Is there something the matter with me....?

                           (Photo credit: Wikipedia)A rash question....so there will be a pause to allow for the cries of
'Damn right there is......' followed by examples illustrating the point.

Calm having been restored by judicious use of chair and whip I shall explain why this thought has just occurred to me.

Young members of the family are visiting Costa Rica and see it as an unmissable part of the experience to stay at a 'boutique hotel and spa' on the coast.
Puzzled by my lack of enthusiasm they explain that they are both busy people - true - and need time to 'chill'.
In which case why not try a cruise to Alaska, one thinks but probably wisely does not say.

I take a look at the chosen resort.
It is miles from anywhere, so unless you call a taxi you are a prisoner of the hotel insofar as eating is concerned.
It is not at all clear from the hotel's website whether your food and drink are included in the astronomical room rates.
Hints garnered from Tripadvisor suggest that they are not.

It is on the beach.
Wonderful.
Except that you can't swim off the beach in front of the hotel as it is decidedly rocky. You have to trot up the beach for some five minutes to find a spot where the waves are less likely to land you on something liable to impale you in a sensitive area.

The beach is empty, so the guests' feedback reads.
Yes, of course it is.
Totally illegally the hotel has wired off its stretch of beach which prevents local people from using it.

The hotel has a dojo.
Something Japanese....Sumo wrestling, perhaps, or an origami works....?
No.
It's a space with stone Buddhas lurking just where they might catch the foot unwarily swung while undergoing yoga.
Two free sessions a day with a most sinister looking man covered in tattoos.

I have never understood the appeal of yoga.
Should I wish to have my limbs and body contorted into unnatural positions I would take up skiing which also has the advantage of apres ski as opposed to faddy health drinks and a distinct absence of people saying
'Om.'

'Ouch'...yes.
'Om'...No.

The accommodation consists of separate units dotted about the grounds...one bedroom or two, closed in and air conditioned, with sitting area and - would you believe - shower and loo in the open air. There are head height walls but there don't appear to be any doors.
Hammocks are provided for every unit.

What happens in the rainy season? Nipping out of your air conditioned shelter for a quick pee while the thunderbolts sizzle overhead and the rain buckets down like Victoria Falls has very little going for it apart from desperation.
Follow that up by hoisting yourself into a wet hammock and you've got a head start on rheumatism at a young age.

Which is why, I suppose, they have a spa.
To me, a spa is somewhere you drink water which tastes foul, in the hope that your illness will also think it foul and shab off elsewhere.
However, things have changed.

It appears nowadays that a spa is somewhere where you are plastered with mud, wrapped in clingfilm and tenderised while having hot stones placed on your backbone.
Prices start at sixty dollars for an hour......oh, and another twenty dollars if you want exclusive use of a jacuzzi after the treatment. This, remember on top of the astronomical room rate.
I do not see the attraction.
Not at that price.
Come to that, not at any price. Put a hot stone on my backbone and you'll have lift off.

The hotel, in accordance with the image of Costa Rica as eco friendly, is itself eco respectable.
Thus your loo paper, once used, is placed in a bin in the open air loo to be collected by staff.
Bags me not that little task...
To me, that is not so much a mark of respect for the environment as an indication that the hotel's sewage disposal system leaves something to be desired.

Your towels and bedlinen will be changed only every three days - neatly coinciding with the average stay - so try to dry yourself in the sun if you don't appreciate damp towels.

Oh, and there's no television......giving you ample opportunity to read a book.
Just be sure to bring one along as there is no library.

Is it because I am retired, with plenty of time to 'chill' that all this strikes me as a waste of time and money?
Would I think differently if I were younger, my days and nights full with work and family?

No.
When I was working at full capacity, my idea of 'chilling' was, depending on the time available, to read a book, visit an interesting garden, go to a cricket match, drop into a favourite museum or gallery, try a new restaurant or take off to a new area of France.

Under no circumstances could I have borne to be out of reach of a daily newspaper...even if local...and although in later life I took package holidays using hotels in wired in compounds, I used them as a base to explore. There would always be a local bus or taxi outside the security point - and I was away for the day.

And as for flopping about in spas...I can plaster mud on myself should I so desire.

The whole thing seems to me to be completely mindless.

Yet while I regard this sort of experience as a meretricious con trick, these hotels multiply across the globe, with people undertaking the horror of long haul flights to spend a week in their gilded prisons.

Clearly, there has to be something the matter with me....

No longer a fool....

A Birthday cake. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)It was my birthday this weekend past.

No, let me not beat about the bush. It was my birthday on Sunday, 1st of April.

