Hey there.
A new and improved version of this post can be found by clicking here.
I’ve upgraded this blog to make it more interesting and user-friendly. It has a new name – Down Unknown Roads – and a new address (www.downunknownroads.com).
You’ll find all the old posts (although a small few have different names), and our continuing adventures are now featured there for you to enjoy.
Thank you for coming to this site, and I hope to see you Down Unknown Roads. Ciao XX Bev.
ENTERTAINING MR BROADBENT (& co)
It was time to leave lovely Moncarapache and the fabulous Intrepids, so we decided to throw a little farewell party. To make it cosy, Steve and I tried to put up the safari room that fits onto the side of Georgie. We’ve done this once before with the help of Lawrence (Steve’s daughter Rosie’s partner – stay with me here) and it seemed pretty self-explanatory, but this time it appeared to have morphed into a puzzle of double-mensa proportions. So I got Mr Jim Broadbent to help and went and cut up bread and cheese, and filled bowls with Pala-pala (a brand of micro-chipstick that we are all addicted to).
Despite days of running to and from electrical shops we’d been unable to find the right combination of TV, speaker, connecting cable, and microphone neccessary to get my karaoke working. In the end, Steve signed us up for 2 days of online karaoke. It had over 20,000 songs. Anything you could think of. No mic, but brilliant all the same.
Kick off was at six, and by six thirty we had crammed nineteen people into Georgie and the party was in full swing. At seven thirty Steve got the karaoke going. Now it must be said that when I’d mentioned the idea previously, several of the Intrepids had been somewhat lukewarm about the idea, but as the first song up was the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York, everyone sang their hearts out.
We did all the usual Christmas songs with the men trying to outdo each other on the Noddy Holder bit, then moved on to golden oldies and classics. Steve was wistful about having seen Dusty Springfield in concert when he was young. The warm-up band had been some chaps calling themselves The Beatles. And we all got well-oiled and sang until Georgie vibrated.
By about ten, some of the people had wandered home, and we were left with the party die-hards; Terry and June, John and Brenda, Mr and Mrs Jim Broadbent, and two couples that we’d never met before. That’s how parties go though, isn’t it?
Steve had somehow got drunk again, and was starting to be very bossy with the karaoke as it was playing from his phone. He put on obscure music that no-one but me had ever heard of, but then forgot to sing along. He also got very excitable as he was sitting next to Mr Jim Broadbent, who is always upbeat and who wanted to walk 500 miles, then do the entire Proclaimer’s back catalogue.
At one point Steve tried to get his attention, but due to the effects of alcohol on his not-quite-recovered-from-the-stroke brain he couldn’t remember either of his names and ended up yelling, ‘Darling! Darling!‘ at him, without noticing there was anything untoward about this. Honestly: pissed myself.
For me, this was the signal to wrest the phone from his hands and get the karaoke back under some kind of control. So I put on ‘Let it go‘ from Frozen for him to sing and you never saw a happier man. Apart from Jim, who also looked a little teary. ‘Great song, this,‘ they both agreed, as they mumbled the bit about fractals.
Sadly, the next day Brenda had gone down with some horrible bug, and by the time we left early the following morning, John, Mr Jim Broadbent and Steve were all complaining of feeling shit.
Some of the fabulous Intrepids, on one of their boot-camp style yomps.
AND SO TO SPAIN
We’d been invited to spend Christmas with Elena’s parents (Julio and Emilia) in Don Benito, Spain. Elena is our son Sam’s girlfriend and they were both going to fly over and spend Christmas there as well. We were all very excited, (Sam especially so as he’d heard that Don Benito translated as ‘Mr Pretty Man’, which we both thought was terribly cool until we found out it didn’t).
We’d planned an easy journey so that we wouldn’t be too tired: across to Seville, then up the motorway towards Merida, stopping for the night at a truck stop on the way, and doing the last leg the following day.
Near Monasterio we stopped for petrol and found the motherload of truck stops: Leo’s 24hour service station, complete with mini-mart, gift shop, self-service cafe, restaurant, bar, showers, hotel, squash courts, enough parking for 100 trucks, and – get this – its own butchers and deli.
