this time.

There are not many things I feel strongly about. But this is one of them. And I’d be quite happy to defend my position with a few punches of my own if anybody felt particularly strongly about confronting me over my “insults” to one of Spain´s “finest traditions”.

As to tradition? Bollocks. It was tradition in the 19^th century to shove kids up chimneys to clean them, it was tradition in the 15^th, 16^th ands 17^th centuries to burn witches, and it was tradition in the Middle Ages for estate lords to have “first night” with any virgin bride.

If it’s just a case of politics, that’s surely the lamest reason to oppose a ban. Come off it! And, as for letting it die a natural death, well that could take generations.

Opposition from Spaniards to bull fighting is growing every day. Yet of course, it’s always the minority in these cases who shout the loudest. It was the case with fox hunting in the UK, but thankfully, good sense won out in that case a couple of years ago when they banned it too.

So, I’m very much looking forward to January 1. May Cataluña be the first of the bull fighting dominoes to fall in Spain.

And if you feel particularly opposed to what I’ve said, I’m more than happy to have a fight with you. Only, unlike with the bulls, it’ll be a fair fight. I’ll get in the ring with you all by myself.

Happy New Year!

Save Me…… from the withdrawal symptoms of a very competitive Christmas

Christmas in Spain is very different to Christmas in the UK, at least as far as our family goes. It’s a lot less dangerous.

For a start, it begins one day earlier in Spain. Tomorrow, the 24^th December, is a big day here, with presents and a big meal. Christmas Eve in the UK isn’t really anything specific, apart from an excuse to open the jumbo tin of Quality Street sweets you’ve been desperate to break into ever since you picked them up in the supermarket a week before (or in my case, pick up two tins, chomp through the entire contents of one before Christmas, and then pretended I only ever bought one in the first place).

In Spain, the presents aren’t that big at Christmas. Little to average ones are handed out on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. That’s because the biggies are saved for January 6, the “Dia de Reyes” (Day of the Kings). Just when you thought everything was over and it was time to get back to work for another year, the Spanish pull this one out of the bag just to stretch the joy, celebration, over-eating and credit card limits a little bit further.

While everyone in the UK has already been miserably back at work for five days (or four if you’re in Scotland – they get January 2^nd as an extra day to recover from the excessive boozing one on January 1^st), the Spanish are parading through the streets in a series of floats celebrating the Three Kings, chucking sack-loads of tiny sweets at kids of all ages standing on the pavements as they go past (tip – using an upturned umbrella is a surefire way of catching a lot more sweets as they’re hurled with gay abandon from the passing floats. The drawback is that you tend to barge out the smaller and real kids who are standing under your umbrella trying desperately to catch whatever’s left. But the guilt wears off quickly when the sugar rush from the sweets kicks in.

Anyway, this year, we’re spending Christmas in Spain. Last year, we were in the UK, in six foot snow drifts and temperatures of minus 10. This year, it’s temperatures of plus 10 and a bit of drizzle if we’re lucky. I’m very much looking forward to it. But I will miss one thing from Christmas in the UK – the excitement and the danger.

What I mean by that is the annual festive playing of Monopoly and/or poker.  

In my dad’s house these are not so much games as open warfare. Warfare indeed, but in a strangely controlled, yet thrillingly high risk atmosphere. For in this house, Monopoly and poker are not known by their given brand names – they are known as “Kill Or Be Killed.”

It’s a ritual, literally. Some families go to Midnight Mass. Some sing carols around the roaring fire, some sip hot mulled wine and toast the good fortune of friends and family.

In my dad’s house, we set out to utterly and completely destroy our gaming rivals as they sit round the table in wonky Christmas cracker paper hats, burping and farting furiously from all the beer, coke, little tiny sausages, roast potatoes, turkey and pistachio nuts they’ve consumed.

It’s the same adrenalin rush you get from sticking your finger in a live plug socket or slamming your younger brother’s head in the fridge door when he was six and warning him not to tell your dad or you’ll set fire to his favourite Scalextric racing car. You know it’s wrong, but you just have to do it again.

Quite why it generates such competitiveness is, now I sit here and think about it, a mystery. But it’s always been that way. While I don’t visit my dad’s every Christmas, when I do the games are the highlight of the festive week. And while it may result in angry slamming down of cards, the chucking of tiny red hotels across the table in tantrums and barely veiled threats of comic violence when you load the deck while others are getting a beer from the fridge or going for a pee, it remains tightly controlled around the table – as if there were some invisible boxing ring ropes surrounding it.

The vanquished may storm off to the next room to watch the telly and angrily stuff fistfuls of chocolates and peanuts down their gob so there won’t be any left for the others, while vociferously claiming an unspoken conspiracy by the remaining players to drive them out of the game and that “you’re all a lot of cheating bastards and I’m not playing with you again”. But you can bet they’ll be right back at the table the next time to do it all over again. 

We should invite a psychiatrist around one year to observe. He’d probably suffer a breakdown watching it and have to call another psychiatrist just to take over from him.

Meanwhile, in Spain, the family are sitting round a big table full of top quality prawns, calamares, jamon Serrano and fish, quaffing champagne and sparkling wine and laughing loudly at others’ jokes, before falling asleep in front of the TV. It’s quite a culture-shift.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t find Spanish Christmases boring. Far from it, I love them. But they’re different. If Christmases were like films, then Spanish Christmases in my wife’s family would be like watching James Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. They leave you filled with warmth, cheer and happiness and a comforting after-glow.

Christmases in my dad’s house are like being in The Bourne Identity and Casino Royale at the same time, while being strapped to the front of the world’s fastest rollercoaster as a pack of angry Rottweilers snap and strain on metal chains just inches from your balls. Scary, shocking and nerve-wracking. But a hell of a lot of fun.

Save Me…… from the profession I once loved

A storm is brewing. The dark clouds of corruption, criminality and cover-up are growing day by day. It is a story of huge magnitude, a thriller that is sure to have seismic repercussions for years to come. The spotlight is focusing, and those with something to hide are deeply, deeply worried. It’s a story that the British tabloid media could splash on its front page week after week.

Except, this time, they are the ones who are at the centre of the shit storm.

Let me explain.

For 17 years, before moving to Spain, I worked both in and with newspapers, radio and television and gained a perspective of it from both sides of the fence – ten years as a journalist and seven years as a PR spokesman for a company with a very, very public face.

Since moving to Spain, I’ve taken a different direction. But the industry that I spent so many years in, still fascinates me. Which is why I have been so glued to the growing storm that has been engulfing the British tabloid media in recent months. It’s a storm which, in this writer’s humble opinion, is long, long overdue.

