Castillo de Locubin - Festival of Cherries

Famous for its Cherry Festival, which is held during the first week or so of June every year, Castillo de Locubin is around a 15 minute drive from Alcala la Real and is a village, quite a large one.

I have only been once, which was earlier this week, to see a friend who lives there. She's English and she wrote and told me to meet her in the square by the mosaic fountain. She obviously assumed this was the best place and one that would be easily found. She should have been right.

Castillo is a maze of steep, narrow streets and has no real centre to it. It also has at least three entrances from the main road and somehow, I managed to miss seeing the square as I entered the village. I wasn't concerned as I knew I could ask - which I did - for directions to the main square, or la plaza mayor. And I followed instructions and buried the Volvo deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of ever-narrowing streets, only just avoiding burying the front end into house walls, pedestrians and parked cars. And eventually I reached la plaza mayor - with the sinking realisation that this was not the place.

After a long chat with an old man, practically interrogating on where there might be another plaza with a mosaic fountain to no avail, I decided to go to find my friend's house - I hadn't been before but I remember her telling me the name of the street and as it's up for sale, I also have seen photos of the outside - perhaps she'd given up on me and gone home by now. Of course it would have been helpful to have had a phone but I didn't - I don't have a Spanish mobile (yet!) I saw the house and decided to park up nearby and walk around til I found her or found the 'square' that she meant.

For about half an hour, I trudged up and down the streets of Castillo, asking occasionally for a square with a fountain and being directed several times back to la plaza mayor. I decided to ask for a phone booth, conscious by now that my friend would have called Cesar and he would assume that I had 'crashed the car again' - and was directed to the park, right at the bottom of the village. And you've guessed it, as I rounded a corner, there in front of me was a big square with a mosaic fountain to one side - and my friend coming towards me.

All this is a pre-amble, but I feel better for it. I have quite good navigational skills and living with Cesar, I need them, though he still never entirely trusts me and wastes lots of time asking other people. My only consolation is that he doesn't listen to them either and will quite often drive off and do the opposite of what they've said. He can't help it, it's something innate in him.
(This is possibly quite a hormonal-driven piece of writing - life's like that sometimes.)

Where was I - oh yes, more justification required for me being lost in Castillo for 40 minutes - it was the use of the English word 'square' that did it - should have been 'park'. To the people of Castillo, a big square park in the most central position in the village, with a mosaic fountain, still could not be described as la plaza mayor - not even to a lost English woman, and who instead sent her to a small, insignificant place at the top of a hill that did even look like a main 'square'. It wasn't even square, it was round!

I'll stop.

And move on to my second visit to the village, which was last night for the Cherry Festival. Which was a cheerful, festive event just as it should have been - with lots of cherries, cherry goodies, gazpacho with cherries (delicious) and a big cherry cake that was shared out for all to grab at.
(And we found a parking space a (cherry) stone's throw from the 'main square' as I now know all the streets in the village!)

Stalls and stalls selling crates of cherries - this display is of the prize winners - makes my mouth water all over again.

Competition entries for cherry recipes - there were several that we thought we'd rather like to try - but these were display only!




The giant cake that was shared out - another story in itself - at 11.30pm. We still have a lot to learn about queueing and the sharp elbows of the older people of Castillo... let's leave it at that!





There were lots of stalls selling the usual collection of toys, balloons, plastic dolls and yapping dogs - at ridiculous prices, really stupidly inflated and outrageous - and both Cesar and I were really annoyed to find out that one of the stall holders had been rude to Ruy, who was looking at the things whilst we were sitting down by the fountain - had actually told him to go away!! And as I'm having a warts and all sort of post here, I'm including my extreme distaste for people who have stalls full of things designed to make children want them - and then wave those children away whose parents are not near enough to hear their requests to buy. Ruy was a waste of space to them and made to feel so - not on in my book.

But onward, ever onward!
 

Romy did not go without her cake!

And we all sampled lots of cherries - which were delicious.

And the party went on..

 And on...

For some!
Cesar swears he wanted to go dancing with me but by midnight, we had two exhausted children (those who'd been dancing the night before) and one who would rather not dance but be reading a book) - all asking to go home. So we left Castillo with its annual cherry party still in full flow - until next year.




