On the return journey I passed the figure of a man receiving medical care. The man was familiar to me because he rides a very macho quad bike – accompanied by his little brown dog. This couple are a familiar sight around Coín. Often the little dog would stand like a figure-head while the quad bike negotiated the traffic.

When the bike was moving more speedily, the little dog had a very secure seay in which he sat and watched the world whizz by.

I was concerned for the welfare of the man and he had several people, including a police officer looking after him. It wasn’t until I saw his quad bike (plus little brown dog) at the side of the road, that I actually recognised him. At the same time I realised that I had immediately become more concerned about the welfare of the little brown dog than I was of the owner – especially when the owner was collected by ambulance under lights and siren.

Am I becoming desensitised to the condition of my fellow man or am I just too concerned with the welfare of animals?

Strawberries and bananas can be seen in many areas but here are my favourites.

Eat while warm from the sun

Thanks to the presence of many fountains like this one, little dogs can usually cool themselves down in Coín.

Navas, Martinez and Ramos with the cup

Well, Spain did it. They won the cup!

I know little about football but I do listen to what people say and it seems that the best team won.

Apart from Paul, el pulpo, it would appear that only the Spaniards were convinced that they would win even though the team received many ‘honourable mentions’.

From the point of view of the ignorant observer of the ‘beautiful’ game, there is no doubt at all in my mind that 50% of this win should be credited to the fans. It has been quite an experience (again) living among people who support their national team unreservedly while still giving credit to their opponents.

A short walk into the town centre as the game kicked off was enough to convince me that Coín was supporting the national team in superb style although it was great to hear the appreciation of the good moves made by the Dutch team – even if they did seem to want to win by creating a level of attrition.

Many Spanish finger-nails will be chewed to the elbows as evidenced by the tense silences that punctuated wild cheers or groans of dismay.

The wild celebrations as the game ended were simply a noisy demonstration of delight that seemed to go on all night.

Well done Spain and well done the supporters!

A little isolated now.

This walk along the gorge at El Chorro is probably most famous for having featured in the closing scenes of Von Ryan”s Express starring Frank Sinatra. It is certainly not for those with any sort of a fear of heights. The railway bridge in the picture (above) is the one that the video starts on but the access has since been destroyed for reasons of public safety.

El Camino del Rey was built in the early 20th century as a way to move material, for communication and monitoring and maintenance of the pipeline for the hydroelectric power station at El Chorro. El Caminito was built between 1901 and 1905 and owes its name to King Alfonso XIII who, in1921, used the path for the official opening of the dam.

While access to the path has been forbidden for some years, it was walked regularly by whole families (some with small children). After fatal accidents in1999 and 2000, the need for restoration of el Caminito became urgent. The province of Malaga and the Junta Andalucia argued about responsibility for years.

In 2004, access to the trail at various places was demolished. The trail is still a magnet for dare-devils and specialist mountain rescue teams still have to risk their lives to rescue the fool-hardy and ill-equipped.

Some questions are not even remotely framed as rhetorical and yet, if you try to answer them, you receive no thanks, a sceptical response or simple abuse. Some of these questions are in areas in which we ”live” – they relate to our faith, our religion or our general attitude to simply being alive. These questions almost inevitably lead to acrimony – especially, and this I simply do not understand, when religion or beliefs are involved.

Hopefully we can create some form of intercourse here because I am one of those people who have spent their whole lives asking questions and seeking truth. I believe that there is a power that is greater than ourselves but I do not understand the nature of this power, whether it is sentient or whether it has a way to know that we exist.

I believe that the theory of evolution can explain some aspects of development within a specie by natural selection but it cannot explain the most simple of developments leading to new species. I believe it is a convenient sump into which to pour the questions of those like me who simply do not understand why the theory has received such wide acceptance.

Whether there is a life after this one I am not sure. I certainly hope there is but what form it would take and how I might perceive myself in this ”after-life” are total mysteries. Although man has made many heroic attempts to explain the creation and the existence of deities, they all depend to an enormous extent on faith – but that faith is not in the deity you worship but faith in the person who taught you about the deity you worship.

Without faith in the teachers there can be no faith in the deity.

The physical world around us is miraculously solid while consisting of a huge percentage of emptiness. We can be shown that some solid matter can be composed of elements that are, themselves, only fragments of energy. We can be shown that light has weight/mass so that it is affected by gravity. In the centre of black holes we are told that the sum total of all the matter that constitutes our solar system will be so densly packed that it would hardly take up any space at all – a bit like being able to compress air into a cylinder but much more extreme and without the cylinder.

