Sunsets and Olives 2: Back to Spain...... the madness continues!

by John Austin Richards

Alonzo is still babbling away to no-one in particular, when suddenly he stumps off, beckoning us to follow, to a different part of the courtyard, where we are confronted by a huge piece of apparatus, cast iron, maybe fifteen feet high and ten across, clearly a press of some sort. I saw something similar on the Somerset Levels in about 1971, on a school rugby trip, where having administered a hefty beating upon the local yokels, our rugby master Jack Allen, who legend had it once played for Bristol, directed the coach down a bumpy lane to a cider farm, where he proceeded to get us royally bladdered. To this day I can picture Jack with a pint glass wedged between his gums and his lips, gargling the first verse of ‘God Save the Queen’. Not going to happen today I imagine. The wussy Spanish don’t drink pints, right?

  The structure is basically a giant vertical screw set in a massive frame, with various wheels, cogs, circular raffia mats and a huge wooden bucket at the bottom. Olives have already been shoveled into the contraption, between the mats, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out what is happening next; someone, or something, needs to turn the screw. A donkey on a treadmill, perhaps? Wrong. Two ruddy-cheeked countrymen emerge dragging a huge wooden beam, which they thread through a corresponding hole on the apparatus, pausing for effect, milking the encouragement from the crowd, before taking up position either side, and applying their meagre weight, the gears grind and the beam creaks painfully in a clockwise direction.

  Nothing happens for a few seconds, when suddenly comes the sound of liquid dripping into the container. Olive oil, I assume, although at this rate it will take until next year’s harvest to get it finished. This is all so quaintly low-tech, and surely they have some form of mechanisation, bearing in mind there must be a million olive trees in the province? No idea. The old fellows are really cranking up the pace now, however, they might even overtake a few snails, before sundown, at this rate, the Spaniards are clapping, cheering, shouting encouragement, we are applauding politely, amid splashing and gurgling, and strangled oaths. Still no sign of the hole, though.

  The men pause for a breath, worn out as they are, the poor chaps, and Alonzo steps forward clutching a glass canister, which he holds beneath a tap in the wooden bucket, and after a few solemn words he turns the peg to release the first taster of this season’s crop of…Duckhams! It is green! Surely this isn’t olive oil? The stuff we buy, admittedly from the supermarket, is oil-coloured, clear, translucent, golden-brown. This substance is reminiscent of a cross between cat vomit, and nuclear waste. I have it figured out, however. This is just like when they change a barrel of beer, when about a gallon of froth and murky detritus has to be drawn off, before it can be enjoyed. They need to get rid of this cloudy, green rubbish, but do what with it? Oil some hinges? Paint it on some rusty gates? Feed it to the pigs? Pouring it down the drains is clearly not an option, unless they want to stain the Mediterranean the same colour as Shrek’s underpants. Jose digs me in the ribs. ‘First press.’ Well fine, but when’s it gonna start running clear?

  Alonzo holds up the glass to the heavens, and recites a monologue. What is this, a prayer? Is he offering thanks to the Almighty for the harvest, or cussing about the impurity. Are there harvest festivals in these parts? Are we off to church, next? I hope so, actually. Harvest was always one of my favourite times of the school year, taking a basket of fruit and veg for distribution to the old folks. ‘Thank the Lord for all His mercies, and these the first fruits of His hand.’ But what about the hole? Alonzo then directs us towards the trestle tables. ‘Now we see hole of olive-picker’ smiles Rafi, eyes aglow. ‘Plees, take you breath.’

  What is this? Does she mean hold my breath? Is there a vile stench about to be released? Will there be noxious fumes from the olive press? Wouldn’t surprise me, judging by the state of what has just trickled out. Or are the slices of cod humming? Looks like they might be, actually. Certainly not the freshest bits of fish I have ever seen. I glance at Chrissie who looks totally bewildered, and shrug. Her sense of smell is acute, especially when I am around, whereas personally my olfactory powers are not that great, due no doubt to having been whacked on the hooter once too often, in the scrum. Rafi clutches her loaf. ‘Plees, take you breath, we making hole of olive-picker!’

  ‘Bread, Rafi.’ Chrissie grins. ‘Bread, with a ‘d’.’

