Happy What?

          We are in the last days of December, “betwixtmas”, a period of time that falls outside the normal definition of ‘week’ or ‘weekend’, a few days that seem to hang around, like Christmas leftovers, waiting to be used up. What to do with them? Not a problem if you are a fervent traditionalist. (Foxhunting, anyone?) Or a lazy-arse who, seeing that everyone seems to have left off hustling for a while, determines to do nothing at all. Or someone who relishes the gift of a big chunk of time to get a head start on a project that has been on the back burner all year. This latter category is where I see myself, though my plan fell apart when we left Fran’s finca in Spain prematurely and, in so doing, left behind the work that was to have occupied me. Alas, with no back-up project planned, I have resorted to renewing my Netflix subscription and, consequently, this last week has been a haze of film and TV, instead of the blur of activity I had anticipated.

          Otherwise, Christmas itself came and went without inconveniencing me in any way – I am a refusenik, insofar as I neither subscribe to the religious myth on which Christmas is based, nor embrace the commercialisation of its reciprocal gift-giving tradition. But I don’t consider it to be all humbug. There are aspects of the festival that appeal to me – bonhomie and decorative lights, for example – it’s just that I find that these pleasures get subsumed by the excesses of display, precarity of expectation and weight of obligation all concentrated in one occasion. I appreciate them best when they are dispersed more evenly throughout the year. Just as I prefer to drink Champagne on a wet Wednesday, when its restorative powers are most needed, so I find it more rewarding to socialise with friends and family frequently and not rely on that ‘special occasion’, one dinner in December.

          Admittedly, this position is easy to maintain when you don’t have children and are not, therefore, obliged to attend nativity plays, doze off at carol concerts, visit Santa grottoes and otherwise indulge their expectations. If I were a parent I suspect I might be more compromising, though I would still work covertly to undermine the foundations of belief and encourage some new thinking. Reassessment of religion-based traditions is overdue, as I see it. As our society has become more culturally inclusive and our nuclear families more genetically diverse, the majority view has dwindled and homogeneity may no longer be taken for granted. The “Merry Christmas!” salutation you get from a stranger might be well-intended but, from another perspective, it is loaded with presumption or, worse, an element of subtle coercion.

          The birth of Jesus was designated as a public holiday back when the church and landowning aristocracy had a stranglehold on power and used it to control the peasants with the dual threats of armed force and the fear of God. The word holiday (deriving from holy day) evokes in me that repressive era. Other cultures, with different faiths, used the same system of control and have a similar legacy. But now that there is greater social mobility and a mingling of cultures within Britain, it seems valid to question why all religion-based celebrations are not granted the status of public holidays. That may seem fair, but it also seems impractical. Perhaps, instead, the system could be revised, so that everyone is allocated a quota of state-funded days off that may be taken at whatever time they wish, whether it be on a saint’s day or a Tuesday. That should satisfy everyone. After all, we all love holidays: it’s just that some of us don’t want religion to determine when we may take them.

 

Heading Home

          Those of you who were looking forward to the next episode of Finca Follies will be disappointed to learn that they have come to an untimely end. The three of us left Fran’s finca last Monday. Not because of a falling out, but because the increasingly rapid spread of omicron threatened to lock down international travel and prevent us returning to England when we had planned. We decided to leave while it was still possible. Besides, the donkey shed project had already been put on hold until spring.

          Of course, I am also disappointed. I’m no horny-handed son of the soil and I have no identifiable soft spot for donkeys, but my urge to fix things is suited to the challenges of remote, off-grid living. I was actually pleased when the water pump packed up and left us dry for a day. Helping to sort it out exercised my DIY tendency and earned me community points. Also, the precarity of infrastructure may be inconvenient, but it does have the effect of ousting complacency and nurturing the pioneering spirit.

          And there is regret at not having time to explore the region, although we did get a taste of it when we visited Reus, a small town, but cosmopolitan in the eyes of us finca-folk. There I found what I craved – tapas outside, in the main square, where I could savour exotic tastes and traditions. I had a glass of Albarino and feasted on jamón Iberico, huevos y patatas fritas (a fancy version of ham, egg and chips) and took a moment to contemplate the ideology of veganism to which I had been exposed of late.

          Our departure had to be hasty, lest we run into Christmas closures, but trans-European train journeys are not easy these days. We could make it home in two days, as long as we could present covid-negative test results at the Eurostar terminal in Paris. Overnighting in Barcelona, we got tested, then found a tapas bar even better than the one in Reus. The next morning, we took the train to Paris. But what should have been a relaxing ride through the flamingo-strewn Camargue and beyond, turned toxic with anxiety when it transpired that our test results were not forthcoming. Over the phone, the clinic denied having any record of our appointments, so it was with grim determination that we pressed on to the Gare du Nord, hopeful that the gatekeepers would take pity. They did not.

