Colonic irrigation

I woke up around midnight, cold, even though I was perspiring freely. Every joint in my body ached. My head throbbed. I was nauseous, my abdomen was cramping, I felt like vomiting and my bowels trembled alarmingly. I thought back to what I had eaten the previous day.

Bread, cheese, ham, oranges – nothing remotely suspicious … unless, that was, I considered the source of that bread, a wholesome ‘integral’ loaf sold in the local market by travellers who didn’t appear to wash.

I staggered down the stairs to the bathroom and had a violently explosive crap. Whatever Sir Thomas got right in the invention of the water closet, he failed to allow for these sorts of event. Continue reading “Colonic irrigation”

Santa Fe hot springs

We set off in search of these fabled pools knowing no more than that they were on the outskirts of Granada. When we got to Santa Fe, we started asking passers by for directions to the ‘agua caliente’. Somewhere in the ‘campo’, we were told. After an hour or so of driving up and down the same old roads, I suddenly caught sight of a sign marked ‘banos’. I swerved off the road, and pulled up alongside a Rasta haired girl with an enormous earring who was lugging a backpack. It turned out she was heading for the same place as us, so we offered her a lift. She was strangely silent as to the exact direction we should take when we came to the first fork in the road; she didn’t seem to understand our broken Spanish. We took a guess and turned right down a dirt track. Everything was indescribably muddy, as it had been raining for two days non-stop. We pulled up at a barricaded house, and while Michelle got out to ask for directions, I swivelled around to inquire whether the girl spoke English. No, she didn’t. French, perhaps? Indeed, she did. In fact, it turned out she was French. She told us some garbled story about living in Barcelona, coming down to Granada with friends, who had since legged it to Morocco, and having driven to the ‘banos’ at night – hence, her uncertainty about the route.

Continue reading “Santa Fe hot springs”

The Company Shed

On the basis of a glowing review in a Sunday newspaper, I persuaded my wife and mother, who both love seafood (sadly, I don’t)  to visit this celebrated shack. The review alluded to “the best fish and chips you’ll ever eat”, as an alternative to the “seriously good platter”, so I planned to join them. We arrived early and put our name on the waiting list and sat on the outside benches with others holding our bottles and portions of bread. The glistening fish on a table just inside the front door which were Continue reading “The Company Shed”

Immanuel Kant

“At some future day it will be proved – I cannot say when and where – that the human soul is, while in earth life, already in an uninterrupted communion with those living in another world; that the human soul can act on these beings, and receive in return impressions of them without being conscious of it in the ordinary personality.”