The water man

Writing about the deluge (9 December 2015) reminded me of a strange incident from a few years ago.

Late one afternoon someone hammered on our back door, a flat-palmed thudding like a four-in-the-morning drugs raid. This is normal - nobody tippety-taps in the Canaries, if you knock on a door it's because you wish to be heard.

I opened to find a plump, pink-cheeked individual encased in a slightly rumpled grey suit and with a black leather portfolio under his arm. He didn't look like an evangelist, not polished or smiley enough, and anyway they come in pairs. He looked like the Man from the Council.

'I'm here about the water, el agua,' he tells me. 'You know about the problems with the water?'

'What problems?'

'The quality! You haven't noticed? With the drought, you know, no rain, the water quality's very poor. Can I talk to you about it?'

I invite him in, a little concerned and rather more puzzled. It's true the rain is a little late this year but the island practically floats on fresh spring water, it's never a problem. However, here's this official telling me something's amiss so of course we need to know more.

I show him into the kitchen, which is where we keep the kind of water you might worry about. 'We haven't noticed anything wrong,' I tell him, turning on the cold tap. Water runs smoothly, normal colour, no bobbly bits, doesn't smell funny...

J has arrived to see what's going on. 'He says there's a problem with the water.'

'What problem?'

The Council man has deposited his black leather portfolio on the kitchen table. 'I'll show you, if you can spare five minutes?'

He requests a glass tumbler, which he fills with water from the tap. Then he pulls from a bulging pocket of his jacket a little black box. It has four metal prongs on one side and an electrical cable sprouting from the end, terminating in a plug. The plug is chipped and the cable insulation has been repaired with insulating tape. You'd think the Council would equip its water engineers rather better. Doubts are forming.

He places his little box on top of the glass tumbler with two prongs dangling in the water, then plugs the cable into a mains socket. Within a few seconds little streams of bubbles being rising to the surface from each prong. 'You see?' he says, indicating the bubbles.

Well yes, you'd expect bubbles. 'That's normal,' I tell him. 'Electrolysis.' Basic science – electrocute water and its molecules ping apart into their constituent hydrogen and oxygen. Which are gases, so they bubble.

I attempt to explain this in Spanish to our demonstrator, who agrees smoothly but cuts me short, holding up a hand: 'Wait a few moments!'

A green scum begins to spread across the surface of the water. He turns towards me, smiling grimly. 'Now. You see?'

After a moment's thought I suggest politely that the green scum is probably copper oxide from one of the electrodes. But he's now on the alert for this kind of nonsense and holds up his hand again. 'Give me some bottled water and I'll show you the difference!'

I'd love to do that, I tell him, but we have no bottled water. 'You drink only tap water?' he cries incredulously.

Of course we do. It's fine, the tap water is excellent, sourced from the island's springs, properly treated and monitored - why buy bottles?

The man who, I am quite sure by now, is not from the Council shakes his head. 'I wouldn't drink that stuff, myself. Not from the tap.' He dries his little box on a paper handkerchief, wraps the cable around it and slips it back into his pocket.

'So now what?' I invite him cordially. By now I'm really curious to know.

'Ahora qué?' he repeats, smiling. 'That's very Spanish.'

'Thank you.'

He sits himself confidently at the kitchen table, as a man who has the answers. From his portfolio he extracts a two-page leaflet about his company's domestic water purifier.

It's quite small, he assures us, would easily fit under our sink. Takes just a couple of hours to install then no more problems with dodgy water and murky scum! He produces an application form for us to fill in.

I break it to him not very gently that we don't want a water purifier. There is no way I'm going to spend a thousand euros or whatever it is on a complicated piece of plumbing we don't need. He gives up without a struggle, puts away his leaflet and application form and leaves, looking miffed or perhaps just tired.

After he's gone I ponder a little more about his gadget. Four prongs, electrodes. You only need two for electrolysis. Three were bright and shiny, I remember, while the fourth was dull and greenish, probably copper or a copper alloy.

Here's how it runs. You use the copper prong for your demonstration with tap water because it produces a nasty-looking scum. Then if the householder is a normal member of the modern world and can supply you with bottled water, you use the other pair of prongs, neither of which contains copper, so they produce only nice clean bubbles.