It’s complicated. But in a nutshell, in 2007 a reporter for the News of the World newspaper was jailed for illegally intercepting phone messages involving members of the British Royal family. He was portrayed at the time as a “rogue” reporter, a one-off who shamed the newspaper. But since then it has emerged that this was far from the truth. Arrests, sackings and resignations have followed at parent company News International. The News of the World – the biggest selling paper in the UK - has been shut down, a parliamentary inquiry, a public inquiry overseen by a judge and a police investigation are all ongoing. A spotlight has well and truly been turned on not just News International – which also owns The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times and which is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which also owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal – but on the whole British tabloid media and its ethos. Bombshell after bombshell – the hacking of a murdered schoolgirl’s mobile phone, illegal payments to police for information, the use of private detectives to follow Members of Parliament and others – has exploded into the public domain in recent months. And it is far from over.

It is the UK’s very own Watergate. The shit, as it were, has finally hit the fan.

So why should what I think be of any interest? Well, during my 10 years as a journalist, I briefly did shifts at News International and during my time in PR I dealt with all the tabloid media at both regional and national level. I found the tabloids to be aggressive, arrogant, fearless, bullying and not always that interested in getting the facts right.

That arrogance naturally seeped through to regional journalism, where, in the decade I was in it, there was a general attitude that somehow we were the crushers of corruption, the gladiators of truth, the juggernauts of morality and anyone who got in our way had something to hide.

But most of the time it was bullshit. Stories were often “flammed” up – written so that they were more exciting, bigger, better, than the reality really was. And all because we felt we had a right to, we had a duty to, a need to beat the opposition, to go one better. The more I saw of it, the more disillusioned I got with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, regional dailies, where I spent the majority of my career, were not in the same league as the nationals when it came to “bigging up” stories. But the attitude was the same. We almost felt like we were untouchable.

I can say for a fact that when mistakes were made, the last thing the paper wanted to do was to offer an apology. Normally, a “right of reply” would be suggested first – this would be along the lines of “Do you want to write a letter and we’ll carry it in the letters’ page?”. I always thought this was a cheap get-out. Even if that wasn’t sufficient and an article was required to correct the facts, it wasn’t written as a correction, it was written as a “follow-up”, as though new information had just come to light. Again, it was bullshit. And all because the general attitude was that it was bad or weak to admit a mistake had been made. If a correction or apology was finally needed it was virtually never given the same prominence as the original offending story. More often than not it was tucked away far back in the paper in a corner.

I experienced the full force of the national tabloids when, after ten years, I took the job in public relations. It was for a very large company, which employed a lot of people and was never far from the headlines. I talk in past tense, but it’s still there, of course. I’ve just moved on to pastures new having spent seven years there.

The aggression, the arrogance, the spin, the ignoring of facts that didn’t fit a given agenda, were all regular fare when it came to some in the tabloid media. The irony was that PR was seen as something seedy by the journalists. But the fact was that those with the biggest agenda, the most aggressive spin, were the tabloids themselves.

And the thing I found hardest to accept - as my former boss would no doubt attest to - was that there was little point in challenging them. The feeling was that to do so would cause more trouble than it was worth. The beast was too big to battle.  

In recent weeks in the public inquiry, we’ve seen the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler talk about how they felt when the News of the World hacked into the voicemail of their daughter, giving them false hope she was still alive, and the parents of missing little girl Madeline McCann reveal their horror at the bullying and downright lies of several tabloids.

We’ve even seen some defend these actions – one former News of the World reporter told the inquiry “privacy is for peadoes” and said that he didn’t see anything wrong in hacking phones. What sort of scumbag is this man that he actually thinks like that? Is his sense of decency so warped that he doesn’t know right from wrong anymore?

It’s not as if people haven’t been complaining about this sort of thing for years. Of course they have. But it’s just that society has reluctantly accepted it as the sacrifice for a “free press”. Any voices of descent have been quickly stamped on by the bully boys of the tabloid press as a direct attack on freedom of expression. And people have been intimidated.

But in the quest for ever-increasing sales, ever more shocking headlines, the tabloids have long since crossed the line of morality, fairness, decency, compassion and, in many cases, legality.

I became a journalist because I wanted to expose the bad guys, to write about important things, things that mattered, things that people cared about. Somewhere along the line, the tabloids have lost perspective, they’ve forgotten what’s right and wrong, they’ve become morally bankrupt. They’ve forgotten how important the job of a journalist should be. Instead, they pump out truck-loads of “pap” – just look at the average tabloid to see how many stories are based on celebrities, TV shows and which sports star is shagging which glamour model – and they have been prepared to stomp over anybody just to get that bigger scoop.

There are still great papers and great journalists out there, uncovering corruption and wrong-doing. But the industry has been tainted – no, smeared more like – by the deeds of those under focus now.

I’ve gone from being a fervent supporter of a free and self-regulated press to someone who is now very much in favour of statutory – and strict - regulation of the press. But I fear the true journalists will lose out because of that.

I sincerely hope certain people end up behind bars when this is all finished. That’s exactly where they deserve to be. This industry has needed a serious clean-up for a long time. I´m glad it finally appears to be happening.

Save Me.......from judging too quickly

A few weeks ago I visited friends in Croydon, south London, where I used to live before moving to Spain. I wrote that everything seemed a bit dark and depressing. In fact , I think the word I used was “grim”.

Now, this has been weighing on my mind a bit recently, because it never seemed like that to me when I was living there. I’ve been wondering why I had such a reaction on my last visit.

So I took the opportunity to come back again this week, just for a few days, to see what my perception was this time. As I write, I’m sitting in an internet cafe in south Croydon.

 I flew back in yesterday, determined not to let preconceptions influence my judgement.

I have to say that the potential for disaster sowed its seeds right from the start. I flew into Gatwick airport yesterday afternoon in the middle of gale-force winds and driving rain. As we came into land we were buffeted around a lot and as the wheels finally touched the tarmac and came to a halt there was a clear sense of relief as a load of people at the back of the plane broke into spontaneous applause and cheers.

However, perhaps this time, despite the bad start, things were going to be different, I thought to myself. Because, far from being on edge and clenching my seat arms tightly in fear as others were, I sat nonchalantly, a picture of Zen calm, smiling to myself. Why?

