Gay Zombies
You are reading this as Rozanne has obviously driven us across Spain through Portugal and back again safely. The Citroen C5 Hybrid, while comfortable, surprisingly does significantly less kilometres to the litre than the Jaguar. Further, the drive battery to keep charged needs to be topped up from an external power source. It is unable to charge itself despite the long trip. As for the Jaguar, on reaching the agents late last week it started no problem. Aaargh. Must be a computer or electrical problem, we await diagnosis, at least all mechanical parts are fine. How bloody frustrating! Oh for the old fix on-road vehicles!
Last week when I informed you we were heading for Barcelona that was not quite correct. In fact, we were heading to a town known as Sitges, a destination which would allow us access to the city without being in the city while permitting us to enjoy the Mediterranean beaches. We looked up on the net what the merits were of staying in Sitges which provided the following description from Google: “The compact old town and surrounding streets are filled with shops, restaurants, and many gay bars and nightclubs. The Maricel Museum and Cau Ferrat Museum showcase Catalan and other Spanish art.”
For me, the main attraction of Sitges, it is out of the city with excellent restaurants. For my children, the beach, sun and bars. For my sister and Gordon disappointed as the said antique shops were ‘in style’ only. What we did not know was we had booked the same week as an annual film festival. Not your ordinary film festival. The Sitges Film Festival specialises in fantasy and horror films, it’s considered one of the world's foremost international horror festivals. Our second surprise was our nearest beach was a nudist gay beach, a bit disconcerting for a conservative fossil like me. That is, not it being a gay beach but rather its location right in the middle of town. The family beaches were out of town. Elderly gentleman displayed their pancakes and sausages from early morning. Game viewing, fishing and a full English breakfast are of more interest to me than the accepted modern displays of social interaction. I do not think it makes us less tolerant, just confirms our in-built conservativeness having lived so long in Africa. Our kids are better travelled at the bohemian holiday centres of the world than we old Africans are.
One gentleman had the audacity to proposition my son whilst embedded in the family group following a swim. The pickup line was, “I am sure I have seen you on Grindr?” my son's ambiguous reply was, “I am with my family.” Rather than mentioning he was with his girlfriend who was standing right next to him.
To support the film festival there are many vendors of food and macabre memorabilia along with shows including the highlight of the week being The Zombie Walk on the night of the full moon. Everyone, men, women and children subjected themselves to the varying skills of a large team of make-up artists who would transform the individual into either their favourite grotesque horror or fantasy character. I must say some of the characters were very impressive with realistic wounds and gushing blood. All good fun, allowing me for the first time in my life to come across gay Zombies. Something I never expected to see in real life.
“Life never fails to surprise you, even in old age if you make the effort to venture out of your cosy zone.” - Peter McSporran
Once again we are finding Spain expensive. I suppose Sitges is a more upmarket destination or perhaps we are just spoilt in our rural home in Portugal where we share meals with farmers and builders. The restaurant staff are very pleasant here but not as genuinely warm.
“Tourists have the ability to remove genuine warmth in a smile, to replace these with cynical grimaces on the faces of those that serve them.” - Peter McSporran
I would think many landlords and hotel staff were dismayed at the sight of multi-coloured baths and showers requiring cleaning the next day. The worst sight I saw was a giant Zombie threatening everyone in the vicinity with a real working chainsaw. For myself, every time he revved the damn thing, I shivered. Little wonder one of the festival's slogans was, “Normal People Scare Me.”
The world is a changing place and now that our children have lived in Europe for a number of years, their values and perceptions of the world differ from ours. No harm in that, probably a good thing. Of interest, I like to catch up on the Ukrainian war every day while they would all prefer I didn't listen to the news in their company. It seems the best way to deal with these serious issues is just to switch them off, especially when on holiday. All, of course, are keen to offer an opinion on the need for equality and social rights. They seem to forget someone had or is fighting for them to benefit from those rights, just as the Ukrainians are doing now for their own freedom and that of others. My children witnessed the theft of their homes and inheritance through state-sponsored violence. I am sure most people have considered what they would do if conscripted. I fear, my children's peers and the youth of today in present-day British culture would rather not resist even with the threat of invasion, rather accepting subjection over freedom.
"I suppose freedom is like a luxurious gift. If you are given it, it has not got the same value as if you had personally bought it or fought for it." - Peter McSporran
Disappearing Friends
I have started reading Ross Gordon’s book, Dancing on Bones. Ross is the son of my late great friend and neighbour John Gordon, a well-known character in the Zimbabwean tobacco industry before his untimely death in 1990. Many of the people Ross mentions in his book I obviously know, but of interest to me, he regales us in the first half of the book about his father including some of his eccentricities. I will write about John later in my blog, he offers so many opportunities to tell stories. Of particular interest was Ross’s view of the war as a child which he relates dispassionately as he sees his father going off on call-up, many of which towards the end we did together being in the same stick. His reflections on the war show clearly how hard it was for those that were left at home. On their father’s return after each call-up, on questioning him of what had happened during his stint, there would be no detail, instead, his answer would be his view on the outcome of the war. It seemed the closest a child could get to trying to understand what was going on as the war progressed was seeing their father's clothing, equipment and weapon changes as a measure of the seriousness of it all.
