April Showers

The news in spain, Weight loss and spanish TV advertising

While we wait here in Ibiza for SAT TV and the dear old internet to be installed we have to watch the world news, in Spanish, on CNN+ or a Spanish news channel TV24. This is OK but only if you can get the gist of what's being reported. For example, today I thought Margaret Thatcher had died only to discover a few minutes later that she was in fact only being discharged from hospital.

I also saw Prince Harry being interviewed, with a Spanish voice over that completely distorted the report to the point that I didn't know if he was all on his own in Afghanistan or what, as he seemed to be on a one man patrol, poor boy.

So what's left to watch after the few English language programmes that seem to have been found from the late 1980's mid 90's are over? I can tell you it's adverts for a multitude of devices for aiding ALL women and I suppose men, no matter what shape or size, to lose weight, lose cellulite and above all look “mas sexy” (sic). There are full body corsets that squeeze the extra body weight (OK, fat) to other parts of the victims body to create a slim waif like new woman a la Victoria Beckham(Not). There are electronic waistbands that vibrate to “melt away that excess body weight (yes, fat) and a vibrating platform from a company called “Vibro Power” that claims to shake the extra body weight (yes yes I know, fat) from every inch of the body. Of course the women (OK and the men) modelling these items are already slim, sexy and free from any “extra body weight”. They all seem to already have well toned bodies or in the case of the men washboard stomachs. There is one rather voluptuous lady with a very pneumatic bust (that does not move a fraction while she is vigorously vibrated on the state of the art 500€ machine. The ad is worth watching if only to see her!

One of the best adverts (apart from the penis extender) yet, is I have to say, the portable inflatable sauna. You can sit inside this blue plastic device (it looks like one of those garden pools turned into a Wendy House) in the comfort of your living room while watching TV or even eating your diner. However, the really simple way to lose weight, according to the marketing geniuses behind these relentless campaigns, is the “pedalo” type device that you can sit and watch TV, read, knit, eat, use your PC and a multitude of other completely sedentary activities.... what complete and utter ******** !!

I can only conclude that the vast numbers of FAT people with that “excess body weight” to redistribute are keeping one or two German, Italian and American manufacturers of these items in well earned dinero! It seems that all we sell (the British that is) on Spanish TV is, Direct Line Insurance!

CAFÉ SOCIETY

Alternate days we go into either Santa Eularia (or Santa Eularia des Riu to give the town its full name) or into Ibiza (Evissa) town.

There are dozens of cafés and bars around both towns with their own particular atmosphere and clientèle. We usually go to the old hotel in Ibiza called Montesol and sit outside, weather permitting, drinking a milky coffee and watching the world go by.

We have also found a small place back off the main roads called the “Chill Café” where the coffee is rich and milky and they serve a goats cheese “tostada” drizzled with honey.

In Santa Eularia, we have a couple of places to choose from, the Royalty or a small place down on the sea front run by a German couple. The real favourite place is a hotel that has a large terrace where again you can sit and watch the odd comings and goings along the promenade.

A major pastime, apart from reading the paper and having a coffee is to look around at who's there and what they are talking about. One other cafe we go to is perfect for this as it attracts the “wheelers and dealers” of the community.

We were sitting in Café Sidney in Ibiza at the Marina Botofoc and as is done we “ear wigged” on a group of disparate “EU Aliens”, as I have seen us described in a publication here. The group in question certainly seemed to be conducting a whole range of “dodgy deals” in one huge loudly conducted conversation about Property, Internet and Computer sales all while they ate and answered their mobile phones.

My hearing is not what it used to be and I do sometimes have difficulty hearing the details of these various commercial plans and transactions, so I am may have to purchase a small device that I have seen advertised on Spanish TV for children to spy on their friends with. It takes the form of a rather fat, bright yellow ballpoint pen that you leave near you on the table while inserting a discrete ear phone into your ear. We are assured in the advert that this will bring to you in crystal clarity any conversation within 20 metres of your position - Wonderful!

