autumn

Fillet of Fish

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Giens Peninsula, Hyères, Côte d’Azur. 17.30.

It was still pretty hot and sunny this morning, so as soon as Rohan was back with breakfast, I wolfed down a couple of slices of bread and cheese and hurried down to the saltmarsh.

Just like before, the flamingoes kept to the centre of the saltpans, far from the road, and there was next to nothing to see once I reached the public footpath – possibly because it was very busy today with families out enjoying the sunshine. I contented myself with observing the herd from a distance as, short of an organised tour into the reserve, this is probably the closest I am going to get.

I’ve spent a not insignificant part of my life in and around these great natural mirrors. Saltmarshes are blissful places, full of light and wonder when the sun is shining. Footprints in the mud can last well over a week, turning them into a tracker’s dream. I was looking for flamingo tracks, of course, but there were quite a few boot prints out in the mud, too. I wonder how they got there?

I didn’t see that many birds today, but there were fish everywhere. The mullets were especially active, lingering so close to the surface that their tail fins gave them away as they broke the water. Mullets are primarily marine fish, but they can be found in estuaries and brackish waterways like the channels that carve up the Étang des Pesquiers.

At work, mullets are synonymous with that god-awful hairstyle that seems to be all the rage with teenage boys at the moment. Fortunately, out here, they’ve taken on their original meaning once again.

The others had planned to go into Hyères to get some crêpes and check out the 11th century castle, but I was just too tempted by the sea to join them. I’ve come all this way, and as things stand, it may be quite some time before I see the sunlit waters of the Mediterranean again, so I voted to stay behind and go for another swim. Rafe had a few things to accomplish so he stuck around too, so after we’d tidied the place up a bit, we clambered back down the cliff to the not-so-secret beach. The GoPro did such a phenomenal job yesterday, so I put it back to work straight away.

It was a bit rougher today, the waves driven by an impressive bank of clouds heralding a front to the southwest. I still clocked plenty of two-banded sea bream, ornate wrasse and silvery saupe among the rocks. The light filtering down into the shimmering seagrass took my breath away just like it did yesterday, and every time before it. I could have spent hours just drifting with the current and taking it all in, if I could.

I also counted an astonishing number of octopuses over the course of my forty-minute swim. Once you get your eye in and know where to look, they are quite easy to find – just look for the yellow sheep-like eyes, as the rest of their bodies blend incredibly well into their surroundings. This one was ensconced in a tiny crevice just beneath the surface, watching the tide come in.

Well, that’s a wrap – nearly, anyway. This time tomorrow we’ll be coming in to land in the UK. It’s been bliss, getting away from it all for a bit, and I’ve been so happy to be back in Europe and speaking French again. I might try to get to Spain and see my cousins one last time before the move in February, but that, for now, must wait. I have an incredibly busy term to get through first – and somewhere amid the mayhem I’ll have to break the news to my kids. Not looking forward to that, but once the interviews begin, they’ll join the dots. So maybe I should head that off.

I’ll decide closer to the time. For now, I’m happy enjoying the final hours of this very spontaneous French holiday. BB x

Luthiers and Leclerc

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Giens Peninsula, Hyères, Côte d’Azur. 18.42.

Rafe’s playing his guitar downstairs. It’s been a while in the making, as it was with a luthier in Toulon for most of the holiday. Our driver has done a wonderful job in getting us to Hyères and Toulon, but we haven’t gone any further as he has been finding driving in France a rather stressful experience. It’s a reminder of both how little I cared for driving way back when, but also how much more in control I could be when faced with a setback, which was encouraging – in a round-about sort of way.

Anyway, we’ve been to Toulon and back and recovered the guitar. It cost him a lot more than he planned, but given that it involved refitting all of the frets, restringing the body and fitting a brand new set of tuning pins, it’s not all that surprising.

I just enjoyed stepping into the luthier’s workshop. It felt like walking into an older world, into a time when things were fixed or remade by craftsmen… before Amazon’s buy-it-again culture drove so much of it underground.

