The Mother of the Marshes

April 14, 2025April 14, 2025 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Casa Los Tres Aires, El Rocío. 14.01.

The long-promised rains have arrived. Buckets of it. It began with a sudden gust of wind in the palm trees and a ripple over the lagoon, turning the mirrored surface of the water into a sea of silvery sand dunes. Some of the locals wandering in the square turned to the west and pulled their jackets about them. The savvier ones pointed and moved toward the shelter of the church. Then the darkening sky turned a pale grey, and the trees beyond the road disappeared behind an advancing sheet of rain. Just as the church bell chimed for half past, an almighty drumroll of thunder sounded in response and the heavens opened, and down it came: sheet rain, a wall of water, turning the sandy streets of El Rocío into rivers in a matter of minutes. By the time I made it back to my casa rural I was soaked to the skin – and more alive than I’ve ever been.

Some devotees of La Blanca Paloma – the White Dove, the nickname of the Virgen del Rocío – believe that her sudden appearance in the branches of an olive tree in the marshes of Almonte was a manifestation of the divine. More sceptical minds might be persuaded that the image was simply one of many hidden away from the conquering Moors and scattered across the countryside, forgotten until their chance discovery by bewildered countryfolk. Whatever you choose to believe, the Virgen del Rocío exerts a powerful influence over the town and its surroundings, bringing more than a million pilgrims to her shrine every year.

One legend has it that the townsfolk prayed for her intercession during the Napoleonic invasion, hearing that a raiding force of French soldiers was heading for the town. For whatever reason, they never made it as far as El Rocío, turning back at Pilas, just shy of thirty kilometres away. Maybe it was the unforgiving terrain of the marshes – or maybe it was the watchful power of the Virgen. Who knows? The fact remains that the village of El Rocío was untouched by both the Napoleonic War and the Civil War in the following century, a conflict which tore almost every town in Spain apart. It’s easy to see how many have come to believe that some great force watches over these marshes, shielding them from harm.

It hasn’t been able to protect them from everything. While it’s incredible to see Doñana restored to life, it’s important to bear in mind how it got into the state it was in: this time last year, the news were all full of woe, decrying the death of one of Europe’s last great wetlands as its life was slowly sucked out of it. Why, you ask? Climate change may be part of it, but the blame lies almost entirely at the feet of the monstrous theft of the land’s water by the agropiratas.

These mercenary industries have set up shop in the outskirts of Doñana and, over the last two decades, they’ve been draining its aquifers to grow strawberries on an industrial scale. Strawberries are a very water-hungry fruit, and the results have been catastrophic, causing the water supply to cascade, lakes to dry up and the local extinction of a number of species that can be found almost nowhere else, including the white-headed and marbled ducks, the salinete (a fish found only in Doñana) and the eel – formerly abundant and now almost completely eradicated from these marshes.

I could do a lot more for charity’s sake, but there are two causes I will not budge from. I will never visit Malta, on account of their refusal to abide by European laws concerning the protection of migrating birds (they still practise the vile tradition of bird-liming), and I will never buy strawberries from Spain, knowing what damage they are causing here. If only we could go back to a time before globalisation, when people were more patient, and prepared to wait for strawberries to be in season, for a short time each year…

It’s still raining out there. It cleared up for a few hours, and then the storm clouds came back with a vengeance. March 2025 has been one of the wettest months in Spain since records began, putting an end to four years of minimal rainfall. It hasn’t been unprecedented: the flash floods that swept through Valencia in October and claimed 232 lives are still a very recent memory. Even so, taken as a whole, the average rainfall over the last five years is still well below the average. Spain will need more consistent rain if places like Doñana are to survive in the long run.

That, and decisive action from the government on the villainous agropiratas and their strawberry farms.

I wanted to make the most of the park’s rebirth, so I went for a long walk in the pine woods of La Rocina to the south of El Rocío. A boardwalk trails stretches for five kilometres along the side of the river that feeds into the Madre de las Marismas, the lagoon that sits under the eye of the Virgen del Rocío. Like the Raya Real, this place is very dear to me: I used to come here as a boy and look for bee-eaters, hoopoes and scarab beetles in the scrubland at the trail’s northern edge.

