The Cherry Orchard

Last week, as I read that the UK was having its first heatwave for absolutely ages, we were enduring the relatively chilly temperatures of about 17 degrees. As I dug out my thicker clothes and took my cardigan with me when I ventured out, I was put in mind of the old saying : 'Cast ne'er a clout til May is out', which made some sense to me when I lived in the notoriously fickle-weathered Pennine area of Yorkshire.

But here in Spain, there is a similar - nay even more prudent - saying - 'Hasta el 40 Mayo, no quites el sayo' - which means, 'until the 40th of May, don't take your coat off'.

Well, that makes it around the 9th or 10th June and it was pretty spot on.



This week, we've had temperatures of 36 degrees.
It's nearly killed off some of our new plants, which, because they went in rather late this year, haven't yet got themselves quite established.
We're holding out hope but there are a couple of trees that don't look too good.








I've had a week of feeling well below par myself, starting out with some sort of stomach bug which left me with chronic backache and a very stiff neck - though I'm really not sure how these two things are related. We are really lucky here in Alcala to have a wonderful masseuse at hand for all things painful. She's a most lovely English woman, married to a Dutchman, with many years experience in providing specialised treatment - often for sports injuries and to some pretty high-ranking sportsmen - when she lived in Majorca. (Go figure who.) She gave me some treatment yesterday and I felt so much better afterwards - I may have to go again next week too....

And I've been not 'bloglovin' recently. I've been concentrating on preparing students for their exams - indeed, those of them doing the Cambridge syllabus have now done the exams and I've no more classes with them. I've had some sleepless nights worrying (without any real reason) that if they don't pass it will be all my fault, though the other teacher and I have a pretty clear idea as to how it will go for each of them. But I'm obsessing a bit as my contact with them comes to an end.

I would have loved to have spent the last week of term having fun but tradition at the Academy has it that all the classes do exams in the last week. My youngest group have theirs on Monday and then, on their last day, after the first 20 minutes, their parents come in to see me to get their results and for me to give them their marks. I'd much rather sing songs and play games with them but they'll all be fine with the exam and we have all had a lot of fun this year - and goodness me, I'm very proud of them!

And on Friday - when the school term ends - a whole group of students taking the Trinity Syllabus have their Oral exam. What an end to the year. I'm very hopeful that some of them will get really good results and the nice thing is that we will know by the end of the day, which of them have passed. This  has been a lovely syllabus to teach, but as this is the first time the Academy has offered it - and the first time that Toni and I have taught it - there has been an enormous amount of work for us to do to ensure we've got it right. We still have a mountain of paperwork to complete before the end of Wednesday - so I have been a bit preoccupied. So much so that I've hardly read any blogs - so apologies if I've missed any of your lovely posts.

Now then, this post was going to be about our wonderful neighbour, Sergio. I wonder if I've already gone on too much about other things to start with him now? Especially as it's half-past midnight. Oh, what the heck - I'm here and I'm typing and the children are upstairs watching 'The Fellowship of the Ring' - again - and FR is working on the other computer.

Sergio lives just a little further along the road from our house, with his aged parents. He is the fount of all knowledge and I am so very glad we have got to know him.

Our relationship began early on - he walks his three handsome and huge dogs every day and passes all around the village, thus getting to know all the gossip. He has small pieces of land in various different places around the village, which seems the usual thing around here, so he pops up unexpectedly in front of us on nearly all our walks.

He calls us up to insist we come for a walk just now because the light is perfect to appreciate the views. He dragged FR off to buy tomato and pepper plants to put on his land as we'd decided not to plant on our land this year (lack of water and fencing - the latter a problem as the sheep and goats pass over our land - they've already eaten the potatoes we planted there!) He made the children go and pick wild strawberries the other day.




He is wonderful to talk to because he knows so much - I've found myself having conversations with him about things from archery (he has a hunting bow) to vets (he knows them all and which are the best). He is also full of advice - from cars to chorizo - even which dog food provides the best consistency of dog poo...!

My vocabulary has increased remarkably since I met Sergio.

Last week, he took FR and the children off to pick cherries from his cherry field - I say field as it isn't an orchard in that quintessentially 'English' orchard way - though I guess orchard would do really.
This year has been dreadful for the cherries as there was a late frost and so there is not a lot of fruit. He told us this week that it's not worth harvesting them for sale, so we should go and take what we want.






So this evening, we did just that.

We filled our bags and ate cherries from the branches.

It was clear that there was a problem this year as some trees had no fruit at all - but the odd one or two was laden and delicious.








It was no surprise when Sergio suddenly turned up on his motorbike. He told us the cherries would be even better in a couple of days but that it was due to rain on Tuesday and if it did, then the cherries would be ruined.

I wouldn't argue with Sergio - he's always right. I should have asked him if it was a cherry orchard, I guess. I will do that.

Cherry on the top

Following a telephone tip-off around 7pm yesterday, we piled into our car and drove to the top of a hill just outside Alcala la Real, where we found - just as promised - trees laden with cherries.

We picked and picked and hardly lightened the poor trees' loads - branches laden with ruby-red berries - most of our pickings went into a big bucket that we'd brought for the purpose, but rather a few went directly into our mouths. These were not just cherries. These were plump, juiciful, mouthwateringly delicious cherries - there was much 'mmmmm'ing and head-throwing back in pure pleasure at the taste.

After about an hour, with a bucket overflowing with fruit, we jumped back into the car and headed home.
We had picked more than 10 kilos of cherries!

Which is...

quite a lot of cherries

whichever way you look at them

FR and I set to to make some jam to ensure that none would go to waste. However, it was not a smooth operation at all. Problem number one came when we realised that all recipes insisted on using jam sugar, which is high in pectin but we couldn't find any here at our local supermarket - and as it was already after 9pm, there was no time to look elsewhere. Problem number two was that all the same recipes said to stone the cherries first using a cherry stoner as stoning cherries any other way can be extremely messy. We didn't have a cherry stoner. So, with a bit of casual logic, I thought we could cook the cherries first with their stones in, as the stones contained pectin (well, I think they do) and then we could strain the stones out when the cherries had softened. 

FR spent about an hour picking all the stones out - it was messy. Horribly messy. I didn't dare enter the kitchen and take a photograph or it could have been even messier. It was, of course, all my fault.

That bit done, we added sugar and lemon juice and set to boiling. One hour passed and no sign of setting. An hour and a half and still no thickening. We definitely lacked pectin. At 2 in the morning, we called it a day and bottled our cherry compote and went to bed. 

But I'm so glad we persevered because breakfast this morning......

was d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s!

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.