Save Me…… from nothing else, at least for now.

Well, we’re back. From the Camino de Santiago. We did it. Not all 800km of it. That was never the aim. But we did 202km of it in 11 days, and that was what we set out to do in the first place. So we achieved our goal. So much so, in fact, that we want to do it again next time. But a longer journey. This time we walked from Ponferrada. Perhaps next time we’ll go from Pamplona. That’s something like 700km.

There’s a lot to write about what happened. I must have filled two notebooks and two dozen memo pages on my mobile while on our adventure.

But that’s for another time.

There are other projects to be done for now. Completing the Camino is the end of this chapter. I don’t need to be saved from anything else for the time being. That’s not to say that I’m stopping writing. Definitely not. But it needs to be done in other ways for now.

Keep posted. I’ll be coming back soon.

Save Me…… from losing sight of what’s important

We’ve planned, we’ve prepared, we’ve practiced. And now the time is nearly upon us. Now all that is left to do is to do it.

It was a year ago that me and my wife decided to walk the Camino de Santiago. Many people do it for many different reasons. For me it was about getting fit, facing a challenge and trying to understand what drives so many people Spaniards in particular to walk the ancient route across the top of Spain to the supposed resting place of the apostle St James. By doing it I hope to understand the culture and the people I’ve come into a little bit more. I hope to understand myself a little bit better too. For my wife, it’s a more spiritual and personal journey so it is for her, not me, to talk about if and when she wishes.

This time next week we should be on our way. It’s been a long time in the planning and preparation and now we cannot wait to start.

While we would love to be able to tackle the full 800km plus route from the Spanish-French border, we simply don’t have the available time or, frankly, the fitness to do it. But we were determined not to do the minimum 100km to qualify for the Camino certificate either.

So our route will take us from our start point in Ponferrada, approximately 180km plus walking distance from Santiago. And while we will aim to do about 20km a day, we are wise enough to know not to push it. We will take it easy, take our time and most importantly enjoy our challenge. It seems patently absurd to me to force ourselves to complete an inflexible route march every day simply to reach our destination on a set date.

The whole concept around the Camino is to meet new people, learn new things not just about those you meet but about yourself too, to enjoy your surroundings and to achieve your own personal goals. If it means it takes us longer to do then that is fine with us. If there is one thing I have learnt since moving to Spain it is that it’s ok to take your time.

For many years living and working in the UK I was up against deadlines and under pressure to perform, to get results. It shaped my world view for too long. In Spain I’ve learned to relax again. It’s taken a while, but I’m getting there. I don’t believe for one second that I will come out the other side having achieved some form of Zen enlightenment. But I do believe it will do me the world of good and will help me to cement my newly found ability to take things as quickly or as slowly as I wish, without the shadow of demand, results and performance looking over my shoulder.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped trying. It doesn’t mean I don’t care anymore. I do, more than ever in fact. But the goals are mine now, not anybody else’s. The challenges are what I want, the achievements are what I choose. Finally, I’m doing things for me, instead of someone else.

This all might sound a bit in-the-air, a bit fluffy and a bit false. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. If I’ve gained anything in preparing for this challenge, it’s a much clearer sense of what really is important in life and, in particular, that what really counts is what is important to me and to the ones I care about the most.   

Like I said, I’m not expecting an epiphany, an awakening or some sort of spiritual re-evaluation. It is what it is. It’s just a walk at the end of the day. A long walk, a hard walk, especially for someone who is as unfit as me. But I know that it is entirely possible, because I’ve pushed myself hard in the past. I’ve never walked as far in one go, but I have walked long distances with bigger packs than the one I plan to carry and I’ve been able to push myself that little bit further even when I thought I had no more energy left to give.

The point is that the mind is prepared as much as the body is. The body may not be as able as it was 20 years ago. But there’s a lot you can convince a body to do if the mind is as able as it ever was.

Whether I’ll have an opportunity to post a blog during our trip I will only know when we are there. I will try, even if it’s a short one. But if not, it will be the first time in 51 consecutive weeks that I won’t have posted anything. However, even that doesn’t bother me. It would have done in the past.

I hope that we’ll meet some interesting people on our journey. I hope the people who meet us will find us interesting. Maybe some lasting friendships will be formed, maybe they won’t. Hopefully we’ll find space in the albergues and hostels we find along the way at the end of each day. But as it’s August and the busiest month of the year, maybe we won’t. If that happens, we’ll be sleeping out in the open, looking for some sort of basic shelter. And that’s ok. If anything, a part of me secretly hopes that will be the case on at least one occasion.

But one thing is for sure, we are as motivated and as determined as we can be to complete this challenge. It will be hard work, but I am sure we will enjoy every single minute of it, blisters and all. I hope too that I will learn a lot and have a lot of stories to tell from it.

Finally, I hope the weather will be kind to us. It may be August but it’s northern Spain and the weather there can be as unpredictable as it is in the UK.

As for the summer, it has finally arrived with a vengeance here in Seville in these past seven days. Last month the thermometer barely got over 40C. But this week the city hit 45C during the day and a stuffy 36C at night. If that isn’t a signal to head north then I don’t know what is.

Hello Camino and hello me.

Save Me…… from not making the most of what falls from the sky

Summer temperatures haven’t been as hot in Seville this July as they have been in summers past. We’ve barely got above 40C most days throughout the month, which is strange to say the least.

A couple of days have seen the thermometers top 43C but other than that we’ve mostly hovered around the mid- to upper-30s. And for Seville that is unusual, especially if previous years are anything to go by.

What’s not in the slightest bit unusual is that it hasn’t rained for a long time. In fact, I can’t actually remember the last time it rained, let alone the last time it rained significantly.

I’m not complaining. The days are still hot, even if sometimes the nights are uncomfortable. But with air con and a fan it doesn’t get to you much.

What is perhaps more unusual is that despite it not raining here in Seville for, well, let’s be honest, several months, the taps are still running and there are no water restrictions. You can have a shower, a bath, you can water your plants, you can hose down your terrace, you could even fill a bucket and pour it over your head if you really wanted to.

Standing on our terrace you can look out across the east of the city and see hundreds if not thousands of flats and houses, each one no doubt using many litres of water every single day. Taking a train down to Jerez last weekend took us past acres and acres of sunflower crops and olive groves, none of which seemed to show any significant signs of drought. The huge, portable, watering machines that trundle across the open fields, were everywhere to be seen as well. And yet still no water restrictions.

