Two Old Fools in Turmoil

by Victoria Twead

  Joe and I had discussed our travel arrangements. For me, it was easy. All I needed to do was board a flight from Almería airport to Sydney, where Karly and Cam would pick me up.

  For Joe, it would be tougher. He didn’t want to be without a car in the UK, and decided that he would drive. The plan was that he would drop me off at the airport, then continue up through Spain to Bilbao, where he would board a ferry and cross to England.

  Our car was going to be tested. It was an elderly vehicle and had never given us any trouble, but was this marathon journey asking too much of it?

  “The other thing that worries me,” said Joe, “is that you usually do the navigating for me. What if I get lost and miss the ferry?”

  So we decided to invest in a Sat Nav, the sort that fixes to the dashboard. Joe loves gadgets and was in his element. He opened the box and started fiddling right away.

  “I’ve chosen Jane,” he said.

  “Jane?”

  “Yes, the voice on my new Sat Nav. I’d rather have Jane telling me what to do than George.”

  “I think we’d better test it, don’t you?”

  “Good idea, let’s use it the next time we drive to the Enchanted Pool.”

  It was a sensible plan.

  We climbed into the car and Joe, manual in hand, tapped in our destination, then Start.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again, to no avail.

  “Oh, that’s just typical!” said Joe. “I’ve been sold a mute.”

  “Have you turned the volume on?”

  “Oh. Righty-ho. It’s on now.”

  “Turn back where possible,” said Jane.

  “Steady on, old girl, we haven’t got out of the garage yet,” said Joe.

  “Turn back where possible,” said Jane.

  “Gosh, she’s feisty, isn’t she?”

  I rolled my eyes. I would sit back and allow this embryo relationship between Joe and Jane to develop. After all, they would soon be spending many hours together.

  Once we had reversed out of the garage, Jane got into her stride and directed us correctly out of the valley and onto the main road. All was well.

  “She’s doing fine, isn’t she?” commented Joe. “And doesn’t she have a deliciously posh voice? I think we’re going to get on nicely together.”

  I didn’t reply. I was going to reserve judgement. I would wait to see how Jane and Joe coped with the simple journey ahead.

  Spicy Minced Pork

  Picadillo

  This recipe is very simple, but to create the best taste, it does need plenty of time to marinade and soak up those flavours.

  Ingredients (serves 2)

  250g (9oz) pork mince

  3 or 4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled but lightly crushed

  ¼ to ½ teaspoon of hot or smoky paprika

  ½ to 1 teaspoon of sweet paprika

  Salt and pepper

  Olive oil for frying

  Method

  Drizzle olive oil into a frying pan and add the garlic cloves.

  Fry over a medium heat until the garlic skins are crispy.

  Peel the garlic and then mash it with a pinch of salt.

  Mix the garlic with the mince and add the two types of paprika.

  Keep stirring and mixing until well blended.

  Put into a bowl, cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours.

  Remove the bowl from the fridge about half an hour before you are ready to cook, so that it rises to room temperature.

  Drizzle olive oil into a large frying pan and add the mince, stirring until it’s cooked.

  Serve with rice, and add two fried eggs on the top (optional).

  24

  SMALL CAR, BIG LORRY

  We had driven so often to the Enchanted Pool that the route was as familiar to us as the layout of our house. We just needed to follow the only tarred road over the mountains, then down the other side to join a motorway for a short distance, and finally to turn into the village.

  Easy.

  So we were both a little taken aback when Jane, the Sat Nav lady, spoke again.

  “In one hundred and fifty metres,” she said, “turn right.”

  Joe was negotiating a particularly tight hairpin bend at the time.

  “What is she talking about?” I asked. “There’s no right turn here!”

  “Yes, there is!” said Joe, swinging the wheel right, and turning the car down a track I had never noticed before.

  “This isn’t the way!” I protested.

  “Well, perhaps it is! Perhaps it’s a shortcut we never knew about. We ought to give Jane a chance. After all, she has GPS on her side. She’s receiving signals from satellites orbiting the earth, you know.”

  Joe’s confidence in Jane was definitely not shared by me, and his passion for shortcuts was a personal dread of mine. I don’t believe any ‘shortcut’ he ever took actually shortened our journey. On the contrary, it often doubled it, or worse, got us hopelessly lost.

  The track was boulder-strewn and didn’t look as though anybody or anything had ventured down it for years.

  “Joe! Seriously! This isn’t a shortcut!”

  The car was bumping along so violently that we were being thrown about. To one side was impenetrable undergrowth, and on the other side was a steep drop down the mountainside. To my horror, the path almost petered out altogether, continuing as a mere goat track.

  “Joe! Stop! This is ridiculous.”

  “Turn back where possible,” said Jane.

  “Now you’re both ganging up on me,” said Joe, applying the brakes, but I wasn’t amused.

  “How on earth are we going to get back to the road?”

  “Turn back where possible,” said Jane.

  “We can’t turn here, there isn’t space,” I said, peering at the thicket on one side and the drop on the other.

  “Then we’ll have to reverse,” said Joe, scratching himself. “If you get out, you can direct me.”

