How to Recognise the Last Days of an Andalusian Summer

Have Patience Mr Sock

Upon awakening I knew something had arrived.
There was a detectable change in pressure. The wall of heat that had been here since June had finally lifted. To celebrate, I put on a pair of jeans. I even reached for the sock drawer, opening it a little, but then pulling back at the last moment. Silly boy! I peered in and the socks gave me an unemployed look. Have patience, I whispered as I pushed the drawer quietly to.

Oh such pleasure awaited me outside the back door. A delicious chill hung in the air, and in the sky a few clouds had returned after the summer break, to share anecdotes and muster a little solidarity. However, they did little else that morning but taunt me from afar. By the afternoon though, they began to grumble in anticipation and assemble in greater confidence. 
  I tried to close the balcony door for the first time in months - it complained - but I insisted. This was one of my unfinished jobs to do. But not yet. Now I wanted to just wander aimlessly savouring the richness of anticipation.

It arrived an hour later. First in my imagination - as the faint sound of someone or something tapping gently on the roof tiles, unfamiliar but insistent - and then reality hit. In fact, everything got hit. All the collective dirt, dust and grime of months of building work poured off the roof and down the still guttering-less walls. It streamed down as a wall of water, into gaps where windows ought to have been, under doors that still had no frames and back, flowing back into the house where tiles had still to be laid. And still it came, harder and harder, down through the air vent in the bathroom, running down exposed beams and filling one corner of the untilled patio with just enough water for The Hound to swim safely across.

Yet the Níspero tree smiled as its once cement covered leaves were showered off, and the fingers of the honeysuckle stretched out to welcome the water. And from the dripping hallway of an old house in the old barrio alto, one man and a dog learnt that the oven door had finally closed.

---

This was a short exert from the book Inside the Tortilla. Like to read more? Grab the ebook for just 3.99 or less at the Amazon Kindle Store or in other ebook formats here.  Also now in PAPERBACK from here or from Amazon.

---