It’s true that there are many areas of parched grassland, turned yellow from the lack of rain. Fly into Seville or Jerez at this time of year and looking out the window of the plane you won’t see much in the way of green at all. But the right places are still getting the water. The places and the people that need it are getting it.

Contrast that with the UK. There, if there’s no rain for two weeks, the water companies go into meltdown, the hosepipe bans are tossed around like confetti and before you know it, the standpipes are out, there’s panic buying of bottled water in the supermarkets and the army are being drafted in to man the portable water tankers.

Before the downpours of June and July, there were drought orders in force up and down the UK as the population tried to come to terms with the fact it hadn’t rained significantly for at least 14 days!

So what on earth is the problem? How can southern Spain survive restriction-free for months on end, while the UK sputters to a halt after a matter of weeks? What are we doing here that they’re not doing there?

Well, some might think it has something to do with the population. The UK has higher demand because it has about 20 million more people. But it’s not as if the country is a desert. Green fields are everywhere. And, let’s be honest, it’s incredibly unusual for it not to rain in the UK for any significant period of time, while the opposite is true for southern Spain.

Maybe it’s something to do with culture. In southern Spain, people tend to be a little more conservative with water. They don’t really waste it. They turn the tap off when they’re brushing their teeth, they don’t – despite being able to – fill up buckets of water and liberally pour them over their heads. They also don’t have a lot of baths. I’m not saying they’re dirty. They just have showers instead. Quicker, more economical when it comes to water use and frankly a lot cleaner than lying in your own filth in a bath for an hour. It might not come as a surprise to learn that I’ve never been a fan of baths. Give me a shower any time.

In the UK, people are less sparing with their water. To be fair, you can hardly blame them because they know that they’ll be another shower of rain along in a minute. Some years ago a friend of mine, who worked for a water company in the south east of England, told me that more than 70 per cent of water that comes into people’s homes in the UK goes straight back down the plughole the moment it comes out the taps. Think about it.

But the real answer to why we here in southern Spain seem to make our water go further is actually historical. Over several decades in the 20^th century Spain embarked on a programme of reservoir and water pipe building right across the country. That meant that when it rained in one place, the water was captured, saved and used efficiently. So it was possible to transport that water to another part of the country where it hadn’t rained.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a shortage of water in the south. There is. We could really do with some rain, especially as the reservoirs in the south are quite low. But other parts of the country are getting rain. In fact, this week has seen some fairly fierce rain storms in the north of the country. In Palencia and Lugo in the last couple of days the heavens opened big time. But frankly, no more than what the UK would probably get in an average summer itself. The difference is that a lot of the rain that fell in the north of Spain will be used in exactly the way it needs to be.

It may have a dodgy economy at the moment, it may have the highest unemployment in the European Union, it may have a desperately weak manufacturing base. But Spain does seem to have got it right when it comes to keeping its population in running water.

The UK, on the other hand, despite the huge quantities of rain that descend from the sky on a regular basis over its green and pleasant land and an infrastructure that would at least suggest an ability to provide adequate water for its citizens, doesn’t appear to have got its act together quite yet.

Fascinating, don’t you think?

Save Me…… from the people who grumble about nothing

The Olympics will have kicked off in London this time next week. But I´m prepared to make a prediction already. In fact it´s a guaranteed bet. It´s a rock solid shoe-in for the Gold medal for Team GB if ever there was one. This one cannot lose. I stake my life on it.

Well, it wouldn´t lose if the event was actually in the Olympics. But it´s not. Which is a shame. Because if it was, they would probably just give the gold to the British team immediately without even having a competition.

The Brits are rubbish at football, they´re rubbish at most sports actually. But at the sport of complaining they are Olympic champions. No, in fact they are World, Galactic and Universal champions.

If there´s one thing I´ve noticed above all others looking back at the UK from here in Spain it´s that you guys never stop bloody whinging. I should know. I´m one of you!

Think about it. How familiar are the following sentences to you? Everything´s rubbish nowadays; They don´t make ém like they used to; It wasn´t like that in my day; It´s all wrong it is; Kids today eh?; We´re all going to hell in a hand basket (whatever that means).

These are phrases that are used so commonly in everyday British society that they´ve actually entered the English vernacular. And as if that´s not enough damning evidence, then let me give you another example. When someone asks you how you are, often the answer will be: “Mustn´t grumble.” You´re fine, but you don´t say you´re fine. You complain about having nothing to complain about.

Christ knows how the UK ever became a global superpower in the past what with the complaining about how rubbish everything is all the time. Mind you, thinking about it, maybe that´s how they did come to dominate the world. Everywhere they went, they depressed the locals so much with tales of misery and hardship and the fact that it never stops raining that the locals gave in without a fight just to shut them up. I think the only reason the British Empire slowly disappeared after the Victorian era was that everyone else in the world started cheering up and telling them to bugger off.

A brief scan of the British papers this past week revealed the following stories to me; O2 mobile phone customers getting livid about having no phone network for a day and a bit, complaints that some security staff at the Olympics being “illegals”, anger at the fact that it´s been raining a lot recently, complaints that there are too many women teachers in UK schools, much gnashing of teeth over the fact that David Beckham hasn´t been selected for the Olympic football squad, fury over claims by a government minister that Britain will always stay in the EU, outrage over cuts to the Olympic opening ceremony, wailing over the fact that there isn´t enough security at the Olympics.

Did you notice a common theme in there? There seems to be a lot of people angry about the Olympics. You´d think the fact that the UK is hosting the premier sporting event in the world, an event they´ve been planning for four years, would generate some sort of joy, excitement, thrill or happiness among the British people.

But oh no. We can´t have that, can we? It wouldn´t be right to actually be positive about something as big as this. The staging of the Olympics is perfect for the British mindset because it gives them the opportunity for an Olympic-sized moan. And there´s nothing that makes the British people happier than being unhappy about something.

The other stories are almost as bizarre in their banality. Mobile phone users without coverage for a day or so? Well, all that does is show just how much mobiles control their lives. Grumbles about the fact it´s being raining a lot recently? It always rains. It´s Britain. It´s hardly breaking news. Grumbles about the EU? Again, nothing new there, just some bloke´s throwaway comment sparking fury and threats of conspiracy. And as for the claim that there are too many women teachers in British schools? Well, that one came from the Daily Mail. Say no more.