For more years than I care to remember, I have cursed my mother for not either letting go earlier or just showing a bit of fortitude and hanging on a bit longer in order to avoid lumbering her daughter with such a birthday.

As a youngster faced with mother's not so subtle campaign of undermining confidence and attempting to induce guilt I used to wonder whether she had done it on purpose as it fitted her campaign so well. Then decided that she probably hadn't but would have if she could.

A  plain little girl with glasses I grew to anticipate the mocking cries of 'April Fool' from those playground sharks who can detect unerringly the vulnerability of an unhappy child.

In later life, armour plated, it was a marker of people to avoid.
People who wanted to use that ritual to take me down a peg or two - not as friends can do with jokes be they never so coarse or brutally hard hitting - but slyly, waiting to see if they could draw blood.
No chance by then...they would have been better off trying it on a stone.
But I noted the attempt.

I escaped mother, gradually loosened the carapace I had adopted and had a pretty reasonable life. I enjoyed my work, I had friends and, finally, I was loved.

The birthday faded into the background.

Only to come bouncing back!

Last year Mr.Fly decided we would try a Peruvian restaurant which has a great reputation but which, being in a part of San Jose off our normal beat, we had not visited.
My birthday would be a nice occasion to try it.
We were house hunting at the time, so decided to explore the area nearby which is supposed to be developing -  according to the Mayor who wants to attract investment - before going to lunch.
Had I wanted to live in an area without local shops, but with a plethora of car parts emporia and decaying sixties housing it would have been ideal, but as it was it did not fit the bill despite the handy public transport belching fumes down every side street.
The development proved to be three tower blocks nattily brick clad to match the tower housing the tax offices alongside, conjouring up the horror of returning home three sheets to the wind and finding yourself in the wrong tower while someone waves a tax form at you.

As the area was so disappointing, we decided to head for the restaurant, crossing the central thoroughfare of San Jose, the Paseo Colon. Now, before Those Among You with a certain sense of humour start sniggering, 'Colon' is Christopher Columbus and no, the town has not named its main artery for a part of the human intestine.

We walked a couple of blocks to the restaurant, arriving some ten minutes before opening time. No sign of life, so we sat at one of the tables on the terrace.
A waiter emerged, and told us we could not sit there as the restaurant was not yet open.

'But we have booked for opening time and would like to sit down and, perhaps, have a drink.'

'No. It is a house rule. If we let you sit there today it would be tramps tomorrow. Nicaraguans even.'

Clearly we did not figure as his idea of the 'beautiful people'.

One lesson I had learned in France was immediately acted upon. If restaurant staff are sniffy, it's time to be off like an Exocet before worse befalls and you are expected to pay for it.
We decided to take our custom elsewhere and walked down the side street towards the city centre.

The side road was free of traffic fumes...but something else assailed our nostrils.
Not the smell of urine from the street sleepers...all was washed down here...but something much worse.
Something that reached down your throat  and twisted your intestines.
It was not just a smell...it was a Presence.

We looked over the wall.
Directly alongside was the open back door of the restaurant kitchen, bins ranged alongside.
We continued walking.

The Lebanese restaurant we had been heading for was closed, so we eventually partook of my birthday lunch at the counter of the Turbo caff at the Mercado Borbon -  and very good it was too as evidenced by the roaring takeaway trade for the stallholders.

This year, it so fell out that we had invited friends for Saturday and had been invited in our turn for Sunday before I remembered about my birthday. Still, what could be more enjoyable than seeing friends. That was fine.

But there was something lacking from my calculations.

Birthday cake.

Costa Rican bakeries have displays of large birthday cakes that take me back to the days when rationing finally ended and cakes of all sorts manifested themselves, exploding with ersatz cream, jam and butter icing at every orifice and bearing enough sugar flowers and ribbons for an army of fairies.
Costa Ricans like to give birthday cakes to friends and family. You see men walking to their cars with three or four in a gravity defying tower, preparing for a family get together on the weekend.

The first cake arrived on Friday morning, its kind donor almost invisible behind it. Two more followed later. Two more on Saturday, one with each group of friends. Another on Sunday.....

Agreed, in every case the donors arrived mob handed which saw off a fair portion of the cake - but there was always some left over and no way of recycling it discreetly to neighbours as it was the neighbours who had brought it or its fellow.
The fridge was beginning to resemble a cake shop.
The dogs were becoming indignant.

By the time we had returned home on Sunday with the remains of the cake given us by our friends the thing had run out of control.
What to do?

I decided to scrape the sponge layers free of jam, cream and butter icing and freeze them to make a trifle at some future date - no, more like four trifles...
The dogs were happy, jam cream and butter icing adorning their whiskers.

