Artistic licence

I’m very honoured to have featured in Chris Dolan’s delightful account of his epic busking, cycle ride across Spain, Everything Passes, Everything Remains, which he and two sexagenarian friends accomplished last year.

In the book, he has been most generous in his portrayal of me and his depiction of our scintillating “crack” over copas y pinchos. Yet, his description of my attire left me bemused.

Chris writes that I looked “every inch the English gentleman. Tie, americano (sic), loafers, bespectacled.” Tie and specs, I grant him, but I never wear a jacket when I’m teaching and, though I have a blazer, I don’t have an americana, let alone a pair of loafers!

Because the weather was unseasonably cool and showery, it is true I was wearing a jacket when I met them: a light blue, zipped, raincoat with a hood – surely impossible to confound with an americana. When I removed my coat in the bar, what I was actually wearing was shirt and tie, dark grey chinos with black leather belt, black socks and black leather, lace-up, Derby shoes. Yes, indubitably more British than Spanish; but essentially English?

Now, I’m pretty certain from when I met Chris that there is nothing wrong with his memory or his eyesight. So, what could account for such a lapse?

Well, to give Chris his due, he does claim in his introduction that he “has a tendency to mythologise” and issues the disclaimer that the book “is not a reliable record” (p1). It would appear that his mythology of me is that I am “every inch the English gentleman” (p130), though he does later add “but a Scot too” and finishes the section with the great compliment of calling me “a Segoviano auténtico” (p135), which my Segovian wife thinks “muy chulo” but for which I thank him.

However, although I lived in England for many years (almost two and a half times as long as I lived in Scotland), it is a country in which I never felt I belonged and, thus, always felt a stranger who was just passing through. But I willingly concede that the length of time I spent there may well have tainted me. So, perhaps, based on this perception, in a spurt of creativity, he outfitted me in what he imagines the typical English gentleman abroad might wear. Another explanation might be that he was just trying to amplify the contrast between me and my famous forebear, Don Roberto, who was, inter alia, very much “an English gentleman”.

Whatever his reasoning, I forgive him his artistic licence and hope he will forgive me my “chuzpah” in daring to question such an eminent author as him.

Brexit Day

Well the dreadful day has finally arrived – that johnson having signed his deep frozen and anything but oven ready deal – and I have been deprived of my EU citizenship, which had been my privilege for almost 30 years (almost half my life).

I marked the occasion by burning a Union Jack and will now start the process of obtaining Spanish nationality, which will automatically restore my EU citizenship. I look forward to fulfilling the obligation to renounce British citizenship, when I am successful.

And as for the Brexit bunch, they can take their shoddy, blue passport and shove it! Hell mend them!

A response to the Department for Exiting the EU

Reading the DExEU response to the largest petition in the history of the Parliamentary Petition website gives a good clue as to why the UK is in such a calamitous position. It is full of false assumptions, factual inaccuracies, misdirections and arithmetic errors.

“We will honour the outcome of the 2016 referendum and work to deliver an exit which benefits everyone, whether they voted to Leave or to Remain.”

Well, that’s going really well, isn’t it!

Theresa May’s abysmal deal is universally hated and Leave are so divided over what they want from Brexit that we are in dire danger of crashing out with the very “No Deal” that everybody claims not to want and which benefits nobody except for a few very wealthy shysters!

“…close to three quarters of the electorate took part in the 2016 referendum, trusting that the result would be respected.”

Nigel Farage certainly wasn’t about to respect the result if Leave lost and many Brexiteers vowed they would fight on if they lost by a narrow margin.  And they were not alone.  One poor sap went so far as to start a petition calling for a second referendum if the result was less than 60:40, and was horrified when it was (in his words) ‘hijacked’ by Remainers after Leave had won by only a slim margin. It went on to become the most popular petition with more than 4.1 million signatures, until it was overtaken this month by this petition, which the government so disdains.

“This Government wrote to every household prior to the referendum, promising that the outcome of the referendum would be implemented.”

First of all, thanks to Theresa May’s vanity election, in which she lost her majority, this is not the government which wrote to every household. Second, no government can be bound by the promises of their predecessors.  Third, it only did so because David Cameron was cocksure he was going to win, just as he had in Scotland.  Fourth, the leaflet also said that voting leave would not involve leaving the Single Market and Customs Union, which Brexit campaigners denounced as ‘scaremongering’, claiming that no-one was seriously suggesting any such thing. Yet, funnily enough, this government, which wants to claim the leaflet, also wants to take the UK out of both the SM and the CU. A bit of cognitive dissonance there, methinks.