For the second day in a row, we settled on a seafood lunch. Traveling solo makes it easy to forget how complicated catering for a group can be, and there have been reminders of those Camino days out here. Fortunately, that’s not been an impediment to securing my favourite French dish of all out here: moules au Roquefort. I grew up on the more popular moules marinières – a memorable and delicious excuse for day trips to Calais from my childhood home by the sea – but one taste of the powerful combination of fresh mussels and the tanginess of Roquefort cheese in Brittany two years ago has made me a convert. If it is on the menu, I will accept no substitute.

We took a jaunt into Toulon’s maritime museum. It wasn’t quite as interesting as Barcelona’s drassanes, but then, I have a major preference for pre-1900 history, so I tend to switch off in the presence of most modern history exhibits (the fault of a heavily 20th century-skewed history curriculum at school, I think). It does have a nice collection of nautical paintings, though, which are always beautiful to observe.

Rafe is making a bouillabaisse for supper tonight, so we stopped off at E. Leclerc on the way home to pick up some supplies. I shall miss Rafe’s superb cooking when this holiday is over, but it is a reminder of how much I enjoy my solitude. Living on my own for seven years has only honed my reclusive tendencies, I think, and the absence of stillness gets to me sometimes. It’s a helpful reminder that, while I’d like to find Her and settle down and all, I have to balance my ambitions with my very human nature.

On another note, the moon was so bright last night that it was almost as bright as daylight outside. I wish we had nights like that in the UK. BB x

Around the Cape

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Giens Peninsula, Hyères, Côte d’Azur. 19.15.

Still no sign of the shearwaters. I suspect they’ve long since gone out into deeper waters. Still, a couple hours’ hike around Cap de l’Estérel and its crumbling WWII fortifications was a welcome change after another morning sheltering from the rain (though I did manage to pop down to the bakery before lunch to pick up some supplies).

The Sardinian warblers are proving to be just as elusive as ever, but the black restarts that live on the peninsula are charming enough in their feverish movements among the bushes in search of food.

One seabird that stays on the coast throughout the year is the Mediterranean shag (phalacrocorax aristotelis desmarestii), a leaner, paler cousin of the bottle-green bird that we have back home. In the UK – discounting the Farne Islands – I’ve only ever seen these birds at a distance, but in the Mediterranean I’ve had quite a few close encounters.

I’ve always been really struck by how fiercely green their eyes are. So many Pacific seabirds I encountered in Peru and Chile had strikingly red eyes, which I believe is an evolutionary adaptation that helps them to see better in the murky waters of the Humboldt current. I think the vivid green eyes of cormorants and shags share a similar function, but they’re no less impressive for the colour swap.

The sentier littoral (coastal path) that rounds the cape was a lot easier to follow than the one that supposedly laps the lagoon. I imagine it’s a lot busier in the summer months, but I still ran into a few French families and joggers along the way.

The weather is proving to be quite erratic here. The forecast rarely matches the reality: today was supposed to be a washout, but the rain all came down within the space of twenty minutes this morning. With any luck, it’ll be warm enough to go for a sea swim tomorrow. It won’t be quite as warm as the Aegean back in August, but it’d be nice to get a bit of sea swimming in before we go. BB x

Too Long

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Gare de Toulon, Côte d’Azur. 18.30.

The train to Hyéres is delayed by forty minutes, so I’ve stepped outside the station to get some fresh air. The Côte d’Azur is still in the grip of Storm Adam and the skies are the colour of steel, though they look almost blue beyond the sickly glow of the streetlights.

Clouds of cigarette smoke. Black and green olives rolling across the pavement from the trees standing outside the gare. The cheery sing-song jingle of the SNCF echoing over the rush of the wind and the casual drawl of the Provençale accent. Effortlessly chic Toulonnaise girls talking into earpieces, Eastern European sans-abri moving their blankets out of the rain, a Hispanic couple chatting away in slow, heavily accented English and a number of other accurate but overused cliches.

It’s good to be out of England, though. Two weeks without work would have driven me mad with boredom.