 Here in Spain, there´s 24 per cent unemployment (or if you´re a young person 50 per cent), there´s tax hikes, pay cuts, slashed government spending and businesses closing left, right and centre.

But the sun is shining, the beaches are full and people, while expressing their frustration with demonstrations from time to time, generally just get on with things. There´s not the culture of persistent moaning here that permeates the core of British society. Maybe that´s because the Spanish have had it a lot tougher than this in the past. That´s not to say they don´t care. They do. But they just express it in a slightly less permanently irritable way.

They realise that things aren´t great at the moment and haven´t been for some time. No jobs means people here have had more time for leisure or sport activities. Maybe that´s why they have the best football team in the world at the moment, because they´ve had a bit more time to practise. There´s nothing like success in the sporting arena to galvanise the masses, to send a wave of happiness through the population. And that´s just what happened earlier this month when Spain won football´s European Championship again. It makes the hardships easier to bear, at least in the short term.

So instead of complaining about how everything´s rubbish all the time, maybe the UK population should instead celebrate the huge sporting bonanza that is the Olympics and be happy and excited about this festival of everything that´s good about the world.

They might even find that things aren´t quite as bad there as they are here in Spain.

Save Me…… from having to take a microwave oven up a mountain pass just to make a point

I’m sorry to both Scotland and Croydon. I like you both. But the following must be said.

Much of my family is from Scotland and I have toured and explored many beautiful, awe- inspiring places within it. From mountains to lochs to sweeping sandy beaches and rocky headlands. It is quite an incredible country when it comes to natural scenery.

Not so much Croydon. Before I moved to Spain, I lived in Croydon. It´s not quite Scotland. It’s more beautiful on the inside. But I’ll come to that later.

Anyway, it is with great pain that I have to say, with hand on heart, that the scenery we found this week not 100km from home in southern Spain blows all of it away. All of it. The lochs, the mountains, even the haggis and bagpipes. Even the strangely fascinating No.1 Croydon tower. It blows them all sky high, in much the same way putting a mobile phone into a microwave and pressing “start” would do.

The startlingly beautiful scenery I speak of can be found on the road between the Andaluz villages of Grazalema and Zahara de la Sierra.

Travelling from Jerez or Seville you follow a twisty mountain road from the small town of El Bosque to Grazalema which, itself, is incredibly beautiful. This first road is steep, narrow and, in places, the edge drop away hundreds of feet. It takes you past the isolated mountain village of Benamahoma, itself worth a detour to visit, and the views from the road are amazing, especially when you near the top of the pass before descending into Grazalema.

But it is here that many people stop, already blown away by the rolling hills, the deep valleys, the acres of forest and the rocky mountain pinnacles they lay before them at the “mirador” that stands just 2km from Grazalema itself.

However, what so many people miss is the turn-off to Zahara, just one more kilometre further down the road, just outside Grazalema. From here, there are 14km of road taking you through the most invigorating, spectacular and stunning scenery. Ascending the first part is breathtaking. Plunging cliffs, huge boulders, sloping trees, grey, rocky outcrops, rich green grass and sweeping vistas greet you as you look out to the right.

But that’s not even the best of it. When you come to the pass at Puerto de las Palomas, you find yourself at a point between two sweeping valleys. You can see for miles and miles across the Sierra not just to the south east but to the north west as well. It leaves you speechless (which is frankly unheard of for me). Go to any good thesaurus, find the most positive adjectives you can about scenery and you still won´t come close to describing the view from this point.

But – yes, there’s another but – as if you thought you’d already stuffed yourself full of sweets from the metaphorical sweetshop that is the view at this point, as you descend the other side towards Zahara, you drive down an awe-inspiring, twisty, turny, steep and precipitous mountain road, which reveals 2,000ft below you a fluorescent turquoise lake, while towering rock pinnacles lie jagged and broken a 1,000ft above you.

I’m out of breath just describing it.

Now, it’s fair to say that if we saw the same sight over and over again, we might become a little blasé about it. For example, I worked in central London for nearly a decade before coming to Spain and every day I would see the famous Tower Bridge and the Tower of London on my way to and from work. Wonderful sights. Incredible to look at. But after the twentieth time of looking at them as I crossed over the river in a double decker bus, I just didn’t bother any more. You know what I mean?

I can imagine Sherpas born and brought up within in the shadow of Mount Everest saying to an awe-struck mountaineering tourist seeing it for the first time: “Oh yeah, that thing. Done it already thanks.”

I bet even Kublai Khan, on seeing Xanadu for the twentieth time, probably said: “I’ve seen better if I’m honest. Don’t like the trees very much. They’re a bit too pointy.”

Now, for me, this has become true with some parts of Scotland. Don’t get me wrong. It’s an incredibly beautiful country – if you miss out most of Glasgow that is – but I can quite happily drive past whole swathes of it and not feel the need to gaze out in wonderment.

And so, this week, as we drove along this road through the sierra, I did worry for the briefest of seconds that it might all get a bit humdrum the next few times we drove that way, especially as we live not far away.

But then I slapped myself hard in the face. Metaphorically, of course. Take your eyes off the road for a few seconds and you’re liable to career off, through the concrete bollards and plunge thousands of feet to a fiery grave, all the while thinking to yourself what an incredibly beautiful place to have such a violent death.

Frankly, there is no way, no way, I could ever get bored of this sight.

I’m sorry Scotland. I really am. I think you’re great (well, maybe not Glasgow so much). But it’s over. We’ve grown apart these last few years, haven’t we? You’ve got your own friends now and I’ve got mine. We don’t do things together like we used to. Look, it’s me, it’s not you. Honestly. I’ve just moved on. I know it’ll be difficult at first. But you’ll find someone new. I know you will.

And as for Croydon. Well, it’s got a nice shopping street and some good pubs and a few parks. But it doesn’t have much in the way of rocky pinnacles, mountain passes and turquoise lakes. I like it. I do. But here I turn back to my original analogy.

Imagine Croydon’s sweeping vistas were a mobile phone and the views from the mountain roads in the sierra were the world’s most massive microwave oven.

I´m quite getting to like this country.

Save Me…… from, well, I don’t know

It´s been a strange couple of weeks. I could, if I was being overly pretentious, call it a watershed moment for me. It hasn’t so much been the things I’ve been doing during this time, but more the way I’ve been feeling as I’ve done them.

