I wonder what made this pattern. Answers on a postcard, please.

Well, it has been chucking it down in sunny Spain. The sun has come out again today, but for the last couple of days it has been torrential. A bucket left on the roof terrace is completely full of water, plants with inadequately drained pots are up to their necks, and something strange has left patterns on the concrete painted seat. There will be landslips on the mountain roads, and our friends who live up a long track in the campo will have to dig themselves out and rebuild the bridge across the stream below their house. When it rains here, it does it as if it really means it.

There is something about the enthusiasm of all things Spanish that really appeals to me. If you are going to be sunny, do it to the max. For months on end, the sky is bright blue, my Galileo thermometer sits with all its blobs sitting on the bottom, waiting for temperatures to drop below the maximum it can register.

When it finally decides to rain, the mountains disappear as the village is enveloped in cloud. The power goes off, the thunder rumbles and crashes around the valleys, and the drumming of the rain gives fair warning that it is not a good idea to venture outside.

If you are going to have a party, go for it! All the ferias here are full-on fun for days at a time. From 8am Thursday until late Sunday night, there are bands and foam parties, funfair rides and dancing. Music bounces around the village until five and six in the morning. Weddings are expected to go on until 7am the next day: at the one we went to recently, they had arranged for the man with the churros and chocolate van to come and feed everyone breakfast.

Everyone turns out for a night of music

Costumes and finery do not even have the slightest acquaintance with the idea of a Little Black Dress. The most obvious examples would be the glorious, clashing, spotted and patterned, frilled and flounced flamenco dresses. There is no ‘less is more’ mentality here. Even more isn’t more. More is adequate until something even more over the top can be added.

When the horses and mules are brought out for showing off, their finery is intricately covered with pattern. Bright rugs and saddle pads, braided twiddly bits and bells, fringes for their foreheads and snoods for their tails make them almost as gorgeous as their owners. (I think I have mentioned I know nothing about horse technicalities, so please do not go trying to impress the horsey set with terminology borrowed from El Perro!)

Even the dog gets to wear a dress at a wedding!

Guests at weddings and christenings look as if they have stopped off at the church on their way to an awards ceremony. Shiny silk full-length gowns mix with tiny, tiny mini skirts and heels of staggering proportions. I have yet to take a tape measure to any of them, but I would estimate that there is often more vertical dimension to the heels than to the skirts. The women must have undergone some cunning natural selection process over the years, with those who have the most powerful calf muscles surviving the vertiginous cobbled streets, while those with less enhanced legs fell to their deaths from the nine inch stilettos they attempted to wear while they went to the baker’s or the fishmonger’s.
Make up is inches thick, hair curled and puffed and styled and straightened and dyed and dressed to Hollywood standard.

Alcohol measures here are the stuff of legend. Going to a local bar and explaining that you are not drinking because you are designated driver for the night is regarded as a slight madness that needs to be treated with tolerant smiles and a large amount of alcohol.
Que quieres bebir? Asks the landlord
Agua sin gas, I reply
No hay agua. He wags a finger at me and smiles. We have no water.
But I am driving tonight. Cuts no ice.
There are no police up here. Venga!
I order a tinto de verano, a wine and lemonade drink. He pours half a tumbler of wine, grins at me, reaches down two bottles from the spirits shelf and adds a generous slug from each, before topping up the last inch with lemonade.

Conversation here is not subdued and polite. Everyone shouts. Ladies having a chat when they are out for a stroll will separate and walk at ten yard intervals, to make shouting more tolerable, I suspect, although the volume does not drop significantly when they are right next to each other. The consultorio has signs on the wall asking for a little respect and quiet, so the conversation in the waiting room is down to the levels of a football crowd, as everyone discusses everyone else’s symptoms. As one brought up in a very children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard and adults-should-maintain-decorum environment, strict even by British standards, I should find this shocking and uncomfortable. Actually, I love it. I don’t think I shall ever be able to throw myself into the scrum and shout along with everyone else, but being in the middle of it is quite exhilarating, and the warm and good-natured tone of it means it never feels threatening.

I was going to mention that they embrace bureaucracy with a similar enthusiasm, but although it is true, I prefer to keep my blood pressure at a manageable level.

It occurs to me that the local people may do the loud and generous and crazy thing on a rota basis. Perhaps at any one time, while there is chaos and colour on the streets, there are two thirds of the population desperately applying ice to their bleeding ears, whispering around the house, and catching up on their sleep, before having to do their next eight-hour stint of extrovert Spanishness. If this is the case, I suspect it is a well-guarded secret, which will never be willingly divulged to the reserved extranjera, who watches with enjoyment, but shows no signs of going native any time soon.