The Answer, My Friend...

Nothing daily about the newspaper that's blowing across the road. It’ll be one of the freebie weeklies. Sur In English, Euro Weekly News, The Olive Press, Brexiteer Expat News… Okay, I’m kidding about that last one. Except…

If it’s the EWN it’ll have a column by a one-time swingin’ 60s pildura-poppin’ popster, whose only hit was Little Arrows. You couldn’t make him up – so I haven’t. Everything the under 25’s imagine when they think “geriatric selfish baby-boomer brexiteer” - that’s our Leapy. According to his column he’s been living in Spain for nearly three-and-a-half decades. Won’t go home, “because it’s changed” “all those wogs who won’t learn English”. I’m told his Spanish is passable – ¡Joder! El debe hablar como nativo.* Of course, he’s not completely stupid. Just like the old git in your local pub says, he’ll write: “Oh, sorry, can’t say that now! I mean immigrants.” It’s vile, his column. I hate the fact they give him column inches.

“Don’t read it then,” you say. And you have a point. I rarely do, only succumbing to an occasional urge to see if he’s had some sort of Saulian Road to Damascus moment and he’s turned into a human being. He hadn’t up to last week anyway.

I like reading the Spanish press. I like El Pais and reading SUR, national and local papers respectively. They both think the UK is nuts for leaving the EU. No sports exist except football and basketball. Nobody cares about what the Aussies get up to with their balls. Trump is the same loon we think he is. In the press they are divided about Puidgemont, al hombre en la calle no importa**.

You never see one of these Spanish papers blowing down the street here inland. Nobody much buys them outside of a few doctors, lawyers and bankers and then only at the weekend. There are copies of the local papers in most bars: the aforementioned SUR, and Malaga Hoy. Sometimes I’ll be on my second coffee before I get a look at one of them. They get read – and people do the crossword.

That’s the Malaga Hoy free now, I think I’ll order a beer. You can drink too much coffee after mid-day.

As Leapy Lee’s favourite copper used to say, “Evenin’ All.”

*Fuck me! He ought to speak like a native

** The man in the street doesn’t care