Family

A Big Day

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

Still haven’t managed to do any formal study but at least I have spoken a lot more in Catalan.

Where normally I might say just a few words, I have been actively trying to stretch out conversations purely for practice.  While not quite grabbing people by the arm in the street like some crazy ancient mariner I am definitely not letting people go until I have had my tuppence-worth of chat.

In the market I went to at least four different stands for the fruit and vegetables. I asked which artichokes were best for cooking ‘a la brasa’, I told another customer how to prepare Kohl rabi and what it could do for your health, I stopped an aquaintance in the street and talked for at least 15 minutes about the need to have a vegetable patch.

Today my partners son arrived – ‘for good’. Well, at least till he is finished with college.
Normally I speak to him in English partly for his education and partly because I can’t bear him to be laughing at me as I stumble along. Our relationship has been rocky over the past two years.
But today was Catalan day so I told him I must speak in Catalan and he actually helped me with words and reminded me when I slipped into English.

And then we all went for supper at the pizza restaurant.
By ‘All’ I mean, my partner, his ex wife, his son and me. This was a first and funnily enough it went well. She is leaving the country very soon and is in that special time before saying goodbye to her old life. I had done my positive affirmations  before going and so somehow it worked out.

I find I am sometimes thinking in Catalan. I wonder how it would be to really switch over like I know some people have done into English?

I also did a whole hour and a half class of Photoshop in Catalan without getting dizzy once.
Two new things at the same time – my brain is getting quite excited!

Wildness

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

Life here is not all sunshine and beaches.
Like many women I sometimes find myself spending too much time

Here

and doing This

or going to buy This

so I can make This

It’s all too easy to be lulled into a snare of my own making.
The temptation then is to turn to

This

or even This

When I want to be one of These

I read these words and felt them kindle some inner fire

“A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, strong life-force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. Yet separation from the wildish nature causes a woman’s personality to become meagre, thin, ghostly, spectral. We are not meant to be puny with frail hair and inability to leap up, inability to chase, to birth, to create a life. When women’s lives are in stasis, in ennui, it is always time for the wildish woman to emerge, it is time for the creating function of the psyche to flood the delta”                       Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Puny with frail hair, thin, spectral and ghostly. Yes, that’s how I’ve been feeling here lately.
And irritable!
This book has been on my shelf for more than ten years – only now am I ready to read it

So….it’s time to seek out a high place and howl at the moon!

PS As I wrote those words the Resident Adolescent yet again put on the music system with throbbing bass at top volume. My wolf leapt up, loped downstairs and snarled!

Would you like a drink?

~ Kate Wilson ~ 12 Comments

There is a blog I like a lot by a woman in Canada, Bodhi Chicklet, where she writes posts called Virtual Coffee.  She invites you to join her for a chat and tells you all the things she might say if you were actually there. I hope she doesn’t mind if just for today I pinch the idea and invite you for a virtual vermut(vermouth).
If you were here sitting with me this evening on the terrace this is what I would tell you

I suppose that if you are a middle-aged British woman who moves to Spain it is unavoidable that sometimes you will have to struggle with the OFU feeling. That means – for those of you who have never been there – Old Fat and Ugly.  Surrounded by young brown dark-eyed slim Catalan/Spanish women it is not always easy to feel good about yourself. Especially when your partner tells you that your (sort of ) step son says you are lletja. This is Catalan for ugly.

Of course he didn’t expect this to be repeated to me but it was and so I have to deal with it.  When you are 16 anyone over the age of 20 will probably be lletja but…..and this came on a day when I already had chickened out of the gym because I couldn’t face a roomful of muscley men.
And next weekend I am invited to a family birthday party where the ex wife will also be.  As she normally walks past me without speaking on the street it doesn’t seem a very tempting invitation. But you are expected to go to family things here – you seem strange if you don’t.
Anyway, I spent the afternoon cleaning a room that was my late mother-in-laws workroom – just brushing the floor and tidying things into piles, and thinking about her. Remembering another day when I had the OFU blues and went to visit her.  She had called me upstairs – as her flat is above ours she could wave and call down from her kitchen window – and vulnerable as I was on that day I ended up bursting into tears on her shoulder.  What a lovely woman – she confided that she had never felt pretty and, lovingly as always, she told me how much she liked my face, my smile and my energy in the house.  Goodness I miss her!
Then our house was 50/50 women and men.  Two of each. Now it is just me and the boys.
Working my way around her room, seeing her flower arranging equipment, her painting gear, her stained glass tools, I wished once again that we could have spent more time together. All the times that I was too busy to go in for a cup of tea came back to haunt me.
I found some lovely old cooking magazines that were priced in pesetas.

Afterwards I brushed her patio and reminded myself that I must water her plants more often now that it is getting hotter. It’s so pleasant to be up there almost talking with her.  Everything is still as it was when she was here – and yet it’s not.

Her table and chairs have recently migrated down to our terrace and this is where we can drink our vermouth and listen to the swifts. It’s nice to have a comfortable place to sit for the first time and I love the cushions – aren’t they nice? She probably made them like so many other things in the house.

But I’d so much rather she was still upstairs waving from the window and calling me in for a chat

Time to move on after Christmas

~ Kate Wilson ~ 6 Comments

 

By now I am usually ready to let go of Christmas – I want all the decorations to be gone and the Christmas carols to stop going around in my head.

New Year was a more exciting celebration in Scotland but I can’t quite change the topic until I write a little more about my first Christmas in Catalunya.
I was fortunate to be invited to join a Catalan family for the celebrations. On Christmas Eve I beat my first Tió and received a gift from its rear end.
On Christmas Day I had a wonderful meal – eating the traditional Sopa de Nadal but, as a semi vegetarian, turning down the meat course of pigs muzzle, pigs feet, pigs tail and other, I’m sure delicious, things. Of course there was cava too and lots of turronsThe following day was St Esteve Day – the feast of St Stephen. People asked me the origin of the name Boxing Day and I had no answer – anyone know? As there is someone called Esteve in the family it was his saints day which meant more presents for him and another special meal with all the family. This time I was helping to organise it so I contributed traditional British mince pies with brandy butter and cream and we all ate more turrons and drank more cava.
On January 5th it is the eve of El Dia de Reis and in the streets there was a large procession of floats with three kings seated on high, drawn by wonderful green John Deere tractorsChildren and their parents lined the streets armed with umbrellas (it was raining hard) which they turned upside down to catch the sweets which were thrown from the floatsOn Epiphany, or Kings,  more presents are given, to be found in your shoes which you leave out the night before. Then another family dinner which ends with the wonderful cake called Tortell de ReisInside this there are hidden two objects – a small king figure and a bean. If you get the bean you must pay for the cake and if you get the king you are crowned for the day.