Buddy baby, you're a true Christmas miracle!

He’s only alive because of his mum’s intuition. Born 12 weeks early with no heartbeat, he weighs less than a kilo. Meet my new grandson 

Baby Buddy: The little mite had no heartbeat

I’M not exactly new to grandparenthood, if that’s the right word.
Up to last Wednesday my two daughters had their hands full with a handful of kids between them. Five, that is...or two and a half of each if the eldest got her way and was allowed to chop her despised cousin Charlie in two.
The two boys and three girls range in age from 20 down to five but all have one thing in common. They came into the world normally and were lucky enough to arrive healthy and complete.
So when my elder daughter Hayley found she was expecting, everyone assumed all would go well. I know she’s 41 and  it’s  12 years since her second daughter, Daisy, was born.
But all progressed normally right up to the 28th week – with Hayley and her partner Steve Holmes focused entirely on the scheduled arrival of a son in early March.
Then, 197 days into Hayley’s  third pregnancy, came a remarkable – and frightening – development triggered by the smallest hint that something was wrong.
Last Wednesday, the embryo child all but stopped booting hell out of Hayley’s body from the inside. She sensed that something was amiss, and although her midwife was not ­unduly concerned, the worried couple wanted to be sure.
A surreal scenario followed, with Hayley and Steve acting purely on intuition and forking out £100 for a  private consultation with a  paediatric specialist.
He sent them immediately to hospital, where  a scan revealed that the waters around the baby had all but dried up. Fearing the tot would not survive in this sea of nothingness, an urgent Caesarian section was ordered and the baby was plucked, lifeless, from Hayley’s body with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck.
The little one had no heartbeat and was not breathing.
For fully three minutes, doctors and nurses united in a battle to give life to the tiny foetus. For Hayley and Steve, those three minutes translated into a lifetime of lifelessness.
As the seconds ticked away, they named the baby Buddy, desperate that he should have a proper identity, even if he was never to draw breath.
Then, his tiny body invaded by a host of canulas, tubes and ventilators, a miracle occured. The mite’s heart began to beat.
Buddy was alive...if not kicking. All 992 grammes of him (or a tad under 2lb 2oz if you don’t do metric).
For 24 hours, his under-developed lungs were helped by a ventilator. Then another miracle; he started breathing by himself.
And another miracle, he scored 8 out of 10 in an official health check – a respectable score for a full-term baby, let alone a barely-formed Bud.
Amazingly, doctors told the relieved parents that had Hayley not gone to the pediatrician, the baby would have died inside her within two hours.
Over the next few days, Buddy went from strength to strength. He was two days old by the time I arrived in Manchester for my Christmas visit. Hayley was waiting for me in hospital reception...there were predictably lots of tears as we embraced.
With Hayley approaching her 42nd birthday, the chance of her conceiving again after a complicated Caesarean  is remote, to say the least.
And with Steve’s only previous marriage childless, this was  his probably his only  chance to fulfil his dream of fatherhood.

Hayley's hand shows how small Buddy  is

So they desperately needed  Buddy to be a survivor…and judging by his never-say-die attitude throughout his first week of life, he’s bionically indestructable.
After four days on the critical list in Intensive Care, he was reclassified at five days old as merely ‘vulnerable’. By the time you read this, he’ll probably be doing aerobics in his cosy incubator with its vivid blue light.
With his sensitive skin and distorted grimaces, there’s something unearthly about my sixth grandchild. He was not meant to leave the comfort of his human spaceship until early March and at less than one third of the weight of the typical new-born, I could easily confuse him with ET.
Particularly when my specs aren’t around.
It’s wonderful that, with his future now all but secured, I can joke about which planet the little fella came from. All of which leaves both Hayley and me in stitches.
Only mine don’t hurt.

Spain v Britain - the good, the blood and the ugly

IN the six years since I bought my home in Spain, my spectacles have become a shade pinker.
   I love the country, I love the people, I love the lifestyle - and of course I l adore the weather. OK, I’m not so keen on the Gota Fria but that doesn’t stop me being an unashamed Spanofile.
Having said that, Spain is far from perfect. In fact, there are things I loathe about this country.
The lunatic drivers and useless administrators, shop ­assistants who chat on the phone when customers need service, electricity companies that have no qualms about leaving old ladies in the dark if a payment is delayed.
And of course, the mañana, mañana mentality in just about every aspect of life. I could go on and on.

When it comes to organisation and administration, Spain is a Third World entity. However much we expats rip into the old country (and there’s plenty to rip into), when it comes to recording information, British bureaucracy takes some ­beating.
The UK system has been tried and trusted over generations and one simple phone call is invariably all it takes to iron out the glitch.
In Spain, if you ring your electricity, gas and water ­suppliers with a query, they’ll either be unable to find you on the company database, have your name, address or phone number wrong (often all three) wrong - or say they will call you back. Which they won’t.
This is, of course, a totally subjective opinion, since our individual experiences differ. This applies to hospital stays, too.
The reaction of readers to last week’s article on my recent stay in Torrevieja Hospital suggests that most expats regard the Spanish health service as superior to the NHS.
Yet the same article posted on one of my blog sites – and read more by people in Britain - prompted exactly the opposite response.
Which left me in a state of limbo over my own treatment because, whilst I adored the hospital itself, there were a couple of worrying elements of my six days in dock.
l The ‘mañana mañana’ mentality of the nurses when I pressed the call button. On one occasion I waited ten minutes for someone to come after telling them over the speaker that I needed assistance.
lThe near-sadistic behaviour of one impatient young male nurse when he couldn’t find a usable vein in either of my arms to insert a canula.
l In contrast with my after-care at Rochdale, where I had two coronary stents inserted in 2009, no proper advice on what to do and not to do in the immediate future.
The male nurse with an attitude came to the ‘rescue’ after a canula worked its way out of the back of my right hand, causing blood to drip all over the floor.
He wasn’t happy from the start and things got worse when he couldn’t find a usable vein in either arm in which to insert a new probe. I closed my eyes and froze as he pummelled away at my skin, trying to tempt even a mini-vein out of hiding.
At one point, he thought he found one, only to lose it. ‘’Stop moving!’’ he yelled in frustration, even though I hadn’t budged a millimeter. Problem was that my veins had become so incensed at being treated like a pin cushion that they’d gone into hiding. And this hot-blooded horror was bent on needling them into surrender.
He eventually found a way into my right arm just above elbow level. It felt distinctly uncomfortable. I suspected something was not quite right but his mood alone sealed my lips.
Within a couple of hours, my right bicep was almost solid. The canula had to go – and this time an angel of a nurse descended and soothingly found an entry point in the back of my left hand.
She was typical of the nursing staff of both sexes…sweet and caring. But while it was an isolated incident, he of the black mood left a dark cloud over my overall experience.
My discharge from hospital was also rather strange. Unlike in Rochdale, where I had my first angioplasty, there was no advice not to drive for a few days, and no little card for my handbag, detailing my condition and medication in case of emergency. And no proper details on recuperation procedure.
I can only assume this was because I had been through the same stenting process before – and know the drill like the back of my hand - what’s left of it after Mr Nasty’s needle session.
Well, I do know what I should do.
Basically, it’s a case of eating the right food, getting some exercise and taking things easier. Unfortunately I suffer from an incurable infection called workaholism, which undoubtedly contributed to the events that put me in hospital.
I’m now under strict orders to ease back – with an unwinnable battle ahead if I don’t take my foot off the gas.
And it’s not the angina that I fear most.
It’s my colleagues at The Courier.