We had most of the car park to ourselves, with a fabulous view of the mountains. Two eagles flew over the van as we drove in. Just spectacular.
It had everything and none of it was the usual down-market tat you get in Britain, though I searched and searched for something crap to photograph. The best I could find among the beautiful, soft, leather handbags and miles of artisan pickles, cheeses and marmalades was a shelf of pocket knives with artfully carved wooden handles – in the shape of slightly flaccid penises.
Now, I am generally a glass half full person and so this caused me to wonder why I judged them to be on the way down, so to speak, rather than on the way up? (Notice that I did not say ‘almost erect’). I once had a friend who was interviewed by a policewoman after seeing a flasher. ‘Was it erect or flaccid’, the PC wanted to know? My mate was twelve and had no idea what she was talking about, so the PC tried again. ‘Was it dingling or dangling’, she asked? Not helpful. No. But it came to mind as I looked at those penknives. Did they have a hint of dangle or a sorry attempt at a dingle?
Steve was now feeling terrible from the bug and I was succumbing to it as well. Bugger. Searched out all the drugs we had bought with us and cursed myself for not having thought of a gallon of Nightnurse and some industrial strength Sudafed when packing. We went to Monasterio and tried to persuade two different chemists to sell us as much vitamin C as possible and any other drug we could get. They’d never heard of time-release vit C, and if they had, they weren’t going to sell it to us. So we coped with what they gave us and went back to Leo’s for a three-course meal, with bread, and wine or coffee for €8.50.
FELIZ NAVIDAD (COUGH, SPLUTTER, SNIVEL, ACHOO)
Emilia and Julio have a town house in Don Benito for the winter, and a country house, just outside, for the summer. It was arranged that Sam and Elena, along with her sister Julia and boyfriend David, would stay with us at the country house. It had a huge driveway that Elena was certain we could get Georgie onto, and if it didn’t make it around the tight corner, then we could drive her straight onto next door’s driveway instead.
Well, we didn’t make it around the corner, so onto the neighbour, Manolo’s, driveway we went. We shoved everything we thought we might need into the house, took more drugs, and followed Julio around as he showed us where everything was. He didn’t speak English and we are total beginners at Spanish, but it amazing how much you can figure out by people pointing at things.
He built up an enormous fire, which had the advantage of being on an inside wall, on the other side of which was our bed-head. We were assured that the heat would transfer well into the room. Great. Because this was the summer house, which means it was designed specifically to stay cold. Great high ceilings, tiled floors, lots of drapes and shutters, no central heating. Dear old Julio came three or four times a day while we stayed there and built up that fire every time. Probably used an entire tree. Sorry, environment, but I was cold and had the flu, so it had to be done.
The family were wonderful, warm, loud, and gushing. We met the two grandmas, 93 year old Emilia, and 91 year old Visi (pronounced busy). Emilia wanted to know why my hair was grey when hers was still dark brown. Honestly, so did I. There were aunts and cousins and friends and Elena’s elder brother, Juan, with his wife and new baby. I had to tell them all that I had a bug and would only shake their hands, and I wouldn’t go near the baby. Steve and I were terrified that after our visit we’d find out we’d killed off both the grandmas and the baby would be in intensive care. So we kept our distance. And then we cried off and went back to the country, and fell into bed.
Bad photo of lovely grandma Emilia
The next day was Christmas Eve and was the traditional day for celebrating: the big meal would be in the evening and the gift giving would occur after that. In general, only a small gift is given at this time, the main presents arriving with the advent of The Three Magic Kings at Epiphany. Or the Three Wise Men, as we know them. I asked Elena why they are called ‘magic’ and she thought for a long while and then said, ‘because they are magicians‘. So there you have it.
It makes sense when you consider that Santa Claus grew out of a Scandinavian tradition, and so would be of much less importance here. The Kings bring the gifts to baby Jesus, so that’s when the children get their gifts as well – on the 6th January. But because Elena and other members of her family could only get time off at Christmas, they decided to celebrate a little early.
Thanks to the flu and all the medication we took, the next few days are a bit of a blur. Steve and I had to take turns doing the meals while the other one crashed in bed. I ate spider crab legs, he ate a sparrow. Older Emilia became my very best friend despite not understanding a word each other said. We used Google Translate A LOT.
