The Fool On The Hill

Today we have visitors. My sister Yvonne and her husband John, after driving around Spain and Portugal are staying for a couple of nights. Nothing unusual about that you say, it happens all the time.

Well, not to expats it doesn't. Visits are few and far between and are meant to be savoured. Who was it said that an expatriate is a foreigner in two countries: the one he lives in and the one he's left behind. The life of a person in a new land does not start like that. You don't arrive thinking that you are a foreigner or an outsider, (must read that book by Albert Camus) - its a feeling that unfortunately grows the longer you stay.

Does everyone feel the same? Unlike most of my countryman who live in this country I don't live in one of those British ghettos by the sea. And unlike them I have to speak Spanish to be understood for nobody around here speaks any english. So I thought that the occasional feeling of isolation had something to do with my struggles with the language but it seems not. I just recently finished a book by the american broadcaster and writer William Shirer, The Nightmare Years retelling his life in Germany and Europe in the 30's. His german appears to have been flawless as his exploits will show and it was therefore somewhat of a surprise to read that after 20 odd years he expressed exactly the same sentiments. That a foreigner can never truly feel at home in a foreign country. Once he realised that he went back home, to america.

So anyway, I've ended up doing the same thing as my father who lived in a foreign land for most of his life. Which I suppose would surprise him a little if he could think about it now which unfortunately he can't. But he was running away from a broken home, hard work in the fields for an un-loving step-mother and so he did what most of the Irish do, ran off to england at the age of 14.

But enough of gloom, lets go back to the beginning. I have always enjoyed the experience of meeting a friend ( or relation ) in a foreign land. The emotion of seeing someone you know far away from the normal places. And Spain has usually been the country where most of the meetings have occurred from way back in 1979 when I refused to go on holiday by plane and insisted on driving there. With no real idea where in Tossa del Mar that my friends were staying we met them straight away purely by chance riding their hired bicycles in the street as soon as we got there.

The most absurb arrangement ( and the more vague is usually the better ) has to be with my mate Keith - "see you at 12 by the startline" ( of the 1987 Austrian Grand Prix). Of course, with my spanish girlfriend passing the time of day with every stranger she meets we were extremely late and found Keith with his legs crossed dying to go for a pee but not wanting to lose his place by the fence right by the startline.

Happy Days. One of the joys of being older is the ability to look back at happy memories of different times before the world became so complicated. We know more, but seem to comprehend the human mind even less, and are stuck by the sense of time running too quickly through our fingers. We see more than ever with our eyes now wide open but with the sense that there's so much more to learn and understand and that the time allocated to us is fast running out.

St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague

I can't let the day go by without reminding everyone that today, 28th June, is of course St. Vitus Day. Saint Vitus' Day is celebrated on June 28 according to the Gregorian calendar, and on June 15 according to the old now defunct Julian calendar.

I suspect that all this is not something that a lot of people will know and even fewer will even care about but nevertheless it is an important day in all our histories.

Sunday June 28th, 1914 was the day that the heir apparent to the Austria-Hungarian throne Franz Ferdinard and his wife Sophie choose to officially visit the town of Sarajevo in Bosnia. He'd attended the army manoeuvres in the mountains nearby and a state visit to the town seemed to everyone a very good idea. The Emperor Franz Josep had visited the town a few years before and had been received well, the streets being full of cheering crowds so a repeat performance was obviously expected for his nephew.

Of course, since then several things had changed, not least the fact that Austria were in effect the occuping force in 1914 having annexed the country in 1908. In addition nobody in the diplomatic circles of the Austrian government seems to have taken any note of the date involved because as any Serb will tell you June 28th is celebrated by every Serb as the sacred day of Vidovdan the day that their armies were defeated ( and their King Lazar killed ) by the Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. A long time ago, you may say but to a persecuted race like the Serbs a date not to be forgotten. It is possible that the confusion over the Gregorian and Julian calendars may be the reason as the Julian calendar was still in use by the Eastern Orthodox church.


Sarajevo Town Hall (or what remains of it - its interior was destroyed by Serb artillery in 1994.)

Perhaps the date was not really that important but it all served to add further insult to the visit. A young nationalist, Gavilo Princip, fired the gun that killed both of the couple who died within minutes. The security was non-existent and after one bungled attempt that resulted in injuries to one of the party on the way to the Town Hall, Princip struck on the return journey after the driver of the lead vehicle mistook the turning. The car of Franz Ferdinard stopped just 5 feet from the nervous youth and the rest is history.