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) November 25, 2011 

Why does the kit always hit the fan?

I popped into a major sports shop in Torrevieja last week, hoping to buy a couple of football kits for my grandsons for Christmas.
They are both crazed Manchester United fans - and actually live in the city, believe it or not. But they also enjoy the trappings of success. That’s why they are just as happy to run around in Barcelona or Real Madrid kit.

Now I know that Spain are world champions, but I was reckoning on paying no more than €40 for a replica of the new jersey they (or 'we' by adoption) wore against England recently.
Don’t you believe it! The CHEAPEST shirt on display was €59.95…with the World Cup winners’ jersey marked up at a cool €72.95.
For some reason, the adult version of the same kit was €3 cheaper. Curious.
There’s no mystery, or course, as to why cash-strapped mums and dads are subjected to paying extortionist prices to keep their kids happy at Christmas. It’s the ridiculous wages paid to professional footballers…when pure logic tells us their income should be capped.
Top stars reportedly earn at least £100,000 A WEEK – a disgusting figure that 95% of us could not make in two or three years.
If the players’ unions had any compassion, they’d force the likes of Iniesta, Rooney and Messi to fork out a measly £1,000 each weekend to repay the folk without whose hard-earned wages they’d be a lot poorer.
The only consolation for English folk is that their heroes made up at Wembley for the fact that Spain won the World Cup in South Africa last year.
Maybe manager Fabio Capello, whose English is far from perfect, got his instructions mixed up and told his players: ‘‘If you can’t join them, beat them.’’

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) November 25, 2011

My close shave - 6am razor attack in a Spanish hospital to die for

I was asleep when a chink of light  in the doorway alerted me. A man had entered Room 114.

A 6am intruder! The last thing I wanted on top of the angina attack that had put me in Torrevieja Hospital for four days and counting. Particularly with only a flimsy regulation-blue hospital gown for protection.
As I lay on the bed, squinting blearily into the darkness, the glint of metal told me the shadowy silhouette was on a business call.
He sat down on the bed - and  I realised he was brandishing two razors in his right hand.
My worst fears were confirmed. I was about to be shaved of my last vestige of dignity…by, of all people, the camp male nurse I had silently dubbed Dapper Diego.
I hadn’t the heart to protest as DD lifted my gown and, humming quietly, went to work. Donna’s pube train was at the sharp end of a potential disaster - and my only thought was that Diego might not mind the gap.
Five minutes later, the plucked chicken with the dicky ticker was ready for her heart-to-heart with the stentist later in the day.
More than 12 hours later as it happens. But of course, Torrevieja Hospital, like just about everyone in Spain, does everything manana.
Anyway, I eventually ended up at the mercy of  the guy whose job is to ping balloons into clogged up coronary channels. It sounds like a children’s party – and it might as well have been from the way the medical team laughed and joked their way through the entire procedure.
There was I, lying there with a catheter invading half my body via a gaping hole in  my femoral artery, and they were all cackling away in Spanish like kids playing doctors with a doll.
I certainly didn’t find it funny…though their trivialisation of it all did admittedly ease my own fears that my life was in danger.
Stentist? It was more like a dentist working upside down after administering laughing gas to himself and his staff.
That all happened last Wednesday – nine days ago. And you’ve only heard a fraction of the story.

The previous Saturday, my house guest Mike had to perform the old 112 and call the emergency services when I suffered an angina attack. Minutes later, I was in the back of an ambulance roaring down the N332 at 140kph with Vettel Mickey screeching behind in his rented Ford Ka.
I was about to receive proof – if any was needed – that the Spanish health service leaves the NHS standing. Even if it does seem to work at half the speed.
Torrevieja Hospital is a magnificent building with magnificent facilities …a credit to Spanish medicine in the 21st century.
That was evident from the moment I set foot – or rather wheels – on the premises.
I was whisked through the emergency admission process in a matter of minutes…with a slight hiccup when doctors discovered the handful of different medications Mike had grabbed from my bedroom drawer weren’t mine!
Assessed and then herded into a 32-bed observation ward, I shared the following eight hours with an array of characters of various nationalities in various states of discomfort.
Only an obligatory bland, salt-free apology for lunch eased the boredom. Plus the hope that I would be discharged later that day.
I suspect that is what the doctors intended because I was the only patient in the ward not to receive an evening meal.
Mind you, that changed big-time when the nurses got word of the poor starving waif in bed C-21.
They hunted around and unwittingly brought me a magnificent fully-flavoured meal that had clearly been intended for a non-coronary patient. Salt of the earth, those nurses!
For the next five days, home was a comfortable, modern en suite room of my own. And for me, Torrevieja is right up there with any British private hospital - with the exception, of course, that you don’t pay five-star hotel prices.
You get a much better view, too. Tourists would pay good money for the glorious panorama from Room 114 across the salt lake. Picture postcard stuff, particularly at night when the glow of lights on the far shore flickered on the water.
And in Dr Piotr Chochowski, I had the most caring of cardiologists. I’ve lots more to say  - but the main thing this week is that I’m not yet ready to cash in on my Golden Leaves funeral plan.
And since the whole episode did not cost me a cent, I still have considerably more money than stents.


Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 18-11-2011

Trick or treat, sick or sweet - for Fawkes sake bring back Bonfire Night!

I BLAME it on the Americans. In fact, I blame everything on the Americans - they are big enough to take it. Even the ones who weigh less than 20 stone.

I’m talking about the over-the-top Halloween hoo-ha that has whooped its way into Britain...and all but killed off one of the nation’s most treasured occasions.

When I was a child, Guy Fawkes Night was one of the biggest days of the year. A tradition marking the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, it commemorated a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics. The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament - something I doubt many British 10-year-olds these days know anything about.

They are more concerned with Halloween, where they are free to frighten the lives out of  old ladies by donning ­horrific masks and demanding sweets with menaces.

I wonder what you get if you ask for a ‘trick’ rather than a ‘treat’? Does one of the little demons remove his mask and turn out to be Paul Daniels?

To me, the Guy Fawkes culture of my youth was so much more embracing.

For days, even weeks before the event, we’d go from door to door with makeshift effigies of Fawkes and implore householders to give us ‘a penny for the Guy’.

Then, as darkness fell on November 5, the neighbourhood would gather for a fireworks spectacular in which Guys galore would go up in smoke on top of a massive communal bonfire.

How that delightful tradition came to be usurped by the hideous ‘trick or treat’ culture, I do not know.

I believe Halloween has Celtic origins and was originally a pagan holiday in honour of the dead. But I honestly cannot remember anyone celebrating it when I was young.

We may have started it - but as with everything else, the world has pinged it back in our faces with interest.

But I yearn for my grandchildren to enjoy the atmosphere of Guy Fawkes Night as I did half a century ago.
November 5 has a special place in my heart.

And nobody will convince me that the Halloween takeover was not a devious plot by those over-the-top, razzamatazz Americans.

Finders keepers: Can any of us say we are truly honest?

I’ve always believed that honesty is the best policy.

Indeed, statistics suggest that for most of us, it’s the ONLY policy.

