One for Prospective Bikers

At last, it seems that winter has finished. Here in Andalusia it is never really Spring until the dread day when the students in your class, be they High School or University students, become totally unmanageable and the class is given over to youtube videos, games or simply telling them silly stories. Obviously such external factors in no way affect we professionals who labour under the onerous task of teaching them!

I of course do not indulge in such silliness. The fact that I have fun classes - if my students want them or not - does not mean that in the back of my mind professional foresight is not at work. Perish the thought that I too am affected by such sap-rising factors as the weather and temperature!

April, as my uncle TS would say, is definitely the cruellest month. Seville's April Fair falls, naturally enough, in April - except next year when it is in May and gives me a huge holiday two weeks after Easter. But I digress. There is a saying in Spanish - No te quites el sayo hasta el 40 de mayo which in English is: cast not a clout till May is out. This is also true of motorcycle clouts. 

I have been happily casting clouts for the past few weeks, but now it is the turn of my biking clouts to be washed and prepped in preparation for the motorbiking season. Such preparations are not however the only ones needed. My [t]rusty old steed needs a thorough overhaul after the recent winter rains that filled the petrol tank with water - and yet still it fired up!!!  

Luckily, after the donkey-work of removing and cleaning the easy bits, my son, a fully-qualified mechanic of high-performance bikes, will do the rest and resuscitate my zombie-bike in time for my April excursions far and wide as I escape, briefly, the purgatory that is Seville for more pleasant places and, dare I say it, less obnoxious people.

To the Lighthouse!

This particular, and not very original, musing has nothing to do with Virginia Woolf, whose works, to my great shame (and please forgive such a shameful pun!) are still a closed book. The title however, is particularly apt.

A Spculative drawing of the Lighthouse at Pharos,
Alexandria Courtesy of Wikipedia 

What is the function of lighthouses? As we know the first one was at Pharos, Alexandria. Probably it is the origin of the name of the Portuguese coastal town of Faro and definitely of the Spanish (and I suppose Portuguese) word for lighthouse, faro. The function of the first, indeed all, lighthouses is twofold: to warn sailors of dangerous shores and to serve as an aid to navigation. Each lighthouse also has its own occlusion code so that experienced sailors can instantly recognise them.

Can we possibly imagine what it must have been like sailing close to the coast, but perhaps out of sight of land, our only guide the stars which would often be obscured by clouds and bad weather? As ships and navigation became more sophisticated and sailors ventured out onto the wide oceans, the welcoming wink of a lighthouse must have been a signal of hope and of home after months, perhaps years of sailing.

The first sign of land, of home, of family might have been the glimmer of a lighthouse. All of the

Lighthouse, Cádiz. Courtesy of Luis Domingo, as seen on
Panoramio 

crew would have been straining their eyes, trying to see over the horizon as they felt the call of their home port pulling them homewards, sensing the lighthouse even while it was still over the horizon.  All would have dreamt of their own lighthouse and of their loved ones. In the days before GPS, lighthouses were one of the few solid, immoveable reference points - a point that  even if it hadn't been seen for years, existed. That was known to exist, calling them home. The lighthouse was a point that the lost, the becalmed - and even the most assured navigators would instinctively aim for, even if it seemed so far away, so unattainable.

We all need lighthouses. We all need to know which is our lighthouse. But, for the lighthouse to call us we must also keep them in our own consciousness and call to them. Only then will we find them again through the fog and darkness of our own existential Odyssey.    

How to Make the Perfect Pancake

Today I have decided to reveal the secret of making good pancakes. I  hasten to add that I am talking about proper pancakes, not the American mattress thingies. Apparently I am what the German, little-toe amputating, marmoset-swimming, pancake-eating nihilihsts in The Big Lebowski might call a pfanküchenmeister, even though until last week I had not eaten them for about 9 years. 
However, my children and their friends love them, so they have featured regularly on the breakfast menu when we are up the mountain.
This week however, there were no children present - just myself and my half-orange, as the Spanish call our significant other halves and at her insistence I cooked and ate them with her for the first time in years. They were delicious! A pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled.
OK, so here's the recipe - all measurements are approximate:

