10 Battles

Roast Pumpkin with Chili and Honey

 

When we first moved to El Hoyo, there were only three telephones in the village. Marcia had one, Paco and Carmen-Bethina another, and we had the third. It was then 2004, before mobile phone signals had reached our village. We felt fortunate even to have a land-line because at least it allowed access to the Internet.

Now it was the summer of 2009. Construction had started on the dreaded new apartment block that we called The Monstrosity. New telephone poles were erected, cables stretching and connecting to each apartment. So, the 21st century was finally going to reach El Hoyo?

Long ago, we’d sorrowfully accepted that living up a remote Spanish mountain meant that broadband, or any kind of speedy Internet access, was an avenue of pleasure denied to us. We implored the mighty Telefonica, but they were very firm, stating that broadband was not an option for us. We had no choice. We could have a painful, grindingly slow dial-up Internet connection, or nothing. Perhaps benefits would come with The Monstrosity after all, like broadband?

Dial-up was annoying but we made the best of it. We couldn’t watch anything on YouTube or download much, but it was better than nothing. Joe and I were reliant on the Internet. It enabled us to keep in touch with friends and family, and keep track of our finances.

I’d had a shock a few months earlier, when I was online routinely checking the balance in our bank account.

What? Was the computer screen playing tricks on my eyes? Our telephone bill had leaped from the usual hefty-but-acceptable 90 euros to the totally-ridiculous-astronomical-definitely-not-acceptable sum of 880 euros. So we dialed Telefonica and asked for the English-speaking Helpdesk in order to lodge our complaint.

“We’ve made hardly any calls,” Joe said pleasantly. “Our usual bill is approximately 90 euros. And we’ve been charged 880 euros! That’s enough to buy a small car, haha! There’s obviously been a mistake.”

“Hmm... I’ll just check on our computer... (long pause) No. No mistake,” said Telefonica. “I can see you changed your Plan. You used to have the 24/7  Internet Plan, and you changed it. Now you are being charged by the minute every time you go online.” 

“WHAT? Charged by the minute? But we haven’t changed anything! We didn’t change our Plan!”

Twenty minutes later, Joe and Telefonica were still arguing, and Joe was getting precisely nowhere. His blood pressure was sky-high.

“As an act of goodwill, I will refund you 100 euros,” said Telefonica magnanimously.

Joe gave up but I was furious. Seething, I phoned the Helpdesk again. I was livid, and Telefonica got both barrels. There was a long, long pause, and finally they agreed. We had been charged far too much. It was a mistake, and we were refunded. 

Satisfied, and more than a little smug that we’d won the battle, we forgot all about it until a couple of months later when Joe and I stared at the computer screen in horror and disbelief. They’d done it again! Telefonica had seen fit to help themselves to the funds in our bank account for the second time! This time, our usual 90 euro telephone bill had swollen to a whopping 1,011 euros.

After I’d scraped Joe off the ceiling, he dialed the Helpdesk again.

“You’ve made another mistake,” he said between gritted teeth.

“No mistake,” said Telefonica breezily. “I can see from the computer what has happened. You changed your Plan. You used to have the 24/7  Internet Plan, and you changed it. Now you are being charged by the minute every time you go online.” 

“BUT WE HAVEN’T CHANGED ANYTHING! WE DIDN’T CHANGE OUR PLAN!”

It was déjà vu, but eventually we got it sorted. Telefonica refunded our money and issued the normal 90 euro bill. But now we watched our bank balance like neurotic hawks.

The third time was the straw that broke the camel’s back. In July, Telefonica helped themselves to 530 euros out of our bank account. By now the Telefonica Helpdesk was on speed-dial and Joe was bellowing down the telephone wire like an enraged wildebeest. The telephone poles in the valley trembled.

“You’ve done it AGAIN! You’ve ROBBED our bank account! Our telephone bill cannot possibly be 530 euros! Why do we have to go through this fiasco every time?”

“Please wait one minute and I will check for you. (Long, long, long pause) “Ah, now I can see what has happened - it’s quite clear. You have changed your Internet Plan. You switched from the 24/7 Plan to the Pay by the Minute Plan.”

Joe turned purple and a vein in his forehead throbbed. “I DIDN’T! I’ve changed NOTHING!” he shouted. “It’s YOUR mistake and this is the THIRD time this has happened!”

“But Mr Joe, nothing in this life is free,” said Telefonica, affronted. “You changed your Internet Plan.”

