In contrite silence

In contrite silence, he put on the clothes that she’d torn from his body only an hour previously. ‘When can I see you again?’ He hated himself for asking, but he had no choice. He was besotted.
‘I’ll ring you.’
‘I can take time off work whenever you want.’
‘I’ve got neighbours.’ She was tight-lipped. ‘They’re bound to notice.’
‘Well, you can come to my place.’
‘I don’t think so.’
A silence followed.
‘You act like you hate me.’ He accused.
‘I’m married.’ She raised her voice, I have children. You’re ruining everything.’
At the front door, as he bent to kiss her, she said angrily, desperately. When they broke apart, his hand was inside her shirt, kneading a breast. Her nipples were as swollen and firm as cherries and he was once more erect.
‘Hurry,’ she urged, fumbling wit his fly, pulling him out and holding him silky and erect in her fist, She sank to the hall floor, clawing down her jeans, pulling him on top of her. ‘Quick, we haven’t much time.’
She flexed her buttocks, rising to meet him, desperate for him.
He entered her ant thrust with short, intense stabs. Instantly the ripples began to flood through her rising in intensity, spreading outwards and inwards, peaking into almost unbearable pleasure.
After he came, he wept into her golden hair.
From the book “Sushi for beginners” written by “Marian Keyes.”

Clodagh dug her heels

Clodagh dug her heels into his buttocks, banging him ever deeper into her. Every time he stroked himself up into her, a word was dragged in a hoarse whisper from her chest.
‘God’
He slammed into her again.
Harder!’
Another slam.
The bedhead slapped rhythmically against the wall and her hair was tangled and soaked with sweat. She clutched him ever closer, as the ripples of pleasure built and built. Into the vortex she spiralled. With each pulsation, she thought that that must be it, until another, even more beautiful, throbbed from her. She quivered on the top note, and she felt it in her fingerstips, her hair follicles, the soles of her feet.
‘God,’ she gasped.
He must have come too because, panting and drenched, he lay upon her, his weight pinning her to the bed. They lay still, gasping and spent, until she felt their sweat begin to cool, then she buckled beneath him and roughly pushed him off.
‘Get dressed’ she ordered. ‘Hurry. I’ve to collect Molly from playgroup.’
This was their third time together and she was always abrupt – cold, almost –when the sex was over.
Do you mind if I have a shower?’’
‘Be quick about it,’ she answered curtly.
When he emerged from the bathroom she was dressed and refusing to meet his eye. Then she froze, sniffed the air and exclaimed in disbelief, ‘Is that Dylan’s aftershave I smell?’
‘I suppose,’ he mumbled, furious at the mistake.
‘Isn’t enough that you’re fucking his wife in his bed? Have you any respect?’
‘Sorry.’

From the book “Sushi for beginners” written by “Marian Keyes.”

Galicians had been here for centuries before the Romans

Galicians had been here for centuries before the Romans. Galicia was rich in primitive iron and , even gold mines. It also had, and has, awealth of natural resources in the sea. Molluscs and other seafood are still basics of both diet and economy. On the inland side of Monte do Facho’s peak, the remains of a typical Galician Iron Age settlement - a castro – are being dug up by archaeologists. Living in round, stone, thatched buildings and protected by defensive walls, people lived in this castro until the time of Christ.
The castors, some five thousand of them, are dotted on hill tops and promontories across Galicia. Their inhabitants – who also had little workshop`s and stores –sought safety, from enemies, bears and wolves, in height. An information board on Monte do Facho explains that, some time in the years after the birth of Christ, ‘ the inhabitants went downstairs to get land near the sea’. Monte do facho, with its six foot long, granite aras lying here as if cast onto the mountain top by the Gods, must have remained however, a fine place for a sacrifice.
Like almost any Atlantic coastline, the weather here is unpredictable and unforgiving in equal proportions. To drive around the tips of the peninsulas between the rías when the storms are coming in, buffeting you with near horizontal rain and wind is to wish for athick set of walls to hide behind and a warm fire for comfort. To come here on a bright, sunlit day, or glimpse it when the clouds suddenly roll away, is to gaze with awe on dramatic landscapes counjured by sea, rock, wind and rain.
At Finisterre, the relative protection of the sea lochs runs out and the exposed coast starts turning east, gaining the spine- chilling name of the Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death. This is the point where Romans thought the world ran out and where , it is said, they would come to watch the sun being swallowed up by the sea at night.
The rias, with their calm waters, are homes ti neat rows of bateas, the large refts from which chains of mussels grow on cords hanging below them. Gangs of gumbooted woment, bent double at the waist and dragging buckets behind them, dig up winkles, clams, cockles,scallops, razor clams and oysters when the tide runs out on the long, shallow beaches. The exposed cliffs of the Costa da Morte, however, are the territory of the percebeiros who risk life and limb to scrape off the percebes, the prized goose barnacles, which cling like bunches or purple claws where the Atlantic waves crash in.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Slippery, lime- green moss

Slippery, lime- green moss lined the rocks and boulders of the pathway as it snaked up the hill through the inevitable Galician eucalyptus wood. I was alone. A few sharp sounds, a dogs barking or doors slamming, ricocheted up from the village below. The only other noise came from the sea, the wind and the birds. It was easy to conjure up the images of the ancient Galicians who had walked this path from Iron Age times onwards. The view from the top of the mountain was breathtaking. He Cíes islands seemed close enough to touch and , to the north, the islands of Ons and Sálvora lay placidly in a deceptively calm ocean. I could see the mouth of the Ría de Arousa to the north. The view stretched beyond that reaching, at least in my imagination, to mainland Europe’s most westerly point – Cape Finisterre, the End of The World. The Atlantic. Almost bare of ships, stretched out towards America. Inland, meanwhile, chimney-smoke drifted across the lowlands and onto the glassy waters of the ría.

