ANA HAS BEEN UNWELL

Sometimes I feel our mayor presides over us like Lord Summerisle. Small towns in Spain often have that Wicker Man vibe. There are three other things that are a must, a bar, a church and a crane. I can't find his Lordship in today's Sunday paper which seems odd as he is oft to be found lurking among the various photo opportunities that grace the pages of our local rag.


Walking around town today in Sergeant Howie mode, I couldn't help noticing there was more than the usual amount of imbecilty in the air. A small gene pool and marriages between cousins leaves those of us 'de fuera' meaning 'from outside', or foreigners to you and me, feeling just a tad freaked out, especially when it comes to identical twins. I have never seen so many in one place. It gets weirder when they run a cafe or a shop and they both loom out and ask you if you are 'local', or worse, 'what bra size are you'. There are two sisters who I can't tell apart and found myself asking one of them 'are you sure it is you?' as I only know one of them and thought maybe she was 'the other one' and was just being polite and wondering what freak I could be. As I have said before, Spain is not a country but a state of mind and while I was dealing with the twin situation a midget walked by carrying an oversized carrier bag that was scraping along the ground. On the side of the bag was the name of the shop, 'Tall Girls'. Later on I saw the man who runs a baker's at the top of my road and I have no idea if he is a twin or a midget even as he is always seated in his bakery with his hands clasped firmly under his armpits. He asks 'que hay' when you enter and then uses those hands to pick up your bread. Never again. I think more immigration is needed, not less.

Spanish people ask me how to say 'pijo' in English. This is a difficult one as we have various levels of 'pijo'. If you are not familiar with this word it loosely means snob or posh, but this doesn't really conjure it up for me. In Spain that could mean someone who has the affront to have a shower every day.

There is a shop here that perhaps 'pijos' frequent and which I find myself in for 'research' reasons like the other day when I overheard the sales assistant comment that the rather lovely dress the pijo was wearing was of course 'muy ingles'. The shop in question goes by the name of Adolfo Domingo. Only in Spain would a parent name their child after a fascist. Do Italians still call their children Benito? Perhaps they still do. Franco's first name was Francisco and that hasn't gone out of fashion. As for the shop, they should have just called it Eva Braun's Wardobe.

Lastly, if anyone is still bothering to read this blog, who can tell me if under Franco ( dreadful thought), a Russian salad was called an 'Ensalada Zarina'.