Tunas in Mojácar

Recently, there was a competition of Tunas from all over. They were here for three days, brightening up the village with their song and friendly attitudes. Tunas are made up of university students from different fields; each field has its own group. They are usually men and they play mandolins and guitars and several other traditional instruments. They all dress in the same ancient outfit, of velvet bloomers and full sleeved jackets. The jackets are adorned with different colored ribbon to distinguish one group from the other. They didn’t just come from all over Spain to compete; there were groups from Mexico, Holland and many other countries. This year there was even an all girl group. On the night before the competition, they were all out serenading the bars and restaurants. Most of the bars were closed and the restaurants too. No one was about. It is something that the whole family can enjoy and what a shame, no one knew about it. Traditionally they were given tips and this would go to help with their university fees. Now I think it is just more for fun and tradition. Wherever they go they make fun, music and laughter. These are all events that could bring so much to the area but Mojácar seems unwilling to let people know what is happening.

While wandering the streets on the night of the competition, we bumped into Julia Hope. We happened to be sitting at the Taberna which, back in the sixties, was a disco run by Julia called the Zurri-Gurri. Julia was driving her electric wheelchair and we were commenting on how nice it would be if cars were removed from the village and only golf carts were allowed, that way she and her husband Russ, could ride together.

The roving Tunas, about 500 of them, is just one in a series of disastrous promotions that the Town Hall has made. So many talented artists, musicians and groups come through Mojácar yet go completely unknown to the community. Hands up those who knew about the Serón ham and Laujar wine tasting in the plaza of the Post Office yesterday! You see what I mean - not only did the residents miss out but the exhibitors went away feeling that Mojácar was not worth promoting.

Even Puppies Like Laundry

We have a problem with laundry here. The water is so hard that even with softener, clothes come out stiff. Then there is the sun, which fades the colors and eats the elastic. So where does one dry one’s laundry? I started with a clothes-line among the trees, only to find that snails love damp, wet laundry and leave a silvery trail across your clean clothes. Birds sit and nest in the trees, leaving their droppings all over your washing. I moved my drying to two clothes racks in the middle of a patio, only to find that the big black olive-eating birds fly by and leave huge purple stains that don’t come out. The puppy has just found a new friend to play tug-of-war with: my clothes on the rack. He doesn’t destroy them; he just drags the wet clothes through the dirt and the foxtails to bring them to me. Having finally taught the puppy that those are Mama’s clothes and not a toy, I moved the clothes rack under the cover of my patio; fine for the winter but in spring the swallows come back from Africa and build their mud nests in the beams under the terrace roof, to make matters worse, when the babies hatch, they automatically know to hang their back-sides over the edge of the nest to do their business, leaving huge piles on the terrace or smaller dabs on my laundry. So, ever ready to come to an arrangement with Mother Nature, I moved the clothes rack to a corner where the birds don’t nest. However, in life, nothing is perfect and our pet chicken, Valentina, she of the delicious morning eggs, must join this tale about now.

After an enjoyable forage about the garden, and a chase with the puppy through the flower beds, she will rest her feet and gossip with the sparrows while perched on our clothes rack. And, if the mood strikes her, she’ll poop.

Maybe it's time to get a dryer.

La Vieja Remanona and Other Picnics

Here in Mojácar, the weather is always good, so we used to take some food and drink, a few pets and friends and the kids would all trail up to the top of our mountain... or amble along the paths and off into a shaded part of the campo, for a good time with the family. Maybe it's time we did it again!

A Fun Day Out (1990)

Here are some pictures from a long-forgotten fiesta we had down at our stables; back in the days when we just had fun and there was no competition. See how many people you recognise.

Maria, Corey, Rudy and Charlotte. Didi's birthday fun ride. At the top, Swiss Michel and then Juanico from Bédar clears the jump.