  “Turn back where possible,” said Jane.

  “Oh, be quiet!” I said crossly, getting out of the car. “It was you who got us into this mess in the first place.”

  I didn’t enjoy directing Joe back to the road. I was convinced he would drive off the edge of the cliff, but we finally made it to safety. By the time I climbed back into the car, I was hot and bothered, and looking forward to my swim even more than usual.

  As we drove down the mountain, we realised that Jane had a foible. Hairpin bends confused her.

  “That’s women for you,” observed Joe. “I’ve never understood how they think. I don’t mind. Now that I’m aware of her little flaw, I’ll be more careful.”

  We eventually reached the outskirts of the village.

  “Cross the roundabout and take the third exit,” said Jane.

  To my annoyance, Joe ignored her and sailed all the way round the roundabout.

  “Route recalculation,” said Jane, then repeated herself. “Cross the roundabout and take the third exit.”

  “What did you do that for?” I asked. “Why did you drive all the way round again?”

  “Oh, I just love hearing her say ‘cross’. She sounds like royalty, she pronounces it crawss.”

  I shook my head. Those two deserved each other.

  I now began to pack in earnest and needed to donate our superfluous belongings to anybody who wanted them. I was horrified at how much we had accumulated over the years.

  Charity shops were not common in our part of Spain, but charity bins were lined up on the pavement on the street outside the Enchanted Pool. They would make the job of clearing the house much easier for me.

  Unworn shoes, unwanted clothes, towels, sheets, blankets and all manner of surplus items were pushed into the bins. The economic crisis had hit Spain hard and I hoped that the items would be of use to someone.

  Joe did his best to help, but the slightest exertion made him breathless.

  “I wish I didn’t feel so useless,” he said many times.


  “You’re not!” I protested. “Your help is invaluable.”

  And it was true. He had now taken over almost all the cooking and shopping duties, leaving me free to sort the house, pack and write. As long as he could be left alone to do things at his own pace, he could cope.

  The next big date in my diary was the day the international removals company would arrive.

  I had chosen a company that offered a packing service. Then, all I needed to do was choose which of our possessions we wanted to ship to Australia, for the men to pack.

  I gave over the dining room for this, carefully stacking our belongings in piles. I also had to make an inventory of everything, another time-consuming task.

  I thought long and hard about each item before including it in the To Be Shipped pile, but some decisions were hard. We all have our favourite kitchen items, but most are replaceable. I tried to be strong, but I confess my special bottle opener, a few beloved pans, some bowls and favourite glasses found themselves on the To Be Shipped pile. Of course there were clothes, the portrait of Great Aunt Elsa, and other precious personal belongings that had to be included, too.

  Just to be safe, Joe scanned all our photograph albums, which took several days, particularly as he kept calling me over to look at old photos that reminded us of past adventures and brought back memories of places and people we had forgotten.

  As the day of the removal men’s arrival neared, I began to worry.

  “Will they find us?” I asked Joe.

  “Of course they will! They’ll use Sat Nav.”

  “Well, I hope their system is more reliable than Jane or they may drive off the side of a mountain. I wonder how big the truck will be?”

  “Not very big. They know we don’t have much to ship. And we did warn them that our streets are narrow.”

  “I hope they understand our Spanish.”

  “Oh, Vicky, stop worrying. It will all be fine.”

  But it didn’t stop me consulting Google Translate at length, checking how to say “the corners are very tight” and “if the truck is too wide, you won’t be able to get out of the cab.”

  On the day of their arrival, the telephone rang, making me jump.

  “Hello, is that Mrs Twead?” asked a polite English voice.

  “It is.”

  “This is Craig, from LetUsMoveIt. We’re at the bottom of the mountain. We estimate we’ll be with you in twenty to thirty minutes.”

  “Oh good, thank you!”

  I turned to Joe.

  “They’re English!” I said. “They’re coming up the mountain now.”

  “There you see? What did I tell you? Nothing to worry about. It is an English company after all.”

  “I know, but I fully expected the drivers to be Spanish.”

  “Let’s take a coffee up to the roof terrace and watch them drive into the valley.”

  “Great idea.”

  We were sitting up there, surveying the village and watching the road, when the telephone rang again.

  “Hello, Mrs Twead, sorry we’re a little late, but we hadn’t factored in all the tight hairpin bends. We’re still about fifteen minutes away.”

  “Oh, that’s perfectly okay. Um, our street is very narrow and the corners are tight. Will that be a problem? How big is your truck?”

  “Could you get a London bus into your street?”

  My jaw dropped. A London bus? No way would a vehicle that size negotiate our street.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said weakly.

  “Well, not to worry, I’ll phone you again when we reach El Hoyo.”

  The phone went dead.

  “It’s the size of a London bus!” I said to Joe. “I told you it was going to be a problem!”

  Eventually a huge, white vehicle crested the mountain and turned down the winding road into our valley.

  “It’s a monster!” I squeaked. “That’s never going to get into our street.”

  In silence, we watched it descend. Neither of us spoke.

  “I think I’ve had an idea!” said Joe suddenly.

