Oranges and Bananas

Apologies for the lack of posts of late. The second half of 2018 was dreadful for a couple of reasons, and I guess I’ve not wanted to be bending your eyes with either triviality or darker thoughts. Now that the year is out of the way, there’s a bit more perspective on things, so I’m hoping to post some vaguely measured stuff fairly soon.

In the meantime, here are some words about Seville, which Mrs E and I came back from a couple of days ago. But before we get to Seville, a bit of background on Mrs E’s relationship with Christmas.

Christmas is one of those areas where we don’t entirely see eye to eye. Given my way, December would kick off with an elaborate advent calendar, door bells playing sleigh bell music, heavy pudding construction, impractical candlelit card-writing sessions, and generally work its way into a frenzy of cheese, port, frozen cold dog walks, and close harmony carols at the end of the month. Then a quick wind down to a debauched New Year, a series of light regrets and promises, then pack all the decorations away for another year. 

Mrs E’s take on the festival is rather different. It’s not that she actually hates Christmas, it’s more that she wants to spend as little time on it as possible, and then get it out of the way really sharpish. To be fair, some of this humbuggery (very much like normal buggery, but when you don’t know the words) dates back to the time when there were four small children with stockings to prepare. This meant there’d be around 80 presents all needing to be wrapped late on Christmas Eve, which was often the time I’d arrive home a little bit too full of festive cheer, enthusiastically slurring my season’s greetings. As a result, we’ve always played a game of ‘decoration chicken’, which involves choosing the right moment to put up any decorations to finally admit that Christmas has arrived. Mrs E’s starting point in the game is that she’d accept decorations going up on 23rd December, and down on 26th. Given that I’d probably prefer a full month, any minor extension of her window tends to be a bit of a hollow victory, but it’s celebrated nonetheless: ‘Mum’s let us put the tree up with a week to go’ broadcasts the family WhatsApp message.

Well, this year, the decs were all packed away on the 28th, we had a very mildly debauched New Years Eve, which was largely spent wondering where our children were, and then took ourselves off to Seville on the 4th for a few days. 

And found ourselves in the run up to Christmas, which, given the above, was a bit of a disappointment to Mrs E. 

Our preparation for the break was woeful, extending only to flicking through the guidebook (welcome to Seville, home of bullfighting) and learning a couple of phrases (‘Yo no halo espanol’; ‘peudo tomar una cerveza’), and didn’t take into account checking local customs and festivals, which in Spain, means we missed the whole point of Christmas in January. 

As far as I understand it (now), the Christmas festival in Spain goes something like this: 

• start getting excited and a bit of light carol singing in mid-December
• Big celebration and lots of food on Christmas Eve, followed by midnight mass
• Wander the streets playing guitars and shining torches after midnight
• Lots more rich food on Christmas Day
• Wait until 28th, when the ‘Dia de los Santos innocentes’ (a bit like April Fool’s Day) gives you permission to play hilarious tricks on innocent victims (I’m really glad Mrs E missed that)
• Go mad on New Year’s Eve, including eating 12 grapes within the 12 strokes of midnight for a year of good luck (ditto)
• Then start ramping up for the really big bit of celebrating Epiphany, which is the big event, lots of nativity scenes, loads of models of wise men in shop windows, children getting excited about the 6th January, when they get all their presents, and parades like you wouldn’t believe…

I’ve not seen a decent parade for a few years, and it seemed like most of Seville had turned out to see what was going on, on both Friday and Saturday night. The general theme seemed to be to get anyone who could play a brass instrument or ride a horse, find some uniforms or costumes, and send them through the streets of the city throwing out sweets to the spectators. Writing it down like that underplays it a bit, because the crowd was so enthusiastic, cheering, shouting and being pretty athletic whenever a shower of sweets came their way, that it had a carnival atmosphere that you don’t get at too many religious events. 

Slightly disturbing was the several hundred people following the procession in blackface – something that we weren’t prepared for at all. There’s quite a bit of reaction to this on the web at the moment, so have a look some time and see for yourself. I can’t imagine the sort of reception that this would get at home, and there seemed to be a complete ambivalence to it as a ‘tradition’. A couple of days later, I managed to blag a ticket to Sevilla FC, who were at home to Atletico Madrid, at a stadium that was beyond awesome.

I had my bag searched on entry, and had to go through three levels of security before I was allowed to take in a banana, which I thought was a little odd. I tried to explain that it was my lunch, rather than a weapon, which got no response at all. I understood a bit more about twenty minutes into the game, when little sections of the crowd started making monkey noises every time Thomas Partey got the ball. I thought that we’d said goodbye to that sort of behaviour at football about twenty years ago, but apparently it was still ok in that neck of the woods.

Anyway, aside from that, and the other odd tradition of ritually killing dumb animals in front of thousands of baying spectators, Seville seemed nicely civilised and full of reasonably jolly people. Lots of medieval streets, big old catholic statements, lots of water and bridges, and seriously fruit-filled orange trees everywhere you looked. 

We stayed on for a couple of says after all the Epiphany fuss had died down, and the city felt like it was starting to settle down to a sunny normality. Even the sugar had been washed off the roads and paths, meaning that you could walk along without your feet sticking to the ground – we’d seen people be separated from their shoes after the parades as their heels stuck to the sugary mess of several thousand trampled sweets.

We stepped onto our flight home out of an unwashed blue sky, and a couple of hours later, stepped into the grey drizzle of Stansted, and drove home talking about how we could wish away the rest of the winter, and when we’d next see a decent sunny day. 

The next day, metrosexual man that I seem to have become, I tracked down some Seville oranges and made some marmalade. Well, every little helps.