We can't mention these “businessmen” without making mention of another small minority of “gentlemen” that were also present that day sipping at their beer or a coffee and for fear of offending a particular social group I will try to be, shall we say, circumspect. There are these gentlemen of a certain age and an apparent degree of affluence that is attractive to some “ladies” and so, when ordering their beverages they do so whilst at the same time stroking and fondling the rather attractive “serving wenches”, sorry waitresses that work at Café Sidney (are we allowed to use the waitress or wench term in this day and age of political correctness?).

I confess I was fascinated by the stroking and fondling by one rather rakish, if not elderly groper, purely in the interests of research of course, of a young lady who was employed, I am sure to serve food and drink rather than to provide a focus for his examination of the quality of her rather nicely tanned skin. Call me a pervert, no don’t” I am only a guardian of decency and good manners and stroking and fondling I reserve only for very intimate occasions and thus far the cat from the nearby farm has not complained.

I must work hard at looking rakish and affluent and will be returning to Café Sidney without Mrs H within the next few weeks, purely in the interests of research of course.

THE WEATHER

We have had a real mixture since we came last September with the temperatures then nearing the 30 mark followed in October by torrential rain that nearly did for me! Then in November it did start to feel slightly cold with the “locals” donning all sorts of Hollywood movie types of winter wear. You can imagine, scarves wrapped several times around the neck, a variety of hats and all manner of heavyweight overcoats. We on the other hand were still acclimatised to UK weather and went out every day dressed for the Spring. November and December proved a bit colder with some showers but again, not too bad. It wasn’t until January and February when we had moved here to San Carlos that we got hit hard by the winter. Having not lit an open fire for over 40 years and struggling with a paraffin heater and electric convections heaters that overloaded the electricity resulting in me having to tramp down the drive to the “power house” to reset the mains and even at one stage refit the two 50 amp fuses!! The last time I saw that done was in the UK by the Electricity Board when I had drilled through a power cable in the kitchen and he told me it was illegal for anyone other than a Board Electrician to do the job. It's supposed to be the same here but as someone said to me here “it has to be a chapuza” Yes, you guessed it a “botched job” - We have now switched to gas for heating water and now know the limitations of the 30 amp supply to the house so we don't have a kettle and three 2 amp heaters blasting away at the same time now...... I have to say that at the time of writing things are starting to warm up a bit now and we will be able to take advantage of another session of nude sunbathing very shortly.

FASHION

There is an officially recognised fashion style here called “AdLib” I'm sure that someone in the past made a slip in translation and used the nearest English word they could find but that's not being fair is it? I'm not to sure what Adlib fashion equates too but there are lots of styles here that range from the elegant to the frankly ridiculous. We sit and try and work out the ethnic origins of the strange sights we see, “oh she must be German “ we say when we see a particular eye catching number and I don't mean in a positive sense either! The we will see a singlet and those ridiculous Hobbit style shorts with a reverse baseball cap and well, yes a good old English twang emits from the individual. There are people dressed from head to toe in black there are 65 year old hippies and there are all sorts of things in between. We have tried to “blend in” as much as possible only to have blended in so well that we nearly got caught up in a touring party of Spanish Senior Citizens on a coach tour of the island. Among the “fashionistas” locally we see an eclectic mix of regional and ethnic styles only seen in 1970's science fiction movies. Generally though literally all ages of men and women of all origins wear jeans either informally, casually or in many cases formally. Weather forecasters and news readers god forbid wear them on TV even the newly re-elected Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero wore them at a political rally. Now, on the other hand we will have to see what single T Shirt and shorts I can wear throughout this summer. Shall I start by wearing a dark blue ensemble and let them fade, unwashed until autumn? Or should it be a deep pink that I wear an allow to fade to a paler shade of, yes, Pink! ..... I think not dear readers, I think not.

I can't leave this subject without mention of today's fashion faux pas. This weeks winner must be, by a good margin, the spectacularly attired black guy outside the Royalty Bar in town. Now don't get carried away with visions of Shaft or Will Smith or P Diddy or whatever his name is .. this was not Bling. First of all his sun glasses were nicely curved ones that fitted around his eyes and were neatly jewelled at the sides and clearly very expensive. He had a beard, not a great bushy beard but a tiny growth tightly twisted into a short two inches of hair sprouting out of his chin just under his lower lip. He wore a sort of distressed denim“flower pot man” hat that was made from what looked like angora and a large baggy tracksuit top over a very baggy and fancy pair of blue denim dungarees full of pockets and “designer” rips and guess what? He didn't care. I understand that his name is Vaughan and he is the “cool guy who runs the chill out bar at Pascha”

POLITICS

I mentioned the recent elections here earlier and the re-election of the Spanish Socialist party here, the PSOE and Mr Zapertero. Well what a grind it all was, putting our lead up to an election in a completely new, if not more exciting series of events. I will try and promise not to complain about the lead up to a British General Election again.

