Colourful

Thanks to William Blake, and probably more particularly to Hubert Parry, we know what colour England is. It's a green and pleasant land. I heard the tune the other day and it made me wonder what colour Spain is.

Round here my first thought is dust coloured. Alicante is summer and the summer is all orange and yellow and buff with a bright yellow sun. 

Blue as well. People often comment on the blue of the Alicantino sky. And the Med of course, despite being, apparently, full of plastic and other even more horrid things often gleams bright turquoise or sky blue. Just over the border into Castilla la Mancha, where they are a bit short of Mediterranean colour, they like to paint their towns white and indigo blue to compensate. 

If the Manchegos paint their towns blue and white the Alicantino tradition is of different colours to the facades of adjacent houses. Villajoyosa is well known for it but even in the streets of Pinoso the tradition is there if you look. Alicantino houses also have tall windows, with the jambs picked out in a different colour and fancy window grilles.

Of course it may be that Spain is green.  Not the British green. Well certainly not that drab grey and browny green of a cold English winter's day, complete with cawing crows. We do have greens. The vibrant greenness of the vines and the the, rather prosaically, olive green of the olives. Mind you, up North, the clichéd picture would show green pastures and black and white or Guernsey coloured cows. There may be pipers too; Galicia is big on bagpipes. The Cantabrian coast is called the Green Coast, la Costa Verde.

Down on la huerta, the market garden, of Valencia, the Orange Blossom coast, I could try to suggest that the orange groves provide another colour but the truth is that it's the smell rather than the look that oranges do best - at blossom time the citrus groves are pungently fragrant. That's not the case with the blossoms on the almond, cherry and peach trees with blossom which goes from the whitest of pinks to the darkest of reds.

When I asked Maggie what colour she thought Spain was she instantly said white. If you've ever travelled around Andalucia you'll know why. The villages there, often built on the hilltops are a blaze of white. Andalucia also uses that colour scheme beloved of bullrings - red and yellow. Like the colours of the Spanish flag. 

And all under the sun as the old advertising slogan used to say.

Heat and Dust

Have you seen those photos of the Greek Islands? Blue and white paintwork everywhere and the boats apparently suspended in mid air on a transparent crystal clear sea. It's the light that makes those photos so stunning and it's the same sort of light that we have here. A popular late 19th and early 20th Century Spanish painter, Joaquín Sorolla, is most famous because of the way he captured the Mediterranean light. I often think of Sorolla when anyone comments on the limpid, flawless blue sky in even the most mundane of my snaps.

So, when we first came to Spain I envisaged a house with big French windows, with gauze like curtains moving gently on a whisper of warm breeze making and unmaking pools of light on the tiled floor. Obviously we would wear, white, probably linen, clothes as we Virginia Woolfed our way through the days sipping on ice tinkling lemonade or a more alcoholic gin and tonic. Nobody sweats in those images, we would just luxuriate in the brightness of it all.

Actually of course, nowadays, being good Spaniards, we walk on the shadowed side of the street, we look to park the car in the shade so that the steering wheel will not singe our hands and the seats other parts of our anatomy as we return to it and we would always choose to eat inside, in the air conditioned interior of a restaurant, rather than out with the flies and the dust in the street. It's alright to have a drink in the street but always in the shade. And whilst you're there the most important thing about a beer is it's temperature. That's one of the reasons Spaniards drink small beers and not pints (well that and the metric system). Eating outside we leave to the tourists. We're sometimes taken aback when guests want to sit in the sun or eat outside. We're not really good Spaniards though, or at least I'm not. Maggie would do the Spanish thing and drop all the blinds on the house and leave us in permanent twilight if she had her way. Windows and doors would stay firmly closed until the sun had dipped out of sight or at least until it starts to cool down a bit. I'm still for a through draft and a bit of natural light in the house. We're also lucky that, up here, at 600 metres the evening temperatures drops into the teens which makes it easy to sleep without taking to the old Spanish trick of sleeping on the terrace. Of course it's also the summer heat that means that Spanish events, like theatre or pop bands, don't start till lots of Britons are thinking about whatever the summer equivalent is of cocoa and a bedtime book.

It really is a splendid light and, as I've said before, I like the heat. Yesterday I polished my car and as I collected the various implements with the job done I noticed the fine patina of dust already on the car. I smiled. Just as it snows in Stockholm in winter it's warm and dusty in Culebrón in July.

August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk

If I were to ask you whether you'd expect summer in Spain to be warm or cool what would you say?

Exactly.

I like it warm. I like the unremitting heat of the Alicante summer. Sun every day, no rain for weeks or months, the sound of flip flops on the street and the telly full of people having outdoor parties and frolicking in the sea with orgiastic fiestas in every town and village.

So summer here is as mythical as Christmas in England. There it's snow, robins, family camaraderie, goodwill, never ending mince pies and the warm feeling of gift giving. It's sort of true, it can be true but most of it is some sort of aggrandisement of the truth.

