Jerrychicken - The Diary

As hinted previously this largely unknown area of Northern Spain is stunningly gorgeous, being Alpine in appearance it would surely be a huge, even massive, tourist attraction if the people who live there weren’t the most miserable twats on gods earth, with big chips on their shoulders too.

The ongoing terrorist situation in the region does nothing to attract tourists or investment either, but its mainly the most miserable twats on gods earth tag that does them no favours.

I’ve stayed there on several occasions when driving my father back from Benidorm - the ferry from Spain to England leaves from two ports in the area - but two of them stand out in mind - the first time and the last time…

The first time we followed directions to a tiny little hamlet somewhere way up in the Pyranees, 20km or so off the main road to the ferry port and about an hours drive from there in the morning - it was another of those suggestions from “a mate in Benidorm” who recommended the place and on arrival in the early evening it certainly looked worth the detour.

The village was like a scene from “The Sound of Music” with alpine log cabins with steeply pitched roofs and lots of ornate carving on the gables, a nun wandered down main street (the only street) singing about a problem she had with someone called Maria and doves coo’ed in harmony as they flew alongside her.

OK I lied about the nun, but the rest of it is true.

The guest house was also of Alpine stylee, stone clad and lots of stripped pine inside, we were offered two rooms by a man who spoke only in the Basque tongue, or so Brian said, and Brian based his assumption on the fact that it wasn’t “proper” Spanish because he couldn’t understand a word the man was saying - this was Brian who’s grasp of Spanish after being resident in Benidorm for seven years was “donde están mis espectáculos” or “where are my spectacles ?”, which prompts me to make a note of another story …

The rooms were beautiful, the view from our bedroom window was beautiful, the people there were the most miserable twats on gods earth of course, but everything else was simply beautiful.

We ventured downstairs for an evening meal and one of gods most miserable twats came to the table to serve us, presenting us with a menu in Basque with no translation, but we British are not phased by such things, we simply shout louder if Johnny Foreigner can’t understand us, and if he still doesnt understand us after shouting at him we claim his country in the name of Queen Victoria and tell them all they are hereby British subjects and henceforth should drive on the right and name their roads after our Prime Ministers - then we teach them the words to “God Save The Queen” and plunder their country.

So we perused the menu for some time and while doing so the miserable twat of a waiter brought a bottle of wine which we hadn’t asked for but set about anyway. After ten minutes Brian still hadn’t recognised any words on the menu that he could translate so simply pointed at something and by using the universal rule of travelling that if you all pick something different then you surely will find at least one edible thing, we placed our order.

The meal was actually very good, I recall chicken, or something chicken-ey, lots of tomato and, erm, other stuff and I think I may have chosen chicken for my pudding course too, but after a few bottles of wine and some more beer it was declared a very successful meal, then the waiter brought the bill.

Our dad looked at it, it had lots of zeros on it.

He looked at it very sternly and asked who had drunk the five bottles of wine, we counted the empties, we all had, the beer didn’t appear on there but lots of food dishes did and the total bill had five zeroes on the end of it, he was going to complain but then in a remarkable act of generosity which I had never seen before or since, he declared that it had been a very enjoyable meal and it was worth every peseta.

I looked at the bill and with the aid of a pen, some paper and all of my fingers and toes worked out that it was around £80, not bad for three with beer and wine, he looked a bit happier but not much, I think he was reckoning on spending about £10 for our food that night.

Then I noticed something else on the bill, two entries that amounted to around £60 of the £80 - the bill included our two rooms for the night, my father suddenly looked happier than I have ever seen him look before.

The region could be a goldmine for tourism if it weren’t for the miserable twats that live there.

The last time was a slightly different experience…

The last time that I visited the Basque region was after my fathers demise when Ned and I flew out to Benidorm to bring back our dads car - a sporting Renault number, he lived the high life in Benidorm - and also to repatriate Brian his flatmate.

We arrived at a motel on the main route after dark and checked in at the desk where we let Brian do all the talking in his best Beni-Spanish but the manager refused to speak Spanish back to him until he’d seen our passports, at which point he switched from Basque to Spanish and smiled, just the once. Apparently the British have a slightly higher acceptance rating than the Spanish do, although given that ETA were (allegedly) supported by the IRA (and vice-versa) during “the troubles” I can’t quite work that one out.

Still, we checked in, the rooms were fine, we went downstairs into the bar for vittles. The motel was on the periphery of a small village and obviously served as a meeting place for the population for the bar area was packed full, no matter, we shoved our way through the throng to the bar and stood in turn waiting to be served by the extremely busy barman.

We stood, and we stood, and we stood and waited and when the barman had finally served everyone in the room then he started to completely ignore us, it was almost as if he was refusing to even acknowledge the presence of strangers in his bar - which by coincidence is exactly what he was doing.

It was around that point that Ned pulled my sleeve and when I turned to see what he wanted he pointed to the bloke stood next to me, a huge swarthy looking ape of a man who, I noticed for the first time, had an unbroken shotgun slung carelessly over his shoulder, fortunately he had his back to me so didn’t hear my gasp of “what the fook”.

Ned pointed to a few other large swarthy apes in the room, all of whom were carrying shotguns, some tables had belts of cartridges piled on them and more guns were stood against a bench in the corner.

There are two options open to you when you discover that you have just walked into the local branch meeting of a terrorist cell - or maybe a bunch of apes who have been out hunting in the hills all day - you either walk out of the bar backwards, smiling all the way, or you ignore their overwhelming firepower (after all I could have armed myself with a glass ashtray off the bar) and behave as if its an everyday occurrence to find yourself in the bandito’s hideaway - we were hungry, we wanted beer, I cared not for the apes and their nefarious ways, I rapped on the bar for attention from the waiter - he looked up, saw it was me, then carried on drying the glass he was holding in his hand.

“The bastard won’t serve us” I whispered to Ned.

On the bar was a plate full of baguettes with what looked like bacon inside them, I was starved, Ned was starved, Brian was starved, we reached out and helped ourselves to three - in an instant the barman was stood in front of us demanding money, I asked for three beers, he had to fetch them but did so begrudgingly and probably picked the dirty glasses to do so, then in the stylee that I hate about foreign places of boozing he brought a till receipt on a small plate and presented it to me, didn’t put it on the bar or anything, just held it in front of my nose waiting for the money.

I placed a large demonination note on the plate and he took it to the till then returned with my change and held the small plate in front of my nose again - this is the bit that I hate about Johnny Foreigner and their bar-waiting habits, they expect to be tipped, even though they hate you, I took all of the money off the plate including the till receipt, smiled and thanked him with {cover your ears and eyes children}, “thank you cunt”.

He smiled back, we walked away, sat down, tried to eat our baguettes which contained not bacon but dried, cured ham that resembled thin strips of shoe leather, and I told Ned and Brian what I’d said to the barman, we kept looking over at the bar, he kept looking over at us, we smiled, he smiled back, it was only a matter of time before he went and got a Basque/English dictionary to find out what it was that I’d called him - so we left out of the front door of the bar, hurried around the back of the building and went to our rooms via the fire escape.

Like I said, the place would be a goldmine for tourism if it wasn’t for the miserable twats that live there.

PS This single post will probably rate my blog as sheer unadulterated filth from now on, I shall test it in a couple of days.