I´m not making much sense, I know. But that`s because I´m still trying to work out the significance of it all.

I´ve been living in Spain a while now. But last Sunday, on a plane back from the briefest of visits to London, I actually felt like I was coming home.

Truth be told, I noticed a change the week before. But I´ll get to that in a minute.

I had had to take a plane to Jerez because I couldn´t get one to Seville that evening as everything was booked up last minute. But as we banked in a steep curve to come into land at the airport, I could see out of the window the winding Guadalquivir River, the fields, the lagoons and the sea along the coastline from Jerez down past Cadiz. The sun was low in the sky as it was about 9pm and it reflected brightly off the water as the plane came into land from the south.

The feeling took me quite by surprise, I have to say. Because while I´ve always liked Spain, I haven´t felt completely at home here. At least, until now, that is.

I don’t know. Perhaps it was down to the beer I´d had on the plane that was making me feel that way.

But even after getting off the plane, grabbing a taxi and heading into town, the feeling remained.

That same evening Spain beat Italy to win football´s European Championships again. Just like last week, the streets were deserted, the roars and the cheers echoing around the town from bars and homes as people crowded round their TVs.

But making my way back to our flat in a taxi on empty streets, for the first time I felt a genuine pride and connection with the team and the people here which I´ve not felt before in Spain. When I got in and switched on the TV, I even got irritated – it is me after all, so how could something not irritate me, even at a time like that – when a couple of the Spanish players from Barcelona tried to unfurl the Catalan flag as they held the cup aloft. The same thing happened in 2010 when Spain won the World Cup. Then, one of the players enthusiastically waved the red and yellow Catalan flag as he held the Cup too.

Don´t get me wrong. I have nothing particularly against Catalan separatism and pride and the growing calls for independence from Spain, but I did find myself thinking that the players achieved their success wearing the Spanish shirt and with the Spanish people´s support and it seemed to me that they were forgetting this in their excitement to express their political feelings.  What strange affinity with the Spanish was I experiencing?  

I don´t know. Perhaps it was the stodgy Chinese takeaway I was eating as I watched the celebrations on the TV that made me feel that way.

The next morning I had to take the early 7am train back at Seville. As I sat at a window seat and watched the sunflower fields roll by outside against a bright sun low in the sky, I found myself having the same feelings again. A strange peace. A calm. It was a beautiful morning and there wasn´t a cloud in the sky. The carriage was quiet; most of the other passengers were sleeping or dozing. But I was happy to sit there and watch the world go by outside, feeling as if I really belonged.

I don’t know. Maybe it was because I was listening to “So What” by Miles Davis on my MP3 player at the time that made me feel that way.

As the train pulled into the station at a small town not far from Seville, I looked through the railings into the adjoining park and saw a man sitting on a mower winding his way serenely around the trees and up and down in perfectly symmetrical lines. He was an old man, with wrinkled, sun-tanned skin and grey, receding hair, covered by a crooked, battered red and blue baseball cap. He was wearing earphones and I imagined him listening to The Blue Danube by Strauss as he wound his way, almost as if he was in a waltz, around the park apparently with not a care in the world.

I don’t know. Maybe it was because I was listening to The Blue Danube by Strauss on my earphones at the time that made me feel that way.

It had all started the week before when me and the wife had gone to a spa in Seville for a dip in their hydro pools and a back massage.

As we sat there in the pool, embraced by dozens of little bubbles blasting out from jets under the water, for the first time in ages I actually felt quite relaxed. I realised too that, for the first time in a long time, my brain wasn’t whizzing along at a million miles an hour thinking of all the things I had to do.

I always did that when I lived in London. I always had a million different thoughts at the same time. That’s what living in London does to you. Everything moves so fast that you have to move with it or you get trampled in the crush.

So when I first moved to Spain, I was still going at full speed, when everything else around me was going at a far more sedate pace.

But as I sat there in the spa, the bubbles rushing through my swimming trunks like a thousand tiny farts, I took a deep breath and let it wash over me. Metaphorically and physically.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because things don’t move as fast here as they do where I used to live. And maybe I’m finally beginning to realise that it’s ok to drop down a gear or two.

Save Me…… from the enduring predictability of pointless English optimism

 Living in Spain, it’s often interesting to see things in the UK from a different perspective. And often that perspective is quite eye-opening.

Take football for example. On Sunday, the 2012 European football championships come to a head when Spain meet Italy in the final. And it´s not hard to notice that neither of those teams are England.

The French – they’re not in the final either - have an expression for it. Deja vu. But when it comes to football, it´s a very English phenomenon.

As if England were ever was going to be in the final though. Really. Come on. This is England we´re talking about. A team forever lauded by the English press, a team which, every tournament, is the one that can finally do it, and a team which, every tournament, is the one that doesn´t.

It´s the same old story played out again and again and again. And the funniest part about it is the English press and public. After all these years, after countless attempts, dozens of false dawns and myriads of dejected autopsies and blame hurling, the message still doesn´t seem to have hit home.

England aren´t very good.

But here in Spain, we already know that. Everyone knows that. Here, the championships have been met with huge amounts of interest. Not least because Spain are the current World and European champions. When Spain have been playing these past couple of weeks, the streets have been empty as everyone gathers round the TV screens at home or in bars and cafes to watch, cheer, groan and clap.

It’s certainly been a strange experience to be outside here in Seville on those evenings. The streets may be deserted but the surrounding buildings almost seem to sway in some sort of harmonised echo chamber as near-misses, thumping goals, sliding tackles and final whistles are met with a synchronized audible roar escaping through open doorways and windows across the entire city.  

Spain have had their ups and downs since becoming world champions in 2010. But if you asked a Spaniard at the start of this tournament who they thought would win, England wouldn’t even have entered the conversation. No-one, apart from the English, thinks the England football team is any good.

Just because they invented the game, just because they have what is considered to be the biggest and most expensive club league in the world, doesn´t mean the international team is therefore going to be one of the best. And it hasn´t been for many years. Well, 46 to be exact.

When Spain play nowadays, people expect them to do well. And more often than not they do; they’re in the final for the second consecutive time. The Spanish players pass the ball between themselves like some giant pinball machine. When England play, they boot the ball up the field and rush after it, just like me and my mates used to do on the green behind our housing estate when we were 11. We didn’t win anything either.

