The sardine has exploded - it must be all over for another year.

So, the big finale. In Brazil, they mark Mardi Gras with huge, glamorous parades and elaborate costumes. In New Orleans they throw beads into the crowd, decorate coconuts and bake cakes with tiny baby figurines in them, purportedly to represent Jesus. Here, the flouring reaches its epic climax, the folion all come together for the burning of the lardeiros and a funeral is held for a giant sardine. (I know. I'll come back to that later.)

I've never been to Glastonbury but veterans all seem to talk about the mud years. Well here in Viana the rain, if it comes on the Tuesday as it did this year, turns the ground not into mud but glue. We'd been lucky so far this year but on Tuesday it absolutely shat down, thinning the numbers who'd usually attend - people don't want to ruin €300+ drums - and ensuring anybody who did attend will be picking rock-hard globules of solidified flour out of their hair and ears for the next couple of days, regardless of how assiduously they try to wash them out.

The lardeiros, as I've said in earlier entries, are the Carnival made manifest, and they're set ablaze at midnight on Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, or whatever you want to call it), bringing the flour attacks to a close. As you can imagine this makes people go all out to get the last flourings in for another year. Usually pretty much anybody who has a drum or an aixada will be there, beating the folion as the Lardeiros burn. It's a pretty visceral experience even when the square isn't completely packed because of the weather. This film is from 2012:

The world feels like it's shaking with the noise - the thunder of drums and trowels being struck is absolutely deafening. Bangers and aerosols placed inside the effigies pop and explode while this is happening. How are they set on fire? I'm glad you asked. In a move which would give any H&S exec in Britain palpitations, a bloke who may or may not have had a couple of cold drinks himself is hoisted up to the figures on the back of one of those telescopic platform things, soaks them in something highly flammable like petrol or whatever it is, and then torches them using a long, burning stick from the ground.

And how they burn. What remains is often still smoking well into the next day:

Ouch. Gonna need some cream on that.
Photo: Emilio Ortiz Rodriguez

If the bars were busy on the weekend, they're absolutely heaving on Tuesday. One or two of the bars' owners take the opportunity to close for the night, or part of the night, to have one Carnival night out themselves, forcing more people into fewer bars. I knocked it off at about 2am this year but for most people this is the night that goes on 'til 7 or 8 in the morning. There's usually a band - cancelled this year because of the heavy rain - and a costume competition, and they don't even start until after the lardeiros burn.

Wednesday marks an almost instant return to the village's usual quiet. Immediately there are noticeably fewer people about and the streets are cleaned of the flour. Most bars are closed for a clean-up which takes a good couple of days, and some remain closed for a few days' well-earned rest. It just leaves the sardine funeral to the year-rounders or the few who hang back beyond the end of Carnival.

Oh yes, the sardine funeral. In another pyromaniacal episode, a six-foot-long sardine, constructed of a cage wrapped in tin foil and, once again, filled with explosive materials, is mounted on a trailer and paraded through the town. Locals follow, in funereal black, lamenting the sardine's passing. When it reaches the designated spot in the Cabo da Vila, the old town surrounding the castle, it burns in similar fashion to the lardeiros while people stand ludicrously close to it and await the comestibles. Free red wine is distributed liberally, and real sardines - barbecued on an enormous fire at the scene and served on bread - are consumed in large numbers.

At the end there are torrijas, a sort of cinnamony French toast. These are not much to look at but they're absolutely delicious and many of the locals make them, meaning each one you sample is slightly different from the one before. I can't tell you how many of these I can wolf down but my record doesn't bear imparting here, on account of the shame it would bring me to report it.

A stroll back down the hill for a coffee in the nearest bar and that really is it. All over bar the blogging, until the sound of the folion beats over the village early next year and heralds the coming of another Carnival. The locals hold a funeral, I think, because they feel genuinely sad for Carnival's passing. Its importance to them finds arcane expression by this burning of the sardine effigy, and if that doesn't seem to make any sense, then you need to come out here and experience this for yourself to see what I mean.

Waiter? I say? There are bones in my sausage and my liqueur's on fire.

