Fountain of Love

When I was younger and, indeed, when I was not so young, I loved Sherbet Fountains. They were a confectionery, consisting of some basic white sherbet and a "straw" of liquorice through which to suck it. These ingredients were packaged in a thin cardboard tube, wrapped in yellow paper that was twisted tightly around the liquorice that stuck out of the top. As you sucked on the liquorice in an often vain attempt at extracting the sherbet (which would eventually overcome its blockage and shoot up the back of your throat, into your nose causing an excruciatingly pleasant discomfort), the paper wrapped around the liquorice would gradually become wetter and gunkier. Delicious!

Sherbet Fountains became less available once I moved to Belgium, but on the occasional visit to the UK, I would stock up on them, even though they were becoming increasingly difficult to find. I countered this by simply buying a boxful at a time, much to the surprise and delight of the lucky shopkeeper. Then, as I became still older, the search for SFs gradually ceased, though even then, they were always in the back of my mind. I must admit that, now that we live in Spain, I didn't think I'd suck on the fountain again.

Well, look what I've received for Christmas: four (read my lips: four) tubes of this wonderful confection, the genuine Toot-sweet (eat your heart out Dick Van Dyke, but I forgive you Sally Ann Howes). The ingredients remain the same; well, I expect some Health Mogul has fiddled with them a bit, but they certainly look the same. The packaging on the other hand, has taken a quantum leap and now resembles something fit for launching into outer space. It's all high-tech plastic, including a super-hygienic top that imitates the liquorice tube, but is also made of plastic and must be removed to reveal the real thing inside.

Ah, joy! What a wonderful way to spend a Christmas..

My only problem is that I must now work out a rationing scheme in order to stretch out the pleasure as long as possible…

It's Impossible

I am always amazed and saddened when someone says, "I can't," when referring to any mental task that needs to be undertaken. This usually takes the form of learning something new: a language, a way of doing something, new technologies, whatever.

"I can't" provides the perfect get-out, allowing its pronouncer to huddle down into a comfortable, easy, effortless way of life. It rarely has any significance, other than as a reflection of the unwillingness of its user to put themselves out in order to achieve whatever they insist that they are unable to do.

I have heard "I can't" so often since being in Spain. Most of the people Elise and I become acquainted with are fairly old, sixty and upward. They use the excuse to justify their apparent inability to learn the Spanish language. "I can't, because I'm too old." "I can't, because I don't speak to Spanish people." "I can't, because they speak too fast." "I can't, because they always want to speak English to me." And so on. If an excuse can be found, then these people will surely find it and make use of it to prove that "I can't."

Nonsense. Sheer, utter nonsense.

You are never too old to learn something new, let alone a language. Indeed, learning a language is a natural process that we have all gone through when we had far more reason to say "I can't," (not that we could) as very small children, learning our native language.

The oldies often think that if they go to so-called language lessons once or twice a week, then this will be sufficient to allow them to be able to learn Spanish. The lessons last all of an hour or so and, given that most of the pupils have little or no idea of grammar, even the most basic grammar, that they have not been in a classroom for forty or fifty years, that they do not have the self-discipline to pay sufficient attention during the classes and certainly not to do any homework adequately, then it is little surprise that early high expectations are soon dashed, that attendance drops and that the experiment ends in inevitable failure.

Do these people really not understand that they live in the best school there is to learn Spanish? They live in Spain, a country populated by millions of people who speak the language fluently; a country with perfectly good television and radio stations that transmit in Spanish, a country with bookshops that sell books printed in Spanish, a country with shops where the sales assistants speak Spanish.

The very best way to learn a language is to use it. It sounds simple and it is! However, it requires an effort. It means that you will struggle; it means that you will make mistakes; it means that you will not understand and will have to ask the speaker to repeat and repeat again. But the effort will be worth it and in a few years you really will be able to understand and be able to be understood. How well you will be able to do so will depend only on the amount you immerse yourself in the language: if you live in an area where nobody speaks anything but Spanish, you will become almost fluent in a relatively short time (I was almost fluent in Dutch with a year when I lived in Belgium in a similar environment); if, on the other hand, you limit yourself to only the occasional practical use of Spanish and otherwise exist in an English-speaking environment (or whatever your "normal" language is), then you will likely never become fluent and it will be several years before you will be able to partake in even the simplest of conversations.

It all depends on the amount of effort you are prepared to make! And don't come up with the excuse that I hear more often than any other: "I'm too old and can't retain things like the youngsters." Rubbish! You use a very small percentage of your brain-capacity and there is plenty of room for more information to be stored. The reason you might not be able to learn as quickly as a child is that you have other things to worry about: what's for the next meal, when is the next electricity bill due, when shall we get the new furniture (and how shall we pay for it)…?