Your victim is thus convinced that tap water is poisonous while bottled water is good – but even better would be the superlative water from one of these magic purifiers, which will save you having to buy bottles!

The more I thought about this, the more appalled I was. This wasn't just salesmanship, it was evil. And if I was mistaken, how else would you explain those four electrodes?

As far as I'm aware nobody in this village bought a water purifier, they're all sensible folk who recognise knavery when they see it. And I'm sure he didn't come from this island, he'd been sent here on a test mission, a sacrificial goat to see how the locals reacted.

A few more calls like the one to our house and he probably crept home to weep for a while then look for a job delivering beer.


Health warning: please don't try 'electrocuting' water!
It's extremely dangerous without the right equipment.

After the deluge

As we arrived at the beach Blasina was rising from the waves like Botticelli's Venus, although decently clad in a big black bathing suit.

She looked unhappy. Walking towards us across the sand she waved grumpily towards the water. 'Look at it!'

A founder member of the Floating Heads discussion group (story dated 8 September 2015), Blasina likes her ocean to be as it should be, and today it just wasn't.

So what was the problem? Well, to explain that we need to go back a couple of days. To an evening when, sitting quietly reading at home, J suddenly looked towards the window. 'Hear that?'

I'm not good at faint noises these days, but yes, with a little imagination...

We flung open a window. Rain! And not just a fairy sprinkling, this was the real thing. Within a few minutes it had turned into the kind of downpour that fills the air like a demented fog, plummeting and pummelling, rattling on the rooftops and bouncing from the streets.

Other windows were lit in other houses, glimpsed through the waterfall, each with a shadowy figure peering out into the night.

Why anybody would want to stand at the window and watch rain falling may be hard to understand if you live in Birmingham, Düsseldorf or Omsk. Here on this island, however, rain is rare, and there have been occasional years with none at all, which is disastrous.

But now we were having our first downpour, reassuringly early in the winter. And after the initial frantic demonstration of intent it settled into a steady thrumming on our flat roof like a crowd of baby gnomes trying to stamp on each others' toes. They continued for most of the night but by daylight they had grown tired and trickled off home to bed, leaving only an expectant silence suffusing the air.

The big question now was whether... opening the doors to our terrace... yes, there it was! In the distance, the unmistakeable clatter of stones upon stones. This was significant.

We ventured out into the street and down the hill. So did everyone else. Down to the dry riverbed, which was now gloriously alive with hurtling water and tumbling rocks.

Kids dared each other to put a foot into the raging torrent and were summoned back under threat of being thrown in. Somebody with a new 4x4 whooshed through at speed, sending spectacular wings of water flying sideways and demonstrating the wisdom of his 30,000 euros investment.

Watching this rare novelty of running water, our neighbour Lali wore the ecstatic I-can-hardly-believe-it expression of someone who's just won a year's supply of groceries. 'Estamos muy contentos, muy contentos!' she laughed, 'We're really happy...'

The gift of rain on this island, if you wish to be poetic, brings life to the land and food to the children. It greens the hills and sprinkles bright colours across the springtime meadows.

More prosaically, rain means the difference between irrigating your potatoes for free or having to pay for water from the tap. If the reservoirs are full, anyone with a farm or smallholding, a finca, can use the water to irrigate their crops.

There used to be a clever system of little canals snaking along the hillsides, distributing water from the inland lakes throughout the countryside. To irrigate your banana plantation you would simply remove the stone that blocked a gap in the canal wall, allowing the water to cascade through into your field. Then, using a spade, you would guide the water along channels in the soil to reach the far corners.

It's mostly done by pipes and valves nowadays, which is a lot less fun.

But to get back to the story - a night of rain like this can go a long way towards filling the reservoirs, but as Lali and many others cautioned, 'We still need more...!' What we needed now was a few days or preferably nights of gentle drizzle in order to replenish the aquifers - the vast stores of water that underlie the island and keep its wells topped up and fresh. La Gomera is rich in water, unusually for the Canaries, and for that we have to thank the winter rain that soaks deep into its foundations. Much of it is captured in the island's central forest, the Parque de Garajonay.

