Sep 2006
Adios Almunecar
21/September/2006 12:56 .Once
upon a time.....Permalink
It looks like we are going. But there is an undeniable sadness tonight on saying goodbye to the town, a sadness of finality, of lost possibilities, of unfulfilled promises.
Putting out the rubbish this evening at 10.30 and meeting Jaime and Fiona was most certainly not just a coincidence. This had never occurred before in 8 years! In a typical unplanned way, they were the first people we met that led to the our eventual market pitch and my SAGA work teaching Tai Chi and Computers to tourists over the winter and spring months. Jaime was also helpful in finding us a flat.....and so many other things during out time here..... And now - unplanned - they are the people who have come to bade us farewell. It had to be. Perhaps what happens at the end, is that the moment stops being a repetition. It becomes again what it once was, what it always was, something new and fresh and pregnant with possibility.
Goodbye Jaime you uncarved block you.
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5 Flavours of Loja
21/September/2006 12:23 .Local life.Permalink
Flavour 1: Inside an Immobilaria
- You're famous aren´t you?
- Not that I knew
- You used to sing with the Communards
- No. Not with the Communards, no.
- Oh come on now.
- Can you just tell us if you have any flats to rent?
Okay Ive been mistaken for Jimmy Summerville before, but not in Spain! This was too much. Loja was to do this to us a lot. We would go somewhere looking for something, only to get something totally different. Its like entering one of those Bazar Ceuta 100pts shops. You go in for a packet of tissues and come out with a handy portable BBQ.
Flavour 2: Outside another Immobilaria.
Carmen lived at the bottom of the town and twice each day had to climb the steep hills to get to work.
- Hey Carmen, Don´t you find it a pain to have to climb up here every day? Wouldn't you prefer to live closer to the centre and avoid all this effort?
- You know Pablo what I really find difficult? Sitting down all day, thats what gets me, not the hills nor the steps.
Flavour 3: Outside the Hotel Bar
A SEAT Marbella pulls up. Its 9.30.am. I look up from my lukewarm manchada as my attention is drawn to the windscreen wipers that are frozen permanently at 45༠. The car shudders, shakes, spits and then stops a few feet from my table. Yogi withdraws behind my feet. The doors fall open as though they had each been held in place by their occupants. Out stumbles five elderly campesinos making a special trip for breakfast to the hotel. The last to exit the vehicle is a fragile prune on matchsticks that requires the support from all her fellow passengers. No-one is under the age of 70. Not even the one-armed driver who fronts the group ordering coffees in varying strengths and shapes in a voice than could be heard back on the coast.
Flavour 4: Bar Rufino
Half an hour before the film.
- Two glasses of wine.
With the wine is served two hot slices of tortilla, bread and olives. A welcome tapa after the coasts mangy offerings. Feeling guilty for drinking so little and eating so much we order two small tuna and tomato rolls. - ¿Que te debo Rufino?
- 3 con 70.
- Whoa.
Flavour 5: The Cine club in the Casino.
A young guy stands outside handing out postcards with a picture of the film on one side and a resume of the back. He waves us into a darkened seating area, filled with leather backed armchairs facing towards a large screen temporarily erected at the front of the room.
- How much ?
- Nothing. Its free whilst the old cinema is being repaired.
- Whoa.
Almost
14/September/2006 11:55 .Once
upon a time.....Permalink
Still no flat though we viewed 9 places in two days. Are we just too picky? Is this going to be the same problem as always - we want the mountain air and to be in the center of town at the same time. We want sea views whilst living inland. We want a bar next door in the middle of a forest. Is that too much to ask? I don´t think so.
Less then two weeks before we have to move out of the flat and still nowhere to move to. A sense of excitement is marred only by an equally forceful sense of disaster. But this is the balance that we have sought - for it is only the presence of these two extremes that serve to remind us that we are indeed alive once again. And that this unmapped route we have chosen - pot-holed, poorly lit and rutted as it may be - is infinitely preferable to a tarmaced motorway that neither weaves nor winds nor allows for spontaneous stops.
Its a delicious moment when life rolls irreversible forward.
Play: Ive changed my address - Diana Krall.