A rose by any other name...

One of the problems I faced over the many years I spent visiting Viana rather than living here was trying to remember everybody's names. As a fairly regular visitor, and a fairly rare English one at that, everybody was kind enough to remember mine. Sure, I got (and get) a few variations of it - I've been called James, Jamie, Jameson and others, but that was more about the difficulty of pronunciation of a name that doesn't really exist here. I knew that they knew me by name and couldn't honestly say the same was true in reverse.

Still, I thought - no problem. There was always the locals' trick to fall back on, which works just as effectively in English. We may call each other 'mate' or something, but here you can be called pretty much anything descriptive that fits, for just me or for me and my missus together, in Galego or Castellano - 'tio', 'chaval', 'caballero', 'joven', 'rapaz', 'Inglés', 'pareja', or most commonly here, 'rey/reina'. This last one literally means 'king/queen', and has got me into trouble because I initially thought it was Spain-wide, but it turns out to be a very local habit. I got some odd looks from friends from other parts of Spain when I used these, so no longer do.

You can be called by whatever you happen to be doing or wearing when greeted, even - 'Good morning, ironer.' 'How's it going, tennis player?' These are all handy ways out which served me well (or badly) until such time as we came here permanently, when I thought I'd easily put names to so many of these familiar faces.

This has been complicated by a number of factors. First and foremost, I'm getting on a bit, the memory is not what it once was and I'm increasingly shit with names. But the locals haven't made it easy for me, either. They seem to share about six names between everybody. There's much. much less variety than I was used to back in London, so for example I know at least three Maria-Josés and I can't tell you how many Josés or Carloses. It doesn't help also that some of the people whose names you were pretty confident of are not called what you thought they were at all because of the absolutely standard practice of changing some of them, just as we do. So where Alexander is likely to be known as Sandy in English, for example, people called Fransisco here are routinely called Paco. Apart from the ones who are called Fran, obviously.

I don't think it's just me for whom this can be problematic. This, for example, though I've changed the specific name and occupation to anonymise it (probably pointlessly because, given what I've said above, it could be about any one of half a dozen people, but anyway...), is an extract of a conversation I once heard:

"You know Lourdes?"
"Which Lourdes?"
"Lourdes, Lourdes's daughter."
"Which Lourdes?"
"The baker."
"Lourdes's daughter is a baker?"
"No, Lourdes, the daughter of Lourdes the baker."
"Oh. No, don't know her. What about her?"

See what I mean?

As if in recognition of this shortage of names (or perhaps in a village-wide plot to confuse the stupid Inglés), everybody has a nickname. Some of the nicknames are echoes of what happens in the UK - the carpenter is known as Chippy, for example. But why the hell is our mechanic friend called Gali - essentially, 'chicken'? Because his dad was called Gali of course. Why was he called Gali, though? Because he kept chickens. Right. Of course nobody else around here keeps chickens(!), so naturally he's the one who became so-known. I don't even know his real name.

In a further twist, some people have multiple nicknames depending on who you're talking to. One acquaintance of ours has at least three. So I still have to use the old tricks more than I like, and more than I thought I'd have to. It's getting there, though - I can now sometimes tell my missus, who's from here, what some people's names are when she doesn't know. She's still way, way ahead of me on all the familial connections, though, seeming to know who's so-and-so's second cousin, who's whatshisname's half brother etc.

Don't even get me started on that. I'll stick to trying to learn all the names for now, thanks.

Well roast my chestnuts, my bread's pregnant.

I mentioned in an earlier post about the importance of chestnuts here. At this time of year, they're everywhere. Many locals have chestnut trees, from which they sell the harvest to dealers who in turn sell them on to supermarkets etc. I confess I'm not much of a fan - I will eat them, roasted, but without much enthusiasm. My partner, though, more typically around here, adores them and will eat them raw, straight off the tree. In the supermarkets I've seen them on sale for over €5 per kilo - while that's obviously a lot more than the growers get for them, it's an indication of how popular they are here.

So popular in fact that they feature as the centrepiece of a yearly celebration called Magosto, not that Galicians need too much of an excuse for a party. Known as Castañada* in other parts of Spain, it's not limited to Galicia, being celebrated in several other regions and in Portugal, but evidently takes similar form pretty much everywhere.

We were away for this year's celebration, so the images (which are crap, sorry!) in this entry are from last year, which I did attend. The village's newest bar put on a Magosto of their own this year, which I also got to, and the format was essentially the same on a smaller scale - Galicians know what they like - and went down very well.