After the Austrians decided that war with Serbian would be the result of the assasination, the rest of Europe reluctantly agreed and the First World war, or The Great War as it was known then, began on August 4, 1914.

How many died during the war? The estimates vary but always give figures in millions. Around 15. The start of the conflict is now 92 years ago so the effect of 15 million dead can only be read and imagined. It was all a long time ago and we only have memories of what our grandfather may have told us or what we have seen in the documentaries.

But it all started in the small town of Sarajevo on St. Vitus Day 1914.

The Fool on the Hill has unearthed more startling facts. After years of fruitless endeavour trying in vain to master the Spanish language, it appears that my resounding failure has been due not to my utter lazyness or complete stupidity but because I don't eat any fish, oily fish in particular.

According to George Monbiot its all due to a lack of efficent brain connections. Its all revealed here and I can't say I'm surprised by the news. For the last few years I have been frustatingly searching for an excuse, sorry reason, for my sorry state of Spanish and have come to the obvious explanation that my Dyslexia is to blame. This manifests itself in appalling spelling with the resulting constant need of a spellchecker and an inabilty to properly remember sounds.

For a long time I have noticed that my wife can be told or can hear a foreign phase or word and the following day can remember it. Give her the Greek or Arab phase for hello and its still there weeks afterwards. In my head, unless I write it down in phonetics, its gone within seconds.

Back in March I managed to track down a book in the library that explained that one ear is for voice sounds and the other for other sounds (!), stay with me here. The sounds from the right ear travel go to the left hand hemisphere of your brain and are then connected to the area that controls speech recognition. For some reason Dyslexia occurs when these connections are not properly created in childhood.

One thing you must know straight away - I don't like fish, all those scales and tiny bones sticking in your throat. But hold on there - no, I'll swiftly rephase that. Its not that I dislike fish, to be honest I really LIKE fish. Can't get enough of them, show me a fish-tank and I could spend hours just watching. Silent swimming around what a luxury, what peace, what serenity. What I don't like is eating them.

And maybe my mother didn't like them either so here we are with Dyslexia and the struggle to learn impossible spanish.

A new writer has stepped into my life, and one that is seemingly quite well-known.

First of all my excuses for ignoring his book for so long which has been in my procession for a good 5 years. Writing in one's own name obviously has its drawbacks especially when you're called Cees Nooteboom - with my atrocious memory it's taken me several days to finally get it into my head. He's Dutch and into his sixties and there's nothing in the name to tell you that a book by him should be worth reading. Added to this is the picture of a rather miserable looking man ( not the photo above) which doesn't do him any favours at all.

Thinking back now, the hardcover book, I remember, was being sold at half-price which was not really encouraging for what was a recent title but with a name of "Roads to Santiago" buy it here , ( Santiago in North-Western Spain ), and always ready for a bargain I quickly passed over my plastic and took the book home. Back home however I began to regret my impulse purchase and found that the appeal of the bright yellow dustcover was not matched by its interior. Lots of black and white photos of churches and landscapes with not a person in sight. Compared to my paperbacks it felt heavy and dull and it soon lost its appeal and it has for the past 5 years languished on my bookshelves along with the other dozens of unread books being occasionally rearranged but most of the time slowly gathering a film of neglected dust and never revealing its treasures.

It was only on leaving the house in March on a journey back to Spain that its bright yellow dustcover once again caught my eye just as it did back in the bookshop and ignoring its weight I slipped it into the already bulging suitcase.

Back in Spain and considering what book to read next it occurred to me that it was about time once again to learn more about the country I live in. So after the recent efforts to educate myself in politics and biographies, bringing myself up-to-date with current affairs and indulging in fiction I looked again at the now faded yellow cover up there on the shelf. So I picked up Cees again and took a long and winding journey to Santiago de Compostela.

In contrast to 5 years ago it was finally the intriguing black and white photos that finally won me over. My recent interest in black and white photography was the reason and I began to admire the pictures and the words wove around them. The pictures themselves tell a story of a country of old churches, roman architecture, empty roads and barren landscapes - all subjects that anyone living in Spain can identify with and all things that the author has seen during several of his journeys across Spain. He calls it a love affair and says that any year without a sight of Spain a year lost.

