Sniffin’ about an Andalusian pueblo at Easter

The other evening, Angelica and I went for a sniff about the pueblo to see what was up. It being Good Friday, the town’s Easter cabalgata was in full swing. The cura waved his pot of incense about with careless abandon while women dressed as dominatrix widows, banged long poles on the ground forcefully. Along with sinister hooded figures, they played escort to rows of hardy penitents out for one last night of appeasing their maker in return for all the sinning they’ve been doing over the last year. Penitence involves hauling great effigies of saints onto their shoulders before lugging them up and down Conil’s streets and alleyways every evening during Semana Santa (Holy Week). They do it till it hurts, and then some. People love to watch.

The weather reminiscent of a bank holiday Monday in Scunthorpe, few visitors spent much time on the beach, preferring to idle about the town trying to keep warm. Down by the Torre de Guzman holidaymakers hithered and thithered in numbers. After doing rather more dithering than hithering or thithering we parked ourselves on a handy bench. Cobbles gleamed greasily as we gawped at knots of souls wandering as aimlessly as a tide about to turn. More than a few might have been pondering as to why they keep worshipping a God with a humour wicked enough to have it spitting rain the very Easter they chose to take the family for a short break by the sea. In Scunthorpe, maybe, but on Andalucia′s Costa de la Luz?

Hithering and Thithering

Torre de Guzman

Old doors

Sticky sweet stuff

On Easter Sunday morning, after briefly considering the Resurrection, we got into a discussion about the clocks changing. Having thought about being robbed of an hour that morning Angelica decided she didn’t like the idea of them messing about with our clocks. She doesn’t know why they do it. I told her they do it just to irritate people. Well, it does, so they must.

When you think about it, why do we continue to vote for the sort of governments that tell us to get up and go to work an hour earlier towards the end of each March. Then, seven months later, just as you’ve got used to it, they tell you to switch back again. It’s a psychological game they play with us. They only do it because they can. Think about it for a moment. Suddenly the government tells us that the new seven o’ clock is eight o’clock, and we all believe it without question. Am I the only one to find something rather disturbing about that? Why don’t they just tell us all to get up an hour earlier? It’s the same thing, except for the fact we wouldn’t have to go to the bother of having to check that clocks were right for at least a week.

We sat on a bench deep in thought. As we watched dusk rob what was left of daylight, a gaily-painted trailer dispensed the sort of brightly-coloured sticky stuff that boosts small children into hyperactivity. By midnight they would be buzzing. It was time to head back before all that sugar kicked in.

 

 

Advertisement