CUNCTATOR BY NAME

We had  lunch with Rosa, at her wonderful 16th century house with good company, fine wine and conversation and a fantastic rip into the pen pushers and powers that be that hold this country back and kill off any talent. From education to the buffoon who looked me up and own the other day at the local council because I had the affront to ask him about the whereabouts of my fifty euros said gobierno owes me from December, they all got it in the neck. Our voices and laughter echoed round the village and across the fields towards the Pyrenees. Later, a wind of the mistral type, probably the cierzo, reminded me of ghosts and now I know where the expression 'put the wind up me' comes from. It is a peculiar wind, making you feel like a storm is coming but there are no clouds or sign of rain. The sky was clear with so many stars, the view you get when you are near the mountains. We wondered about the previous inhabitants of the house and the village too, so Henderson suggested to Rosa she bury a plastic box or container in the garden so someone would find it in another five hundred years and know a little about her. Much later when we were clearing the table and Rosa was stuffing corks and other souvenirs of a good evening into an ice-cream tub he remarked that maybe that was a better idea, to leave a time capsule full of red herrings just to confuse the future archealogists.

Despite the unreasonable behaviour of bureaucrats and other arseholes whose role on this planet is to try us, the Spanish have retained a way of life probably unlike any other country in Europe. I really don't know what century I am going to wake up in and once you realise this and try to accept it, it gets easier and you have more fun, recognising the surrealness of everything. It is a country full of time capsules, with towns and villages a world away from the one you might see in San Sebastian, Bilbao or any of the major cities here.

There seems to a lot of crime locally but not as unnerving as the chilling stuff you hear back in Britain. I should be reassured that some maniac addicted to fags robbed the tobacconist round the corner of 3,000 cigarettes or the romantic thief who stole some poetry books from the vitrine outside a bookshop here have nothing in common with the freak back in Britain who went around raping old people for twenty years. Instead of the Daily Mail there is Spanish TV, but as scandalous and bizarre as it is I am convinced Britain is full of murderers you are not related to. Henderson doesn't agree and says these things happen everywhere which I know is true but I am still convinced Britain has more than its fair share of killers and weirdos only being outdone by the States. Maybe there is an argument to keep bull fighting.

On a more trivial note, the pedestrianisation was said to start 'in days' and I did see a topographer on the square last week. Then they said it would start tomorrow, Monday but in today's rag it says, due to a meeting tomorrow, work is going to be put back till Tuesday.