Where Did They Come From?

While our girls were studying in the north of Spain and in France, our spare girls still lived with us most of the time. They were like five sisters and are still today. These three extra girls came from dysfunctional British families and we looked after them for several years. They started staying with us at very early ages and just stayed most of the time. They helped with all the chores and with the animals and really having six children (five girls and a boy) was as easy as having three. I still feel like they are still mine today. Sometimes I would take them on trips with me and we all had a great time. Because they all spoke a variety of languages they would mix them up and use the first word that came into their head and because they all understood all the languages it didn’t matter because it was like their own special language. One time I took one of the girls to France with me to get Jessica, who was at a riding-school, it was a no-break twelve months a year course so they could get in their studies and their riding: they had a month on and a month off studies. We took a train to the north of Spain and then rented a car to go to France. On the way back we picked up Amber at Izarra, the school she was at in the Basque country. By the time we were all together in our two cabins on the train in Vitoria for the ride back across Spain the girls had tons of things to catch up on so they jabbered all day. People kept coming out of their cabins to look and listen to the girls, wondering where they came from. Besides with the combination of languages there was the combination of accents. One girl was from Manchester, England and two from America but had all grown up in Mojácar. They all had the dreadful Spanish Mojácar accent but could also speak perfect Castellano if they wanted and our girls had also picked up a bit of a northern accent. Then there was French and a few songs in Euskera (the Basque language). I could hear the people in the other cabins discussing this strange phenomenon. It was certainly nothing they had ever heard before. It is very common here in Mojácar for the children to speak four or five languages by the age of six or seven and they mix them up when they are together but when they speak to someone from a certain country they speak that language perfectly. As I have stated before it is a shame that the school and town hall never took advantage of having such a cultural diversity at their finger tips. Anyway we loved having the extra girls, which we think of as our daughters, and still do.

Baby Takes Lessons

In our aviary we have Love Birds of every color and they have lots of babies all year long. They usually find a partner and stay with them for life sharing everything from building the nest to caring for the young. While the mother sits on the eggs the father brings her food and water, then, when the babies have pecked their way out of their eggs, the two parents share the feeding of the little ones. At this time, the babies are rather ugly, with bits of bristle and half-formed feathers on their tiny bodies. When the babies are ready to leave the nest, it is a lot of fun to watch them learn from their parents how to fly and eat and where to find water. They grow and learn very quickly and pretty soon they will find a partner of their own and start their own family. They are called Love Birds because once they find a mate it is for life and they like to do everything together. They are very affectionate and spend all day hugging and kissing and feeding each other. They are so close that if one dies usually within a week or so the other dies of sadness, they almost never find another mate. One day a snake got into a nest box with a mother and four babies. He ate the mother and smothered all but one baby. We had never seen anything like it because, out of character, all the birds in the aviary took turns taking care of the baby. They fed him and tried to coax him out of the nest but he did not want to leave. They started putting his food farther and farther from the entrance of the nest. When they finally got him out on to a branch they all stood in a line and tried to teach him how to use his wings. All synchronized they would stretch one wing and then the other while he watched on. He wanted to stay a baby. It looked like a Jane Fonda exercise class to watch. He would get very angry and stomp his feet and scream but the other birds were persistent. They kept moving closer and closer to the food and water trying to get him to care for himself but it was always another temper tantrum. It took him much longer to learn things than the babies with mothers even though all the birds were helping. He finally grew up and learned to do these things himself and then found a partner and started his own family. Besides being very funny to watch, I wanted to put on Jane Fonda Music for them, it is very unusual for this to happen. The father usually tries to take over both roles and is usually quiet successful, but if the baby hadn’t survived the father probably would have died of heart break. They are beautiful and wonderful birds and much more fun to watch the TV. When they are making their nests they take strips of palm branch and stick them in their wings until they can’t carry any more, they do not carry them in their beaks. They look like pretty colored porcupines. Our aviary runs the length of one side of the house so you can watch them while you clean the kitchen or from the bathroom, or of course, from the garden where you will be joined by some curious sparrows and other birds.

Dress for the Occasion

I wish the tourists could see themselves as we see them. It is bad enough to go into the bank and see oversized men in their Speedos and women in tiny summer dresses that look like they were made for their grandchildren, but when you go to have an ice cream or coffee and have to sit in front of a large dimply lady where you see right up her dress to her privates or another woman sat down with the back of her dress stuck on the back of the chair so during your whole coffee all you can see is her back side in a g-string, not a very pleasant sight. I know we all wear T-shirts and swim suits at this time of year but they should stay on the beach or people should take more care of how they sit. It is not just the women. When a big man sits at the table in his Speedo, he leaves little to the imagination but the worst are the men that wear surfer shorts with nothing underneath and then cross their legs while they sip a cool brew. You can see right up the loose leg of the shorts and well you can imagine what you see. I have nothing against the human body, but there is a time and place for everything. I don’t feel the bank or a restaurant is quite the place for this type of attire.