Ken and Sarah in Madrid

Ken and Sarah, great friends and Mojácar residents, accompanied me to Madrid in early February. We took the train from Murcia on Sunday morning so we could get in as much sight-seeing as possible on our two day trip. I wanted to try and show my gratitude to them for all that they have done for me, by giving them a look at the Madrid most tourists don’t see. Ken is a photographer and Sarah was complaining that she didn’t have any pictures of Ken, so he bought her a little camera of her own but the one thing they didn’t have were pictures of themselves together, so I made it my project to get a picture of them together at each place in Madrid. I know they felt I started getting a bit annoying, but after I figured out how to use Lenox’ camera, we got some great travel snaps. We started with the obvious like the famous post office, which is now the City Hall, fronting onto the Plaza de Cibeles; then on to the Puerta del Sol, the Plaza Mayor and some excellent draft beer and a few shrimps at Santa Barbara, the most famous beer house in Spain. The weather was beautiful and the streets and shops were full. The plazas were filled with musicians and actors.
We saw Spain’s oldest restaurant, the Casa Botín, the famous hat shops, the Gaudí building and the nearby renovated apartment block decorated in professional graffiti. There was color and activity everywhere: the atmosphere was wonderful. We were all exhausted by the time we got back to our hotel. The next morning was hospital for me and the huge Corte Ingles on the Castellana for them; we met for lunch on Serrano, and then continued shopping down Serrano and up Goya. The shopping was exhausting but we stopped for lots of drinks and tapas along the way. We had lots of laughs and fun, we couldn’t help to observe what a difference between the lively streets of Madrid and the dead streets of Mojácar. I wanted this trip to be something special I could do for them but it ended up that all my simple plans went awry and once again they were there to save the day. If they hadn’t come with me I would probably still be sitting in a street gutter crying with the frustration of the Spanish hospital system. Instead we had a great time. There were so many things that we didn’t have time for like a Pisco Sour at the Inca or the lamb at the Asador so we decided that the next time we should stay for a week, in a hotel near Colon, so that we could go out and see some of the jazz clubs, the famous Viva Madrid and Chicote bars, the Casa del Retiro (the large and busy park in the centre of Madrid) and get to see so much more that Spain’s capital city has to offer.

Alan Simpson

Alan wrote this himself.

Alan Geoffrey "One Wine" Simpson 1930 - 2011  A native of the leafy lanes of Hertfordshire, Alan Simpson traversed jungles and deserts on his way to his final home and resting place. He first came to Mojácar in 1968, when Bill Napier and old mayor Jacinto were beginning to put it on the map. A child in World War Two, he was machine-gunned in his village school playground by a cruising aircraft (The only casualty was a boy who ran into the road and was brushed by a passing car) and rendered homeless by a V2 rocket before he had finished his Sunday lunch, thereafter being probed for broken glass on top of a piano in a snowstorm. That is why the title of his on-going autobiography was "Naked in the Snow". {It was serialised in Talismán magazine and later printed as a book of "the-story-so-far". Each chapter was written to be a stand-alone, anectdotal tale, but together they form a fascinating and humourous account of a true adventurer.} An infantry commander in the Korean War, he was commended for his part in extricating  casualties and the dead from a minefield in No-Man's-Land. After the war he aided Malaya's path to independence, seeking out terrorists deep in the Malayan jungle. Travelling with headhunters for companions he explored distant headwaters in Sarawak by dugout canoe, sleeping at night beneath bundles of human heads.  He later sought out remote parts of tribal Africa and the Sahel before moving to West Africa, where he commanded part of a 650-strong  security force protecting the diamond fields, which later funded Sierra Leone's twenty year civil war; the setting for the film "Blood Diamonds". Still in West Africa, he became a chief of police in the diamond mining areas, and was later a miner of diamonds, gold and tin. His memoirs mention the Zanzibar bloodbath instigated by "General" John Okello, and the attempted overthrow of the Moroccan monarchy by General "Name of a Nightmare" Mohamed Oufkhir, both of which situations caused him some inconvenience. Alan Simpson was an occasional magazine contributor, and a talented photographer. An "honorary" Mojaquero since his first visit, Alan became the real thing when he settled into Mojácar Village in 1990. His partner, the artist and potter Janet Le Bretton, predeceased him in 2001. 

Gifts from the Heart

I always felt that it was important for our children to understand the meaning of giving and putting something of them into what they gave; also we didn’t have much money in the beginning: but even when we did, I continued the tradition of home-making all our gifts. They mean so much more than just going out to the store and buying something just because it is the done thing. We would start a few weeks before Christmas and usually a few of the children’s friends would spend a few weeks with us working on their presents. A lot of parents forget how important it is to children to have a gift for the grown-ups, and since the parents are usually the ones buying them they don’t buy a gift for the children to give back to them. We would bake and make cookies that they painted or make cheese balls with a pack if crackers or decoupage pictures on wooden napkin holders to be used as letter holders on the desk. Every year we would do a few favourites and a few new things like sand-candles or pillows. They would make their own wrapping paper with potato-prints or ironed leaves. The kids always got up to their elbows mixing something while learning about measuring and math and how to taste things and add ingredients that suited their fancy. A great learning experience and some very funny conversations took place, as usual when you get a group of children together. We had lots of fun making all of the things and most of them were treasured by the grandparents or eaten as the case may be. Sure it made a big mess but we would listen to music and the kids were great at helping to clean up. The gifts all looked beautiful and the children had such a sense of accomplishment and pride in what they had made. It made them understand the meaning of Christmas, or at least what it meant to me, which was to give something of yourself to someone you love. I know it takes a lot of time and patience but if you have it, it is well worth the time. I hope my children follow the tradition because not only was it fun and a learning experience but they got the true feeling of giving.