SPANISH SUMMER NIGHTS AND ME by David Mitchell (the read aloud family .txt) 📕

SPANISH SUMMER NIGHTS AND ME

The year is 1990. I am sitting on our patio by my swimming pool on the Costa Blanca gazing, and observing how the soft evening breeze creates ripples on the surface of the illuminated pool which, in turn, were reflected on the walls of the patio and pool side and made the whole villa appear to shimmer in the bright moonlight. It was a truly remarkable sight to behold and I never tired of seeing it. My wife, Lynne, and I have been out to dinner at one of the many restaurants along the coastline. We have enjoyed a very nice meal, with a very acceptable bottle of Rioja wine, and after a short walk along the promenade, all the while hoping we might exercise away some of the calories we had consumed, we had returned to our villa. I have to say that it has been a very nice evening, and we know we are exceedingly lucky, to be able to live like this when one considers where we came from or, more accurately, where I came from, i.e. the slums of the poverty stricken East End Docklands. I am now actually living the dreams I dared to dream when younger - but back then they were only dreams. Miraculous - and seemingly impossible dreams ! However, sometimes even miraculous dreams sometimes come true. I know this for a fact - they did for me !

Lynne likes to read before sleeping and so she went to bed soon after our return. But I am a late bird and, come to think of it, an early bird too – so I tend to burn the candles at both ends ! However, after returning from a very pleasant evening out I invariably took immense pleasure in sitting for a while on our patio beside the pool. I always switched on the pool lights as well as all the other external lights, for similar to my mother, I liked houses to be well illuminated. Quite wasteful and extravagant – but very nice. At times I felt our villa was like a beacon lighting up the sky for we had quite a lot of external light fittings. I went to the kitchen to pour myself a nice, cool, glass of wine, and then I decided to savour one of my rapidly reducing small stock of Cuban Havana Cigars – the real McCoy. I knew they would be extremely good for the box had been a gift presented by the Cuban Minister of Finance no less to my very dear Czech friend, Jiri Stepan, or George as I call him, during a visit of the Minister to Prague to confer with George’s boss – the Governor of the State Bank, Prague. As Assistant to the Governor, George’s duties included caring for the wellbeing of the guests of his boss, most of whom were international visitors. I imagine the Minister was very pleased with the arrangements George had made for him and therefore presented him with the box of cigars. In his generosity, and since George doesn’t smoke, he gave the box to me during one of my Prague visits.

So there I sat, wine in one hand, cigar in the other and until the day I die I shall never, ever, forget those wonderful, balmy, Spanish nights. To sit there, with millions of stars twinkling above, and the moon shining brightly, whilst listening to the faint sounds of guitar music coming from down in the valley where a Spanish family lived; or if not, then the beautiful strains of Mantovani’s string orchestra playing soft, romantic Spanish melodies on my hi-fi which we had installed in our patio barbecue house. Those evenings were heavenly and it requires a much better writer than I to describe them adequately for they were superb and out of this world – as near to Heaven that one will ever get on this earth. Our villa was situated up quite high in the hills and so I was able to watch the lights of the fishing vessels slowly setting out from the port far below me passing the Penon de Ifach, a sea mountain which had risen from the depths many millions of years ago and which, by the way, I have climbed six times. The views from the top are truly remarkable and on clear days it is possible to see all the way to the Balearic Islands.
No doubt this small fishing fleet were hoping for a good catch and the glow of their lamps was reflected in the waters of the Mediterranean. Taking it all into account, it produced a wonderful, peaceful, tranquil, and romantic picture. Why – who knows, maybe we shall even eat some of their catch if we decide to go out again to eat the following evening. ! Back then it was exceedingly cheap to eat out – sometimes even cheaper than eating in ! The Spanish fishermen, who often also ran fish restaurants as a profitable sideline with their families, used to say that their fish from the Mediterranean were so fresh that they actually jumped out of the sea straight into frying pans of the various fish restaurants ! Meanwhile, the soft breezes continued to blow, the walls of our villa continued to shimmer in the bright moonlight, the stars continued to twinkle, and I absorbed it all in every little detail, I felt very relaxed.

But as the time passed I began to feel just a little drowsy, my eyelids began to droop somewhat (I think the shimmering villa and the atmosphere had a hypnotic effect), and, confirmed nostalgic that I am, my mind started to take me back through the years. I knew and appreciated very much indeed the fact that we were so very fortunate to be able to enjoy the terrific life we had selected there on the Costa Blanca; both Lynne and I were very grateful that we had the opportunity to choose our retirement and such a life at a relatively young age – we were still in our 50s. In my now sleepy state of mind I started to think about what a great journey through life it really had been our good fortune to experience. In my thoughts I went back – back to the very beginning – to the slums and backstreets of London’s East End Docklands where it all started long, long, ago.
From there, and despite many handicaps such as (1)being born on the wrong side of town (2)education ruined by the war, (3)coming from a poor family which was unable to help me get on in this world in any way. No – everything I have managed to achieve I have achieved by myself – No, that is incorrect, my dear wife Lynne has always been there to support and encourage me. Without her support I do not believe we could have accomplished or reached the ambitious goals we set ourselves. She has been behind me 100% all the while and I am so grateful for the help she gave me through the years. She made the blackest times seem just like the breaking of dawn on a new day – like a burst of sunshine. Could one ask for anything more ? And is it any wonder that I rose from nothing to become a successful international businessman ?
Summer nights in Spain were lovely and living high in the hills we were not bothered with any nuisance factor such as mosquitoes or other ugly flying things – although during the day we did have a few quite unusual visitors. Our two little grandsons always spent their summer holidays with us and I remember one occasion when we managed to get the VCR Tape of the children’s film PINOCHIO from the DVD Club we belonged to. Well we played it and the kids were enthralled with the story (and so were we by the way) – they liked JIMINY CRICKET especially for he amused them. And little Grant, being a born imitator, began to make us laugh by his impressions of him afterwards. When the film had finished I wandered out on to our patio and there, and this is absolutely true and I can prove it for I have it on film, sitting by the side of our swimming pool as if getting ready to dive in, was a large cricket !
Quickly I returned to our lounge where the boys were getting ready to play billards. I knew I couldn’t fool the older one, Darren, - he was to smart for my pranks - but young Grant was not even five yet ! Yes – him I could fool. So I cried out “Tin-Ribs (that’s my nickname for him) quickly – come here – Jiminy Cricket has come to see you !” With that Tin-Ribs stopped playing billiards immediately and rushed out.
When he saw the cricket he kneeled down before it and started to speak. “Hallo Jiminy” he said “How are you ? And thank you very much for coming to see me”. He seemed to be convinced that it really was Jiminy and was very impressed. It was a very touching scene and an example of childish innocence. But all too soon the cricket tired of this baby talk and hopped away somewhere for a little peace and quiet perhaps.
On other evenings we would take the car and go down into the town of Calpe. There we could either have dinner out – and there is no feeling like sitting, after a satisfying dinner, a good bottle of wine, and a glass of Soberano with one’s coffee, looking out over the Mediterranean. No – it wasn’t blue then because it was dark but when you keep gazing towards the sea it is surprising how many things you can see. I recall the time very early after our arrival in Spain when ordering a Soberano after dinner in one restaurant. The pretty waitress asked me “Helo ?” which means “With ice ?” But I didn’t know that the pronunciation of “helo” was, as in English, “yellow”! Not knowing any Spanish then I replied “Yes please – I’ll have the yellow one !” My thoughts were that I would try anything once ! Afterwards we would stroll along the front and being cheerful people we would smile at other couples walking in the opposite direction and bid them “Good Evening”. Did we know them