But just how honest are we really? If you found a purse containing £60 cash in the street, but with no way of identifying the owner, would you hand it in to the police?

I know I would… because I did. Find £60 and take it to the cop-shop, that is...

I remember reading somewhere that something like 85 per cent of people are honest, in that they would never dream of taking other people’s property. That’s an encouraging statistic amid all the horror tales involving burglars, thieves, handbag snatchers and pickpockets.

And I believe that figure is not far off the mark.

The vast majority of us have no truck with the scum who believe that taking other people’s property is a much better option than working.

And I like to think most people would do what I did when I found that purse near a cinema in the centre of Manchester late one Friday evening.

It was a pretty little purse, probably belonging to a teenager – and inside was a wad of notes amounting to around £60. It didn’t even cross my mind to pocket the money…my only concern was for that poor young girl whose week’s wages had been in that purse.

So I took it to Bootle Street police station, where I was told that if it wasn’t claimed within a certain number of weeks, the money would be mine.

‘’And I can tell you that 80 per cent of cash we get handed in is never claimed,’’ the desk officer told me.

Predictably, I got a phone call some weeks later telling me that, in keeping with the statistics, nobody had claimed the purse and its contents. So would I come and collect it..

But the money was demonstrably NOT mine - it belonged to the person who had dropped the purse. There was no way my  conscience would allow me to have it…so I told the police to give it to one of their charities.

To this day, I don’t know where the money ended up. I also continue to wonder how much pain the loss caused to the purse’s owner…and why she did not go to the police station to see if it had been handed in.

My friends have similar tales to tell. My neighbour June, for example, recalls picking up what seemed to be a five pound note outside her doctor’s surgery in South Wales as she got into her car one day.

When she got home, she discovered it was actually a wad of fivers. She took it back to the surgery, where she discovered that a young man had lost the money – which in fact belonged to his boss.

June’s reward was the knowledge that she reunited the fivers with their rightful owner – while I never did get closure on my .not-so-little find.

So much for our honesty when it comes to the property of other people….but how many of us have never tried to cheat the taxman?

Like giving a plumber the nod when he tells you his repair work will cost £70 plus VAT but he’ll do it for £60 cash?

Let’s be honest, virtually all of us have done it. Yes, all those scrupulously honest people like myself who would not dream of pocketing other people’s property.


In the eyes of the law, wheeler-dealing with the plumber to avoid VAT is far worse than pocketing that tenner you find in the street. Yet we do it despite the fact that deliberately avoiding the payment of tax is not only dishonest, but a serious criminal offence.

Double standards? I prefer to look at it as an honest way of getting my own back on the legalised extortionists who tax me on what I earn, then tax me again when I spend my taxed earnings, and do it a third time when I die.

In other words, they celebrate my demise by completing a hat-trick of robberies and fleecing my children and grandchildren in the process.

.So what would I do if I found a purse containing £60 with a note saying it belonged to a tax inspector?
Easy. I’d use it to pay the plumber

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 28/11/2011
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They pink it's all over - but I'm not too old for joke birthday cards

IT was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and no, I’m not telling you how old I am.

But judging by the sort of birthday cards I received, my friends (the few I have left after all my moaning) clearly believe I have reached my dotage.

Apparently I am no longer a suitable target for those corny joke cards the ‘younger’ community bounce off each other.

I didnt even get a card making fun of my being old. You know, the sort that make you seem glam until you get the punchline inside.

A year older...and no sign of any joke cards

On the front, it will say something like ‘’What Do You Like To Get Up To In Bed, Sexy Lady?’ Then, when you turn inside, there’s an old dear in a flannelette nightie sitting on the loo saying ‘I Like To Get Up To Wee.’

That one’s dreadful because I made it up. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, virtually every card I received was one of those schmaltzy affairs you send to great-grandma on her 97th birthday.

I’m talking about the pink ones covered with pretty flowers and the message To a Dear Friend.

Admittedly, I automatically orientate to this type of card for my 83-year-old  stepmother - but with good reason. She gets the pink schmaltz treatment because she has no sense of humour – or sense of anything, for that matter.

Anyway, this plethora of pinko cards all but convinced me that my friends had made a pact to tell me subtly that, in their eyes, I am now officially OLD. The fact is I love funny cards…and always have done. Providing they are not too crude, that is.

I might be a boring old drone to some, but no one can say I don’t have a sense of humour. So I assume the reason no one sent me a card I could laugh at is that the entire planet now sees me as a coffin dodger.

I scoured the cards for even the slightest hint of humour and the nearest I could get to a giggle was one bearing the message ‘Especially For You…’’. Well, Who else would it be for, tonto?

That’s me off everyone’s Christmas card list. Now where did I put my Zimmer  frame?

Taff at the top - but England's rugby losers still get all the headlines

SORRY, folks, but I can’t resist it. I’ve got to have a quiet gloat at England being Frog-marched out of the Rugby World Cup – and the emergence of my beloved Wales as contenders to become world champions.

Every self-respecting Taff – male and female – is a rugby union fan. And to see our boys (and most of them are little more than boys) playing so brilliantly over in New Zealand makes me immensely proud.

Even if Wales lose to France in this weekend’s semi final, the team have done the nation proud. I mean, there are only three million of us – or one Dragon for every 17 St Georges or 21 Joan of Arcs.

As a little Principality attached to and overshadowed by England, we don’t have a lot to shout about. So you can’t blame us for making a song and dance when we show the English up. Even if it’s only at tiddlywinks.

Since everyone associates Wales with rugby, male-voice choirs and sheep, we should at least be half-decent at scrummaging and singing (I’ll pass on the sheep bit).

So it was sad that on one of the rare occasions we excel ourselves in a major sporting arena, the UK media chose to relegate the achievement to also-ran ­status.

Monday’s Daily Mail devoted the back SIX pages of a 72-page paper to England’s losers. Sports fans had to turn to Pages 66 and 67 for the first mention of Wales.
The Sun’s website the same day featured FOUR separate stories about England and nothing topical on Wales.

It was the same on TV, where most of Sunday’s news bulletins focused on England’s thumping and only mentioned the far superior Wales-Ireland contest as an afterthought.
By this weekend, the English media will of course have jumped on the bandwagon and be screaming about Sam Warburton’s brilliant BRITS flattening the Frogs.

It’s just like the Andy Murray scenario. The media suck up to the Dunblane racketeer before tournaments as ‘’OUR Andy, Britain’s best’’. This, despite the fact he is on record as saying he’d support ANY team playing England.

Then, when edgy Andy makes his customary semi-final exit from Wimbledon and other major tournaments, he reverts in Fleet Street’s eyes to the status of ‘sweaty sock’ (that’s Jock in Cockney rhyming slang).
That’s one of the reasons why most Celts have a ‘We love it when England lose’ mentality, whatever the sport.

I don’t go with that. If Wales can’t win, then ­another British team has to be the best alternative.
But I totally understand the thinking of people like Welshman’s son Gareth Evans, a Scot spending his first holiday in this region.

‘’I wasn’t even born in 1966, but I’m fed up hearing about what England did,’’ he says. ’’I hope Wales win the World Cup if only to shut the English up.’’

I somehow think that if the Scots had become World Champions in 1966, Bannockburn would be a distant second to the Mighty Macs for the next 10,000 years.
I was lucky enough to have personal friends among the great Welsh rugby team of the ’70s (which is still revered as one of the finest the game has known).