But what amazes me is that when England play, the English press and public expect them to do well. And more often than not, they don´t. This time it was the Italians who undid them. And how? Through penalties, yet again. And the only reason England end a lot of their matches with penalties is because they are just not adventurous enough.  

Let me explain what I mean. I’ve never been much of a football fan. I was brought up with rugby. For me, football is 90 minutes of nothing much happening, of a white ball pinging back and forth, up and down the pitch, with the outcome often being 0-0. As if that’s bad enough, when you get a score like that, you are then subjected to another 30 minutes of exactly the same. I can’t ever remember a rugby match ending without a point being scored.

But my point isn’t that rugby is better than football. It is. But that’s not what’s important here. What’s important is this. Since coming to Spain, I’ve been more inclined to watch football matches, especially when Spain play. And it’s not just because Spain happen to be quite successful at the moment – after all, everyone likes to see a team win – but it’s more to do with the fact that the Spanish team play an exciting game. Spain hadn’t been very successful for years up to 2008 when they finally became European champions again after more than four decades. But they always played a more exciting game.

I hate to say it. But England are just boring. Unadventurous and boring. And maybe that’s why they are the perennial under-achievers. Maybe that’s why I found football boring. Because I grew up watching it in England.

The English press have been busy pointing the finger of blame at everyone since England were booted out in the quarter finals at the start of the week. But what good will it do them?

I mention rugby for a good reason. I have always supported Wales, as my dad is Welsh. But for years and years the team was rubbish. But then they started to change the way they played. They started to adopt the methods, tactics and strategies of more successful teams. Now, Wales aren’t the best team in the world yet, but with three Grand Slams under their belts in the last eight years – the rugby equivalent of the European Championships – and a semi-final placing in the World Cup last year, things are certainly on the up.

Maybe the England football team, the English press and the England supporters should consider a similar change in direction if they truly want to break out of their mediocrity.

You never know. I might even start to find watching England play football interesting again.

Save Me…… from “towing” the line when it comes to parking rules

I saw something very unusual this week. Unusual, that is, for the streets of Seville. It´s something I´ve only encountered once before around here and that time I was on the receiving end of it. In the streets of London it´s by no means an unusual sight at all. In fact, if you go through a day without seeing one in London then something is wrong.

I talk, of course, of a clamper and tow truck. The one that cheerfully takes your car away when it´s parked illegally. In London, there´s hardly enough room for cars any more because when the roads aren´t filled with buses and taxis, they´re filled with tow trucks, jamming yellow clamps on any vehicle so much as a millimeter outside its parking space.

But here in Seville it´s such an unusual sight that it actually drew a crowd of people.

We were sitting in a cafe having breakfast on Wednesday when, first, a police car turned up and then, minutes later, the tow truck. They were coming to remove two cars that had parked in a designated loading bay outside the supermarket just down the road from our flat.

I would have said the people who parked them did it mistakenly, having not seen the sign that said not to park there between such-and-such an hour each day, just as I did last year in Jerez (hence me being on the receiving end of it). It was a mistake and I paid the price.

But I would put money on the fact that their parking wasn´t a mistake this time. Why? Because the drivers were both Spanish. And when it comes to rules, by and large the Spanish ignore them. They feel they are a burden, an irritation, an unnecessary obstruction to their ability to do what they want, when they want and how they want.

In Spain, when it comes to rules, the general rule is that there aren´t any rules.

As if to prove my point, no sooner had the tow truck (two of them, in fact. It was a bonanza day as far as tow trucks go) had removed the offending vehicles and the police had finished walking around trying to look menacing in their dark glasses and holstered guns, then two more cars came along and promptly filled the empty spaces again. The drivers wandered off, oblivious to the impending doom that awaited their cars.

But here´s the thing. The reason why people ignore the rules, and why the next two drivers parked up seemingly unconcerned about the fate of their cars, was for a very good reason. It´s because the vast majority of the time nobody enforces the bloody rules.

That’s what I meant when I said I was so surprised to see a tow truck.

Seville is a vibrant, busy metropolis of activity. The shops are busy, the streets bustling with people and the cafes and bars are filled. Shops have little signs on their windows saying when they open and close. But you learn to ignore them because most of the time the shops will open when the staff feel like it.

The same concept goes for parking. There are signs saying where to park. But people park anywhere and everywhere. And each time they park, they have one objective in mind. How can I get to the place I want to get to and do what I want to do in the quickest possible time? Oh, and how can I do all that and cause the maximum amount of disruption to everybody else, while they´re all trying to do exactly the same thing at the same time?

I´ve seen people park on roundabouts in between exits. I´ve seen people park right across pedestrian crossings (presumably wheelchair users trying to use the dropped kerb are expected to get a good run-up and jump over the car instead). I´ve seen people park on pavements, not just half on and half off the pavement but right slap-bang in the middle of a pavement. I´ve seen people park at traffic lights. Really. You might be driving along, minding your own business, you pull up behind a car waiting at the traffic lights. Then just as the lights turn green, the driver in front of you opens the door, gets out and buggers off. You´re sitting there trapped right behind him while all the other cars behind are then all honking their horns like mad at you because you´re the one who´s not moving!

And why do people do these things? Because they know nobody is going to do anything about it. I´ve even seen bloody police cars park on pavements just so the policemen don´t have to walk an extra few yards to buy a bloody ice cream from the newsagents.

Then, of course, there is double parking. I´ve left this out of list above because it happens so often that it has become socially acceptable to do it now. If you come back to your car and find yourself blocked in, you just sit on the horn until the offender turns up ten minutes later shrugging his shoulders and saying “I was only gone for two minutes. What are you making a fuss for?”

It´s also quite normal for cars in Spain to have dents, scratches, bumps and scrapes. In fact, if you find one that hasn´t got a load of markings on it, you´d probably be inclined to instinctively give it one with your key or your boot.

You see, that´s the difference here. In the UK, especially in the big cities, if you park wrongly you can expect the clampers and tow trucks to descend on you like balaclava-wearing SAS soldiers crashing through your windows carrying stun grenades and machine guns. But here, people just shrug their shoulders.

Here, it´s socially acceptable to lean against a strangers´ car if you’re standing on the street talking to someone. In the UK, try it and you´ll get swift retribution from the car owner.

Here, cars have scratches and dents and nobody cares. In the UK, if you give another car so much as the lightest of pings you´ll leave the owner facing either a heart attack or a murder charge.