I mentioned that Sunday is a big day in Carnival. It's oddly timed, following (as Sundays tend to) what for most people is a long, boozy Saturday night, but that's just how it goes at this time of year. Deal with the hangover, get up to the town and partake of the hair of the dog which bit you. You can't miss the parade.

Viana do Bolo is the name of the county, for the want of a better word, in which our village sits, as well as the name of the village itself. It actually comprises around 52 villages of varying sizes, ranging from tiny hamlets of just a few dozen people up to Viana itself. In terms of geographical extent, Viana do Bolo is actually one of the largest counties in Spain, albeit one of the least populated. Many of those villages have their own folion, their own drum beat, and they go visiting each other during the week to drum and enjoy the hospitality, given freely, of the locals. But on the last Sunday, everybody comes to Viana to join the parade.

Each village's folion will come down behind a banner proclaiming from where they've come. From the top of the town they come down through the village, stopping to drum at the main square, and then up to marquees alongside the sports hall for a lunch laid on by the council. Many of them come in bright costumes, and some also put together a carroza, what we'd call a float. That is to condemn the things with a wildly inadequate description, however, because some of these can be absolutely extraordinary. The good people of Quintela can usually be relied upon to deliver here.

This tank, which fired sweets at everybody, is from 2015:

And this, in my view the most spectacular of all, is from last year:

I have no idea how long these things must take to put together but can only imagine they work on them all year. This year's carroza from the Alternativos, a group from Viana itself, was a merry-go-round mounted on the back of a car, revolving as they went. Amazing work, done out of a love of Carnival and for no other reason.

You also get a decent look at the boteiros in the first video, whose crowd control job I wrote about in this entry. As you can see the square is rammed. This is pre-lunch, so there's a roaring trade in vermouth as well as beers and coffee. Many of the bars lose a decent percentage of their glasses during Carnival because people buy their drink, take it outside and never bring it back, moving on to another bar as is the custom here. It's clearly worth the losses, though, because there are more customers about now than at almost any point during the year.

So, to lunch. As I said, those in the parade have grub laid on for them, but everybody else has to make their own arrangements. Many try to cram in one of the few local restaurants. Others have a big feast at a friend's house, gathering in a bodega. For those fortunate enough to have been able to secure tickets, it's the Festa do Androlla, which will be celebrating 50 years in 2020. Androlla is a large, reddish sausage, spiced with paprika. It's a local thing, hugely popular here, but wouldn't be to everybody's taste I think. It contains, you see, large chunks of bone, better to infuse the thing with flavour. It also turns the water in which it's boiled for an hour and a half a deep, bloody red. For the squeamish it isn't. It's typically served with grelos (turnip leaves) and boiled potatoes, but is only one of four courses at the Festa.

So about 1300 people gather in the local sports hall, to enjoy soup, then the Androlla, then lacon, a salty, gammony bacon, then bica, the local cake. Each of these courses is repeated - that is, the dozens of waiters serving the long tables come round with them offering seconds each time. This is supposed to start at 2.30 for a 3pm opening course, but this is Spain after all. The parade will last over two hours and usually runs late anyway. This year's first course was served at almost 4pm. People don't seem to mind too much - there's wine on the table and friends to catch up with.

Androlla, grelos, spuds, chorizo and lacon. Twice.
Plus three other courses, obviously. 

Galicians are a gregarious bunch normally, but this is a particularly bad spot if you happen to be suffering a hangover headache. Often the local folion beat will be drummed on the tables, the sound of a thousand spoons cacophonous and deafening. When the waiting staff first stream into the hall with the soup course, whoops and cheers greet them. Often a group of folion or bagpipers will march in to accompany the coffee and liqueurs which round off the thing. It's raucous, informal, friendly and strongly recommended as an experience. 

The sound of this lot beating the tables with their spoons has to be heard to be believed.

This actually represents a slightly trimmed down version of what used to be served, by the way. It sounds ludicrous but I really miss the slow-roasted lamb, served with lettuce in a vinegary dressing, that used to be served as well! You didn't need breakfast or dinner when you had a ticket for the Festa then. Or breakfast the next day.