I was happy. Not only had I been spared the singing of  Happy Birthday, I had also been spared the horrors of April Fool.
No one knew of this European tradition....and I wasn't about to tell them!

Alcoholics Ubiquitous

A picture of bayonet training. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)It was a night of the full moon.

The dogs had kept me awake barking at the coyotes who prowled and howled along the river bed below, but, finally, peace reigned.

And then they started barking again.
I got out of bed to upbraid them and saw through the front room window a man standing under the street light outside the house. (Yes, these are the wilds of Costa Rica, down on the gravel tracks, but we do have a street light. Rural France take note.)
I shot back to the bedroom, put on a dressing gown and pulled down the bayonet from its home on top of the wardrobe.
Door open, lights on. dogs charging out out baying and mad woman advancing with bayonet at the high port...you'd think anyone would leg it...but not my caller.
By the smell of him he had been sampling the contents of a distillery which, together with the dogs ceasing to bay and jumping up at him instead revealed his identity.

Don Antonio, coffee picker extraordinaire, snapper up of trifles whether considered or not by their owner and dedicated drinker of strong spirits.
Not only did he clearly have no notion that it was three o'clock in the morning, he couldn't have told me if it was Pancake Tuesday or Palm Sunday.

We sat down on the bench in the porch and he told me that he thought he would drop in on his way back from visiting his sister at San Antonio.

What do you mean, on the way back? We're miles down the road...

I didn't waste time on the road...I came across country.

This involved a precipitous descent from mountain to river, through brush infested with poisonous snakes and a steep ascent on the other side, with much barbed wire to negotiate. Having drink taken.
You wouldn't wish it on a jogger.

What about the coyotes?

I threw matches at them...

He probably did.

Don Antonio conserves his energy, so if he had paid a call it was with some purpose in mind, but, courteous to a fault he would not bring out the reason for his visit without first going through the formalities of asking after one's health, one's family's health - probably the dogs' health given half a chance - so it was a good job it was a warm night.

After we had dealt with  details of Mr. Fly's latest round of tests and I had enquired as to the progress of his brother's ulcer, he became confidential.

You don't have to worry about that  so and so up the road. The Neighbour. I put him right when I met him at Alcoholics Anonymous at the church last week.

For some reason -  a disturbed night, perhaps, or the full moon - this conjured up a picture of the church packed to the gills with crowds of men in crisp white hats with curly brims drowning the smell of incense with gales of the hard stuff. Perhaps that's how it was.

Don Antonio continued.

I told him that if he started anything with you again (I suppose remembering the time he tried to hit me with a riding crop through the window of the car) he'd have me to deal with.
I'm not frightened of him. I've had him off his horse more than once when he was riding past my place. Gave him a good kicking.

What had he done?

Nothing more than usual...he needs to be taken down a peg, that's all.

Didn't he say anything?

Couldn't really. The priest was there and the others all said they'd have a go at him too.

There was something odd in the reasoning behind this.
It was clearly not in order for The Neighbour to retaliate in the presence of the priest, but it was seemingly fine for the assembled Alcoholics to back up Don Antonio. Someone should do a study....

Well, that was most kind of you. Was that what you dropped by to tell me?

No...I've got a problem. My brother in law gave me a bottle of his guaro (home brewed alcohol) for my brother and I drank it on the way.

Light dawned.

So you need another bottle in case your brother in law squeals on you? I don't have any guaro.

No, but you've got that banana wine....your husband gave me a bottle once. Wonderful stuff. I woke up in the ditch and my brother said I'd been singing for hours!

Doubtless the censorious would say that I would be wrong to give more alcohol to a drunk....and doubtless the censorious would think themselves right.

As I got up to go in search he held up his hand.

Can I have two bottles? I want to take one to the next AA meeting to show the boys....

From a long line of lovely bloggers....

Ayak, whose Turkish Delight blog is just what it says, has given me this Kreativ Blogger award...with no strings attached!

I would like in turn to pass it...no strings attached to....

Susie at Desperate Anglo Housewives, Bordeaux who makes me laugh and who has wonderful recipes.
Don't read the 'Ouch' post unless you want to pucker up in a sensitive area.

The Accidental Farm-Girl, for the great way she describes her adjustment to a new life...and she has another blog too, rather wilder, which you can discover for yourselves.....

and

Grumpy Old Ken for whom the award - in whatever language - must have been created.

I know some bloggers think these awards are childish, or, in one case, given out together with cookies which track your path on the net with sinister intent, but I think they are a great way to share great blogs.

The steergoround.....

Cinnamon tree (Photo credit: santheo)Yesterday we had a steergoround.
One would appear in the garden and be hooshed off to the corral.
Then another...same process.
Then another....