While this year's harvest has been good, last year's was disastrous because of the long drought. You wouldn't have thought so from the walk up to the old cattle market where the event was held, though. Giant trucks, their trailers already groaning under the weight of huge numbers of chestnuts, stood silently in the street while still more were being deposited into waiting containers:

Lorry-loads of these, hundreds of thousands of them.
And this in a terrible year.

Harvesting these things is laborious. Machines are available, if you can afford one, to get them off the trees in the first place - they look like an ugly love-child of a combined harvester and a giant hoover. But everybody I know who harvests them has the bastard-spiky cases which they come in removed by hand. So this represents a prodigious effort to get the things to the shops, even in a very low-yield year.

Under the corrugated roof of the market, your three Euros buys you access to essentially unlimited supplies of red wine (very young and not the highlight - best drunk in a Calimocho), barbecued sardines, chestnuts (of course), pregnant bread and bica. Now I love bica - it's a very plain-looking sweet sponge, but if it's made well and it's fresh, it's absolutely fantastic. There is considerable debate about which of the bakeries in the village, and which region of Galicia, produces the best bica. It goes beautifully with coffee and is often served after a big celebratory meal. It also soaks up the local fire water, aguardiente, rather nicely.

But pan preñao, pregnant bread, that was a new one on me. You're given what looks like a plain, warm roll, which at first glance I assumed was to go with the sardines. One bite into it, though, and it becomes clear that it's got a bun in the oven itself:

Congratulations - it's a beautiful, spicy sausage.

A delicious chorizo is hidden inside. This makes the thing very filling but they disappear like, well, hot rolls. People seem to be able to eat several of them. I limited myself to one of them, leaving space for the bica.

There was also, of course, music. Two bands doing their thing - one the typical charanga, playing the usual Spanish style stuff that you'll hear at any such gathering, the other a three-piece featuring a bass and an accordion, who went through a series of rock classics headed up by Smoke on the Water. A bit different from the usual sounds which back up these things.

It was dark and my camera's crap. Sorry.

Our bellies full and warmed nicely by the enormous fire at the back of the market-place, it was time to stroll back down the hill to the main square for a drink or two. Being Galicians, and therefore all serious gastrophiles, talk was of the merits of the bica, and the sardines, and the year's chestnut harvest. I suspect that this year's affair, with the vastly superior haul of castañas this autumn, will have been more cheerful still.

*Castañada better evinces the central role that the chestnuts play in the thing, castaña being the Spanish word for chestnut.

Insert fungi-related pun here

If you know me reasonably well you'll know that I really can't stand mushrooms. Just a cursory glimpse at the entry on Sicily, with my allusion to them ruining perfectly good Carbonara, would be enough to give you a clue. What is it about them? I'm glad you asked. Everything. Everything. Taste. Smell - they smell of the grave. Texture. Awful dead-slug-like appearance of many of them when cooked. The propensity of some of them to imitate edible* species when ingestion of the slightest quantity of the impostor will kill you stone dead, and horribly. The fact that they get put in food, especially in restaurants, without appearing on the menu in the ingredients, thereby rendering what you thought was a perfectly safe order completely inedible. You get the idea - years ago, before living with my partner, I wouldn't even have uncooked mushrooms in my flat.

In Viana, though, I seem to be in a minority of one. At this time of year everybody goes hunting for mushrooms, with one prized above all others. Choupines, as they're known here, or Parasol Mushrooms in English, provoke a giddy excitement. Photos of the first ones found will appear on people's FaceBook feeds, with kudos going to the first person to find one each year, and the locations of good foraging spots are carefully guarded lest somebody else should get there first. 

We are of course right in the middle of the countryside here and, dry years like 2017 apart (and I can't adequately describe to you the wailing and gnashing of teeth that the absence of Choupines caused by last year's drought provoked here), this is the wettest part of Spain. Ideal conditions for fungi of all kinds. A friend of ours was going foraging for them on Monday, and would we like to come? Since I have fond memories of picking blackberries in Brighton's Wild Park when I was a kid (this has got to be more or less the same, right?), the sun was shining, my missus loves Choupines, and our mate knows how to differentiate between what you can (allegedly) eat and what will kill you, off we went.

