Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts
the stars to flight.
And, lo, has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable – Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’

Cosas de España/Galicia

I recently wrote that, if I were the Spanish PM, I’d regard it as more important to get shut of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa than to get back Gibraltar at the bottom of Spain. Here’s one reason why. Is there anything at all that Spain gains from retaining these non-colonies? Or are they as worthless as Renfe’s web page?

BTW . . . This is why I was surprised that it was announced this week that immigration was the number one concern of Spaniards: The issue of immigration has rarely registered as of paramount importance to Spaniards.

The Canaries are another illegal immigrant flashpoint, and a major one. But, in that case, who would Spain give them to? Not as obvious as the answer would be for Ceuta and Melilla. Though Morocco very probably thinks it is.

This is a report on an alleged new law that will affect tourists in Spain, possibly even residents. Two immediate questions? 1. Why your bank account details?, and 2. Who’s to know if the number you give is out by at least one digit? Anyway, I think we can assume that the details will be sold on to someone on the darknet.

Even though I’ve been an atheist since my teens, I’ve visited an awful lot of Spanish churches. Mainly to admire human craftsmanship*. And to be slack-jawed at the opulence, financed by poor folk. Here’s what Fascinating Spain regards as the most beautiful temples in Spain. All Catholic, one assumes. *craftspersonship?

I didn’t guess it right this time . . . The unsung Spanish city where a glass of wine costs £1.

The USA/Quote of the Day

Charismatic authority tends to undermine traditional political parties, which are dedicated to principles, values and goals that are bigger than any one individual. Loyalty is owed to those principles and values for which the party stands. When a party becomes corrupted by a charismatic leader it can quickly collapse into a personality cult, like Maga, which now stands for little more than loyalty to the boss.

AI

Someone doesn’t exactly admire the (traditional) EU approach. . . The EU’s ‘regulate first, ask questions later’ approach to AI is turning Europe into a tech backwater: Meddling Eurocrats are dragging the bloc back to the Dark Ages.

English

The 45-letter pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is often cited as one of the longest words in English. Though, doubtless, shorter than many in German. The OED originally defined it as “S disease caused by ultra-microscopic particles of sandy volcanic dust.” But later modified this to: “An artificial long word said to mean a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust.”

Did you know?

While several theories exist regarding the name of the Canary Islands, the predominant belief is that it originates from Latin references to dogs [canis, canes] encountered by early explorers. So, nowt to do with little yellow birds.

Finally . .

I read that Hollywood royalty included Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Chris Rock and Bryan Cranston and realised I had no idea who the last 2 are. Age? Or the fact I haven’t seen a new film for ages? Needless to say, the only popular singer I know is Taylor Swift, as she’s never out of the news. Even then. I just had to think hard about what her first name was. . . .

Finally, Finally . .

MY YEAR IN THE SEYCHELLES

• Part 1: 12 September 2024: Why VSO?
• Part 2: 13 September 2024: The Leaving of Liverpool
• Part 3: 14 September 2024: An interlude: The Seychelles back then
• Part 4: 14 September: Departure, Nairobi and Arrival
• Part 5: 15 September: Arriving in Mombasa
• Part 6: 16 September: The YCWA in Mombasa
• Part 7: 17 September: The flight to Mahé
• Part 8: 18 September: Our Arrival
• Part 9: 19 September: Early Days
• Part 10: 20 September 2024: My Colleagues and Some Early Adventures

Part 11: Mr Warren and Me

After 3 months in the hotel, Jerry eventually succumbed to our persistent demands that Martin and I should have single rooms and I was moved to a new chalet going by the name of Goelette. It was the middle chalet of a row of 3. On my south was Phil Murray, a fellow teacher at the Seychelles College, and on my north was one of the hotels permanent’ residents. There seemed to be 4 such permanent residents; two old gentlemen and a middle-aged couple.

The couple went by the wonderful name of Mr and Mrs Knud van Augustinus and they had an unfortunate habit of rowing in the middle of the night. Unfortunate for me, that is. I couldn’t sleep.

One of the two old gentlemen was called Mr Warren but we never did discover the name of the other. Since the latter only ever appeared for breakfast and the evening meal and never once took off a very dark pair of sunglasses, we took to referring to him as 008 and left it at that. We did hear that he was extremely wealthy but also something of an eccentric. His reputation was based on the single, probably apocryphal, story that he’d once had a boat to sell and had been confronted with 2 prospective buyers. Neither had offered him as much as he’d demanded, so he chopped the boat in half and set fire to it. A sort of reverse Solomon.