So forget the "I can't," and instead be prepared for an effort, filled with both frustration and joy.

Use Spanish at every opportunity: shop in Spanish, go to Spanish restaurants and order in Spanish, ask directions in Spanish, strike up conversations in Spanish. Carry a small dictionary with you, or a PDA loaded with a Spanish dictionary (I found this particularly useful when I started). If you know the sort of situation you are going to have to face, then prepare yourself for it: look up the words you might need and memorise a few apt phrases; in the beginning, one of the most useful phrases is one to ask your interlocutor to speak more slowly.

Read Spanish books. Start out with the simplest of books for very small children and use a dictionary to try to follow the tale. At first this will seem like hell and it will take forever to read and (perhaps) understand even the simplest story. You will have to look up almost every word and many you will not find in a dictionary simply because you do not know the infinitive forms of conjugated verbs. Don't worry! Try to work out a meaning of the word you see given its context and if this doesn't work, then just carry on. You will be surprised how much this helps your vocabulary (which will be passive at first, but that's quite normal).

Watch Spanish television (ban Sky, BBC, ITV and any other national channels). Spain has a full digital terrestrial service (TDT and it's free), so watch the news and a few other programmes in Spanish (as a reward, you can watch a few series in English, or German, or French… thanks to the digital nature of the transmissions). In the beginning, you will understand almost nothing the presenters say, as they will seem to speak so quickly. Don't worry. With time you will start to pick out words, then sentences, and in a few months, assuming you make the effort (see, it again requires effort) to watch every day. Leave talk programmes on in the background in order to allow yourself to get used to the sound of Spanish and to hear different accents.

And, talking about accents, try to eliminate or at least disguise your "foreign" accent: don't ask for "Oon caffay con letchay, paw favaw," but attempt to shorten the vowels and roll the "r"s to make it "Por favor, un café con leche." Listen to how the Spaniards say it! Also, take note of stress marks: Spanish has a few simple rules about stress (normally, you stress the last-but-one syllable), but stress marks override these rules and indictas how a word must be pronounced. Near Guardamar is the village of Almoradí. See the stress mark on the final "i"? (It looks like an accent, but serves a different function.) Well, that indicates that instead of saying "AlmorAHdi" (following the normal rule of stress), you must say "AlmoradEE," with the stress on the final syllable. So a written Spanish word actually shows you how to pronounce it!

Have absolutely no worries about making mistakes. You make mistakes in your own language (you might not know it, but you certainly do) and it is only to be expected that you will make mistakes in a language that you are learning. I was once in a market and She Who Must Be Obeyed wanted cushions larger than those on display, so at each stall I asked the stallholders if they had "Cojones más grandes," to which I inevitably got a huge smile back, even as they explained these were the only ones available. I discovered later that I had used cojón instead of cojín and that cojón means something quite different (you are free to look it up)! The point of spoken language is to get your ideas across to someone else; if there are mistakes, it really doesn't matter (formal written language is a different kettle of fish), so don't worry about making them. Certainly in the beginning, you will have to struggle to get even the simplest ideas across, but that will gradually improve. The secret is, the greater the effort, the quicker the improvement.

Something I have found very useful in learning Spanish, or, at least, increasing my vocabulary, is to do crosswords and other word puzzles. You really need a dictionary of synonyms to start off with this, or perhaps a good school dictionary (Santillana publishes the excellent Diccionario Escolar de la Lengua Española. I also watch Spanish game shows, such as Pasapalabra (quite impossible to follow for the first year, as they really do speak very quickly), Saber y Ganar, and Password. But perhaps this is for just a little bit further down the learning line.

Don't think that you will ever truly become a totally fluent, perfect speaker of the language. To achieve that takes years and years of major effort and practice. You will never fully eradicate your "foreign" accent, but all languages have accents, and Spanish is certainly no exception, so you are just adding to the vast selection already available. Native speakers will always recognise you as a foreigner and that's fine, as they will admire your effort and determination to speak to them in their language, as befits a guest in their country. I lived for 35 years in Belgium and could speak Dutch quite well, but always with a slight accent. When I speak English, English people recognise that I am Welsh, even though I left Wales when I was nine years old! You don't get rid of your origins that easily! (That still doesn't excuse Oon caffay con letchay, however!)

To make things more interesting, learn a bit about Spanish history and culture. Both topics are amazingly interesting. I know that many towns and villages refer to their older buildings as monumentos when they often do not merit the description monument, but look further than the tourist industry's hyperbole and linguistic nuances to discover the wonderful cultural mix that Spain was before the Catholics destroyed it. A better perspective on the people and their history should make the language even more interesting to learn.

In the meantime, use the best school there is, Spain itself, and get out and try to make practical use of the language. Forget your inhibitions, forget your worries, just get on with it and, above all, stop saying "I can't." Soon you'll be saying "No puedo," and that's a lot better!