The train was delayed by around fifty minutes in the end. At least one of my companions was getting extremely jittery by the lack of signage on the notice boards, even as the train’s departure was seemingly imminent. Thank goodness I’ve been trained on Spain’s AVE and the last-minute-madness. After the rush for the subway in New York this spring and the gauntlet of flights going to and coming back from the Galapagos this summer, it will take a lot more than a ghost train to get under my skin.

France hasn’t ever grabbed me the way Spain has since the start, though I daresay I haven’t ever given it the chance. This is probably my eighth or ninth trip to France, if you include at least three day trips to Calais (and you leave out any holidays where France was simply a staging post), all of which add up to a little over a month on French soil. I’ve lost count of the amount of time I’ve spent in Spain, but it’s almost certainly closer to four years than it is to three.

The Côte d’Azur gets a lot of attention of the summer variety, but it’s quite beautiful under the iron skies of autumn. I’ve packed for the cold, but I wouldn’t begrudge the odd day of sunshine so I can enjoy the Mediterranean once again – it was so blissfully warm back in the summer. There’s talk of curfews because of the violent protests erupted across France right now, so I might not be going for any 3am swims, but I’m looking forward to being (relatively) tech free for a week or so.

If it weren’t for the comms-heavy side of my day job, I’d quite happily sack off the WiFi and go off grid. I miss those blissful evenings back in my year abroad days – before data became a universal thing – where leaving work meant leaving the internet behind. The amount of reading I managed to get done! There’s just no comparison.

I’ve made it to Hyéres. My final destination is the Giens Peninsula, some four kilometres to the south. It’s late and the sky is threatening rain, so I don’t quite fancy walking it. The taxis here are expensive at 40-50€ a throw and the three or four Uber drivers in town are reluctant to accept what is probably not a very cost-effective return journey. But I’m not that bothered. I’m confident we’ll get there somehow. BB x

Fall

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There’s a small oak tree that grows beside the boarding house. It shed its leaves a couple of weeks ago, briefly covering the tarmac in a golden-brown carpet, before the groundskeepers swept them all up into the back of a truck and took them away to the tip. A beautiful gift of death tossed into the trash. Word must have got around, in that silent way that trees have, as so many of the trees around the school have since held jealously onto their leaves well into the usual falling season. My oak, stripped to the skin, looks cold. Winter will soon be here and it has lost its coat.

The world seems a little darker right now. It’s not just the longer nights. The news is full of it. Abuse in the Church of England. Treachery and death in the Middle East. A self-confessed day-one-dictator returning to the White House. Politicians who once laughed at the Man spinelessly throwing in their lot behind the future power base. Shadows creeping over Ukraine. I expected to see more of it on my social media feed, but there’s been surprisingly little said about the US elections. Perhaps the folks I know have listened to the voices in the wind and decided that now is not the time to voice their concerns online. Perhaps they vented their frustration elsewhere. Or perhaps – and I suspect this to be the grim truth – most of them just didn’t care overmuch.

There’s a quote often attributed to the Anglo-Irish philosopher Edmund Burke that runs along the lines of ‘evil triumphs when good men do nothing’. As is the way with so much these days, there’s almost no evidence that he actually said such a thing. We have learned to doubt everything. In that light, how can you blame a nation for putting their confidence in a self-confessed liar?

Burke did, however, say something similar, albeit a lot more profound:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770)

He might have been writing a little over two hundred and fifty years ago, but he might just as well have been describing the world as it is today. It is always rather chilling when the voices of history stretch their pale and clammy hands into the present.

Until we learn to put our differences aside and work together – even with those with whom we do not, cannot or simply will not see eye to eye – our future will be in somebody else’s hands. Until the educated West accepts this reality, there will be no end to the head-scratching and the bewilderment. I have beat upon this drum since my schooldays, where it was doubtless drummed into me by my teachers, but I still believe this to be true: that you should always be prepared to listen and engage in conversation, no matter what you believe. Cancel culture does not work. It just fans the flames of those who feel their needs are being ignored and their voices silenced. We are marching into an increasingly intolerant age, and it worries me that those who fight for tolerance’s sake are among the vanguard, whether they know it or not. Men like Trump ride into power on the backs of such virtue-signallers.