So much we see about us appears to have been designed and yet we can still see it all as the result of a giant accident when a ”so-called” cosmic egg exploded.

I”d love to know where the cosmic egg came from and I”d also love to know which came first, the deity or the egg.

Banged too hard!!

I think most people living in Spain have always been of the impression that the monopoly-style powers wielded by Telefonica are doing nothing to help bring the prices of services down. I have certainly noticed that every time they tell me that their prices have been reduced, my bill still seems to increase.

Now it is official!

In all of the Eropean Union, only the residents of Ireland pay more for an Internet connection than residents of Spain.

At first I thought that this would be only an insignificant difference, after all, you know what they say about statistics, but the difference in cost is a startling 42% according to the latest reports.

Nothing will be done about it, we know, but sometimes it helps to realise that, despite the advertising we see, our own impressions are to be trusted.

I wonder if the move to Movistar is an improvement. Time will tell.

I have been involved in a few minor problems and it has really brought home to me that the systems in Spain are clogged with paper. Even something as easy as buying a car requires more than a simple sales receipt, it has to be supported by a photocopy of your identity document. It isn”t enough that the official selling the car has seen the document – a photocopy of it must be ”put on file”.

Fair enough, but when you want to sell the car, even though they have your receipts for tax, your records of annual inspections and your photocopy ”on file” – you have to produce another photocopy of your identity document because the one that is on file is in a different type of file – an acquisition file!

Some while ago I registered as a resident in Coín to enable the council to have a record of me so that they could qualify for capitation. This involved a photocopy of the national identity document, my British passport and all three pages of my tenancy agreement. Nobody told me at the time that this registration only lasted for one year and that I would have to re-register even though my presence in the town was acknowledged by the various documents I receive in the post from the council.

In order to re-register I now have to produce photocopies of the national identity document, my British passport and all three pages of my tenancy agreement!

Since there have been no changes, why is it necessary to produce five more pages of information? Why can”t the official carrying out the registration be trusted to simply check that the documents exist?

Every department of Spanish local and national government runs on photocopies.

There must be thousands of tonnes of paper in the recent archives of all departments – even though they will never be referred to because, guess what, if you want to have a document checked, a photocopy is not considered good enough so you have to provide the original or obtain a new version (by supplying all the necessary photocopies).

The most lunatic aspect of this situation is that the people demanding photocopies often do not have a photocopier that the public can use – you get sent to the local copy shop! I dread to think how much paper is serving no purpose in all the offices around Spain and I am sure that if it all disappeared tomorrow, no harm would be done – we would simply be asked for more photocopies to replace those that are lost so that they can be filed away, never to be seen again.

Spain must be in danger of sinking under the weight of paper.

Look on the Triple A web site and you will be able to see the above statement and the enormous amount of dedicated work that goes in to rescuing, healing and re-homing some of the thousands of abandoned pets that are found, here, on the Costa del Sol.

At any one time it would not be unusual to find 260 dogs and 160 cats being lovingly cared for while new owners were being sought for them (many of them finding loving homes in Sweden, Holland and Germany).

Every single pet rescued by Triple A was probably bought at some time. Maybe it was an irresistable ball of fluff in a pet shop window or a desperate looking, wriggling thing in a cardboard box on a street market.

However this poor creature came into the posession of whoever abandoned it, of one thing we can be sure, there was insufficient heart in the new owner to make the life of the animal they had accepted the responsibility for, a happy one.

While the presence of Triple A says a great deal for the compassion and care that does exist within the human heart, the fact that it does exist is also a round condemnation of us, as human beings.

Please. Please. Please. If you go shopping for a pet, make sure that you understand the commitment that you are making. Make sure you understand the needs of your new pet and how its needs will impact upon your life. Triple A and the wonderful people who work there do enjoy what they do but I am sure they would be a lot happier if they didn”t have to do it. Look at their web site. Look at their success stories and then try to understand the bewilderment and fear that careless owners have bestowed upon innocent creatures that only ever wanted to love and be loved.

 Triple A has an enormous task in simply feeding their flock and paying for the help that has to be paid for. If you can help in any way, please do so. Contact details are on their web site as well as ideas of things you can do to make a difference in an innocent life.

Quite at home

Here is one of the more than 20,000 animals that have been successfully re-homed in the past 15 years. Chap has come into my family to be a companion for Scamp after the sad death of our Abbie. It is well over a year since Chap joined us and he has turned out to be a lively little dog with loyalty, love and a great personality. He is a great companion for Scamp although I sometimes think he must have watched many ”Lassie” films in his previous home because there are times when his whining can be really infuriating – but he knows when he has gone just a bit too far and will climb on my lap and settle down to doze.