Tales from Elsewhere - The Spanish Villa - (1 of 3)

My parents retired to Spain from Argentina in the late 1980s and lived in a garden suburb near Chiva, a village ten miles from Valencia on the Mediterranean, towards Madrid, until my father died some fifteen years later.  Eighteen months after that my mother moved to England and died in early 2007.  

It brought to an end what had been for the most part a very pleasant sojourn in Spain and I retain pleasant memories of visiting them twice a year with my partner John – for my birthday in mid June and at Christmas.  I therefore regularly saw that region of Spain during the tourist season and in the cooler winter when the citrus trees, heavy with fruit, awaited harvest in the brilliant winter sunshine...  

 ...and Spaniards would return to their families for the most important religious festival of the year.

As a bilingual family we were fortunate to communicate easily with neighbours, friends and shopkeepers; we all made many friends there, and seven years later we are still in close contact with the Noble family, my parents’ kindly former next door neighbours.  Noli and Nico Noble are in their fifties now and their daughter Blanca in her early thirties.

They were a young couple when my parents first went to live there.   One evening Mum and Dad were having dinner with my visiting sister, brother-in-law and niece, and they heard screaming coming from next door.  One of them immediately got up and went to see what was the matter, and found a little girl of six or seven hanging onto the bars of the locked gates which led through the front garden to the darkened house.  She was crying in distress. 

When they were able to make sense of what she was saying between hiccoughs they learned that her name was Blanca, that her parents were at the club and she had been at a friend’s house nearby.  When she decided she wanted to go home by herself she had expected them to be home when she got there but when she saw the house with no lights and locked, didn’t recognise her way back to her friend’s in the dark and didn’t know what to do.   She knew my parents by sight, so let herself be persuaded to go next door to await the return of the Nobles.  My niece was two years older and took her under her wing, chatting to her to calm her down, until twenty minutes later they heard Noli and Nico’s car pull into the drive.  The child had been told to await collection at her friend’s, which Blanca had forgotten, and all was resolved.

This was the start of a firm friendship with the Nobles, and they were to become essential in my parents’ lives as they aged. 

Despite the small age difference the girls naturally gravitated towards each other when my niece visited from London.  There was a memorable occasion when the club was hosting a fancy dress competition for the younger members, and they both presented themselves done up to the nines with as much makeup on as they could get away with.

Noli and Nico referred to their house as the ‘chalet’, or weekend home, for they had a flat – and jobs - in the city of Valencia.  It was in typical modern Spanish style with pretty red roof tiles and wooden shutters, a large garage on the ground floor, terracotta steps lined with ornamental tiles which led up to a large cool and airy verandah where we enjoyed many an al fresco meal.  There was a carved wooden front door which opened into a large house with gleaming tiled floors, ample rooms and a light, minimalist décor. 

At the front the garden had been mainly laid to gravel, with some hardy shrubs which could withstand the intense summer heat, helped along by a more modest version of the irrigation system used in the citrus plantations – half-buried, black hoses with minute holes in them which ‘leaked’ drops of water.  This was switched on during the week when the property was empty.  At the back they had the paellero, an ornamental tiled shelter with a fireplace large enough to accommodate Noli’s paella dish measuring almost a metre in diameter, next to a tiled table and benches protected by an awning – another superb setting for balmy evening meals soaked in sangría.

By contrast, my parents’ bungalow was an uninviting square, concrete structure, (picture above) whose stolid appearance was relieved slightly by the swimming pool at the end. 

(Photo by Shane)

From the pool you could climb onto the flat roof via a large, ugly metal fire escape.  Once up there, you would have been surprised to notice that it had lamps on metal stems positioned at regular intervals round the perimeter, crowned as they were with football shaped glass globes because, we were told, the previous owners had used the area for parties.  They looked odd when you were looking up at them from street level, and the social use they had once enabled did no good at all to the roof, which always had to be patched up so it wouldn’t cause leaks below.

Some of the globes had been removed by the time this picture

was taken.  John in the foreground looking, as he would call it

"fonzed and brit".  (He loves spoonerisms...)

