How could she know that her new boyfriend had cost us a night’s sleep?
In summer, the sun seemed to increase in size, hanging longer and longer in the sky, bleaching all the colour from the mountainsides.
During the day, sensible people hid from the fierce rays in the shadowy depths of their cottages. Cats and dogs were rarely seen, skulking in dark hiding places away from the punishing heat. Our chickens tucked themselves away in their hen-house and dozed, not becoming active again until the sun lowered in the sky. But as the sun sank, the villagers spilled out of their cottages and the streets became lively with gossip and the Ufarte’s Flamenco guitar. Cats magically reappeared and dogs loped round the village, stopping to sniff and water every corner.
Little Tabs, our semi-wild cat, usually whiled away the days asleep in the shade of our jasmine. Her beautiful stripy coat was a perfect camouflage. The sun could only penetrate the leafy depths of the jasmine in slashes, and Little Tabs’s stripes blended perfectly. Only her emerald eyes, unblinking, gave her position away.
She’d never brought her kittens back to see us and we wondered if they had survived. I imagined how big they’d grown, how they would look: one with silver stripes, the other a clone of its mother.
Joe and I had been working on the house and had some rubble to dispose of. The village had several dumpsters, one conveniently parked in our street. Joe raised the lid of the dumpster and I lifted my bucket of rubble, preparing to tip it in. In that split second, my brain registered something strange. I halted and stared into the depths of the dumpster. Stiff and still, Little Tabs lay there, her emerald eyes wide open and lifeless. Her burnished stripes had lost their shine and were already covered in a film of dust.
I was inconsolable. How had she died? Who had thrown her in the dumpster? Had she been shot? Poisoned? Why would anyone do that?
With heavy hearts we trudged back to our house, Joe with his arm around my shaking shoulders. He was upset, but more philosophical than I was. We both knew that village cats were not highly rated by the villagers, and it was not unusual for children to use cats as target practice. True, we couldn’t find any wounds on her, but the stark fact was that Little Tabs would no longer sit on our window-sill, peering into the kitchen and gently tapping on the glass.
“I shall miss her so much,” I sighed. “She was always in our garden. I can’t believe this has happened again. After that other time when we thought she was dead, and now she really is.” Miserably, I turned to gaze out of the kitchen window, remembering how Little Tabs used to sit there with her nose pressed to the glass.
What happened next was a minor miracle. Instead of Little Tabs’s face, two almost-grown kitten faces gazed back at me - one silver, the other a perfect replica of its mother.
We named one Sylvia because of her colour, and the other Gravy, I have no idea why.
Gravy and Sylvia
By day they slept in the shade of our jasmine, always together, often entwined. And by night they played in the garden or prowled the village. Like their mother before them, they grew quite tame, but never actually allowed us to touch them. And so, through her daughters, Little Tabs lived on.
As the temperatures soared, we, like the Spanish, rarely ventured outside in the middle of the day. Our house, built in the typical Andalucian style, had metre-thick walls and small shuttered windows, perfect for keeping the interior cool even when outdoors was a furnace.
One hot weekend I needed a letter posted urgently, so I sent Joe to the mailbox in the square.
A few minutes later he returned, letter in one hand, a bulging, heavy-looking plastic carrier bag in the other. He looked hot and bothered.
“You’re back already?” I said, surprised. “What’s in the bag, and why didn’t you post my letter?”
“Paco saw me pass by and gave me all these melons,” Joe explained. “They’re so heavy I thought I’d bring them home first, before posting the letter.” He mopped his forehead and once more braved the hot street, letter in hand.
Ten minutes passed and Joe still hadn’t returned. I stuck my head out of the window, glanced up and down the street and saw Joe approaching, this time weighed down by a big cardboard box.
“More melons,” he panted, sweat dripping off his nose. “Antonio, in the end house, called me in. I told him we already had loads, but he insisted.”
“What are we going to do with all these melons?” I asked. “And did you post my letter?”