To help with the feeling of being full fit to burst, a queimada is served last. This is a local fire water, the fire bit being quite literal, which burns brightly in large cauldrons until ready. To say it'd put hairs on your chest would be to understate its power. It's very, very strong stuff but at least sears off the feeling of not being able to move and enables people to file out and head home.

This is pretty much always a cue for me to roll downhill to the house for a siesta, but apparently lots of people head out for more drumming and more drinking after this. I may be used to Carnival by now, this being my 18th I think, but I really don't know how anybody who eats at the Festa is capable of going out and getting back on it afterwards.

Apparently on Monday there's a children's parade and free hot chocolate in the square but I can't honestly say I go out much on the Mondays if I've been to the Festa do Androlla because I just lop around in the house feeling full up and making plans to diet. You have to be ready, after all, for Tuesday, the biggest night of them all.

Comadre mia!

So Thursday was comadres, the day the women have free rein to go after the men and one of the biggest nights of the Carnival. It is, fairly understandably, a much bigger night in terms of numbers of people going out than compadres. On Wednesday night, at midnight, the Lardeira is hoisted into place alongside her male counterpart. The ladies then have 24 hours of flouring without comeback from the lads. This is an appalling photo - sorry - but gives some impression at least. As you can see, they've both been amended so they're now more typically - how can I put this? - profane.

The word Carnival has its roots in the Latin 'carnem' or
'carn-', meaning 'flesh'. That carnal route is still
pretty evident in the Lardeiros.

On Thursday, generally, groups of women will gather in themed fancy dress, organise a large dinner somewhere and then hit the bars for copas and dancing. Flour and folion are of course much in evidence too. It can be a long night for many - I certainly woke up with an inexplicable(!) headache on Friday. Staying out 'til six or seven in the morning is not uncommon, though age and drink-lightweight tendencies mean I don't last until such rarefied hours.

A note on the flour. Nobody has been able to give me a definitive answer on when it started, or why. There are conflicting theories, but it's certainly old, and it's (to my knowledge) confined to a small corner of Galicia. Traditions evolve, of course, but the classic delivery should be a handful applied to the face, below the nose, and rubbed in from ear to ear, preferably catching the victim completely by surprise. You should go home with the bottom half of your face completely white, like you've been bobbing for apples in a basin full of cocaine. A clean face at the end of such an evening doesn't say much for your popularity. (Or it speaks well of your powers of evasion and sprint speed).

I have of course seen variations on this theme. Some young'uns (tsk) pull a trailer around behind a 4x4 and hurl flourballs of the white stuff in crunched up newspaper. And a couple of years back another wrinkle caught out acquaintances of ours - we had to meet a Brit and an American who were friends of friends, who'd heard about this and came to see it. Though we didn't know them, they were easy to spot - wearing clean, respectable clothes, standing still in the square watching what was happening with bewildered faces, they made easy targets. We'd barely had a chance to introduce ourselves before the American found herself deposited into a bath, filled with flour and being dragged around town, to better enfariñar anybody who caught the eye of the group pulling it. She emerged looking like a ghost version of herself. 'Welcome to Carnival', I thought, but they both later distinguished themselves with how well they threw themselves into the whole thing.

The town is full, and the bars are full, like almost no other time of year. Pretty much everybody comes home for this - we've already spoken to friends who've come back from Madrid and London. Others are arriving this weekend from Vigo, from Valladolid, from wherever they may be. The rooms in our house will all be full of visitors in need of a bed for the night.

It's difficult to overstate quite how important this is to people here, who take great pride in its genuine tradition (this is not something made up to coincide with Carnival to attract visitors, as happens in many enterprising councils), and they wouldn't miss it for anything. I've been told of a Vianese living in Valladolid years ago who, unable to get time off work to come home for Carnival, couldn't contain himself and got into 'legal difficulty' for flouring somebody in that city who obviously had no idea what this nutcase was doing.

Today will be a bit quieter, but tonight is obviously a very big night, not being a 'school night' for 99%. As late as we may turn it in this evening, Sunday is a big one. The folion parade and the Festa do Androlla are not to be missed. I'll tell you about that Festa in the next entry, as any cacophonous celebration of a large, bony sausage is deserving of its own entry. (And no, that wasn't a joke.)