The garden area was a testament to my father’s determination to recreate his childhood memories of humid Buenos Aires, in the dry desert conditions of Valencia.  Blue hydrangeas turned pink despite the acid soil mulches, then withered and died anyway; thanks to the use of the Nobles’ watering method of hoses with small holes partly buried under the soil, the rose bushes survived, producing small blooms with little scent and small leaves.  At Dad’s request I brought over plenty of daffodil bulbs one winter, and carefully dug them in around the mud patch outside their kitchen, where they would see them and remember to water them regularly, but the hot sun was too much for them, and I only saw them once, the flowers hanging limply on their stems. 

Worse still were the sweet peas, which made me wince with foreboding even as I carefully planted them and put up sticks, held together with string.  He longed for the delicate petals and the sweet perfume to remind him of his mother’s garden, but no amount of watering could do it – they shrivelled as soon as the hot air swept past them in the summer months... as did even the sticks.

But the fig, orange, tangerine and lemon trees thrived, as did the succulents in the heavy shade, and the bougainvillea rioted all over the fence.  In the evenings the sprinkler would pick up the aromatic scent of the geraniums – but Dad was always disappointed that he couldn’t bring back the bygone days.

Further afield the citrus groves surrounded the cluster of garden suburbs or urbanizaciones, as they are called.  The owners had long since yielded to the inevitable in establishing the rule that if you wanted to walk through his groves you were allowed to carry away with you any fruit that you could fit in your pockets, but bags were not permitted.  Noli would laugh at this, and evening walks with her usually involved a shopping trolley, as I would glance nervously around, imagining armies of angry fruit growers bearing down upon us wielding big sticks.

Back at the urbanizaciones, the (mostly) pretty houses still do not have mains gas or sewerage today, as residents fear the expense of such major installations.  The very heavy gas cylinders – bombonas  - were delivered by the bombonero on certain days of the week, and he would leave them at the front gate, with 12 steps still to climb to the front door.  While he could, my father valiantly struggled with them unless we were around, but in the end they had to depend on neighbours or the goodwill of the delivery man.  The cooking was done using these cylinders, and there were many times when the preparation of meals – a Christmas lunch once – was brought to an abrupt halt, and recriminations liberally sprinkled with dramatic exclamation marks would follow –

“The bombona’s finished! The turkey isn’t ready!”

“Well put another bombona in then!”

“There isn’t one!”

“Well you order them, don’t you?”

“Why is it always my fault?”

“When is the next delivery?”

“After new year!”

“Oh my God!”

(Later, after Dad had gone next door...) “Noli says we can finish it off on the paellero – we can’t use their oven because they’re cooking stuff for their family party tonight!”

“The paellero?  Are you MAD?  How can we cook a turkey on a paellero?”

“I don’t know!  It’s your fault anyway, if you had ordered a new bombona...”

...and so on.

(To be continued.  Next time - the cesspit...)

-oOo-

Photo Finish
- from Lonicera's non-digital archive

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"Iolanthe" production - the pictures

It's been such a busy few weeks that I haven't had time to do what makes me happiest - write a story.  Health issues, busy shows, happy weddings, sad funerals - and not enough time to look at the screen and think.  So for this week I'll show you my dress rehearsal photos of this year's production of the Bristol Gilbert & Sullivan Operatic Society - Iolanthe - with comments.

John as one of the lords, looking pensive

(and very hot under that crown, apparently)

Another lord, with as it happens, his father (in real life)

in similar role standing behind him. 

Two of the fairies - they claimed the wigs they wore were even hotter!

The Queen of the Fairies

This fairy had disobeyed a fairy law and had been sentenced to

live at the bottom of a river for 25 years,

hence the green hair...

This fairy was going to find it difficult to walk about the stage so they arranged a wheelchair for her, suitably covered in foliage.  In her right hand she holds an ear trumpet (all the better to hear with) and in her left is Philip the corgi, normally carried around by the Queen of the Fairies (an innovation this year which went down very well with the audience).  Philip was a glove puppet, and was therefore able to react wonderfully to what was being said.  He almost upstaged the Queen...

