Viral Spain Blog, 31^st December 2021.

Happy New Year...but before we get on to that, how was your Christmas? We had a very average one. Oliver was a bit quiet then at lunch developed a head ache and headed to his room for the afternoon. (If only we had known!) And of course the very welcome rain meant we did not go out for our usual Christmas walk. We all felt a bit lacking in energy.

The new eco giving regime sort of worked. Some resorted to chain stores but we all managed to avoid Amazon!

The big and totally unexpected news of the week however came three days later when Oliver's preflight Covid test came back positive. We all took a day or two to digest this news, especially Oliver who had a flight to cancel and a new plan to work out. He and Sarah talked through the options yesterday morning and he hopes to get a second test which if clear will mean he can fly back next week. And now we understand why he, and the rest of us were not at our best over the festive season. We cannot blame it all on the competitive spirit and fuel for discord that seems to arise from the Monopoly board!!
We, Isobel Sarah and I are also quarantining and new regs mean this is only for a week. I was sorely tempted to breach mine as the sea conditions forecast is the best I have seen in years and I really wanted to exploit the great weather with a canoe trip today! The risks would be minimal...I don't socialise on the drive, the launch or the trip! However in the end it just did not feel right, and might not to anyone who saw me heading off. A canoe on the car roof is far from inconspicuous.

Maybe this year we should have played secret sickness?

Back to new year considerations, whatever they are. Actually I rather like the idea of new year resolutions having rather disliked them for much of my life. It does feel like a new start and a chance to review life. This feels especially pertinent to me as an older guy. Do other older guys feel the same? Each year feels to me a bit more precious than the last. And while I like to think in terms of at least fifteen more, who knows.

My resolutions for this year revolve around connection with my fellow humans; Listen and respond to what I hear, Touch (one word is all I wrote, but you know what I mean, safe caring touch, no naughty stuff ) and Speak from the heart, ie. with honesty openness and care. So there you have it. They feel a bit daunting, especially now I have revealed them to the world. Okay so aim high Chris, make those years really count!

' How to Blow up a Pipeline ' was one of my Christmas gifts this year. This was from Oliver. Who knew he was an anarchist, or perhaps he thinks that of me. That could make my final decades really count.

I am only half way through but already Andreas Malm is making a good case for direct action. Only empty words, and a few changes, are all that have occurred so far. Many millions are invested in coal and oil. It is obvious that the needed changes will not happen without a drastic new initiative. Anyone want to borrow the book?

I leave you to cogitate over this and to consider your new year. I wish you well.

Merry Christmas Blog 2021. (24^th December ).

So many things to consider in the run up to Christmas but hopefully it is now nearly all done for you as it is for us.

I have yet to wrap. I like to do that while listening to the carol service from, I believe Kings College Cambridge on BBC radio 4 (at 4 here ) . It is a ritual that might not last. I remember last year noting some of the, what is to me, nonsense, in the readings and prayers. I do like the carols though, or I think I do....maybe if I attended to the words!

We are back this year to our usual pattern of giving with more than one gift in every direction. Last year we wanted to get away from consumerist Christmas, and the resultant madness and brain strain about what to buy. We did secret Santa. It was a fiasco as the website got it wrong. They must employ the lousiest programmers in the English speaking world when the prime and very simple task of assigning one of four presents to one of four people could not be achieved. Fortunately some complications over posting and timing were discussed and revealed the mistake.

This year we decided to make guidelines for less consumerist giving. We want to give smaller gifts and to shop locally, definitely no Amazon buying, nor Amazon destroying gifts.

I will let you know how it goes. An added detail seems to be not using plasticised wrapping paper. Our kind neighbour brought us back last weekends newspapers from England so I am going to use those. Oliver has wrapped in brown paper with hearts on it! Other presents are still en-route to the tree.

It is however a plastic tree but I am sure we are on form after seven years to make it last the required ten years to make this more ecologically sound than natural trees.

We are also turning the heat down in the house. ( I mean physical not emotional !). This however I will admit is more due to our son being here from cold Canada than eco concerns. He and his house mates have their central heating at 21'c. Our temperature depends on the number of logs we shove into the wood burner. It is a bit hit and miss so we have to open doors, and stringently control the cylinder gas fire in the kitchen.

Before any aware readers throw up their hands on horror at these two environmentally unfriendly heat sources I will say we do have the house pretty well insulated.

Okay, so I wont get much into what we are going to eat or do over Christmas...I fear fish is not so sound, card games must be okay though?