• Ingredients: A goodly wodge of sifted wholegrain flour. This is my children's discovery; it makes the mix creamier and gives the resulting pancake a greater consistency. This flour is also better for the digestive system and contributes to helping make your poo float - always a desirable outcome (excuse the unintended pun) - unless it turns out to be a persistent, unsinkable Tirpitz (Turdpitz?) requiring 2 or 3 flushes and aerial bombardment with a squadron of Fairey Swordfish - or a bogbrush. 
• A free-range egg at room temperature.
• A pinch of sea salt - if possible, use Atlantic salt flakes from the saltpans of Cádiz, (does this make its main producer, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, a Mormon stronghold as in Salt-Flake City?) but don't try to snaffle your own - you tend to find yourself thigh-deep in mud, have to throw away a pair of unsalvageable jeans and drive home  in your stinking, stained undies. This can be rather embarrassing if you are staying in a flat in the city centre and have to cross the road to reach the apartment building looking and smelling like a Glaswegian alkie who has had a rather explosive accident.
• 1 1/2 generous dobbles of full-fat milk. Goat's milk is another possibility, but it gives the pancakes a sort of footy tang. When making savoury pancakes this does add a certain dimension to the experience, but it isn't really recommended for sweet ones.
• Preparation: make a hole in the centre of the wodge of flour and crack the egg into it. Discard the eggshell. Sprinkle on the salt and mix the egg and flour together using a fork. 
• Dribble in some milk and mix. Repeat the process until you have dribbled in the full 1 1/2 dobbles.
• The mixture should now have the consistency of cream. If it is too thick, add more milk in fractions of a dobble, if too thin, sprinkle on more flour using deciwodges, etc. Don't worry if you make too much, it freezes perfectly well.
• Obviously the mixing part can be done using a blender, but where's the fun in that?
• Cooking: If possible use a special pancake pan or a dedicated skillet. Pour a small amount of sunflower oil into the pan and heat until the oil runs around the pan as promiscuously as drunken students at a fresher's ball. Pour in enough mixture to cover the pan to a depth of about 1/10 in.
• The pancake is done on one side when it moves over the surface of the pan with a noise like rustling paper. You might need to free up the sides to allow it to move. 
• Toss the pancake, or turn it over with a spatula - this latter is not so impressive and only for the cowards among us, erm, you. I never resort to the spatula, leading to admiringly rapturous cries of "What a perfect tosser!!!" from those present as I deftly practise the dexterous wrist-flicker's art to an appreciative public.
• When done on both sides, serve on a warm plate.
• If using hot plates, NEVER sit down to eat naked, whatever the food or the occasion - it will end in tears. Literally.

Fillings:
Believe me, after scarfing down these rolls of sugary delight, you will probably need a few. Try to get tooth-coloured fillings as the others contain mercury.
Favourite family fillers include: strawberry jam, chocolate spread, condensed milk in those rather amusing non-drip squeezy bottles (known by some local wags as culo de maricón); honey - idem, lemon and sugar.

Our favourite savoury fillings are: smoked salmon with cream cheese, cured ham, caviar, cured cod in olive oil, goat's cheese etc., washed down with liberal libations of pink champagne - all very decadent and expensive and best left for special occasions - unless you substitute rosé wine or Fino sherry. Then again any day can be a special occasion with or without the champers. It obviously depends on the company. And I was in the best of all possible company.

This English Patient - or paciente inglés - has waited a long time to make these pancakes for his once and future Queen, and will do so again at the drop of a hat.

Wanna nother pancake, green eyes?
 All you gotta do is whistle!

We Know Where You Woz

So, last weekend I was in Cádiz, Spain's most captivating city, as I mentioned in a previous post. 

One of the enormous trees in Plaza Mina with the almost-completely

obscured Museum behind.

It is also one of Europe's most ancient cities and the oldest continuously inhabited one. In fact its Museum on Plaza Mina contains, as well as quite a few rather boring Murillo paintings, many artifacts dating from Carthaginian times.

Cruise ships - important sources of wealth
for today's city.