And so it begins

I've just been served coffee by a mate of mine, a fairly strapping fellow, dressed in a long, black, sleeveless dress. (He's dressed like that - not me. I'm not that confident even at Carnival). He completed his ensemble with a gold hair clasp and some, to my ignorant eyes at least, expertly applied make-up.

Why this departure from his usually more conventional attire? Because today is compadres, of course, and it marks the first day when the flour throwing kicks in. It's a big day. Special occasion like that, man's got to dress up.

Last night, at midnight, the male Lardeiro was paraded from the top of the town down to the main square, accompanied by folion of course, and hoisted into place above the plaza. Almost immediately, any females present were liberally floured by lads who'd come suitably armed with kilo bags of the white stuff secreted about their person, and those ladies had no recourse to flour back. Today only, this coeliacs' nightmare battle of the sexes is entirely pitched in favour of the men and boys. Tomorrow, a normal free-for-all applies. Next Thursday the female version, the Lardeira, will take her place alongside her mate and the women and girls will have the day to themselves - any male venturing out on comadres accepts the risk of enflourment without comeback.

Brits would call a Lardeiro a Guy, or an effigy. They're the embodiment of Carnival, destined to go up in flames at midnight on Mardi Gras, signalling an end to the seasonal silliness. A sort of Olympic torch in reverse, if you will. Traditionally they were attired in clothes pinched from unsuspecting 'donors', though  I'm told that doesn't happen any more and the clothes are simply worn out, given freely. Their ultimate fate is a spectacular one - they're not just stuffed with rags and newspaper. Their bodies are essentially chicken-wire cages, into which fireworks, bangers and empty aerosol cans are stuffed. The Health and Safety people back in the UK would pass out at how they're made, how they're set aflame and how they're watched as they meet their fate.

You'll have to wait a week, old boy.
She'll be along in due course.

Crossing the square to get to the bar for my coffee, it already looks like it's been snowing. Chaos reigns as shrieking kids run about in fancy dress, boys covering girls' faces in flour, white-faced mums and clean-faced dads watching on in some cases. Today I was able to wear clean, new clothing and walk confidently across the plaza, knowing I wouldn't be targeted. From tomorrow that journey will have to be made at a run, wearing clothing I don't care if I can never don again.

All bets will be off until the Lardeiros burn, and it'll be safe to go out again, it all being over for another year. Apart from the funeral for the giant sardine, of course. More on that at the time.

Yes yes yes - but can it hold a tune?

We're all familiar with the agony of choice when it comes to purchasing our latest trowel head. Who hasn't, doing their routine shop at the ironmonger, stood by the rack wondering which size, which material, which brand? Will the cheapy one do? But the ground's really hard right now, maybe I should go with the professional one at three times the money? I'm sure I don't need to go into detail - you're all trowel-head aficionados here. In Viana it's rather different. When buying a trowel head here, you have to think about Carnival first, and everything else a distant second.

I've mentioned Carnival in passing on here a few times already, and intend to use this year's to write a few entries to go into more detail. For an excellent, rather more articulate outsider's view on Carnival, I recommend Flour on the Skin, a documentary made by a friend of ours a few years back, featuring my missus in front of the camera. Well the Carnival atmosphere in the village is growing already, and the most obvious sign of this is the sound of the folion, the booming beats of the locals' drums and aixadas, rhythms which have become extremely familiar to me.

There are various folion groups, though essentially anybody can play with any group they hook up with. (It's not, of course, quite that cut and dried, and I've learned that something so important to locals is not without its own politics.) They all have two basic ingredients in common, though - large wooden drums, made by locals and both skinned and shoulder-strapped with local animal hides, and aixadas; trowel heads. If you don't fancy lugging a bloody great drum around all evening, or don't have the several hundred Euros each one costs, or simply prefer to play the trowel head, it's the aixada you'll take out with you.

Here's one of ours:

Essential folion kit for the drumless. Note the carry rope made of old
shopping bags - nothing wasted here - and the marks made by hitting
the aixada with the hammer.