So it is time and there is space to write of the true meaning of Christmas. If only I knew. It seems the powers that be picked a convenient date, many centuries ago to over ride pagan midwinter festivities and make a big Christian festival. Does that minimise it's real meaning for Christians? I only have, as far as I know one Christian friend, and she has only just mastered posting on face book so whether she will see this blog I don't know. Mary (good name for the occasion ) are you there? Please tell us about the meaning of Christmas for you!

I have evolved a sense of what it is all about for me. It is a time to reflect on what is important in our lives, on connection, love and purpose. That for me is almost a definition of my spirituality in general. Good congruency there then!

Happy Christmas and may 2022 be the year of much needed change in the world for all of us.

Viral Spain 16th December 2021.

 

Viral Spain Blog 16^th December 2021.

Do you talk to your hairdresser? If you are a woman this is a silly question. From my limited experience of women's hairdressing, that is half the reason to go there! However, to say the least, I have a very varied experience of haircuts, from being forced to have one as a teenager (aspiring to Rolling Stone 'styles' ) to these days quite liking them.

Yesterday's pre-Christmas trim was actually enjoyable. After three or four years I know the barber quite well. He is a portly 40ish bald local man who I knew had a tale or two to tell. Feeling my feet more in Spanish I decided to launch into conversation. His comment on the cold mornings set us off and I told him of my cold cold bike ride some 19Km. along the valley on Tuesday morning (for my spanish class as it happens). He was impressed, 'not like you are a spring chicken nor nothing' he said (roughly translated ) so I told him how exercise and meditation help keep me from ageing too much. Mentioning meditation was the key to his world of strange experiences. He sees himself as meditating all day as he cuts hair. He said he has amazing powers of concentration which started when he was nine with an extraordinary experience of disappearing into a source of light. These went on for three or four years but nowadays he simply has experiences of disappearing into objects! He was speaking in a heavy local accent through a mask. I questioned him pretty carefully and think I got this correctly. Maybe it was just his pet mouse disappearing!

You never know what you are going to learn in Orgiva. It is a place where every third foreigner practices some esoteric method of personal development but I did not expect to find Orgiva's alternative soul in the hairdressers.

I was just looking at Orgiva Massive face book community page (seeking the ultimate in alternative practices with which to entrance you) but read of the death of a Quaker Friend. I am saddened by her death even though this great lady had been in and out of hospital and care homes and I suspect was ready to leave us. Apparently she had a peaceful end with her daughter and grandson beside her. I guess we all hope for that and as one well wisher commented on face book it cannot be taken for granted these days.

Inevitably for us oldies this brings up thoughts of mortality, especially to one who is 69 tomorrow. Not so old I tell myself . I am just about the oldest in my men's group but some way from oldest in my bio dance group. I suppose I might have another twenty years. Each bit of reflection, each delve into consciousness brings me to a greater determination to make the most of my last decades. I can't recall if I have mentioned a final afternoon of my last men's group training looked at life purpose. I am now thinking I do not need a great project, a new business or whatever rather a growing awareness of how good my life is already. I have just taken a cup of coffee out onto our terrace, enjoyed the cool air and the recently risen sun, the large Jakaranda tree and the very blue sky. Inside is my lovely wife, emotional and physical warmth, and our lovely children are travelling many many miles to join us next week.

So despite Covid and brexit and global warming lets all do our best to be grateful for what we have and strive to make the world a better place especially for those who have least.

Merry Christmas, felices fiestas.

 

Viral Spain 9^th December 2021.

I have just been looking at the calendar to see if I could work out why I did not write a Blog last week. I can't, so then I looked at Facebook to see if I had written one; NO. My memory is not as good as I would like!

Yesterday I got a letter from the bank asking for me to log on to internet banking to give them an up to date email address. Unfortunately I cannot find the little code maker they supply for getting into internet banking. I guess my next step is to see if I can satisfy the requirements for phone banking!

Inconsequential happenings I suppose, but they feel significant to me because this Summer when we were in the UK I went into the bank to sort this all out and promised myself I would log on once a month so I would remember the numbers or where I keep them, where the codifier is, etc. Next thought I had about internet banking; yesterday.

This would all matter less if the bank would give Sarah and I (joint account holders)

equal access. They won't.

Makes me wonder how even older, even less competent people manage? I guess they do not have internet banking.

Anyway, gripe over, lets talk about my canoeing last Friday. I remember that!