          We were directed to a dodgy-looking testing facility outside the station entrance. It was a small marquee with temporary signage and, inside, a broken chair and a folding table. It was staffed by one man and he was wearing a token white tunic over the many layers of winter clothing protecting him from the freezing wind. He bade us download a form, fill it in, take the test and pay him 25 euros, whereupon he undertook to email the results in 15 minutes. We were sceptical but desperate, so we paid up. Thankfully, he was true to his word and the results came through, to our phones, as negative.

          Is it even possible to travel these days without a smartphone? They contain all of the required documentation, except passports (?), which sounds convenient but is not without drawbacks, such as attempting to retrieve various emails and pdf files while clutching your passport, having donned your specs, which keep misting up because of your face-mask, which must be worn at all times, except for when the passport controller reminds you, brusquely, to remove it and all the while managing your luggage and trying to stay in sight of your partner, whose ticket you have on your phone and who is suffering severe travel-related anxiety and may physically assault an official at any moment.

          It is not surprising that when at last we took our seats on Eurostar, we celebrated with Champagne. Not our departure, but our arrival.

 

Campo Adventures

          A week has passed since the three of us arrived at Fran’s finca, where we have been invited to adopt, temporarily, the lifestyle to which she has committed herself permanently. And while it has not been difficult to grasp the practicalities of living together, the subtle relationship challenges that arise when several households merge present more of a challenge. Neither flat-share nor kibbutz, but with elements of both, our domestic situation tests our willingness to be flexible.

          Not that we spend our days agonising over such things: there is little time left for that on a smallholding deep in the campo, where chores such as fetching firewood, carrying buckets of water, tending animals, encouraging crops and fixing infrastructure take up a large part of the day. There is also a low-level, preoccupying anxiety about sufficiency of water and electricity, neither of which is sourced from the mains supply. Freedom from the corporates comes at a price, one that Catalans themselves seem not to be prepared to pay, since they have sold their fincas to ex-pats and moved on-grid. We have already met some of the new owners, a motley collection of adventurers with different backstories. One couple rubbed me up the wrong way when, over coffee, they set about haranguing us with their anti-vax views and far-fetched conspiracy theories. The fact that they also believe that there is a God and He has a purpose indicates, to me at least, that they are inclined to gullibility. I might have dismissed them as crazy people, but they are neighbours and, as such, not just community, but a resource to be nurtured, as we were to find out.

          Our big project here is helping in the construction of a donkey shed. The infrastructure, a wooden frame with a tin roof and walls of baled straw, is already complete. Our task is to render the straw with several layers of clay, using no mechanical aids, since our taskmaster, Fran, is intent on doing this the traditional way. The first step in the process is to break down the lumpy clay (there are five tons of it) and mix it with water to the consistency of a slip. The slip is then slapped onto the bales and worked in by hand. The second coat (yes, we have to do it all over again) will include sand and rabbit droppings in the mix. This is back-breaking, finger numbing, tedious work so, after a couple of hours, Stefano and I began to look for ways to ease the burden, taking turns at each task and hunting around for tools that might speed things up. There were mutinous murmurings about mechanical mixers, but Fran was immovable. Instead, in keeping with the principles of self-sufficiency and mutual support, she had arranged for a gang of neighbours to come over and help out on Wednesday. They would include a young man from Manchester, a middle-aged man from Devon, two women – one half of a South African couple and one half of a French couple – and the conspiracy theorists, who hail from Essex.

          In the event, any concerns I had about another encounter with crazies proved ill-founded. All the volunteers were friendly, cheerful and willing (I suppose there was some tallying of favours involved) and the result was impressive. By mid- afternoon, the walls were entirely coated, inside and out. The zealots did not raise their pet subjects – although one of them pointedly said a hasty grace before she tucked into lunch – and social intercourse with the others, some of whom came back later for supper, helped to dispel any minor, latent tensions that might have been building within our little band of five.

          The finca dwellers I have met are all urban refugees. It’s a significant lifestyle exchange but they seem to love it. I would be interested to know how the former finca owners are faring, having fled in the opposite direction.

 

 

 

   

 

Getting There

          A degree of excitement, tinged with tension, had been rising at Wonderman Towers due to preparations for our first trip to Europe since we were so woefully set adrift from it by the twin disasters of Brexit and Covid 19. Our destination is Catalonia, where our old Manchester friend, Fran, has set herself up to live organically on an off-grid finca. In keeping with the spirit of COP 26, we chose to minimise carbon emissions by taking the train, which meant leaving on Monday at lunch time and arriving on Wednesday in time for supper. But, before we got started, there was the business of PCR testing, which occupied a chunk of Monday morning and was the source of the largest part of the tension.

          Day one took us as far as London, where we met mutual Manchester friend and co-traveller Jo who, like Fran, is of the vegan persuasion. We spent the evening together, swapping stories and speculating on how our adventure would pan out. Given that we have the idea of staying with Fran for perhaps a month, the possibility of harmonious relations being unsustainable for so long must be taken into account. But the opposite also applies and we may all get on so well that a mere month will be too short. It is, therefore, opportune that we have not booked return tickets, though the official reason for not doing so is the unpredictability of Covid-imposed travel restrictions.

