And you are nowhere
ACCORDING to ‘mis amigos viejos’ I have been in limbo for some years. Even academic Spanish friends – oddly enough they do exist – proclaim that I don’t behave like un Inglés – Don, señor o hombre – or any other kind of extranjero.
Accordingly, I’m told this puts me in an unpredictable or ‘odd-ball’ category having lived here for almost a third of my life.
At the risk of being accused of labouring a point, I did not emigrate to Spain to become a member of an ethnic ‘ghetto’ community whatever its origins.
I moved to Spain because it appeared to be a place where I could retire in peace.
Despite the way some of my contemporary expats regard the country, I believe I was right. I cannot afford to spend my time and energy complaining about bureaucracy despite the fact that other folk seem to get so much pleasure from doing so.
I did and still do observe their pathetic antics and these have been the meat and gravy of so many of the articles I have written since I became an Hispanophile.
In early 1979 when I settled here, I met Brian Sumner the founder of the Costa Blanca News. He was as much of a rebel as I was and was of the opinion – at first – that I had not come out here to retire but to set up opposition to his newspaper.
Others had tried it on; Mick Webber, a highly successful Fleet Street journalist did so without a great deal of success.
Brian found it hard to believe that I was not similarly inclined. In fact, after having slaved in the newspaper industry for over thirty years I had little or no further enthusiasm for the game.
Needless to say, although Brian was wrong, so was I but not for the same reasons. I had retired because I was fatigued and had a stomach ulcer problem.
The fact that none of my family were interested in the newspaper business probably accelerated my decision.
That my reputation as a newspaper man had preceded me to Spain was a compliment I could have well done without.
For a struggling local ‘periodico’ entrepreneur to think I was interested in usurping his pitch was sheer lunacy.
Sure, if pressed, I would have helped him (I ultimately did) but at the time I wanted to be as far away from printing ink as possible.
I did write a series of articles for the St. Helens Star entitled ‘Smith’s Spain’ and organise a couple of ‘readers’ holiday outings during this period but that was part of my agreed retirement package.
The fact that one of these articles won a Costa Blanca Journalism Award was a bonus.
Eventually, Brian and I became friends and despite the fact that I was more interested in exhibiting photographs and had one of my articles ‘pirated’ into ‘Living in Spain’ another local rag, it was the ex-army captain who inveigled me into beginning to write once more.
I did a bit of proof reading for him first and scribbled a few ‘restaurant’ reports before he conned me into doing a couple of interviews.
One was with Pedro Delso and the other was with Edmundo Ross. At the time I was unaware that both were virtually impossible characters to interview.
However, with the help of my camera and a lot of patience, I coped. Both articles were featured in the paper and I was hooked.
From then on I began writing on a regular basis and because some of my subject matter appeared to be just a touch bizarre, I came up with the idea of writing a book about the local lunatics, moaners and 'Billy Liars'… NO PROBLEMA was the result!
Needless to say, it was forced conversations with the kind of British expats that I had tried hard to avoid and the carping in the Costa Blanca News ‘Letters to the Editor’ page that really inspired it.
I reckon this ‘freedom of speech’ facility in the newspaper really ought to have been called the ‘Moaners and Nut-Case Forum’ as at least 80% of the content was of a grousing, nit-picking or trivial kind.
Some of the ‘regular’ – almost weekly - scribes honed in on set targets. They attacked the various serial columnists like Ian Frewer and Gilly Beaumont whilst arguing amongst themselves.
Other pernicious penmen set their sights on religious, political and nationalistic topics whilst the remainder tended to complain about everything from dogs fouling pavements to British registered cars with outdated road tax discs.
Oddly enough, in the case of the latter indignant pseudo-bureaucrats… they expected and demanded the newspaper to do something about it.
To these prats an editor was expected to have the wisdom of Solomon combined with the authority of an ombudsman.
Needless to say I am addicted to the ‘letters page’ despite the fact that it sometimes set my teeth on edge.
I would like to do mischief to the majority of the carping correspondents.
It is a pity they cannot use the Costa’s finest ‘soap box’ in a more useful and reasoned manner.
On picking up the 'News', the first thing I did was to surf through the plethora of Moaning Minnie missives which cluttered up the letters page and emanated from folk who must have regularly crippled their quills or got email cramp berating the inefficiency of the town hall, the police, Aguagest Levante, Iberdrola and Telefónica.
They ranted on about bank charges and the fact that they were forgetful in paying direct debits, tardy or non-existent gas deliveries and power cuts, before launching into diatribes about dogs cocking their legs up in public aided and abetted by owners who did not carry ‘pooper scoops’ and plastic pooh bags.
I suppose it’s was a fairly harmless way of letting off steam.
These squeakers and squealers were a mixed bag; they moaned at the drop of a hat about virtually every topic.
They were either religious nuts or hate religious nuts! Some were politically bonkers.
Some of the addicted letter writing folk were snobbish too and ‘initialed’ their self-importance. They append their ‘qualifications’ after their signature, viz: Joseph Justice, KNUT, KGB, Lt/Col (ret) VD (and bar), MSS, PC, MA or whatever. This kind of compulsive snob scribbling made me yearn to read a bit of grouch-free correspondence.
However, were it not for the newspaper ‘letters page’ I reckon poison pen letters would become part and parcel of the junk mail industry and anyone with a definite or controversial opinion would be afraid to walk the streets.
Other carping letter writing addicts specialised in criticising newspaper columnists.
Their efforts appeared on the ‘letters’ pages with such regularity that I often wondered if they booked space in advance!
A couple of them with vastly differing views actually wrote to each other via the forum facility.
They were often excessively rude, opinionated yet ill informed; basically bloody stupid. That they targeted Frewer, Beaumont and others was to be expected.
Frewer was deliberately controversial and to make sure he got a response he actually argued and disagreed with himself in his own column.
Gilly Beamont also relied on the controversial approach whilst knocking the British Government and as for Bob Yareham, he professed to be an English language specialist but never a week went by without him dropping some sort of grammatical clanger to be pounced upon.
Even I have been on the receiving end of published letters on several occasions, despite the fact that I merely wrote travel topics, book reviews and tongue-in-cheek humour which should have hardly incited the fury of readers.
Having been accused of being a food snob and ignore ‘menus del dia’ my defence was that trying to enthuse about chicken and chips or paella on a regular basis wasn’t easy and bad for the digestion.
Other moans were about my offbeat travel recommendations and the fact that I had reviewed books that readers claimed were unobtainable despite the fact that I always included book shop details within my articles.
It occurs to me that these ‘letter’ scribes just carped for the glory of seeing their names or opinions in print.
Whatever their reasons, misguided or otherwise they can’t be as cowardly as one chap whose letter I found extra irritating.
This was a very authoritative essay in which the bloke expounded his knowledge of politics, nuclear missiles, NATO and more but hadn’t the guts to append his name to his outpourings.
A similar anonymous scribe – if only partial – just signed himself ‘Fred’. He was a rabid BBC viewer and a programme knocker to boot, which just goes to prove that even ex pats can be square-eyed and don’t care who knows about it. In his published note he found it strange that Auntie Beeb denigrated Benidorm which is hardly strange at all.
Most of the holiday documentaries shown on British television follow this pattern. That Fred admitted to staying ‘glued’ to the goggle box for the entire rubbishy programme rather proved that he couldn’t have had anything better to do… or was mentally a few cents short of a euro.
Of course all expats are not grouch letter writing fiends or television addicts… I’m not typical either, preferring to be lumped together with run of the mill quixotic eccentrics. Although this lot may not form the majority they are at least a bit interesting rather than pedantic and boring.