People of course love to complain. In winter we complain about the cold and in summer we complain about the heat. This always amuses me slightly. Anyone who knows Spain knows that there are bits that are, generally, cool and rainy. The coolest (temperature wise) place I can find for yesterday was Covatilla near Bejar in Salamanca where it was just over 20ºC but Covatilla is a winter ski resort so it's at the top of a mountain. The warmest couple of spots for yesterday, in the whole of Spain, were Xàtiva and Yeste at a bit over 40ºC. Both are within an hour (or so) drive  of Culebrón. In general, Britons think of Spain as being a sunny place. White people come here to lie on the Mediterranean beaches and go, by turns, pink and then red. So my amusement is because people seem surprised that it's warm.

I know that the weather is bonkers. I'm not unaware of all that highest temperature ever recorded in Tuluksak, Tobermory or Tudela stuff but the truth is that the differences aren't that great - at least not for we humans. A temperature rise of 3ºC may have huge global consequences as glaciers recede, ice caps melt, krill do something odd that messes around with whales or jellyfish take to swimming in bits of the ocean that they haven't habitually swum in for a while but, for most people, a few degrees isn't that noticeable. We work on a sort of cold, cool, warm, hot scale with humidity and air movement added in the mix. A biting wind makes can turn the scarf and mittens pleasure of a chill winters day into a painful struggle. The crisp linen of a desert dry landscape is much more comfortable than the sweat sodden shirt and the ridden up underwear of some mangrove swamp.

The maximum and minimum for yesterday in Pinoso were 38ºC and 21ºC. Last year, for the same date I recorded 31ºC and 16ºC in my diary so it's currently a bit warmer this year than last. Usually I don't really notice. Sitting outside with a cold drink or cup of tea and a slight breeze or in the car with the windows down I'm happy as Larry when it's in the high 30s. Maggie on the other hand feels the heat much more. She likes the car or house windows closed and the air con pumping out refrigerated air. I have to be honest though. The other day when I was crawling under the car and the sweat was filling my eye sockets or today, as I unloaded the recyclable stuff, and little rivulets were trickling inside my shirt I did think it was a tad on the warm side. Much more though I thought about that word I nearly always use to describe the summer heat - unremitting. The relentlessness of the heat. The way that, for a couple of months, it never goes away. The manner in which it waits to pounce as you leave an air conditioned building, when the first touch of the steering wheel burns and when, as you awaken at 3a.m., you find yourself enclosed in moist, sticky sheets for the wrong reasons.

When the weather is fine

Summer began at six minutes to six last Friday. Just a few minutes later we arrived in Santa Pola on the Mediterranean coast. It was pure chance, we'd been nearby doing some shopping and we thought why not?

We didn't do much. We parked next to the beach, walked around the corner to an area that has been developed with bars, cafés and restaurants alongside the marina and had a drink. The sun was shining with that early evening hazy shine. Some people were wading in the water, others were swimming. The sea was sparkly. The expensive and not so expensive boats in the marina bobbed up and down and made those tinkling, ringing sounds that moored boats do. The bar was comfortable, modern looking with light filtering through blinds and awnings. It was a bit pricey with slim young servers and ice cold (alcohol free) beer. Say what you will about far off exotic lands but the Med takes some beating when it's on form. It was one of those moments.

A couple of days earlier I'd already been to the coast, showing a pal around my old stomping ground of Cartagena and, this weekend, we went to see friends near Altea. In fact, one way and another we've spent the whole weekend close to the beach. On the train back from Alicante to el Campello the night-time beach glittered with the life of small campfires raised by friendship groups to celebrate the summer festival of San Juan.

I've written before about the magic of the Mediterranean summer in Spain. It really is something. It's not just the sun, it's not just the brilliant blue skies and the pure white light. It's not the heat or even the ice cold beer but summer here is something really special. It has sounds, it has smells, it has a temperature and a way that the atmosphere behaves, how the air shimmers. It even has a dress code.

Summer engenders a behaviour, it fills the telly with adverts of people eating and drinking together but the truth is that you only need to pop to the coast to find that's a reality and not just some ad agency marketing tool.

Ninety days to the 23rd September when it all ends. Ninety days I hope to enjoy to the full.

Feeling Big John

It was hard to believe but, when I got up yesterday morning, the sun wasn't shining. In fact it was trying to rain. All day it was dull. Of course half of Spain is similar to the UK for summer rain with lush green meadows and contented cows but not our bit, our bit, not far from the Med, is picture book Spain. I've written about summer before but it's just such a wonderful thing that I can't not mention it again.

I haven't worn socks for weeks. My only real fashion choice is which colour T shirt to choose today. The sound of flip flops on the pavement is a summer sound. Generally the sun just comes on in the morning and goes out in the evening. And the light; it's just lovely - crystalline skies so blue that they're like a child's painting. The air is dry, a sort of dusty yellowy dry, that plays hell with the cleaning and makes the plants wilt but just makes it feel so - well, summery. And there are noises too. Things sort of move with the heat. Lifeless things move, things creak with the warmth. Live things move as well. The damned flies, millions of them. Little lizards often turn up in our living room as do any number of strange creepy crawlies. Nothing untoward, nothing too bity so far, but lots of them. And here, in the country, it's just one long sound concerto. The birds are relentless - chip, chip, chirruping as long as there is any light. Then of course there are the cicadas and the grasshoppers, with their incessant reverberating drumming. The dogs don't care whether it's winter or summer. Country dogs bark and bark and bark and shatter the evening quiet whatever the season.

