That’s it, time to move further south!

There’s hardly a car on the road or a person on the street or a bar or café open for today is a, yes, you’ve guessed it, another bank holiday but with a difference.

‘Todos Santos’ or All Saints Day, is Spanish Halloween steeped in tradition which consists of attending an open air mass, usually in a cemetery where the graves of the dead are adorned with flowers. There is a more tasty part to the celebration called ‘La Castanada’ which consists of indulging in roast chestnuts and sweet potatoes (boniatos) followed by sweet almond cakes, (panalletes) though this is also celebrated at someone’s wake. Things should be back to normal for all tomorrow, especially me with a couple of trees to fell and another roof to look at, but hey, it may be Sunday but I’d rather be out than in. Oh, must get back for the Grand Prix though, I’ll probably be the only Englishman in the Venta rooting for Hamilton and not Masa!

And it’s a refreshing change to enquire of one of the locals who they think will win the vote for the next president of the USA, John McCain or Barrack Obama, to be answered with a quizzical, ‘Que?’ No one here really cares about anything or anyone outside of Spain. I sometimes wish we had some of that ideology in Blighty, because I don’t care either!

No Luke for Christmas which was a downer for us, but Joe arrived for a week so a partial family Christmas was on the cards. We went shopping, eating and drinking while taking in the first ambience of a foreign festive season Spanish style. The big outlet centres all along the coast were dressed and lit up magnificently with apparently no expense spared. There was a Grotto in La Cañada shopping complex in Marbella complete with a big jolly Santa Clause and a stream of wide eyed children in tow. Every street in our town was adorned with novelty lights and illuminated festive figures adding atmosphere to the already growing feeling of a season to be jolly.

As usual, we as a family paired off in a rota to wrap presents to then place them under the tree, which for the first time ever, we had chosen to place outside in the summer room, though under cover from any rain that might fall.

I have always loved Christmas, it’s always been a special time apart from the couple of times missed due to tours of duty in Bosnia and the Middle East during my time in the Navy. As for lots of people it can be special for many different reasons. For me it’s preparing the Turkey on Christmas Eve, enhancing its cholesterol count by stuffing with packs of butter and, for this particular dinner, 80 Chipolata sausages wrapped all round it, topped off with strips of streaky bacon. Healthy options? Don’t even go there. Even the veg is cooked in meat stock with the parsnips and spuds roasted in lard. Yes, if I died on Boxing Day, a thousand blue tits could peck on my carcass for weeks!

But I digress. We wanted to bring the spirit of Christmas to our neighbours who by this time had just about, we hoped, come to accept us as permanent residents and what better way to break the ice than to buy everyone a small gift. Nothing too fancy, we bought a cheap bottle of whiskey for every house or some chocolate and sweets for those we knew had children. We would deliver them on Christmas Eve before going out down the coast for a beer and a drive, with a card in our best Spanish simply stating Feliz Navidad from the Davies family.

So that’s what we did, wrapping each bottle, attaching the card, placing them in plastic bags before going up and down the street hanging them on railings and gate posts. That done, it was off for a pre Chrimbo brew with Rose and Joe.

Arriving back at the villa later that evening we were surprised to find that, in our absence, a number of bags had now been left hanging on our gates. Picking them off, we went inside and on opening, discovered a number of items from jars of honey to bags of nuts, sweets, chocolates and bottles of wine all left by from we assumed were our neighbours. This gesture alone made this Christmas pleasantly different as throughout the evening, the doorbell would ring and on investigation we would find a bag of goodies or somesuch hanging there. Remember, this was our gesture and we never expected something like this to happen in return.

The Spanish actually celebrate somewhat differently. Christmas Eve is usually celebrated with a family meal followed by the opening of presents by children received from ‘Papa Noel’, (Father Xmas).

Christmas Day is usually a day of reverence towards the birth of Christ and of the Virgin Mary and for celebrating mass. The next part of the festivities invariably is that of the arrival of the Three Kings whereby gifts are exchanged by the adults, on New Years Eve.

Unbeknown to us, this giving of presents as we had done could have been construed as a mild insult in as far as we had broken with the traditions of our new Spanish acquaintances. We have since discovered that the Spanish are a fiercely proud people, and if you give them a gift or do them a favour they feel duty bound to give something in return. So you have to be very careful not to offend. But all was well as we found out with the understanding from all that our gesture was purely one of friendship and was perceived in that way.