It was a cold but sunny day, temperature just climbing to 18'c by the sea. (Yes that is quite warm for you Brit dwellers.) The forecast showed a gap in the windy weather with much of the coastal sea conditions 'rizada'. That means 'curly' but having just looked it up in the dictionary, to be sure of my facts, I am f-cked, or my story is. It also means slightly choppy. That is exactly how it was. I find a slight chop really uncomfortable in the canoe. I thought 'rizada' meant smooth and curly, which is how it usually is when the forecast says 'rizada'. Anyway despite hints of nausea I was able to enjoy being afloat, the sun, the sea, the dark cliffs and the tiny beaches.

And when I got in I remembered the steep beach-side steps. I wheeled the canoe on its rickety home made trolley up to the steps and was beginning the lift when a man walking past offered help. Wonderful, we had the canoe up the steps and onto the roof of the car in one smooth movement. What I wondered though is why this happens so rarely. The man was Belgium. Are the 'helping people' norms different with different nationalities? Do I normally look so competent? Is it a man thing? We men are supposedly bad at asking for help. I think that is the one! Ask Chris, ask. And maybe look less confident?

This is in danger of becoming a gripe piece: maybe if I ask questions it is not a gripe. Why do hearing aids cost SO much? For the price I have been quoted I could buy three electric mountain bikes, or four modular canoes ( a new direction planned to reduce lifting problems) or nine pairs of glasses with graduated lenses. I could even get a similar micro electronic device, a mobile phone for 11% of the price of audiofonos.

The man in the shop tried to baffle me with science talking of miniature processors and complex interlinking of the two units. I actually think he was talking b----cks! Surely even if you are a bit deaf the brain still does the processing to determine sound direction. Okay they have to be high quality mini-amplifiers with an exceptionally good selectivity and boosting of certain frequencies but 2000 euros each?

Anyway, I hope not too much of a gripe piece and that you are all lining yourselves up for a great festive season.

Viral Spain 9th December 2021

 

Viral Spain Blog 25^th November 2021.

Bananas, yes bananas, they are an important part of our life! Yesterday morning I popped into the greengrocers. I asked what bananas they had and was pointed to some short stumpy ones grown locally and two euros a kilo. We are on a buy local drive at the moment so I bought some asking for one or two ready to eat next day and felt pretty pleased with myself.

What is it they say comes before a fall?

This morning porridge was made, lightly cooked bananas within, mmm breakfast on a cold morning! No! The banana had a sort of green taste. Sarah says floury. Anyway they were barely edible. We will see if they improve with further ripening but Sarah might buy some standard bananas this morning just in case!

I find life to be like that, if not full of the unexpected, at least with a healthy measure of it. Take last weekend, we had a men's group training weekend. It was due to be about designing our initiation. We had two highly experienced trainers over. On Friday morning our parent organisation in the UK phoned to say they would not be releasing their Mentoring Handbook to us. There has been a chequered history of the UK people helping then not helping us, their Spanish off shoot. We were not therefore very surprised. And being adaptable our trainer team decided to give us a weekend on mentoring instead.

It seems we are finally severing our UK connection.

Anyway it meant I had a weekend learning about mentoring which to be honest I don't know if I would have opted for. I was a probation officer in the UK for 22 years and latterly took part in training at least a dozen student probation officers, even did a lecture or two at Exeter University. There are also my 40 weekends of Psychotherapy training lurking in the back ground. On Friday I was not sure how relevant my old experiences might be to 'mentoring'. Also my career did finish 21 years ago. However by the end of the weekend I began to feel a growing surge of confidence, even competence!

On Sunday afternoon we looked at our current motivations and life purpose, something we might work on with mentorees. First though we need to look at ourselves and ask 'what makes me get up in the morning with a smile on my face? '

The answer for me is a mixed bag of activities and plans that do not comprise a fulfilling whole. We have been set the task of finding our current life purpose in the next four months. I have some work to do.

One question is how different is it if one is retired and nearly 70? Tell me what you think older readers! Meantime my dear friend and daily correspondent in Australia is saying I have more to offer because of my age. He lists the qualities and experiences I can bring to my life purpose. I shall spare my blushes (and maybe yours ) and not list them here.

This all may be true but certainly bucks the societal trend, as I perceive it, that the old be put out to grass and largely ignored. Maybe I will be testing that norm.

Now though it looks as if it might have warmed up a bit out side and I shall hop on my bike for a stimulating 40 minutes of pedalling in the sun.

Thank you for reading this far. Do put an emoji to show you have read it. I value my readers! Go well.