P.S There's an edge to my writing here - or at least to me, as I am writing - and one of my labels is 'hormones' and just at this moment, whether you need to know or not, I am swamped by the little beasts and struggling to stay good tempered and patient. Writing about it and being honest helps.
I will now go and read the blogger whose blog goes by the name of 'Menopausal Musings'! Just so you know.

In Slough

I have often been to Slough - I used to live near there - in another beautifully named town of England - Staines (home of the delightful character, Ali G). Slough and Staines... and don't forget Bletchley, which always sounds like someone throwing up to me. Who thought of these names?

Now, where was I or rather, where am I? Well, for much of this week. I WAS in Slough, in the Slough of Despond to be exact. This is a place in Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress (but suits Slough the town pretty well too. Sorry if I offend any Sloughians (pronounced Sluffians?) but honestly, it was never one of my favourite places.)  Ah yes, the Slough of Despond - a bog that Christian has to cross in the allegorical tale. I'm not going to try and carry an allegory through this posting, only to say that I've had a bad week - we all have them from time to time - and I'm through it now and it does feel a bit like I've trekked through a bog.

Nothing bad has happened to me or to any of us, I'm glad to say. However, last week, Mateo and I heard some awful news from home which, although didn't directly involve anyone we know well, did upset us both and we shared many a hug and appreciated each other a bit more than usual. Then - and this is GOOD - Cesar received an email asking him to apply for funding for a year's post-doctoral research.... at an English University. Now, I say this is GOOD, because it's very good. The timing is mind-blowingly bad not helpful. (Neat way of saying what I really mean, thanks Natalie of the lovely Chickenblog fame!) And whilst it's good to be asked to apply - applying itself will not guarantee the funding. And the outcome of the application will not be known until next May. And he's applied.

So now we have what appears to be conflicting options:

• of finding the place in which to spend the rest of our lives together here in northern southern .. in Spain; linked to which is the logistics of finding a place to rent so we can house hunt at leisure; furnished or unfurnished to start with? checking out prices for hiring trucks for moving whatever furniture/belongings we would need to take with us; before new term starts or wait another school term? trying to predict weather forecasts for journeys; trying not to upset family who don't want us to move; 

• of facing the possibility that at least one (or maybe all of us) might need to move back to England for a period; how much of the above should we continue to pursue? should we stay here in the meantime; what would be best for the children; what if he gets the funding; what if he doesn't;

As an ENFP, I should relish these options - the changing landscape unfolding ahead of me, the countless options available to choose from! BUT!! I need to add a few factors that have tipped the balance.

I have discovered I have a deep-rooted aversion to driving our new car. The Volvo thing of my past obviously has a deep psychological hold. It was bad enough driving the Fiat again after the accident; then there was the collision on the first outing with the new one - I am feeling like a bit of a target around here! I have had some other minor calamities this week too.

The food situation needs a whole blog to itself. Needless to say, it's complicated. 7 people with rather different body clocks and timetables; children who don't relish lentils; beans or overcooked and vinegar-drenched vegetables; abuelos who consider food cooked by an English woman to be too foreign to even try; complicated cooking facilities, including limited oven usage. And whilst we usually eat extremely well - it's more by luck than management. Last week there must have been less luck, culminating in a number of less than successful dishes prepared by yours truly - nothing awful, just not greeted with any enthusiasm by (ungrateful) diners (grrr). And then, the hardly-ever used gas oven exploded as I was cooking on it, causing me to temporarily lose my hearing. Turns out that there was a cigarette lighter inside it which we hadn't noticed (hadn't checked for!) when we lit the oven. I guess that could have been worse - and my hearing is back OK now!

And the final additional skewing to my lovely life I put down to hormones. Lots of the little buggers. Whoremoans, as I like to call them. They rose up inside me, they turned me into a screaming harpy for several days, turned everything I touched into dross, set my mind awhirling into doom and gloom.......then upped and left! Just like that.

And we're back on track - and come what may in May, we are continuing our plans to rent a place in Granada and Cesar will be going down there - weather permitting - in the next week or so to view a few very interesting options. So, goodbye Slough - glad to have left you behind yet again.