Read Online The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society by Chris Stewart - Free Book Online
Authors: Chris Stewart
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off the terraces. I dropped the alfalfa and raced to get there first. Chloë hardly noticed me holding the fence open as she gunned past, eyes glued to the track ahead, teeth set in grim determination. At thehouse Cathy and Juanito were climbing out of the car looking slightly aquiver. Chloë was still sitting in the driving seat, the engine running, her foot hard down on the brake pedal. I think she was just getting to grips with the enormity of what she had done.
‘Dad, the engine’s playing up again, and every time I take my foot off the pedal the car rolls backwards… what shall I do?’
I helped her sort out the problems and she clambered unsteadily out. ‘I think I might have had enough driving for now,’ she whispered, handing me the keys.
G UESTS W ITHOUT P APERS
U NLIKE MY SHEEP-SHEARING PARTNER , José Guerrero, who makes his living travelling from flock to flock throughout the Alpujarras, my becoming a writer means that I can, these days, afford to be choosy about the work I take on. I’d hate to give up shearing entirely, and if a flock or its farmer or its patch of mountain appeals I’ll be off like a shot, but it must be said there is some pleasure in saying no to jobs you know will be nothing but drudgery. Which made it all the odder that there I was hauling myself out of the connubial bed at the crack of dawn to help José shear Paco López’s sheep.
Paco López is a notorious drunk who lives on a ramshackle farm high up in the Ilex forest above the Trevélez river valley. Frequently he would disappear for days, abandoning his sheep to whatever grazing they could find beneath the holm-oaks, and leaving them prey to the packs of wilddogs that are such a disagreeable feature of the Spanish countryside. It had been almost two years since José and I had last sheared his flock and I remembered that we had made a solemn pact never, ever, to accept another job from him again.
‘Remind me just once more why we’re doing this,’ I bleated as we hurtled round the mountain bends in José’s little tin van, deafened by the Led Zeppelin tape that he insisted on playing at full volume through his tinny radio speakers.
‘ Parné, pasta, dinero !’ José shouted with a bristly grin. ‘I need the money and I can’t do it on my own! Also, it’ll help you shake off those disgraceful rolls of flab! All that sitting on your arse with a pen in your mouth is doing you no good, Cristóbal.’
I supposed he had a point, and it is always hard to turn down work with José, who in spite of – or, perhaps, because of – his recent battle with cancer, remains one of the most cheerful and energetic people I have ever met. In the event, however, the job was worse than either of us could have anticipated. The past months had weighed heavily on poor Paco, who, ground down by the loneliness and the harshness of a mountain shepherd’s life, had been hitting the bottle hard. He had that pinched and distracted look of the serious imbiber, coupled with an evident querulousness about money. His sheep were no bundles of fun, either. They were bonier and thinner-skinned than ever and each one hosted a thriving colony of parasitical arachnids (ticks have eight legs so don’t qualify as insects).
We pitched in to the job with all the good humour we could muster, but it was a stretch even for José’s natural cheer. The air in Paco’s asbestos-roofed shed was baking,and stagnant with the putrid stench of dung, and the ticks were making it almost impossible to get the wool off. Each stroke of the clippers left a livid trail of blood as it hacked through thirty or forty engorged bodies, and the cutters kept sticking, so we had to push and pull and tug and jab, while taking as much care as we could of the sheep’s protruding bones and thin skin. Time and again we nearly gave up, took down the machinery and went home. But something kept us going – perhaps the money, perhaps some imbued work ethic, or maybe just sympathy for
‘Dad, the engine’s playing up again, and every time I take my foot off the pedal the car rolls backwards… what shall I do?’
I helped her sort out the problems and she clambered unsteadily out. ‘I think I might have had enough driving for now,’ she whispered, handing me the keys.
G UESTS W ITHOUT P APERS
U NLIKE MY SHEEP-SHEARING PARTNER , José Guerrero, who makes his living travelling from flock to flock throughout the Alpujarras, my becoming a writer means that I can, these days, afford to be choosy about the work I take on. I’d hate to give up shearing entirely, and if a flock or its farmer or its patch of mountain appeals I’ll be off like a shot, but it must be said there is some pleasure in saying no to jobs you know will be nothing but drudgery. Which made it all the odder that there I was hauling myself out of the connubial bed at the crack of dawn to help José shear Paco López’s sheep.
Paco López is a notorious drunk who lives on a ramshackle farm high up in the Ilex forest above the Trevélez river valley. Frequently he would disappear for days, abandoning his sheep to whatever grazing they could find beneath the holm-oaks, and leaving them prey to the packs of wilddogs that are such a disagreeable feature of the Spanish countryside. It had been almost two years since José and I had last sheared his flock and I remembered that we had made a solemn pact never, ever, to accept another job from him again.
‘Remind me just once more why we’re doing this,’ I bleated as we hurtled round the mountain bends in José’s little tin van, deafened by the Led Zeppelin tape that he insisted on playing at full volume through his tinny radio speakers.
‘ Parné, pasta, dinero !’ José shouted with a bristly grin. ‘I need the money and I can’t do it on my own! Also, it’ll help you shake off those disgraceful rolls of flab! All that sitting on your arse with a pen in your mouth is doing you no good, Cristóbal.’
I supposed he had a point, and it is always hard to turn down work with José, who in spite of – or, perhaps, because of – his recent battle with cancer, remains one of the most cheerful and energetic people I have ever met. In the event, however, the job was worse than either of us could have anticipated. The past months had weighed heavily on poor Paco, who, ground down by the loneliness and the harshness of a mountain shepherd’s life, had been hitting the bottle hard. He had that pinched and distracted look of the serious imbiber, coupled with an evident querulousness about money. His sheep were no bundles of fun, either. They were bonier and thinner-skinned than ever and each one hosted a thriving colony of parasitical arachnids (ticks have eight legs so don’t qualify as insects).
We pitched in to the job with all the good humour we could muster, but it was a stretch even for José’s natural cheer. The air in Paco’s asbestos-roofed shed was baking,and stagnant with the putrid stench of dung, and the ticks were making it almost impossible to get the wool off. Each stroke of the clippers left a livid trail of blood as it hacked through thirty or forty engorged bodies, and the cutters kept sticking, so we had to push and pull and tug and jab, while taking as much care as we could of the sheep’s protruding bones and thin skin. Time and again we nearly gave up, took down the machinery and went home. But something kept us going – perhaps the money, perhaps some imbued work ethic, or maybe just sympathy for
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