Last one to find one gets the beers in afterwards. Right. Unlike my companions, I had great difficulty spotting these things, or any other types, in either the shaded, heavily wooded river valley we went to first, or the open, heavily cowpatted pasture we went to afterwards. My missus and our mate both seemed to be able to see them at great distance, whereas I only found them when I was close enough to almost step on the things. They'd both found several before I got my first one. I was exultant despite knowing it wouldn't stop me having to stand for the cañas. I'd celebrated too soon - it was no good, it'd dried out - if only we'd found that one yesterday. Next one - no good; worm-ridden. Next one - no good, not a Choupin but a very similar looking, inedible cousin. Bastards! I can now add fungal mockery to my list of reasons to hate the things. 

I did, though, eventually find some, as well as another sought-after thing, a boletus. Spud ugly they may be but our mate was delighted when I found some of these things. We had quite a haul - this is what we'd found after the first location, before we got a lot more in the open fields later:

The baskets, far from being an affectation, are actually more or less compulsory.
According to a local, you'll get fined if you use plastic bags - they stop the mycelium
spores from dropping back to the floor and potentially litter the landscape. 

You have to be careful - you have to know which land is private and which not, which areas allow foraging freely and which require a licence, as well as identifying the safe 'shrooms of course. You also have to cut open anything you may be suspicious about to see if it's riddled with insect larvae. (I don't know how much more justification my refusal to eat these things needs!) But they're plentiful, and apparently grow very quickly, so you can go looking in the same spot more than once. We even found a large number of the common-or-garden white 'supermarket' mushrooms growing on the wet fields between the council pool, its water now green and vanishing, and the tennis/padel courts. This was a good excuse to use my penknife, and an extremely pleasant way to pass the morning, but there was nothing in those baskets for me.

Far more appetising are the abundant chestnuts, apples and walnuts that also dot the countryside here. There are untended, wild trees of all of these around, quite apart from the privately owned and tended trees which you must of course leave alone. Much of this comes into season at around the same time, allowing a few hours' foraging to gift you a bonanza of stuff to both eat now or preserve over winter.  I'll eat chestnuts, but I'm not a huge fan, and assuming you can safely extricate them from their alarmingly spiky cases, you have to bite the very bottom open to check there isn't a worm living inside each one before you eat them too. It seems like a pretty good rule when eating anything foraged here - check for grubs first.

The envious approval received from people back in town, and the scarcely veiled entreaties for the locations we'd foraged, evinced our success. In case we'd let our finds go to our heads, however, Cookie assured us that it was no more than he'd 'pick up with his left hand' while out hunting. The mushrooms will be turned into empanada, risotti, croquetes etc, in the next few days, but very few of the chestnuts even made it back to the house - my partner scoffing most of them on the hoof. Their importance here is deserving of another entry in itself, and will feature here soon.

*This isn't, of course, a problem for me. As far as I'm concerned they're all inedible so I'm in no danger from these impersonators.

Vespas, litter and fatalism

We've just spent a week and a bit staying at a mate's in Sicily. He has the good fortune to live in a top-floor seafront flat with the standard spectacular view this usually comes with. You know - the calm blue of the Med, the city's rooftops receding into a misty grey amalgam, the active volcano smoking ominously over the entire thing.

Yep. Active volcano. One of the most active in the world, in fact. Etna's been sort-of-erupting pretty much continuously since 2014, and we were unable to make our planned visit to the top because it was too dangerous. This is the view from our mate's bedroom window, looking away from the sea:

Yeah that stuff coming out of the top, looks a lot like smoke? That's smoke.

To say it looms large over his city of residence, Catania, would be something of an understatement. Sicily may be the largest island in the Med but I'm not sure I'd feel safe in Palermo, a bloody long way away at the other end of the island, still less living at the foot of it. Essentially, much of the island is made up of half-million-year-old or younger lava from previous eruptions, yet Sicilians in their wisdom have decided that the best place for the airport and the second-largest city on the island is right next to it.

It's not only recently this has happened, either. Sicily, the home of Archimedes, is blessed with both Greek and Roman ruins in abundance, and they were hardly placed as far as possible from the volcano either. Indeed we were told by our local friend, who knows a bit about the volcanic nature of the island because he's at work there building a tunnel through its geology, that when an eruption and earthquake completely levelled Catania in 1669, the good citizens decided that they wouldn't make the same mistakes again. You might think this meant they'd build further away but instead they decided to lay out Catania's main street in such a way that the lava could better flow down it from the volcano and into the sea. It's the fecundity of the volcanic soil, apparently. Makes the grapes (and of course the lemons) so good that it's worth the risk. One evening, invited to a barbecue hosted by an American cheerfully living much, much closer to the caldera than our friend, I asked a Sicilian about it. "We're fatalists," he told me with a shrug.