Well, a few years ago, in my old PR job, I took a group of journalists on a flight from Inverness in northern Scotland to Stornoway, on the Western Isles. It was also December. The plane was a seven-seater turbo-prop and the weather was about ten times worse than yesterday. Gale-force winds shook our little plane around as if it was in the hands of some giant tiny tearaway toddler flinging it around above his head. We shook, we really shook, as the gusts thudded into the side of the aircraft with loud bangs.

We landed. But this time we all applauded. I think there may have even been some Hail Marys and a lot of hugs – which was all very unusual for a group of macho,  go-anywhere, do-anything, hairy-arsed journos. But such are the reactions when your life is flashing before your eyes.

So yesterday was a piece of cake for me. Not that I’m trying to brag or anything. The point I’m making is that despite appearances, the omens seemed good from the outset. Not even 60 mph gusts hurling the plane sideways as it flew into Gatwick could dent my confidence this time.

And, as if some strange force was at work determined to give me a better impression this time around, I got off the plane quickly, was through passport control in a jiffy and didn’t even have to wait for a train, because it pulled in just as I walked down to the platform. Getting off the plane and getting on the train to Croydon took no more than ten minutes. I swear.

Sure enough, when I arrived in Croydon, the bus I needed arrived in no time and after dropping off my bags I wandered back into town where, in the very first shop I walked into, I was called “Sir” by two different shop assistants. For a moment, I had to check myself. Was I really in Croydon, the place that the tourist guide books say is, I quote: “the best place in the UK to get stabbed.”

I then went into a newsagents to buy a newspaper and a bottle of water. At the counter, a man tipped his hat to me and motioned for me to go in front of him. Then, as I walked out, a young man, dressed like a chav, accidentally knocked me as he walked past and he turned around and said “Sorry about that.” Had I been sitting on a chair at the time, I would have promptly fallen off it in shock.

By this time my head was buzzing. And it only got better. As I walked up the street, I saw a traffic warden knock on the window of a shop, smile and gesture for the people inside to move their car. He pointed to his watch as if to say to them “I’ll give you a few minutes.” Did they respond with the usual one-fingered salute and the pointy, confrontational finger wagging followed by a mouthful of insults? No, they cheerfully waved back and even gave the warden the thumbs-up.

It was then that I started to think that perhaps there was indeed some strange force at work here. Had Croydon council despatched an elite squad of highly trained pixies to make these things happen in front of my eyes?

Now, don’t get me wrong. There were still the usual old blokes, with the roll-up cigarettes and the pints all congregating outside the pubs as usual. But this time, something was different. Even though they were being buffeted by the wind and the rain, they all seemed to be smiling and happy. I think I even saw a few enthusiastic back-slaps, but perhaps I imagined that.

I have two more days here. Let’s see what else happens. But right now, the sun is shining, there’s not a cloud in the sky and everyone is smiling, saying a cheery “Hello” to complete strangers and saying “Thank you” when you hold a door open for them. Even the school kids!

It’s weird. But it’s very nice. I’ll let you know next week if I get stabbed between now and Monday.

Save Me…… from the shameful spectre of hypocrisy

Back in October I wrote about how it still seemed acceptable to “black up” – white people putting on the “boot polish” to pretend to be black for comedic effect - on mainstream Spanish TV. I said at the time that while I didn’t think it was specifically racist, I did think it was ignorant and it didn’t impress me very much. I also said that this attitude thankfully died out in the UK some years ago.

Now that’s true. You won’t see anything like that on British TV or, in fact, in any mainstream British media. It wouldn’t be tolerated, it would cause a stink if it did show up. That’s because the UK is a vibrant, multicultural, tolerant, rainbow nation made up of a myriad of cultures, creeds and colours from across the globe.

At least it is most of the time.

But sadly, this week, the rose-coloured spectacles through which I viewed this plethora of racial and cultural permissiveness, were well and truly yanked off my face and stomped into little pieces by a big pair of boots worn by a woman from the very place where I used to live before I headed out to the exotic, sun-kissed olive groves of Andalucia.

And how ironic that this ancient, outdated, anachronous and ugly attitude should be played out for all the world to see on the ever-so-modern media that is Youtube. How ironic indeed.

The soul-crushing case of which I speak took place on a tram in Croydon, south London. The tram and the town are both very, very familiar to me. Filmed on a mobile phone and downloaded as “My Tram Experience” to Youtube, where, at the time of writing, it has been viewed more than 8 million times – 8 million!!! – it features a dark-haired white woman, holding a young boy on her lap, allegedly lobbing racial abuse at whoever is sitting and standing around her, not just at non-whites however, but at all non-British people.

Now, I say “allegedly” because since the video appeared on Youtube, the woman in question has been arrested and charged in relation to the incident. She is due to appear in court again next Tuesday, December 6.

The incident in itself is shocking, shameful, embarrassing and, frankly, pathetic. But what’s more depressing is the response it has generated, particularly on Youtube.

Such incidents always seem to bring out the worst in people. Thankfully, such attitudes are reserved for the minority in Britain. Sadly, however, they tend to shout quite loudly at times. Even a cursory search of response videos on Youtube uncovers very strong and disturbing reactions in favour of what she is alleged to have said and railing against the “pollution” of the British identity. Scratch the surface just a tiny bit and the prejudices pour out. To be fair, of course, there are many equally vocal responses against, as well.

But I’ve seen videos by people who say she’s right, that Britain isn’t Britain anymore and that all these foreign hoards have destroyed the culture.

But I don’t recall those same people making the same argument when Britain invaded countless countries over the centuries, installing its own culture, its own standards, its own governments in a little thing called the British Empire. No doubt, me saying this will prompt some people to condemn me for being some pinko-liberal leftie commie, ashamed of the great things my country brought to the world. Well, I’m not. I’ve just done my homework and dare to have a slightly different perspective on the world than the average Daily Mail reader.

Now, history is history, and you can’t change it. The British influence across the globe has been huge. The most obvious legacy of that influence is the extent to which the English language is spoken across the globe now.

But think for a minute if a certain Mr Hitler had had his way and the German Empire had now become the dominant force in the world. How would we view all those Nazis? I suspect quite differently to the way we actually do. After all, history is written by the victors, is it not?

Wait a minute, I hear you say. How dare you compare the glorious British Empire to the genocidal psychopaths of the Third Reich? I'm not, for a second. While it’s clearly obvious that the British Empire did not carry out an extermination policy on the Jews – in fact, of course, it bravely stood against and defeated the Nazis - it was responsible for some very questionable acts. For example, setting up concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War at the turn of the 20^th century where many children and adults died in horrific conditions. It was responsible, in the guise of the Black and Tans, for committing atrocities on members of the Irish civilian population in the 1920s. It was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in “British” India in 1919 when British soldiers fired repeatedly on unarmed men, women and children, reportedly killing more than a thousand and wounding many more. It was responsible too for the alleged use of toxic gas against the Kurds in the Iraqi Revolt at around the same time. I could go on, but I won’t.

