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.

Fierce creatures

Growing up in Brighton and then living in London for 25 years, I haven't the faintest concept of how large a hectare is. Or an acre. I've only a vague perception of what a furlong, also originally a rural measure, looks like because of horse racing. So I'm just going to describe the smallholding - the finca - that I visit fairly regularly here with my partner's uncle as 'big'. Very big.

Placed on one of the valley's steep slopes, there are, variously, beehives, an orchard, walnut trees, potatoes, cabbages, lettuces, enormous tomatoes, courgettes, peppers, asparagus, French beans, spring onions the size of your fist, etc. I've no doubt missed some of it.

It's only about a five-minute drive from our house, and I only go, of course, with my partner's uncle Cuqui ('Cookie', to anglicise it). Now usually, in these pages, I abbreviate people's names just to single letters or only refer to them obliquely; it's just a courtesy to them in case they'd prefer not to have their name placed here in full. The people who know them will know them. I don't need to do that with Cookie - he's so universally known as Cookie that I can only use his nickname here. I've probably been told his real name but genuinely can't remember it. Everybody knows him here. His deep voice and splendid moustache are as much features of this village as the fountain in the main square.

He's an amiable fellow, of blunt and freely expressed opinion - often that if it's not Galician it's no good - who, like everybody here, really knows his food and wine. He's been nothing but friendly and helpful to me since the first time I met him, when he tried to get me shit-faced with his home-brewed liqueurs.

So, arriving at the finca with him, you're greeted by a mastiff the size of a horse laying just inside the gate. Fortunately I know this dog already so his low-pitched growling, most effective to any would-be interloper I imagine, doesn't bother me too much. Nonetheless he did his job, giving me the 'abandon hope all ye who enter here' growl when I approached the gate first. He quickly shut up, though, when Cookie approached and greeted him with a cheery 'sod off', and once we were inside the finca's walls, his new tactic seemed to be to drool me to death. A soppier dog you could not meet, once he knows you're no threat.

Another dog, an English Setter, has to be kept inside one of the buildings when his owner's not there because if left to his own devices, unlike the mastiff, he simply fucks off. Released twice daily by Cookie, he charges around like a nutcase, trying to get the mastiff to join in his games and jumping up at any visitor to see if they fancy a run about. A guard dog he is not.

The half-dozen sheep are partly there to trim the grass, because the place is way beyond the size where any domestic mower, even those posh ones you sit on and drive about, could deal with, and much too steeply sloped in any case. Not knowing me, they keep their distance from me as they patrol the finca, eating anything green and trying to find a way in to the walled vegetable areas. They regard me with a cool suspicion, and if I didn't know better I'd say the one in the middle of the shot below is giving me the skunk eye.

Their other function, of course, is to provide lamb for the dinner plate. The one male who looks after the females for this task is distinctive because of his bloody great testicles. Christ, what a pair of nads. I mean, damn... they're like a couple of coconuts in a wet shopping bag.  

There are other animals working there too. The ones you really don't want to approach, which hang around looking like an LA street gang, are the cats. Feral, of course, they're all scarred and tough-looking beasts which scurry past you and look at you challengingly - "Don't touch me, man. I'll cut you. I'll cut you bad." Seriously, all that's missing are eye patches, tattoos and neck ties. One of them in particular, the boss-man, were he to appear on film, would be played by Robert Shaw. Bent-tailed, limping, scraggy and armed quite literally to the teeth, he was the feline embodiment of Quint from Jaws. 

These could hardly be described as belonging to Cookie. He's merely come to an arrangement with them, whereby he brings them food and they eliminate any rats and mice that may be foolish enough to venture into their postcode and don't savage him on sight. 

Cookie brings, to feed canine and feline alike, offal. An entire set, removed all too recently from a pig - tongue, lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, all still connected in one steaming string which he boils and cuts up for them. Not a meal, or a sight, for the faint of heart. In this, the cats do at least demonstrate characteristics which any domestic cat owner will recognise. While we were busy with something else, one of the cats stole a kidney from the bag and was busy gnawing on it when we came back. When prepared, cut up and served to them, she didn't want to know that same kidney. If it ain't robbed, it obviously tastes inferior. Cat gang culture, I suppose.

There was one other cat there, clearly not part of the gang, since they largely ignored her. This little lady;

Only a few weeks old, she at least was too small to prevent me petting her. Purely to accustom her to human contact, you understand, and not because I'm an absolute softy where kittens are concerned. When we got there, her eyes were fused together with sleep gunk, and her mother being nowhere to be found (she doesn't belong to the street gang), Cookie has to perform the job of her absent mother and wash them every morning to get them to open. She also, of course, gets fed. I hesitated to ask if there were others, but if there were, they've been taken by the eagle that can be seen every day hunting over the lake, or else by foxes. She's either the luckiest or the cleverest of however many of her siblings there were. 

I would, of course, with my English sentiment, take her home and make a pet of her, appalled at her chances. But this is another difference I've quickly got used to - between urban and rural attitudes as much as between Galician and British - such sentiments bemuse some of the locals. For all that Cookie cleans her eyes and feeds her, if she disappears, she disappears and that's how it is. It's certainly not for me to rock up and tell him to do differently. I don't need to learn how to be a local to know that.

(One important point of order in all this - if I get any of this wrong, if I say something here which simply isn't true, it's almost entirely certain that it's down to my language skills, which are sadly lacking. Much more likely than having been told a whopper is that I've simply not improved my Spanish sufficiently to properly understand what I'm being told. Therefore, to coin a phrase, any errors are entirely the fault of the author.)