Christmas day was warm and sunny but apart from that, we celebrated in the usual way with wine and sherry for breakfast, Rose giving me grief as to whether or not I had allowed enough time for the Turkey to cook and why I had prepared so much food for three, something which always made me chuckle. Then it was a call to those closest in the family and of course Luke who we missed dearly. In return we received a surprise call from our dear friends Dennis and Maria Spurr aka The Fantastic Sausage Factory.

Then it was presents with drink and nibbles handed out by Joe in his Santa hat.

The meal was perfect as usual, though with the amount of alcohol consumed, all the preparation work was immaterial. And after dinner came to traditional board games which seem so much more fun after a few sherbets! (A Navy slang word for intoxicating drinks).

The three of us sat as we normally did waiting for full bellies to subside before a walk and settling down to the lighter side of Christmas TV shows and films which are repeated like clockwork every year in the seasonal spirit. During the evening, friendly arguments erupted over classic board games, though I have to admit, if I didn’t cheat, I’d get nowhere!

For me it was a lovely Christmas apart from the absence of dear family, and Joe was a star helping to make the period special as it’s meant to be.

This year will be different again I’m sure, but we will be celebrating as we always have done, and with luck, as a foursome and with newly made friends.

Colourful Characters
Our neighbours have undoubtedly made us feel welcome as outsiders in a community which is tight by any standards. Spaniards guard their privacy ferociously and are not known to tolerate fools lightly. So getting to know, talk and associate with them is a rare privilege for some indeed. The elder generation appear less tolerant than the modern cosmopolitan youth. They seem to have, as I’ve stated in the past, a strict code of family values and morals, whereby they can be friendly on contact but wary of getting to know strangers. One of these gems, and I use the term affectionately, is the mother of one of our neighbours who lives opposite. Mia I would estimate, is around 930 years old, fit as a butcher’s dog and speaks a language so far removed from Spanish classes it’s almost unintelligible. But from the start and after breaching a common speech barrier, Mia is someone you would swear has appeared in every Spaghetti western or Spanish film you’ve ever seen. She’s about 4’2” tall and 5 stone soaking wet, you can see her sweeping up outside the villa, hers and ours, every morning come rain or shine, chatting to everyone as they pass, though I truly believe half of her own kind can’t understand her! Yes, Mia is the quintessential Spanish elder who has possibly never known life outside of Cóin, spending most of her time running for buses and keeping her home clean, but to us she’s a star that’s made us welcome and to share a joke with, no matter how lost in translation!

Worth a visit
The city of Malaga is somewhere that people fly or sail into, only to transit almost immediately for the more popular and well known holiday resorts. Well for me, Malaga has absolutely everything anyone could want and is more like staying and visiting the real Spain more than some of the tourist overrun so called hot spots.

Founded as a city in 800 BC by the Phoenicians, Malaga has possibly seen more invaders, settlers and cultural dominators than any other country in Europe. After the Phoenicians came the Carthaginians, then the Romans, then the most influential conquerors, the Arabs or Moors whose culture even today is apparent everywhere on nearly every older building.

It has experienced famines, earthquakes, floods, harvest failures as recent as the eighteenth century.

The biggest change had to come in the fifties with the influx of tourism which would change the face of southern Spain forever. We visit Malaga ‘Centro Ciudad’ (city centre) at least once a week to shop, to browse, to explore or just for a social day out.

The Gibralfaro Fort dominates the port skyline and is well worth the walk to the top, though beware, in the summer it can be a serious trek but well worth the view. There are the Roman amphitheatre and government buildings (built on reclaimed land), majestic along the Avenida de Andaluce which ends at the huge bullring roundabout. The food market is a real eye opener, though Rose will rarely walk through the meat section unless she has to as you never know what’s about alive and what’s not and in the searing heat you can imagine the rich smell! It only serves to make me drool even more.

The Picasso museum is another must as is the giant cathedral. The shops on the main street are varied but it’s down the little narrow side streets that you’ll find the unusual and the traditional cafes, bars and ventas!

Buses and trains arrive regularly from all along the coast which will drop you in the centre. It’s easy to jump on and very cheap, just grab a map and enjoy, I think it’s a brill city.

Next week
Do they celebrate New Year or what!