In San Sebastián that morning the streets were shining wet in the early sunlight. A few shops had suffered minor flooding, but nobody minded too much and there was a party atmosphere of celebration. There's a well-recognised signal for 'rain' - you position your hand with all five digits pointing downwards and shake it up and down while shouting mucha agua! - lots of water! - followed by a broad smile to show you're not complaining.

Tourists were wandering around with that happily dazed after-the-storm look of the holidaymaker rescued from calamity. In short, all was contentment and good cheer, except down at the beach where Blasina was still grousing as she rinsed off under the shower. 'Filthy,' she snorted. She was talking about the sea. 'Thick as rancho canario.'

Mmm, sort of. Rancho canario belongs to that class of soups known as 'hearty' that you can throw anything into. You wouldn't want to eat what was churning around in the sea this morning, though. All that water surging along the dry riverbed had dislodged a year's worth of dust, dead foliage, bamboo canes, plastic bottles, aluminium cans and supermarket bags, transporting them all to the sea where they swirled around the bay for a while before being dumped on the beach. The sparkling water had turned pink and the normally pristine sands looked like the set of a post-apocalypse movie.

That's life for you, there's a black cloud beneath every silver lining. This one was soon dispersed, though. The town council sent in a couple of beach clean-up teams with rakes, while the sea performed its own twice-daily cleansing with fresh water from the Atlantic. Within a few days everything was again as bright as a baby's bathtub, and Blasina was her usual sunny self.

We could still do with a drop more rain, though.

What's that on your nose?

Part 1: The bubble

Arturo was the first.

Seating ourselves at a shaded table outside his café-bar, we waited quietly, knowing what would come next.

Arturo came out to take our order. 'The usual?' He paused, staring at my nose with the hesitant half-smile of a man torn between politeness, curiosity and suspicion that he's about to get his leg pulled. 'What's that?' Pointing at my nose.

'It's a spot,' I told Arturo. Beyond that I could tell him nothing.

It had begun as such a tiny thing, appearing out of nowhere, out of nothing, like the cosmic Big Bang. A tiny pimple on the upper bridge of my nose, placed with geometric exactitude midway between the eyes. Nothing much happened for a week or two while the newborn pimple sat there deciding what to do, then one day it began to expand enthusiastically.

In the story of the Big Bang this phase is known as 'inflation', a fudge that nobody understands but purports to explain why we now have a Universe to live in. After the inflation of my pimple what I had was a pink circle spreading across my nose and beginning to swell like one of those slow, malevolent bubbles in a volcanic mud pool.

Arturo peered more closely at my bubble. 'There's a kind of scab on top.' Yes.

'And it looks like there's blood inside.' Yes indeed.

He retreated, trying not to look repulsed. 'You ought to see a doctor with that.'

I had already made an appointment for the next morning. Meanwhile I covered the bubble with a sticking plaster which reduced the repulsion but not the comments, since it clearly hid something big and nasty.

My doctor at the local health centre, well practised in avoiding alarm for his patients, flinched only briefly when I showed him the excrescence but sent me straight to the dermatologist at the local hospital with a big label Urgent around my neck and instructions to beat down the door if nobody answered. (I'm exaggerating a little.)


Part 2: The treatment


There are some doctors who inspire instant relief - at last I'm in good hands! - and others who inspire dread that they're hiding something from you. My dermatologist belongs to the first group, an extremely competent lady in whom I have the utmost faith. She examined the growth on my nose with her high-tech illuminated magnifying glass, through which it must have looked magnificently horrid.

She straightened up and nodded. 'It's not malignant.'

'It's not malignant?'

'It's not malignant.' She must be well accustomed to having to say that twice. 'But it does need dealing with.'

Yes, good, great. An ointment, a pill, an antibiotic? 'We'll do it now,' she decides. 'Agreed?' Right, fine.

The best thing to do, she explains, is to burn it out.

Burn it out? I picture a little blowlamp hovering between my eyes. But I have complete faith in this lady. If she wants to burn it out, let her burn.

'Over to the couch there, and lie down.'

'Right.' Complete confidence. J is watching from the guest chair and looking as perplexed and nervous as I'm trying not to look.