My point is not that the British are evil and should be ashamed of their history. But I am asking that some people get a bit of perspective and stop being so selective with our past.

When certain people whine about the crushing of British culture and identity, they seem to forget – or, let’s be honest, don’t know and don’t care - that that’s exactly what the British Empire did to countless cultures and nations across the globe itself in the past.

So when someone rages against the influx of all these “foreigners”, it strikes me as the height of hypocrisy.  I don’t recall the Indian population ever inviting us to come and take over their country. In fact, in the early part of the 20^th century a certain Mr Gandhi suggested most eloquently, peacefully and incredibly persuasively that we should bugger off back to Britain. And bloody good thing too.

Racism is the hostile reaction prompted by fear of the unknown. Fear of what is not familiar and what you don’t understand. It is the basest of emotions, the most uneducated, backward, shameful, dishonourable and contemptible of sentiments.

There is no defence for it and never will be.  It doesn’t matter where it happens.

Save Me…… from the diplomatic fall-out over a rock

So, update from last week, the university professor got it. Spain is now blue, not red. The election result was about as likely to happen as the sun coming up the next morning. Which it did.

On the diplomatic front, there have been rumblings between the two historic powerhouses Spain and the UK in our house in the past week. And it’s all over a lump of rock.

It raises its ugly head every few months in our house. And it seems to be no closer to a negotiated solution, so much so that UN peace keepers were drafted in on Monday, and now it’s difficult to get to the kitchen because of the demilitarized zone in front of the fridge.

The lump of rock in question is Gibraltar. And it is a source of endless fun and debate in our house. On the Spanish side is the wife. All red dresses, castanets and straw donkeys. On the British side is me, with a cup of tea, a bulldog and some fish ‘n’ chips wrapped up in newspaper.

It all kicked off again like this. We were talking about the possibility of buying a new computer as my one is getting a bit knackered and slow now and it takes ages for the water to heat up to drive the steam engine that runs it. I said I wanted one with an operating system in English. She said, well why don’t you think about going to Gibraltar to get it then. It’ll be in English, it might even be a bit cheaper, and it’s closer than getting on a plane and going to the UK. I said, good idea the wife. She said, yeah well, isn’t it about bloody time you gave it back? And I said, what, the computer? How can I give it back? I haven’t bought it yet. And she said, no you moron. I mean, Gibraltar. And I said, me give it back? I don’t own it. And then she said I was just being facetious and I knew damn well what she meant. And I said, oh bugger off.

Now, whenever this kicks off in our house, it always goes the same way. She says we - I like how she always makes me solely responsible for several hundred years of British diplomatic and political decisions. I was only born in 1970. She’d probably claim I was responsible for breaking up the Beatles if she could, but they’d already called it a day five months before I came along. She would no doubt suggest I was therefore already causing trouble before I’d even been born. Anyway, I digress – she says we (I am the British ambassador in our house apparently) nicked it (Gibraltar, not the Beatles) off the Spanish in 1770-something. I said, I always thought Spain gave it to Britain as a sort-of thank you for helping them to kick the French out of the Iberian peninsula. And she says, well, maybe, but that’s bollocks and you should give it back anyway as that was ages ago. And then I pull the Ace out of my sleeve and say, Ok then, when you (she is the Spanish ambassador in our house) give back the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco, we’ll give you back Gibraltar. (To give a bit of background, these are two tiny territories in Morocco, which were originally Portuguese, but then fell into Spanish hands sometime in the last couple of hundred years, and which Morocco itself says should now be handed back to them). This is always a bit of a low blow, because some of her family were born in Ceuta, so it’s a bit personal.

Anyway, she says, that’s completely different. And I say, yeah ain’t it just. How is it different exactly? And she says, it just is, so piss off. As you can see, the debate is detailed, well-thought-out and based on historical precedent.

However, this time, she threw me a curve ball which momentarily had me on the back foot, as it were.

As if trying to suggest giving things away was ridiculous and had no basis in law, she said suddenly that she wished the British had given Brighton away to the Germans in the Second World War. I’m guessing this was prompted by my snide remark about Ceuta.

Now, of course, this was an even lower blow. Brighton is my home town. And it’s hard to imagine it being annexed as a German enclave. I mean, they’d have to cut Hollingbury golf course in half just to put up the boundary posts and razor wire. And it would be total chaos as far as Brighton and Hove Albion football club goes, because their new stadium is just outside the town in Falmer. They’d never get any home supporters because they wouldn’t be able to get through the checkpoints in time for kick-off. Those Germans are sticklers when it comes to having the right paper work.

I said, where the hell did that come from? What a stupid, unconnected idea. You just said that to hurt me, didn’t you? Right then, two can play at that game. I’m going to write about this in my blog.

She then picked up my Beatles Anthology CD, threw it on the bed and said, write about that as well, you bastard and then stomped out. Well, she didn’t actually say “you bastard” but the way she said the first four words strongly implied that that what she meant.

Anyway, am hoping the UN soldiers will clear off by the weekend. There’s some sausages in the fridge with a sell-by date of Saturday and we’ve got to eat them.

Save Me…… from the same old same old

It comes down to the beard in the end. As far as I can work out, that’s about the only clear difference. And it’s not a great choice of beards either.

There’s the salt-and-pepper one sitting on the face of the nervous looking University professor or there’s the grey bush that inhabits the face of the stressed out little granddad.

This is the choice that Spaniards have this coming Sunday when they go to the polls to decide who will take over wrecking the country for the next four years.

November 20 is the Spanish general election and it’s a two-horse race between the incumbent Socialist PSOE, who’ve been in power since 2004, and the Conservative Popular Party (better known as the PP) who are saying the PSOE are rubbish and isn’t it about time they had a go instead.

In the red corner is the little granddad Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, a man who is deputy Prime Minister of Spain. He concedes that he doesn’t sleep well and gets stressed out. He’s likes collecting old teapots and has a fondness for Smurfs.

In the blue corner is Mariano Rajoy, who was deputy Prime Minister of Spain for a time under the previous PP administration between 1996 and 2004. He’s a Pisces and wears jackets that make him look like a University professor. His favourite TV programme is Knight Rider and he always wears purple socks.

Ok, I’ve no idea if either of them like what I said they do. But I’m just trying to make them a bit more interesting, that’s all. Because in reality they’re not. Interesting. At. All.