  Our dear friend is struggling however. ‘Breath’. Like many locals, she simply cannot enunciate a terminal ‘d’. Which explains why their capital city is often pronounced Madreeth. Like the famous football team, Ray-al Madreeth. Who knew? Giggling, she tries again. ‘OK, plees to take you breath-d, and make oyyo, like thees.’ And she starts plucking away at the centre of the loaf until a circular hollow has been excavated, maybe two inches in diameter. The locals have already performed this task, and the table is starting to resemble a battlefield in a bakery, with crumbs and lumps of dough strewn everywhere. So is this the infamous olive-pickers hole? Has everyone taken a day off work just for this charade? And what does the manky cod have to do with it? Quite honestly I could have stayed home and prodded my finger through one of Jose the Pan’s offerings. More satisfying, certainly, pretending to poke a hole in the twinkly-eyed lothario. I dig my fingers through the crust, which is easier said than done, actually, could do with my thing for getting stones out of horses hooves, but eventually I have a passable imitation of hole of olive-picker. Now what? This is rather like being back in primary school quite honestly. ‘Have you all made your holes, children?’ Or an episode of Blue Peter. ‘Here’s one I made earlier.’

  Jose certainly has. ‘Now, plees to take you assy-etty and fill you oyyo, like thees,’ and he proceeds to slop a generous measure of Duckhams onto his creation, completely filling the orifice, allowing it to soak in. This must be some form of satanic ritual. And what is the point of ruining a perfectly good loaf by slathering it with this slime? Why not slice it in half, butter both sides, whack in some ham, or cheese, or both, and bring out the Branston? And what is he doing with it now? Oh. My. God. He is eating it. Or drinking. Getting it all down his coat, more like. Alonzo produces a pile of paper napkins, and the others follow suit. ‘Plees’ he splutters, spraying soggy crumbs over the table, ‘eat you olive-pickers hole!’

  No way, Jose. There is more chance of me lying underneath the car, undoing the sump nut and drinking the contents of the engine. And that’s not happening any time soon. Glancing across the table, however, everyone else is at it, tearing savagely at their loaves like a pack of wild hyenas, oil dripping everywhere, over the tablecloth, the floor, and, almost inevitably, their clothes. OK, so the first rule of travel is ‘do what the locals are doing’, nobody has died yet, so hell, why not. Chrissie is looking decidedly apprehensive, so I have to score one for the geezers, right? So just the merest dribble, to start with. I can always claim an urgent hospital appointment, if this stuff tastes as bad as it looks. I fact I might need a hospital appointment come to that. Anyway, I’ve always had the constitution of a booey, so here goes.

  ‘Jonneee! No! Not a drap, come on! Like thees!’ and Jose snatches the container and swills about a pint of the viscous fluid onto my bread. Sadly my hole is not deep enough so the whole lot overflows, across the table, and I have to jump smartly to avoid the splashback. There you go, another tip about living in Spain. Make sure your olive-picker’s hole is nice and deep. Ordinary supermarket olive oil is a beggar to get out of your clothes, and I imagine this Duckhams stuff will take the colour out. And the skin off the back of your hand. No way am I picking this unholy mess up, so I decide to go the delicate route, break off a small piece, and holding a napkin below my chin, pop it into my mouth. And swoon. My taste-buds think they have died and gone to heaven. Rich, fruity, peppery, with not the slightest hint of engine. How can this be so utterly different from the stuff we buy? Ripping off a larger piece of loaf, mopping up the draps from the table, to hell with getting it down my chin, in it goes, caressing my tongue like a heavenly host of angels, and I roll my eyes in rapt appreciation. Chrissie is following suit, slu
rping and dribbling, and the Spaniards are clapping and whooping like madmen.

  ‘Jonneee, you enjoy you hole of olive-picker, no? Cristina, what you think?’ And Rafi is roaring with laughter. Problem is we are unable to speak, so have to make do with enthusiastic nodding, although truly, I am concentrating on the intense flavours and have lost the powers of speech. ‘Now, plees’ she continues, ‘you must to eat you back-allow! How you say back-allow in Eenglees?’

  Ah yes, the back-allow. I wondered when we were coming to that. I know this one of course, from my lessons with Vic the Fish. Cod. Although the fillets we get from him are fresh, whereas I deeply suspect that the slices laid out on the table here are the salted variety. Salted cod. Never tried it. A leftover from wartime rationing I always thought, my grandparents ate it, talked about it, but mother didn’t buy it and I thought it had long since disappeared from sale in the UK. Here, however, it is everywhere, and not just fishmongers. Grocers sell it, huge great lengths of stiff, unappetising-looking cricket-bats, wouldn’t give it to the cats, quite honestly, but it must be popular here or they wouldn’t sell it, would they? And it’s not as if refrigerated transport hasn’t been invented yet in Spain, so why do they need a foodstuff which originated in the Middle-Ages? Bizarre. Actually, there are several recipes for it in my Rick Stein cookbook, it needs to be soaked in water for about a hundred years or something, but the locals must like it, presumably. Personally, I think it looks unspeakably vile, but it seems as if I am about to try some, doesn’t it? ‘Cod.’