Sadly, those guys never won the World Cup…primarily because it didn’t exist until 1987.
That Golden Era team was brilliant because virtually a whole team of world-class players all arrived on the scene at the same time.

A quarter of a century later, history seems to be  repeating itself. And Wales skipper Sam Warburton and his fearless youngsters are ready, willing and able to paint the Rugby World Cup red.

PESSIMISM NOTE: Please be gentle on me if France win!

Lunacy in lead knickers: Overcharge of the light brigade is out of order

THERE can’t be many of us who have never crossed swords with an airline check-in desk over the weight of our luggage.

And suffered the embarrassment of exposing our packed smalls in front of a queue of impatient travellers as we search vainly for a discardable pair of knickers weighing two-and-a-half kilos.

There’s no chance of finding any one item remotely near as heavy, of course – so we either pay the £50 excess or see our hand luggage whisked into the hold along with an arm and a leg.

It’s a painful scenario, as anyone whose purse has experienced the pain of being disarmed and de-legged will testify. Particularly all you wafer-thin ladies who regard a size six as a tent.

Not so long ago, my friend Amy, who tips the scales at around 45-kilos, found herself hunting for those lead knickers after being caught in the ‘your bag’s overweight’ trap.

Her cause lost, she forked out the obligatory 50 quid …and then saw the giant of a man behind her, complete with bushy Brian Blessed beard, sail through check-in in a whisker.

‘‘He must have weighed 25 stone (158 kilos),’’ Amy moaned. ‘‘That’s four times as much as me, yet he didn’t have to pay any extra. It’s so unfair.’’ She has a point. Whilst airlines obviously need to put a lid on the total weight their planes lift off with, the system of treating all passengers as clones does seem innately flawed.

Excess weight equation: Little Amy plus suitcase plus lead knickers (67.5 kilos) = £50; Michelin Man plus suitcase (178 kilos) = No charge.

You have to admit there is something illogical about Michelin Man and a full set of spare tyres being treated identically to a stick insect.

But then, we live in an age of political correctness where it’s taboo to mock the afflicted. Or in this case those who eat all the pies. However, there are parts of the world where flying can be heavy going for the more rotund (you fat burgers, that is).

For instance, my long-time pal Mike Thornton was turfed off an eight-seater plane after he had been checked in for  a short flight in the Philipines. Mike, an undertaker whose surname sums up his shape, moved to the Costa Blanca recently to escape the deadful (sorry, dreadful) Manchester weather.

He recalls: ‘’My partner and I had booked for a later flight to Manila but when we arrived at Caticlan airport, the one before was still on the runway with two seats free.
‘’I needed to go to the loo so my other half checked us and our bags in at the desk.

When I emerged, the check-in clerk took one look at me and, clearly shocked, said to my partner: ‘‘Oh my God! Would you ask him to get on the scales?’ ‘‘I did – and as a result we had to wait for the next flight.’’

Fortunately, Mike saw the funny side. In fact, he admits he corpsed with laughter.

Which made a pleasant change from his day job…

The day I started singing a children's song I didn't know...

THE say elephants never forget…and neither, it seems, do humans. Even if we don't realise it.
I had a bizarre experience a few months back when I suddenly started singing a song that I didn’t recognise – in Welsh. There was something childlike about it all – but I had no idea where or when I had learnt the words or tune.
All I knew was that the garbled lyrics in my head, phonetically, sounded like this:

Dackoo mama doo add
Dabana gana wed
Ruby and a fat dog
A feeser and a fed
Adoo ack a die dee
A gravy and a call
Jim Crow crust in
Jim Crow  call
Now, if I could speak the Language of My Father, I would have known what the song was all about – and been able to work out when it might have come into my life.
But although I grew up in South Wales and lived there until I was 20; I had absolutely no idea where or when that little ditty got into my head.
Memory
Until the moment I started Dakooing in the shower, it certainly hadn’t been part of my conscious memory. All I wanted to know was from whence the song came – and how early in my life.
My parents are long gone so I asked my sister – who’s 18 months younger than me and now lives in the Middle East. She didn’t recognise the words but was able to confirm that it was neither Arabic nor Hebrew. Very helpful, that.
So I decided to look for the mystery tune on the Internet. Problem was that I had no idea how the words were spelt…so it was a matter of guessing. I actually learnt Welsh for a year when I started grammar school – but, given the alternative of French in Year Two, I jumped bateau.
This of course, was in the days when the British education system was so far behind the times that they thought ‘Duck a l’orange’ meant ‘Get down, they’re chucking fruit’.
It was bad enough that the boffins had the misguided impression that teaching foreign languages to six and seven year olds would only confuse the little sponge-brains.
Meanwhile, European kids barely out of infants school were yapping away in foreign tongues as if they were natives. I personally wasn’t aware of Spanish (which even then was one of the world’s most spoken languages) being on any local school’s curriculum in those days.
But back to Dackoo – and the concocted spelling ‘Dacw mama dywad’ that I Googled into my computer.
Amazement
To my Google-eyed amazement, it came up immediately with a website of ‘Welsh Nursery Rhyme Lyrics’. And there, in both languages, were the full words of 38 kiddies’ favourites taught typically to pre-school toddlers in Wales.
Including those of Dacw Mam yn Dwad or, in English, ‘There’s Mummy Coming’.
As I went through the correct version, more and more of the lyrics came back to me  – along with emotion-filled thoughts of my mother, who died in a polio epidemic when I was six.
*Dacw mam yn dwad,
Ar ben y Gamfa Wen,
Rhywbeth yn ei ffedog,
A phiser ar ei phen.
Y fuwch yn y beudy,
Yn brefu am y llo,
A’r llo’r ochor arall,
Yn chware Jim Cro
My mother could not have taught me the Dackoo words because she was English – and although Dad was born in the Rhymney Valley, his virtues did not include patience. Not that I ever heard him speak a word of Welsh, in any case.
Which means I must have learnt it at Greenways, the Cardiff kindergarten I started attending at the age of three.
Memory
The emergence of that hidden memory after well over half-a-century tends to confirm what European educationalists have known for generations, namely that very young children can absorb a second language with no fear of confusion.
And my own experience with Dackoo also demonstrates that our minds retain information for life, even if we are not aware of it.
What I want to know is, why can’t I remember what I did yesterday?

Wanted... the hit-and-run knitcase who battered my Betty

THE expression ‘hit-and-run’ immediately conjures up horrific images of maniac drivers and mangled bodies.
But what about the guy who accidentally backs into a parked vehicle, causing visible damage, and then drives off, hoping that nobody has taken his registration number? That’s hit and run, too.

And judging by the state of most cars in my part of Spain, there are an awful lot of people on the roads protecting guilty secrets.

Let’s be honest, a three-year-old car without at least one noticeable dent or scrape is about as common as free-flowing traffic on an English motorway.

I’ve had Betty, my little Kia Picanto, for four years, during which time she has been in one proper accident (the other guy’s fault, naturally) and been attacked by two hit and runners.

Oh, there was also the occasion last year when a family member nudged another vehicle while she was parking in Guardamar. Although there was little damage to his car, the owner insisted on going through the insurance because it was a business vehicle. Not clever – my premium has virtually doubled for the next 12 months. All of which makes it all the more galling that the two b******s who deflowered my Betty got away with it, while I face a bill of several hundred euros to get the damage repaired. If I ever get round to it.