I’m reading my way through a number of books to try to see the world through somebody else’s eyes. It’s my way of dealing with the situation – particularly when my profession is to help children to make their way in the world. I’ve started with Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe in an attempt to understand the growing immigration frustration in my country (having been an immigrant myself, however briefly). Ilan Pappé is in the wings. I can’t say I agree with everything I read, but it’s broadening my perspective a little more, and that’s no bad thing.

In the spirit of remembrance, they read the list of names of former students of the school who lost their lives in the two world wars in front of the war memorial yesterday. All of the numbered fallen had one thing in common: not a single one had died on the field of battle. Died in a collision during training. Run over by a lorry near base camp. Killed by an explosive during a training exercise. Shot down by friendly anti-aircraft fire after returning from a successful mission. The senseless waste of war was never more plain. When I was younger I had the morbid suspicion I would see another such great war in my lifetime. It was only ever a whimsy, but these days I am not so sure.

Some of the students were dressed in their military uniform. I had a grim vision of a towering cenotaph. Etched into the cold marble slab were names from every corner of the globe. I hope it does not come to that.

On closer inspection, my little oak has not lost everything. Not yet. A few golden leaves have held onto life, a full fortnight after the rest bowed to the inevitable. It just so happens that they are growing on the branch that reaches closest to the light. I wonder if that is what is keeping them alive.

We can’t give up hope. Hope is one of the things that makes us human. As winter draws near and the world darkens a little more every day, remember to hold on to the light in whatever form that takes for you. It is a warm and precious thing. BB x

Bulerías and Bananagrams

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I haven’t been traveling much recently. A combination of earnest novel-writing, job hunting, private lesson planning and musing over where to buy a cheap bike have conspired to keep me here in Villafranca for the time being. This year I’m working just the one job (proof that, even in the best of all possible worlds, experience isn’t always the best guide), so I have some four hundred euros less per month to live on. Weekend adventures have become what they always were, at heart: a luxury. Sometimes, however, an opportunity presents itself which cannot be turned down for love nor money. Biff’s visit to Seville last week was just such an opportunity.

How I managed to make it through the entirety of my last year out here labouring under the belief that I couldn’t cancel my private lessons for my own benefit is a mystery to me. I rescheduled my Thursday guardería session, packed my things as the WiFi man finally showed up (hello Murphy, long time no see) and hopped on the afternoon bus to Seville. It felt so good to be on the road on a Thursday afternoon. Previously I was working right up to the wire on a Thursday, so that the weekend began on a Friday morning. This year siestas are a thing, and I wonder how I ever managed without them. They’re the perfect solution to early mornings, late nights and post-weekend fatigue. The blinds in my room are a work of genius: at a basic level, they let in the morning light through little gaps in the shutters, which you can close off completely, leaving the room completely dark. I’m enjoying the shelter now, and I know I’ll appreciate all the more when this country heats up again come May next year… that is, if it ever cools down sufficiently for that to be a noticeable change (it’s almost November and it’s still pushing high twenties here).

After weeks of ESL games, I leapt at the chance to spar on an equal footing. Biff inducting me into Bananagram, which is something like the bastard child of Scrabble and a crossword. My passion for complicated and obscure words dragged me down a lot, but it made for some visually appealing results, win or loss.

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But I didn’t cancel my private class to play Bananagrams all weekend. I’ve been moving in and out of Spain for several years now, so it’s always a pleasure to see my grandfather’s country through fresh eyes. Biff hadn’t been here since our school’s music tour to Spain back in 2006. I’m not sure why I found that so hard to grasp. But it’s chiefly because I had new eyes to look through that I got to see a side of Seville I’d never seen before. Palmeras are delicious, persimmons aren’t half bad and, if you’re looking for flamenco off the beaten track, you can do a lot worse than La Carbonería…

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I work by the rule of three. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a message (or interest, if we’re talking about catching somebody’s eye). And three recommendations to visit La Carbonería from three different sources – the head of Chemistry, my flatmate and Biff’s AirBnB host – was too obvious a message to ignore. So, with a glass of agua de Sevilla in hand (that stuff is deadly), we nabbed a table near the performers and were treated to a decent forty-five minutes’ set.