My sense of smell – mercifully restored after a debilitating cold had me in its grip at the start of my travels – was assailed on all sides by Spanish lavender and curry plant, and every bush seemed to harbour a nightingale. I even saw one, singing high in the branches of one of the pines – a fairly impressive feat, since these master ventriloquists have the uncanny ability to seek out the most acoustic spots in the forest, whilst also remaining invisible to the naked eye as they perform their vast repertoire. I’ve included a recording I took below – have a listen and you’ll see what I mean.

I spent my last evening in El Rocío enjoying boquerones fritos and an incredible torrija – a Semana Santa speciality – in Restaurante La Canaliega, watching the sun set over the Madre de las Marismas. The town’s drains were working overtime to deal with the rivers that had formed in the streets, but there was still enough water in the main square to form a second lagoon, reflecting the Ermita’s unique shell-shaped doorway.

I would have traveled a thousand miles to see just this view, but the Virgen del Rocío saw fit to show me her rarest treasure of all on the day I arrived. I have come away with a new rosary of hers, so that I can offer my thanks wherever I am, and so that there will be some piece of her influence wherever I go.

I used to get the stuffing knocked proverbially out of me at school for defending my stance on faith, in spite of being a “rational thinker”. I stand by my beliefs to this day: I do think the world is a better place with a little more love and little more mystery. On the one hand, I adore the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake: the ability to look up at the stars and know their names.

But I also think it’s important to value the wisdom of the ancients. I may not be able to see the shape of a lion up there, but somebody must have done once to call a constellation Leo. And though it took me a long time to find Lynx, it’s taken me a lot longer to find the animal in the flesh. This year, Doñana – and whatever mystical force presides over these marshes – saw fit to show me a glimpse. You can call me credulous if you like, but that’s enough to make a man like me believe.

Not for nothing is the lake named the Madre de las Marismas: the Mother of Marshes. Doñana is feminine in every way, from its name to its essence: a provider, a life-giver, faithful, fickle and generous in turn. I have always said that Spain is my greatest love – but it’s probably fair to say that Doñana is that love crystallised into one place.

I have been gone too long. I must return someday. The fight to save these precious marshes goes on. BB x

The Weatherman Cometh

July 20, 2022July 20, 2022 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It starts with an ominous grey sky to the west. The patchwork of fluffy summer clouds that have been insulating the leftover heat from three scorching days suddenly drops into a void the colour of slate, matching the roof of Bayeux’s cathedral almost exactly. A man in a beret watches the skies; a French family whose children seem to tan faster down the years savour their two-scoop ice creams; a boy and his mother walk their five beagles.

The first raindrop falls on the back of my neck like a kiss. Cool, swift, sweet. I’m sitting on a bollard, sketching. I wait for another. It lands on my arm. Almost instantly a third lands on my sketchbook, narrowly missing the moustachioed gentleman I’ve been sketching. I snap the book shut and watch the tourists scattering as the rain comes down: the French dignified beneath their umbrellas, the Dutch unflinching behind their cameras, the Americans in a mad dash. I think about taking a slow walk back to the hostel to savour the blessed rain after so many days of sun. I’m no further than a few feet around the corner of the cathedral when the heavens open.

I concede defeat to the tempest and join a small but growing crowd seeking shelter in the ancient stone doorway of Odo’s cathedral. The beagle-fanciers are here, along with a cross-section of Bayeux’s tourists. The rain comes down in sheets, hammering the cobblestones like a snare drum, and then a sudden flash and a rolling crash from the bass drum up in the sky. “On est bien dessous, hein?” remarks a Frenchwoman with short-cropped hair and round glasses. A boy with long eyelashes runs in and out of the rain in his yellow anorak, singing the chorus of the Wellerman shanty over and over.

A solitary American standing nearby stares at his phone in disbelief and growls. It sounds like he’s frustrated at a video game, but as he starts to verbalise his frustration it’s obvious he’s checking a weather app. “You’re kidding me, I’ve got to wait half an hour? God, you’ve got to be kidding me. Come on!”. He growls again. And again, louder this time. Some of the other tourists back away. “Hrrrrrnnnn!” The grunts and growls sound uncannily like a bull, giving fair warning before a charge. “END! NOW!!!” A couple of startled jumps from the crowd. By the looks on their faces, they’re weighing up whether to tell him it’s futile to attempt to command the skies, or whether it’s more futile still to reason with a man so blatantly trying to do just that. As a result, nobody intervenes, and Yankee Canute continues to defy the elements, bellowing at the clouds with increasing fury. “Hmmmmmhnnn, CAHM AAAAHN. When’s it gonna EHYAAND? GAAHD, I don’t have TAAM for this SHIIYET”.