Joe rolled his eyes ceiling-ward. “No, let me just catch my breath first and have a cold drink, then I’ll try again.”
I dragged the box of melons into the kitchen, and Joe set off for the third time, this time successfully posting the letter and returning empty-handed.
“Well, the chickens are in for a treat,” I said as we sat at the kitchen table, eyeing the melon mountain. “There’s no way we can eat all those melons ourselves.”
Just then, the phone rang. It was Marcia, from the village store.
“Come to my shop,” said Marcia. “I have a surprise for you.”
Obediently, in the searing heat, we retraced Joe’s steps back down to the square, to find Marcia waiting for us, hairpins escaping from her silver hair. There was a large plastic crate on the counter.
“Melons!” she smiled, patting the crate with a gnarled hand. “Melons for you, from my son. He grew them himself. The English supermarkets are buying all the melons he grows. Imagine! Your friends in England are probably eating my son’s melons grown here in El Hoyo!”
Melons from Marcia
We put in an Oscar-deserving performance of thanking her, and, gasping and sweating, lugged the crate home. Then we feasted on melons. The chickens feasted on melons. Judith, Mother and all our English friends in the next village feasted on melons. Even the men who delivered our new fridge went away with melons, and we still had plenty left...
There are many advantages to living in an isolated area. The peace is priceless and soothes the soul. One feels far removed from the turbulence of the town, the traffic and the people. Regrettably, there are disadvantages, too. No shops just around the corner for last minute necessities. No banks to quickly visit for bill-paying. We all loathe receiving bills, but thankfully, direct debits make paying bills easy, although not necessarily pain-free. That hot summer, Joe and I discovered the pitfalls of direct debits and dealing with big companies.
10 Battles
Roast Pumpkin with Chili and Honey
When we first moved to El Hoyo, there were only three telephones in the village. Marcia had one, Paco and Carmen-Bethina another, and we had the third. It was then 2004, before mobile phone signals had reached our village. We felt fortunate even to have a land-line because at least it allowed access to the Internet.
Now it was the summer of 2009. Construction had started on the dreaded new apartment block that we called The Monstrosity. New telephone poles were erected, cables stretching and connecting to each apartment. So, the 21st century was finally going to reach El Hoyo?
Long ago, we’d sorrowfully accepted that living up a remote Spanish mountain meant that broadband, or any kind of speedy Internet access, was an avenue of pleasure denied to us. We implored the mighty Telefonica, but they were very firm, stating that broadband was not an option for us. We had no choice. We could have a painful, grindingly slow dial-up Internet connection, or nothing. Perhaps benefits would come with The Monstrosity after all, like broadband?
Dial-up was annoying but we made the best of it. We couldn’t watch anything on YouTube or download much, but it was better than nothing. Joe and I were reliant on the Internet. It enabled us to keep in touch with friends and family, and keep track of our finances.
I’d had a shock a few months earlier, when I was online routinely checking the balance in our bank account.
What? Was the computer screen playing tricks on my eyes? Our telephone bill had leaped from the usual hefty-but-acceptable 90 euros to the totally-ridiculous-astronomical-definitely-no
t-acceptable sum of 880 euros. So we dialed Telefonica and asked for the English-speaking Helpdesk in order to lodge our complaint.
“We’ve made hardly any calls,” Joe said pleasantly. “Our usual bill is approximately 90 euros. And we’ve been charged 880 euros! That’s enough to buy a small car, haha! There’s obviously been a mistake.”
“Hmm... I’ll just check on our computer... (long pause) No. No mistake,” said Telefonica. “I can see you changed your Plan. You used to have the 24/7 Internet Plan, and you changed it. Now you are being charged by the minute every time you go online.”
“WHAT? Charged by the minute? But we haven’t changed anything! We didn’t change our Plan!”
Twenty minutes later, Joe and Telefonica were still arguing, and Joe was getting precisely nowhere. His blood pressure was sky-high.
“As an act of goodwill, I will refund you 100 euros,” said Telefonica magnanimously.
