from a holiday notebook

1.

They straggled up the stairs again, discussing the word helioblau and the rather laboured passage in Patrick O'Brian about the captain of the Iris trying to head-hunt a mate called Blew (to join up with Green, Brown and White).

"Anyway, looks like the used tampon has gone." (It had been on the fourth floor steps for several days)

"Yes, so it has. Someone's done the dastardly deed."

A pleasant feeling of cleanliness came over them. The 'dastardly deed' was nudging the tampon into the stairwell so it plummeted into the understorey car-park where they never went and could thus be forgotten along with whatever other nameless filth lay down there.

"But perhaps the conserje is conscientious and would soon whisk it away?"

"Significant how those words sound alike: conserje and 'conscientious'. You feel he must be. You feel his life is tormented by conscientiousness. Whether he is or not, he's got no time for us, he saw straight through us, that much is a fact."

"Like yesterday when you remarked about how your creases have increased. The wind freshens. Everything keeps on getting baggier and that's what you have to sail with."

"That was discourteous of you, to - my God I'm not up to the stairs today, I'm sure they've put in an extra floor - to - impose your meditation on me though it has nothing to do with whatever we're talking about, therefore - making me have to concentrate only to find out what a vacuous flop it was. Your notion of philosophising is to let go and flounder."

"To scud - that means to just go with the wind. I learnt it in Patrick O'Brian. I now know that the only thing Tabitha can do with wind-surfing is to scud. It's not too clever on the open sea. Miss the harbour arm and it's next stop Ibiza."

"If she could go more than 10 yards without falling off that would be a real danger."

If you want to know what these two old boys looked like, they were exactly like the disreputable, scraggy pair of burglars in Gunnar Persson's comic strip Kronblom, which appears in the weekly magazine Allers. One has a potato nose and the other an accordion nose but otherwise they are as like as two prunes and in their worthless way they get on perfectly.

They have a friend called Tabitha who has to put up with a lot. When Skalle announced "I think I might have swordfish today", she said "Yes, get it and I'll stab you with its beak."

"Do you know Heinrich?" asks Skalle unexpectedly.

"I've seen him under a parasol, a whole lot of them in a ring, with their side-partings and trim beards, ropes of pearls, humming Lago Maggiore im Schnee, reading Jack Higgins and Marianne Fredriksson, ordering Schnitzel mit: Zigeunersauce, Jägersauce, Champignonsauce, Hamburger Art, Wiener Art, Cordon Bleu... what is the other one?... oh that's it, Pfeffersauce."

"Heinrich looks ill. Under his arm he was carrying a rainbow-coloured jigsaw of A Tropical Island Sunrise. I still would like to climb the Jungfrau from Interlaken, up to a point - the point where it gets a bit dodgy, I suppose."

"How readers of alpine air and blue-water sailing become slowly smelly in a comfortable round-shouldered jacket and bald armchair."


2.

It's local election day on Sunday and there are small vans cruising with loudhailers playing tape-loop promises and there are colourful posters everywhere and especially along the Paseo de la Libertad where there must be 100 meters or more of poster space. The parties don't use it for big posters, just for dozens or even hundreds of small posters that are identical and are pasted up in a mosaic of say 4 high x 30 wide. It works better for an audience of strollers; the same message stays in view for a long time but it remains intimate in scale, it does not blare at you. For a visitor or child the visual effect is beautiful and fun, like the table towards the end of a game of Monopoly or Risk, all filled up with colours. The space each party gets seems to be proportional to its expected (or perhaps previous) share of the vote. There are lots of parties but the ones I've written down are:

The PP (Partido Popular). More or less the Conservatives, I think. They are the party currently in power here and the slogans reflect that: Mas Torrevieja. Ahora mas que nunca. Confianza en el futuro. ("More Torrevieja. Now more than ever. Confidence in the future.") They are in favour of continuing the system of trasvases to draw water from further north into the arid Segouro basin to supply the huge demands of the coastal urbanizaciones. Unsurprisingly the trasvases are deeply resented in Castille and Aragon.

The PSOE - the other main party, I think more or less equivalent to Labour and now in power nationally. They are committed to local de-salination plants to supply fresh water for the Costas, though opponents warn of dire environmental impacts out at sea. Slogans: Gana por el cambio. Tu voto puede. ("Win by change. Your vote can do it.")

PSD (Partido Social Demócrata). Looks like typical third party? Slogans: Nuevas ideas, nuevas formas. Una nueva forma de hacer política. (New ideas, new ways. A new way of doing politics.)

Los Verdes. Quite popular among the Northern European ex-pat community. (I saw them signing people up at a boot sale.)

Communistas. Left.

Blocque Izquierda Alternativa. Left.

Esquerria Unido. Left. Slogan: Recuperar Torrevieja - es possible.

Partido de Elche. Local Independents. Slogan: "Not left, not right. Just Elche."

CLR (Centro Liberal Renovador). This party made a strong pitch to the British and Germans, stressing the indifference to Orihuela Costa displayed by the current Orihuela leadership: appalling jams along the coast road, etc.