          Day two and, when morning came, it brought with it the good news that our PCR tests were good to go, which made the taxi ride to St. Pancras station relatively enjoyable. The only potential obstacle we now faced was approval by French authorities of our completed “sworn undertaking to comply with rules for entry into metropolitan French territory”, an unconvincingly self-validated form printed off from the French embassy site that looks as if it was compiled by an office junior. In the event, one of the French border officials glanced at mine and the other did not ask for my companions’, though both wore an expression of contempt, which I interpreted as their smouldering resentment at Britain’s departure from the EU. I could imagine them, during their coffee break, saying that De Gaulle was right to have said “Non!” to perfidious Albion becoming a member. Nevertheless, we were allowed to board Eurostar, which whisked us to Lille while I finished reading the recently deceased Clive James’ Brilliant Creatures, a novel published in 1986 and written in the style that characterised his way of speaking at the time. It would have made a good audio-book.

          From Lille, we travelled to Nimes, where we spent the night. By the time we left for Barcelona in the morning, I had finished reading Duncan Weldon’s Muddling Through, an account of the often incompetent, sometimes dogmatic ways that Britain’s economy has been managed since industrialisation. Even though the text includes statistics that would normally cause my brain to atrophy, the story is so well told that my attention was held to the last page. You couldn’t make it up, as they say. And on day three, despite being distracted for a while by the sight of flamingos as the Barcelona train sped through the Camargue, I started How Democracies Die (Levitsky & Ziblatt), getting far enough through the section on Donald Trump to be frightened by just how close America has come to transforming itself into a dictatorship, for the time being, at least.

          The last leg of the train journey took us down the coast to L’Ametlla de Mar, from where Fran ferried us in her electric car to her isolated, starlit finca and introduced us to Stefano, itinerant Italian and resident ‘workaway’. Over a convivial supper, we began the process of settling into the dynamics of our situation. Solitary reading time is over, for the time being.

 

 

Incomers

          As newcomers to the area, the process of ‘fitting in’ is a work in progress that includes familiarising ourselves with the surrounding area. So, this week, we took a bracing circular walk from the village of Noss Mayo, up to the cliffs on the coast and back down to the village through woodland along the side of the creek, ending up at a pub for lunch. The route is a varied delight, especially when all the elements are perfect, as they were for us last week. The weather was bright and dry, our company of three was affable, the staff in the cute pub were friendly and the menu was appetising. We sat outside, overlooking the creek – dry because the tide was out – and the picturesque hodgepodge of houses on the other side, with the wooded hill rising steeply behind them.

          A woman dressed in a faux country outfit came out of the pub in search of a phone signal. She was a bit anxious and explained, in her conspicuously metropolitan accent, that she was expecting a delivery but could not contact the driver. “If you see a John Lewis van,” she said to us, “please let me know,” whereupon she went back inside and I made a snide comment about the gentrification of small villages by wealthy incomers and second-homers bent on uniform, off-the-shelf John Lewis makeovers, although I am aware that, but for the presence of these people, lunch might have been bread and cheese, rather than seafood linguine. Anyway, as to the acquisition of pretty rural residences by outsiders, it seems there is no way to stop a process that began when the first ‘local’ sold up and retired to the hinterlands with a substantial windfall.

          After a while, we spotted a van arriving on the other side of the creek but, since it bore no obvious logo, decided against alerting the lady Londoner. Still, she must have made contact, for she was soon seen lolloping over the causeway towards it. “It must be John Lewis. There she goes!” I said. But our amusement was cut short when a man sitting behind me, whom I had not previously noticed, turned and said, in a not-too-friendly tone, “She is my wife and that’s our new bed being delivered.” He left soon afterwards with their lunch in takeaway containers.

          Incomer-resentment reared its head again this week, closer to home. While out with my trusty litter-picker, I heard a hearty “Hellooo!” from a car that had pulled up behind me. I turned and saw the woman driver beaming at me as if she were an old friend. In fact, she was a stranger, but we soon established that we both belonged to the voluntary litter-picking group, Clean-our-Patch. She was, at first, doubtful of my credentials, since I was wielding not the standard-issue stick, but a nifty folding model that I had got from the internet and was trialling that day. “It’s nice and clean around here,” she said. “Well, I do come round most days,” I replied, beginning to suspect that she was an inspector. I wasn’t far off the mark. It turned out that she was an organiser, not locally, but of a group based in the distant suburb of Plympton. She explained that she was scouting for a suitable area for their Thursday mass clean-up outing. “The trouble is, there are 60 of us and we have picked our area clean. Do you know of anywhere around here that might benefit?” It didn’t take me long to direct her to the arse-end of a housing estate nearby that is considered by some of the locals to be a community waste disposal facility. That will teach her to come round here, interfering, I thought, uncharitably, as she drove off with a cheery wave, no doubt to convey the news back to Plympton that the inner city is in dire need of a Thursday clear-up.

          Every Thursday, preferably.