Andalucia

Having just spent 2 weeks in a small Spanish cottage with three women (two of them seventeen, blond, and stunningly beautiful), I now have more sympathy and understanding for misogynists. The two girls had those perfectly proportioned bodies with flawless skin, that makes older women smother themselves in expensive magic potions to “prevent” aging (because they’re “worth it”), submit to the surgeon’s unnecessary knife, or torment themselves with bizarre diets. But, apparently, being young and perfectly beautiful is not good enough even; you still need to anoint yourself with various chemical concoctions, shave your legs etc, use four different shampoos and conditioners, and improve on your flawless face with a bagful of cosmetics. From personal observation I know that one of the girls has fourteen assorted plastic bottles of gloop in the bathroom.

The location was perfect, the sunshine relentless, the sky interminably blue, and the pool delicious. It was August, it was hot, and the advertised air conditioning was crap! One tiny unit for the whole place, that only stayed on for half an hour at a time before it gave up, was inadequate to say the least. We gave up trying to use the AC after the fist day. All the bedrooms had ceiling fans thank the gods; otherwise we would all have had to sleep outside by the pool. During my siesta I just lay on my bed and perspired.

I have been accused from time to time of pessimism (my friends mean rationalism of course), but on this trip I had made the mistake of allowing hope to triumph over my experience of family holidays, and thought that I would get a good deal of painting and drawing done while the others splashed merrily in the pool or went sightseeing and shopping. Ah, but I had not taken a couple of factors into consideration; the heat, the cries and shrieks from the pool, and the unavoidable television, morning, afternoon, and evening. The young don’t read books apparently, or if they do, they soon find it a chore. Monopoly on this trip was much noisier than I remember, and so were all other games or did it just seem so because young females (and some older ones too) can have such loud, shrill voices?

The hire car had air conditioning, but it also had a manual gearbox (to save money I was told), and now all cars seem to have five or six gears, my first car only had three!). I can still remember how to change gear, even after driving an automatic for the last twenty years or so, and have often done so when my own car was in for service, but the combination of trying to read Spanish road-signs, spot traffic lights, ignore the giggling in the back, drive on the right, AND remember to use the clutch and change down into second at a roundabout, was a little too much sometimes in the first few days. The cry “you’re in the wrong gear”, although meant kindly I am sure, was not actually very helpful, so I did stall the car a couple of times – at least!

I did actually manage to get some work done, and I used the beautiful pool twice a day. The views were totally breathtaking, the Spanish people admirable, the evening temperature perfect, the coffee strong and dark, the beer refreshing and the food edible. The red wine in bars was usually good, and even better when it was served with chunks of ice “(ice in red wine?” I hear you cry). The white was best left alone.

Shall I mention the dogs? You know – the ones that bark? It seems to me that the more beautiful a place is (India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Caribbean) the more you need to try and ignore the ubiquitous barking dogs. When one starts they all feel the need to have a go and soon the whole world is barking. It peters out after a while and you relax, enjoying the profound silence and your cool beer, but dogs don’t like silence, it’s boring, so after just a couple of minutes one will start again. No, I had better not mention the dogs.

Go to Spain. Go to Andalucía and be awestruck – but not in August.