Sounds better here? Well, maybe. But the problem is the inconsistency. Most of the time nobody gives a damn about the rules.

But sometimes they do. You just never know when it´s going to happen. Makes it all quite exciting in a way.

Save Me…… from the lack of a comfy sofa

You may well have seen this week that Spain applied for, and got, a hundred billion euro bailout from the rest of the Europe, because its banks are up shit creek without a paddle, and frankly without a canoe as well.

The money comes from special European funds set up to keep the continent stable. Those funds come, ultimately, from taxpayers across Europe. The money will have to be repaid of course. And who does that? Yep, you guessed it, the Spanish taxpayer (in other words, me).

A hundred billion seems like an awful lot for the banks and the government to have lost down the back of the sofa with dodgy deals and risky investments.

But I figure if there´s that much sloshing about to fill in the hole they dug for us, then surely there´s got to be a bit extra floating around for the average taxpayer too, for things we need. After all, we´re the ones who are picking up the bill for the mess.

So, with that in mind, I´ve put together a shopping list of things I really need and I´m going to email it to Christine Lagarde. She´s the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and is the same woman who said a couple of weeks ago that Greeks should be paying their taxes if they wanted a bailout. How I laughed when it emerged 24 hours later that she doesn´t pay a penny of tax on her annual salary of $468,000. I laughed so much, it hurt.

Anyway, here´s my shopping list.

We need a new potato peeler. The one we bought from that shop along the street run by that nice Chinese family has fallen apart now. It only cost one euro but I think it was a false economy because it lasted just three weeks and was finally undone by a pretty sturdy spud which had been in the fridge for only 24 hours.

Next, we need a new fan. Again, the last one we had was bought from the same shop and it gasped its last on Monday. Maybe I shouldn´t be buying so much stuff from them, but they are cheap and they always smile at you when you walk in the door. Except the dad who prowls around the aisles after you, as if he expects you be stuffing merchandise down your trousers if he turns his back for more than a second.

Anyway, a new fan. A good one will cost no more than 35 euros so I think Christine could stretch to that, surely.

Socks. I need socks. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to go through socks like there’s no tomorrow. It’s the toes that go first. And it’s not like I keep my toenails long or anything. I’ve just got this thing with socks. So, yes, I need a lot of new socks please Christine.

We could also do with a little battery-operated alarm clock. That’s because we´re planning to walk the Camino de Santiago in August and it´s quite likely there won´t be many power points along the way to charge up my mobile phone which has a perfectly good alarm on it. So, needs must. And if Christine thinks that´s a bit of an unnecessary luxury, then I could point out that buying it will actually save the taxpayer in the long term. No alarm clock, no wake up in time, no wake up in time no room at the inn at the end of the next day, no room and we have to come home early. By doing the Camino, we lose weight, get fitter and therefore become less of a burden on the National Health later in life, thereby saving the taxpayer a shed load of cash. So I think forking out, say, five Euros for an alarm clock is well worth the investment.

There are quite a lot of other things we could really do with. But the last one is quite big so, in the spirit of thriftiness the banks seem to have temporarily forgotten, I´m willing to forego all of them for this last, admittedly, big one.

It´s a sofa.

We have a small flat and when we moved in there was a sofa in there already. But it was one of those really cheap, crap ones that cost about 99 Euros from IKEA and are about as comfortable as sitting on gravel for hours on end.

The upshot was that we got rid of it and replaced it with two rocking chairs. One was new, but the other was recycled from my mother-in-law who didn´t want it any more. It´s a bit knackered and needs a lick of paint but it works well enough. The problem is that sometimes I just want to come home from work and collapse into a nice, comfy, deep sofa with the wife and watch the TV. And we can´t do that in two rocking chairs.

A sofa - and I mean a comfy sofa. Not any of those crappy 99 euro ones from IKEA – would go along way to improving our home comforts and, as a result, directly reduce the stress after a long day and therefore the number of arguments we have. New sofa = more relaxation = less stress = less arguments = less likelihood of divorce = less need for counseling = less need to get free counseling on the National Health = less burden on the taxpayer.

So, what about it, Christine? Can you afford to let me have, say, a thousand Euros, even eight hundred, out of your tax-free half million dollar salary? I´ll pay you back, honest. And if I don´t, then we can just go back to the same fund that bailed out the bankers because money seems to grow on trees there apparently.

Save Me…… from medium mountains and even more medium guidebooks

The first mistake I made was reading the word “Medium” in the guide book. The second mistake was believing it.

As we stood at the foot of a very steep, boulder-strewn path next to a towering rocky outcrop in the middle of the Sierra de Grazalema last weekend, my walking companions turned to me and, in unison, said: “Are you sure it´s medium?”

“That´s what it says,” I replied, turning the page towards them to show the proof. Medium difficulty walk, it said. A bit of gentle climbing in places followed by flowing pastures and wide-open crests, it said.

Four hours later, back at the cabin, totally exhausted, sunburned, with strained ankles, twisted knees, parched mouths and frayed tempers, my walking companions turned to me and told me, again in unison, that my guide book was a load of bollocks.

The four of us – me, the wife and our two friends who are a couple – set out last weekend for a peaceful, relaxing saunter through the picturesque hills and valleys on the edge of the village of Grazalema, about 90 kms south east of Seville.

We had travelled down on the Friday evening after work and picked up the keys to a log cabin we had rented for the weekend at a campsite nestled in the rocky hillside overlooking the settlement, one of Andalucía’s famous White Villages.

That evening we ate well at a bar in a little square in the centre of the village and also bought provisions for the next day. We were happy and excited to be tackling the walk around the 4,294ft high bare rock pinnacle of Penon Grande the next morning, especially as it was only 10kms. Pleasant and relaxing in fantastic scenery.

Well, the last of those three adjectives was accurate. But as we clambered up the steep path the next morning, gasping for breath and stopping to recover every 200 yards, I started to imagine how I would colourfully express my disappointment to the authors of the guidebook which had cost me an arm and a leg to get in the first place.

Look, we´re a bit out of shape anyway. So I wasn´t necessarily expecting to sprint up the hill like a mountain goat. And it was hot, very hot. We had planned to start out quite early, before the sun climbed high in the sky, but as is always the way with relaxing weekends like this, we rolled out of bed about 9am, had a long breakfast and then thought about starting the walk about 11am.