The growling and grumbling is briefly cancelled out by another clash of thunder. “Hurry up, END, NOW! Cahm aaahhn, pleeez, end now! Why does it have to do this during the day, it should do this at night!” – (a fair point here, it was unbearably hot last night) – “Gahd, I don’t have time for this shit!”.

I slip inside the cathedral to escape the verbal artillery for just a moment. Bayeux’s cathedral survived intact the last time it came under fire from an American battery, so I figure it’s a safe bet. The muted thunder beyond the stone walls sounds strangely beautiful, and the grey skies filter through the stained glass in hopeful technicolour. The aisles are packed with a colourful array of tourists waiting out the storm; a phoney faithful glued to their phones, waiting to proceed on their pilgrimage to the crêperies outside – a combination of American flags and English spoken here signs were drawing in the crowds earlier. Staring down at the sightseers, a gargoyle pulls his mouth into a sneer, tongue out, deriding a thousand years of peasants, pilgrims and pensioners.

Outside, the rest of the gargoyles are doing their job, spewing rainwater from their mouths onto the streets below. For the first time they look complete, as though the gaping mouths were merely voids waiting to be turned into channels. A father points them out to his daughter, one hand gesturing, the other on her ear as our frustrated Yankee Canute swears blue murder at the sky.

The streets of Bayeux shine under the whitening sky. Umbrellas and ponchos have been magicked out of the air (and some straight out of souvenir shops). The Wednesday market is being dismantled. The fishmonger reclaims the last two skate wings and a Norman bookseller voices a quiet complaint to the heavens as he stacks his pulped collection of second-hand books: “aujourd’hui, précisement?”.

The storm has passed and the sun has returned with a milder temperament, his midsummer fury sated at last. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off. Find a park, do some reading, and clue up on the bus times for tomorrow’s expedition to the coast. A bientot! BB x

T-12

March 13, 2018March 13, 2018 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The Heavens have given us a temporary respite. The spring rains that began a month ago today are still falling hard, and set to fall harder still over the next week or two, but today the clouds are colourless and clear. I no longer live in a state of quasi-permanence beside the brasero and soon I’ll be able to put my jumpers back in the wardrobe once again. Spring has definitely arrived here: my morning walk to school is a symphony of song from the park, albeit a symphony where every part seems to think they hold the solo, from the strings of the serins and the woodwind of the blackbirds to the kestrel fanfare, stork drumrolls and the uncompromising neither-here-nor-there noise of the starlings. It puts a smile on my face every morning.

I’m conscious, as I often am at this time of year, of my time running out. Where the year seemed to stretch on into the middle distance back in cold, gloomy February, March holds up a mirror as if to remind me how much the cold warps one’s perspective. As it stands, I only have twelve weeks remaining, of which nine and a half are working weeks and only four bring as-of-yet unscheduled weekends. In my desire to be busy once again I’ve burdened myself up with responsibilities that eat into my timetable like caterpillars: a private lesson in Almendralejo, choir rehearsals in Zafra and play rehearsals at 8.15am on a Thursday morning. Combined with commuting time, and those inevitable private lessons that are at the incredibly inconvenient time of six o’clock in the afternoon, my time is slipping through my fingers and the year will be over before I know it. And with a summer job and a proper job at the end of it waiting for me back in England, that’s more than a little disheartening. Something’s got to give.

Reading is keeping me afloat. I finished She the other day and I’m onto another classic, Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. After the insightful but heavy high-Victorian ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ of Haggard’s dialogue, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear people speak in an altogether more human register some twelve years prior. Once again, I’m reminded that, if it weren’t for my all-consuming love for Iberia, I would have followed my grades at gone for a degree in English Literature. I might not have enjoyed reading as much at the time, but I’m certainly making up for lost time here and now, even if that does entail reading two Haggard books per month. Still, I don’t read Haggard for the dialogue: the old adventurer might be unable to tear himself from his medieval register, but there is wisdom scattered in his words like pearls on a stormy beach, and I love mining his books for quotes in such a fashion. I just need to modernise my reading tastes so my own writing doesn’t become quite as jaded. Hardy might be a step backwards in time, but he’s more than a step forwards in modernism. BB x

The Rain in Spain

March 2, 2018 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Snow doesn’t like me. Every time it falls I’m in the wrong country. The last time I remember snow good enough to build a decent snowman was early in 2013, when I was on my abortive gap year and had precious little else to do. Going north to university was supposed to bring better weather; living as close to the coast as I did, pretty much every weather front we got had dissipated by the time it reached us.