Meanwhile, I’m driving round with my pride dented, along with a cracked headlamp and two mysterious holes in the top of the front bumper. My hunch is that the damage was caused by a pair of motorised knitting needles on wheels, which then tried to pull the wool over my eyes.

For all our frustration at careless drivers who damage our cars and then leg it (that can’t be right), how many of us have not done the same thing ourselves?

I nudged a parked car during a three-point turn in Manchester a few years back and still have a conscience over it, even though I have no idea if any damage was done. I could have stopped and knocked on the owner’s door but I was frightened what their reaction would be. And I guess fear does come into the equation.

  It’s a lot easier to go missing than to face the possibility of being attacked by a furious gorilla of a man. Particularly if he is armed with knitting needles.

Help, we've been burglarized! The Yanks have stolen our language

THERE used to be a language called English – until it was murdered by our so-called friends across the Pond.
And the thing that saddens me most is that we’ve wilted like wimps under a growing bombardment of ridiculous Americanisms.

‘’Can I GET a burger and chips,’’ has become the staple way of ordering food for just about every young Brit under the age of 25. I’m still waiting to see someone actually do what they say…and march into the restaurant kitchen to collect their grub.

Then there’s the curse of having to watch TV show hosts inanely urging British audiences, not to applaud, but to ‘’give it up’’ for some Z-list guest who’s incapable of  generating spontaneous appreciation.

Give up what? Pandering to Hollywood movie culture by using American-speak at every opportunity? Far better they give up the ridiculous posturing rap culture that’s become the ‘in’ thing among certain segments of British society. Sometimes with extremely negative consequences - innit?

I honestly believe that English as we know will disappear within a couple of generations, submerged under the tsunami of American influence on our young people. Television, computer games, electronic gadgets, all sorts of technology – everything seems to emanate from the other side of the Atlantic these days. And as for American films (the real word for ‘movies’, remember?), I doubt I understand even half of the obscenity-filled soundtracks these days.

The English language is certainly not what it was 50 years ago.

Back in the 1960s, Britain was king. The Beatles ruled the music world, England were world football champions – and the Commonwealth still encompassed half the planet.

Then, slowly but surely, the meticulous grammar that people like myself were taught in school began to be Yanked away. It has since been regurgitated in American-speak with Britain’s younger generation happily swallowing the new version as if it was a ‘cookie’. And that takes the biscuit.

It seems that English kids today are so weak-willed that they can’t fight off their absorption into 21st century America. Because, believe me, they are being sucked in relentlessly to the point that they actually seem to think McDonalds is proper food and that Starbucks make decent coffee.

We’ve already seen it with Halloween, which was not even celebrated in the UK in my childhood. Guy Fawkes Night was the big one – everything went into making the best ‘Guy’ for November 5, because it guaranteed richer pickings from our door-to-door ‘Penny For the Guy’ collections.

These days, householders are pestered by a horde of masked midgets demanding sweets (or should that be ‘candy’?). With menaces, too. Presumably the sweets are the treat –but what happens if you opt for ‘trick’? Does one of the midgets’ masks comes off and reveal Paul Daniels? Horror of horrors!

But back to the English language. As a professional wordsmith, I have to deal every day with the trimmings of the American Revolution. I am increasingly seeing words like ‘organisation’ and ‘realise’ spelt with a Z; rather than an S. Indeed, the spellcheck on my computer, which is set to ‘ENGLISH English’, perpetually tries to ‘correct’ the spelling to the American style.

We can do nothing about the Yanks nicking our language and changing the rules (just as they did when they pinched the game of rugby, turned the participants into bouncy castles, and called it American Football).

But for heaven’s sake, let’s vow NEVER to allow words like ‘burglarize’, ‘gotten’ and ‘’winningest’ to creep into our everyday speech.

Even if that means stepping up to the plate and doing math in the parking lot.

Mr Coleman's cane: Corporal punishment and human riots

When I was in junior school, I was petrified of the cane in Mr Coleman’s study. He was the headmaster - and the only teacher allowed to dish out corporal punishment.  And I worked hard to make sure I never crossed him, or any other teacher for that matter.
When I think back, the fear of bamboo on youthful fingers was probably the biggest deterrent of all in keeping boisterous 10-year-olds on the straight and narrow.
My Dad wasn’t averse to clipping me around the ear when I stepped out off line at home; indeed he occasionally whacked me on the back of the head and was promptly ticked off by my stepmother for overstepping the mark. “Jack, that’s dangerous,’’ she’d complain. ‘’If you must hit her, smack her on the leg.’’
To anyone under 30, the above scenario must sound Dickensian – and to some extent it was. But whilst I was a bit of a naughty child at home, I made sure I kept on the right side of the school authorities.
Only once was I marched to Mr Coleman’s study...for stupidly lobbing a lump of coal onto the playground. Don’t ask me where the coal came from because I haven’t a clue. Mind you, this was in South Wales and at the time I was a minor!
Anyway, you can imagine how this cowardly coal-chucker reacted when the headmaster brought out his cane.  I burst into a flood of tears and apologies... and literally begged for mercy.
My emotional plea had the desired effect on Mr C, though I’ll never know if the cane would have hurt my hand more than his alternative punishment – the exertion of writing   ‘I shall not throw coal on the playground’ 100 times.
Now I was a pretty typical kid and, whilst I was an angel compared to the child rioters of 2011, there is no doubt the fear of physical discipline taught me and my friends to respect authority.
I’ve a message for David Cameron, Theresa May and Co.  Corporal punishment works. And it’s because Britain abandoned discipline that loony looters have been running wild in the nation’s major cities.
I have certainly never come across anyone who was permanently damaged, physically or mentally, by the after-effects of six of the best. In fact, everyone I’ve spoken to said the experience did them good.
But try telling that to the politically correct dummies who run our country. They would rather collaborate with the thugs rather than confront them – believing you can talk sense to the brain dead.
The vermin who destroyed England come from a subculture that has developed over the last few decades  – a scum society where scallies perform street carnage while mum and dad are either enjoying the pleasantries of a comfortable jail cell or out of their minds on drink and drugs.
These lowlifes are only a tiny minority of British society, yet they can cause havoc, as we have seen so painfully recently.
They respect nobody, would not dream of working, and believe the only way of life is to steal from others. They live by the law of insolence, robbery and violence.
And the only way to deal with them when they go on the rampage is to give the police and, if necessary, the  Army the freedom to stamp on them.
But in a country where most of the police are not even armed, what chance have we got?
Political correctness rules, just as it does in the schools where the little scumbags develop their obnoxious charms. Teachers cannot so much as raise a hand to discipline the rebels, who celebrate by threatening and even attacking the people trying to educate them.
This is where the problem began...we took legalised discipline out of the equation when the cane was confiscated from our schoolteachers.

Mr Coleman,  your cane is needed. Desperately.

My life is going to the mogs... but that's just PURRFECT!

MOLLY: Not bright enough to have learning difficulties

GEOFFREY: Does he have another home?

 THEY say that cats have nine lives.Well, my life has nine cats. At least it seems that way as just about every waif and  stray in the neighbourhood queues at my cat flap for its daily food fix.