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It was nice to have the time to wander about Seville at leisure. So often I’ve been running through Seville, waiting for a bus, or a plane, or something along those lines. There was a demonstration in the Plaza de España by the police for equal pay, watched from the shade by a mounted division. Catalonia was being stripped of its powers, so I think the police had other things on their mind. It felt weird, to stand in the plaza and see the cities and regions of Spain painted on the panels all around, knowing that up north the kingdom was pulling itself apart. Just like the Paris attacks, it was hard to believe such a thing was possible under the Spanish sun. Babies in pushchairs followed the protesters, Latin tourists snapped photos, gypsies danced for pennies on the steps. Life goes on.

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Fortune favours the interested. Go on a wander about town and you never know what you might find. I’ve seen a Mario Kart stag do, a gypsy wedding and an errant griot here. On our journey in search of a tapa or two, I saw a nun with a stuffed-toy octopus in her backpack. You never know what you might find.

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Seville’s streets are beautiful by night. Some parts look like France, others look like Spain, and others central Europe. I suspect it’s the trams that make it look like central Europe. The monk parakeets that live in the palm trees and the ring-necked parakeets that nest in the alcoves of the various churches jostle for space, and the screeches of the latter make the place sound eerily like London every once in a while, though it’s not quite cold enough at night. The chestnut vendors are out and about. When the nights are colder, the steam rising from their wheeled stands will complete the picture. I hope they’re about in Córdoba, too. I’d like to buy a bag of them and eat them on the Roman bridge as the sun goes down and the lights on the mosque come up.

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I wonder what my next visit will deliver. BB x

 

Back to the Grind

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The orientation day for the auxiliares de conversación in Cáceres stands out so far in being the only quirk in what is, for the moment, an experience rather akin to Groundhog Day. But for the rain-starved fields of gold, it really does feel like I’ve stepped back in time. Here I am once again in Villafranca de los Barros, settled swiftly into a cosy flat on the same street as before, no less. Once again, I’m sharing the place with an interim teacher, this time a science teacher from Seville fresh out of university, which makes a healthy change. And, in another mirror of 2015, I’m currently feeling more than a little sleep-deprived, having spent the night in Almendralejo with Tasha and Miguel and the Concha Velasco Band. Some things never change.

Choosing between living in Villafranca and Almendralejo was a rather tough call this year. At heart, I guess I knew I wanted to stay put in the town I now know so well. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that, given the choice between a town of seventeen thousand and thirty-four thousand, it’s hardly even a decision I have to think about. All the same, I found myself rather tempted this year to put old habits aside. Life, as always, has other plans. A series of consecutive events guided my feet, including an incredibly warm reception from staff and students alike, the discovery that Extremadura’s primary avian ecology centre, AMUS, is located just a stone’s throw from the town (how on earth did I miss that before?), the sudden arrival of a twenty-four-year-old sevillano looking for a flatmate and, of course, the ever-present majesty of the Sierra Grande de Hornachos. Like a moth to a flame I find myself drawn ever closer into a spiralling obsession with that lonely mountain range, rising out of the Extremeñan steppe like Kilimanjaro. Just as I could never fully convey my inability to adjust to life in Amman, so too does the true nature of my fascination with that town elude me. It’s just a fact of my life. Some higher force pulls me towards it, and I cannot nor will not resist.

I could have thought of no better a homecoming – if I should be so bold as to reinvent the term for my own purposes – than to spend my first weekend of my new life in Spain with Tasha supporting the Concha Velasco Band. Music is one of those necessary sacrifices I had to make in coming here, and like any sacrifice worth its name it was a painful one to make, so it pieces my heart back together a little to have such a spectacular band to support so close at hand.