'You don't have a pacemaker, do you?' asks the dermatologist. Why would that matter? But I don't. Could probably do with one just at this moment. She switches on one of those mysterious electronic machines they have in hospitals then administers a quick jab of anaesthetic at the top of my nose.

A minute or two later she's waving in front of me a little rod trailing a curly cable back to the machine. The rod turns out to be an electronic red-hot poker. She taps the bridge of my nose with it, tentatively at first, perhaps to see how I react, then with more determination. Tap, hold, withdraw... tap again, hold...

This doesn't hurt, it really doesn't, but the billowing smoke and barbecue smell are alarming. And the cotton swabs, handed to her in quantities by her assistant to mop up whatever’s flowing from my nose bubble. How deep does this thing go?


Part 3: The aftermath


It's best to leave the cauterized wound open to the air, it seems, to heal more quickly. Within moments this revamped adornment to my nose catches the eye of Bernardo, a fellow villager. He is seated in the waiting area, accompanying his mum (nobody ever visits a doctor alone). 'Hey, that was a good shot! Right between the eyes. You must have really annoyed her.'

Such remarks will be repeated throughout the next week. Shop assistants, bartenders, friends, taxi drivers (especially taxi drivers). My barbecued nose spot has become a blood-black hollow, perfectly circular, clearly the entry wound of a high-velocity bullet. I've seldom produced such hilarity with so little effort.


Part 4: Epilogue


Eventually the black scab fell off and now there's just a little scar. But the question remains - what provoked this evil eruption?

Well, it was certainly the sun, and it's suspicious that the spot nestled precisely below the bridge of my old plastic sunglasses. Could the curved lower surface of the bridge have acted as a concave mirror, treacherously focusing the ultraviolet into a hotspot?

Who knows. I'm not going to experiment. Maybe it was just the usual cause of most such problems these days, la edad, age. And the remaining scar, a little white patch, could come in useful one day, as Arturo pointed out. 'When it's time to put you down they'll have something to aim at.'

But meanwhile: 'Another little glass of wine?' Oh okay, Arturo, go on then.

Gofio

One morning many years ago, on our way out of the village, we paused beside a cloud of blue smoke billowing from the patch of land on the street corner. At the centre of the cloud was Dolores, perched on a rusty kitchen stool before an upturned dustbin lid. The lid was balanced on two brick columns and beneath it was an unruly fire of logs, twigs and leaves.

Peering through the smoke, all I could see in the dustbin lid was what looked like dark sand from a Gomeran beach. Now, why would anyone...?

From the stone shed behind Dolores a cockerel greeted our arrival with a subdued cock-a-gloogle-gloo while its harem of hens clucked excitedly around it. A clutch of turkeys gobble-gobbled next door and at the far end, two goats looked on from their tin outhouse in goatly disdain, chewing. A compact little tribe of fellow travellers on a leisurely passage to the dinner table.

We bid Dolores good morning and asked politely why she was heating sand in a dustbin lid. She beckoned us into the enclosure to look more closely. Ahah! Right. Mixed in with the sand were grains of maize, also known as corn. The sand was there to surround the maize with an even heat so it didn't scorch. Clever!

'You're roasting the maize,' I ventured, 'to make gofio?'

Dolores nodded - got it on one. Not too difficult because if you live in La Gomera you know about gofio. Gofio is what for centuries has enabled little Gomerans to grow big and strong, Gomeran women to bear fifteen children without blinking and Gomeran goatherds to leap across hillsides using long poles. Gofio thickens your breakfast milk and your lunchtime soup, gofio dumplings sustain you in the fields, honey-sweetened gofio balls are a treat for the kids and toothless grandpa.

Once the maize grains were well roasted, Dolores would sift them from the hot sand and take them up the hill to the gofio mill, where for a small fee they would be finely ground into flour. Very finely ground. On my first introduction to gofio I made the near-fatal mistake of sniffing it. I've since wondered if a lungful of gofio could spontaneously explode, as powder aerosols sometimes do, but the effect is in any case similar. Don't ever sniff gofio.

At a New Year's day family gathering to which we'd been invited, a particularly enthusiastic advocate demonstrated how to make gofio dumplings in the authentic manner. The first requirement is a rabbit. There are many rabbits in the Gomeran hills and Luis had obtained one, or rather its skin which is the key component for this purpose.