The love interest - singing how they feel about each other.

End of Act One

The "very susceptible Chancellor". 

(He makes all his own costumes - isn't it beautiful?)

A close-up of the Queen which shows off her adorable "crown".

In all Gilbert's plots there are simpering 'young ladies' being coy with the men before trapping them into marriage.  In this case the women were fairies who never aged, and the men were lords in Parliament.  He was clearly trying to tell us something about the times - or how he saw women...

The sentry outside the Houses of Parliament

The Finale

-oOo-

 Photo Finish

- from Lonicera's non-digital archive

An outing to Wells Cathedral with a visiting school friend

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LapBand catch-up

Funny how things work out.  In the post before last I told you how over-restricted I felt, and the uncomfortable physical consequences.  I booked myself an appointment at the bariatric hospital in Taunton where I had had the lapband fitted, to have a partial unfill.  That was for Wednesday 21st March, and by the time I attended the appointment it had become even more important that I have it done.

About a month ago I felt a grey patch rise from the outer corner of my left eye, through which I couldn’t see, but after blinking nervously a couple of times it dissolved and went away.  I forgot about it until a few weeks later when on the Monday of the week before my appointment it happened again as I was getting dressed. 

This time I did worry (vaguely) and made a telephone appointment with my doctor, though they couldn’t fit me in until Tuesday 20th.  I was at work when she rang, and as I was telling her about it her voice sharpened and she fired a lot of questions at me, then thoroughly scared me by telling me I might have had a mini stroke. 

In no time at all I found myself booked in to see a stroke specialist at another Bristol hospital, by which time I had been to Taunton and had 0.75cc removed from the band (after a lot of discussion as to how much it should be – in the end I followed their advice).  All the tests in Bristol proved I had not had a mini stroke, but that there had been a partial blockage of the vein leading to the eye, which was probably diabetes related.  I’ve been put on all sorts of pills ever since and for the foreseeable future, and dire warnings about controlling my diabetes.  I thought I did, but apparently from now on I must test myself several times a day.

Enough of the boring stuff. 

I realise that my over-restriction may have been the cause of all this, because I know I was eating too many sweet things.  So having more removed from the band has worked well – I can now eat the meat-and-two-veg I had craved for the last 2 years, and the temptation to eat sliders has remained just that:  a temptation, rather than my brain demanding food, ANY food.  The other discomforts have almost disappeared, except when I ate too fast recently, which proved to me that there was still restriction there.  The other added benefit is that I can now swallow pills relatively easily. 

At the moment I’ve found it reasonably easy to steer clear of sweet junk food because a consequence of my eye episode is that I’m not allowed to drive for a month from the day it occurred.  John is therefore giving me lifts when I need them, and mostly I don’t, because I’ve used up some holiday and I’m at home.  So no chance to get near a sweet shop! 

My requirement of insulin has gone right down, a good sign, but I shall be back on wheels after Easter, and need to continue to resist sweet things.  From now on I have to remind myself that I don’t want to end up blind or having a stroke.  I also have to remember to be calorie-aware with the food I can now eat. 

I may look back on the unfill as being in the nick of time for my general health.

-oOo-

Photo Finish

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

The spring...

...is sprung...

...the grass is riz...

...the bird...

...is on the wing.

But that's absurd!

I thought the wing wuz on the bird...

-oOo-

Tales from Argentina – The Rail Crash

On Wednesday 22nd February 2012 Argentina suffered one of the most serious railway accidents in its history.

(Internet picture)

The crash at Once station, Buenos Aires, 11/02/2012
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It happened at one of the major termini in Buenos Aires known as Once (full name Once de Septiembre), where trains arrive from west of the city. 51 people were crushed to death and over 700 injured when the train reached the terminus and due to brake failure was unable to stop. It hit the buffers at about 25 miles per hour, enough to concertina the first crowded four carriages, stacking one inside the other.