Not so. In my first year at Durham we had a light dusting, and second year delivered only a little better. In my third year the powers that be decided to deliver a decent fall… but of course, I was in Spain at the time, and didn’t see any snow whatsoever. The following year I returned to Durham, where it was cold, but not enough for snow. Spain, on the other hand, got a lashing so strong it covered most of Andalusia – one of Spain’s hottest regions – in an impressive layer. And now this Beast from the East lays waste to the UK with snowfall like it hasn’t seen in decades, and here I am in the one part of Europe that was spared.

It’s obvious. Snow and me simply aren’t compatible.

What are we getting here in Spain? Guess. I’ll give you a clue: they had a fair idea when they wrote My Fair Lady.

You want the Beast from the East? Try the Pest from the West. It’s supposed to rain for a full fortnight.

There are just over a couple of weeks to go until Semana Santa. I haven’t been blogging much, partly because of the taxing nature of private lessons with under tens, but mainly because any writing I don’t commit to my novels seems like a betrayal, especially with the workload (and the salary) set to treble next year, and by my own hand. I’ll keep you posted. BB x

Reflections from a Little Window

October 23, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Since I’m no longer abroad (for the time being), the primary function of this blog is somewhat defunct at the moment. Even so, since it’s been such a crucial tool for keeping me writing this year, I see no reason why I should just leave it there for a year. So, to keep the old writing muscles flexed, I’m taking on the 365 Day Writing Challenge and using this blog as the medium. They won’t be especially long entries, but hopefully they’ll be good reading, and better still, good warm-ups for the essays I’m due to be writing over the course of the year, not least of all my twelve-thousand word dissertation.

So, without further ado, here’s Day One: Outside the Window

Mine is a little window. Perhaps that’s just as well, as it looks straight across the road to the girl in the house opposite. She’s been working flat out since eleven o’clock this morning, and if she were to look up from her studies, she’d have a pretty good view of my bedroom. But when I sit down at my desk to work, I’m invisible to the outside world. I like that. I might not be the shy, retiring figure I used to be, but I haven’t lost my fondness for disappearing from time to time.
The local jackdaw brigade is out in force. There’s a roost nearby, I think, maybe in the trees over on the Avenue. It’s nice to have something wild close at hand this year, but I don’t half miss the kites, or the storks and swallows I used to see every day from my balcony in Villafranca. The trade-off is regular rain, which is something I find myself curiously attached to.
It’s raining now, as it happens.
There’s nobody out and about on my street at the moment. I suppose that’s because it’s a Sunday afternoon. Everybody who’s not at the library or the gym is inside, wrapped up snug in their rooms and noticing, like me, that we’ve already reached that time of year when your breath comes out in a cloud, inside or out. Sooner or later I’ll have to stock up on hot chocolate.
I walked home in the rain the other night. It was after midnight, and the rain was coming down hard. It’s hard to say exactly how it felt, walking over Palace Green in the half-dark getting gradually soaked in my hoodie, with the mighty cathedral and its scaffolding-crown towering overhead. It’s not the first time I’ve seen rain since I got back from Morocco, but it was probably the first time I really thought about it. I always used to think that standing outside in the rain was something to be shared, something intensely romantic. Now that the six-year blinkers are off I see things a good deal more clearly. It’s a feeling as personal as a diary, and every bit as important. And if we really are sixty percent water, there must be something naturally therapeutic about getting soaked in the rain.
I’ve missed it.
It’s not raining anymore, and the sky is still light, in that English yellow-streaks-through-grey kind of way. The slate tiles on the roof across the road are proof enough that it has been raining, though, and that’s something beautiful to see.
The girl in the window opposite isn’t there anymore. She must have taken a break, and about time too. That’s what Sundays are for. Quite by accident, I’ve been working flat-out this week, all the while duping myself that I was ‘merely helping out with a few things’. I guess I just can’t help myself. When it comes to spare time, there’s only one day of the week when I can forgive myself for doing nothing.
The sky’s opened up. Through the fifty shades of grey in the clouds above there’s a break of blue up there, and the sunlight on the trailing edges of the breach is a brilliant golden-white. It’ll be gone again by the time I pen this down, but whilst it was here, it was one of those fleeting little moments of beauty you just have to stop and watch.
Bit of a reflective first run, this one. I’ll play around with style and voice over the next few and we’ll see where this takes us.