How could one not be owe struck by the mysteries of nature, or be given to thoughts of deities and spirits, in such a spot? Wide flat slabs of granite, very slightly hollowed out, are scattered on the peak here. There is also a tiny, round, weather beaten eighteenth century look-out post of grey, lichen-clad blocks. The little mountain gains its name from the fires that used to be lit here to guide boats home. The flat stones, or ara, of which 130 have been found, were used as sacrifical altars in Roman times. The God worshipped then was called Berobreo. Like Santa Marta, he could cure. Archeologists believe this, too, was a place of pilgrimage. Some aras still bear inscriptions asking for the gift of good health.

From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Galicians are not real Celts

Galicians are not probably not real Celts. But they would like to be.Many, thanks to some sel-interested tinkering with history by nineteenth century Galician Romanics, are fully convinced they are. ?Most of the Celtism found by local historians in Galicia is utter claptrap. It is decoration to cover the gaping holes in that particular story’, the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote in 1931. The independent tribes that injabited this area in pre Roman times certainly had, from the sea, contacts with Brittany, Ireland and other Celtic areas. Modern genetics has shown also, that here is a shared gene pool around the European Atlantic in which the people of northern Spain, including the Basques , share. There is even an ancient Gaelic text, the pre-eleventh century Leabhar Gabhala ( The bool of the invasions) which claims that Ireland was once successfully invaded and overturn by Galicians. These were known as the ‘sons of Mil’ and , improbably , took Ireland in a single day.

Whatever the truth of the Celtic origins- and they do not shout out at you in the physical aspects of Galicians or in their language – people like them. Vigo’s football club is, for example, called Celta de Vigo. In front of the Tower of Hercules, the ancient lighthouse overlooking the ocean at La Coruña, a huge, round, modern, mosaic rosa de los vientos, a wind compass, bears the symbols of the world’s Celts – including the Irish, Cornish and Bretons, Bagpipe players are here a common as in Scotland. Some even make it as local pop stars.

From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

I found work teaching English

I found work teaching English. I studied at the city’s university and at the Brazilian Institute on the top floor of the Casa Ametller – a beautiful modernist building on the Paseo de Gràcia. Looking out of the window I could gaze upon what some Catalans would describe as further evidence of their ?difference’ . Paseo de Gràcia is home to some of the best work of Barcelona’s emblematic architect, the turn of the century modernist Antoni Gaudí. I could see the strange organic forms and Darth Vader – shaped chimneys above the sculpted, soot-encrusted stone façade of Gaudís Casa Milà –long ago dubbed La Pedrera, the Stone Quarry. Gaudí’ s Casa Batlló was next door. Its scaly, undulating, ceramic tiled roof represents the dragon slain by Catalonia’s patron saint, Sant Jordi. It was, and is, breathtaking stuff – a lesson in how adventurous and imaginative the Catalan mind could be.
I walked everywhere. Stepping on Gaudí’s jellyfish, conch shell and starfish decorated hexagonal tiles on the Paseo de Gràcia, gravity pulled me down to the Ramblas. It was a short hop from there to the narrow, dark medieval, washing adorned streets, tiny squares and austere, voluminous stone churches of the Gothic Quarter.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet

Barcelona was, of course, different then in the mid-1980s.

Barcelona was, of course, different then in the mid-1980s. It still had a rough, port air to it. Quinquis, small time crooks and pickpockets, were a threat on Las Ramblas and in the old city. Transvestite prostitutes did nightly sentry duty on the street corners of the Rambla de Catalunya, the extension of the Ramblas away from the sea. Gypsies would set up a fold-out tables on street corners and rip you off with the timo de los trileros, enticing you to bet on which of three upturned cups of walnut shells hid a pea or a small plastic ball. You walked carefully, or not at all, through the Barrio Chino – the densely populated red light district on one side of the Ramblas. I spent my first couple of weeks in a rundown hostal in a charming but dilapidated square off the Ramblas. The Plaza Real had palm trees, peeling paintwork, a leaky fountain, a dozen drug dealers and a weekly market in what looked distinctly like stolen goods..
I was looking for a job, I wore my hair short, my shirts almost ironed and a suit. The plaza low life left me alone. In retrospect I realised this was because I looked like one of those clean cut young American evangelists who, even today, pound the streets of Spanish cities seeking converts.
From the book ‘Ghosts of Spain’ By Giles Tremet