It may not be as all-consuming as my devotion to the Northern Lights back in the day, but it’s a start. And at the very least they have a Pon de Mambo-style number in Radio Futura’s Escuela de Calor, which never fails to get me jumping about like a mad thing. I never thought I’d turn roquero, but where funk and a cappella are scarce, needs must. BB x

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Entitlement

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I didn’t make it to Spain.

My bags were packed. I had my lightweight hiking clothes laundered and folded and neatly placed at the top of my rucksack. My flights were booked, hold luggage inclusive, my tent rolled up and my roll-mat tucked in along the side. I’d even learned a couple of lessons from last time, and I had stocked up on plenty of mosquito repellent, sunscreen and up-to-date maps. In short, I was readier than I’ve ever been before. But I still didn’t make it to Spain.

In the end, budgeting was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Five weeks ago, when I’d bought myself a decent tent at last and was eager to put it through its paces, it seemed perfectly logical to book a return flight to Spain and see what happened. I had a tent, so this time I could camp out in the wild for free and have a cheap trip. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, in fact, so much. The more digging I did, the more dangerous a notion it became. Wild camping is a legal grey area – that much is certain – but as the economic situation worsens, those countries hardest hit hit harder. Where there is money to be made, the freebooter and the vagrant are unwelcome. Whilst a local farmer may take no issue to you setting up a tent on the edge of his property, a passing local just might – for a quick buck. For a simple denuncio, one might expect to receive a small cut of the fine meted out by the police which, depending on the whims of the officer in charge, can be hefty. I’ve heard of cases of campers fined up to 600€, which is a good 590€ more than what you might pay in a campsite, if you can find one. If Spain didn’t still cling on to such legacies of the Franco era, it might not be so risky a venture. But as it stands, when a local shepherd stands to make more money by turning you in to the police than in an entire week’s work, it gives him little incentive not to do so.

My girlfriend’s mother passed onto me a keen insight on my last visit: we see a lot less danger when we’re younger. At eighteen, it didn’t occur to me that by setting up camp in the middle of the woods on the slopes of the Guadarrama I might be putting myself at the mercy, not of hungry wolves, but of hungrier shepherds. I just did it and moved on. Now that I’m older and wiser – and more wary – I find myself second-guessing a little more.

It’s just a damned shame that Spain does not have as many campsites as England does. Northumberland, for example, has over a hundred campsites. Extremadura, which is more than eight times the size of Northumberland, has twenty-two, with twelve of them concentrated in one mountain range in the north. Perhaps the Spaniards don’t enjoy camping as much as the English do, but they’re missing a trick. Spain is absolutely stunning, with scenery – in the very biased opinion of this author – second to no other country in Europe. Without campsites, or the option to wild camp, they’re missing out on the chance to reconnect with their supreme natural beauty.

When you can put a name to something you see, it means so much more to you. Your friends matter because you know them by name, just as the pupils whose names you recall stand out in your mind. Neglect to know the world around you and it will never mean as much to you as it will to the naturalist, the tracker or the mountaineer. It’s a natural connection we sorely need as tech takes over the world. Going camping offers that connection to the next generation. Or at least, so I believe.

Part of the reason I so hastily splashed out on flights to Spain which I now can’t make or change without incurring heavy surcharges (thanks a bunch, Easyjet) was a disgusting feeling of entitlement that I just couldn’t shake. Having been up to the Edinburgh Fringe for one last, loud fling with the Lights, I needed to get out. To be myself. To travel. Isn’t that what everybody else does in the summer? Instagram certainly seems to say so, as does Facebook. You can hardly move for photos of Cuba, Malaysia, New York City, the French Riviera, German markets, Polish cafés, Incan ruins and Thai elephant baths. It’s a storm of what-a-wonderful-time-I’m-havings and wish-you-were-heres that build and build until you ask yourself why you aren’t out there seeing the world. A FOMO more potent than any shot, and one that, like a bad drink, leaves a bitter aftertaste. Sooner or later, the travel bug gets to be like any other addiction, and after mowing through the next barrage of Phnom Penh sunrises and Carribean bikini lines you get itchy feet. I want to be there. I want to see that. What about me?