Yes, there are numerous other parties all vying for power in the general election, but they’re all like UKIP in that they haven’t got a chance. And I’m not here to do an in-depth analysis of the political make-up of Spain anyway, so bollocks to them.

The Spanish aren’t great for making their minds up when it comes to elections. Since 1993, there have been hung parliaments for all but four years. But they have a rough idea of what they want.

For the past seven years, Mr Bean has been running the country. Well, at least a man who bears a striking resemblance to the character created by Rowan Atkinson, not just physically, but many would believe in his mannerisms and competence as well.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero – to give him his full, unfettered, unabridged name (all Spanish people have two surnames, but he’s got a middle name too, which makes it even longer) - has been Prime Minister of Spain since 2004. In fact, his Socialist party has been in power in Spain for 24 of the last 34 years.

Is it surprising when you consider Spain’s recent history? Not really. When you bear in mind that General Franco – a deeply conservative Catholic – was in power for 36 years, it’s a sort of two-fingered salute from the Spanish people to his legacy. It might also have had to do with the fact that Franco was a Fascist dictator who crushed all dissent to his authority with murder, imprisonment and torture during his “reign”. Four decades of suppressing the natural Spanish trait for defying authority has left a deep-seated need to redress the balance.

Two years after his death in 1975 – coincidentally also on November 20 - Spain had its first democratically elected government in more than 40 years, a Unity government headed by Adolfo Suarez. But he himself called it a day in 1979 and then in 1982 Spain settled into 14 unbroken years of Socialist government under Felipe Gonzalez, a politician who today still garners grudging respect across the political spectrum – a sort of Spanish Tony Benn. Franco would have been turning in his grave, no doubt. So lucky for Spain that they buried him under several feet of concrete at the Valle de los Caidos, north of Madrid. Good riddance, I say.

The big question now is who will be Prime Minister come Monday morning, November 21. The smart money is on Rajoy. Spain is in a bad way and people are not happy. Jobless figures are sky-high and economic growth is at zero.

But I’m not so sure either Rajoy or Rubalcaba are the right men for the job. Neither of them have huge presence or charisma and their parties aren’t that different really. Even their campaign slogans, hoisted up on banners and posters down every main street and in every metro station, don’t encourage confidence. They’re both a bit half-hearted in my opinion.

The PP’s slogan is “Sumate al cambio” (Join in the change), while the PSOE’s is “Pelea por lo que quieres” (Fight for what you what).

When the choice is a spam sandwich or a meat paste sandwich, you don’t really want either.  

If you were to put a gun to my head (and if you were Franco, that’s what you’d be doing now) I suppose ultimately the best choice would probably be a PP victory. Change is needed, a fresh pair of slippers as it were, even if the new ones are a little boring, a bit worn out and with that sort of 1970s retro pattern-look which makes them look like the cat’s thrown up on them.

People who know me might be surprised to see me write this as my personal politics swing fairly strongly to the left. In fact, if anything, I’ve noticed that the older I get, the more left-wing I get.

But sometimes there’s nothing like a change of jockey to give an old nag a much-needed kick up the arse.

Save Me…… from Sundays, big balloons and confusing toilets

If Seville is anything to go by, Sundays are a day Spanish families put on hold their bitter arguments, snide remarks and angry plate-throwing tantrums to pile out en masse to cafes, bars and restaurants for a big meal.

Everyone from the dribbling, yelling, wheelchair-bound granny to the dribbling, yelling, pooping six-month-old brat is dragged out to take part in the weekly tradition that is the seven-hour-long Sunday lunch.

Places are packed with parties rarely numbering less than ten. Smaller families are looked on with suspicion, while couples are often chased out of eateries because any family without at least three generations all living in the same house and eating at the same restaurant table must be thieves or burglars just there to case the joint.

So it was with this thought in mind that me and the wife ventured out into our neighbourhood last Sunday to experience this phenomenon. Perhaps it was the visit I made less than two weeks ago to a Toby Carvery in the UK, where families and friends get through truck-loads of roast potatoes, Swede, Yorkshire Puddings and Roast Beef every Sunday that put the idea in my head.

Although why on earth we decided to go to a TGI Friday’s is beyond me. It was my idea. I admit it. My brain was obviously not working properly that day.

We had been thinking about going to this nice Irish pub we sometimes go to. They do good, simple, cheap food and the atmosphere is nice. But I hadn’t been to a TGI Friday for three years and the unpleasant experience I had had the last time had mysteriously and temporarily been wiped from my mind, so we decided to go there instead. It was also one stop closer on the Metro.

Deep down I knew it was a mistake, as we were led to our table by a waiter wearing a pirate’s hat. What does a pirate’s hat have to do with serving food, I thought? This was what I wanted to ask him. But I didn’t. Maybe it was because I was briefly distracted by the other waiting staff who were wearing bunny ears, what looked like a train driver’s cap, a jester’s hat and another who looked like they had two toilets rolls glued to their head. All this had the effect of numbing the voice deep inside me which was saying: “Get out, run now. The Irish pub is only one stop away.”

So we took a seat in a booth and the pirate took our order. As we waited for what were frankly very over-priced starters – again, the strategically placed waiters’ headgear and the gaudy decorations on the walls including old baseball gloves, traffic lights and pictures of rock-and-roll stars were all numbing the senses and making rationale thought impossible – I became aware of a large family group sitting behind me, and in particular a little boy who repeatedly bashed the back of my head with his TGI balloon. Yet another brilliant helium-filled marketing ploy to take the focus off the pricey but poor food. Genius!

I turned around, ready to proffer a kindly smile that gave the impression I thought he was a lovely child and weren’t his parents lucky to have him, while also subtly hinting that should he continue to keep hitting me, his balloon – and, let’s face it, probably him too – was liable to get a fork jammed into it.

Naturally, it took me a few seconds to create the facial expression that could exude these subtle messages all at the same time. Enough time, it seemed however, for the little angel to have a pre-emptive rebuttal ready to go.

For, as I turned around, he promptly let go with a huge, raspy, burger-encrusted burp right in my face and then gave me a ketchup-stained toothy grin.

I was momentarily stunned, my smile now exuding yet another message that, had it been a speech bubble appearing above my head, would have said: “What the fuck?”.

His parents said and did nothing, ashamed, I like to think, that they had produced such an evil offspring. My wife, sensing my discomfort and ever the sympathetic and caring woman that she is, promptly burst out laughing.