All I Want for Christmas

The tree in Guardamar is now fully decorated and even has a large star on the top. The base has been enclosed by wooden panels, but these still have to be covered with some green artificial grass to finish it off — someone was measuring this up this morning, so it should be just about ready for Christmas. Looks good!

When I was young and living in Wales, we naturally had a coal fire. Each year we children would write our Christmas wishes on a piece of paper, which we put up the chimney for Santa to find and act upon. Most wishes were for bikes, Davey Crocket hats, Magic Robots, train sets, and suchlike. By brother, Brian, had other ideas. He clearly had grievances. Trouble was, his problems involved his younger brother: me! He made no bones about it in his note to Santa, either, which has been carefully preserved during the intervening years (going on sixty now!).

He writes,

To fatherxmas,
David sxi is note
pleas dont bring toys
becous he wount
lendt his toys
t henebody

The rotter didn't even have the guts to sign his treacherous note, but he did have the gall to underline it.

So much for the season of brotherly love…

Take time out to spare a thought for the turkeys in the turkey farms, all reading in the latest edition of the Turkey Times about the forthcoming Great Turkey Christmas Outing: We won't say where we'll be taking you, but we promise you a hot time and that you'll be the centre of attention.

Little do they know…

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree has been erected in the town square of Guardamar.

Each year, Guardamar has a "different" tree: last year's tree was made of hundreds of white plastic bags, each containing the written wish of the person who gave the bag. This year's tree is made of a central wooden stem to which have been fixed numerous dried flowers from the many Agave americana plants that grow around Guardamar. The Agaves were first brought to Guardamar by Francisco Mira i Botella, when he used them as part of his successful plan to prevent the town from being submerged under advancing sand dunes.

Agave americana, or century plant, is the best known and most widely cultivated species of Agave, producing very large and dangerously pointed bluish-grey leaves in a tight rosette formation. The flower grows from the centre, straight up, on a stalk that can reach well over 5 metres in height, carrying many yellow flowers.

The Guardamar tree has been decorated by over a thousand children from local schools. Each child made a red decoration in the shape of a ball, a heart, or a star, carrying their name. Televisión Guardamar has a short news item about the tree and the children.

Just a Little Bit of Green

I have just finished reading How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn.

Given the author's name, the subject of the book, and the renown in which the book is held, together with the fact that I originate from the Rhondda Valleys, I felt I should read the book and would enjoy doing so.

Big mistake.

What a strange book it turns out to be, with the author offering a strangely twisted view of life in a coal-mining community around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Llewellyn seems to have the timing of the story all wrong, with lush pastures and clear streams abounding in an area apparently full of mines, but where houses still have to be built along the valley sides. By the time of his tale (never specifically stated, but identifiable through references to Victoria, the Boer War and other temporally confused events), the Valleys were already blackened with coal tips and coal dust and the mine owners had already crowded the floors and sides of the valleys with row upon row of crammed houses (now quaintly referred to as cottages, for some inexplicable reason). The rivers that cut through the valleys were already dead and blackened, unlike the trout-filled, green-sided river of Huw Morgan's valley.

If Llewellyn's timing is off, then his representation of the Welshness of his characters is just as far from the mark. The author's attempt to emulate the way they speak borders on the comical. By the time of the story, little Welsh was still spoken in the Valleys, wiped out by English overlords and the influx of outside workers, yet all of Llewellyn's main characters (and there are many of them) are depicted as doing so through the means of supposedly direct translation into English, which merely results in nonsense: "my little one" is simply no substitute for "bach", but that is just a drop from the ocean of rubbish that Llewellyn pours into his pages of conversational interchange.

The characters themselves are good enough, as is the basis of the story, but the whole is a great disappointment.

But if you're looking for disappointments, try John Ford's 1941 film of Llewellyn's tale. Unbelievably, in 1990, How Green Was My Valley was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Americans must have a very warped idea of any of those three categories. The film makes a total mockery of Welsh (and, more particularly, Valley) culture, is historical hogwash and aesthetically a bizarre mixture of inaccuracies. Any research prior to the film being made must have been minimal at best: the geography is wrong, the accents are wrong, the houses are wrong, the location of the mine is wrong (at the top of a mountain, would you believe!)… The film is, quite honestly, a load of tat and deserves to be flushed down the great sewer of cinematography, rather than praised as anything significant at all. There seems to be only one genuine Welsh accent in the film (there are Irish, English, American, and, I'm sure, even an Austrian accent), but the owner of this accent, the character Dai Bando, is portrayed as little more than a buffoon, very different from the book's interpretation. The mountains are wrongly shaped, there is even something approaching yodelling at one stage, the houses are like palaces, massive places, quite out of keeping with the reality of the time. The Library of Congress would do better to classify it as a poor parody, insulting to the Welsh, and both culturally and historically inaccurate. Nonsense, the whole thing, and best left to one side.