The city proper is at the end of a long isthmus and thankfully the wrecking ball of the 20th century left almost all of it intact, except for the area next to the commercial port which now welcomes numerous cruise ships.

Fidel would feel at home here.

Five centuries ago however, other, slightly less-welcome ships came to Cádiz as Drake and other English privateers raided the port - both for strategic reasons and indeed to land in nearby Puerto Santa María, carry off Sherry from Jerez and Manzanilla from Sanlúcar de Barrameda and no doubt to tarry with the exotic gaditanas, famous for their grace, elegance and beauty since Roman times. 

One of the results of these incursions was the razing of the city by the English and its consequent reconstruction along a grid pattern (centuries before Birkenhead whose grid street plan is said to have inspired the model for New York) to facilitate the movement of troops from one place to another as the need arose. Curiously enough, the new city and its fortifications were based those in La Havana in Cuba, hence the fact that it often stands in for the Cuban capital in big-budget Hollywood blockbusters.

Cádiz, therefore, is no stranger to Tom Cruise. I just wonder if he was able to peep over the promenade parapet without having to be lifted up by his mum! 

A piedra ostionera on the sea wall parapet.
  

The building material used in Cádiz was the local piedra ostionera, literally oyster stone. This is a rather porous sedimentary stone which, as the name suggests, is full of ancient sea shells. 

Impressive architecture with sumptuous carving and
ornate tilework.

Cadiz enjoyed the monopoly of trade with the Americas and so became an immensely rich city as the picture of this ornate house in the extensive Plaza de San Antonio shows. 

A house with a veedor

In this part of the city a lot of houses were originally built by shipowners and each had its own lookout tower, or veedor, where an employee would sit, looking out to sea, scanning the horizons for the arrival of the owner's ship(s) returning from the Americas laden with riches. Either that or he would sit there reading the sports pages and smoking ciggies. For centuries, between the hazards of the elements, English privateers and sundry wars the safe return of a ship was never certain until it had moored - and sometimes not even then. 

In the photo on the right we can see one such house with its veedor on the corner of the eponymous street. The street itself is a pleasant  mixture of small shops, fish friers and bars.

Another great advantage of the city's narrow streets and time-capsule like properties is that indeed there still are numerous small shops. Most of the city's department stores are located outside the historic city centre along the isthmus.

Calle Veedor 10, the Iron Duke slept here

After the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), the next time that Cádiz came to the notice of the English public at large was during the Peninsular War (1808-1812). The city became one of the few Spanish cities not to fall to the French. Lovers of historical novels might like to read El Asedio by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The French besieged the city by land and frequently bombarded it but, thanks to the Royal Navy's domination of the waves, life and commerce continued without too much hardship - at least for those inside the city. The French besiegers suffered constantly from a lack of supplies and guerrilla raids. It jolly well served them right, if you ask me. 

Ferdinand VII looking like a 

rotund Mr Bean.

From 1810 to 1812 what was in effect was the Spanish Parliament held sessions in the Oratorio de San Felipe Neri, an oratory in Calle del Rosario. It was during that time that the first Spanish constitution was drawn up, known as the Cádiz Constitution of 1812. It didn't take long, however, for the inept and absolute Bourbon monarch Ferdinand VII to abolish it as soon as he was back on the throne and thus plunge Spain back into political turmoil for over another century.

Rear view of the monument to Spain's first Constitution with a cruise
ship behind.

San Felipe Neri. The narrow
streets make it impossible to
get a decent shot

So, there is a brief trot through Cadiz and its history. There will probably be more in the same vein at a later date when I get another opportunity to escape from the rather over-rated city of Seville. During the April Fair perhaps? 

A couple of views along the streets of Cádiz. The sparkle of the sea is never too far away, no matter how long the street. Turning a corner is always a pleasant surprise - you might find another sparkling street or a large unexpected square. The city is well worth a long, contemplative visit - much longer than the ones that the cruise liners afford to their passengers who, replete with half-digested experiences and food, hardly have time to soak up the true experience of this welcoming, intimate pearl of a city before they are back in the boat and off to another destination.

Guess Where I've Been

A block of flats with lifeboats. Global warming and the 

rise in sea levels is getting serious. Ooh-err as they 

used to say in the Beano!

