I hear a rickety engined car pull up on the track above the house and a second later a booming voice cries "Amigo........Aqui"
****, I thought, I looked up and it was the menacing looking bloke from the Finca 200 yards down the track. Now this guy makes the baddies from the magnificent 7 look like choirboys
He looks like a Red Indian, and has hands bigger than tennis rackets, he wears worn out cowboy boots and a stetson and even his weather vein on his roof is 'orrible,..it's a metal cut-out of a bloke with a shotgun carrying two shot creatures by their ears His car is a 100 year old Datsun Patrol (yes Datsun) and it always has bodies dangling from its tailgate.OK, quick thinking here, I shouts Mrs. to go and see what he wants , she replies she's got no clothes on as she's just got out of tepid shower
"Amigo Aqui" the voice boomed again, Ok this is it, I gets up and walks towards his car.........he's scowling and I'm bricking
I put my hard walk on, but I knew it was a useless gesture as I was dressed in a white T shirt that had gone pink in wash, Brazil footy shorts, OH's raincoat and my canvas shoes protected by galoshes
, as a confidence booster I would have paid a grand to be wearing my Doc Martins, Jeans, padded checked builders shirt and Everton baseball hat (backwards) which were all back in England.I gets to car and he starts rummaging in footwell...........I was sure he was about to pull out his colt revolver and start shooting at the floor and tell me to dance as they do in the westerns
After an age he pulls a package out and says "Para te". I didn't know what to expect..........I shouts Mrs. again to open it......no answer so I peeped into bag...........2 f***ing lettuces........pheewwwww
Thinking that was that he then forrages in the footwell again!! "Christ almighty" I murmered, up he pops with a few straggly "weeds" and puts them under my nose
......he beckons me to sniff 
........"Mint" I said "No Menta" he snarled. and beckoned me to plant it now. "Manana" I said "Ahora" he said as it will die, so I wobbles off in my galoshes for our only little bent trowel to try and dig a hole in the rocky mass that is slowly turning into a garden......it was useless and pathetic for the task I'd been ordered to do and merely bent even more . He looked a bit bemused and got out of the car with one of those big flat pick-axe type things.........I shouts Mrs. again in growing panic and she shouts "be out in a sec.".Anyway he plants the mint for me after I had to stop him from taking his first swing with his tool as it was right in line with the main water feed from tank........that took bottle believe me.
Mrs. then arrives with a couple of beers.......his face lit up, and he went back to car and brought out a little tiny puppy which he carried inside his jacket, he handed it to Mrs. and he informed us it was his new dog.......I thought he ate them
He then said " come to my casa".............In for a penny I thought.
What an eye opener, as we arrive at his beautiful but ramshackle place he picks up a little black kitten and kisses it, speaks softly to his pigs and pours us 2 glasses of his homemade campo wine..............he then vanishes for an hour and leaves us wandering his menagerie. We then get called to a spread that would cost a fortune in a restaurant..............A huge salad made with all his own produce including eggs. A superb fish dish and a massive plate of his own home produced cured pork..........amazing
The only b0llocking we got off him was for saying please and thank you..........he said "friends don't say please and thank you"
We finished off with the usual look at his pics of his wife/kids etc. and bid our farewells after making sure we could return the compliment in June.
For a guy who looked like the tougher brother of Roberto Duran he really made us realise just how kind and special most Spanish people are.
Kenny