The food took a while to come, it was very average and not at all worth the 50 euro bill. As we waited for the cheesecake dessert – by this time we had become a bit more savvy and had ordered only one dessert and two spoons – I decided to pay a visit to the loo.

Going in wasn’t the problem. From the restaurant there was a pristine white corridor which led to the toilets. Coming back out was where it got interesting. I opened the door back to the restaurant and found myself in a completely different place – a Japanese eatery.

 Had the staff and customers of TGI, including my wife, played a joke on me and changed the entire look of the restaurant in the three minutes I’d been having a pee? For a second I thought Jeremy Beadle was going to come out from behind a pot plant and tell me I’d been framed or something. But then I remembered he was dead, so that wasn’t going to happen. I turned around and did the only thing I could think of. I went back into the pristine corridor, like some pervert hanging around public toilets. It was only then that I realised TGI and the next door Japanese restaurant shared the same bogs and I’d taken the wrong door.

After that, I was in no mood for cheesecake. Or balloons. Or Sundays. Next week I’m going straight from Saturday to Monday.

Save Me…… from being confused by apparently altered perceptions of a sporadically grim yet comfortingly familiar landscape

First things first and an update from last week. I didn’t win the lottery. Bummer.

Now, normally I have plenty of things I want to write about each week and have no problem putting pen to paper. But this week, I’ve found it quite a struggle. Not that I don’t know what to write about. I do.

But it’s because I’m not quite sure how exactly I feel about it. It’s got me in somewhat of a dilemma. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, rather than writing. However, deadlines loom. Friday comes around all too quickly. In fact, I’ve found to my cost that it’s at exactly the same time each week.

So here it is. This last week I made a flying visit back to the UK, to Croydon to see friends. I don’t get to travel back much, so it’s nice to go and it’s nice to catch up on things I miss when I do. It was great to go back, to see friends, to see old places, to have a Sunday lunch and a proper Indian.

But I was also very aware of how odd some things seemed. In fact, how depressing they actually seemed in some cases.

The first thing was a pub in the centre. It’s a pub I’ve often been in, it’s a pub I like. It opens for breakfasts every morning and there are tables and seats outside the front for the smokers to congregate. But on the morning I walked past it this week at about 9.30am, the tables out front were packed with a dozen old men in various stages of scruffiness. Each one was gulping from a pint of lager and dragging on a roll-up fag. Not a breakfast between them. Even the one old man, who I’ve seen there many times before, and who dresses like some 1920s dandy, complete with brightly-coloured waistcoat and beige jacket, corduroy trousers, orange flower, smartly polished brown shoes, an elaborately decorated walking cane, and a hat that makes him look like Terry Thomas or a well-turned-out Dick Dastardly.

And most of them were still there when I walked past again at about 4pm, each with a pint and a roll-up. This, it seemed, was their life. No doubt many, if not all of them, would be there at closing time and would then be back again the next morning at opening time. I wouldn’t be surprised that at least a few of them have requested in their wills that they be stuffed and mounted on the bar when they finally pop it (which I would guess, won’t be long now). It totally depressed me.

The second thing on my visit back was the darkness. It seemed dark, darkly obscure, blackly dim. Darkly black. It wasn’t raining. It was just dark, like the sky was lower or something. I don’t know, maybe it was because the clocks went back and it was dark at 4.30pm instead of 5.30pm. But it seemed to have the effect of closing things in.

Both these things made me feel uneasy. I found myself questioning how I felt about coming back. Was this how I remembered Croydon? Was it as grim as this? Was it as depressing? Or was it simply the perception of an expat flushed through with two-and-a-half years of sun and ice-cold beers in Seville? Was I just seeing it from a different point of view now? Maybe during the time I lived in Croydon I had become accustomed to it and so had become desensitized. I had witnessed this year’s summer riots in Croydon – where a decades-old family furniture shop had been burned to the ground – through the news websites while in Spain. I had read about the pessimistic jobs forecasts and the poverty gripping the nation on the same websites. And yet even then, when I was reading about these things from 1,300 miles away, it hadn’t seemed that depressing to me. It was as if I almost expected it. After all, it is Croydon. It’s not exactly Chelsea or “Poshington-on-Sea”. I had never felt like that living there. Other people who knew me thought I was mad to live in Croydon, because of its reputation. But not me, I thought it was fine. I was only ever threatened with being stabbed twice in the whole time I lived there. It was great.

Maybe that’s why I was so taken aback at how grim it seemed to me this last week.

But, here’s the funny thing. I knew the moment I stepped back off the plane at Seville airport on my return, that I missed it. Even though it seemed grim. Grimmer than being locked in a shed with perpetually bubbly Timmy Mallet and having no weapons to hand. Grimmer than being kicked in the bollocks by a one-legged donkey who then proceeds to poo on you as well. Grimmer than being trapped in a windowless room where you’re forced to watch endless re-runs of Jim’ll Fix It (yes, I’m sorry he’s died too, but let’s be honest, he was weird wasn’t he?)

So what does that say about me? I don’t have a clue. Even as I’ve sat here and written this, as I’ve tried to explain what I felt, I still can’t work it out. Answers on a postcard please.

Maybe I’ll find the answer by buying a lottery ticket again this week. Perhaps this blog does have special powers, but it just skips a week now and again.

I’ll let you know.

Save Me…… from divine interventions in the weather forecast

And lo it was that on the day after, God did readeth the blog and saweth that there was much sun and that it was still hot in Seville and that, yea, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over such intemperate affairs.

And like an episodeth from the 1960s Batman TV series where ye Caped Crusader fighteth the bad guys and the words “Blam” and “Kapow” splasheth across the screen, God dideth punch the sun right in the gob.

Well, I figure this is the only way it could have happened. It must be written down in scripture somewhere, because last week I wrote on this very blog about how hacked off I was with all the sunny weather and the hot temperatures and how I wished for some rain and a good dose of cold.

And sure enough, a matter of mere hours after I posted the blog, the heavens opened here and the thermometer dropped about 12 degrees. I kid you not. I was gobsmacked.

The only conclusion I can come to is that God reads my blog and he got on the phone to the lower ranking sun god to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing hanging around in Seville when it was the end of October.

Up until last Saturday we were still getting temperatures in the early 30s. Then, just like that, the weather turned, the thermometer is now a distinctly chilly 21C and the rain is battering us with an enthusiasm it hasn’t mustered for about six months.

It’s wonderful. It really is. I’d nearly forgotten what rain sounded like. And as for the cold, well it’s a relief to be able to turn the fan off at night for the first time in ages.