If you’d like to do something like this, the challenge list I’m following is this one here: http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

Back in Action

January 3, 2016 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s been a while!

I kept my word, it seems. It’s been about two weeks since my last post. Probably more. In that time I’ve not honestly been up to much at all, hence the dearth of posts, though that probably has more to do with a real need to take some serious time-out; last term was pretty hectic, especially towards the finishing line.

Coming home for Christmas was never part of the original plan, but I’m glad I did. England at this time of year is pretty magical, with the mist, the frost and the rain in the pine woods about the house. Doubly so this year, as it’s been all of three months since the last time I saw rain in Spain. Apparently global warming is to blame. Whoever the culprit may be, it’s impressed upon me just how much I like rain. I don’t know whether that’s ineffably English or the reverse. I don’t really mind either way. I wasn’t really complaining about the gorgeous blue skies and twenty-two degree heat right up until my last day in the country (the twenty-second of December, in fact). All I hope is that it keeps for one week longer at least, so that it doesn’t put a damper on my stay in Madrid next week… more on that later.

That said, I haven’t sung a single Christmas carol this year, and that makes me feel more than a little wierd. Not even Silent Night. That must be the first time in my life where I haven’t. Next year had better make up for that.

I haven’t made anywhere near as much progress on the grand drawing as I’d have liked. Nor have I finished my series of 2015 doodles. What I have achieved over the last two weeks, however, is a new camera. The trusty old Nikon D70 has done me wonders over the last ten years, but… ten years is a long time. Especially in the fast-moving world of digital photography. I got my comeuppance for my loyalty when I went into Extremadura’s biggest camera store and was roundly told by the head clerk that nowhere stocked the ‘gigantic’ CompactFlash memory cards that the D70 runs off anymore. Time, perhaps, to move on.

Fortunately, I’ve been working two jobs and several private lessons over the last three months, so I’ve enough set aside for such adventures.

Introducing the Nikon D3200. In all its 24 megapixel glory.

Tech that can crack out magazine quality prints on AUTO mode is worth the investment. Sadly, most of my lenses are a little out of date too, and the autofocus doesn’t work, so it’s been an ordeal learning to use manual (finally). A necessary one, but an ordeal nonetheless. Manual and nuthatches simply don’t mix.

To put it through its paces, I took it to Deal for a final coffee with the family before I jet off back to Spain for the unforeseeable future. Even on manual mode alone, it did a fine job.

The phrase ‘a kid at Christmas’ springs to mind; but then, I am a kid at heart, and this is technically still the Christmas season, so there you have it. I’m waiting on baited breath for my kit lens and the ol’ telephoto to have a functional autofocus (I haven’t been able to check thus far as I left them in Spain), but in the meantime, I’ll just keep practising with manual.

A gannet far out to sea (Sigma 500mm, where are you when I need you?)

Apart from getting back into some serious camera hijinks, it was worth coming home for a reunion with two very special friends, and a whole panoply of others close to my heart. That’s what Christmas time is for; being with your nearest and dearest. A phrase I heard bandied about a lot this Christmas was that people had learned to distance themselves from those they ‘simply no longer really had time for’. I guess that’s a good ethos, and a strong marker of that over-the-hill feeling that is turning twenty-two. The first winnowing of friendships that were once so strong, and at the same time the moment when you see clearly, perhaps for the first time, who the people are that you will fight to keep in touch with. Having always had it in mind to leave these rainy shores to chase my dreams in Spain, I’ve never allowed myself to grow too attached to anybody here in England, but for two shining lights I would return home anytime and oft, and you know I would. You know who you are. Thank you.

Things you’d be hard-pressed to find in Spain: a tankard of whipped-cream-topped hot chocolate

Well, Kent is behind me now, I’m back in West Sussex – where the rain and the darkness has not ceased for several days – and counting down the hours until my plane whisks me back to Seville and home. But for the wind, the place is as silent as the grave. That hasn’t stopped the birds from letting me know that they have not appreciated my absence, so I made sure to throw out some New Years’ seed for them. They’ve got to be so tame now that I hardly need to freeze when the camera’s out.

Such is the power of that camera that neither of those have been zoomed in or edited whatsoever. Oh, but we’re going to have some serious fun with this thing.