The trains are old and poorly maintained, windows and even doors sometimes drop off; passengers report that there are also tiles missing from the floor here and there, through which you can see the rails flashing by. None of this would have come to light if the mortality rate had not been so high and the anger of the surviving commuters so great.

For some time I have been following a blog called Relatos de una Pueblerina en la Ciudad (Stories of a Village Girl in the City), its writer Mechi being the village girl of the title. She lives in Moreno, 45 km/28 miles west of the capital and works in downtown Buenos Aires at a job she loves, in the quality control of computer games. She’s a regular weekday commuter, and was on the ill-fated train.

Mechi is a witty and sharp observer of the eccentricities of her fellow daily commuters, but I’ve always been keenly aware of the discomfort she is forced to endure in this daily routine.

There aren’t enough trains or buses to accommodate the number of commuters needing to get to work in the capital and every weekday morning she arrives at her local station (which is the end - or the beginning - of the line) fretting about whether she will be able to get on the train without having her hair pulled, her ankles kicked, her clothes torn, her feet crushed or her eyes stabbed by elbows and bags.

She anxiously checks the electronic timetable when she arrives on the platform, noticing the services which have been cancelled without explanation yet again and tensely awaits the eventual arrival of the next train. She frequently finds herself in tears as she desperately tries to outwit the crowds so that she can get to work on time and in such a way as to find somewhere to sit, to enable her to recover her dignity and relax before the next stage of her journey to the office.

She and her fellow travellers use careful judgment and sheer cunning to try to get a seat, as the journey takes over an hour; she has remarked in wonder that once the frantic struggle to get one’s own space on the train has been negotiated, people switch from vicious to kindly in an instant as they invariably laugh with relief and behave as if it had never happened.

She attempts to shut out the loud chatter and the ever present stench of urine by listening to music on her iPod, or if she’s been able to get a seat, by dozing. After alighting from the train she catches a bus for the last hour of the journey into town.

Such is the overcrowding that many seats are taken even before it arrives at this last station on the line, for commuters who live several stations nearer the city will board the train in the wrong direction and therefore add 15 minutes to their journey - just to ensure they get a seat.

There is fear too. Even if larger and more aggressive travellers have been skilfully avoided, there is the problem of the state of the train itself. She tries to avoid choosing the carriages which have tiles in the floor missing; it gives her nausea to see the rails racing by underneath. The doors don’t always work properly, however when commuters complained to the company – TBA (Trenes de Buenos Aires) that people smoking on crowded trains made the journey intolerable, they responded in an unexpected manner by knocking out the windows of the carriage allocated to smokers “so that the smoke could escape”. Commuters didn’t know whether to be surprised because of their choice of solution to the problem or because they had bothered to respond at all.

On the morning of 22nd February Mechi felt stressed even before the train pulled into Moreno station. Making split second decisions she ran past the first carriage, which she knew would fill up to unbearable levels with last minute arrivals; she carried on past the second because it was the smokers’ compartment, and after a brief hesitation sped past the third because she assessed that she would still smell the smoke. Her decision to board the fourth carriage and her success in finding a seat probably saved her life.

The journey was uneventful – or at least it was by her standards. The carriage was packed and someone who got on several stations down the line had even opted for the uncomfortable tiny enclosed cabin at the end which had a sign on it forbidding its use – perhaps because it was used for storage. But even that was better than being crammed between so many bodies. Mechi was in a double seat facing two other seats - but sometimes the crowding was such that people would stand in the tiny space generally occupied by the four pairs of feet.

As the carriages ahead rounded bends she could see through the window sparks flying from the wheels; at various stations the driver didn’t stop properly so that all exiting passengers could alight onto a platform, and at one point a plastic cover on the door mechanism of her carriage sprang loose and passengers who were pressed against the door had to help keep it pinned back so that the sharp edges didn’t injure both them and the people getting in and out. But, as she said later, this was not unusual.