So, ok, maybe those two things weren´t helping us. But our friends, who are lighter and fitter than both of us, were also gasping a bit and clutching random extremities from time to time too.

This wasn´t so much a walk as a scaling of boulders and rocks up a near vertical slope. Ok, I exaggerate a bit.  But not much. The first 40 minutes was hard work and I don´t mind admitting that on two occasions I was all for calling it a day and heading back down. But the wife, despite huffing and puffing herself, pushed me onwards.

Eventually we hit the crest of the first climb and looked down to see a bizarre sight. In amongst the rocks, the trees and the boulders was a perfect little shady meadow, enclosed by dry stone walls and populated by a family of very contented-looking cows. There was no clear road or pathway in or out of the meadow and on all sides there were mountainous peaks. So how had they got there? And why were they there?

I speculated that this was actually some sort of bovine sanctuary, a place where cows that had escaped the industry conveyer belt to Burger King could live out their lives in peace and tranquility. Never one for wispy notions of idyllic surrealism, my wife said I was talking out of my backside.

The shade and the green grass were a welcome relief from the jagged climb we had just endured, but in only a few minutes we were through it and out the other side on an even longer, more jagged climb. Not as steep this time, but much longer. And the route of the path only gave us fleeting shade, making the ascent even more difficult as the sun beat down.

But by this time we were made of sterner stuff and we knew that as long as we continued to put one foot in front of the other we would eventually get to the top of the 4,000ft crest and would be greeted with fantastic panoramic views across the Sierra.

But as if Lady Luck herself was cocking her leg and pissing on our parade, just as we reached the crest, the clouds came down and we could see literally nothing below. By this time though, with wheezing down to a minimum and calf muscles like Popeye´s, we didn´t care as much as we thought we might as we knew the last of the climbing was finally done.

While coming down is easier on the lungs than going up, it´s harder on the knees and the ankles. But we soon completed our circle of the peak and made our way back to Grazalema where we found a little Meson which served surprisingly good food. Surprising, because it was part of a “Menu Del Dia” which often as not is a combination of crap served up to gullible tourists who, captivated by their surroundings, are happy to drink gazpacho with the consistency and taste of dish water. But this place was not like that. I would give them a name-check but I can´t remember their name.

As we sat there at an outside table on a slight slope, eating gazpacho and chicken at an angle, our conversation turned to more spiritual matters, all of us clearly influenced by the rapturous experience we had managed to live through that morning.

We first talked about what we would like heaven to be like. I pointed out that I didn´t actually believe in that kind of thing but that I would suspend disbelief temporarily. Of our friends, she said each day was a little bit of heaven for her, while he said it was more a state of mind than an actual place. I suggested that my wife´s idea of heaven would be a bag shop.

We then talked about what we’d like to achieve in life before we die. The conversation reminded me of a letter I once sent to the Guardian newspaper.

I wrote in response to another letter I saw in the paper that week from a man who said: “I’ve been buying the Guardian for 30 years and have never yet finished the crossword. Is this a record?” The next day someone else wrote in saying: “I’ve been buying the Guardian for 30 years and have never yet bothered to do the crossword. Is this a record?” So I wrote in too. I said: “You think the first bloke has got problems. I’ve been buying the Guardian for 30 years and have never yet found the crossword. Is this a record?”

They actually printed my letter. I was so happy. And with the memory of that flooding back to me as I sat round a table with my friends tired and aching but happy, I realised that I wasn’t so bothered about that guidebook after all.

But I mean, really. Medium? Medium, my arse.

Save Me…… from going up to 11 all the time

There is a famous scene in the film This Is Spinal Tap where dimwitted rock guitarist Nigel Tufnel shows documentary maker Marty DiBergi his amplifier. He excitedly points out that all the volume control knobs don’t, in fact, go up to ten. They go up to 11. He adds: “It’s one louder, isn’t it?”, missing the obvious flaw in his argument.

The impact of that line has been so great that it has entered the English language as an idiom. “Up to 11” suggests taking things to their extreme.

And so it is the case at least with volume and personal space when it comes to Spain. Everything here is a little louder, a little closer, a little more in-your-face.

Go out in the street and the cars are louder, sit in a café and people next to you will be speaking louder so that you, in turn, have to speak louder yourself to be heard. Go on the metro or a train and someone there will be speaking loudly on a phone or to their companion even though they’re sitting right next to them. Turn on the TV and the adverts are always louder than the programmes (until a few years ago, also true in the UK, before the TV regulators banned the practice).

I’m not saying the UK isn’t ever loud and that personal space isn’t stomped all over. It is at times. Especially teenagers and young males full of alcohol. But I’m talking about general, everyday, routine activities. Compare the two and you’ll find nine times out of ten that Spain is just louder.

Maybe that’s why a lot of people go to church here, just so they can have a bit of peace and quiet for a while.

This got me thinking. Why is Spain generally louder?

Is it because they´re a bit closer to the equator and so a bit closer to the sun and therefore as it´s hotter everybody is a bit more tense, on edge and therefore louder out of frustration? No. Get the aforementioned 20-something British males fuelled up on alcohol on a Friday night and there´s plenty of tension, frustration and loudness.

Maybe it´s because Spain´s land mass is generally higher than Britain´s. In that respect, there´s less air and so people have to talk louder just to be heard? No. That´s just nonsense. And besides, I´ve been to the mountains in Scotland many times and I haven´t noticed people shouting about the weather or if you´d like another sugar in your tea.

So I thought about it a bit more to try and find an answer.

Last week on a train from Seville to Jerez there was a man in the carriage talking on his mobile phone the whole hour-long journey. The whole journey. To one person. He was sitting further down the carriage from us, but after about 20 minutes a woman sitting opposite him leaned over and asked him if he knew that everyone could hear his conversation in minute detail and would he mind just turning it down a bit because she was trying to read her book.

He put his hand over his mobile and for a second looked at her, inhaled deeply, smiled, then turned back to his telephone friend and explained as loud as before: “Where were we?”. The woman just rolled her eyes and went back to her book. I would have punched him.

Last night we went out for a walk and passing by a café full of busy outside tables, we saw an elderly man burst into song. Not good singing either. Bad singing. Very bad. I don’t think he was drunk either. But nobody said anything. Nobody said “Shut up”. They all just started talking louder themselves.

