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.