Elena’s mum kindly sent each of us home with jars of homemade soup and bags of food, which we were too ill to make use of. The next door neighbour cut us veg from his patch – some broccoli, a romanescu and the biggest cauliflower I have ever seen. I genuinely didn’t know they made them that big. Since Julio nearly severed his foot falling off the patio roof a year ago, he has been unable to grow his own veg. So he keeps chickens in what was his veg patch and Manolo grows the produce. Then they share it. Here is a picture of the cauliflower, with an orange, for purposes of scale.
We went out to bars and met all their lovely friends. Julio showed us pictures of his house in Almancil, on the coast, and practically ordered us to stay there as long as we wanted. They showered us with every bit of hospitality it is possible to receive.
And then I disappointed my son.
Let me explain.
When I was a kid I had a phobia about ‘slimy’ foods: you know, things that have no bite to them, like custard. Couldn’t bear them, made me gag. Then one day my parents gave me a plate of tinned spaghetti, the mere sight of which was appalling to me. And my helpful elder brother, Mac, said, ‘that’s worms, that is‘. Fast forward fifteen years and I am finally able to eat both custard and pasta, but only in small quantities. Fast forward another fifteen and I am wolfing them down with gusto. Yay, sorted.
But……when you’ve got the flu……..you just want comfort food, and familiar things, and nothing that tastes a bit ‘funny‘. Don’t you?
So when a plate of angulas were put down in front of me, I admit, I freaked out a bit. Because they are baby eels. Elvers. And, of course, they are small – about the width of a piece of tinned spaghetti – and grey. Oh yes. With no hint of a tomato sauce to disguise them. It was all my childhood food nightmares come back to haunt me. In my drugged up and bacteria-logged state I imagined I would have to sit there until I ate a whole plateful, just like when I was a kid (mums did that then – thought it was good for you).
So I did eat one. And it was actually nice, and nothing liked it looked. And my son commented that he thought I was more adventurous than that. And I wanted to be the mum he thought I was, and scoff them down with sophisticated assurance, but they were GREY! And then Julia, Elena’s sister said that she didn’t like them either, and I thought, ‘Oh thank God‘.
MOVING ON
On our last day, Manolo and Julio came and cooked lunch for us at the country house. Both Emilias came, and the long table was laid for us and all the neighbours. Julio said that he and Manolo have been best friends since they met on the first day of school, aged five, over sixty years ago. Sweet.
They were going to cook a traditional spanish peasant breakfast dish for us, and to do this, they needed to utilise the cauldron. The one that Julio had been using to take out the fire ashes all week. I love this.
They worked really well together, as you would expect. Using knives that Crocodile Dundee would quail at, they hacked up bacon into lardons the size of your average chocolate brownie. They browned them off in loads of olive oil, then scooped them out to make way for three whole heads of garlic, split into cloves. Then they chucked in a washing-up bowl of red pepper strips, and softened and charred them. Finally, the oil was used to flavour and fry an entire cauldron full of breadcrumbs. This meant stirring and stirring, so that each crumb had some oil, and had crisped up a little – about 40 minutes of hard graft, I reckon. This was man food.
They’d also broken up different types of chorizo meat and mushed them in pans with wine and other flavourings. The peppers, garlic and lardons were stirred back in at the end, and bowlfuls of the mixture were topped with the fried chorizo. It was bloody lovely.
But then we had to leave. And the driveway that had been so easy to pull onto, was suddenly quite difficult to get out of. The gates opened inwards, so we had been at an advantage coming in. Trying to navigate our way out of a space that was only just big enough, with the gates catching and scraping along Georgie’s sides, was brutal. I’d held the right gate on the way in, but Steve’s angle must have been slightly different then because Manolo was getting crushed as he tried to do it.
But these were the men who carried knives and ate man food. They ate those bloody eels, for God’s sake – this was not going to beat them. In the end, one of Manolo’s sons had to climb onto the hedge, I kid you not, and lasso the gate for Julio and Manolo and Emilia to haul open with a rope. Don’t believe me? Here are the pics.
And then we were away. And where did we go? Back to Leo’s of course.
Over the hill and far away 