Yes, 21C during the day is chilly. So chilly in fact, that during the night, we’ve even had to break out the duvet again. Up until Sunday, we’d been sleeping without covers. I even wore a jumper – for the first time since April – when we went out on Sunday evening. We were at a party and, I don’t quite know how it happened, but the women were all inside sitting around on the sofas while the men had banished themselves to the terrace outside, shivering slightly and occasionally saying “My, it’s a bit nippy out here isn’t it?” in Spanish. And it was. But even as I pulled my jumper sleeves down as far as they would go over my arms, I kept having to tell myself that if this were the UK we’d be sitting there in T-shirts, flip-flops and shorts reveling in our “Indian summer” (I always thought an “Indian summer” was just like a normal summer except that it happened in India).

When you’ve been through five months of temperatures not dropping below 33C and regularly being above 40C during July and August, 21C is cold. Trust me. It’s positively freezing, frankly.

Rain is good, it brings green back to our parched little valley. Cold is good, because it sends the scuttling cockroaches that hang around your bathtub during the hot months like a gang out of West Side Story, back to their subterranean shitholes.

But, of course, if this year is anything like last year and the year before that, we’ll have constant rain for the next three or four months and I’ll be back on here moaning again about how I’m sick of the rain and the cold and isn’t it about time the sun came out.

That’s Seville, you see. It’s a land of extremes. Loads of sun for flipping ages, then loads of rain for months on end. If only there was some sort of middle way the weather could take down here that kept me happy. Yeah, just me, no-one else. The UK may have generally crap weather, but at least it’s changeable. Wait 20 minutes and something new comes along.

I’m off there tomorrow for a few days. No doubt I’ll be freezing my arse off and grumbling again.

Mind you, I’ve got to look on the bright side. If my blog does in fact have the divine power to predict and even shape future events, as this last week has so clearly and unambiguously shown, then I hereby state for the record that I think I’m due to win ten million Euros on the lottery next week.

I’ll keep you posted.

Save Me…… from a shortage of mushy peas

It’s funny the things you find you miss when you live in another country. I’ve been living in Spain for a couple of years now and have actually not been back to the UK very much at all in that time. Four times in fact, and each one for a short visit. I’ve spent less than three whole weeks in total in the UK in over two years.

And while I don’t actually miss the UK that much – not at the moment anyway, I have no immediate desire to move back there, at least not yet - I do, of course, miss certain things, like my friends.  I also miss the strangest things about it.

Take the weather for example. Yes, really. Here in Seville, deep in the heart of southern Spain, there’s a lot of sun. A huge amount. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the sun. It’s great. It’s brilliant. Since June it’s rained here just twice. And there’s not even a water shortage. The Spanish got that figured out a few years ago by building a lot of reservoirs so that water is always available, even if it only rains twice in five months.

But here lies the problem. While I love the sun, it’s getting towards the end of October now and I’m getting a little sick of it, quite frankly. I mean, come on. Enough’s enough. When is it going to be get colder again? The sun’s great. But it’s like when you buy a packet of Custard Creams (my favourite biscuit) and eat them all in one go. You love them, but you don’t really want any more for a while. You know what I mean.

As far as the sun goes, I’ve had more than a few packets of it these last few months and I could really do with a nice big jumbo cash-and-carry packet of rain and a big family pack of cold too! And that leads me to what I really miss.

I miss Custard Creams (although my friend Paul very generously took up some of his baggage allowance to bring me a pack when he flew over for a visit in July). I miss sausages. Proper sausages. Not the processed frankfurter-type with non-specific meat you can get here in plentiful quantities, but the real, proper pork bangers that you can whack under the grill (not that we have a grill in our tiny flat, but if I could get proper sausages I’d go out and buy one). I miss mushy peas, the ones you can get in a chip shop. I miss chip shops. And I miss proper chips. You get chips here, but they’re not proper chips, not the thick, crispy, crunchy chips. I miss cabbage and Brussels Sprouts and mashed potato and roast potatoes and roast beef and gravy. God, I miss gravy. Yorkshire pudding, trifle. Curry!! God, how did I forget that?? There are a total of just two Indian restaurants here in Seville. Two! And they’re both quite expensive. If living in Seville was like living in the Sahara, the oasis’ would be filled with Chicken Korma and poppadoms and the palm trees would be made of onion bhajis.

That’s not to say that the food here in Spain is bad. It’s not. It’s great. But sometimes it all gets a bit “samey”.  Tapas are a staple diet here for people visiting the bars and cafes. But almost everything comes out of the frying pan! Except the salads of course, but when you’ve had 500 salads in a single summer, you don’t want salads for a while.

All this listing of food is making me hungry. But I still don’t have the urge to move back to the UK. That’s the dilemma. Apart from arranging food parcels to be sent here every month, which would cost a lot, I can’t think of any other way to satisfy these cravings. Yes, the packet of custard creams my friend Paul brought were brilliant. But they filled a very tiny part of a very big hole in my stomach.

I am back in London next week, but only for a flying visit. I hope, when I’m there, to visit my favourite south Indian café and have a Sunday roast in a pub.

Maybe these short visits will be enough to keep me going for a few months more. I hope so. If not, I just hope someone is planning to open a Happy Shopper here in Seville soon. They’re the only places you can get a full English breakfast in a tin, a packet of Black Jacks and a Curly Wurly! God, I miss Curly Wurly’s.

Save Me……from dull, boring, patient lines

Let’s be honest. When it comes to the economy and jobs, the Spanish aren’t very good. Turning up on time is something else they have difficulty with as well.

But there is one thing they are good at. In fact, one thing they excel at. And that is sports.

There’s football for a start. They are world champions and Barcelona are probably the best club team in the world at the moment. Then there’s basketball. Currently, Spain are the European champions and are second in the world rankings. Then tennis. There’s some bloke called Rafa Nadal who’s not bad with the racquet. After that, you’ve got cycling – Alberto Contador, Miguel Indurain, Carlos Sastre to name just a few who have won the Tour De France in recent years.

But there is one sport the Spanish have so completely, totally and utterly mastered, that, if planet Earth were Star Wars, they would be Yoda.

It is the sport of “queuing.”

Hang on just a minute, I hear you say. Some mistake surely! The plucky, fair-playing Brits are world champions at that discipline, I hear you shout as you shake your fist at the computer screen.

No Sir. They think they are. But they are not. Not even close. In fact, if there really were a world championships for queuing, the Brits wouldn’t even make the play-offs. You’d probably be knocked out by queuing minnows Montenegro or Fiji. Why? Because you’re too obsessed with making sure everyone sticks to the rules and doesn’t step out of line (literally). That is so yesterday!