You sew the skin up again (nicely cleaned of course) to make a long bag, open at one end. If you ignore the dangly legs it now looks fairly innocuously like a Scottish sporran.

Into this bag you pour your gofio, being careful not to sniff, along with water or perhaps goat's milk for a richer dumpling. Close the end of the bag and tie it tightly with string then - here's the skilful bit - start rolling it like a big heavy sausage across your knees, backwards and forwards, applying pressure with the palms of your hands as in deep massage. You will be subjected to rude jokes while you're doing this, as Luis was, but ignore them and keep massaging.

After the proper length of treatment you can untie the rabbit bag and peel it away from what is now a large roll of slightly squidgy gofio dumpling. Slice it into bite-sized discs as required.

Nobody does this in real life any more, of course. They just mash up the mixture with a wooden spoon or, more probably, bung it into an electric dough mixer, but the end result is much the same and just as healthy.

Gofio forms part of a beautifully integrated system of self-sufficiency. You grow the maize on your family finca or smallholding. Being tall, the maize plants shelter other crops such as beans and potatoes from the strong winds which are a known feature of Gomeran weather.

Having consumed the maize cobs, either sliced up in soup or turned into gofio, you donate the rest of the plant to the goats or the pig. In return the goats give you milk and, in due course, meat, and the pig gives you ham, bacon and blood sausages as well as a friendly honk every morning when you go to feed it, except for the last time.

The goat milk - a litre or more every day - you can drink fresh from the udder or turn into cheese, to eat with your slices of gofio dumpling. Gomeran goat cheese is wonderful, tasty but mild, not at all goaty like the French stuff.

Meanwhile, back at the smallholding, your potatoes are coming along nicely in fertile volcanic soil enriched by nitrogen from the beans growing between them and by manure from your goats and pig. The beans will later form the basis of a nourishing soup called rancho canario into which you sprinkle your gofio...

It's not as satisfyingly circular as that nowadays with our frozen foods, takeaway pizzas and spit-roasted chicken, and there are fewer goats and pigs around than before, but you will be hard pressed to find a family without its own finca and somebody still making good use of it.

Dolores doesn't grow maize herself now because her joints have let her down, but her sons do. And gofio, although now produced mainly by companies rather than individuals, you will find on the shelves of every supermarket. Buy it, eat it and grow strong!

Paco and the magic bracelet

For such a simple device, this thing is miraculous. We had to queue to get it fitted. Well, queue in the loose sense of milling around with everyone else. Queuing is mainly a British phenomenon and elsewhere it's done differently, sometimes by the simple use of elbows. Not in Spain, though. The Spanish queue is an invisible thread that winds itself through the throng and is generally respected. Each participant knows who arrived before and after them.

So we all waited patiently to check in and, once verified as worthy, to have our magic bracelet fitted. Paco, who has Down's syndrome and is everybody's favourite, gave a little shiver of excitement as the fitter wrapped the bracelet around his wrist. Made of bright green plastic with rows of holes, it took only a moment to clip it fast and trim off the excess with a pair of scissors.

You can put it to work immediately. Head for the bar, demand a restorative glass of beer and kaboom! - there it is on the counter. Take it away and nobody will charge you anything, now or later. Paco marched off with a glass of fizzy orange and a look of wonder in his eyes - you don't have to pay for it? This is not life as we know it!

We were on a weekend indulgence with our village association, staying in a smart hotel in Tenerife on an all-included deal, the todo incluido. You pay in advance and once the pain of that has faded, all is magic. In the restaurant that evening the waiter, mesmerised by our bright green bracelets, plonked a bottle of red wine on the table then awarded us the freedom of the self-service counters.

Most people start by overdoing the magic then feeling ill the next day, which slows them down and is what the hoteliers depend on to avoid ruination. Our neighbour Eusebio started by overdoing it then continued to overdo it for the next two days.

He and his wife Carmela were sitting at a table next to ours, his plate cleverly piled in multi-coloured layers assembled from everything on the buffet counter. I raised my wine glass: 'Salud!' He grinned and returned the salutation.

