Sheila, Patron Saint of Cabbages

Last year I decided to take "localvore" to its logical conclusion, and grow a bit of food on the balcony. I had mixed success (see "Peas"). Well, last night I harvested the solitary cabbage, and we had about a third of it with pork for dinner. It was delicious. I suppose it figures - organic cabbage harvested twenty minutes before we ate it.

And then I looked at the half-circle of cabbage leaves from where I cut the cabbage, and the light bulb on top of my head lit up.

You knew I was mad anyway, didn't you?

Another Sale!

Escape Velocity have bought "The Dodo Dragon" for Issue three. This story's been published before, (once in Greek!) but it still makes me feel good all over.

And the novel's up to 80,771 words, which also makes me feel good. But I don't think I'm going to finish the first draft by the end of the month after all. Which is a puity, because I'm starting a writing course in March, and I'm going to be seriously pushed for time.

Ah well, I'll just let the house get dirty. It's always worked before.

A Funeral at Last!

Last night I went to the delayed Sardine's Funeral in Los Sauces. I finally discovered why people say it's better than the sardine's funeral in Santa Cruz.

They say it because it's true.

The crowd was far bigger than in Santa Cruz, and over half of them wore fancy dress - mostly Halloween theme costumes. This is my hairdresser. I didn't recognise him nutil he spoke.


First they had a butaca - serious percussion. I took a lot of video, but there wasn't much light and most people were wearing black, so it's not brilliant. I need to learn to edit video.


At the end of the butaca it poured with rain for about ten minutes. Imagine a couple of thousand people all looking for shelter and saying, "Oh no!" all at once. Thankfully it stopped pretty quickly.

Then I wondered about for a bit and had a beer (alcohol free - I was driving).

Then the sardine appeared.


Now in Santa Cruz its a funeral procession, and the mourners are wailing with fake grief, but they're walking in a dignified way.

In Los Sauces, the sardine is being tossed around as though it's on a rough sea. The pall bearers really work up a sweat. I found out the hard way that it gets a fair bit of momentum - the guys at one side can't necesarily stop just because they're going to crash into a phtograher. I was glad I only took the compact camera. And the mourners jog and pogo and scream like banshees. It's like Santa Cruz used to be, only better. Monty Python eat your heart out. What's more, there were a couple of smaller sardines brought by groups of kids. The sardine goes around the square twice, and then through the back streets towards the huge new bridge, back along the main street, round the square twice again, and finally onto the bier in the square. The kids' sardines went under the bier.

Of course it ends with the sardine being cremated. And in Los Sauces, the crowd doesn't just watch and cheer. They pogo and boogie and scream again. And there are lots more fireworks.

By then it was one in the morning, so I didn't stop for the public dance. I just ate a sandwich and went home.

Next year I'm going back, and I'm definitely dressing up.

Teneguia

Hurrah!

After seventeen years on the island, I finally got to the summit of the volcano Teneguia.

It's only 400 m above sea-level, and I didn't walk all that far. But I'm horribly unfit and it's a rough path. And besides, I have a horrible tendency to leave everything to some mythical day in the future when I won't be so busy.

So I'm proud of myself for getting up there. And boy was it windy!

A Carnivorous Shopping Trolley

It's been pouring with rain for days. Eventually I had to go out and get shopping regardless.

I went to the supermarket at San Antonio, and I had to park on the steep slope beside the building. It wasn't raining when I went in, but as I came out, it was pouring with big gusts of wind . I didn't want to sit in the car and wait, because I thought the firewood would get soaked, and so would the six-pack of milk. Not that the milk itself would mind, but it was likely to turn into six separate packets at the most inconvenient moment. So I struggled down the steep hill with the umbrella trying to turn itself inside out and the trolley trying to gallop away down the hill.

I got the trolly propped on the front bumper of the car - the uphill side - and started dumping the shopping into the car. One bag at a time, because the other hand was clinging onto the umbrella, to stop it flying off to the Bahamas. By the time I got all the shopping in, I was soaked from the thighs down.

And then either I knocked the empty trolley or the wind did. At any rate, somehow it came charging down the slope and whacked into my middle, carried on, and crashed over the kerb and into the bushes below. There's no serious damage, but I'm bruised.

I left the goddam trolley where it was. For one thing, I wasn't sure I could get it back up the slope, and I'd certainly get soaked trying. For another, I was in a foul mood.

Carlos laughed, but he applied alcohol and sympathy. He knows me pretty well!