Joe gave up but I was furious. Seething, I phoned the Helpdesk again. I was livid, and Telefonica got both barrels. There was a long, long pause, and finally they agreed. We had been charged far too much. It was a mistake, and we were refunded.
Satisfied, and more than a little smug that we’d won the battle, we forgot all about it until a couple of months later when Joe and I stared at the computer screen in horror and disbelief. They’d done it again! Telefonica had seen fit to help themselves to the funds in our bank account for the second time! This time, our usual 90 euro telephone bill had swollen to a whopping 1,011 euros.
After I’d scraped Joe off the ceiling, he dialed the Helpdesk again.
“You’ve made another mistake,” he said between gritted teeth.
“No mistake,” said Telefonica breezily. “I can see from the computer what has happened. You changed your Plan. You used to have the 24/7 Internet Plan, and you changed it. Now you are being charged by the minute every time you go online.”
“BUT WE HAVEN’T CHANGED ANYTHING! WE DIDN’T CHANGE OUR PLAN!”
It was déjà vu, but eventually we got it sorted. Telefonica refunded our money and issued the normal 90 euro bill. But now we watched our bank balance like neurotic hawks.
The third time was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In July, Telefonica helped themselves to 530 euros out of our bank account. By now the Telefonica Helpdesk was on speed-dial and Joe was bellowing down the telephone wire like an enraged wildebeest. The telephone poles in the valley trembled.
“You’ve done it AGAIN! You’ve ROBBED our bank account! Our telephone bill cannot possibly be 530 euros! Why do we have to go through this fiasco every time?”
“Please wait one minute and I will check for you. (Long, long, long pause) “Ah, now I can see what has happened - it’s quite clear. You have changed your Internet Plan. You switched from the 24/7 Plan to the Pay by the Minute Plan.”
Joe turned purple and a vein in his forehead throbbed. “I DIDN’T! I’ve changed NOTHING!” he shouted. “It’s YOUR mistake and this is the THIRD time this has happened!”
“But Mr Joe, nothing in this life is free,” said Telefonica, affronted. “You changed your Internet Plan.”
Many phone-calls later, Telefonica grudgingly agreed we’d been overcharged, refunded our money and issued the normal 90 euro bill. We phoned our bank and got the direct debit stopped. We researched online and found another company, an alternative to Telefonica, one that didn’t tell us that we lived in a far too isolated spot to receive broadband. (Amazingly, it was British Telecom, not a company I remember with much affection.)
But, hurrah! BT were offering us unlimited broadband, a router and 400 free minutes calling time to anywhere in Europe for less than Telefonica were charging us for dial-up.
The changeover was painless and transformed Joe and me back into happy bunnies. Happy that we finally had broadband instead of the dreadful dial-up, and happy that we’d successfully severed all links with Telefonica.
Result! The telephone poles in the valley relaxed.
Except that later we discovered that Telefonica and BT are one and the same company. Hey-ho. Nevertheless, we had no further trouble.
Unfortunately, that self-satisfied smug feeling Joe and I enjoyed after having conquered the mighty Telefonica didn’t last. Soon after, we had another run-in with a huge company that left us feeling rather ashamed.
Living so far from town, we were forced to keep shopping trips to a minimum. Once a month we shopped at the Carrefour Hypermarket and filled several trolleys with industrial-sized quantities of everything we needed, like toilet rolls in packs of 32, gallons of longlife milk and big 500 gram catering drums of instant coffee. Anything overlooked was topped up from shops and smaller supermarkets in neighbouring villages.
One morning I prised off the lid of a recently opened coffee tin and was appalled. The coffee was clearly contaminated. Fluff, bits of dirt and debris mingled with the coffee granules.
“Eww... That’s disgusting!” I said, pulling a face and pushing the coffee drum away.
“What’s the matter with it?” asked Joe and peered inside. “Eww... That’s revolting! We’re taking that back. Carrefour can’t sell us coffee like that and get away with it!”