Officially I have three moggies. The first is mad Molly, who is small, black, weirdly mis-shapen and has learning difficulties (the description of her previous owner, not mine). Poor Molly’s not intelligent enough to have learning difficulties. The cat flap’s been there for three years and she still doesn’t know how to use it.

MOGGY No.2 is Geoffrey (Geoffrey Boycat to give him his full name – apt for an animal that moves as slowly as his cricketing namesake used to score runs for England).

My Geoff is a black, long-haired softie of a stray who was probably lost or left by his previous owner a long time ago. Certainly someone cared for him because he was neutered and healthy when he first started coming to my place. In fact, it’s possible he still has another home because he sometimes goes missing for a day or two.

MOGGY No.3 is Henry, a young tabby who turned up at my back door last autumn with a hairless, bleeding chest and a mega-miaow. ‘’I suspect he’s been in a fight but I can stitch it up, no problem,’’ said the vet. ‘’I would advise you to have him neutered as soon as possibly, though. Not only will it stop him fighting, it will also help to keep the cat population down and make him more of a house cat.’’

Twenty-four hours later, Henry moved in -  neatly stitched, snipped and tucked. When his chest took longer than expected to heal, I took him back to the vet…and a blood test revealed he was FIV-positive, the feline equivalent of HIV.

‘’It’s nothing to worry about,’’ said the vet. ‘’He was almost certainly born with it. It’s quite common and he has a good chance of leading a normal life. Because he has been neutered, he’s highly unlikely to pass the FIV on, even through sharing food bowls with other cats.’’

All of which makes Henry a bit special. After all we’ve been mutually stitched up – him by the vet and me by Henry, who could have saved me a lot of money had he turned up on someone else’s doorstep! (I’m joking…wouldn’t be without him for anything.

Add to Molly, Geoffrey and Henry the half-a dozen feral waifs and strays which turn up at various times of the day and night – and the menagerie-a-trois moves into mega-moggy mode.

And thereby hangs another tail…the tale of why I prefer cats to dogs.

Now I’ve written a couple of light-hearted articles in the past about the respective merits and otherwise of each species, so apologies to those who have previously been subjected to what follows.

Cats are to me the most mysterious, fascinating and wonderful creatures on earth.  Not only can they read your mind, they can also manipulate it to  their own advantage.

That's the voice of 40 years of cat ownership speaking. Oh, and I didn't own any of my moggies - they owned me.

I was THEIR pet, not the reverse. If it didn't suit them to live in my home, they'd have been off like a flash to appoint some other purr soul as honorary daily food-and-milk supplier.

Some of us are cat people, some dog people and some, like myself,  care for both. Only we usually have a preference and in my household, moggies have always held the edge.

To start with, they allow their owner more independence. If you're not around for a few days, it doesn't really matter as long as someone is there to feed them. Leave a dog on  its own for two days and you're not only in serious trouble with the animal authorities, the poor mutt will also have moped itself into a candidate for the canine nuthouse.

Then there is the cleanliness issue. Dogs love to pepper their noses with  the ghastliest of savouries left for them by their fellow barkers. The browner and smellier the better for Fido and his pals, and the worse for those of us whose shoes squelch the stink into our  rugs and carpets when we get home.

From my experience, there's nothing more frustrating  than trying to house-train a  puppy. It will pee and poo to order providing you let it out a minimum of 250 times a day. But pop out yourself for five minutes and you open the door on your return to a mound of doggy dung and a floor awash with a ship-load of urine.

The yelps when Little Poo  is left momentarily on its own are bad enough. But they are nothing to the yelps of human anger that boom into the stratosphere when Mr and Mrs Owner discover what poochie was up to while they were out of the room.

Yet to a dog lover, those Close Encounters of the T*rd Kind are all acceptable in exchange for the pure, uncomplicated love you are guaranteed in return for just being there. Who cares that Fido spends all day rolling in mud, urine, vomit and the faeces of every animal on earth? It only takes a couple of hours to clean him up - and then those luscious licks and doggy hugs make it all worthwhile.

Unless, like me, you're already so browned off by those pooper bloopers that you've vowed never to have a dog again.

Cats are a complete contrast. House-trained before they've ever seen a house, all a kitten needs is a litter tray and it will wee and poo  into it ad infinitum. Mind you, removing the hail of stones that hurtle around the house in mini-puss's attempts to  bury the residue with its lethal back feet can take twice as long as clearing up after any untrained puppy.

HENRY: The vet stitched him up - and Henry stitched me up!

Moggies also need no  teaching when it comes to cleaning themselves. And thereby hangs another tale - plus body, head and legs.  Before you  know it, puss has licked herself  bald and is coughing up a two-ton hair ball. You rush her to the vet thinking she's on her last legs but fear not...they all do it.

Unless, like my Molly, the furry one suffers from feline asthma and vomits up nothing but wheeze.
If your cat is a Tom, then you have another problem or three. First and worst is his territory spraying, and the pungent, difficult-to-remove smell it creates. Then there's his sexual appetite, which he'll inevitably impose on all the local moggettes - accompanied by a cat's chorus loud enough to drown out a 30-piece orchestra.
The solution to that one is simple. Have Tiger Tom snipped in the bud when he's a few months old and the spraying and s****ing will be a thing of the past.

If you have a dog, you will of course need to take it for walks. Unless you are a lazy bitch like one or two of my friends - and end up with a mutt that's even fatter than its owner. In such instances, at least fatso and her pet won't need a pooper scooper to clean up the dog mess, though not that many people seem to bother if the pavements in my locality at El Raso are anything to go by.

People not clearing up the mess left by their dogs in public places is a big problem everywhere. But here's a question for you: If you saw a threatening-looking yob's pit-bull pooing outside your home and he didn't clean up the mess (the yob, not the pitbull), what would you do?  If your answer is 'nothing', score a brownie point for honesty.
As for me, I'll stick with my moggies. I just wish they could purr in English.

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) September 2, 2011

Ryanair, rip-offs and reason: You're taking the Mickey, Micky!

Michael O’Leary’s methods of making money do work – but at the expense of rubbing an awful lot of people up the wrong way. Including me.

What some people don’t realise is that Ripoff-air’s seemingly low prices are heavily subsidised by those poor people who HAVE to make emergency late bookings for unforeseen emergencies like family bereavements.
And by the millions of families who cannot take vacations off-peak and are forced to pay silly prices to travel during school holiday periods.

My daughter Lisa has just been lumbered with just such a situation – and ended up paying a fortune for a ONE-WAY Ryanair ticket from Alicante to Liverpool for her 15-year-old daughter Talia. Plus heaven knows how much more in £1-per-minute Premium Rate phone calls to verify details with arguably the most elusive customer call centre on the planet.

Counting the Costa: My granddaughter Talia, her mum Lisa and €228.99 boarding card 

Talia was away with her school in Holland when Lisa and the rest of the family flew out to my place in Spain last week. So she travelled with me on my return from the UK on Monday – on a single Monarch ticket which cost a total of £54.48, including all taxes plus a suitcase. That reservation was made on July 29 – just three weeks before the date of travel.

A very fair price in the peak season, by anyone’s standards.

However, since Talia is 15, she is not allowed to travel alone, so the only way of getting her back to the UK in time for the new school term was to add her to her mother’s party. And they are booked on Ryanair’s Alicante to Liverpool run next Monday.

