Don Quixote 1

Yours truly has been basking in much needed 70 degree sunshine on the Costa Blanca for the last week: Benidorm to be exact. It's a strange place, dedicated to bargain-basement hedonism for northern Europeans, but Spain is there, even if it is well buried beneath tons of tourist tat.

I stood on my balcony every morning and gazed at the implacable  crumpled, silver-grey mountains of Puig Campana that loom over the resort and wondered what they would make of the carryings-on of these funny little beings on holiday.  The mountains have outlived the Moors, seen Franco come and go and they'll still be there when we've long gone.

Musing, whilst gazing, Don Quixote came to mind.  I've always loved Don Quixote.  Even as a little girl and didn't know the book, I had learned that Don Quixote was quirky; a possessor of an impeccable, left-handed sort of logic that got him into all sorts of scrapes, but because he had a good heart and an innocence, in the end it would be alright.

Don Quixote and Sancho hang on the wall in my hall.  I bought the painting when I was twelve on a trip to Paris with my mother.  It's painted by Pedro and cost £10: all of my spending money for a week.

Me, Montmartre,age 12

I look back now and it was a strange thing to do, because at twelve, paintings weren't the sort of thing I bought.  My £10 would usually have been destined for Parisian tourist tat.  But I do remember having to have it and it's turned out to be prophetic because thirty-eight years later I met my own Don Quixote and he was in action whilst I was away.



At  my post-holiday catch-up with Johnny last night,  he reported, rather mysteriously, that there had been an incident in the Brasserie the previous night. More than that he would not say.  'Later on Gill,' he said.




As we walked into the Brasserie, barman Joe began to laugh.  'You should have been here last night - it was a scream,' he said and unhelpfully, from my point of view, dissolved into further fits, incapable of coherent conversation.

The tale will have to wait until tomorrow as the words and thoughts are going blurry and I need to make some sense of it all.

It's nice to be back!