Giles Brown
THE last few weeks of November are the time of the year that I try and take a pause.
It always feels as if this is your last chance to have a breather from the myriad of festivities and public holidays that liberally sprinkle the calendar in Spain.
Having got San Pedro feria week out of the way in October (when for the first time in decades the heavens didn’t open – there’s all the proof you need of climate change), managed to avoid Halloween – let’s face it, only the most determined or demented trick or treaters would want to venture over a kilometre down a mountain track to knock on the door of an isolated cottage on a lake where the ‘Guiri del lago’ abides – and swerved the Dia del Toston, where townsfolk take to the countryside to roast chestnuts. I am obviously nutty enough as it is.
This time of year is perfect to make sure you have enough firewood in, align your chakras and perhaps start to plan your Christmas festivities before you are submerged under the tinsel tsunami that hits the coast on December 1.
You can forget the following week as well as it is packed with company Christmas parties that traditionally leave the accounts department unable to function. One glass of semi-sec cava is enough to induce a deep state of paralysis that means that the poor loves are unable to respond to your pleas for monies owed until Three Kings. (The hard living, rock n roll lifestyle accounts department of this newspaper is obviously exempt from the previous statement).
So I salute my fellow freelancers in this traditionally hectic period of festive financial follow-up frenzy and hope that this year Santa rewards them with plenty of sex and cheques, rather than the more usual socks and chocs…
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