As they pulled into the terminus at Once, early morning rush hour was at its height and in the densely packed carriages people were gathering up their belongings. Books and iPods were stowed away, women tidied their hair and rucksacks were zipped up. The lucky ones who had managed to get a seat had stood up to stretch their legs and prepare themselves for the exit scrum.

The train had slowed and suddenly braked very sharply. Sleepy expressions turned to terror and Mechi heard the sound of hundreds of people screaming as they were knocked off their feet. Then there was a muffled crunching sound as the train hit the buffers and passengers were flung through the air to the front of the carriage. She herself was thrown on top of the young woman who had been seated facing her, and her first concern was to help her to her feet and ensure she was alright. She had been protected from further injury by the row of seats in front of her.

There were sprawling passengers tightly packed several high in the gangways, and some were bleeding. She found it impossible to extricate them, though she was able to help one girl who had hurt her leg and as they sat her down she continued to cry hysterically. Mechi could see that there was nothing further she could do without expert help and decided to exit the carriage where more horrors awaited her as she picked her way dazedly past heavily injured people who had been pulled out and onto the platform.

(Internet picture)

The crash at Once station, Buenos Aires, 11/02/2012

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Even in shock she observed that the third carriage was deep inside the second, and the second deep inside the first, with the sides looking like so much torn cardboard. The buffers were half way into the first carriage. People were screaming insults at the driver – who survived relatively unscathed – and tried unsuccessfully to get to him.

Whilst Mechi kept repeating to herself over and over that it was her loathing of cigarettes that had made her choose the fourth carriage, a man at the exit, looking white and drawn, told anyone who would listen that he had been in the train behind because he had missed this, his usual one, and he always travelled in the first carriage...

Trembling, she boarded her bus to go to work, and when she got there she did the only thing that could comfort her at that point. She sat down and wrote it all out in her blog. It wasn’t till she got home later that she learned the true extent of the crash, and about the number of victims, and just how lucky she had been.

Over the next few days her blogger friends were prompt to offer comfort, as the emergency services commented on what they had seen, and the fact that oil had had to be used to prise apart the tightly jammed dead victims. There were angry protests, grieving families, and desperate people looking for their relatives not knowing whether to search in hospitals or mortuaries. Fifty deaths were reported, with many of these unnamed and unaccounted for.

The driver said his brakes had failed, but that had been happening for some time and no maintenance had been carried out. On the journey that morning they had failed at an earlier station, but when he reported it he had been told to carry on. It was later revealed that this shocking instruction had been given based on past experience: if they had accepted the issue as a maintenance problem the train would have had to be emptied of passengers; hundreds of angry people thwarted from getting to their destinations for many hours. On a previous occasion they had turned on the staff in a very ugly scene and the trains were set alight. TBA wanted to avoid a repetition of this incident, which had been extensively reported in the media.

Accusations flew back and forth at high level within TBA and the government; finally the president herself gave few opinions on the subject, and always during speeches where other subjects were also being covered. She grieved for the dead and their families, she said, we will find the culprits and they will be punished accordingly. Yes, she continued, there had been a lack of investment in the railways, but this was because previous governments from the seventies had left her with a high level of debt. She was careful to define exactly to which administration she referred, since the last one had been her own (she is on a second term) and in the two before that her own husband had been president. Some days after that she sacked the transport minister.

Meanwhile the parents of a young man called Lucas Menghini still desperately searched for their 20 year old son, who had been observed on closed circuit television entering the train that morning, and begged the emergency services to search again. Three days later it was announced that the body count had gone from 50 to 51. His body had been found in the fourth carriage, where Mechi had travelled. Lucas had sought to make the journey a little easier on himself by taking refuge in the little cabin with the sign on it forbidding passenger access. When the train crashed it became a death trap, and he was only identified by the contents of his rucksack.

In Mechi a terrible anger was growing at the pointlessness of the deaths, the inaction by the authorities and most of all against TBA and its treatment of its customers. She remembered over her two years of commuting how frequently the staff had treated them like cattle, herding them in and out of trains with shouts and insults, how complaints were either ignored or treated with contempt.