The other old gentleman, as I’ve said, was Mr Warren and I had the misfortune to be moved into the chalet next to his. It didn’t take me long to find out why the room had stood empty for several months. Mr Warren was 97 and once confided to a friend that he had never done a day’s work in his life. He was tall and thin and still in possession of a fair amount of straight white hair. Like our friend 008, he only ever left his chalet twice a day, once to go to breakfast, which was invariably toast and marmalade, and then to go to lunch, usually a plate of peas surmounted by a knob of butter. He was never heard to speak to anyone except a little Indian friend of his who paid him 2 visits during my stay in Goelette. Martin did once attempt to strike up a conversation with him but the effort proved too great and he gave up after listening to the old man’s ramblings about his trips around the world.

Mr Warren never wore anything except a pair of grey slacks, a white shirt and a brown, long-sleeved pullover with leather patches on the elbows. He’d leave his chalet at exactly 8.15am every morning and 1.15pm. every afternoon and make his way, in his strange, shuffling gait, towards the dining room. He never went anywhere without his umbrella. The journey was approximately 150 yards and 100 yards of shuffling would bring him level with one of Jerry’ s “charming” bars. At this point, unless it was raining, he would always stop, raise his head, point his umbrella skywards,

laugh to himself and then shuffle on to the dining room. He carried out this procedure at every sortie he made, regardless of the numbers in the bar and with scant regard for his reputation. Naturally everyone thought he was stark raving mad.

He had 2 other habits of note. The least upsetting of these was to sit on his porch and read out loud, non-stop, for hours on end. The books were always in French and Mr Warren’s accent left a lot to be desired. Every sentence would be read out twice; first to be identified and then to be savoured. Since he was pushing 98, his voice was a little lacking in modulation and his afternoon readings would sound like the intermittent droning of a bluebottle.

During the vacations, when I used to spend a lot of my time reading on my own porch or in my chalet, it used to drive me to distraction. On several occasions, I yelled out in anger and frustration but he’d pretend ‘not to hear me, despite the lack of distance between his ear and my mouth. Then he’d read the sentence a 3rd time, as if my interruption had caused him to lose the thread.

Occasionally he’d meet a word he didn’t know. At this point, he’d repeat the word several times and if nothing came to him he would look it up in the dictionary and copy both it and its meaning on one of a pile of sheets of paper he kept tied up with string. Why a man of 97 would want to compile a vocabulary of French words has always eluded me.

Mr Warren had an even more galling habit. Being the punctilious sort of chap he was, he would rise at exactly 6.30 every morning. He would then make his way to the mirror and stand in front of it, stark naked – the details of this part of his morning routine were communicated to me by members of the hotel staff. So standing he would shout, “All the bad breath, all the bad air, all the bad smells out of me. Ha, Ha, Ha!” This he would repeat 3 times before moving on to the sink. It doesn’t take much to imagine how I felt being woken up every morning by that – and I lived in Goelette for 7 months.

Once at the sink he’d start his routine proper. Since there was 2 foot gap between the ceiling and the wall which divided his room from mine, I was compelled to listen to the details. It was impossible to get back to sleep.

He would first shuffle to the sink, still naked, and call out:-

“Plug in, one, two, three, four. Turn the taps on. One, two, three four. Water in, one, two, three, four. Turn the taps off, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

He’d then proceed to give himself instructions, complete with numbers, as to what he should wash, where he should powder and where he should splash the TCP antiseptic. He left nothing to the imagination and was well versed in slang.

After several weeks I knew the routine off by heart, since it never changed from day to day, and I would accompany him through his ablutions by numbers. If he was ever aware of my mimicry he studiously ignored it.

His washing done he’d dress in a similar vein, walk onto his porch and give me a weather forecast; his final words before departing for breakfast were always “Quite alright. Switch off light. Lock the door. Off to breakfast”.

After a month or so, of course, the novelty wore off and I grew less and less tolerant. No-one on the island would believe my story even though I could repeat the exercise verbatim at the drop of a hat.