From early on John recognised the war could not be won. He contended it would be won politically, not by the barrel of the gun. He was correct, we never lost the shooting war but lost the political one perhaps due to our own shortsightedness but importantly to the fact the world had moved on from where we thought our place was on it. We had moved from being seen as essential benevolent colonial settlers to becoming identified as racial white settlers exploiting the black people by the very country that had put us there. If we felt disappointed, how did the many Rhodesians that fought for Britain, including Smith, during the second world war feel?
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” - Socrates
With hindsight, this may be said of us at the time. With Independence, however, we thought, due to the conciliatory messages being spouted by Mugabe, that it was not too late to try to adapt and fit in with the new status quo.
In the final years of the war saying goodbye to friends was common as many chose to leave the country while some were killed in the war. As the war progressed and intensified the latter group of friends we never had time to say goodbye to increased. Comrades in arms killed in the war and farmers and their families killed in ambush or homestead attacks.
“Nature determines when you are young, the old are expected to die. In times of war, this changes as the young die much to the chagrin of their elders.” - Peter McSporran
In Africa violent death is never far away, while there rarely are accurate statistics, probably car crashes, murder and public violence often led by the state are significant causes. Natural death of the African male, both black and white, comes much earlier than his European counterpart. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe for men is about fifty-seven years of age while in the UK, it is seventy-nine years. A whopping twenty-two years difference. There is a similar disparity for females with childbirth fatalities being a big factor in Africa. There are many reasons for this, mostly down to poor health care and poor nutrition. In white people alcohol and smoking, a cause in my generation a big factor. It is little surprise that the majority of my male friends since the army days and around the early years of independence have left this world. In the army days we dreaded listening to the casualty lists, now frequently, in fact, almost a daily occurrence, the old Rhodesian army social media sites record the deaths of many of those remaining.
I bring this up as in the past few weeks two people that played an important role in my life passed away, though neither are ex-comrades in arms.
The first was John Wightman, the man that designed my first forced air curing system and all my subsequent tobacco curing and crop drying systems.
“What John Wightman did not know about hot air and its reticulation was not worth knowing.” - Peter McSporran
John was an unassuming, in fact very humble man whose knowledge was a major contributing factor to my success as a farmer. I am sure if he had been given the role of reducing energy usage in the Western world, he would have made a major impact. Tobacco curing is a huge consumer of both electrical and carbon-based energy in the form of fossil and or timber. The heat is generated from burning coal, fossil fuels or wood and is transferred by air pressurised by fans driven by electricity. To reduce costs the heating of the air must be very efficient while the design of the air transfer must be streamlined and where possible whatever remains, recirculated. Sounds simple but in fact, is very technical with numerous factors. John reduced my fuel usage in tobacco curing by seventy-five per cent as he did for many others. I was so sad to hear of his passing, such a wonderful man who due to circumstance never received any scientific reward.
Then this past week Joan Craft passed away. Not nearly as well known in farming circles as John but a real stalwart in any community she lived in. Joan was married to David who was one of my farm managers right up until we were kicked off the farm. In fact, he narrowly escaped death by going to the rescue of another farm manager during the farm invasion. Dave was an ex-regular air force man who as a young recruit was sent to the Northern Rhodesia-Congo border to assist with the stream of refugees leaving that country. The events of that time never left him. During the bush war, he ended up as a chopper tech. A highly skilled dangerous job. In our war, the chopper tech would look after the helicopter on the ground becoming its weapons operator in the air. He would either man the twin brownings in the G-Car (troop carrier) or 20mm cannon on the K-Car. He rarely spoke of his time as a chopper tech, although these guys would have been involved in shooting action on a daily basis.
Joan supported him throughout these times both in the service and on the farm happily integrating into whichever community. She was renowned for being the go-to person for help on domestic or personal matters. Nothing was ever too shocking for her to give advice, comfort and solace. When we moved to Zambia, Dave and Joan followed us growing our first crops of tobacco up there before he moved on to extension work with smallholder tobacco growers. Joan was Rozanne’s bridge partner of choice up there. Joan for many years lived with COPD which she suffered from without a word of complaint, moving with Dave to Australia in the later years to be close to their daughter Trish. Their son, Mike remains in Zimbabwe. Goodbye Joan.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
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