I had attempted to make Talia’s reservation while I was in England, but Ryanair’s online booking service, unaware that she would be on the same flight as her mother, predictably rejected the booking with a message that under-16s cannot travel alone.

The only option remaining was for Lisa to add Talia to her travelling party herself, which she eventually managed to do – but by now it was only10 days before the date of travel.

Enter Michael Skybandit O’Leary and his rip-off boys, rubbing their hands with glee.
What would be a fair price to pay for a one-way ticket from Alicante to Liverpool in late August? The £54.48 charged by Monarch? No, that would be incredibly cheap. Say100 euros, then – 120 top whack?
No chance. For the pleasure of travelling one way from Alicante to Liverpool, with absolutely no frills, Lisa was fleeced for 228.99 euros – or £212.84 sterling at Ryanair’s. A predictably miserable exchange rate.

And still the expense was not over, because Talia had to be booked as an Adult to circumvent the system – and Lisa then had to call the Rip-offair office to switch the documentation to Child.

That in itself took three days, which won’t surprise many of you.

Ripoff-air even managed to include a €6 administration fee – presumably for the extra work involved in counting the money. Plus another €6 for web check-in. Does that mean Talia can check in for free at the airport…before Ripoff-airs jobsworths tell her she can’t take her hand luggage on board because the bag is 4mm too wide?

Ryanair’s sharp practices are not even clever. ‘‘Passengers who do not present a boarding pass at the airport will be charged a reissue fee of £40’’, they warn. Forty pounds! How much does it cost Ryanair to print a piece of paper, for heaven’s sake.

Oh, and each boarding pass ‘‘’must be printed and presented on an individual A4 page’’. Get it wrong and it’s gonna cost you again but then, when do O’Leary’s boys NOT take the Micky?

A Cork-based friend of mine travels to Alicante with Ryanair because has no other option. And he reckons their attitude is not one of gratitude for his business but that THEY are doing HIM a favour in providing a service.

Another friend’s experience last year suggests that Ryanair should consider adopting the expression ‘The Customer is Always Wrong’ as their official slogan.

My pal Andres Ballesteros, whose English is adequate but not perfect, paid on line for a return ticket from Liverpool to Alicante for his UK-based son – only to realise almost immediately that he had booked the flights back to front.

It was clearly a genuine mistake but Andres, who lives in El Altet, accepted he’d have to fork out another 20 euros or so to have the dates reversed. But when he phoned Ryanair’s call centre, a dismissive female operator told him haughtily: ‘‘It’s your mistake. You’ll just have to pay again’’.

Consequently, poor Andres had to rebook both flights, more than doubling the cost and adding a tasty bonus to O’Leary’s greed machine. World’s Most Popular Airline? World’s Least Caring Airline more likely.
Lisa reckons Ryanair have made a total of around £250 out of Talia’s single fare. 

No frills? At that price, my granddaughter should be getting all the frills of every inflated fare O’Leary has pocketed all summer.

PS: I just took a look at Monarch’s website in order to make a direct comparison with Ryanair – and guess what? A one-way ticket from Alicante to Manchester on Monday (August 29) would cost me €420.50! I stand corrected – it seems that when it comes to holiday time, the fly-boys are all as bad as each other.

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) August 26, 2011

Fool Britannia - you outlawed discipline and gave birth to a scum culture

Theresa May: Preaching

I CAME home to Manchester last week to visit my family and friends.
Instead, I came home to see the values I love destroyed forever.
The riots and looting may have been temporarily washed away by midweek rain, but you can be sure the thugs will return.
Because they know they have nothing to fear from a system that has been wrecked by political correctness and the outlawing of discipline, both at home and in the nation’s schools.
England will never be the same after the trashing by local morons of cities from London to Liverpool and from Manchester to Bristol.
Like every law-abiding citizen, I wanted to see the trouble cut off at source by the police - be it via water cannon, rubber bullets or taser gun.
Instead, we had Home Secretary Theresa May preaching against even the softest of deterrents as shops were wantonly vandalised, torched and looted.
‘‘The way we police in Britain is not through use of water cannon,’’ she woffled. ‘‘The way we police in Britain is through consent of communities.’’ That, Ms May, is precisely why the country is in a mess - because the low-lives responsible for the mayhem don’t live by the rules of normal society.
The only thing they fear is pain, plus perhaps the prospect of spending many years behind bars. And in a society that has banned physical discipline and treats prisoners like hotel guests, that means they fear NOTHING.
The scenes were embarrassing as the world watched ignorant children, yes children, being allowed to wreak havoc with impunity as if they were stars in a Hollywood movie.
As for deterrents, there weren’t any.  Just droves of unarmed police, reined in and equipped more to defend themselves than to attack the villains.
Prime Minister David Cameron seems to think the troublemakers will get their comeuppance in court – but he’s deluding himself. The PC brigade frown on locking up children and I’ll  be staggered if even one rioter or looter gets the five-year sentence a stricter society would impose.
No wonder the world is laughing at Britain’s joke government and the opposition, too.  Because Ed Milliband’s lot are just as responsible for the softie judges and magistrates who will inevitably tiptoe through the minefield of mayhem.
The vermin who destroyed England come from a subculture that has developed in the UK over the last few decades  – a scum society where scallies perform street carnage while mum and dad are either enjoying the pleasantries of a comfortable jail cell or out of their minds on drink and drugs.
These low-lives are only a tiny minority of British society – yet they can cause havoc, as we have seen so painfully this week.
They respect nobody, would not dream of working, and believe the only way of life is to steal from others. They live by the law of insolence, robbery and violence.  And the only way to deal with them when they go on the rampage is to give the police and, if necessary, the  Army the freedom to stamp on them .
But in a country where most of the police are not even armed, what chance have we got?
Political correctness rules, just as it does in the schools where the little scumbags develop their obnoxious charms. Teachers cannot so much as raise a hand to discipline the rebels, who celebrate by threatening and even attacking the people trying to educate them.
This, Mr Cameron and Ms May, is where the problem began...we took legalised discipline out of the equation when the cane was confiscated from our schoolteachers.
Now you’ve forgotten that it actually used to work. I never met anyone who was damaged by six of the best. Exactly the opposite in fact – it taught kids to behave themselves.
But of course it wasn’t PC. Unless that stands for the Perfect Corrector.
I just thank God that I got out in time. Y viva Espana.

The two faces of doorstep charity

I’VE never been sure what the Spanish law is regarding door-to-door charity collections.

On one hand I’m told it’s illegal, and that the people who ring my bell trying to raise money for a new school/hospice/orphanage/public toilet are in fact bogus.

On the other hand, you have those charity callers whose impressive documentation .and smooth tongue convinces you they are for real.

‘’Don’t give money to anyone collecting at the door,’’ is the clear message from both my community president and the local Neighbourhood Watch. ‘‘The odds are that they are not genuine.’’

Well, for the last two or three years, this cheerful-looking Spanish guy in his 40s, lways armed with identity card, badge, documents and flyers galore, has been doing his best to squeeze euros out of the expat community around my home.

Some people give, some don’t. And I admit he’s sweet-talked me into parting with a few euros in the past.

But that was before I became Editor of The Courier – and in fact, before this newspaper even came into existence.

This time I was armed with a powerful new weapon and II plotted a scheme that would make or break him next time he came calling..