On the TV, there are a myriad of debate shows, discussing everything from the economy to the latest colour of handbags. But tune in to any of them and you won’t have to wait long for at least two people to start talking over each other, louder and louder. And it’s not as if the presenter steps in and says something like “Er, one at a time please so we can hear the different points being made.” They let it continue for ages. It’s just a wall of sound.

Which leads me on to the closely connected issue of personal space. In the UK, a person’s personal space is a big thing. Invade it and you’re liable for a confrontation, or at the very least an irritated scowl and a “Do you mind?”.

But here, everyone gets right up close to everyone else all the time. Up close and loud. You could go into an empty pub, as we did yesterday, and sit at the table right in the corner away from everything, and someone will still comes in five minutes later and sit down at the table right next to you and start talking really loudly. I contained my irritability by furiously sipping at my Vino Tinto and rolling my eyes.

Yes, I rolled my eyes. I didn’t cough, frown, and say “Do you mind?”. I didn’t even make a sarcastic comment, which if you ask anyone who knows me, is like getting a dog not to piss on a lamp post. It’s just not natural for me. But I did it.

What have I become, for God’s sake?

So does this phenomenon irritate me or have I got used to it now. I’m not acutely aware of being louder myself or more in people´s faces, but then I’m in a loud country so maybe it’s difficult to tell. However, when I’ve been back in the UK from time to time recently I’ve not had anyone ask me why I’m shouting all the time.

And I think therein lies the answer. It´s geography. Obviously.

Spain is a big place, quite a bit bigger than the UK. But it has a population of only 46 million, a massive 20 million less than the UK. You would have thought in such circumstances, we’d be climbing over each other in the UK and that personal space and peace and quiet would be an impossibility.

But it’s quite the opposite. I think it’s because of the fact that everyone is so jammed in there that space and peace and quiet have become so precious.

In Spain, we´re all rolling round like peas in an aircraft hangar. Masses of space, little to fill it, lots of people desperate for human interaction. So everyone shouts and gets in your face all the time.

See? Everything is so simple when you can sit down with a bit of peace and quiet and no distractions, and just think about it.

Save Me…… from my lovely waste of three hours

It had to happen sooner or later. Life always imitates art eventually. And so it has this week with Spain’s entry to the Eurovision song contest.

Already a parody of itself, at least as far as the major European nations are concerned, the annual trawl of the pop sewer, once again takes to the airwaves tomorrow night across the continent.

Intentionally or accidentally, Spanish poptart Pastora Soler let slip to the press yesterday that the country’s national TV broadcaster TVE didn’t want her to win this year because they didn’t want to be saddled with the cost of putting on the three-hour marathon of musical manure next year, such is the prestige of winning this God-awful show.

Rewind 15 years to a UK television comedy called Father Ted, about three dopey Catholic priests who live in a remote part of Ireland. One episode had them being chosen as Ireland’s entry to the Eurovision Song Contest with the very worst song in the world called “My Lovely Horse”, precisely because Ireland didn’t want to win and end up having to pay for the show the following year.

And lo, it came to pass that TV comedy gold became reality. Surely the writing is on the wall for this symphonic stupidity now?

 The Spanish public themselves already see the contest as nothing more than a bit of fun, one night of idiocy, a joke. For proof, look at the song the public voted for as Spanish entry in 2008. A comedy character called Rodolfo from a TV chat show who sang a song called “Baile el Chiki Chiki” (Dance the Cheeky Cheeky), complete with fake plastic Elvis wig and dancers who deliberately fell over.

The same year, Ireland paraded shopping trolley puppet Dustin the Turkey singing a song called “Ireland Douze Pointe”.

This year, the UK is being represented by none other than ancient, past-it, Engelbert Humperdinck. I don’t doubt that he’s sincere in his wish to sing a good song. But the people who chose him? What sort of shortlist did they have? Were they aware of the irony?

The question is, how much more of a two-fingered salute to the contest can you get? Maybe next year both Spain and the UK should send clowns with water-squirting flowers and custard pies and a comedy car that falls apart on stage. Or let’s just go the whole hog and send Jonathan King instead? The pop impresario has been convicted of sexually assaulting teenage boys, but hey, he can write a damn good pop tune.

There’s no doubt that the stranglehold the big European nations once held over this prestigious poop-fest has well and truly gone. Since 1998 only one of the “Big Four” nations has won it – Germany in 2010. But the UK, France, Spain and Germany are the ones who still dig deepest in their pockets to keep the contest going year after year. “Why?” I ask myself with an incredulous look on my face that no-one can see, which is why I’ve described it to you.

In the UK, the sad spectacle has been treated as a joke by the public for years, helped in part by the brilliantly sarcastic barbs ladled out by long-time BBC Eurovision commentator Terry Wogan. But even he bowed out in 2008 after nearly 30 years, describing it as “predictable” and “no longer a music contest.”

His last comment referred to the fact that politics has overtaken the voting nowadays (Greece and Cyprus regularly swapping “douze pointe” every time, for example). The voting used to be the only part of the show I’d watch. But I don’t even bother with that any more.

Even more ironically, the current BBC commentator for the show Graham Norton is an actor who used to be in Father Ted himself!

The only people who seem to take it seriously now are the “new” Europeans. Since 2000 the show has been won by, among others, Estonia, Latvia, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia and Azerbaijan.

So it strikes me that while tiny Iberian songstress Pastora Soler might have been speaking slightly tongue-in-cheek when she said what she said, I’m not so sure the bosses at TVE are actually that keen for her to win anyway. I bet the BBC give a sigh of relief every year the UK hits the bottom spot with “nil pointe”, which it has done worryingly often in recent years.

Ok, the contest has provided some musical quality over the years, the most obvious of which was the win by ABBA in 1974, funnily enough when the contest was held in my home town of Brighton.

But when you’ve had songs called “Ding-A-Dong”, “Boom Bang-a-Bang”, “La, la, la” and “Diggi-loo Diggi-Ley” over the years – and they’re just the winners! - just how much shit do you have to wade through to uncover the real diamonds?

When everyone is tightening their belts, when there’s cuts everywhere, when TV is already swimming in its own growing filth pool of reality shows, is it really worth investing more and more millions in what is frankly a big joke now? Tradition it may be, but crap it most definitely is.

I’d much rather watch “My Lovely Horse” over and over again for three hours. At least it knows it’s a joke.