  Once again however, Rafi’s pronunciation is letting her down. ‘Coth. Codth. Cothd.’ Poor woman just cannot get it. Mind you, I struggle with Madreeth, personally, so it works both ways. And you should hear me talking about Hee-HHON. The Spaniards around the table are all practicing their new English word, and suddenly we have a chorus of coth, codth and cothd, intermingled with breadcrumbs, tears are being wiped away and the whole scene resembles a tea-party in a playgroup.

  I’m not getting away with it, though. ‘Plees, to be eating you coth now’ Juan instructs. ‘Like thees.’ And he breaks the offending seafood into its component flakes, mixes it with pieces of loaf, drowns it in Duckhams and swallows the whole thing. OK, so the fifth rule of travel used to be ‘eat what the locals are eating’, but this had to be amended following a dish of Pho in Vietnam, which as far as I can remember was the only time in my life I had to give up on a meal, containing as it did slices of a pink substance which might or might not have been rodent, from an earlier century. So the fifth amendment now goes something like ‘eat what the locals are eating unless you suspect there might be lumps of rat in it’, which I think is fair enough. Anyway, cod is not vermin, is it? On the other hand, in its cricket-bat state, this stuff looks as if it might have spent its entire life swimming up a drainpipe, but again, what the hell, I can only die once can’t I? Following our friend’s example, I take a generous pinch of back-allow, a goodly lump of crust, a healthy dose of Duckhams, open my mouth, then snap my jaws theatrically onto the weird combination. And my taste-buds resurrect themselves, die once again, and travel, via heaven, on an inter-galactic voyage into uncharted universes. Utterly. Sensational. The cod is salty, but offset somehow by the intense flavour of the oil, and already I am looking forward to olive-picker’s hole day, next year. Oh my GAAD, as Amador might have said, were he here.

  Right. I have some questions. ‘So why is this oil so different from what we usually buy in the Donna, sorry, Mercadonna?’ I enquire of no-one in particular. Blimey, I was about to use the English word for our local supermarket, then.

  Juan snorts with derision. ‘How much pay you, for thees?’

  I glance at Chrissie for support. ‘Not sure, about three euros a litre?’

  He waves his hand dismissively. ‘Ees fine for cookee, but for eatee you must to buy first-press, sabor, sorree, flavooo much intenso, ees good for you. Yees. I understand, you no have olive-trees in Eengland, you not know thees, but here in Espain ees much tradition of assy-etty.’

  Yep, I get that. We’ve been buying the industrial oil, mass-produced, bottom of the barrel stuff, probably not even Spanish, some impostor blend, French possibly. A bit like that ‘Old Farmyard’ wine-flavoured beverage they had on the boat. Certainly not Spanish Duckhams, that’s for damn sure. ‘So where do we buy this first-press flavooo much intenso, then?’

  Alonzo is grinning wildly, waving his stick. He’s got us, hook, line and sinker. ‘Ben. Follow me. Thees way, plees!’ And off he stumps, across the courtyard, the group following animatedly behind. Mind you, the locals are animated in everything they do. Even when they are asleep, I imagine. He leads us to an emporium, reminiscent of the dispensary in Doctor Finlay’s Casebook, complete with dark, wooden shelving and ornate glass bottles of varying vintages and styles, some with stoppers, others with corks, each containing the same deep, dark, intense oil. We have been transported back in time to the premises of a Victorian apothecary. All we need now is for Doctor Cameron to pop up….AND THERE HE IS! Behind the counter sits a whiskery old gentleman, and, I swear, if he speaks with a Scottish accent, I will surely faint. We are back in Tannochbrae, for sure. I wink at Chrissie. ‘Och aye, Doctor Snoddy!’ She whacks me on the arm, and turns away, shoulders shaking.

  Jose meanwhile is grinning. ‘Why you laugh, plees?’

  What can I say? He wasn’t even born when Doctor Finlay was on TV, and my translation skills are not that great. ‘Oh, we were amazed at this museum. What a wonderful place!’ There, that should cover it.