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It’s not the Inca trail, but it’s still bloody gorgeous

Let’s not kid ourselves. Travel is not for everyone. It’s just not. It can be done on the cheap, but it’s never free. Time is money, and if you’re not spending one, you’re spending the other, which means you can afford to spend it. Now that’s a privilege few of us have.

It isn’t often that I feel bitter about the affluence of the world around me, but it’s at times like this that I realise with a nasty jolt that it’s nothing short of madness to expect the same luxuries as one’s contemporaries. Life would be an awful lot easier if we stuck to telling people face-to-face about our adventures rather than bombarding them with photos twenty-four seven, and even then, do we have to yell? The blogger in me says yes. The writer in me isn’t so sure. I’m just a student fresh out of university with a modest job already on the cards, and that’s a luxury I can’t overstate highly enough. It’ll be many, many years before I can afford annual transatlantic summer holidays, and by the time I can, I don’t suppose I’ll want to.

Fringe, I accept, was my holiday. It was expensive, more than any holiday I’ve ever had, and I was a fool to think I could afford another, summer job or no summer job. In the end I was saved by the budget and, more poignantly still, saved by the bell. A couple of friends of mine are getting married in a couple of weeks, and it’s because of them that I had to return from Extremadura before flying back out again. The folly of making two trips to the same place became apparent only once I’d decided not to go.

I still have my dreams. I still dream of South Africa. But I can wait, until such a time as I have the time, the money and the maturity to go and to really make the most of it. For the time being, I’m going to focus on the humbler side of life. I have plenty of books to read and lessons to plan. I, too, am privileged to be where I am and how I am, and I should be grateful for that. Autumn is here, and autumn is always such a beautiful time of year in England. I should be making the most of it. BB x

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A New Beginning

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Hello blog. It’s been a while. In case the absence of posts over the last few weeks wasn’t proof enough of my self-imposed isolation, the cramp in my left shoulder is what has really kicked me back into gear. I’ve been slaving away over the megadrawing for almost a solid month now and it shows: at seven metres and twenty centimetres in length, I’m very almost at the end. Only two sections remain.

Even so, I feel I need a break. And with the gorgeous weather we’re having at the moment, I think my drawing arm could do with a break.

There are still another couple of weeks to go before I’m needed back in Durham (in truth, another month – but I’m quite ready to get going long before term begins in October). With my target language research project out of the way, I have very little to worry about for now. And that, I should point out, is pure bliss after all of the administrative missions of the past year. How long it will be until the spell is broken is debatable. It simply depends on whether I’m ready to tackle the workload that final year has to offer.

I can. There’s no doubt about it. Mindset is the key and I believe I can. Truly.

It’s unseasonably warm and sunny for September here in Sussex. I missed out on autumn last year in Spain; it came in a couple of days in the middle of winter, and was gone in the blink of an eye. Autumn is my second favourite time of year after spring, so I was a little sad to see none of it last year. There’s something wonderful about the falling of the first leaves, the coming of the conkers and that first chill in the air that tells you that winter, far off, is on its way. Perhaps that’s something England does better than Spain. Or perhaps I simply haven’t been in the right part of Spain in autumn.

I don’t have much news to tell for now. Doubtless that will change when I get to Durham. I sent off my job application for next year and am waiting patiently for a response. If I should succeed in that, I will follow it up with a second, in the hope of snagging the two-job rota that kept me so well afloat last year. In the meantime, I have my sights set wide, and if it comes to it, I’m more than prepared to bite the bullet and freelance for a time. All I need for now is enough money to survive and as much experience as I can get my hands on. The main reason I’m planning to return to my former post is simple logic: I’ll be teaching many of the same kids, so I won’t be able to fall back on my old lessons. I’ll just have to draw up a whole year’s worth of new ones. And once I’ve been a year at that, I’ll have two years’ worth of ideas under my belt and will be truly ready to go mobile.

That, at least, is the game plan.

A lot can happen in a year. I can be rather spontaneous when I choose to be, but it’d take nothing short of a miracle to turn me from my road now. Spain is in my heart and it’s Spain for which I’m bound. I don’t think even Helen of Troy could dissuade me at this hour.

