Even though I trained as a historian, I'm not comfortable dwelling too much on what's been and gone, so no more about my past for a while. And if you're wondering why I studied history in the first place, I've come to the conclusion thirty years on that the choice of subject was driven by a need to understand the present.
It didn't work, I'm still as baffled by the present as always. So to keep things simple, here's the here and now:
Well, the sun's shining today (ok, it is Spain but it rains here more than you'd think and then some). If I say it rained a couple of days ago that doesn't quite catch the intensity of Spanish rain. To try and illustrate what I mean, not too far from here there are the ruins of a large church complex; it was destroyed in the eighteenth century by rain. I'm not kidding, rain here can be like the wrath of God when it tries hard enough.
So, the sun's shining, and there's a stiffish breeze blowing the trees in the park opposite. When it's quiet round here - and believe me the Spanish are rarely quiet - you can usually hear the waves on the sea-shore 350 metres away. However the current soundscape contains dogs barking, kids running around the play area in the park, and a bunch of guys from the ayuntamiento revving up their weed-whackers.
... and suddenly, silence. It's often like that; there's an unspoken collective agreement to take a break mid-afternoon: parents drift off with their kids, cats bed down in sunny spots, dogs stop barking. If Wifie wasn't playing Okami on her Wii, and yelling in frustration when things go wrong I could probably hear the sea.
As for smells, courtesy of a fellow traveller's sneeze returning from Sardinia three days ago, I can't smell a damn thing. Tomorrow I want to talk about history.
Friday, 15 May 2009
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Introductions are in Order
In reality, not an easy task. But let's start with the basics: I was born in the early fifties. As colour didn't arrive in the UK until the sixties, my childhood was spent in black and white.
Actually I was lucky enough to be brought up in Troon on the west coast of Scotland. It's a peninsula, jutting into the Firth of Clyde so there were beaches to run on, sand dunes to jump off, and rock pools to play in. There was a fishing harbour and a breaker's yard attached to a working shipyard, so ample opportunity for trespassing and mischief. In short a great place to grow up, but you feel too old to do most of the fun stuff over the age of fifteen (we grew up slower then).
So after kicking my heels for a couple of years, time to buckle down, take on some responsibility and get a job; however I've never been ambitious, I've always tried to avoid responsibility and I dislike hard work ... and those are my good points.
To cut a long story short I bounced around for ten years before finding the ultimate slacker's paradise - University: one of the few places you can fool around for 95% of the time then, fuelled by instant coffee, push as much material into short-term memory as possible, sit the exams and hope for the best.
So, how did I stumble from moderately successful student to middle-aged fart? Maybe a story for another day.
Actually I was lucky enough to be brought up in Troon on the west coast of Scotland. It's a peninsula, jutting into the Firth of Clyde so there were beaches to run on, sand dunes to jump off, and rock pools to play in. There was a fishing harbour and a breaker's yard attached to a working shipyard, so ample opportunity for trespassing and mischief. In short a great place to grow up, but you feel too old to do most of the fun stuff over the age of fifteen (we grew up slower then).
So after kicking my heels for a couple of years, time to buckle down, take on some responsibility and get a job; however I've never been ambitious, I've always tried to avoid responsibility and I dislike hard work ... and those are my good points.
To cut a long story short I bounced around for ten years before finding the ultimate slacker's paradise - University: one of the few places you can fool around for 95% of the time then, fuelled by instant coffee, push as much material into short-term memory as possible, sit the exams and hope for the best.
So, how did I stumble from moderately successful student to middle-aged fart? Maybe a story for another day.
All I want to do is blog to you
It's strange the things we take for granted. When I lived in Oxford it was an unalienable right for anyone to have a telephone line and an internet connection. The phone jack in the wall was your guarantee of online happiness. Then we moved to Spain ...
It's taken almost two years to get connected by Telefonica, the monopoly provider; two years of frustration; two years of using internet cafes to access online bank accounts; two years of envying those lucky people who took a connection for granted.
But strange to say, I'm not bitter; I'm just grateful to be breathing the oxygen of online existence once again.
My first blog, started in Oxford in the weeks before the move to Alcossebre, was meant to document the start of our new life in Spain as we (Wifie and I) took our first, faltering steps in a new culture - learning the language, making friends, tending our Mediterranean garden.
However there's been a two-year hiatus and it seems right to start again so, in the next post, introductions are in order, objectives will be outlined and ambitions explored: ¡hasta luego!
It's taken almost two years to get connected by Telefonica, the monopoly provider; two years of frustration; two years of using internet cafes to access online bank accounts; two years of envying those lucky people who took a connection for granted.
But strange to say, I'm not bitter; I'm just grateful to be breathing the oxygen of online existence once again.
My first blog, started in Oxford in the weeks before the move to Alcossebre, was meant to document the start of our new life in Spain as we (Wifie and I) took our first, faltering steps in a new culture - learning the language, making friends, tending our Mediterranean garden.
However there's been a two-year hiatus and it seems right to start again so, in the next post, introductions are in order, objectives will be outlined and ambitions explored: ¡hasta luego!
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