Low life
Traveller's tale
Jeffrey Bernard
Seville was very much all right. Cordoba with its wonderful mosque was frac- tionally marred by the presence of a party of American lesbians in my hotel but I shall never forget that amazing building and the surrounding gardens. Further up the river that runs through Andalucia, the Guadal- quivir, I came to Andujar where I was a little disappointed. I was disappointed be- cause as so often in the past I had taken too much notice of what I had read in a travel book. Never again. Travel books I now think are like cookery books and recipes. Lovely bedtime reading but when you've read them you should go your own way. I had read that Andujar was 'exquisite', 'full of flowers', so much so that they grew in the streets and 'dripped from window- boxes'. Ah well, the imagination can rage on a damp, cold day in London. Anyway, Spain always beckons and, of course, Andujar is pretty nice really. So many people have got Spain all wrong. They rush to the various Costas, pack themselves on to the beaches, get sick on brandy and survive on egg and chips and peel hideous- ly. Away from those beaches there's a different country. The landscape along the Guadalquivir valley is stunning, rich and fertile and the food it produces is dazzling in a way. I can stand and stare at the heaps of it in those marvellous markets in Spain that combine every sort of food and to sit under an orange tree eating tapas and sipping wine by the Alcazar gardens has got feeding flies with Ambre Solaire on a beach outside Malaga well beaten.
One thing the guide books did have right was that the rather dilapidated quarter of Trania is the right place to stay in Seville. It is lively, cheap and happily far beneath the noses of Hilton-minded people. It re- minded me of the backwaters of the Ramblas in Barcelona. I spent most of my first afternoon there sitting by the river with some wine and eating delicious grilled sardines which a man kept giving me while they prepared the dinner proper. The fact that he looked vaguely like Norman couldn't even spoil it. That night I stayed in a nearby hotel which charged £4 a night. So it didn't have its own bathroom but it was fine for a couple of days. The next day I made the startling discovery that the coffee was so strong I'd have to stick to wine or the beer which is a sort of yellow mineral water. Still, it's cold. And I soon again got to quite like the wine as cold as they serve it. Why are so many things okay abroad which aren't at home? I woudn't dream of drinking chilled red wine here. Neither would I think of scoffing lumps of dry bread without butter, eating cold omelettes and having simple oil and vinegar poured over a salad, as opposed to something more contrived with Dijon etc. I relished all that standing at a bar. It seemed right and civilised. Perhaps I was cut out for the simple life which is why I've never wanted a trip to Gstaad. But I can see it now that farmhouse of mine on the banks of the Guadalquivir. A garden with lots of flow- ers, orange and olive trees, meals outside, a few chickens, a lovely white Spanish horse and the odd day at the local bull fights. Yes, I know. I would go stark, raving mad after a month. I did, for a start, miss hearing the English language quite soon but it's probably quite good for one to shut up almost completely for a few days. Maybe I wouldn't like the Spanish so much if I could understand what they were saying. On the way back and stopping over in Cordoba again I heard the lesbians still yacking away. I knew it was time to come home and leave the strumming guitars for the ring of Norman's till.
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