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Universal Acts of Kindness.

As arranged, I meet my artist friend at the bar in a village called Torvizcon. It's a twenty minute drive from my own village here in southern Andalucia.

Jeanette is a textile artist. We share the same sense of awe of Nature. Her work is inspired by the landscape around here, its subtle colours, its amazing marks on rocks and hillsides.
Of all the landscape poets I've ever read, Thomas Hardy's words have stuck in my heart for decades. Of a certain landscape he says:
'The crows... like inky spots on the nut brown soil...'

Here, we don't have crows, and the soil isn't nut brown. It's parched and ochre coloured. But Jeanette and I both notice scratches, veins on rocks by the roadside. They look like prehistoric drawings of winged, beaked, creatures. Jeannette photographs them.
I feel I could have painted them, they are strangely so very familiar.
I feel anew the excitement to start painting again.
It's been too long a sabbatical.
Five years, I think.

We've planned to visit an artists studio near to a cheese farm and have a picnic, rain or shine. Jeanette's made a quiche I am bringing soup and salad. Unfortuneately the brownies I made last weekend are past it.

I arrive early in Torvizcon as I'm longing to have a cup of real fresh Spanish coffee, with hot milk, in a glass, as they serve it here.
Jeanette arrives and orders a coffee Americano.

A car outside hoots its horn.
In the street a 4x4 arrives with a trailer. The trailer has a wild boar strapped to its roof and underneath are at least 15 dogs, tired after the hunt. The driver pulls out one dog and shows it to a crowd of men ,who gather like flies to view the dead boar. The dog has been wounded. There's blood on it's neck. They put it back in the trailer.

We set off to find the artists studio. John Donald is having an open day. He divides his time between here and the Dominican Republic. I visited his studio last year, so I know the way.

The artists beautiful converted mill is well and truly off the beaten track. It's at the top of one of those mind bogglingly terrifying hairpin bend tracks. As I park my car, the baker in his blue van arrives. An elderly woman and a teenage boy are waiting for him. The baker opens the van doors with a smile, and the smell of the fresh bread leaps out to meet the lingering scents of the village.
Jeanette buys a small sweet loaf with sugar encrusted on top.

Do you know where the cheese farm is I ask the baker.
He gives us explicit instructions. And repeats them carefully. Something about a bus stop, and something about strawberries. I don't take in much else as I am so caught in the delightful 'drama' of this little scene.

Such a handsome man Jeannette comments quietly, as we wind our way up the medieval lane.

We visit the artists house and studio.

In the grounds a waterfall cascades poetically behind a shield of ash tress. Sadly they are diseased by a plague of worms we're told.

Inside the spacious house designed and built by John, we see many examples of the prolific artist work. He has oil paintings, drawings, prints, and pastels. He doesn't appear to draw on the local colors or subjects Jeanette observes. I'm reminded of German Georg Gross's work she tells me later. Very narrative. I like his drawings and etchings.

Jeanette soon asks intelligent questions and the German/American artist John responds. His voice is low ,I can only pick up about one word in 20. It's not that he has a difficult accent. It's just that he almost inaudible to my ears.
Jeanette has a coughing fit. He offers her then me a glass of wine. It's delicious and expensive.

Jeanette then asks the artist's middle aged son about his sculptures . They have a Mexican/Mayan feel to them and are placed on a slope in the garden, near the waterfall.
I have an energy drop.
I want to be far way. I've never learned the art of looking at paintings and talking about them at the same time. It's like I get magnetically drawn their world, and the only way out is away.

We head back to the car and drive off with the intention of finding a place to picnic.

It starts to drizzle.

We're following the bakers directions to the cheese farm.
Suddenly, rounding a bend, we meet a flock of goats advancing quickly towards us. I stop the car.

The goat herd arrives. He's small, slight, his face is the color of the inside of a ripe fig. His eyes are dark like raisins. He has a water bottle slung over his shoulder. He also wears a dark brown leather bag. We greet each other and I ask him how many goats he's has.
300 he says.
The Billy goat is the most magnificent specimen I have ever seen in my life, with huge horns, at last two feel on either side. He has the swagger of a king.
I ask the goatherd if we're near the cheese farm. He says about ten minutes. Up and up, he says, right up.
It's freezing cold. We see the first snows of winter on the high sierras above Trevelez, just a few miles ahead of where we are.

We picnic on courgette and cilantro soup, cheese straws, asparagus quiche, garlic shrimps and fresh salad with a yogurt dressing. Everything tastes delicious, and every part of me is freezing.

Munching hungrily, we watch the goats grazing and walking southwards. Their bells are an orchestra of delight.

The baker has said to look out for a bus shelter and strawberries. This is where we turn onto a dirt track to get to the cheese farm.


We drive past fields of plump ripe strawberries and acres of neat little cherry tomatoes, a turquoise pool, chestnut and walnut trees, looking for the bus shelter.

Stopping to photograph the cherry tomatoes a dark haired middle aged man, wearing mud marked long short trousers, appears with a large panting dog.

I ask him if he knows where the cheese farm is. He grins and says it belongs to him ! He then tells us he's looking for his lost sheep. About twenty have gone astray. He asks us for a lift back to his farm! Your dog too I ask ? He grins again and says no, he'll find his way back himself.
When we arrive at the cheese farm fifteen minutes later, the same dog appears to be napping by the front door.

An hour later, after buying freshly made cheese, the most delicious in the area ( my opinion), the baker passes us on the road. He stops his blue van , winds down his window, and asks us if we found the farm.

It's Universal Day of Random Acts of Kindness.

Comments

  1. How I would have loved to have been a bird following your most wonderful and unfolding day! Your description paints the most delightful picture Meg - I am drawn in! x

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