As you can imagine, these make a hell of a noise, bringing me back to my original point. It seems that in Viana, if you're my missus at least, you buy your aixada as much for its sound as for any other quality. Exclusively for its sound, in fact, since we have no other use for this item. So it was that last week I found myself at the ironmongers, somewhat incredulously listening to various trowel heads being struck in an effort to determine which had the sweeter note. The ironmonger Jorge, an important figure for the Carnival locally, being heavily involved in organising many of the events associated with it, thought there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about this.

I asked him only part-seriously if he sold more trowels for use as percussion than for use in the local farms, and he told me unhesitatingly that there was no doubt this was indeed the case.

I personally prefer to drum rather than go with the trowel. There's something truly visceral about your chest cavity vibrating to the beat of these things, and they can transport the drummers; many of the drum skins are mottled with the blood of the drummers' hands, so carried away do they get with beating them.  When hundreds turn up at once, as they do on the last night of Carnival, Mardi Gras, for the ceremonial burning of the Lardeiros (more on them in a later entry) it can feel like something out of a film. The combination of the huge drum beats, fire, fireworks exploding and flour drifting in the air at the same time is something that truly has to be experienced to be properly appreciated.

Friends who've come here for this, particularly from Britain, have described it in awed terms, leaving wide-eyed and exhausted at the end. Very few people here don't get absolutely animated and excited for it when it comes round. I'll try to give a small flavour of it over the next few entries.

That result in full; three goals, one ham, one happy Englishman to nil

One of the bigger factors in contemplating making the move here permanently, quite genuinely, was the fact that I'd no longer be a regular at the Albion. This of course played no part in my partner's thinking but for me it was, in all seriousness, quite a big deal. Waiting 34 years to get back to the top flight and I promptly leave the country when we finally get there. Something has to stand in its stead.

Step forward the unique charms of Club Deportivo Viana do Bolo, the village's own team, made up entirely of locals or near-locals, all, of course, playing for nothing more than the love of the game.

The Premier League this isn't, but that's to ignore its very different but no less enjoyable attractions. I pay €20 per year to attend all the games. I rock up at two minutes to kick-off and I know several of the players. I even, rather ludicrously given how terrible a footballer I am, play with and against several of them on Thursdays.

The ground itself may lack The Amex's comfort and facilities, but it sits against a spectacular backdrop of the Galician mountains. Aircraft contrails line the sky diagonally to the pitch, all heading towards a Madrid that's distant in every sense.

There was fevered anticipation ahead of the ham raffle.
The game, I mean. Sorry - ahead of the game.

Given the local population, the turn-out can be pretty good if the weather's nice and the team playing well. A hundred or so represents a decent percentage of the local populace, remember, and many of them are even there for the football. I say many, because it seems to me that the real draw for some of them is the half-time raffle for a ham. Yep - you read that correctly. Not for Viana a cash prize or a signed shirt. Here the only prize, apart from special occasions when there may be an infinitely less desirable second prize, is a whole ham. Here's one for which they drew earlier:

Oooh, let's 'ave a look at what ya could'a won.

Ome Euro per ticket (I always buy three) on entry gives you a shot at something that'd cost good money in the shop. Now my missus, who goes only occasionally, won the thing the first and only time she saw a game last season. This, coupled with the fact that no matter who wins it, they get absolutely slaughtered by everybody else (no pun intended), meant that I've been gently dreading ever actually winning the thing, despite my regular attendance.

But so it was, this weekend just passed, that my number was drawn. The chap who actually pulled out the winning ticket threw it to the floor in disgust, and so began the choi-oiking from all and sundry. 

Now I readily accept that, in a group of Galicians yelling over each other, I don't understand some of the Gallego I'm hearing. But I'm fairly sure I received a number of suggestions as to what I could do with said ham, and I'm reasonably certain they weren't all culinary advice. Even today, sitting in a bar as I write this over a coffee, people who weren't even at the game are coming up to me. "Fuck sake, I can't believe a bloody Ingles won the ham. Don't talk to me..." News travels fast in such a small place as Viana, and the winning of such a prize counts as news here. I'm not taking it personally, of course - I'm merely paying the same price everybody who wins it has to pay. You should have heard the grief the poor chap who won it twice in the same season got.

