Aprendo a hablar español

YESTERDAY I RAN to the library with a pocket full of pound coins ~ because they CHARGE for language courses ~ and got out two from-scratch ones in Spanish. I was looking for one that would take me as far as possible and foolishly picked an outsized Berlitz 4-CD one with outsized blown-plastic moulding and two flimsy books that could be reprinted on the amount of paper that would fit in a cigarette packet. In other words hardly anything is explained properly. The other, a CD-only Teach Yourself Spanish Conversation is excellent as you never have to refer to any booklet (in fact I think there was one, but it is no more and the man at the desk, who looked like he yodelled in lederhosen in his spare hand, was far more indignant than I, who would suffer more from its loss.

Frustrated by the lack of grammatical explanation in Berlitz, I've now changed it for Routledge Colloquial ~ only 2 CDs but a nice fat explanatory textbook (I'm such a swot). Incidentally these loans cost £2 a time ~ now isn't that taking the peepee? On the other hand it's good because it keeps them on the shelves for people who actually want to use them, which is something, I suppose...

My Mum got me a bargain-basement CD-player (called a Tesco Value Boombox ~ that wording alone is classic). I had been saving the moment of unwrapping until I had something new to play on it. O man! I couldn't believe it! Even though this was the cheapest budget CD player-cum-AM/FM radio you could get, it was more beautifully designed than almost any other small electrical item I've ever come across. It could barely have been any funkier if when you punched PLAY and the CD started to whirr and prattle una habitación individual por favor... etc a rainbow of mouse-sized miniature donkeys didn't irridesce from the speakers in a blaze of stardust and take to clopping round the CD-closed lid in hoof-waving formation.

I am having lots of fun with the Spanish language and have no inhibitions about yelling out things like "I want another hire car that doesn't smell of sick!" in those "listen and repeat" exercises ~ in the stately language of Cervantes and Lorca. I'm polishing up the most ridiculously posh Castillian accent I possibly can muster ~ lots of lispy Ss and Cs and B and V pronounced the same... por fabor, theñorita! Probably sounding like I've had too much BINO...

Before I fell asleep last night I had a go on the AM radio and was amazed to get a jabbering 20 to the dozen channel in German on medium-wave with elementary Spanish lessons bleeding in on the side... what kind of cosmic coincidence is that??!?

In the end I got fed up with interference in my ear all night and so set the Spanish dialogues on play. This is supposed to embed the language deep in the subconscious. What I can say is I dreamed of old donkeys pulling carts up narrow alleys of the old town...

Illustrated top and bottom you see the Andalucian clifftop village of Rhonda ~ yeah man I've been there. The clifftop is inland and so the soaring town walls go plummetting down to ordinary farmland... quite an amazing place... like a location from a dream...