This view can surely go some way at least toward explaining the lunatic nature of Sicilian driving. I thought I was used to Italian traffic from visits to Rome, but this is another level altogether. Like Rome, the morning chorus is the near-constant beep of car horns, and like Rome mopeds dart in and out of the traffic like their owners have no desire to live to see if Etna goes up tomorrow or not. But they've seen the Romans' driving and raised them all-in. If you stop at a turning, or even a roundabout, waiting for any kind of gap to appear to pull out, three tenths of a second later you're greeted by furious beeping from behind, demanding to know why you're holding them up. Sicilian form is simply to pull out without stopping and assume everybody will give way. The use of mobile phones while driving is so ubiquitous that it looks compulsory rather than prohibited (I saw several police officers doing this), as is the complete disregard for the obligation to wear crash helmets on the mopeds. They'll also pile on as many people as they can fit on any two-wheeler; I saw a father and three kids pull up on one scooter in Toarmina, two of them carrying shopping bags.

We saw the direct aftermath of three crashes in less than a fortnight. One a helmet-less scooter rider floored by who knows what - she looked OK, thankfully. One your standard two-cars-can't-occupy-the-same-space pile up, and one where a police car had crashed into a parked car(!) Those little Vespas, though - though many of them are understandably bashed up, the older (or older styled ones) in good nick got my heart beating a little faster every time I saw them, and not just because I usually had to leap out of the way. I've come back to Viana really wanting one, though I have no licence and am certainly too clumsy to be trusted with such a thing.

Sicily itself is a visually arresting place. As well as the Roman and Greek amphitheatres and temples which have survived the passage of time, the theft of their fabric for buildings elsewhere and the bloody volcano, there are some spectacular sights to be seen. One of the most famous is the Turkish steps. Crossing these chalk cliffs means risking huge falling white lumps and negotiating the narrow, undulating terraces from which the formation gets its name to get to a sparsely populated beach on the other side. We arrived early enough to make our way past the sign warning people that the route  to the access point across the bottom was closed and entry prohibited before the security guards arrived. (Take that, 'The Man'!) This sign was typically Sicilian - at the same time as prohibiting entry, it advised people to wear 'not slippery shoes' - if the sign could have shrugged, it would have. Those same guards then shepherded the hundreds coming and going across a safer route to the cliffs through waist-deep seawater. Those who ignored them got the same shrug as I imagined from the sign. 'Your own call, mate.'

That beach was an example of a free one - many of them are not. Called Lidos by the locals, they're private and you have to pay to get in. Your fee gets you a clean beach and use of a sunbed and parasol for the day, access to a bar and restaurant complex, beach volleyball courts etc. Supposedly, many of these Lidos are run by the Mafia as money laundering operations. I have no idea if there's any truth in this - it's something we were told by a local - but they're certainly cleaner and better-maintained than the public beaches.

Looking towards Catania. I think! Can't remember where I took this.

The state of the public beaches betrays the one aspect of Sicily I really didn't like. The city of Catania, with its collection of Art Nouveau and Rennaissance style buildings, could be one of the most beautiful in Europe, if not for two things which blight the whole island; the rubbish and the graffiti. They're both everywhere. Everywhere. It becomes almost impossible to appreciate the architecture of the place if every single surface is covered with tags, and there's litter discarded absolutely all over the place. It lines the main roads between towns, worse at any stopping or parking point, piling up in those mounds you get in Britain when the dustmen are on strike. It blows around the streets of the towns, collecting in corners and clogging gutters. It's difficult to overstate how bad it is. The locals seem to ignore it but it felt like a crying shame to me because it's such a blight on a place we enjoyed hugely.

But on the positive stuff again, Italian cuisine is my number one (sorry, Spain). The food pretty much everywhere is cheap and exactly what I like, so I've come back as rotund as a Weeble, my stomach stretched like one of Viana's drum skins. They of course know how to make Carbonara, one of my absolute favourites, properly - that is to say, without mushrooms. NO MUSHROOMS - take note everybody in the world who wrongly puts them in there and doesn't bother mentioning it on the menu.

I digress. Too much pasta, too much pizza, breakfasts of high-quality ice cream or granita, both of which are adored by the Sicilians and sold everywhere, have taken their toll. Back to Viana to get back onto the padel court and be run ragged by younger, better footballers again...