She sat down and wrote an open letter on her blog to TBA explaining why, despite her upbringing when she had been taught never to hate anybody; she hated TBA with body and soul. If you treat people like animals, they become brutalised; she didn’t blame the daily commuters for behaving as they did, she said, she blamed TBA for not only disregarding its customers, but for actively pursuing a policy of put-up-and-shut-up. “You have turned us into psychotics”, she claimed.

Her letter struck a chord in many people, who copied and pasted it onto their Facebook page, and before she knew where she was she had turned into a minor celebrity, with thousands of hits on her blog and many dozens of comments championing her reaction. She was contacted by television channels, radio stations and newspapers, all wanting to interview her and quote her blog. Bewildered by all the unexpected attention, she responded to everybody as best she could, and her obvious inexperience and fresh approach multiplied the effect.

Aside from making scores of new virtual friends who are helping her overcome the shock and horror of what she went through, her anger has achieved what politicians would give their right arm for – attention at the highest level.

In the short-term things have got worse.  Taking fright, TBA have removed all trains from service judged to be substandard and replaced them with a reduced bus service and a special train service at double the cost of a ticket.  This does not even begin to cope with the vast numbers of people travelling to work, and the trains that do work are having to leave doors and windows open so that the more intrepid can travel by holding on to the outside while securing a foothold inside the carriage.  Facing seats now always have rows of people standing between them.  Police guard the platforms to break up scuffles.

Whereas before the crash passengers were travelling a couple of stations in the wrong direction to enable them to have a seat on the 'return' journey to Once, people who would have been boarding the train several stations further still along the line on the way to the city are now choosing to go in the opposite direction for half their journey rather than risk queuing for an hour to get an overcrowded bus.  The president has made no further comments.

It now remains to be seen whether anything is done. All that is reported in the newspapers is the update of negotiations on which government department will take on the responsibility for the railways above and below ground.  Nothing is yet known about what exactly caused the accident and enormous loss of life.

One month on and at 8.32 on the morning of Thursday 22nd March passengers alighting from the same service at Once station showed they had not forgotten - as the thousands of people descended from the train wave upon wave of clapping echoed through the huge terminus.  It was a clear message to TBA "We won't forget, and you won't either".  Meanwhile in Buenos Aires itself and other cities in Argentina by prearranged signal motorists sat on their horns at 8.32 for several minutes.  In her office at the Casa Rosada, if the president missed the clapping she most certainly will have been unable to ignore that cacophony.

Internet pic, 8.32 a.m. one month from the accident.

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TBA's unpopularity has spread and - at last - it has been reported that the investigations are to include the recently discovered 800 odd formal complaints submitted to TBA between 2006 and 2009 which were ignored by the company.

On a lighter note, one of the many individual stories was of a man whose brand new shoes saved his life - on that morning in February he had realised that he would be too uncomfortable standing in a crowded train until the shoes had been worn in an little, not to mention the upset he would feel if anybody trod on his gorgeous new purchase, and opted for a later train after the rush hour so that he could sit down.  How many times in our lives have we unknowingly saved our skins by such trivial decisions?

Mechi has taken remedial action in her own life so as not to be at the mercy of old and malfunctioning trains any longer and is moving away from the family home in the village of Moreno to share a flat in town, a short bus ride away from her job.

Internet pic

Note added on 28th March 2012 - a correction:  Mechi has commented today that although she has moved, she is still in the village of Moreno, as the home she and her boyfriend have been building (themselves) is now finished.  Her move is therefore unrelated to the accident, and her commuting difficulties are set to continue for now.  She is both brave and resourceful, and I wish her the very best.

-oOo-

Photo Finish

from Lonicera's non-digital archive

From a garden, and a rugby game,
plus some clouds at the end for Penny at Snap That

I liked the photographer craning for a shot on the left

with the shouting man behind him,

and the two men top right watching the kicker,

as a frame for the picture.

Trying my hand at panning...

Fuerteventura, Canary Islands

Portishead, North Somerset

Portishead, North Somerset

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