It’s hayfever season. It’s also the seasonal change from hot to scorchio and here in Almodovar we’ve been reminded of why this river basin is called ‘The Frying Pan’ with temperatures getting as high as 38 – in May!
As is traditional in Cordoba we missed the week-long celebration of Hypocrisy known as Feria. It’s a gigantic festival of fairground rides, beer and food tents, horses, flamenca dresses and flamenco music and a lot of sore heads on the weekend mornings.
It’s one of the highlights of the social calendar in Cordoba; indeed every town and village has their own version of it but this Cordoba one is the largest that we have not been to. Lots of people dress up in their finery and meet family and friends to have a good time celebrating the Gitano/Gypsy culture that originated in Andalucia and that, for the other 51 weeks of the year, many Andalucíans despise.
Gitanos are often despised because they look different, act different and annoy folk who don’t want them to be different. Very often Gitanos can be utter wankers as well. It’s a mixed bag. They’re originally all the way from northern India so they often look darker than the true-blooded Spanish who never mixed their genes with the Moors over an 800 year period of Moorish rule, obviously.
The hypocrisy is writ large. Andalucia often uses imagery of fiery Flamenco dancers on the tourist adverts and the music is ubiquitous in the whole of Spain, even in many of their past entries into the Eurovision Song Contest whilst, at the same time, treating the actual people with contempt and disdain if not outright hostility.
There is obviously some kind of attraction to the idea of bolshy yet beautiful and spirited women and handsome dark guitar-playing men of the Gitano community that people love – witness Laurie Lee the famous British author who told the tale of some of the ravishing young women whom he bedded – he “embellished” quite a lot of his Spanish memoir just to give some added spice to his tale.
Anyway, we didn’t go to the Feria. Again. We live a rock and roll lifestyle without any rock or any roll.
Having said that, Sonalee is going back to Morocco for a week with a group of students to take part in activities in the Atlas Mountains. It is somewhat edgy for the school to do this since many families see Morocco as some kind of deranged, Hellish, barbaric, crazy place where everyone gets robbed all the time.
No, they really do. Those students who are going with Sonalee are those from the progressive wing of the parent population. Normally trips for the older students consist of visits to really safe European capital cities and so this one is a bit of an outlier for the school. Needless to say, I’m rather jealous and the other staff members who are going are really excited about it.
Speaking of progressive parents, we had quite a few for our first ever Girls Football Match a few weeks ago against a team from El Higueron where we used to live. It was a big moment for the girls and the school and our hosts were just great. Their coach, Jose, was fantastic in how he spoke to his team and to the two younger boys that he lent us to make up numbers and the crowd from both teams were really supportive.
Given that our students come from unbelievably wealthy lineage and El Higueron is in the bottom 15 of poorest boroughs in Spain, the respect that we were afforded said so much about Jose’s club. It was brilliant. We lost 5-4 but no one really cared. I’m lining up another game, hopefully with another local club.
Lots of people have been very enthused and have said some nice things about coaching the girls’ football but, as in many other schools that I’ve taught in, coaching doesn’t seem to be work. I enjoy it. I enjoy seeing kids playing football and seeing them enjoy themselves. It’s great. When we do retire, we have talked about maybe coaching girls in the village again since their team have disbanded since I left to work here.
And there’s that word again, retirement. It’s getting closer. It’s like the full-stop at the end of a sentence; it is inevitable. We have been teaching for 30 years or thereabouts and we both have a feeling of trying to find out what else we can do whilst we still can. We need to put that full-stop in our careers and start a new sentence or two.
As we approach the end of another school year, these thoughts appear naturally at our age. I know we are not the only ones either. We do feel lucky that we do actually have a choice; many do not. We shall see…
In the meantime we have three more weeks of students in school on a reduced Summer timetable – because it’s so bloody hot – before we have two months off and, more importantly, a World Cup to get through.
I admit to having less of a sense of excitement about this one simply because of Trump, FIFA corruption, insane ticket prices , ICE, rabid ugly English nationalism and the rest of the scummy things associated with global politics but I will still be watching some of the endless matches in the next month.
It’s a World Cup. Scotland will be there! And I want Mexico and Canada to do well. And, for some reason, Bosnia and Herzegovina just because they have two names. It will be a marathon of football watching and a good reason not to go out into the heat of the nights here.
We shall see who prevails. In the meantime, Hasta Luego, Inshallah
Ayubowan
Ciao
Paul
PS: I hope you don’t mind if I put down in words how much I love hearing this song. And this joyous number also keeps coming up on my random car music mix, brilliant.