Daniel & Art

From the time Daniel was a very young child he had a great love for art and music. I am not talking about children’s songs and Dr Seuss. We owned an art museum and used to take him to all of the openings. From the time he could barely talk he found a way of telling you what he liked and how it made him feel. Once at the Madrid airport we were in a waiting room and he told me; that thing made him feel soft. I didn’t know what he was talking about so he showed me. Something I had barely noticed made a big impression on him. It was a large sculpture in the middle of the room, just white and round. You couldn’t tell what it was. As we walked around it you could see that it was two doves curled around each other and it did make you feel very warm and romantic. He noticed all of these things. On a trip to England the girls just wanted to get where we were going but Daniel had to stop and look at all of the manhole covers because they had dragons and horses and all sorts of things carved on them. He also didn’t miss the entrance to any building with a sculpture or carving. His taste in music from before he could talk was also unusual for his age; it ranged from Russian opera to Irish folk songs and a lot in between. He would go through phases where he had to listen to certain songs when he went to bed and he always had certain paintings he wanted in his room. He has maintained his appreciation of art and his taste in music has changed a bit more to fit his age and time period, but he still loves a large variety of music that most people his age have never even heard of.

La Vieja Remolona

Today is the day of La Vieja Remolona. It is actually a fiesta from Aragón but for some reason is celebrated here. Even though it is not an official holiday if you don’t go to school or work no one minds. The history of La Vieja goes back a long time to when the children needed a break from the rigours of Lent, getting a sort of day off. The whole family trudges up the mountain and has a picnic which includes special breads and cakes made for the occasion. They have twisted breads with hard boiled egg inside and chicherones (pork rind) I think that they are as bad as they sound but today they sell like hot cakes. The children in Mojácar make a paper doll on a cross and, after the picnic lunch in the campo is over, throw rocks at it. The head is full of candy resembling the Mexican piñata. A lot of young people started the fiesta last night and will carry it through to tomorrow. Any reason to have a fiesta. Like last Sunday was the day of Andalucía, it is an official holiday in Andalucía but because it fell on a Sunday which is already a holiday we had to celebrate it on Monday because it isn’t fair to have a holiday if you don’t get a day off. Don’t forget that after every holiday comes El Día de la Resaca (hang-over day), like La Vieja it is not an official holiday but you don’t get in trouble for not showing up for work or school. Originally the children would go door to door asking for food for the picnic and if they did not get any they would play a nasty trick on the home-owner.
Here’s a song the kids in Aragon sing, threatening those neighbours who won’t give them sweets with a stone through their window (the original ‘trick or treat’):

O viejo remolón
Que no quié comer pan,
Sólo chulleta y huevos
Y chocolate si le dan

The lazy old grand-dad won’t eat any bread; only meat and eggs, and chocolate if you give him any.

Burro Beisbol and Other Stories

Every year, for the Mojácar Fiestas, I would put on two events, a horse show and donkey baseball. Both of these were new ideas to the town hall. They were held on our land and completely organized by me and my family. The cost to the Town Hall was zero. We wanted the Spanish riders to be as enthusiastic as the English ones so we added a few western events like barrel-racing. There was a turn out class where the best horse and rider combination won depending on their costume and how the horse was turned out. They needed to make a matched pair. Then we had the show-off class where you could go into the ring, one rider at a time and strut your stuff. Show the village what your horse could do and what a good rider you were. Barrel-racing was a favourite as it had never been seen here and resembled in a small way “long pole” or "garrocha" and the stop on a dime and turn at great speed, all things needed in a rejoneador, which is bullfighting on horse-back. It was a timed event so speed and precision meant everything. Then there was a dressage class and it could be English or Spanish dressage. The turn-out was exceptional for this event both in competitors and in the audience. People love to watch horses even if they have never ridden. Mojácar was the only town around to put on an event of this type.