Time at the bar

I've always prided myself on a commitment to proper bar etiquette in Britain. I think most people understand the unwritten rules, the bar staff try to apply them when it's not so busy as to be impossible, and there's a general appreciation from your fellow drinkers when you follow said rules. You all know what I mean - don't, when and if asked 'who's next?', call your order ahead of somebody who got there first. I always make a point, if I'm served out of turn, of checking that whoever's ahead of me is already being served or letting them go first. All civilised people agree that this is one of the great features of pub culture and anybody who ignores those rules, boorishly shouting their order as soon as the staff catch their eye, can suffer what in Britain are pretty serious consequences - a hard stare, a disapproving sigh, the shaken heads of the gazumped drinkers. In extreme cases some people may even go as far as politely pointing out to the barman/maid that they were first.

Let me tell you that none of that applies here. Finding it difficult to shake off these old habits, I've found myself standing waiting quietly while others, arriving after me, are served, before eventually the server realises I want a drink and comes to serve me. The reason they don't even realise at first is because I'm not following the unwritten rules of ordering a beer here, which seem to be to be as follows:

Pretty much wherever you are in the bar*, whenever you got there, yell 'pour me a xxx cuando puedas' at somebody behind the bar, and in due course your drink will get to you.

That's it. This 'cuando puedas' is important - 'when you can'.  There's no expectation that you'll be served immediately, or in order, but your drink will get to you. I'm already used to the lack of urgency when waiting for your beer, but can't quite bring myself to just yell my order. This has led to some criticism. Criticism that I'm being too polite, both in waiting and in how I then order. A friend here who runs a bar has told me that I should, rather than asking, 'Would you pour me a beer, please?', be shouting, "Pour me a beer, for fuck's sake.' That's how he'd rather I ordered! That way he knows I'm waiting for a beer and that I won't wait longer than is fair. Needless to say I've yet to ask in such a manner.

Though the bar culture is ubiquitous and just as integral to society as British pubs, there are other differences. Nobody drinks pints, of course. The typical order of beer is a caña or a bottle, both around a third to a half-pint. The typical vuelta, the journey round the bars having a drink and a tapa in each, means that many people order a quarter of a pint - a corto. No way you could have a pint in all the bars, even in a place as small as Viana - you'd be paralytic. The one time I ordered a pint here, it was because we'd been cleaning the lake during a drought, and I arrived at the bar so hot, thirsty and dusty that only a pint would do. When it arrived it was clear that the glass had been forgotten in a freezer for some considerable time - so much ice had formed around it that it watered my beer down to the point of undrinkability when it immediately melted. Lesson learned.

No rounds here either, or at least very rarely. This can make paying for your own drink difficult. Not the excuse of a miser - I've always been happy to put my hand in my pocket in the pub - but quite genuinely, I find it hard to buy a drink here. You don't typically pay when you order here, unless it's during the bedlam of carnival or the August fiestas. You pay for everything when you leave. This can lead to people fighting to be the one to pay, often buying the drinks for friends of theirs who happen to be in the bar while they're at it. I've lost count of the number of times I've gone to pay for my drinks, only to be told I'm 'invited' - my beer's been bought for me. You have to get your money down quickly, often insisting at the start, if you want to get drinks for other people. Even this can get you in trouble, though. Not so long ago I spotted a couple in a bar here that I remembered had invited me a few days earlier. I paid for their drinks and when the landlord told them my mate seemed quite genuinely cross that I'd done such a thing, even though it's what everybody does. And it's what he'd done to me before. It's a minefield, I tell you.

Being a small place, the bar owners know all their regulars by name. (I'm not quite at the stage of knowing all the names yet, of which more in another entry soon). You can, if you go out of an evening, essentially guarantee there will be somebody in there you know regardless of which bar you choose, be it the owner or a punter. So while I'm still some way from ordering my caña with a cheery expletive, and don't entirely understand the complexities of when it's OK to 'invite' somebody and when not, I do feel very much at home in the bars here.

*Or indeed outside of it. Just this afternoon I was sitting in one of the bars here and a chap I don't know just yelled 'a white wine here' though the open door as he arrived, sitting down with his mates outside in the confident knowledge that it would come to him.

Do not adjust your set. There's no point.