This weekend I was lucky enough to escape from Seville for a few hours and travel to another Andalusian city. As you can see I've included a photo of one of the streets there.  It would seem that the architects in this particular place enjoy a great degree of foresight - and judging by the satellite dish on the roof the inhabitants probably get to see some decent telly too! I will be posting more on my trip when I have my notes and photos in better order. A final clue: Norman Bates ran a hotel here. 

I Only Have Eyes for You

Well, it looks like it's time to trot out my favourite photo again:

This looks nothing like my Teutonic
boss.

Today, while listening to  the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, I was astounded to hear that Neanderthal man became extinct because their eyes were too big for their brains.

However, when we come to think about it, is this as bizarre as it first seems?

After all , Homo Sapiens might yet become extinct because their eyes are too big for their bellies.

Eyes bigger than his belly?

 Perhaps not

Calories in a box and burps in a can

It looks like Mother Nature might yet have the answer to the  problem that the human race poses for the earth, killing us off before we are old enough to reproduce; making reproduction well-nigh impossible, or so undesirable as to make pigging out on horseburgers and fizzy drinks infinitely more preferable. Indeedy,  the mere mechanics may be impossible for our, er, bigger brethren.

A pin-up? A rivet-up, more like

How Writing Has Come Full Circle

Although this post might firmly place me in the league of what the Spanish would term as "old carriage" or "big underpants" (Sorry, I'm an enthusiastic fan of bad literal translations), or in other words an old git, I would like to point out that I'm younger than Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs, or indeed both of them put together (!).

When I were a lad... 

When I started to write with joined-up letters, we had to use quill pens with bakelite or wooden shafts and steel nibs that were dipped into our porcelain desk inkwells every two or three words, pressing lightly on the upstroke and hard on the down. The inkwells would be refilled every morning from impossibly huge bottles of Stephen's Ink and over the weeks the inkwell, almost impossible to clean out, would fill up with sludge and blotting paper.


From the age of 8 to 11 we weren't allowed to use ballpens, although we could use our own fountain pens (usually steel Osmiroids). Ballpens and long trousers... the ultimate sign of maturity!

Such were things in the mid- to late 60s. We were still living in the Victorian age, but with tellies and free school milk - which put me off the stuff for life. My generation, however had it good compared to our forebears who had no exercise books with the multiplication tables up to 12 on the back, as well as imperial measurement tables.

Indeed, previous generations had had to make do with slate boards and a stubby piece of chalk (or were they horses' teeth bought from Tesco?). Exercises were done and then wiped, done and wiped, done and wiped, leaving no trace of what had been written thereon before. Today's i-tablets are about the same size as the old slate tablets - not that coincidental considering that both serve the same basic function and that they are made in proportion to the human body.

The great thing about i-tablets is that although we wipe what is written on the surface, it sinks into the device's memory and can be recalled at will. The tablet may, superficially, have been wiped clean, but it will never be a tabula rasa like the slate. If we want completely to wipe  the memory, we need to reformat the device, yet even so ghosts of the content remain and can be accessed by those who know how.  Memory - and the more the better - is what makes us what we are, so perhaps i-tablets are more human than hard, cold, clean slate.

The Secret Lives of Words.

First, I have to admit to stealing the title of this post directly from Isabel Coixet’s magnificent film The Secret Life of Words which included this haunting song on mortality and everyone's need for an anchor in their lives.

OK, the serious stuff over, let’s get down to business. As an ol-, ahem, mature and experienced linguist, though not so cunning a linguist as to be able to hide a rather salacious sexual innuendo in a text, I am indeed fascinated by the secret lives of words. For example, did you know that the suffix –ly in adverbs comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word lich or lych  meaning body? Hence the lych gate in churchyard, The body of the deceased would pause there on its final journey before entering the burial place.  Compare that with the Latin suffix -mente or –ment for forming adverbs in Spanish or French. This suffix means mind - as we can see, the English word is not too far removed from the Latin either. Briefly therefore we can conclude, as indeed did Salvador de Madariaga, that English is a language of action while Latinate languages are languages of reflection. This, he then went on to extrapolate, might also explain why English is a verb-driven language while Latinate ones are noun-driven