As a second bottle of wine arrived on his table, shortly afterwards, we raised our glasses again. 'You know,' Eusebio said, perhaps a little defensively, 'we need this kind of break now and again. Carmela and I work hard all day, every day. What's the point if you don't ever have any enjoyment? Eh? What's the point? Tell me!'

This drew prolonged applause from a nearby table, where two young women were tucking into plates similar to Eusebio's. We all drank a toast to enjoyment. Later the two friends told us they worked on a banana farm in the north of the island and this was a little holiday, an escape from work, an escapadita.

People do work hard in these islands. Eusebio, for example, has a full-time job with the local council but he and Carmela also maintain a little farm, a finca, where they raise goats and grow much of their own food. They're not alone in this, the family finca has formed the heart of Canary Islands life for centuries. More about that in another story, perhaps.

But to get back to the magic bracelet - like all sorcery it has its darker side. When you venture into the town during the day your cheerful, brightly coloured little bracelet marks you like the electronic tag of a paroled prisoner. Seated at a café table with your coffee or beer in hand, you are instantly recognisable as a todo-incluido.

So you have to decide. If it bothers you, hide it beneath a rolled-down shirtsleeve. I decided that it didn't bother me at all, I was happy to roll up my sleeves and wear my magic bracelet with pride. It's a badge of those who have worked hard and believe they've earned a little enjoyment. (Pause for applause.)

It also goes down well with the proprietors of bars and cafés for whom the todo incluido concept threatens disaster. Anyone who ventures outside the hotel to eat, drink or otherwise spend money is to be cherished.

Returning to the hotel for an enchanted pre-dinner aperitif by the pool, we found that Paco had been appointed Wizard of the Drinks and was running a shuttle service over the bridge across the bathing pool, carrying wine, beer, orange juice or vodka-limón. 'Only one at a time,' his brother cautioned him. 'And if you spill any of it you're a dead man.' Paco is well used to being teased, loves it and is a dab hand at the withering retort.

So we drank and we ate and we chuckled, then like tired but happy children we piled into the magic bus to take us home. Two days is enough but it's a fun way to do nothing together.

Here's to good health and enjoyment without guilt. Salud!

Get rolling!

Many years ago, during my first faltering attempts at Hispanic communication, I asked a young waiter in a café-bar for two glasses of rosé wine, which in Spanish is vino rosado. Two glasses, dos copas, so there you go: Dos copas de vino rosado. Easy, see?

The waiter, who was probably called Juan, frowned and leaned closer. I had already learned to dread this Spanish frown. It is not one of annoyance, it simply means I'm concentrating really, really hard to try and catch some faint inkling of what you're on about.

Try again: vino rosado? with hopeful doggy expression. No joy. Juan smiles apologetically and tries a wild guess: 'You want two beers?'

I was rescued by Victoria, the landlady of the apartment where we were staying at that time, who fortuitously passed by at the height of the impasse. She said exactly what I'd said but this time Juan nodded gratefully and toddled off to get the wine.

A bit miffed, I demanded to know in what particular respect my pronunciation had been deficient. Well, difficult to know where to start with that one, but it seemed the crucial failure was the 'r' of rosado.

I hadn't yet learned to trill. In Spanish, when an 'r' comes at the beginning of a word it requires work. You must start it up, roll it along on your tongue then release it like a motorised butterfly: rrrrrosado!

Likewise, a double 'rr' in the middle of a word: Un tarrrrro de mermelada! will get you a jar of marmalade. Maybe.

Learning Spanish is no more difficult than learning any other language. It's just that the sounds you're supposed to make demand courage and, especially, a tongue that's unafraid of adventure. It has to be prepared for new and strange experiences.

Our landlady Victoria was very good at nurturing tongue-tied foreigners. With great patience and tact she taught our two tongues the basic tricks. That word rosado for example: it wasn't just the 'r' I was getting wrong. 'You're saying the 'd' so it sounds like 't' to me,' Victoria explained. Really? But surely a 'd' is just a 'd', whether Spanish or English...?

No it isn't. Victoria had uncovered for us a crucially important, breakthrough piece of information. 'You must put your tongue,' she explained, 'behind your teeth like this.' Tip of tongue against back of upper incisors. Your 'd' then comes out like 'th' in bother. Thus, the capital city of Spain is not what you thought at all, it's Mathrith.

