Driving over Lemons, (almost) Driving over Precipices and Hell-lo Godders

Many years ago, a friend of mine invited us to spend a couple of weeks in her farmhouse in La Alpujarra. Once we arrived at the nearest village, we had to drive for 45 minutes along a rutted potholed dirt road - and at night. As usual I got lost.  Never had a Ford Sierra better deserved its name as, magnificent, it superbly sailed over the terrain.

After an hour, however, I began to suspect that I had missed the turning to the farm, so in the blackest of black nights, I asked my Dark Lady to get out of the (RWD) car and guide me as I executed a three-point turn as obviously I did not want to get my wondrous car stuck in a ditch on a track with no street lighting. I had fearful visions of having to walk miles to get a mobile signal and then wait further hours for the tow truck to arrive - if indeed it would before daylight. 

Inching backwards and forwards and obeying the raps on the car meaning that I had reached the edge of the road, I finally managed to turn around, though not without a nerve-wracking moment when the back wheels began to scrabble on the edge of  the ditch. Once pointing in the right direction, we retraced our steps and were guided in my friend MB who had walked out to the turnoff.

The next day MB took us to where I had executed my wheel-scrabbling turn and my knees went weak as I looked over the edge of the "ditch" - it was in fact a 100-m precipice! Of all of my near-death experiences, this one is definitely in the top three.

After a week of idyllic tranquillity, we were suffering withdrawal symptoms for the city and so we wended our way to Granada where we spent the whole day marvelling at the number of buildings and people while simultaneously - and joyously - breathing in the air pollution. Such was our rapture with normal buildings that we were too overwhelmed to even consider visiting the Alhambra! We were also fascinated by the number of women wearing fuchsia tops.  

After our fix of city life we rumbled back up the mountains to the farm. Arriving at teatime, our rapture and amazement continued as, at the tiffin table, we were introduced to Godders and his wife whose name immediately escaped both of us due to Godders' aura.

Godders was (and I hope still is) a typical upper-middle-class English gentleman. Our first glimpse of him was his candy-stripe shirt, his fawn slacks and - most strikingly - his panama hat out of the sides of which sprouted an abundant mane of snow-white hair. There was so much of it that I immediately had the impression that it was stuck onto the sweatband of the hat, just like we see false noses stuck onto glasses. Also striking was the dense undergrowth of hair sprouting from his ears. He could have used curling tongs on it. And as for his beetling eyebrows, I suspect that when he used his bicycle, he would later have to spend at least a quarter of an hour removing the dead insects impaled thereon.  I was speechless, as was my partner. He was also, I must add, the possessor of a magnificent hooter.

When were introduced, he compounded the comic effect with a fruity nasal drawl that would make Leslie Philips' "Hello" (see min. 2.41) anemic by comparison.

We would later find out that he had bought a house further down the valley with no water rights. Unperturbed, Godders promptly bought a flat in town to do his laundry in. He also had an inflatable boat to row around his swimming pool. One day it sprang a slow puncture and he was disconsolate. It seemed to be on a par with the disastrous battle of Jutland, when Admiral Beatty commented: "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today". Still, Godders found the time and good grace to drown his sorrows in knickerbocker glories at Flambouyant, the local ice-cream parlour and, gentleman that he was, he treated us all on several occasions.

So, here's to Godders, English gentleman and all round jolly good chap. May his navy always rule a foreign swimming pool that is forever England.