Beer is always cold in Spain and chilled glasses are as common as muck. In winter that can seem out of place but in summer it's as right as right can be. The drops of water form on the outside of the glass. You have to be careful though - it's so easy to just have a "cervecita",  in the shade, without thinking about it being alcohol. If you have to drive, never mind, the pop is just as chilled but, somehow, it doesn't feel quite so Mediterranean. And if the drinks are chilled so is the food - fruit and salads and things that glisten with summer colour replace those tasty but drab and calorific winter dishes. Lovely.

Alicante summers are simply splendid.

Menorca

We've just been to Menorca an island about the same size as the Isle of Man and the most easterly point of Spain. Ryanair had an offer on cheapish flights and, as we've only ever done Mallorca in the Balearics, it seemed like a good opportunity. We went for a long weekend.

I have this marking system for films that I go to see. The scale is from one to five. I work on the assumption that if someone manages to finance and release a film in ordinary cinemas it will be perfectly OK. So the natural score for any film is three out of five. If it's better than expected it gets four or very rarely a five and if it's not so good a two or even a one. The problem with this system is that some perfectly well made Hollywood romcom will get the same score as a well made art house film. To solve the problem I added a couple of grades, three plus and three minus, to allow for a bit of personal comment on a film. Basically three plus is for a well produced film that I enjoyed and three minus for a well made film that wasn't my cup of tea.

Menorca gets a three. Everyone told me that it was beautiful. There were certainly plenty of us tourists there from all over Europe and farther afield. A lovely coastline they said and it's true but I wasn't that impressed to find it littered with retirement developments and overly twee housing. We were told that the two main towns, Mahón and Ciutadella, had a real historic feel to them with lots of architecture left behind after the 18th Century occupation by the British. True again; quite a lot of nice buildings and I noticed some sash windows as billed but I've seen places on the mainland that are much more impressive.

Menorca is dotted with things described as talayots - pre Christian stone mounds often with the remains of stone circles, altar pieces and houses close by. I'm a big fan of sites like Avebury, Carnac or Castlerigg but somehow the Menorcan sites we saw failed to light my imagination in the same way.

Acting on the advice of at least three "Top ten things to do in Menorca" that I found on the internet I dragged Maggie along to eat caldereta de langosta which turned out, as the name suggests, to be a lobster soup. It was fine but not so different from the seafood soups you get as part of cheap set meals. Maybe we only got sub standard examples of Menorcan cheese too but despite it being touted as a rare pleasure it all tasted a bit bland to me. Prices were generally relatively high for drinks and snacks wherever we went and despite being used to Spanish prices we constantly found that the banknote we had ready wasn't big enough, Service was remarkably friendly (for the most part) but it was also often notably slow.

I don't want to go on and sound negative. Maggie has already decided that I had a horrible time and I didn't. I thought it was jolly nice, I'm glad we've been there, I had a perfectly pleasant time but I'd hoped and expected to be impressed and I found it all a bit ordinary.

Maybe we just didn't have enough time there to get the real feel of it but much more likely is that I'm just a grumpy old man nowadays.

Mediterráneamente

Summer is just about to end. Very properly this year it finishes on a Sunday evening so we can all get back to work on Monday morning. Calendar controlled, on the first of the month. The TV is full of the great return as people finish their holidays. Of course there are lots of people in Spain who don't have a job to go back to and I presume those tour guides, restaurant workers and ice cream vendors who get seasonal work in July and August will be up bright and early on Monday morning to get down to the dole office.

I just saw an advert on the telly for a beer that has been running all summer. It shows lots of people having a really good time. It's sunny, the people are young, happy and tanned. The beach has a starring role and the tag line is Mediterráneamente, a word that is probably about as real as its English equivalent, Mediterraneanly.

The strange thing is that I have to agree. There is something very special about being near the Med in summer. I know I've mentioned it before but indulge me. For instance, the other day we went down to the coast at Altea to go on a tourist boat that follows a working fishing boat going about its business in coastal waters. I worried about which camera lenses to take but not about my clothes. Shorts and T shirt were the order of the day without bothering to check the weather forecast or even look out of the window. On the boat we were offered sunscreen and water. It was around 35ºC and sunny.

Shorts, flip flops, fans, aircon in the car, water, sunscreen, sunglasses and the bar table in the shade are the norm. It's not like that in all of Spain. In the North you're just as likely to need a brolly or a pullover as you are in Ilfracombe but I can't remember the last time it rained here.

Luckily for me I'm not back to work for a couple of weeks yet.