The dictionaries make light of this. Some even claim that 'd' at the beginning of a word is the same as in English, which is outrageously false. Just listen to a Spaniard!

Even better, watch their mouth closely as they speak. I offer here the simplest and most useful piece of pronunciation advice you may ever read: When speaking Spanish, the tip of your tongue should play a dominant role, clearly visible from the outside, waggling around like a trapped ferret.

Victoria, bless her little waggling tongue, also gave us this useful rhyme for practising the motorised 'r' (erre, pronounced ay-ray, means the letter 'r'):

Erre con erre cigarro

Erre con erre barril

Rápido corren los carros

Los carros del ferrocarril

It's almost meaningless but not quite: R with R cigar / R with R barrel / Rapidly run the cars / the cars of the railway.

Intriguingly, the fourth line is sometimes written as Cargados de azúcar al ferrocarril - 'loaded with sugar on the railway' - which conjures a wonderful image of steam trains puffing through waving fields of sugar cane under a blazing sun, long ago in Cuba. Or Mexico, perhaps, or ...?

I'm sure this little poem has an interesting history.

Salsa and the widows

Eusebio elbowed me in the ribs. 'Those women need help.'

'What?'

'Those women. They need help. Look at them.'

I looked at them. He was right, they needed help. 'You do it,' I suggested, but Eusebio pleaded exhaustion. Too much wine, too much food. Yeah, me too. But still. Chivalry and all that.

It was party day in the village. A day to eat, drink and enjoy being a little cluster of people living in close proximity who are mostly happy with that. The summer sun was friendly but fierce and our sports ground was clothed with canvas gazebos sheltering tables, food, drink and most of the villagers.

Over in one corner young Crístofer, who knows about these things, had set up a laptop computer feeding chirpy salsa music into two black loudspeakers perched like vultures on tall poles. He was still sulking over being made to keep the volume below denture-rattling level - 'Hey, chico, some of us want to talk, turn the effing thing down!' - but was otherwise doing a good job of keeping things lively.

There is no moment, at these events, when we all sit down at the tables to start eating, nor any identifiable end - the meal starts when anything edible arrives, and people sit and eat or stand and talk as they wish. A relaxed and fluid feast that lasts all day.

Crístofer's salsa music pervaded the air like an aerosol drug that went straight to the feet, causing involuntary tapping and twitching. Men headed for the beer cooler wiggle-walking in time with the music. People abandoned their plates of chick pea stew or barbecued pork in order to dance, impelled by their hyperactive feet.

Rubén, a twenty-something guy who has hyperactive everything, danced wildly with the kids, some of whom would get sick before much longer.

So we were all having a great time, everything was hunkydory and ticketyboo, until - inevitably - around mid-afternoon someone produced a football. Someone always does. It was probably Rubén but I can't swear to that. And football, as everyone knows, is the world's worst bully, it will claim any amount of space for itself and ruthlessly exclude all non-players.

The lads all joined the game and, even more distressingly, so did some of the lasses. And that was the end of the dancing. Crístofer left his disco station to take up position as centre-half for the Red team.

Thus it was for a few minutes. The football took over. But – here was his big mistake - Crístofer had left the music playing. Under the shade of the gazebos, at the tables, fingers still drummed along with the beat, feet still tapped and twitched. And on the margins of the football game five widows lingered wistfully, swaying their hips. Five women who had lost their husbands some years ago but had not retreated permanently into black mourning, had decided that life was still to be lived. They wanted to keep on dancing.

Eusebio, a man who also believes that life is for the living, recognised that things had slipped out of kilter. 'Go on,' he urged me. 'I'll go if you do,' I offered. Okay. We approached the five widows together, offered ourselves as partners and led them gallantly onto the football field.

Five ladies and two blokes dancing salsa on a football field can mess up the game pretty thoroughly. Nobody minded. They must have known in their hearts that we were right and they were wrong.

The goalie at our end started dancing. The Blue team’s star striker caught the ball in his hands and shoved it beneath his tee shirt, shimmying. The ref retrieved the ball, whistled and sent him off. He didn’t go.