You see, as has been their way with football, the Spanish have developed a flair for the sport of queuing, a mastery that leaves other nations open-mouthed at their brilliance. They have taken the rule book and turned it on its head. As if we weren’t already overloaded with metaphors, analogies and similes, if the art of queuing were a swimming pool, the Brits would be stubbornly – but fairly – ploughing up and down the middle lane with their dull, but efficient breast stroke. The Spanish meanwhile would have ripped up the lane dividers and would be doing a hugely complicated synchronised swimming routine that would probably include dolphins.

What the hell am I going on about, you ask? I’ll tell you. For it is sublime in its simplicity, yet flexible enough to still allow for some irritated looks and angry finger-waggery.

Let’s take the average bank, for example. In the UK, people come in, stand patiently in a line and wait their turn. Should anyone feel the need not to wait their turn, they will, of course, receive the obligatory tut-tut-ing and stares that, while polite and measured, suggest the possibility of extreme violence should said queue-jumper be inclined to continue such a risky strategy.

Meanwhile in the Spanish bank there’s no line, just a gaggle of people standing randomly somewhere near the counter. But wait, what’s this? It may look random, but in fact it’s not. This is because each new person who walks in the door simply says to the assembled throng: “Who’s last?”. One person puts up their hand, having asked exactly the same question themselves when they walked in just two minutes before. This way, everyone knows who’s before them. They don’t know who’s before the person who’s before them. But then why should they need to? Information overload! And so, each person is served in turn and everyone’s happy. This is freestyle queuing at its best. As Einstein said: “From chaos comes perfection.” (Well, I don’t know if he actually said it or not, Wikipedia doesn’t mention it and then I tried Googling it and that didn’t work either, but it sounds like something he would say).

But wait a minute. The Spanish have queue-jumpers too. They take two forms in Spain. The first is ALL old people. Old people in Spain don’t queue. This has got nothing to do with the Spanish being nice to old people. It’s just that they come from a time when nobody queued in Spain and as far as they’re concerned no jumped–up little youngster is going to make them start doing it now. The second type is the one who says “Sola una preguntita.” (“Only a little question”) as they ignore everyone else and stride confidently to the counter.

When both of these events happen, the people in the queue don’t actually do much. They give a few looks and occasionally wag their fingers, but there isn’t the underlying threat of horrific violence that marks the British discipline. It’s like they’re afraid to complain, but they’ll still call the queue-jumper a “wanker” under their breaths.

You see? Sublime. Perfect. “Douze Pointe” as they’d say in the Eurovision Song Contest.

That is until a Spanish person comes to the UK, tries the same thing, and gets ripped limb from limb. That’s its only flaw. It doesn’t travel well.

Save Me…… from off-colour humour

This blog gives me an opportunity to have a rant now and again, but my rants are generally light-hearted and well meaning. God, the last thing we all need is another angry man spouting off.

However, there is one thing here in Spain – well, actually there´s more than one, but that´s for another time – that I do have some considerable difficulty finding any humour in.

When I explain what it is, you might think it´s a cultural thing, a perception based on background and history. And yes, I would agree to a certain extent. But nevertheless, it´s still something that makes me very uncomfortable. And it´s this.

Here in Spain, it is still acceptable to “black up” on mainstream TV and in society. What I mean is, white people covering their faces in black make-up to portray a stereotypical image, often derogatory, of a black person.

There are a number of examples of this, the most recent of which was on TV this week. On Wednesday nights national TV channel Antena 3 - a bit like ITV in the UK - has a talent show called “Tu Cara Me Suena” (“Your Face Rings A Bell”) in which famous people dress up as a famous singer and perform one of their well-known hits before a studio audience and a panel of judges.

This week´s show featured Spanish actor and comedian Santiago Segura dressed up as Stevie Wonder, singing “I Just Called To Say I Love You.” The fact that this bloke, who’s white, came out “blacked up” was bad enough, but what was worse was at the end of the skit when he removed his dark glasses to reveal two pasty white patches around his eyes where he hadn´t bothered to put the boot polish.

Cue much hilarity, laughter and black gags between him, the judges and the audience! Ha ha ha.

No such reaction from myself, however. My mouth was so wide open in astonishment, you could have driven a bus through it, off-loaded the passengers and driven back out without me noticing.

A few months ago, on the extremely popular chat and comedy show “El Hormiguero” (“The Anthill”), also on Antena 3, there was a skit featuring the presenter and his gang doing a piss-take of the Jackson Five, all of them blacked-up and doing an embarrassing dance routine on Segways (those little two-wheeled scooter things). It was so incredibly hysterical, I nearly laughed.

Unfortunately, the “blackface” also turns up again every January 6 at the annual religious Three Kings processions, which take place in virtually every city, town and village in Spain. It’s an event which celebrates the arrival of the Three Wise Men – and as luck would have it, one of them is “blacked up”.

Now, don´t get me wrong. The UK has had plenty of questionable TV shows based on racial stereotypes – “The Black and White Minstrels”, “Love Thy Neighbour, “Til Death Do Us Part”, “Curry And Chips” – but they were washed up and excruciatingly embarrassing 35 years ago!

I´m not saying I think Spain or Spanish culture is inherently racist. In fact I don’t think that at all. And I´m certainly not saying that the UK doesn´t have its fair share of vile little ignorant racists – take some of the knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who make up the English Defence League as a fitting, yet thankfully minority example.

But I do think Spain disappointingly lags decades behind other nations, when it comes to its acceptance in the mainstream media of outdated, outmoded and generally embarrassing stereotypes. I get it, it’s a cultural thing. Spain isn’t as multi-cultural as some other nations, that’s a fact. And as I said, I don’t believe the issue is specifically racist, but I do think it’s ignorant. And that isn’t much better.

If you want to sing a Stevie Wonder song or a Jackson Five song on the telly, fine. But is it really necessary in this day and age to “black up” for it? Stevie Wonder and the Jackson Five are not famous because they´re black. They’re famous because they were and are extremely talented singers and songwriters. When you “black up”, the focus and the gag automatically shifts to the skin colour, not the brilliant songs they wrote.

And as for the Three Kings? Well, Jesus wasn’t a white man, but for some reason he’s not blacked-up? Why the inconsistency?

Now, if you think I’m getting on my soap box and having a rant, you’re probably right.

But if you think I’m being far too politically correct, making a fuss out of nothing because after all it’s just a joke and a laugh isn’t it, may I respectfully suggest that you pick up your copy of the Daily Mail and stick it where the sun don’t shine.