Heavy Stuff



The place known as school.



I was late for school again this morning; on the way I riffed through a few old excuses (tho' I never use them, I just tell my Head of Studies, who is a saint, the simple truth; I overslept) from times gone by. Here's my two all time favourites!

I once worked in an office; just the once was enough. I worked there with a friend who'd kinda got me the job. He was incorrigble. He would trot between the filing cabinets and his desk with a plastic shark on a lead; he egged us on to hold up marks out of 6 for the girls going past, strict Winter Olympic ice dance style; his desk jotters were little masterpieces of Steadman-esque cartoons and doodles. One of the forms his incorrigibilty took was a distinct lack of punctuality. This sin was leavened by a gift for the creative. His excuses were world class; they reached a zenith the day of the elephant. Our much loved chief clerk, a man with a similar, yet different gift for delineating his own job till it barely existed, was nominally responsible, among other things such as counting windows and hot drinks dispensed by the hot drinks dispensing machine, for discipline. Ian always felt it was his duty to step up Bill's activity levels and so it was that most days he would potter not at all shamefacedly up to Bill's desk and trot out the latest little creative outburst. Until finally one day he simply opened the door, at about 9.45 (which definitely sounds earlier and less late than a quarter to ten) strode up to Bill's desk with purpose and said, "Sorry I'm late Bill, it was the elephant." That good and kindly man knew when he was beaten, looked up at Ian and simply replied, "Righto Ian, carry on."

Nellie?

And the circus was not in town.

When the powers that be could bear it no more they moved Ian somewhere else. I went along later, as did one or two of the other lads. I found us rooms in a nice house with a nice garden and the landlords sister who was so pretty everyone fell in love with her - in fact one of us married her; but that, as they say, is another story. Its good one too. No, what I want to tell you about is my other favourite excuse for tardiness. Sometimes tardiness gets to the point of not arriving at all. I myself was once relieved of my post in the Time Office of the late and I suspect not at all lamented East Moors Steel Works for being late; three days late! Thus it was that when interrogated about his latest job interview fiasco, Mick simply said he hadn't managed to get up. Not get up in time mark you, but get up, full stop. Clustered round his bed, we working lads pressed him as to the cause of this failure, "Why couldn't you get up?" he simply uttered, the single word, "Gravity."

Heavy stuff!

The case of the amazing disappearing bike: now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it............



My townbike - no one can b'lieve its got no gears, but it goes like shit off a shovel - when I'm ridin it!

I want to tell you a story, as the great Max Bygraves used to say, about how living in Spain is a daily adventure. Sometimes I get fed up of the endless chatter and the directionless, couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery nature of organisation here, which permeates society from government level down. Just walking into a bar requires half and hour of senseless chatter before the where, the what and how many of the sitting and drinking has been settled. As the Spanish custom is to change bar every half hour, this can be a tiny bit wearing. I usually go and order up a beer and drink it quietly while I wait.

         But then there are the times when all this suddenly shifts into overdrive and events overtake you with breakneck speed and your left spinning like a top on the pavement in Briviesca during fiesta – but that’s another story.

Boys in Brivvy, maybe, its the only place I've seen them at it, spinning their tops.

Big sporting and cultural events, for example are set up and broken down with an impressive speed and efficiency unimaginable in Blighty. And that’s precisely what happened when my bike got stolen today! Oh, you need to know that the bike cost 79.99 euros brand new, with lights, from Decathlon, and was bought specifically with this scenario in mind.

On Wednesday I finish school an hour early – at 1.10. The girls have nicknamed our hour off, “Happy Hour.” The leaden skies and the stiffish wind didn’t inspire me to rush home and get out on the bike, so I pottered on my town bike to the cake shop and them thought, “I’m near Cristina’s school, I’ll go and meet her.” She was off to the despensa, which is a co-op organised and run to provide organic produce at cost for its members. Cristina is always good fun and things happen around her, and another friend, Pilar, works in the despensa, so I thought I may as well tag along as I’ve never actually been there before.

            So we chatted while Cristina shopped and I stuck my head out of the door to look at the bikes every now and then. But too much then and not enough now, cos the third time I looked mine wasn’t there.

            “Oh shit,” I said in English, as I went out. Both the girls speak English and immediately guessed what had happened. I wasn’t actually that bothered; I knew it'd be one of the school kids that had been loudly larking about in the square below all the flats; I also know that lots of them know me and that lots of people in the barrio know me as I teach their children. My reaction was simply, “I have been a pillock not locking the bike, even though we were just inside the shop.” And I have another at home, well two more actually, but one of them is my proper bike.