“17.4 million people then voted to leave the European Union, providing the biggest democratic mandate for any course of action ever directed at UK Government.”

A sly mixture of truth with gobbledegook.

True, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU in 2016 – a result obtained by chicanery, trumpery and criminality. But as usual, the 16.1 million Remain voters are cast into the oblivion of history (along with the 12.9 million who didn’t vote), their wishes nullified by majoritiarianism. It is highly embarrassing to this government that Remain have not slunk away as demanded by their rivals.

Nor is it the “biggest democratic mandate…ever directed at a UK Government” as the mandate in the 1975 referendum, albeit on a slightly smaller turnout, was more than 34% – almost double the current mandate [sic] claimed by this government.

However, more importantly, the mandate is not, and never was, 17.4 million (just 37% of the electorate, Remain achieving 35%) but 1.3 million (17.4 – 16.1) or a scanty 4% difference (over 8 times less than in 1975).

28% of the electorate did not vote, some (as is always the case) because they just couldn’t be arsed, but some because (like the Tory MP Kirstie Hair) they didn’t feel they had sufficient knowledge or understanding of the issues to make an informed decision on the basis of what the two mediocre campaigns were churning out.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no recognition that had the referendum been binding, the result would have been overturned under the Vienna Convention because of the electoral fraud and criminal activity used to gain that result.

It also falsely assumes that not one single Leave voter has changed their mind since 2016, which is patently untrue given that there were Leave voters expressing their regret the following day and the polling evidence from the intervening years shows a far larger swing to Remain from Leave than vice versa.  Indeed, the most recent polls all show a win for Remain were there to be a second referendum.

Moreover, it also ignores those Leave Voters, who given the stark choice between crashing out with a No Deal (not what they were promised in 2016) and Revoking Article 50, have signed this petition for what they see as the lesser of two evils (given that another application can be made in the future, as long as it is in good faith).

“British people cast their votes once again in the 2017 General Election where over 80% of those who voted, voted for parties, including the Opposition, who committed in their manifestos to upholding the result of the referendum.”

This really beggars belief!

Given that the UK political system is based on a two Party system, it is disingenuous to ignore the fact that there is little or no choice, especially when both those parties back the same policy (albeit with minor differences), for the voter who wishes to oust the sitting government.

Furthermore, it is based on the clearly false assumption that voters all vote for a Party because they embrace every single item in the manifesto, rather than the reality that many voted for Labour because of their social policies and despite Brexit, just as there were Europhile Tories who voted for aspects of their party’s manifesto other than Brexit.

While it can be argued that the Referendum and the 2017 General Election gave a mandate to leave, the argument is profoundly weakened by the fact that the Referendum was only Advisory and not binding and in May’s failing to retain, let alone increase, her majority in an election which polling had suggested she would win by a landslide.

Additionally, May has has broken two key pledges from her 2017 manifesto.  First, her promise to “strengthen and improve devolution for each part of our United Kingdom”- she has deliberately sidelined and ignored both Scotland & Wales throughout the whole Brexit process; second, her infamous, “no deal is better than a bad deal”, which she has failed to deliver, preferring instead to bring back her bad deal for repeated “meaningful votes”, which at the outset she had sought, through costly legal battles, to avoid ever having to face.   Clearly, manifesto pledges are not graven in stone and may be set aside at the whim of the Prime Minister.

On top of this, there were clear instances of tactical voting (e.g the Liberal Democrats in Gordon voting Tory to topple Alex Salmond), for which their pro-Remain party is reaping its just rewards.

In short, to claim that 80% of voters backed Brexit at the last election is nothing short of sleight of hand – the kind of deception that we have all come to expect from Brexiteers.

“Revoking Article 50 would break the promises made by Government to the British people, disrespect the clear instruction from a democratic vote, and in turn, reduce confidence in our democracy.”

As I have shown, the clear instruction is not as clear as the government wish to make out.

As for ‘reducing confidence in our democracy’, that has been achieved by this government all on its own, through its incompetent handling of Brexit, thus far (and there is little hope of any change at this late stage), and with its incessant calls to bring a heavily defeated and highly unpopular deal back to Parliament for a third time in the vain hope that it will be passed out of sheer desperation, all the while denying the very voters, who they claim to respect, any chance to voice their wishes.