Buddhists and others believe in the transmigration and reincarnation of souls, a concept that I find, quite frankly, ridiculous – but then again I would . I sold mine for a run of green traffic lights on the way home from the cinema. Words however do have this ability to transmigrate and indeed transfigure themselves. I am not a serious etymologist – I prefer my etymologies to be objets trouvés. Here is my latest  favourite from – where else? – BBC Radio 4: for years I had assumed that the word git came from either the French gitain or Spanish gitano meaning gypsy. Bearing in mind the general impression of gypsies as rather discreditable fellows, it would seem a good explanation, but no! It is in fact from the Arabic word for pregnant camel and was brought back to GB by the troops serving in North Africa during WWII.

And this is what I want to talk about. After a long introduction, here is the anecdote.

I was born and bred in Liverpool and as such had a Liverpool accent. Vestiges of it remain, but having lived in Spain for nearly 30 years, it has slowly faded, even though it comes back pdq when I go back to the 'pool.

It was only recently, however, that one of the great mysteries of my childhood was solved. I had - and still do have - cousins in Gloucestershire and in summer my parents and I would frequently go on holiday with my uncle, aunt and their children.

  
These cousins would sometimes, in their rather quaint sheep-shagging acent, call me a “skarskit”, a term I never understood until recently when, re-watching an old episode of Till Death Do us Part, I heard the ranting Cockney Alf Garrnett call his son-in-law, played by Anthony Booth, Cherie Blair’s dad, a "blasphemious skarskit" (approx. 1.50). Retranslating this into Standard English, I realised that what he was saying was “Scouse git”. 

Another mystery solved. 

Wealth Inequality in America

Just watch. I'm speechless, but not really surprised.

Just Another Day

This morning, just like any other morning, I got up, had a shower, had breakfast and stood up ready to go to work but as soon as I stood up, a sensation of extreme exhaustion spread across my upper body. It was a feeling as if the muscles in my shoulders and arms had turned to jelly.

Slowly this sensation resolved itself into a feeling of cramp that spread from my arms to the back of my neck, my scalp and to the centre of my chest. "Oho", I thought, "something a bit iffy is happening here". So I put on my coat and walked the 100 or so yards to my local health centre/A&E unit, one of many dotted around Seville.

I arrived at 09:15 and by 11:05, I had had an ECG, seen the doctor four times and a nurse thrice, been dosed on two separate occasions with nitroglycerine, warned not to jump up and down too much in case I exploded, and monitored thereafter. I was finally sent home with an appointment to see my own GP and get a consultation with a cardiologist. I hasten to add that I was not the only patient there.

I had had an attack of angina. It was nothing serious, just one of the added attractions of getting, ahem, more mature. The point of this post, however, is not to moan about my health, but to sing the praises of the Spanish National Health Service, and more specifically the SAS, the Andalusian regional health authority. I am a frequent detractor of all things to do with the Andalusian Administration, but the SAS is world-class and probably explains why Spanish medical staff are at a premium in the rest of Europe. I would rather be seriously ill here than anywhere else in the world. 

So today's blog is simply to say thank you to the SAS for its speed, efficiency and outstanding work, as well as the friendliness of its staff.

Cardinal O'Brien

Is it plain bad taste to express that I have always had misgivings about him?
I always thought he was a bit of a w**k*r.
And... does anyone know who his right-hand man was?

A Stupid Question

Edith Piaf had rien de whatifs. 

Image courtesy of anddreamscapes.

tumblr.com

There is a Spanish saying: A palabras necias, oídos sordos, literally: stupid words should fall on deaf ears. I'd like to take that up a level and introduce the following idea: stupid words deserve stupid questions. Below is the stupid question I propose, but first some context.

Recently I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 Arts programme and one of the interviewees came out with the philosophical gem: "I didn't want to live a life full of 'What ifs?'"

At first sight, this sounds like quite a good philosophy, but it does indeed beg the (stupid) question: "OK, that's fine and dandy, but what if you hadn't taken that decision?