  The lorry was approaching the little stone bridge that spanned the gully at the entrance to the village. It stopped. Before Joe could explain his idea, the phone rang again.

  “Craig here.”

  “Hello Craig, we can see you. We’re on our roof terrace.”

  “Right. We don’t want to risk crossing the bridge, it doesn’t look that strong.”

  “Yes, I understand… What are we going to do?”

  Joe grabbed the phone from me and took charge.

  “Craig? We can see it’s impossible for you to drive into the village. Even if you managed to get up our street, you’d never be able to reverse out again in a thing that size. If you’d like to wait there, we’ll come and collect you in our car. There isn’t much to pack and we can use the car to ferry it back to the truck.”

  I didn’t hear Craig’s reply, but Joe looked satisfied.

  “We’re going to pick them up,” he said to me.

  And that’s exactly what we did. We drove past the square, over the little bridge and drew up alongside the lorry. Two men climbed out of the cab, one bald, the other with long hair pulled back into a pony-tail. We all shook hands and stood talking for a moment. Then the men opened the back doors and lifted out piles of flat folded cardboard boxes and rolls of bubble-wrap and brown paper.

  We were in business.

  Almost.

  With hindsight, I shouldn’t have accompanied Joe. There wasn’t enough space in our small car for two removal men, one driver, one nosy woman and all those boxes and rolls of bubble-wrap.

  “No problem!” I said, always keen to add steps to my daily quota. “I’ll walk back.”

  But the men wouldn’t hear of it. Tony was slightly smaller than Craig, and he generously volunteered to lie down in the boot of the car on top of the bubble-wrap rolls, with the boot lid wide open. He lay on his back with one leg in the air, preventing the boot from slamming shut.

  “It’s not too bad,” he said. “The bubble-wrap’s quite comfy.”

  I didn’t envy him the ride, even though it wasn’t far. It was a typically hot day, and perspiration was already running off Joe’s bald head.

  “Drive slowly,” I said, sitting alongside Joe as he started the engine. “We don’t want to bounce Tony out.”

  “In one hundred metres, turn right,” announced Jane.

  “Oh, be quiet, Jane, not now,” muttered Joe, switching her off.

  We drove at a snail’s pace over the bridge and round the square. Pancho, the mayor, was chatting with Geronimo and Marcia on the shop’s doorstep. All three looked up, when they saw our car approaching. Normally we would have stopped for a chat.

  “I can’t stop now,” Joe said to me, “not with Tony in the boot.”

  Without increasing or decreasing his speed, we crawled past the mayor, Geronimo and Marcia whose eyes followed us in astonishment.

  “Just smile and wave,” said Joe, setting the example.

  Obediently, I raised my hand to wave as did Craig behind me. The car was travelling at walking pace, and I felt like royalty must feel on a tour, waving to the crowds.

  Clearly puzzled, Pancho, Geronimo and Marcia waved back politely.

  “Friendly lot,” commented Craig.

  I found it deeply embarrassing to creep past without stopping or explaining why we were driving so slowly. In my side mirror, I could see Marcia, Geronimo and the mayor gaping after us, then their jaws drop and hands stop in mid-wave as they caught sight of Tony lying in the boot with one leg in the air, propping open the lid.

  It seemed like forever before we reached home.

  “I’m terribly sorry about the uncomfortable journey,” I said to Tony, handing him an ice-cold drink.

  “Oh, it wasn’t too bad,” he said. “Actually, it reminded me of the time when we were in the Swiss alps, and we opened a trunk and found a body…”

  I stared at him, eyes wide.

&nb
sp; “Come on,” interrupted Craig, clearly the senior of the two. “No time to waste, we have to be in Malaga later today.”

  “I’ll tell you later,” said Tony, and began to wrap Great Aunt Elsa in bubble wrap before pushing her into a box.

  Joe and I left them to work in peace, but I couldn’t help wondering about the body in the Swiss alps. I’m a writer. I treasure such stories. They are exactly the sort of tales that inspire my fiction series.

  Later, I took the pair another drink, intending to raise the subject again. Tony was beavering away on his own, Craig having left the room briefly.

  “Gosh, you’re doing well!” I said, striking up a conversation. “I’m sorry there’s not much space for you to work in. This house is really quirky.”

  “Oh, there’s plenty of space,” said Tony. “You should see some places we’ve had to work in. Once, we were in a château near Paris, and the owner, who was a French Count or something, showed us into his library. We thought we’d be packing books, but he reached for a hidden lever, and a whole wall moved. There was a secret passage behind it! Well, we were a bit surprised but he led the way and to our amazement...”

  “Tony! I told you, we don’t have time to chatter,” said Craig, coming back into the room. “You are paid to pack, not yak.”

  “Sorry, boss,” muttered Tony.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, “it was my fault.”

  I joined Joe outside under the vine, feeling frustrated.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  “I know they’ve got a job to do, but Tony has these brilliant stories, and I want to hear the end of them. But Craig won’t let him talk.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Well, it’s driving me crazy. He started telling me about a body in a trunk in the Swiss alps, then about a secret passage in a French castle. I want to hear what happened!”