Unless there is a miracle, Brexit is going to turn out to be a disaster for the UK, and what little confidence remains will be damaged by the outcome as Brexiteers feel betrayed when they don’t get the unicorns on the day they were promised.

My Father’s Ashes

My brother caused great upset in the family (and especially to our almost 95 year old grandmother) by claiming that I had disrespected my father by not carrying out his wish to have his ashes scattered on his island of Inchtalla at the Lake of Menteith, which he vociferously proclaimed he had been planning to do.

But, as is always the case with him, things are never as he makes them out to be.  So first, a bit of background.

My brother, who could not even get our father’s date of birth right on his family tree, only took our father in, when he could no longer safely look after himself, to stop him from “spending our inheritance” (as he so charmingly put it) and taught his young children to refer to our father as “grand fart”.  Then, following the sudden death of his first wife, Louise, who had provided all the care to her father-in-law, he could not get his father out fast enough, initially onto a geriatric ward in a hospital and then into an old folks’ home, despite the cost.

During  our father’s last hospitalisation for cancer, he, ever the wheedler – having told all of us siblings that our father was in so much pain and confusion that it would be pointless making a final, farewell visit – pestered his dying father to make a codicil to his will giving him sole ownership of a large part of the inheritance, a farm.

Following my father’s death, I travelled with my family to Edinburgh so as to attend my father’s funeral and cremation.  We were picked up from the station by my brother, who greeted us with “I’ve got the farm and there’s nothing you can do about it.”.  Then, when we were in the car (a Jaguar he had bought using our father’s money – an abuse of his power of attorney), he said, “Dad wants his ashes scattered on the Island.  I might scatter them at the Lake but never on the Island!”

The following day, though he was very visible at the funeral, he could not be bothered to accompany our aunt, my wife and me to the private cremation service.  On our return to his house in Edinburgh after the cremation, we found him and his children’s nanny (later his second wife) déshabillé and reeking of sex (their first daughter was born 9 months later).  So much for respect!

Ironically, it was his attempt to steal a major part of his siblings’ inheritance (a farm) and evict the sitting tenant of more than 40 years which led to my scattering my father’s ashes in his stead.

In order to challenge the codicil (as much on behalf of my sisters as for myself), I had to travel to Scotland to meet with the solicitors and to talk to the tenant.  While I was there, I contacted the crematorium to ask whether my brother had made any arrangement to collect my father’s ashes as I knew they had a policy, due to a lack of storage space, that any ashes not collected within six months would be scattered in the crematorium rose garden.  I was informed that he had not and was asked whether I would collect them, which I said I would as, given the hostility he had expressed over following my father’s wishes, I doubted that he would do anything until after it was too late.  Being an inveterate liar, he would just claim he had carried out our father’s wishes and hope that we would never know otherwise.

With hindsight, it would perhaps have been better had I taken my father’s ashes back to London with me in the hope that I would be able, at some undetermined later date, to get to the Lake and across to the Island to scatter them.  Unlike my brother, with my mother’s ashes some years later, I would not have kept them in a mildewed garage out of fear of being haunted.

While it grieves me that I was unable to comply with my father’s wishes, I did the best I could with the limited resources I had.  I thought long and hard about where would be suitable that was within my travel area and finally settled upon a place that he had spent much of his time and seemed happy in: the Royal Northern & Clyde Yacht Club.

The simple but respectful ceremony was attended by the Vice Commodore (representing the Yacht Club) and the last of my father’s tenant farmers – both of whom had known him well.  The site was also highly visible to other members who would remember him and maybe swap a yarn or two in the bar he had so often frequented.  I hope he wouldn’t be too displeased.

I leave it to you, dear reader, to judge whether I acted precipitously and, as my brother claimed, disrespectfully or whether the true fault and disrespect lies with him.

Weird Weather

Let me start by saying I work in a wine distributors in a small city.  The city lies on the Castillian meseta but within a stone’s throw of the Sierra Gaudarrama.  Usually, the weirdest weather we get is snow in June (and that only but once in a blue moon), but today was perfectly normal; warm (28ºC) and sunny with a scattering of puffy, white cumulus.  So the weather phenomenon I experienced this morning came as a complete surprise.

It started while I was out in the bodega, stacking a pallet for this morning’s deliveries.  As I was immersed in selecting the boxes of wine listed on the delivery notes, I heard a strange sound.  I couldn’t work out what it was it, so I went out into the shop to investigate.