But what really draws you into the book is the wonderful prose - so deep and meaningful that while the photos show you a world that you can recognize, the words take you into another world that your eyes have never seen before. On Page 46, for example, there is the story of a visit to Siguenza Cathedral to see the famous Condel "reclining on the tomb, reading a stone book, seemingly unaware of his own death".... and I soon settled down to an amazing book of insights and discoveries full of delightful prose.

His love of so many things Spanish such as the painter Zurbaran and the intricacies of Romanesque architecture draw you into a new world and give you more things to experience and appreciate. He sees a picture of the cloister in Santo Domingo de Silos with a twisted column and sets out to see it with his own eyes and his enthusiasm and joy of seeing things for himself is definitely infectious.

A week later we were on the same trip.

Looks like I going to miss the World Cup.

After a series of talks that would have put Murdoch to shame, the terrestrial TV broadcasting rights in Spain for the World Cup were eventually handed to new-comers "La Sexta" TV. Despite pretty plans and numerous promises it transpires that unfortunately "La Sexta" , being only a few months old, haven't had sufficient time to build enough transmitters to cover the whole of Spain so a estimated sixth ( how appropriate ) of fans throughout the country were going to miss out.

To a great fanfare after seeing an opportunity in get in on the act, or is it farce, another new channel 'Cuatro', (who being a year old has supposedly got the required infrastructure in place ) has for an unclosed cut-price deal obtained the distribution rights for some games. Just when you begin to feel saved at the death, it transpires that they have only purchased the rights to those first round games involving Spain.

Well, great. F**k the rest of us is it. With "La Sexta" showing only 27 of the 48 opening phase games there are therefore 21 first round games will NOT be available on terrestrial TV and will only be broadcast on the satellite station Digital/Canal Plus. Thank you Spanish FA - obviously the price was right.

So the foreigners that Spain has in abundance have had to do some planning. If you happen to live in that part of the country not covered by "La Sexta" and want to see all the games you will have to buy a Canal Plus dish AS WELL as one of those new-fanged Digital receivers to get "La Sexta". So I shopped around and strangely found them not only in short supply but risen in price. I eventually, and in some desperation, stumpled up with the 60 Euros and brought a cheapie receiver.

At first this seemed to work but rain clouds have appeared on the horizon, in more ways than one, and the reception has gone AWOL. Maybe the aerials crap or its pointing in the wrong direction or probably its just cheap rubbish. And I now find out that "La Bloody Sexta" doesn't plan to broadcast the first 2 games featuring one of the favorites - England.

So its back to the shop with my "Pro-Basic DTR" to find out why its not working and even if I get a replacement/new aerial or whatever I'll still have to persuade my wife that its vital that I go to the bar down the road at 3 o'clock today.

With little close-season action from my favorite club cafc, with wandering-woman wandering around the islands of Western Ireland and with the usually reliable diamondgeezer otherwise concerned with the vagaries of the east london underground I was forced this morning to look elsewhere for my morning wake-me-up.

Surfing through the news stories today I found something silly about Jeremy Clarkson jeremy clarkson must be destroyed that I assumed was written by a woman till I saw the picture. Sorry, but I find the thoughts of a man not liking, indeed apparently hating Clarkson, to be a bit wierd. Personally I quite like the bloke. He's managed to earn a living doing things things many a man would gladly do for nothing and he fronts a very good TopGear progam thats one of the most entertaining things on TV. Opinionated, overbearing, maybe, but how that can generate such anger is beyond me. Getting upset about a big kid on TV enjoying himself has to be a little ridulous, these people are obviously living in a little world of their own.

All the talk in the article about fuel pollution and global warming somehow got me into the from the wilderness pages and I got into the debate about oil and my current quest, if that is the word, is on trying to find out what "Peak Oil" means. Just give me time, it looks important.

And because I'm reading Distant Voices by Pilger - everyone should be forced once in their life to read Pilger - I found a article by him here regarding an interview he had with an Israeli soldier, a refusenik, and reporting what real life is like for some people.

And finally to really educate myself I turned to the New Statesman to see how their changed format is going and got seriously depressed by reading americas' robot armies. I wonder if anyone can be happy with america after reading such articles. Can it make one pleased to be in the world, can it make people feel more secure knowing that in the future we'll really be safe? I'm afraid that my overwhelming feeling was one of intense dispair for the world and to make me glad I'm in my fifties and not in my youth and its probably the only time I have ever felt that.