I was back in Britain last weekend, accompanying my mother back home after she'd been visiting for a fortnight. Normally we'd spend pretty much every day she's here down at the town's open-air swimming pool, but the weather was not quite as reliable as it usually is during July, so we did have a couple of days where we didn't really get out.

This meant the TV was on for at least a few hours during those two weeks which, the recent World Cup aside, essentially never happens in our house. The reasons for this are twofold; we prefer, during summer particularly, to be out enjoying the lake, the pool or the countryside, and Spanish telly is bad. Really bad. I write that in reasonable confidence that I'm not going to offend any of my Spanish friends because I've never heard anybody disagree with the sentiment here.

Fortunately, there's a button on our remote control which means that any programme which is dubbed into Spanish from any other language (and here that's absolutely all of them - they don't use subtitles for that purpose at all) can be switched to its original format, thereby enabling my dear mother to watch her favourite police procedurals in English. That, though, does not solve the problem of the quality of the broadcasting itself. 

That dubbing issue first, though. Now don't get me wrong - the Spanish voice actors who dub these films and TV programmes are excellent. They manage to start and stop the speech at the same time as the original actors and generally do a good job. But there's only a limited number of them, and they try to have the same actor voiced by the same voice actor for everything. While that makes sense, it means that, say, John Turturro sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger, because it's the same bloke voicing both of them. (I've used two random names, but they serve to illustrate my point.) It jolts you out of a film if the voice is wrong, their mouths aren't moving right, and you're pretty sure you heard that shaven-headed baddie speaking as Howard Wolowitz on The Big Bang Theory only last week. There's also a pretty widespread view here that this has contributed to holding back the learning of English in Spain. Across the border in Portugal, for example, everything is subtitled so people are hearing English spoken on TV and in cinemas all the time. Some of the young shop workers I've spoken to in Chaves have American accents because of the TV, but more of them have a decent level of English than seems to be the case here.

Anyway, I was supposed to be complaining about Spanish telly. Let's take the biggest bugbear of most, the adverts. Pretty much everybody uses the ad break to make a cup of tea or channel hop, right? Or text their mates, or whatever. That's fine if it only lasts three or four minutes but what if, say, an ad break in the middle of a half-hour programme lasted 23 minutes? This is not an exaggeration - it can be well over 20 minutes at a time. They actually put captions up if they're 'only' going for seven minutes, as if it's no time at all. This can also happen at inexplicable moments - you've watched the first hour and fifty minutes of a two-and-a-quarter-hour film uninterrupted by ads, for example, and then you're made to wait 20 minutes for the last chunk while they play ads. How many people are going to stick around in those circumstances?

The different channels from the same groups each also go to ads at the same time no matter where they are in the programme, so you can't escape them (on their network at least) by channel hopping. This leads to ads just popping up on screen, with no ident screen or pause, quite literally mid-sentence. So here's how watching an episode of The Simpsons can play out, for example:

The episode will start with no discernible gap from the previous programme. There's no ident, no announcement, nothing. The show just starts. This can mean that if you've stepped away for even one minute you can come back and be watching a different episode of the same programme without realising it.

For The Simpsons, though, some channels do at least run a shortened version of the intro. As soon as the intro's finished, they head off for adverts. 'Volvemos en 7 minutos', they announce cheerfully. Back in seven minutes. Assuming you're still there when they come back, you may get a few seconds of actual programming. This is not an exaggeration - it can be less than a single sentence and *bop* suddenly you're watching three more minutes of adverts. So you've seen the intro and ten seconds of the episode in just under 14 minutes. Or haven't seen, because you've switched off.

Much worse than the adverts, though, are the tertulias. A tertulia is an informal gathering of people for a discussion, but in this context refers to the chat shows. There are literally dozens of them across all the networks. They're absolutely inescapable on TV here and, let me tell you, dear reader, chatting they ain't. None of my chats with my mates are anything like these. As many as eight people yelling at each other simultaneously about today's political news or, much more likely, celebrity gossip. Relentless, hysterical, asinine and utterly vacuous, this can be two or three hours of the cousin of a Big Brother contestant being 'grilled' by celeb culture 'experts' about their relative, while the same images of said cousin are repeated over and over and over again on one half of the screen. In the unlikely event anybody cares what they're saying, it's impossible to make out (to my English ears at any rate) what's being said because absolutely everybody is hollering at the same time. Horrible and inexplicably ubiquitous - this is, after all, the country that spawned Hola! magazine and myriad competitors.