My first thought on entering the shop was that someone was cleaning our window with a high pressure hose as that is what it both looked and sounded like.  Naturally, I rushed to close the door to avoid the inevitable flood. But as I got closer I could see that it was sand that was blowing in, not water.

When I reached the door, which I rapidly closed, I saw a mini-whirlwind (complete with vortex – about 2m high) sucking all the sand up out of the area in front of the shop and spinning it around.

It lasted less than 2 minutes and vanished as quickly as it had appeared.  The only sign that it had ever been – apart from the mini-desert that had taken refuge in the shop – was the rocky nudity of our normally, sand clad tow-away area.

That’s the first whirlwind (or dust devil) I’ve ever seen; and I got to see it right up close too.  However,  I certainly don’t want to see one any bigger than that,  at least, not anywhere that near.

Reflecting on Divorce

The marriage had been in trouble for years, if they were honest; but it still came as a shock when she moved out.

He had just lost his job – a job he enjoyed, in a company he felt at home in – after 7 years. But she only saw an opportunity to reduce her commute. She demanded that they put the house on the market ASAP and move to an area close to her work, with which neither of them was familiar.

He was, not unnaturally, resistant. All his contacts were in the area in which he lived and worked and that was his best chance of getting his next job. He wanted, if not needed, security, not further change, in this time of turmoil. It was clear, that she was oblivious to his needs and he knew from long experience that the supposed trade off of more time with her would not be forthcoming.

He blamed himself, in part, for creating this creature. He had encouraged her ambition to get a degree (even though he was already doing a degree and they had two young children), and then supported her decision to do a PhD, having to work at two jobs to make ends meet. He tolerated her working long hours during her PGCE and qualifying year while she was writing up her PhD thesis. When it was clear that teaching was not going to be viable as a career, he funded her MSc – from money he had inherited – to improve her chances of gaining employment in research.  In return, she insisted he do his MSc at the same time, despite his reservations about the stress levels being exponentially higher than when they had done their degrees as the children were that much older and, furthermore, he was in full time work.  He was right, of course, and the stress nearly broke the marriage.  But somehow they managed to patch it up and celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary in Tiburon (California) where she was working stints at a laboratory in Alameda.

Each time, she promised that things would get better and she would not have to work such long hours. And each time some new problem (like her first post-doc going pear-shaped) would arise that required her to work even longer than before.  She had always been insecure and driven to achieve – this trait was deeply rooted in her childhood need to win parental approval – something her supervisor capitalised on.

To be fair, her commute was an hour and a half each way; but she had known this when she took the job, which was in the same place where she had done her MSc, and so was all too familiar with the daily journey. He had questioned whether this was feasible at the time and she had assured him that it was not an issue. So he supported her in her decision, knowing how important it was to her. But that is when things started to really disintegrate.

For the first time in their married life, she earned more than he did (only £5k at first), which did not bother him in the least, but really troubled her. Her attitude towards him changed. She began to denigrate the work he did and belittle him for not being more ambitious and not fulfilling his potential. This got worse, after it was discovered that she had been placed on the wrong pay scale and her salary was increased by another £4k. She was later to claim that she supported him, even though he was earning close to a graduate salary and paid the mortgage and the household bills from his salary; her money funded luxuries like overseas holidays.

Though she had 18% more annual holiday than he had – never managing to use her whole quota – she insisted that he take time off work whenever a child was sick or a repairman had to visit, despite her being able to work from home, which he could not.

True, she would spend the day out with him on Bank Holidays, but her conversation was mainly about her work or sometimes the kids (this topic diminished after the children had left home); she would even call her boss to discuss an idea she’d just had.  On their holidays abroad, she had to have an hour’s internet access everyday to talk to her boss. She would even work in the evening on Christmas Day. Everything, including family, church, friends became secondary to her work with the promise it wouldn’t always be like that.

Increasingly, he was left to attend the school events alone and take on all the housework, which was never done to her satisfaction. Naturally, this further increased his unhappiness and the tension between them. He knew, therefore, that if they moved house – her argument being that he was unemployed while she was the breadwinner – it would fall to him to do all the packing and cleaning and unpacking for the move, while she criticised.