Unless, of course, she was Spanish. BB x

The Green Hills of England

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s drawing near to December, that time of year when, like as not, English hearts across the world look back to Albion. Say what you like, but Christmas just isn’t the same anywhere else. I’ve been told as much by the Spaniards themselves, some of whom know it only from what they’ve seen in books and on TV.

I’ve never been the kind to get too nostalgic about home, probably because I’ve always lived by the creed that home is where the heart is, and if truth be told, my heart is rather portable. I’ve been none too careful with it. There’s pieces of it everywhere; in Olvera, in El Rocio, in Boroboro and in the Lake District. This year is no different. I’ve been working here in Villafranca for exactly two months now, and I’ve yet to feel any desperate pangs for home home. How can I, when there are so many places I want to be? I’m also a natural loner, by habit and by necessity. Spending long periods in my own company has never bothered me all that much. Sometimes I prefer it that way. It’s a lot less complicated. So it’s got a fair amount to do with my personality, but it could well be because I’m simply too busy to get homesick. Being told I wasn’t needed for one of my classes this morning felt so decidedly wrong that I heard myself asking to make up the time later. I’ve told you before, I can’t deal with not being busy up to my eyes. It’s a state I both love and hate. But it’s a damn sight better than having nothing to do, which is the very worst state of all – just short of despair, which, I suppose, it is, in a way.

Enough musing! I’m not completely immune, and after reading several blog posts on a similar theme, I’ve got to wondering what it is that I miss about England when I’m not there, and I came up with a few:

  1. Milk. You know, regular, cold milk, none of this warm UHT stuff. Yes, I get it, we’re the only species that drinks another animal’s milk and it’s unnatural, but it’s a lot nicer in the morning than UHT.
  2. Music. I’ve already elaborated on this one, so I won’t go into it again.
  3. Footpaths. When you’ve grown up in a country so well-stocked with public footpaths across open country, coming to a land where unsigned farm tracks of dubious public status are the only alternative to roads is a little depressing.
  4. Rain. There’s something magical about rain. It makes me feel elated, especially the real storms, the ones where you simply have to rush outside and get soaked to the skin. That’s more of an African thing than an English thing, but we do get a lot of rain in England, and a lot more than Spain, anyway.
  5. Green. It’s not as much of a problem here as it was in Jordan, as Extremadura is actually rather green itself at this time of year, especially in the north. But it extends beyond that. It’s that cold wind in the night, the dewy scent in the morning, the crunch of frosty ground underfoot. An English autumn green and red and gold. As much as I love hot countries, it’s the one thing I truly miss when I’m gone. And nowhere, NOWHERE does it better than the Lakes.

That’s about as much as I can think of. Family, obviously, would be at the top of the list, but that’s a given. That’s the only reason I’m going home for Christmas this year, because I’m rushing straight back out here for January; for the Reyes Magos, for Olvera and for the Lion King in Madrid (I’ll save that for a later post). What with my younger brother at university now, all four of us left in the Young family are living and working in four different places, so it’ll be nice to be home together again for Christmas. As for the things I thought I’d miss – friends, food and life in general – I’ve got plenty of all three out here, and in a few cases it’s better than back home.

But the important thing is this: Christmas is a time for being with your family. Forget Christmas; the end of the year, when it’s dark and cold, and a new year is on the brink – that’s a better time than any to be with your nearest and dearest. I’d have liked to have stuck it out here, in defiance, or maybe gone to Olvera to spend it with my friends, but at the end of the day, they have their own families, and I wouldn’t want to hijack somebody else’s special day. So for England I’ll be bound, mere hours before Christmas Day, and for once, for the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m not ashamed to be British. And I have Allan Quatermain to thank for that. Allan Quatermain, and John Lockley, and Flashman, and all the other British heroes of literature, who in spite of all of my self-imposed angst at the shame of being British, have shown me that there is in fact a fierce integrity in being from Albion.

For the first time in history, I’m an Englishman abroad – and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. BB x