Then there's the news. Not the sober, neutral, report-the-facts-and-don't-speculate stuff I'm used to on the Beeb. Some of the news bulletins here leave me open-mouthed in astonishment at their speculation or even outright accusations on criminal cases. 'Why did she do it?' ran one headline along the bottom of a screen recently, relating to a murder case that had not yet gone to trial. Absolutely unthinkable in Britain. To finish off any credibility some of the news has here, and to bring me back to the adverts I've already said ruin everything, the news also stops for them midway through. Now I'm not talking about ITN taking a break and coming back in a couple of minutes. I mean the newsreader him/herself stops during the programme and reads out adverts for sofas, or cars, or mobiles. The person you were just hearing tell you about six fatalities in a forest fire is now trying to flog you car insurance on behalf of the news's sponsor. What does that say about the impartiality of the bulletin? What if that channel's Chief Exec was caught with their 'hand in the till'? Or the network received a nice manila envelope stuffed with cash and a two-year contract renewal promise from their ever-generous sponsors provided they not mention the devastating fire at their factory in far-off never-you-mind-where? Do we think we'd hear about that on their news?

So there you go, this blog's first negative entry on life here. It's easy, when there's so much crap on British telly as well, to take it for granted. The BBC in particular though, reminds just how good it is when viewed against Spanish stuff. This does weigh very lightly on the scales, at least; as I've said, this stuff doesn't matter too much in our house because, apart from for live football, we never switch it on. The telly's pretty much superfluous when there's so much to do, so much to appreciate, so much to love here. It's just as well that's the case, though, dear Spaniards, because, with all due respect, TV here is bloody awful.

Aaah! I cannae feel ma legs...

It's as well humans type with fingers because I can assure you that, had we evolved such that our feet were the more dextrous, and we'd developed computers accordingly, I would not be writing this entry.

Last night I made the all-too-foolish decision to accept the kind invitation of some local lads to play a bit of five-a-side on the village's splendid artificially surfaced and floodlit football pitch. Now I'm always wary of accepting invitations to play football - it can be a bit of a minefield. People can take it too seriously, expecting everybody to play to the same standard, and woe betide the clumsy grey-beard who turns up 'just for fun'. Oh I look the part alright - I've got the necessary footwear, various bits of sports clothing and, of course, several club and national shirts. I look the part right up until the moment I actually have to kick a football, when any impression of competence that may have been adopted based on that appearance will instantly be disavowed.

To use the game's technical terminology, I'm crap. The great levels of enjoyment I get out of playing have never even vaguely been tinged with anything resembling any talent. At secondary school, the games teachers would select a captain of each of the opposing sides, who would then alternate to select their team from the remaining pupils. I was never in the very last group, the lads who couldn't actually kick a ball at all and would rather have been anywhere else, but I was certainly in the group picked shortly before those kids.

I gave the chap who'd been kind enough to invite me to play plenty of warning about this lack of quality. And I mean plenty. But he seemed inexplicably keen that I join in, and I've done basically no exercise for at least a year, so against my better judgement, along I went. Now it's not like in Britain, where courts/pitches etc have to be booked in advance, paid for etc. We turned up, went into the council building to ask for the key to the pitch, switched on the floodlights ourselves and agreed to leave the key in a bar after the football. That's pretty much how things work here - you can always leave something in a bar for somebody to collect in the certain knowledge that a) that person will pass through the bar in due course and b) the bar will know exactly who you mean when you describe who's coming for said item.

So, as I said, we switched on the floodlights and it was then that I realised my mistake in agreeing to play had been two-fold. Despite the kind assurances that the standard would be fine, I could see at least one and possibly more of the lads who play for the village team getting their boots on. Way, way too good for me. And if any one of them was fewer than 15 years younger than me, I'd be surprised.

I was, dear reader, run ragged. I've long got used to watching players breeze past me with contemptible ease, and scoring off my mistakes, but this may well have reached new levels last night. It was five-a-side in name only. I'd say it was effectively five against four, but that would be to understate the enormous drag factor my own 'efforts' had on my side's quality. More like five against net-three-and-a-half.

Through the game I could hear my team-mates ragging each other for missed chances, misplaced passes, failure to save a 100mph shot which burned through the net as it went in, and let's say I've learned enough Gallego to know that they were using the full force of their vocabulary. I, by contrast, was given a very, very easy ride in that respect, and strongly suspect that some of the opponents went easy on me on the rare occasions I had the ball. They probably saw my 'qualities' as we warmed up and pitied me.