Many phone-calls later, Telefonica grudgingly agreed we’d been overcharged, refunded our money and issued the normal 90 euro bill. We phoned our bank and got the direct debit stopped. We researched online and found another company, an alternative to Telefonica, one that didn’t tell us that we lived in a far too isolated spot to receive broadband. (Amazingly, it was British Telecom, not a company I remember with much affection.)  

But, hurrah! BT were offering us unlimited broadband, a router and 400 free minutes calling time to anywhere in Europe for less than Telefonica were charging us for dial-up.

The changeover was painless and transformed Joe and me back into happy bunnies. Happy that we finally had broadband instead of the dreadful dial-up, and happy that we’d successfully severed all links with Telefonica.  

Result! The telephone poles in the valley relaxed.

Except that later we discovered that Telefonica and BT are one and the same company. Hey-ho. Nevertheless, we had no further trouble.

Unfortunately, that self-satisfied smug feeling Joe and I enjoyed after having conquered the mighty Telefonica didn’t last. Soon after, we had another run-in with a huge company that left us feeling rather ashamed.

Living so far from town, we were forced to keep shopping trips to a minimum. Once a month we shopped at the Carrefour Hypermarket and filled several trolleys with industrial-sized quantities of everything we needed, like toilet rolls in packs of 32, gallons of longlife milk and big 500 gram catering drums of instant coffee. Anything overlooked was topped up from shops and smaller supermarkets in neighbouring villages.

One morning I prised off the lid of a recently opened coffee tin and was appalled. The coffee was clearly contaminated. Fluff, bits of dirt and debris mingled with the coffee granules.

“Eww... That’s disgusting!” I said, pulling a face and pushing the coffee drum away.

“What’s the matter with it?” asked Joe and peered inside. “Eww... That’s revolting! We’re taking that back. Carrefour can’t sell us coffee like that and get away with it!”

I knew he was reliving the Telefonica battle and would not let this incident pass. So we took the drum of coffee back and Joe plonked it down on the Customer Care counter. The Carrefour lady looked faintly surprised and asked how she could help.

“Take the lid off and look inside,” said Joe. “Your company should be ashamed of itself selling stuff in that condition!”

The lady used a letter-opener to remove the lid which clattered on the counter. She peeped inside.

“Eww...” she said, recoiling and wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That’s horrible!”

“Exactly!” said Joe, standing tall, triumph in his voice. “It’s full of rubbish and all sorts of stuff. It’s unusable! And these big tins of coffee are very expensive.”

“I’m so sorry,” said the lady. “Leave it with me. I will give you a voucher to replace it, and I’ll have it sent back to the supplier. They’ll carry out tests and find out what is wrong with it. Leave me your name and address, and I’ll be in touch.”

“Well, that told them!” said Joe as we drove home. “I wasn’t going to let them get away with that!” I didn’t point out that the lady had been more than helpful, and that she had agreed with everything we had said.

Three weeks later, a large parcel arrived for us on the fish van. True to her word, the nice Carrefour lady had followed up the case of the contaminated coffee and had written us a letter. It was written in perfect English:

 

Esteemed customers,

I have sent the tin of coffee back to the suppliers and asked them to run tests on it. They have now replied and say that although they cannot exactly identify the cause, they agree that the coffee was severely sub-standard and should not have been on sale. They assure me that they are making massive enquiries to find out how your coffee was contaminated and are double-checking to make sure no other similar batches exist. They are very grateful that you returned the drum of coffee allowing them to research the problem.

On the behalf of Carrefour, we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused and hope you will accept the gifts enclosed.

We look forward to serving you in our store in the future.

Yours sincerely,

Antonia María García

Customer Care Supervisor

 

We tore open the parcel. Inside were two more drums of coffee, a tin of Luxury Wholemeal Chocolate cookies, some After Dinner mints and a stack of vouchers to use in the supermarket.

“Well!” said Joe. “That was nice of them. You see, you shouldn’t just accept shoddy goods or poor treatment from these big companies. You have to fight for your rights.”

That should have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t.

A week later, two identical royal princesses were seated at our kitchen table scoffing the last of our Luxury Wholemeal Chocolate cookies washed down by glasses of milk. Tiaras sparkled in their dark hair. I filled the kettle, took the drum of coffee off the shelf and prepared to spoon some into Joe’s and my coffee mugs.

“Oh, I would not use that!” whispered Princess #1 loudly to her royal sister.

