NOTES FROM ARAGON

Spain is not a country it is a state of mind. Perhaps Aragon is that part of our mind experts claim we never use. If you can't embrace or accept this you won't survive here. You will be found, in a bar probably, doing that thing you you promised not to do when you first landed here. Moaning about the locals. It's paradise if you can stand them, and they are not so bad if you make the effort to get to know them. These particular locals are famed throughout Spain for their obstinacy. Gerald Brenan mentioned this in The Spanish Labyrinth and it is true today although I am not sure about his observation that their physical appearance seemed to be of a more primitive stock. However, one can not open one's mouth without somebody else crying ' que no'. A hundred years before Brenan George Borrow came up against Aragonese pertinacity and bureaucracy. In chapter 13 of The Bible in Spain it is claimed 'that when one of that nation gets an idea into his head it is the most difficult thing in the world to dislodge it'. Nowadays the joke goes 'how do you get a million Aragonese into a Mini? 'Tell them you can't'.Despite all, this town is big enough for both of us. Henderson that is, and me. Think Trumpton crossed with Camberwick Green with a bit of The League of Gentlemen thrown in. Most of the shops are for 'local people'. If you want to know where to go when the world ends it must be here. For now we are ensconced or should I say sequestered in the foothills of the Pyrenees having left the straight life behind.................