The book is bad, but the film is infinitely worse. Indeed, the film attempts to condense the ten years or so of the book's tale into what seems to be no more than a year: it is neither convincing nor successful.

A far more accurate depiction of Wales in general and the Valleys in particular, as they were in the first part of the 19th century, can be found in George Borrow's excellent book, Wild Wales. An online version of the book can be found here.

(Thanks to FreeFoto.com for the use of the photo, showing part of Treherbert, in the Rhondda Valley.)

What Now, What Next, Where To…

As it was my birthday today, She Who Must Be Obeyed decided that we should visit the Museo del Turrón (Turron Museum) in Jijona (also known as Xixona). Turrón is a type of nougat, made with almonds. Originally there was just a hard variety (turrón de Alicante), but a soft sort was developed in the 19th century (turrón de Jijona) and nowadays turrón is used to refer to all sorts of confections sold in slab form, even down to bars of chocolate.

According to the museum's folder, the museum is attached to the factory, which can also be visited until the end of November, when production ceases for the season. It's 6 November today, a long way from the end of November. Nevertheless, the factory was closed (Cerrado por la crisis was given as the reason), so that was disappointing, especially as the museum visit was done with a guide, who had clearly seen everything before and was only interested in getting the visit over as quickly as possible. Pity, as the two display rooms seemed to contain some interesting items and plenty of written explanations, that served nothing, given the rate at which we flew past.

On the way home we decided we would stop in Guardamar for a meal at our favourite Chinese restaurant. But first, we'd go to the Bricolaje to buy some paint. When we got to the Bricolaje, it was closed because of death (Cerrado por defunción), so we had to find another shop that sold the paint we wanted. Then on to the restaurant, but when we got there, it was closed for holidays (Cerrado por vacaciones), so we had to find another restaurant that took our fancy.

Cerrado por la crisis; Cerrado por defunción; Cerrado por vacaciones…

At least the house was still open when we got back home.

I'm Counting On You…

Last night it dawned on me that, not only had I celebrated my 38th wedding anniversary just a few days ago and that I would be 61 years old in just a few days time, but that I had started working with computers over 40 years ago. That's a long time!

When I left school in 1967, I'd had more than enough of organised academia, but for some reason chose to go into the "safe" career of banking. It didn't take me long with bowler-hatted nine-to-fivers for me to realise that I had made a big mistake and so I started thinking about something I had already examined during my time at school: computing. I figured it was something with a future, though was warned by the manager of the National Westminster branch for which I worked (Grosvenor Gardens, I think it was — it overlooked the gardens of Buckingham Palace and was not far from the National Coal Board) that I would become a robot, a machine, and would end up nowhere. Such discouraging words only served to spur me on and soon I became a trainee programmer for what was then Elders and Fyffes and would soon become the Fyffes Group. This was in about September 1968.

Fyffes had an IBM 360 Model 20 computer, housed in a special room, with false floor, air-conditioning and a sort of air-lock entrance. The machine itself had a CPU with 16K central storage (core storage I think it was called, and, yes, you read that correctly — a tad more than 16,000 bytes), three removable hard disks, each of a massive 2.5 megabytes, two magnetic tape decks, a punched-tape reader, an 80-column card-reader, and a stunning 1200 lines-per-minute chain printer (did you get that? 1200 LPM, with each line containing 128 characters). Doing a core-dump really made the paper spew out of that machine!

Fyffes also had some legacy equipment, made up of IBM collators, tabulators, and other -ors I'm sure, which were programmed through plugboards or "control panels" that consisted of a matrix of connectors: using wires, one set up circuits between these connectors in order to achieve the desired result. A sort of hard programming, I suppose. You can see machines of this sort if you got to this page. I made a few programs on these machines whilst learning how to operate the Model 20, but soon moved to the programming department proper, where I learned RPG and Basic Assembler.

The legacy equipment was hardly used, but the Model 20 served to provide all of the sales statistics for the UK, as well as the personnel management and accounting.

Soon Fyffes decided to replace the Model 20 with a Model 30, so a big conversion was required and I also had to learn PL/1, which was a new general-purpose language being touted at the time by IBM (presumably as an alternative, in Fyffes's case, to COBOL). I wrote a few programs in the language, but soon moved, along with several other members of Fyffes DP section, to (take a deep breath) Futcher, Head, Smith and Tucker, a group of accountants in a rather run-down part of London, near Liverpool Street station. It was back to RPG there, working again on an IBM 360 Model 30.

In August 1971 I moved to Belgium. But that's for later.