I took to climbing up the wall and shouting obscenities through the gap at the top. But nothing could deter him. I began to think he couldn’t be aware of what he was doing and that I should have more compassion for an old man who was obviously senile. But one day I overheard him telling his Indian friend about his “absurd exercises” and I determined to let him know of my feelings by some method other than shouting. I couldn’t take a chance on him being deaf as well as daft. So I wrote him the following letter.

Dear Mr Warren

I do not object at all to the exercises which you find necessary to perform several times a day but I do most strongly object to the commentary and the wealth of analytical detail which goes with them and which are a constant source of irritation to me. I would be most grateful, therefore, if you could carry out your ablutions and your reading in silence.

Thanking you in anticipation,

Yours sincerely.

Needless to say, this changed nothing. I never even got a reply. He carried on oblivious and I had to satisfy myself by interjecting a few well chosen phrases over our shared bathroom (semi)wall whenever he stopped for breath.

Victory in this war of words ultimately went to Mr Warren, who wasn’t as mentally deficient as he tried to make out. Since there was very little to do during the evenings, I’d invested in a cheap Japanese guitar and, under Phil Murray’s guidance, had started to learn a few chords. I happened to be strumming it one day when Mr Warren shuffled past me on his way to his petits pois au beurre. I thought nothing of the event but it obviously had repercussions on Mr Warren who used it to formulate a most fiendish plan to secure my removal from Goelette, thus leaving him to do his exercises in peace.

Two days after he’d seen my guitar, but several weeks after I had first started to play it, he made a detour from the well-worn track between his chalet and the dining room and complained to Mrs Legrand about the noise I was making!

You had to hand it to him. And this after 7 months of his nonsense about which I’d never once complained – mainly because I knew the Legrands must have been aware of the situation anyway.

His reading had clearly developed his imagination since he informed Mrs Legrand that I was in the habit of playing my instrument at maximum amplitude, jumping about, screaming and shaking my head.

Not surprisingly the Legrands treated his complaints as a joke and nothing was done. First round to me. But the old man was not to be beaten so easily and a couple of weeks later he again complained that I’d been playing the guitar for hours on end and subjecting him to a machine which screeched and bellowed and gave him an awful headache. This complaint, in one respect at least, was something of a mistake on his part.

As regards the guitar playing, I’d been away on the southern part of the Mahé on the day he cited. And, as regards the shrieking machine he mentioned, well, this was a tape-recording of his own voice. Nevertheless, he must have coupled his complaint with a threat to move out of the hotel because I was informed that I was being moved to another room, in a new stilted-building right on Beau Vallon beach.

I was none too pleased about this. Mr Warren apart, I’d rather liked my Goelette room. It was the only one in the hotel which overlooked the giant tortoise pen, so I would no longer be able to watch their laborious copulating. I would have to find something else to do in the evenings.

I resolved at least to get my own back on Jerry for taking the old man’s side. I would hit him where it would hurt most – in his pocket.

At 6.15 the next morning I carried the tape recording of the old man’s exercises to Phil’s room.

Goelette, of course, was sandwiched between Phil’s and the Mr Warren’s room and – since I’d gone to my new room – it had a new occupant, a gentleman who’d arrived on the evening of my transfer. At 6.30 exactly, Phil and I started the machine and the man in Goelette was bombarded from both sides by Mr Warren in stereo.

By 9.30, he’d left the hotel and was installed in the Beach Hotel on the other side of the bay, depriving Jerry of his rental.

I never found out whether Jerry knew of my contribution to his unhappiness with the Hotel des Seychelles . . .

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts, either after reading on line or in my FB group Thoughts from Galicia.

The Usual Links . . .

• You can get my posts by email as soon as they’re published. With the added bonus that they’ll contain the typos I’ll discover later. I believe there’s a box for this at the bottom of each post. If you do this but don’t read the posts, I will delete your subscription. So perhaps don’t bother if you have other reasons for subscribing . . .
• For new readers: If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.
• For those thinking of moving to Spain:– This is an extremely comprehensive and accurate guide to the challenge, written by a Brit who lives in both the North and the South and who’s very involved in helping Camino walkers. And this is something on the so-called Beckham Rule, which is beneficial – tax-wise – for folk who want to work here. Finally, some advice on getting a mortgage. And this article ‘debunks claims re wealth and residency taxes’. Probably only relevant if you’re a HNWI. In which case, you’ll surely know what that stands for.