I knew he was reliving the Telefonica battle and would not let this incident pass. So we took the drum of coffee back and Joe plonked it down on the Customer Care counter. The Carrefour lady looked faintly surprised and asked how she could help.
“Take the lid off and look inside,” said Joe. “Your company should be ashamed of itself selling stuff in that condition!”
The lady used a letter-opener to remove the lid which clattered on the counter. She peeped inside.
“Eww...” she said, recoiling and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That’s horrible!”
“Exactly!” said Joe, standing tall, triumph in his voice. “It’s full of rubbish and all sorts of stuff. It’s unusable! And these big tins of coffee are very expensive.”
“I’m so sorry,” said the lady. “Leave it with me. I will give you a voucher to replace it, and I’ll have it sent back to the supplier. They’ll carry out tests and find out what is wrong with it. Leave me your name and address, and I’ll be in touch.”
“Well, that told them!” said Joe as we drove home. “I wasn’t going to let them get away with that!” I didn’t point out that the lady had been more than helpful, and that she had agreed with everything we had said.
Three weeks later, a large parcel arrived for us on the fish van. True to her word, the nice Carrefour lady had followed up the case of the contaminated coffee and had written us a letter. It was written in perfect English:
Esteemed customers,
I have sent the tin of coffee back to the suppliers and asked them to run tests on it. They have now replied and say that although they cannot exactly identify the cause, they agree that the coffee was severely sub-standard and should not have been on sale. They assure me that they are making massive enquiries to find out how your coffee was contaminated and are double-checking to make sure no other similar batches exist. They are very grateful that you returned the drum of coffee allowing them to research the problem.
On the behalf of Carrefour, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused and hope you will accept the gifts enclosed.
We look forward to serving you in our store in the future.
Yours sincerely,
Antonia María García
Customer Care Supervisor
We tore open the parcel. Inside were two more drums of coffee, a tin of Luxury Wholemeal Chocolate cookies, some After Dinner mints and a stack of vouchers to use in the supermarket.
“Well!” said Joe. “That was nice of them. You see, you shouldn’t just accept shoddy goods or poor treatment from these big companies. You have to fight for your rights.”
That should have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t.
A week later, two identical royal princesses were seated at our kitchen table scoffing the last of our Luxury Who
lemeal Chocolate cookies washed down by glasses of milk. Tiaras sparkled in their dark hair. I filled the kettle, took the drum of coffee off the shelf and prepared to spoon some into Joe’s and my coffee mugs.
“Oh, I would not use that!” whispered Princess #1 loudly to her royal sister.
“Eww... No! That is all dirty!” agreed Princess #2, pulling a face.
I froze. The twins knew nothing of our coffee complaint story, so why were they discussing the state of the coffee? I swung round.
“I heard that,” I said. “Why? Why shouldn’t I use this coffee?”
“Well...” said Princess #1, after a hesitation. “Our brother, Prince Jorge knocked the tin off the shelf with his football.”
“And the lid came off...” added Princess #2.
“And the coffee spilled everywhere!”
“But we found your dustpan and brush and we cleaned it all up.”
“We brushed everywhere, right into the corners, just like Mama showed us.”
“You mean ‘The Queen’,” Princess #2 corrected her royal twin.
“Yes, we cleaned up really nicely, just like The Queen showed us at home.” Princess #1 paused, waiting expectantly for the praise.
“And what happened to the coffee you swept up?” I asked at last, but my heart was filled with dread. I already knew the answer.
“Oh, we put it all back into the tin,” chorused the princesses. “Do not worry, Tía Veeky, we did not waste a bit!”
El Hoyo is high in the mountains, many kilometres from the nearest big town. One may think it too isolated, or too high for the Spanish passion for sport to affect anyone much, but one would be mistaken.
Whatever the weather, insane, dedicated cyclists pedaled their way up the steep, winding mountain roads. Dressed in stretchy multicoloured Lycra, their muscles screaming with effort, they perspired their way uphill. Joe and I overtook them in our jeep, but on the downward stretch, the bicycles sailed past us with ease.
Two Old Fools - Olé! Page 7