It went like this; turn on TV, sit down to watch lose weight adverts and many jiggling ladies bottoms and what did we get? One huge stage managed political rally somewhere in Spain with either the charismatic Zapertero speaking without notes in front of a baying throng of adoring acolytes cheering at his every word, most of which I didn't understand. Within minutes, just as another series of “nicer dicer”, slender toner, VibroPower and several other fat reduction ads ended, on came Mariano Rajoy the right wing opponent of Zapertero. Well what a contrast he was, not. Well, that's unfair really as he is a contrast in so many ways not least of which is that he is enormously boring! Again though he addresses hundreds of adoring fans in a huge stage managed venue somewhere in Spain and again all apparently off the cuff. Poor old Rajoy was just about to lose his second General Election to Zapertero.

So what have I learnt? Four things really, no sorry, six.

The “PSOE” is Left Wing and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero leads it and the “PP” is Right Wing and Mariano Rajoy leads it. Oh, there is a seventh thing, the Spanish as a nation all seem very politicised with very young teens figuring in the rallies as well as the very old being at the head of many of the Parties in involved.

Amusing though, a Spanish TV channel has a Spiting Image programme that made poor old Rajoy look and sound like and old man in all sorts of situations no self respecting politician, unless desperate to win votes would allow themselves to be seen in. He does unfortunately have a sort of lisp when he speaks and it does sound like his false teeth have slipped. It's all over now, good old smiley, dimpled Zap won and I can get back to watching nubile jiggly women demonstrating fat losing equipment, all in the interests of research of course.

BOND'S BOOK REVIEW

I was bored with reading yet another re-read of one of my many paperbacks so forked out on a new one at hugely inflated costs from the book shop in town. Having forked out the vast 10€ I have just read a novel by Clive Cussler. He is described in the Sunday Times as “The adventure King” and by Tom Clancy as “The guy I read” and by Penguin his publishers as the “Grandmaster of Adventure”.

This was the first time I had read a Cussler book although I have seen his covers on many book stands many times but never been tempted to pick on up, until now; So, desperate for something new to read from an author new to me I picked up a paperback entitled Lost City – A Novel from the NUMA^® Files – A Kurt Austin Adventure.

Well, lets cut to the chase shall we. I struggled thorough this “Boys Own Adventure” as best I could given the absolute hogwash of a story, garnered it seemed from every adventure story Hollywood had ever mangled from the classic adventure novels of the early 20^th Century and then botched together with the worst cavalcade of stereotypical American heroes, French “villains”(both good and bad), British upper class “helpers” and various other European thugs I have ever encountered in one book.

The descriptions of various British and other European cultures borders on the farcical with little in the way of sensible research put into the subject save that he clearly knows so well within the dear old United States.

His descriptions of the leading men in the story with “coral blue eyes” and rugged looks as well as women with names (Gamay!!) that can only have been taken from the coded entries in teenagers love diaries or from the TV series “Footballers Wives” made me want to slit my wrists.

I have to stop as I am giving too much to the idea that this may have been a good read when in reality all I can say is that it was the biggest load of old cods wallop I have ever read and I have read Jeffrey Archer too!

BAD NEWS

The bad news is the state of the pound at the moment!! We are only getting 1.25Euros for the pound now which is terrible when you consider that when we came here the rate was 1.47 it then plunged to 1.37 and had fallen steadily ever since. On top of that, the mainstay of our rental, the interest from the sale of our house, has also dropped dramatically so that we are now getting about a 100GBP less each month to pay the rent with... We are now in the wonderful position where Ibiza is now more expensive that Madrid and Marbella... Tourist are going to feel the pinch coming to Europe this year ....

Anyway, summers coming.