The marriage had been celibate for many years, more than he cared to remember. Following the birth of their children, when she had been incorrectly stitched, sex became irregular – then during her degree it ceased all together. This state of affairs continued through her PhD, PGCE, MSc, first post-doc and well into her second post-doc.  She suggested that to save the marriage that he could take a mistress, but he knew that doing so would not save the marriage but only give her an excuse to take the moral high ground and despise him even more for breaking his vows.  Even more impractically, she suggested having another baby!

This lack of sexual intimacy slowly led to a lack of intimate touching between them, which combined with her monomania for talking about her work, left him feeling lonely and eventually to his loss of feeling for her. He didn’t love her; he didn’t hate her; he just felt nothing for her. Thus, when she finally decided she’d like to resume the sexual side of the relationship, after a break of some 15 years, he was no longer interested; it would have merely been mechanical sex.

It became increasingly clear she was not looking for solutions but for a way of doing what she did best: taking control. During an argument, she goaded him into saying that he supposed he wanted a divorce (with hindsight, it was she who wanted the divorce but didn’t want to take the blame) and then with no further discussion immediately found herself a divorce solicitor and moved into rented accommodation, which she demanded he pay for. What she had not realised, or perhaps she no longer cared, was that he was still looking for a solution, perhaps a celibate marriage along the lines of housemates or, as in the case of a couple she knew, living separately, by which the marriage might continue longer (and certainly until after their son’s forthcoming nuptials the following summer).  But once she had made the decision it was set in stone.

This controlling – a natural part of her personality – became much worse when she felt out of control at work. Now the same applied to the separation: she could not let it get out of control; her control, that is.  He knew that had he agreed to the move this feeling of being out of control would have been rampant as she would have felt powerless both at work and at home. This sense of powerlessness had already been exacerbated by her children’s decision to pursue careers in the arts; their daughter was studying to be an actress and their son studying to be an illustrator, professions which in her opinion were of low value as they were insecure, not well paid and did not contribute much to society.

In the end, the separation was to last nearly four years before the divorce was finalized, during which time he only saw her twice. The first occasion was a few days after she moved out when he had to take her things she had forgotten; the second was at their son’s wedding, where she made a great effort to be civil (unlike her family).  Throughout, she made herself out to be the injured party, spurned and rejected after giving the best years of her life and, spurred on by her parents, wanted to make him pay for it. She was not content with his generous settlement to her, demanding a share of his  inheritance from his mother, but eventually gave way under pressure from his solicitor.

Does she feel any guilt for the breakup of the marriage? Unlikely, as she, like her parents, deems it his fault (he should have taken the female role in the marriage as she had taken the male role; he should not have fallen out of love with her; he should have just put up with it instead of break his vows before God).  Yet, it was she who divorced him.

Does he feel guilty? Yes, in as much as he feels he should have done more to save the marriage, even though he knows that she was unable to do anything that would have saved it, despite her protestations that she could change.  In the end, it was out of his hands as he knew that once her mind was made up there was nothing that would change it.  Perhaps, he should have tried harder, but her feelings of betrayal and resentment made communication extremely difficult – not just then but for long after the divorce.

Does she regret it? Perhaps. Is she happy now? Possibly.  Her hurt clearly persists as she has made it clear that she doesn’t want him to know anything about her or her life now.  He hopes that she is, if not happy, at least at peace with the cost of her career success.

Is he happy now? Yes. He was able to move on, meet someone new (albeit much sooner than he would have chosen), emigrate to start afresh, and get married again.  But he still has twinges of regret for what once was – especially on their anniversary.

A Pleasant Surprise

Last night I saw something I’d never seen before.

I was strolling alone through what was once called “the blind man’s holiday”[1], the usual walkers having long gone home to be replaced by dragonflies which skimmed low over my head and pipestrelles [2] that zigzagged their way round me in hot pursuit of the insects that shelter under the trees.  As I ambled along the path at the side of the embalse[3],  something caught the very edge of my sight.

It was a brilliant light shining through the canopy and reflecting indistinctly in the waters.  I couldn’t see it clearly until it had fallen below the treeline, when I was able to see that it was a small ball of fire with a blazing tail streaming behind it.  As I gazed, it started to break up, small pieces falling away in a shower of huge sparks that quickly faded to darkness.  Then, just as suddenly as I’d become aware of it, it was gone.

A meteor!  A beautiful meteor. The first I’d ever seen.

 

 

[1] the time of evening when it is too dark to read but too bright to light the candles

[2] a very small bat that is common in this area

[3] a reservoir caused by damming a river