One week in

While I don't want this to become a sort of public diary, it's worth noting how the first week's been, now it's passed. It still feels, of course, like I'm on holiday here. When that feeling dissipates, and whether I'll notice when it does, remains to be seen. I am going to have to moderate my intake of cerveza from holiday levels to everyday levels, either way.

Anyway. We live downhill - quite steeply downhill - from the centre of the village. As a consequence, the habit among people in our little neighbourhood is not to ask if you're going into town, but to ask simply if you're 'going up'. This morning, tasked with finding Parmesan from any one of the shops, I had to 'go up'. The forecast had been for rain, which if it's coming today certainly feels some way off, and for a considerable drop in temperature. So I left the house dressed, as was my standard attire in London, entirely in black.

There are two ways up. One, the more direct, is up the main road. The other takes longer and involves a twisting footpath which offers some terrific views across the valley. That's the route I prefer. By the time I got to the point where I took this photograph, not even halfway up, I realised I'd made two newbie mistakes.

The lake, created artificially for hydro-electric power generation, is very low, revealing
the medieval buildings and petrified trees which are usually hidden in its depths.

I'd set off at London walking pace. Bad idea. The locals know that, when it's hot, the pace of your walk has to match the pace of life here generally. I'll also have to eschew my usual all-black clothes because by the time I returned to the house I had to treat my T-shirt as a bio-hazard and get a specialist team in to dispose of it. I didn't find any Parmesan either.

Another thing, and bear with me on this, is 'Cowboys and Indians'. Remember that little riddle you were set as a kid, where you had a canoe and had to get a certain number of those enemies across a river but couldn't leave them unattended with each other? The solution involved shuttling back and forth, carrying one or more of them with you in both directions, going back on yourself to get everybody safely across without a fight. That's our current situation with plug adaptors. We've brought nowhere near enough. So we can't boil the kettle while the computers are charging. If we need to use the drill, which is happening a lot at the moment while we put up our pictures from home etc, then I can't make coffee - a catastrophe here. So we're continually switching them around, temporarily plugging something in and then moving the adaptor to wherever it's next required or back to where it's been borrowed from. Anybody who comes to visit us, please bring three-to-two-pin plug adaptors!

We've been welcomed with genuine warmth and happiness, to a village of around 2,800 people, where most people know most people. This can be a double-edged blade of course, and I've already seen a little of how political things can be in a small place like this. But that's surely the same everywhere and, overwhelmingly, it feels like the reasons we came here for will be borne out fully over the long term. When I 'went up' this morning, as a reminder of the courtesies which would be considered old-fashioned in Britain, but prevail here, the few people who passed me wished me buenas dias whether they recognised me or not. What should feel slightly awkward to a reserved Brit feels right here.

I've just seen a headline on the Beeb that the Tories have reached a deal with the DUP - don't get me started on them - and will form the next government in the UK. With that, and the appalling scenes of Grenfell and the recent attacks in London and Manchester, this place feels like a different planet; tomorrow morning I'm going with our neighbour - my partner's uncle - to his smallholding, to watch him let his sheep out(!) run around with his dogs for a bit and learn a bit about cultivating vegetables here. Oh and we found an adder on our patio last week.

We hope to share it - we have friends coming from Britain over the next few weeks, and I'll be going home to 'collect' my mother and accompany her out here for a few weeks next month. We can only reiterate the invitation we've extended to our friends - come and see us. Grab a bit of this tranquility for yourselves.


Two edits: I've been reliably informed that 2,800 is the entire population of our town and all 52 of the much smaller villages in the administrative zone in which we're located, and that the village itself is considerably fewer than that. Head hung in shame accordingly.

And my partner has pointed out, rightly, that the structure of the last two paragraphs makes it sound like we wish to share the adder, not the peace of the village. We don't - that adder's all ours, so hands off.

Café con lechery

I've just returned from the usual week-and-a-bit sojourn to the house I'm (extremely) lucky to part-own, with my girlfriend, in the Galician hills. This will go some way to explaining why nothing's been written on here lately. Shall I make another blog entry, or shall I continue to lounge here by the pool and drink beer in the sun? Tough call.

Anyway, spending time at said poolside with a mate who's single has introduced me to the concept of café con lechery, the process of discreetly spotting attractive ladies through one's sunglasses while enjoying a coffee at the bar. Not that I indulged, of course, in such conduct unbecoming an attached individual – I have eyes only for my beloved, and write only to record the process as a matter of anthropological record. Moving swiftly on...

I'm not much of a sun worshipper, preferring the colder months of less sweat and more football, but it was on this occasion a blessed relief, given the wretched weather we've been having in Britain, to have an excuse to actually use the bloody shades for any reason other than to just pretend one is cool by wearing them indoors, for example.

I was struck by the difference in the faces between people here and there when I returned. The Galicians were complaining about having a shit summer because there have been days when cloud has interrupted the usual diet of pure cyan skies and, yikes, even occasional spots of rain! Also, the temperature has dropped into single figures overnight (*gasp*) because the wind has been coming from the north. This is what, for them, constitutes an awful summer. Given how resolutely absent the sun has been from Britain this year, I can only forgive the fact that British faces, by comparison, looked pale, drawn and rather sullen on the Gatwick Express as we headed home.

It's to our credit as a nation, I think, that we put up with this pretty stoically. We are, honestly, world, friendly once the initial reserve is overcome, tolerant, fairly happy and uncomplaining people. But even Brits have to see the sun once in a bloody while. May it shine on us for the remainder of this season, so everybody else gets the chance to indulge in that sunglassed pastime I was introduced to by my mate last week. It's not for me, obviously; I only have eyes for my beloved – did I mention that?