“Eww... No! That is all dirty!” agreed Princess #2, pulling a face.

I froze. The twins knew nothing of our coffee complaint story, so why were they discussing the state of the coffee? I swung round.

“I heard that,” I said. “Why? Why shouldn’t I use this coffee?”

“Well...” said Princess #1, after a hesitation. “Our brother, Prince Jorge knocked the tin off the shelf with his football.”

“And the lid came off...” added Princess #2.

“And the coffee spilled everywhere!”

“But we found your dustpan and brush and we cleaned it all up.”

“We brushed everywhere, right into the corners, just like Mama showed us.”

“You mean ‘The Queen’,” Princess #2 corrected her royal twin.

“Yes, we cleaned up really nicely, just like The Queen showed us at home.” Princess #1 paused, waiting expectantly for the praise.

“And what happened to the coffee you swept up?” I asked at last, but my heart was filled with dread. I already knew the answer.

“Oh, we put it all back into the tin,” chorused the princesses. “Do not worry, Tía Veeky, we did not waste a bit!”

El Hoyo is high in the mountains, many kilometres from the nearest big town. One may think it too isolated, or too high for the Spanish passion for sport to affect anyone much, but one would be mistaken.

Whatever the weather, insane, dedicated cyclists pedaled their way up the steep, winding mountain roads. Dressed in stretchy multicoloured Lycra, their muscles screaming with effort, they perspired their way uphill. Joe and I overtook them in our jeep, but on the downward stretch, the bicycles sailed past us with ease.

Our valley was almost perfectly circular, no doubt hollowed out by gargantuan volcanic upheavals eons ago. It behaved like a Roman amphitheatre, trapping sound, echoing and amplifying it. The smallest sounds from the other side of the valley were crystal clear and even conversations could be picked up. A goat’s bell, or birdsong, echoed round the mountains, clear and loud.

So imagine the noise in July, when another sporting event took place. The mountain road was closed to general traffic and rally cars raced each other instead. From early morning to evening, car after car roared past, negotiating impossible hairpin bends at speeds that left us sweating.

The valley echoed with engine noise, but we’d noticed a pattern. All too frequently, the roaring stopped, to be replaced by sirens. Joe and I exchanged glances. We could only assume there’d been an accident. However, shortly afterwards, the race continued and the valley reverberated once more with the roaring of racing engines.

In autumn, the olives and almonds were harvested. Nets were spread under the trees and families knocked the branches with sticks to dislodge the fruit and nuts. The sound of wood hitting wood reverberated around the valley. This was soon followed by the sound of almond de-husking machines that stripped the green husk from the hard shell inside. Like an old-fashioned washing mangle, the handle was turned producing a sound not unlike a cement mixer filled with rocks. Most families owned one of these machines, and the noise of almonds being de-husked filled the village. Nothing was wasted. The families ate or sold the almonds, and the husks were fed to the goats. We were always given enough almonds to last us all year.

Weekdays and weekends were easy to tell apart. In the winter there were only about six or eight souls in El Hoyo, including Joe and me. But in summer, and every weekend, it was a very different matter. All the Spanish families piled into their cars and drove into the mountains to open up their cottages and relax. On Sunday night they reversed the process, leaving the village quiet and empty.

I experimented one weekend in autumn and wrote a list of the sounds I heard.

Weekends

People laughing
People shouting
Babies crying
Papa Ufarte strumming Flamenco guitar music
Dancing and hand-clapping
Cars
Scooters - lots of them (Many are tiny scaled-down versions ridden by little boys.)
Almonds and olives being knocked off trees
The rumble of the almond de-husking machines
Children playing soccer in the square
Dogs barking
Football matches (I mean on the TV, but our neighbours bring the TV out into the street, followed by the 3-piece suite and extra chairs. Then other villagers bring their chairs and join them.)
Hooting delivery vans selling bread, fruit and fish
Joe cracking almonds

I set the list aside and picked it up again at midday in the middle of the week. As before, I closed my eyes and listened. As before, I made a list of the sounds I heard.

Weekdays

A very distant tractor
Birds rustling in our vine stealing grapes
Geronimo’s donkey singing to his girlfriend in the next village
Cocks crowing
Joe cracking almonds

Almonds we’ve been given

In September, Joe and I knew the Log Man would appear. Winter approached, and the Log Man was a necessary visitor. His visits always meant a day of hard labour ahead and we awaited his arrival, the first of the season, with some trepidation.