Donkey baseball has no real rules because the donkeys don’t tend to go where you want them to. A minimum of nine donkeys are needed but eleven are better. The rules are basically the same as baseball except after hitting the ball you have to jump on a donkey to run the bases. A ball may only be thrown by some one sitting on a donkey. If you have to get off to pick up the ball then you must remount before throwing the ball to your team-mate. Technically you should run the bases without help but we had to let someone lead the rider around as most of the donkeys wouldn’t budge or took off for home with the rider dragging behind. No one team ever really won - we usually said that the donkeys won and they would each go home with a medal around their necks much to the pride of their owners. Being the only place in Spain where this was played the news spread fast and soon TV crews were coming to film it. We also took time out to explain about the donkey and its impending extinction and the importance of trying to preserve the breed. With farmers turning to tractors there was less and less need for the donkey. Because baseball isn’t played in this country we didn’t have any of the necessary equipment to play the game so every year I would call the American Base at Rota and they would messenger up a bag with everything we needed and after I would messenger it back. It took my son and me from sunup until sundown to collect and return all of the donkeys because they all lived on farms that were spread out and donkeys don’t go very fast. It was always a wonderful day though, riding through the mountains with a train of donkeys. One year the Americans sent up a bus load of twenty-three service men and women to play against Mojácar. They brought plaques and prizes and we made T-shirts Mojácar vs USA and trophies for them to take back to the base. Yet another thing I not seen proudly displayed in our town hall. They all stayed at our house sleeping around the pool but because it was during fiesta no one slept much. We provided these two activities for the town hall for seven years and they grew in popularity every year. Soon it got so there were not enough donkeys in the Mojácar area to play. I had a petting zoo as part of ANIMO and plenty of space so the town hall could have easily sponsored twelve donkeys that could have been kept here and been a type of sanctuary for this disappearing breed with the sole cost to the town hall being the food. We already had five donkeys of our own and a large area to keep them. It could have been another attraction that drew tourist to the area. The good will factor would have paid for it with lots to spare and we could have continued being the only town in Spain that played donkey baseball. The town hall was just to short-sighted and let both activities drop and now there is almost nothing to watch at the fiestas and certainly nothing that would put us on the map while doing a good thing helping to save and inform people about the donkey.
Pictures include one of the proud donkey owners and several teams and players.

Birthday in the Hospital

I have spent several birthdays and Christmases in the hospital over the last few years but one was particularly memorable and one of the best birthdays I have ever had. I was sent by a specialist from Alabama to a rare diseases specialist, supposedly the best in Europe. The hospital was in Madrid and I was told by this doctor to just arrive and they would get me in, even though it was not in my area and it was social security. They were very interested in my condition and wanted to see me as soon as possible. When I got there the doctor’s nurse took me around filling out papers and lying just a bit to get me in. There were no beds available in any ward except one. It was the last ward of oncology. I’m glad I didn’t know what that meant but the floor was unlike any I had ever been on before. They had permanent visiting hours and no limit to the number of visitors you could have. I had a room to myself and every time they tried to put someone in with me the nurses would say that the bed was blocked. They had a huge kitchen down the hall and beds for family to stay. It is normal in Spanish hospitals to have a family member stay with you but just one, so they usually take turns. I have found in my experience that the family members are usually very nice to the roommate, like me, and help with whatever they can. I was one week on oncology and was then moved to internal medicine. The nurses were all so nice because I think I was the only person they had ever seen walk out of that floor. They also came and gave me gifts for my birthday and would check in on me from time to time. It turned out that the last floor of oncology is where you go to die so there are no rules, just keep you as comfortable as possible. That didn’t stop the screams and yells and tears coming from the family members. I was glad to be moved even though I had become very attached to the nurses on that floor. The work they do is amazing and you have to have a special type of strength to do their job. I have tremendous admiration for them.
In internal medicine my room-mate was an elderly woman called Olivia. She was so sweet and we spent a lot of time talking together. She was in considerable pain and needed quite a bit of assistance which I was able to give her. Her whole family were wonderful and would hold my hand when I needed injections and help in any way they could. The daughter-in-law was a singer and actress, full of life never giving you a chance to be bored. The whole family was like that and we soon became friends and they were glad that I could help out so they could get some rest. It was like being in the TV series House. The hospital ran me through every test possible for six weeks. My birthday and anniversary fell during that time. The daughter-in-law- made a special present for me and Lenox. One for my birthday, which was a song she wrote for me and the other was a play she wrote for our anniversary. We shut the door to the bedroom and she began her performance. She was spectacular, better than most shows I have seen in theatres. She sang beautifully and the words were very special to me and the play was very dramatic, a prose-poem about feelings as personalities, each one acted out with a bitter-sweet story. The whole thing was very romantic and probably the most unusual birthday I had ever had. Apparently Olivia had been quite a while in the hospital and her last few room-mates weren’t very nice so the family and Olivia were happy to have me there and I was happy to have them. Once while talking to Olivia she told me that if I left she was going to leave too because she didn’t want to be there without me. The morning after I left I got a call from her family that she had died quietly during her sleep.

The Corner of Enchantment

Mojácar has always been known as the Corner of Enchantment. One, for the sheer beauty of the place and secondly for the strange events that have taken place here.