Immediately Cristina thrust her bike into my hands and everybody left the shop and began talking all at once. “Here we go,” I thought. But what happened was this. She immediately asked a pair of girls sitting chatting what they had seen. The others who came out of the shop did likewise. Cristina said, “Go down to my barrio!” so I headed off to where her Mum lives; think 1970’s walk up council estate in urban wasteland – identical from Vladivostok to San Diego. As I got there (it was just gone 2.00 when by law, all right minded Spanish people must be off the streets and eating their lunch – I kid you not, it looks just like curfew!) it was obvious that I wasn’t going to see anyone, let alone the bike.

Suddenly, a voice, “Jeremy, go up to the park, by the church, I’m going to G3!” a young man in a car that I’ve never seen before. I didn’t recognise him from the shop, I was pretty sure he wasn’t in the shop. Maybe he’d been passing, or lived around the square and had seen something. Way to go …….. as the yanks would say, I have a posse! I did as I was told – no one in sight. So I pottered quite contentedly back to the shop, more worried about Cris missing her lunch hour and her siesta, as she has to go back to teach all evening till ten. As I rode up to the shop a woman came out and told me that I had got my bike back. What!?

“We’ll take you there in the car,” she gestured to a waiting husband and car. I made to rush off, but she said, “Hold up,” one never rushes in Spain, and told me what had happened. The still unidentified young man had the bike in custody, it was some young Jacks having fun. Off we went in the jam jar. Now this is where it gets incestuous; Burgos es un pañuelo, which translates as Burgos is a handkerchief and means that everyone knows you and all your business, most of the time, before you do.

“Do you know Teresa as well?” she opens with in the car, she'd obviously been information gathering as soon as I left the shop. I do as it happens, rather well. “I’m learning music with her” my benefactress tells me. They’re learning the clarinet together. We joke about how exciting our little adventure is. Now I know that our little adventure will be all over half of Burgos by tomorrow morning and have my suspicions that the other half won’t be far behind. The young man’s car is identified, I jump out and cross four lanes of lunch time quiet road to greet him and listen to his story. He does indeed live in flat overlooking the square and saw the whole incident take place. He saw the three lads sneak the bike, bent double so we wouldn’t see them from the shop. He saw them riding around in circles. Then he noticed he couldn’t see them any more and decided it was time to head them off at the pass with the rest of the posse. The thing is this; in a situation like this, when the Brits would be standing around clueless and yakking about who would call the Old Bill, the Spanish launch into action, loving all the talkin, shoutin, arm-wavin, mobile phoning, manic car drivin’ opportunities, the whole anarchic mayhem of it.

I was still puzzling over the identity of my rescuer, and wondering where the bike was. So I asked him; it was hidden on the other side of the car, it wouldn’t fit in the car or he would have simply brought it back. I ventured the opinion that I’d thought I’d find it because I teach nearby and lots of the people know me.

“Claro, of course.” He said and finally told me he was Nacho’s Dad. I looked again and saw the similarity and we both laughed ………. Every year I have about 100 pupils. This is the sixth year, so with the littlies too that I sometimes help out with, I’ve taught everyone in the school at some time or other. There are some really quite big people in the secondary school that I used to teach too, who are still getting bigger. Sergio came up to me, hand outstretched, in the bus station in Bilbao over Christmas, at least as tall as me, and I didn’t recognise him for several heart beats. So all in all there are about 1,500 parents, who all know me and very amusingly are all utterly convinced in that endearing Spanish way, that I know and will recognise them. They quite often approach me when I’m a little the worse for wear in Patillas.

You'd have to go VERY early to find it like this!

The last time, a photographer from the Diario de Burgos came in to take pix of Amando who’s finally retiring, he took lots of shots as various musicians were joined by Amando on mandolin, he stood on benches (the photographer, not Amando) and sat on stools and everyone had a ball. Then he pottered off to stow his cameras and totter off to his next venue – but not before coming over, hand outstretched, to greet me, “Hello Jeremy, I didn’t know you were a Patillas fan, I’m Lucia and Claudia’s Dad.” Its like a feckin’ mafia. But today they all came good!

Amando with his catchphrase-on-a-stick.

            Here’s the thing tho’! Nacho’s one of my naughty boys. In fact I was only telling my friend and boss, Chelo, yesterday that Nacho, who was inhabiting the naughty boy chair outside her office, suffers from a rare and terrible disease of the limbs, “He can’t keep them still!” she finished for me, being well familiar with the condition.

            This means two things; by tomorrow, the other half of Burgos will all know my story, and I will have to be especially nice to Nacho all term!