I would to tell him I was writing an article on residents being pestered by bogus charity collectors. I wanted take his photograph and put it in The Courier, at the same time confirming to readers that he was no Luis the Ladrón and represented a genuine cause.

I figured that an honest collector would agree instantly to being photographed since it would surely improve hisreturns…while an imposter would run a mile.

I was in the garden when he turned up in mid-afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

‘Hola senora, you Engleesh?’’

He clearly didn’t remember me – not that I wanted him to.

‘’Yes, I want to speak to you,’’ I replied in Spanish, going straight on the attack as he pulled his documents out of his briefcase.

I reeled off my proposal (well, hardly reeled it off – my Spanish isn’t particularly good) and then mentioned taking his photo.

He did not like the idea. In fact, it horrified him. ‘No photograph!’’ he snapped, quickly putting his papers back in his briefcase. ‘‘Definitely not. It is illegal to take photos in Spain.’’

‘‘It’s illegal to collect money door to door in Spain, more likely,’’ I retorted, uncertain whether this was in fact true.

With that, he thrust the leaflet alongside into my hand and stalked off to accost another potential victim.

The following day a respectable looking woman aged about 30 appeared at the front gate and began the charity sales talk. Or so I thought.

‘‘I’m sorry but there’s a great suspicion of charity collectors around here,’’ I said, lining up another photographic session. ‘‘People think you are not genuine.’’

‘‘Charity? I’m not collecting for charity, cariño,’’ she retorted indignantly. ‘‘I’m collecting for ME. For me and my family.’’

There followed a party political broadcast on behalf of Spain’s unemployed masses. She told me she had lost her job, her husband was out of work and his dole had been stopped, and they had three kids to feed.

How else could she support them than by calling on the generosity of more affluent people?

I know she could have been conning. But if she was, she deserved the €10 I gave her just for her acting skills.

Genuine or not, her face lit up at the sight of the money and she couldn’t thank me or hug me enough. ‘‘This will pay the lighting bill tomorrow, carino. I’m so happy.’’

And off she went with a parting shot. ‘‘Watch out for those charity collectors. You never know if their genuine.’’

WITNESS FOR THE DEFENCE

TALKING of uninvited callers, I got into conversation the other day with two very nice ladies about…the end of the world.

Yes, they were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now although I am not a Chrstian, I have never been one of those ‘we’re not interested – clear off’ types.


Indeed, apart from the fact that they are invariably humble, gentle people, I have the greatest admiration for the courage of Witnesses in the face of adversity.

Namely the antagonism of so many people who resent their intrusion. It’s all very well to turn them away politely but firmly, but verbal aggression and rudeness is not necessary.

I'd also like to clear up one or two misconceptions about Jehovah’s Witnesses. First of all, they are neither crazy nor any more deluded than followers of any other religious order. Indeed, to me their message rings truer than most.

The mess that mankind has got the world into needs sorting urgently – and who better to handle it than Big G himself? And soon!

I would never have the courage or dedication to become a Witness. But I do wish I could truly BELIEVE because it immediately takes all the fear out of dying

‘‘I bet you get a lot more abuse than friendliness when you knock on doors,’’ I said to my visitors. ‘‘You are so brave to carry on despite all the resentment.’’

‘‘The strength to go on doesn’t come from us – but from Jehovah,’’ they replied.

I come from Jewish roots, but as a lifelong agnostic, I have spent my entire life wondering what existence is all about.

But there has to be more to it than eating, drinking and making a nuisance of ourselves.

Jehovah’s Witness literature often portrays their idea of the Paradise awaiting believers.

We see images of Mum, Dad and smiling kids strolling and playing in a sunny Garden of Eden, their pets – including lions and tigers – sitting obediently at their feet.

Beat you to it, guys. I’m in Paradise every time I sit in my sunny garden, full of glorious summer colour, with one purring moggy on my lap and another at my side.

In this life, that’s as good as it gets for me. It almost makes my chronic backache worthwhile…

It shouldn't happen to a ket - putting the accent on accents

ONE of the most noticeable aspects of expat life is that you are part of a diverse representation of the British people. Not like at home, where the vast majority of those you interact with are from your own locality.

There’s a row of six villas opposite my house in Guardamar del Segura – with owners of six different nationalities, including all four home nations. Throw in a Russian and a Pole and I’ve got a ticket to watch the Europa League.

My pick of the accents around me has to be that of my Welsh neighbours June and Graham, who sounds just like my late father. Dad hailed from a Charm Dynasty in South Wales (well, an anagram of it anyway – no one believes there’s actually a place called Ystrad Mynach, let alone that anyone was born there).

I’ve always been fascinated by accents. Back home in Manchester, virtually everyone greets you with the obligatory ‘’Hiya, yore-rite?’’ (In  English, that equates to ‘‘are you all right?’’). Out here in Spain, you hear just about every accent under the sun, some of them so garbled you swear they are Martians.

But it’s great fun guessing the hometown of the people you chat with in any bar because they are as likely to be from Newcastle, Nottingham or Norwich as from Brighton, Bristol or Basingstoke.

I am originally from South Wales but lived in Manchester for well over half my life. To hear a valleys accent in Lancashire is as rare as finding a Man United fan who’s not from London or Dublin. But come 1,500 miles south to the Costas and there seem to be Taffs all around you. I love it – makes me feel 20 again, mun!

I’m actually pretty good at recognising accents, having been fascinated by speech patterns ever since having a bizarre childhood spat with my maternal grandmother at her Birmingham home..

Grandma Davis had a ginger cat called Marmaduke (or perhaps it was Marmalade?). She was also a Brummie – albeit a refined one.

‘’Grandma, where’s the cat?’’ asked this nosey little Welsh waif. ‘’Cart, what cart?’’ echoed the old lady’s voice from the kitchen.

‘’I didn’t say cart, grandma, I said cat,’’ I called back.

‘’What do you mean ‘CART’? was her indignant response this time.

‘’The CAT!’’ I shouted. ‘’Marmaduke. the CAT.’’

Grandma suddenly realised what I meant. ‘’Oh, you mean the KET! You kept saying CART.’’’

‘’It’s not a KET, it’s a CAT,’’ I pleaded, but grandma wouldn’t have it.

‘’They don’t teach you proper English in those Welsh schools,’’ she tut-tutted. ‘’It’s a KET– please stop saying CART.’’

My 11-year-old granddaughter Daisy absolutely adores that story and makes me repeat it perpetually. But that’s exactly how it was…I really threw the ket among the pigeons that morning!

To this day, the subject of accents regularly throws up amusing incidents and anecdotes.

Like the family from Derry in Irelandwho have a villa near me. There’s nothing they like more than to have a good natter natter…and they are so friendly that you just have to sit and chat with them. Problem is, most people don’t understand a word they say - particularly when they've had a few drink . I can even understand Alex Ferguson better!

It’s a case of nodding your head and saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ depending on the answer you think they want to hear.

So which British or Irish accent is the most difficult to understand? Brummie, Geordie, Glasgow, Derry? My personal No.1 is pure Barnsley – borne of a foggy winter afternoon when I parked my car on a piece of waste ground purporting to be a car park and was chased by a steward yelling: ‘‘Thah’s lift thee leets oon.’’

‘’I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’’ I said after he repeated the phrase.

‘’Yoove left yer bloody lights on!’’ he said, realising he was talking to a stupid foreigner.