  It seems not, however. ‘No thees not museo, thees shop. Here you can to buy you assy-etty. You want buy assy-etty thees day?’

  I am certain we do, but we are pensioners on a budget, after all, and this is a premium product. Got to watch the pennies, right? What if it is wildly expensive? Be a bit embarrassing, wouldn’t it? ‘Do you know how much it is, please Jose?’

  Alonzo senses a sale, however, and slips his arm companionably around my shoulder. He points towards Doctor Cameron, who has craftily assembled three different-sized bottles on the counter, while we were looking the other way. ‘Small, three euro. Medium, five-fifty, and large, eight.’ Hell, that is cheap, we pay three for the olive-oil flavoured beverage from the supermarket, and the large bottle Doctor Cameron is caressing lovingly is easily twice the size. And it’s surprising how much we get through, for cookee, obviously, but also for eatee, drizzling it on salads, crusty bread with ham and cheese for lunch, sliced tomatoes on toast for breakfast, the list goes on. Who knows, I might even need to get some salted back-allow, poke it in my olive-picker’s hole, after this eye-opener of a morning. I smile at Chrissie in a ‘please get my money out’ kind of way.

  She raises her eyebrows innocently. ‘Did you want something?’

  Always drags it out, does my wife, this carrying my money business. Can’t blame her, really, but the alternative is surely to be stranded in a foreign country with no bank cards. And how much does a wallet weigh, anyway? I bought her the blooming handbag, with a little Scottie dog hanging from it. Surely that earns me certain transportation points? I grin pleasantly. ‘Would you mind giving the man eight euros, please?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Eight euros of my money, please?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And why not, pray?’

  She narrows her eyes. ‘Because YOUR money is in YOUR wallet which YOU left home this morning.’

  Like pulling teeth. ‘So could you possibly see your way to lending me eight euros of YOUR money, please?’

  ‘No.’

  The Spaniards are all chuckling at this British soap-opera, and I glance at Jose and shake my head in a ‘women, eh’ fashion. ‘Just for half an hour, until we get home?’

  She exhales dramatically. ‘I didn’t bring any money, YOU didn’t bring any money, because YOU didn’t say we needed any, did YOU?’

  I turn to Alonzo. ‘I am sorry, my wife forgot my money, we will return tomorrow and buy the assy-etty, then’, and s
tep smartly backwards to avoid the left-hook, but instead walk into a right-jab, which earns my wife a loud cheer from the crowd. And me a painful rib. Always the butt of the jokes round these parts, aren’t I? Still, learning a language has to be fun, hasn’t it? And acting the goat has been my life’s mission, from my early schooldays, and I’m still at it. The epitaph on my gravestone should be he liked a laugh.

  Anyway, it seems as if the group is breaking up. Been a long old morning, all in all. Learned some great new Spanish phrases, too, and I cannot wait to inform Loli I have been eating hole of olive-picker. Imagine the kudos she will reap telling the other neighbours that, in the street tonight. Juan has other plans, however. ‘Plees now we go to see olive tree mee-lon-arry-o. You will be exciting see he!’

  Mee-lon-arry-o? Is that a millionaire? A millionaire olive tree? Surely not. I’ve heard of Million Dollar Baby, courtesy of Mr Eastwood of course, but a tree? Is this a local legend of some sort? Did the tree up-root itself, stroll down the newsagents, buy a lottery ticket, and hit the jackpot? Or did some unfortunate olive-picker, in days of yore, hide his stash under the trunk, meet an untimely end, the loot being discovered many years later? I am assuming we are talking pesetas here, not euros, and as we all know, a million pesetas is worth six grand. According to Fernando, working seven days a week for the entire harvest would only earn you half that, at today’s prices. And it’s not as if the picker could work overtime, bearing in mind it is absolutely pitch dark in the olive groves at night, so he couldn’t see what he was picking, could he? Or is the tree a valuable tourist site, worth a million? Did, I don’t know, some Spanish king, in ancient times, shelter there from his pursuers, rather like our Charles the Second? Fairly useless, actually, olive trees, for harbouring royalty, or anyone else for that matter, given that the branches are only a few feet off the ground. ‘I see you, come here plees, you Majesty, I chop off you head, thees day!’ Are there hundreds of pubs dotted around Spain called the Royal Olive Tree? Not seen any, to be honest. I smile warmly at our friend. ‘Millionaire?