On the side of beauty, the beautiful white village on top of a hill overlooking the sea, mountains and desert. It was a village with small, narrow, winding, cobble-stone streets with white washed houses and flower pots, full of geraniums, hanging on all the walls. The original buildings were supposedly built on the back side of the hill so that when pirates went by at night they could not see the lights shining from the windows. It was a place to fall in love and a place to fall in love with. Mojácar has incredible geological and archaeological sites everywhere. It is built on top of Phoenician, Arabic and Roman ruins. The old fountain was so romantic and just walking the streets at night you felt as if you were in a magical land.

Strange things and mystical powers seemed to be commonplace here. This area falls on one of the ley lines used by the Templars, one of the seven places in the world where if you take the points of energy and join them together they make a star. The points are supposed to be special places where you should be when the world comes to an end.

This is a picture that really has nothing to do with the story but adds to it. I wasn’t sure about the Templar’s and their ley lines so I spelt it LAY lines. Lenox then explained to me that a lay line was where you went to get laid. We found an amusing government sign on the side of the road that you could only find here in Spain so Lenox had me take his picture next to it. I think you can get the double meaning and where I went wrong. Well, enchantment takes all sorts!

There was a hill where if you stopped your car and put it in neutral or put a ball in the road it would roll up backwards. We all used to stop there on our way to Almería. My father, being a physicist, knew there had to be a reasonable explanation, but even he spent many an hour watching a ball roll up the hill.

Witch-craft, both black and white, has been practiced here, and old remedies have been used for curing various diseases for centuries. There are a lot of different types of curanderos here, faith healers. Curanderos on the whole, being ‘white magicians’, can’t charge for their help or accept any payment in hand but some would leave a conspicuous table at the door, out of their sight, where you could leave a chicken or some money. Some curanderos used the hands-on approach and others could heal you without touching you. One famous Mojacar curandero was the Tío Frasquito Santo from Aguas Enmedio, a hamlet on the way to Sopalmo (Mojácar – Carboneras). You would never pay him, but perhaps some cigars, or some firewood…?

There were always the frauds who would charge a fortune but it was hard to believe in them. Palm reading was particularly popular in the bars and actually quite efficient. As a young teenager, I remember being in The Saloon, when Toni, the witch, came in and offered to read the palm of an Englishwoman on holiday here. The lady was sceptical but decided it might be fun. Without knowing anything about this woman, Toni was right on the mark all the way from her childhood to the recent death of her husband and an affair she had had. But, said Toni, I have to take a coin for my magic, since it comes from the ‘black’ side.

Old women would paint snakes and other monsters on your body to get rid of things like shingles and it worked. They had separate drawings and places on the body to paint even for things like ringworm. Before antibiotics were discovered they would burn Zotal (a creosote-based product) in the sick person’s room to kill any sort of bacteria or things like Scarlet Fever and Smallpox. One old lady in Mojácar, known as La Cachocha, was famous for her love philtres – known as ‘alambiques’.

Most of the older houses have some sort of ‘duende’ or ghost attached to it. Ours has two that have resided here since way before we moved in. Our old Moroccan maid used to put milk and bread out to keep them happy. The strangest thing that ever happened here and there have been many, was one rainy/misty night all the electricity in the town was out including our house. There is a lamp post at the beginning of our drive that has never worked, ever, but that night the only light on in town was that lamp. We even switched off our entire trip switches just in case. A few hours later when the electricity was restored the light went out never to be on again. There have been many stories here of sheets being ripped off the beds at night or footsteps upstairs but the light was the strangest one because no electricity goes to it. Lenox has named our duendes Itch, he lives in our bedroom, and Chomp, who lives in the kitchen. They have never bothered us much so we live in peace with them. One night I made a roast beef and put it on my cooker, which is huge and industrial. A few minutes later, after calling the family to dinner, the roast was gone. No footprints or grease on the cooker or floor so it wasn’t the dog. It weighed more than the cat and it would have still been eating it. It was a complete mystery, like something out of ‘The Gremlins’. It was then that Lenox said if the duendes had become carnivorous it was time to move to the Parador hotel.

Even in a sober state, here in Mojácar, most of us have seen UFOs. We used to think that it was just because of the large consumption of booze and drugs but later your average person started seeing them, much to their disbelief. I remember when a respectable English couple were in Garrucha having dinner when they spotted what look like a UFO, they were sure it wasn’t so they watched for a long time until they decided there was no other explanation. When they returned to Mojácar to tell everyone about the amazing experience, they had just had, no one seemed impressed and kept saying things like well did you see this one or that thing? Disillusioned the couple announced that Mojácar really did live in a different reality because if they had told anyone in England they would have been hauled off by the little men in white coats and here it was common place.

The light in Mojácar also has a special magic to it that brings artists from all over the world just to paint here. A friend has just made a half-hour film about one of our best-known artists, the American Fritz Mooney. Find it here.