fishydreams

On the way back from the river last night I heard on the radio that the final of the Champions League was underway and that Barcelona was beating Juventus by a goal. Football matches don´t come any bigger than this one. Both teams were set up to take the “treble” should they win this final.

I figured that I might catch the end of the game at Masia bar in Villafranco and so pulled up and shouted a pint and a tapa of boquerones en vinagre. There were three televisions blasting out the game. One was in the main part of the bar. The biggest screen was in a kind of function room behind the bar. It was pretty quiet in there – just a three or four expat types. The third telly was in a little covered extension out the front. This was where the action was. Everyone bunched up at the tables offering the best view of the game but there was some space on the tables on the opposite side and I decided to settle there. Continue reading →

The famous physicist Schrödinger once set out a little thought experiment of the kind with which Physicists love to bamboozle us. It makes little sense to me so I asked my Physics teaching colleague to explain it in really simple terms. He told me that to get a useful explanation I should read a little of a book of his that he happened to have to hand called “Physics for Absolute Morons” or something similar. The book makes everything crystal-clear by offering the following explanation:  Continue reading →

There´s not a whole lot of shade if you fish my river at this time of year so if you are going to do anything more than a few hours you might want to plan for a pit stop to grab a bit of shade and maybe a cold drink.

On the A357 which runs along the Guadalhorce river valley you can choose from a couple of places. One of these is the Cepsa service station and the other, right on the opposite side of the road, is the Cafetería E.S. Europa. This leaves you with a decision to make: Cepsa or Europa? Continue reading →

I have been a man for as long as I can remember and it strikes me that being a man works out pretty well most of the time. Being a man lets you get away with all kinds of stuff. You can shout at the telly, use bad language from time to time, and get away with wearing the same trousers for ages before anyone notices. It gets even better as you get older. People just put up with your little quirks and eccentricities. If you don´t seem to know what day of the week it is, never mind. What do you expect? To the kids I teach I am just a bloke of a certain age. If any of them had ever heard of the palaeolithic they might just imagine that that was the era in which I was born.

Things were better for men in the 50´s which was just a few years before I put in an appearance on this planet. Continue reading →

A week ago today Steven Lawler and I witnessed some remarkable behaviour on the Guadalhorce – the gypsy barbel were leaping up a weir and falling back into the river. They looked for all the world like salmon.

We noticed that they never cleared the wall, despite coming pretty close at times. Steve took a close look at them and suggested that they were not trying to clear this obstacle, as we had first thought, but were feeding in the silkweed on the weir itself.  Continue reading →

Pip and I were out walking with the dogs this afternoon and we decided, just for the hell of it, to have a photography competition. The idea was simple enough. Each of us would take as many photos as we like and then whittle them down to a shortlist of 5. Mum would be the judge and score our photos out of 10. Mum´s words are final. Everybody knows that.

The campo is just crazy with flowers at the moment. It is just lovely out there. It seems, in places, as though clouds passed overhead and rained paint – purple clouds, yellow clouds. The verges of the paths are overgrown and heaving with colour. sometimes the dogs, straying off the track would just disappear into the plants as though they had been swallowed by the campo. Continue reading →

We heard a sad story when we walked the Caminito del Rey. It was told to us by one of the guides and concerns three local young men.

You don´t need me to tell you that young men are full of testosterone and bravado and they get up to crazy stuff from time to time. Sadly, there have been a number of fatalities here which have been reported from time to time in the press. Continue reading →