My Name is Paul English

So, I now have another new name to go along with the various ones that I have attracted in my life, including many that I am sure I am not exactly aware of but can guess from annoyed students, annoyed parents, my sisters, my wife, my mum, frustrated teammates and Spaniards who cannot believe just how much I mangle their language.

Our local plumber, Jose Maria, has decided to call all of us foreigners by our name and the word Ingles. Which is fine for me but Graham is a bit pissed off because he’s Irish. What to do? When you go to pay a bill here, which could be a few weeks or a few months after the work was done, this is how you are named in the invoice. It is the way of things here.

Fuente Tojar has finally gotten over its summer fiesta which involves several thousand people from far and wide visiting the village over a weekend and dancing to music that goes on until six in the morning. It’s chaos. Our village is overwhelmed by people, noise and money that these people are spending.

Many come from the local towns and villages – my barber was particularly excited at the prospect of meeting many women at the festival especially those women with (and there is no other way of putting this) with the big boobies – but many also come back from their townhouses that they live in from places as afar as Barcelona and Cadiz. They’re the ones who hang around for a few weeks rather than just the weekend. Hence we see many ex denizens of the village who enquire as to who on Earth we are and what we are doing here.

Afterwards the village stinks of various dried up liquids and solids deposited in various places centred upon the plaza. We await the rains of Autumn. Eagerly.

In truth the weather here dominates still. The extreme heat is okay for a few weeks. After a few months it gets tedious. It gets tedious not having any energy, living in the dark of a shuttered house and not having the willpower to face 40 degree heat unless you absolutely have to. The walls have definitely started to close in.

These young ladies played during the cultural week. They were excellent.

It also means that your achievements for any given day become limited to one or two. It’s ridiculous really. If you achieve one thing – I made chip shop curry sauce yesterday – then you feel like you have done something worthwhile. How sad is that? The rest of the time is spent lounging around doing bugger all because that’s all you can do.

The municipal pool up the road is nice to lower your core body temperature for a few hours so that you have a little bit more energy and the plaza bar serve very cold wine late at night to make you feel better. I am really not sure what we would do without the plaza bar. When you imagine small Andalusian villages, it really should involve an outdoor casual bar with many locals talking and children annoying you. It is, in our eyes, a quintessential part of Spanish life and we love it (apart from when it smells after a fiesta).

The Aeronautical Museum near Malaga Airport.

The dogs are feeling the heat as well. During the day it’s wall to wall fur in the front room, made more furry when the two kittens decide they want to sleep on the sofa as well. Dora’s favourite time is the evening when the balcony doors are opened and she gets to bark at anyone with the temerity to walk down the street. Okay, everyone who walks down the street or ‘looks funny at her’.

I have, of course, been watching the World Cup because it has been on in the mornings and both Spain and England have done well. Disappointed for the England team but Spain were the younger and brighter team today and are deserved winners. What has been interesting about the progress of the Spanish team has been the relationship between the coach and the players, most of whom absolutely despise him.

This building used to be the terminal for all air travel in the south of Spain.

About two years ago (I think) half the squad said they were no longer willing to play under him because he was a freaky control freak who made their time with the national team an unpleasant one. The trouble was that they did not take into account the if not actually corrupt practices of the Spanish FA, then at least extremely dodgy practices. The coach was appointed by the Head of the Woman’s FA in Spain who just happens to be his dad. What are the odds? The man the team complained to happened to be the best mate of the coach’s dad. The rebel players were summarily dismissed and will never play for the team again whilst also being called traitors. Did I spell Nepotism correctly?

There are many lingering vestiges of Franco’s corrupt practices here in Spain, although huge progress has been made it has to be said. Football is one of the bastions of male privilege and nepotism and just outright corruption. The President of Real Madrid is widely acknowledged to be one of the dodgiest geezers in Spain and possibly the biggest scumbag of them all, and the competition for that title is fierce beyond belief. The agents are dodgy as Hell, the journalists haven’t even a basic understanding of integrity and the fans don’t care as long as their team do well.

There’s a Roman Archeology Section. This is a child’s grave. The body would have been placed side on.

Whilst Real Madrid and Barcelona exemplify the outrageous Getting Away with It, there isn’t a club in the land that isn’t involved in something dodgy with regards to funding, player contracts, tax evasion, ground rents, ground purchases, tv rights, sponsorship deals and shirt deals. The Spanish public have grown up with this and acknowledge that it is just part of life here.

I am pleased for the Spanish team today. They are blazing a trail and they really are very skilful. That the presentation team on telly today were all female is quite telling because that would never have been the case a few years ago. One of our favourite memories from this world cup has been the Spanish commentators going absolutely mental when Spain have scored. No inhibitions, no decorum, just pure shouty joy and disbelief. Long may it continue.

On a more mundane note, I have started to get enquiries as to being a tutor. Sonalee has started to tutor one student already and is looking at taking more on. This is a brave new world for us both but we are quietly optimistic that we can make it work. We still think we have one more adventure in a forrin land in us whether that be in Spain or maybe in Colombia or Africa. Who knows. For now, we are at home and will be here for a whole winter – Sonalee’s first for four years.

Our next adventure may well be in Italy. We were visited by Colin, an ex colleague of Sonalee and one who is teaching near Bari in a Canadian school. I know, right? Canadian? What can I say, it’s a new one for us. Anyway, he seemed to enjoy his short time here and the dogs loved him. It was nice when he did the tour of the house and exclaimed how great it was.

Sometimes you forget. You forget that you do actually live in a really nice and large house and that you have made it nice with some great artwork from friends and numerous trips to Ikea. It is a great house with some odd quirks and we are here this year to make it even nicer. We are lucky to have it. I would thoroughly recommend having a great house in Andalusia.

I would also thoroughly recommend going to an evening concert in Granada to see Manu Chao. He’s a musician I have longed to see for decades. Manu Chao is just a force of nature; he loves what he does and people love what he does. We ended up seeing him play in a nightclub on the outskirts of Granada to an event that didn’t start till eleven in the evening (it’s Spain) and left two and a half hours later absolutely blown away. And slightly deaf. Hardly anything was not in Spanish but it didn’t matter. The man is a genius at getting a crowd to just enjoy themselves and be happy – possibly helped by some of what many were smoking.