Anyway, back to the game. After the controversy of the guiri winning the raffle, the crowed swelled further for the second half with the arrival of a number of spectators who'd missed the first half to attend a funeral. You don't get that in the Premier League either. I'm pleased to report that the good guys won 3-0 and sit top of the league, which is a relief to me because, naturally, the first season I watched them after moving here, they were relegated and I saw only two victories all season. I was beginning to worry that I was a bit of a Jonah.

I never got any stick for that, though. Bring bad luck to the team, yeah - by all means. But for fuck's sake don't go winning the ham.

Lactose-tolerant scatology

The great Billy Connolly, speaking in defence of swearing, once said that you never hear or read '"Fuck off," he hinted.' I've always been at one with the Big Yin in his view - far from being the sign of a limited intellect (as I've heard it dismissed), I believe that creative use of swearing is the sign of a lively and extensive vocabulary. Any idiot can simply drop the f-bomb repeatedly, but it takes real wit to use the profane to the fullest extent of its power.

It's often the swearing that anybody trying to learn a language will pick up first. The liberal use of this form, coupled with swearing's force of emphasis and general usefulness, make swearwords some of the first that many people distinguish. (Not forgetting the churlish delight many people have in learning rude words in other languages, of course.)

The Galicians have made things even easier for the keen-to-learn outsider in this regard, by focusing their swearing to an extraordinary extent on the scatological. I'd say more than half the swearing I hear is an excremental imperative. I'll give you an example. Late last Thursday night, returning to Viana from Christmas in the UK, the drive back from the railway station was marked by patches of fog and near-moonlightless darkness. Caution was necessary, none more so than when a deer suddenly ran out in front of the car, appearing from nowhere out of the gloom and forcing a sudden braking. "Shit on the whore of a deer!" pronounced the driver, perfectly delivering an exemplar of the most common form of swearing I hear.

Shitting on, or in, things, would seem an almost compulsive desire here, were you to take the locals' imprecations literally. I've heard hundreds of forms of it - the deer incident being typical of how specifically it can be adapted, but the most common are:

Shit on the mother who birthed you/him/her/it!
Shit on God!
Shit on my life!
Shit on ten! (No I don't understand this one either, and wonder if it's an example of my mishearing the dialect from time to time. But I'm reasonably sure I've heard this more than once.)
Shit on the whore!
Shit on the hostia. (The hostia is the communion bread, of which more later.)

And, given that I've named this entry in this phrase's honour, my absolute favourite:

Shit in the milk!

Now the first time I heard this one I dissolved into laughter, not only because of the inevitable mental image it conjures, but because to me it doesn't sound like an expression of outrage as it's normally used here ("The train's cancelled? Shit in the milk!"). No, to my English ears it sounds more like an expression of emphasis, alarm or surprise. (Shit in the milk, that's hot!). I also picture a baddie in some lewd kids' comic. ("I'll put a stop to their little enterprise. I'll defecate in their milk. Ha!")

I don't use these terms myself because they all sound faintly absurd coming out of a foreigner's mouth, and spoken with an English accent. I was, though, kindly told by a friend on Monday that I now use the Spanish equivalent of 'fuck', 'joder', just like a local. This was oddly pleasing, but joder is so mild here that you hear it on television at any hour of the day, unbeeped. They only beep two things, as far as I can tell. The aforementioned hostia, which can be used on its own as a sweary expression of surprise ("They were how much? Hostia!") but is obviously a Catholic reference to the host, and therefore offends many people in what's still a pretty religious country. The other thing is puta, meaning 'whore'. That gets beeped too - I have no idea why. Hijo/hija de puta ('son/daughter of a whore') is one of the strongest insults here but the only bit they beep on telly is the last word.

To truly swear like a Galician, though, I need to start using carallo. This reference to the phallus can be used so multifariously that it'd fill an entry on its own - I recommend this page for a much fuller comment on its ubiquity and versatility. Again, I hesitate because it makes me think I sound like I'm trying too hard. But if the day ever comes when I'm complimented on using carallo like a local, well shit in the milk that'd make me happy.

See what I mean? Emphasis, not outrage.

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.