Permit me a moment of more self indulgence than usual

It has well and truly settled into winter here, and it tends to rain more often than it doesn’t. The chestnut sellers are out in force, the churro cafes are packed, and the evenings have started to take on a slightly subdued air as the streets and squares empty of dawdlers and drinkers.

I love this weather. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am just not built for summer. I don’t like the beach, and I’m appalled at the thought that actual humans might see me in a swimsuit. In fact, I’ve realised that don’t really know how to dress myself in the heat in general. A figure like mine requires some serious scaffolding, and as much as I’d love to wear those floaty, wispy little summer dresses, the underpinnings I require make it all but impossible. 

And eating is no fun in the heat. All you ever want in the middle of summer is to pick languidly at a salad, even when you’re hungry enough to require a three course meal with matched wines and cheese to follow. 

No, I am not a summer person. 

Now, winter. Winter is great. The clothes are far more fun; boots, jackets, scarves, cardigans, woolly hats. There’s nothing better than getting properly rugged up before going outside – yet another thing winter has over summer; you can choose how cold or warm you wish to be simply by adding or subtracting items of clothing. How perfectly civilised.

And, of course, the food is so much better; stews, roasts, buckets of pasta, melted cheese on everything, and of course, the aforementioned churros with hot chocolate;

But I think my favourite thing about winter is the landscape. You can keep your rainforests, your tropical beaches. The countryside in winter is far more interesting. I’ve been doing a lot of walking while we’ve been here, and as the weather has been getting colder, the landscape has become more and more arresting;

 

It reminds me of a passage from The Wind in the Willows (one of the best books ever written in my humble opinion, for adults or children, and Kenneth Grahame is surely one of the saddest figures in literary history);

Copses, dells, quarries, and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, til they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering – even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery, He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple.

PS. I finally saw the swan! Pity that it seems to have no head and only one leg, but I suppose I'm just being picky.

We make a new friend

On Sunday we went for a walk by the river, and as we walked by the riverbank we spotted a water rat scuttling across the path and into one of the rock heaps that line the water. We stopped to have a look, which attracted the attention of a genial looking middle aged chap on a bike who had just ridden up the hill. He stopped and peered into the rocks with us. 

‘A rat’, Jo supplied when it became clear that bike man needed an explanation, and we pointed, ‘here’. We all looked together. ‘There he is!’ we cried as one, having spotted murine features protruding from a crevice. The three of us gazed with satisfaction at the rat for a moment.

After the excitement of catching a glimpse of a rat in a pile of rocks had abated somewhat, bike man clearly felt that small talk must be made. ‘The water’s very green’, he commented. 

It was indeed green, in a lurid, industrial sort of way. 

‘Yes, very green’ we agreed. ‘Do you know why?’ asked Jo. 

Bike man shrugged and said that he didn’t know, but that he thought it might be something to do with the farms upriver. As Jo later pointed out, it was probably just as well that he didn’t know, as there is no way in hell we would have been able to understand a more detailed explanation. 

There was a pause in the conversation. 

‘The ducks don’t seem to mind, though’, observed bike man. 

‘No, there are many ducks here today’, I agreed eagerly, pleased to have been able to form a sentence (for the record; muchos patos aqui hoy, which I accompanied with vigorous nodding and an inane grin). 

At this, bike man’s eyes lit up. Clearly he had recognised me as a fellow nature lover – interest in the rat alone could have been mere Sunday amateurism, but I was obviously also passionate about ducks, and you can’t fake that sort of thing - and he launched into a long, animated story about something he had seen recently on the river, but in his enthusiasm he spoke a bit too fast for us and all I caught was that whatever it was he’d seen had been very big, and white. 

I assumed he was talking about a fish he’d caught, and was working out how to ask ‘and did you eat it?’ (the river, even when not the sort of green I more usually associate with pine scent bathroom disinfectant, is not the cleanest, and I was wondering what a fish pulled from its murky depths would look like, let alone taste like), when he pulled out his phone and showed us some pictures he’d taken. Oh, a big white swan. I get it. Probably just as well I didn’t ask if he’d eaten it. 

We looked at the pictures appreciatively, and I commented that it was very beautiful. He was clearly expecting something more, so I essayed; ‘how do you call it in Spanish?’ Good question. ‘Cisne’ he replied. ‘Oh. In English we say swan’ was my less than inspiring response. He nodded, clearly unimpressed. ‘It’s a very nice cisne’ I added, by way of reassuring him that I recognised that linguistics was a far less interesting topic than that of ornithology, and he nodded again, placated. 

We turned back to the rat, who had taken advantage of the fact that we’d stopped paying attention to it to leap into the river, was now swimming briskly downstream. For a brief moment we shared in a sense quiet satisfaction that only true nature lovers can appreciate. Then we said our goodbyes, and he cycled off, presumably to share his story of the time he saw the swan with a new audience. I hope it brings them as much pleasure as it brought us.