Well, I’ll keep you posted. My next insert will probably be from Spain, but whether that will be pre- or post-Madrid depends entirely on whether the Bar Atalaya WiFi is in operation. In any case, hasta pronto, amigos. The rain in Spain falls mainly on England x

The Green Hills of England

November 25, 2015 / 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:

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.
Music. I’ve already elaborated on this one, so I won’t go into it again.
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.
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.
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

Not All Those Who Wander Are Flossed

August 4, 2015August 4, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s just taken me about an hour and a half to wade through the latest Arabic text for tomorrow’s class. With a night of karaoke at the Marriott Hotel on the cards for this evening, I don’t exactly have the ‘I’ll do it later’ gambit at my disposal.

First off I want to apologise for a very rocky week or two of bipolar posting (some of you noticed, I gather…). The mid-term fury is over and things have settled back to the way they were before, helped along the way by much meditation, H.R. Haggard and Karl Jenkins. Ouch, that’s a painfully middle-class sentence. Life in Amman rumbles slowly onwards, the daily Arabic homework’s still coming in thick and fast and the Versailles branch of the British Council still haven’t told Andrew where he’s going. Business as usual. I took an entire weekend out to deal with my restless psyche and it seems to have paid off. It meant missing out on a couple of parties, but for the sake of my bleeding heart, it was worth it. So if you were feeling the strain of my sine-wave posts over the last week or so, fret not; the dust has settled. It should be a little easier on the eye from here on out.

It’s been a fairly productive couple of days, which means we haven’t had that many adventures; but that’s no bad thing. I saw our first clouds in a month or so the other day, and what a sight for sore eyes that was. You’d be surprised how uplifting it was to see a speck of grey on the horizon for once. Blue skies are lovely and all that, but when you’ve had temperatures balancing out over the high thirties for almost three weeks without cease, a cool breeze is a welcome miracle. There was supposed to be a thunderstorm, which we all got super excited about, but it never came. Instead, the sky went a very queer shade of brown and a mild sandstorm swept through the streets. No rain. One of the strangest weather phenomenons I’ve ever seen. We got the full force of the stifling storm heat, though; the temperature soared up into the mid forties. My insides felt like they were being cooked every time I stepped outside and there was a weird charge in the air. Mostly we found ourselves retreating to our various homes to sit like idol-worshippers before the air-con until the sun decided to call it a day. Even then it often carried on long into the night, that stuffy, all-pervading heat. The blankets had to go. How they’ve lasted this long is anyone’s guess. BBC Weather’s been getting an unnatural number of hits from our flat, at any rate. They say there’s a 51% chance of precipitation tomorrow. Good news takes the strangest forms…

I finally got around to sending off an email to the school I’ll be teaching at in Extremadura. I’ve had it written for the best part of a week and a half, but for some reason I never hit the send button. I guess I wanted to be dead-certain on the grammar, but in the end I just had to be happy with what I’d written, bite the bullet and hit SEND. With any luck, I’ll get a reply at some point before I arrive in September. So that’s pretty cool. In the meantime I’m keeping my teacher senses trained with this project of ours at the Iraqi church Andreas got me in on last week. The last session must have gone down well enough, because we had double the numbers this time. We’ll have to call in reinforcements at this rate. Parts of the body this week, following on from the previous lesson on going to the hospital. Getting the groups to use the vocab to compliment each other was a great idea, and also highly amusing. Apparently eyebrows are a valuable commodity. Or maybe they were just trying to get their heads around the pronunciation. I’d like to believe the former. Having to explain the difference between diarrhea and constipation in the politest possible way is definitely going down as one of the most entertaining moments of my teaching career. Something along the lines of ‘let’s say you eat a bad falafel, and it goes right through you… and for the other one, well, it doesn’t quite go right through you…’. British humour. It never gets old.

This church is just about the best thing that’s happened to me out here, though. It’s the one thing I’d return to Jordan for, given the chance. Maybe this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, maybe not. I hope so, at any rate. I’ve been waiting for my chance for so very long now, ever since I left that world behind almost six years ago… I’ll be dropping by three times a week from now on, twice for class and once for the service, so things should start to look up. And that’s a real slice of good news.

Bummer, I’m out of toothpaste. Looks like I really will have to resort to this weird Arab brand I picked up in the corner shop last week. At least it smells nice. After Morocco I’m none too keen to follow up on any of these traditional Arabian dental practices. BB x