For the last half-hour or so I was even more of a spectator than I had been, before mercifully a halt was called, we locked up and then went for a beer. This post-footy ritual at least seems like a universal constant, as one of the greatest things about football after work in London was the opportunity to have a pint and a pub dinner with my brother and mates afterwards. The Spaniards are clearly no different. In any case we had to go to the bar to drop the key off, didn't we? So we pretty much had to go to the bar.

I must report that today my legs feel like they died overnight and rigor mortis has set in. They clearly got something out of my presence, though - perhaps helpless mirth - because I've been invited back. It turns out they play at least three times a week. So that's youth, ability and regular practise - just those three tiny things that separate me from them. Notwithstanding that this is a really good way for me to get to know a few lads that I know by face only, and pick up a bit more Gallego, I must be a glutton for punishment because, to my own slight disbelief, I've agreed to go and play again tonight. I really hope there's beer again after.

Drums, please

I've probably mentioned the frenzy of flour throwing that happens around here in the build-up to Mardi Gras, and will do so again shortly. It's all part of the Latin world's celebration of Carnival which closes as Lent begins, and it's kind of started already.

A couple of weekends back, various groups were invited to Viana from all over Spain to participate in La Mascarada, a parade of fulions (the locals' various drum beats) and masked costumery of all kinds. It's kind of a cultural exchange, showcasing in another town what you all do yourselves during Carnival. The people who were good enough to come and visit all did so out of a love of Carnival and a desire to showcase their own celebrations, and for no financial rewards at all. It was a clear demonstration of how important these annual rituals are that they'd come so far for just a couple of days, some of them sleeping in the local sports hall, to do this.

I've now seen so many of these parades that none of what happens comes as even a vague surprise, but I do wonder how this must look to anybody who's never seen it. The images here, used with the kind permission of local photographer J Luis Ortiz, give a much better impression than anything I could write as to what goes on. As for the sound of the huge drums being beaten to the various Galician villages' own rhythms, you'll have to trust me that you can quite literally feel your entire chest cavity vibrating to the beat. More on those in another entry later - the drums are hugely important to the locals and deserving of their own entry and images.

The first sign that the parade has started (other than the approaching thunder of the drumming, of course) is the sound of bells. Then these guys come charging down the road, clearing the path for the coming parade. 

Boteiros - crowd control Carnival style. Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

The headwear these Boteiros sport are all, of course, hand-made, and can weigh anything up to 20kg. Many of them wear neck braces under the masks to help support the weight, but I've seen just how tiring it is running up and down and pole vaulting with their sticks with that kind of weight on their heads. I'd be surprised if they don't all finish each Carnival a couple of inches shorter.

Once the route's been cleared, the Boteiros shuttling back and forth keeping people back, down come the various groups. If they're from this part of Galicia the group will almost certainly include drummers beating the fulion, but those from elsewhere come in all kinds of finery, from Guadalajaran devils wearing real cows' horns, potato chunks cut into bizarre teeth shapes jutting from their mouths, to whatever this is;

"Where are you taking this... thing?" One for Star Wars fans there. Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

I couldn't see where these horsemen and women came from - each group carries a small sign naming their home town - but they stopped in the main square and challenged each other to a sort of saddled poetry-off. I'd love to tell you what they said but it was all in Gallego, which I still sadly lack as a language, and it was in any case all but impossible to hear them over the cacophony of cow bells, drums and inflated animal bladders being used for percussion.

"Speak up! I can't hear a thing..." Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

The arrival of Viana do Bolo's own 'Alternativo' fulion group signals the end of the parade, and it breaks up into various impromptu drinking and drumming sessions. Everybody who's been part of it heads up to the top of the town, where food and drink has been laid on for them in the sports hall. Later, after a couple of cold drinks in town overnight - it was a Saturday after all - they go and do the same thing again in another village a few miles away, before heading home for their own Carnival celebrations. As for Viana, we can all expect to have our faces covered in flour pretty much as soon as February starts - much more on that in a later entry.

Yeah those aren't balloons. The were once inside a cow and they make a lot of
noise when they're banged together. Photo: J Luis Ortiz.

(Incidentally, as regularly as I've attended this sort of thing now, I was still told by one of the local kids that I 'looked really English' after the parade simply because I was wearing a long, black coat and carrying an umbrella. It was bloody raining!)

See? I told you it was raining. I was hardly the only person carrying a brolly.
Photo: J Luis Ortiz.