The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society by Chris Stewart

Author:Chris Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2005-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

9

Casa & Campo

Some years later I found myself reflecting on Mourad’s reaction to our home, after a phonecall from one Eduardo Mencos. El Valero had looked depressingly like a Berber farm to Mourad yet here was the director of Casa & Campo – one of Spain’s glossiest home and garden magazines – asking to come and view our garden. It seemed a ludicrous notion, but Señor Mencos was not a man to be gainsaid. “Didn’t you tell him that we don’t actually have a garden?” Ana asked incredulously. “And this is just your average mountain farm with a vegetable patch on one terrace?” I assured her that I had, but that this had been dismissed by my interlocutor as typical British modesty.

“And you mentioned the old wrecks of cars scattered about the place, and the bedsteads used as gates?” she continued.

“Well, yes, I think I might have. Anyway, all farms have old cars and bedsteads on them,” I countered, neither of the two having featured prominently in the conversation.

“And that the swimming pool’s a large pond full of frogs?”

“Yes, I said all those things, but he’s read some article about us and is convinced he should come and see the place for himself. He’s not bringing a photographer, though – this would just be to, well…to meet us and have a look around.”

Ana groaned. Casa & Campo specialises in features and photos of salubrious dwellings with impeccable borders, topiary, gravel drives, zen follies and the like. “It’ll be a waste of everyone’s time,” she insisted. “El Valero just isn’t a Casa & Campo sort of place. And I’m not sure I’d particularly want it to be.”

She was right, of course, but it seemed ungracious to cancel the visit now. Perhaps we could make some improvements. Standing on the terrace, outside the kitchen, I cast a cool appraising eye around our farm. “We could get rid of Custard,” I suggested.

Ana came and stood beside me, and together we gazed down at the ancient yellow carcass of our old Renault 4 rusting away just beyond the steps to our house. Wasps were buzzing in and out of the jagged hole that had once been her sunroof; for some reason hot yellow tin is irresistible to wasps. “Well, at least it will keep the Guardia happy,” she reluctantly agreed.

♦

It’s wrong to get sentimental about cars, especially their battered old husks, but the truth is that you can’t help remembering them fondly. They head my personal hierarchy of inanimate objects, along with guitars, walking sticks, the odd cooking pot and a beloved cherrywood corkscrew…Thinking about it, I seem to be consumed with sentiment for a whole array of objects, though cars are very much ahead of the pack.

Custard was the very first car that we bought when we settled in Spain: a canary-yellow Renault 4L, or a Cuatro Latas (“Four Tins”) as the locals call them. We were seduced utterly by her spotless bodywork and the sparkle of her windows, which we were assured was the work of one devoted lady owner, a pharmacist from Armilla.

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