HIBERNATION, ANOTHER WINTER OF DISCONTENT!

YET ANOTHER COLD AND BITTER WINTER TO SEE THROUGH! Post No.13/IN (A 7 minute read) 

A very brief cloud burst has just occurred and a few drops of rain have been released. It is the last day of April 2023 as I write and as such, I have officially survived another cruel winter. The fittest of the fit shall survive, they say! The layers of clothing are crucial to my survival.

But this winter which has been typically cold indoors, did give way to warmer than usual spring temperatures. Even as the official winter came to its calendar close on the 21st March 2023, my indoor thermometer had moved up to 18ºC! Bearing in mind that we had been asked to keep our heating at no more than 19ºC, you can see that I was moving into warmer days!!

Today my thermometer indoors is at 21ºC, a temperature that we do not usually experience indoors until mid-May onwards. You will read of the layers of clothing that I have to wear indoors to stay alive. This year by virtue of drastic global warming, I have trimmed down my layers somewhat and a lot sooner than is my custom.

Six full weeks sooner, to be precise. Since the beginning of April, I have no longer needed heat indoors. That point has always arrived in the second week of May. How sad that we the poor folk of Europe are actually benefitting from our planet warming up so dangerously! We are breaking records this week here in Spain although for us in Almería, we are around the typical average temperatures. It is very dry though, there is the major difference.

We have hot air floating up from the Sahara, where average temperatures at this time of year, are in the high 30sºC. They have no cooler period than this one. But I still believe that it will be both the cold and heat that will see the vulnerable amongst us fall by the wayside, if we do not have the ability to withstand the conditions that come our way.

Onto chapter nine of my second book and in the depths of winter (February 2022), my partner and I take to the road, heading north to Barcelona where I get a shock to the system by seeing so many people again. The hotel room with heating made up for the other negative elements and I did have a fabulous stay there. Though I was not looking forward to the reduction in temperature at home.

There was another journey to come though and this one took me to Almuñecar in the Granada province and I could not believe my good fortune at bumping into Abd al-Rahman I by the shoreline. A statue of Abd al-Rahman I, maybe I should say. He was accompanied by a plaque which had these words etched on it. "Oh, palm tree, you are like me, a foreigner in the west distanced from your homeland!"

The sensation of kindred spiriting had me spiral off into the past and go digging up the story of Abd al-Rahman I and why there should be a statue of him there in Almuñecar. It is a fascinating story to be sure and I write in more detail of it in this chapter.

Yes, I was distanced from my homeland too, I was a foreigner out of place too! 

It had been the Phoenicians who had built up the town of Almuñecar and set up a very important trading port there. They began the production of salted fish and garum along the southern Spanish Mediterranean coastline. 

Later the Romans came and took over, what a surprise! They loved garum and the production of garum/fish sauce, increased enormously under their occupation. All good things come to an end as I go on to explain in the following chapter. But it was the Umayyad Abd al-Rahman who spent six months in Almuñecar before winning the right to take over.

He moved on to Córdoba and set up the first Caliphate of Córdoba.

MARK KNOPFLER -THE RAGPICKER´S DREAM ALBUM

Back to my own self and I reflect on what Barcelona now means to me in spite of having spent twenty years of my life living there! My favourite troubadour Mark Knopfler knew what I was FEELING! He had penned a song titled "A Place Where We Used To Live", which can be found on his "The Ragpicker´s Dream" album.

THE SONG LIST OF THE RAGPICKER´S DREAM ALBUM BY MARK KNOPFLER

 

I quote myself from this chapter:

It is where we USED to live; we no longer do! We have not got one foot here and one there, neither of us. For me though, it was ever JUST a place where we USED to live! If anyone is thinking, uuhm that sounds familiar, maybe that is because you too listen to my favourite troubadour Mark Knopfler and know his song titled "A Place Where We Used To Live", which is on his "The Ragpicker´s Dream" album.

When I first heard that song, it brought tears to my eyes. I have JUST lived in many different places and yet, within a week, they really have become JUST places where I USED to live, or as in this case, where we USED to live. I can remember them all but there is only one that I have ever longed for and missed.

My own family home in Norfolk of course and just like Mark Knopfler, "my heart was hanging on!" It took a long, long time for me to stop longing. In truth, that particular song is one of those soothing melodies coupled with sensitivity. They are all as chapters in our book of life. The places and stages that we have passed through.

And as such, we all live where we live right now, do we not? Permanency is what I do not have and I FEEL that is what Mark Knopfler is lamenting in his song too. Comfort zones; you FELT safe and secure. You had a sense of stability and continuity. You thought that maybe it would always be that way.

That you would not have to start the whole process again of getting installed and finding your way anew. A different person now with more experience of life and all its emotional troubles to take with you and so often, by yourself!  End of quote.   

The melancholy was overtaken by my love of learning and on returning home, I found a new groove and threw myself right into it. Oh, yes! I was going to write a good book, I was. I was just going to follow my Trains of Thoughts, like they were not really interesting?! I wonder how many of you living outside of Asia, do actually know the name GARUM and just what importance it had to the culinary world for a long period of time.

The next post I will tell you more about garum, the title of chapter ten, very interesting stuff my friends, so please check back for that. If you would like to be notified of my new posts, give the follow link a try and I will keep you posted!! Or comment below, I would love to know your thoughts on my blogspot and my writing.

My second book is now on sale, here are the links: ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT e-book and ON THE INSIDE LOOKING OUT Paperback

My favourite troubadour does have a website of his own and I will give you a link here to it, should you wish to know more about this truly gifted song writer and musician.

The official Mark Knopfler website