You would think that they were hobbits and we were Beorn.

Once gathered into the corral they would mooch off again and the steergoround would start all over again.

It was too late to find the break in the fence...so this morning we awoke to all five of them happily munching the grass alongside the fish ponds.

But not only the grass. Their midnight feast had involved plantains....plants knocked down to get to same....the leaves of several orange trees....and my one and only cinnamon tree.

Nowhere near the size of the tree in the picture above, only one year old, the poor thing had been torn to bits, stems lying all around as one steer after another had had a go at it.
I can only assume that cinnamon was not flavour of the month in steerland.

Still, it urged me on to have a go at harvesting what we had.
I took a kitchen knife and stripped the stems.....fine curls of skin with the most wonderful sweet scent.
My hands still smell of cinnamon hours after putting the curls of skin to dry.

Another first for me in this new life.

El Jefe....and Dad.

You can call me Prince Monolulu because......

                                                          I Gotta Horse!

I haven't kept horses for years, so when the chap who rents our grazing for his cattle asked if his peon could graze his horse with them I was only too pleased.
A day or so later the barking of the dogs alerted me to an arrival, which proved to be the said peon with his little boy - hardly older than a toddler - perched on the back of a brown and white mare which had clearly seen better days, walking head down with a rope round her neck as leading rein.
He installed her in the shed facing the house, cut her some camaroon grass, and he and the little boy stroked her and talked to her while she got down to business.

They came every day....Danilo cut and trimmed sugar cane for her...we bought horse nuts....she settled in.
The father had bought her cheaply...she was all he could afford...as he had grown up with horses and he wanted his son to have the same pleasure.
The little boy gave us pleasure too, stroking and talking to his horse...never noisy, never rough, never making sudden gestures and all was well until the day when father turned up with a cattle lorry.

His wife said he was spending too much money on the horse when they had so little to start with. She said he had to sell it.

What about your little boy?

Well, his first lesson about life...don't love something if you're poor.

Father was nearly in tears...it wasn't just his little boy who loved that horse.

We could not see her go off in that lorry, back to a weary round of auctions, underfed, not fed at all....so we bought her and she is giving us a great deal of pleasure, she and the little boy, whose father brings him down at the end of his long working day to stroke her and talk to her.

It's not just philanthropy...the rich gringos.
In the short time since her arrival I had recovered that sense of companionship and complicity that a horse can give...the little nudges, the whickers, the biff amidships when the food isn't coming fast enough.....
The incomparable smell of a horse, bringing back memories of all the years when horses were part of my life.

Surrounded once more by tubes of worming paste and tins of hoof oil, anti parasite shampoo, hoof picks and grooming brushes I've lost years!
Rejuvenation pills...who needs them!

I gotta horse!

But if you are not someone of a certain age, not from the U.K. and not one for the geegees you might ask where does Prince Monolulu come in?

As a schoolgirl I lived not far from Epsom racecourse.
Father, being a man for the geegees, was quite happy to book me in at our Australian dentist - another man for the geegees - on the morning of one of the race days so that I missed a day at school and we would set off for the afternoon armed with the racing paper in the hope of seeing home a winner, even though experience suggested that our sure and certain hope would be better centred on the Resurrection than on father's five horse accumulators.

I don't know what Epsom racecourse is like now at the Derby meeting, but when I went with my father there was still just a hint of the Frith picture.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that all human life was there, but there was a fair section of the odder parts of it spread over the Downs, from Gipsy Rose Lee reading your palm in her caravan (modern - for the period) to swing boats and coconut shies, via the boxing booths, the bearded lady and the sanitary facilities housed in a vast white marquee whose function was made crystal clear by the barker at the entrance

'Piddle and poop a penny.'

Raised in the discipline of 'going before going out' however none of our betting budget was wasted on responding to this particular invitation.

Father had his own ideas on the likely winners so was unlikely to take any heed of the tipsters, usually large gentlemen in tight racing silks crouching and flicking whips to give the impression of riding the winner as they worked the crowd around them.
However, he liked to see if the horse he fancied in newsprint was as good in the flesh and so before each race we would go to the paddock to see the runners being led in. But to get to the paddock we had to pass another tipster....

                                                     Prince Monolulu

Unmissable in bright jacket with plumes waving above his head, this gentleman seemed to be a permanent part of the racing world since giving a tip on Spion Kop for the 1920 Derby which came home at 100 - 6. Since then, his fame was guaranteed...even his his tips weren't.
Just mention Prince Monolulu to a racegoer and he would automatically reply with his catchphrase

I gotta horse.....