Monday 9 December 2013

LA QUE SE AVECINA OR THE ONE THAT LOOMS

It's been a while since I wrote something on this blog but that's because I've been out. I could and I will write about the food, the wine, the women, the songs, the Pinteresque behaviour of my family, but I feel I have neglected the drama of some of the locals and so an update is in the offing. If you don't know the saga of Mr C and his wife next door or the prophet of doom upstairs then you'll have to backtrack a bit to the old blogs. Mr C, who brought me grief, was replaced by a sporty handball player who brought me wine, but he moved on and a waiter with a puppy moved in. Your woman upstairs left and gypsies are now renting. 

The last episode of Mr C involved him making strange moans every twenty minutes which was nothing out of the ordinary until I went to bed and it continued into the early hours. I knocked on the door and when his wife answered I could see him lying on the floor, face down in a pool of blood. I told his wife as much as I couldn't stand the bastard I wasn't going to let him lie there and was going to ring for an ambulance but she grabbed me and begged me to leave him be. Not content with driving me mad over the years she now wanted me to conspire in his demise by leaving him to bleed or freeze to death. 'They are coming tomorrow', she exclaimed and I deciphered she meant social services. Much to her chagrin I rang 112 and when they arrived they said pretty much the same, that even though he was a pain in the arse she should have called them when he first fell over and hit his head. As they lifted him off the floor he caught sight of H and muttered 'eres un payaso', 'you're a right clown'. That was the last time we saw or heard from him and he now resides in an old people's home in Angues which is too far for him to hop on a bus and haunt us once more. Meanwhile Mrs C had young men coming round in the early hours and while I didn't want to deny her a sex life, her nightly arguments with Mr C were replaced by amorous cries of delight. This went on for several nights and then Mr C's son showed up to cut off the gas and electricity. Along with the waitress from the Rico Rico and various other folk we all tried our best to help but the lack of hot water pushed Mrs C over the edge, into a taxi and back to Brazil. Six months later she appeared again with a locksmith who somehow changed the locks for her and she moved back in for about five minutes until the police came and turfed her out, handcuffed and arrested her and remonstrated with the locksmith for letting her in without proof of her living there.

I tried to get to the bottom of the story, believing all these years that Mr and Mrs C were not legally married and so therefore leaving Mrs C helpless before the law but it turns out they were married according to his son so she would have been entitled to live in the flat but somehow she was paid off and sent packing again to Brazil. However, according to Aragonese law anything bought by a partner before marriage doesn't automatically go to the spouse if the relationship ends in divorce. Apparently each province in Spain can have different laws regarding this matter and if you are a foreigner resident here there are often complicated disputes regarding wills and divorces as Spain expects the resident to comply with the law back in their place of birth even if you make a will here or get divorced here. In any case, Mrs C hasn't been seen since and no one can tell me what happened as everyone has their own version of events.

Meanwhile, yer woman upstairs, Mercedes continued to patrol the streets and community and then Anselmo her husband died. We assume she went back to her village and now the flat has been rented out to gypsies maybe as a deluded idea that we would suffer more living underneath them as opposed to the previous madness involving Mercedes and her dreaded hound Piti the Priapic Poodle. The parties next door continue and I, unable to beat them, join them.....