Committed footballers tried to continue the game but they were lost. Down at the far end, the defenders turned their goalmouth sideways, probably the best defence anyone has ever invented.

Meanwhile Bernarda, one of our salsa widows, grabbed a plastic bottle full of fizzy orange and sashayed across the field with it balanced on her head. The game dissolved into chaos and anarchy. This was my kind of football.

Strings and things

Occasionally, seized by nostalgia for the days when my guitar played a significant role, I blow the dust off, pick a few notes, strum a chord or two and perhaps even attempt a song, after making sure the windows are closed.

So: one Friday evening, guitar perched on knees, I twang a preliminary chord, C major. Needs tuning. Adjust second, third and fourth strings without problem then the fifth parts in two, pyoing! as soon as I pluck it.

Examining the remnants, I can see why. I'm not good at guitar maintenance. The last time I bought a full set of strings was in the UK, many years ago, and the guy in the music shop gazed at my guitar in disbelief. 'When did you last change this lot?' Umm, several years ago. Well, maybe ten. Could be fifteen. He nodded. 'We have a name for strings like these,' he said sadly. 'They're what we call grotty.' His glottal stop on the 'grotty' cleverly imitated the noise made my low-E string, which had a knot in it. He sold me a replacement set of nylon strings and suddenly I had a brand new guitar, warm, mellow and resonant.

But that was then, and already many more years have passed. At least ten. Could be fifteen... This newly-ruptured fifth string clearly signals an encroaching malaise of old age and weariness. I'm talking about the guitar strings.

I decide to start by replacing just the broken string. There is a specialist music shop I know of but it's in Tenerife, requiring a ferry and bus trip. However, after a quarter-century love affair with La Gomera we have uncovered a few of its secrets. We know it's entirely possible to buy guitar strings right here in the capital, San Sebastián. There is no music shop but there is a shop, heavily disguised, that sells guitars.

Here's what you do. Follow that elegant lady with the crisp hairdo, swirling red skirt and matching high heels - let's call her Carmen - as she clickety-clacks purposefully along the pedestrian street. Carmen is on her way to buy a new outfit!

Watch to see which shop she enters. The smartest fashion boutique in town, of course. Follow her in. Make your way past the tailored jackets, the sparkly dresses, the calfskin handbags and red-soled shoes, the discreet display of fortified bodyshapers - and there, right at the back, you will come upon a little cubbyhole where the walls are adorned with beautiful, curvaceous, polished-wood acoustic guitars.

Show the lady assistant your old, grotty string as a sample, explain that it was once a wire-wound nylon fifth, and she will fetch you a replacement. No raised eyebrows or snide remarks, just service with a smile. Any guitar is something to be treasured and nurtured here, where the proprietor's husband is one of the island's best guitarists.

I guess any long-established community is full of useful little secrets like this, the local know-how. It's not a question of excluding the outsider, anyone would be delighted to tell you where to buy a guitar string. It's just how things develop when services are run by the folk who live here rather than global conglomerates. For instance, to renew your driving licence... oh, later, later. I must get back to my guitar practice.

Give us a kiss

We’re on the beach, freshly changed into our swimsuits for the daily dip when a neighbour approaches to introduce her friend Eva, a slim, attractive woman considerably younger than me (that's not difficult) and clad in a minimal bikini.

'Encantado,' I tell her (delighted to meet you) in the proper Spanish manner then, perhaps knocked off balance by the splendid cleavage, I offer her my hand. This is not Spanish at all, it's ridiculously British.

'Un besito!' (a little kiss) admonishes Eva quite rightly, and offers me her right cheek then her left. I happily oblige, having absolutely no problem in sharing little kisses with beautiful women. 'We kiss a lot, we Spanish,' she explains, which of course I've known for the last thirty years, it's one of my favourite characteristics, but somehow the British reserve still pops up when I take my foot off its neck.

Accompanying this pleasant woman is her equally attractive teenage daughter in jeans and teeshirt who has been up all night partying. She collapses onto the sand and falls asleep within moments of arriving so plays no part in the interchange, which is perhaps fortunate because otherwise I might have multiplied my social failure. The other day, another woman we already knew stopped for a chat in the street, also trailing a teenage daughter. This one managed to remain awake during the conversation and, as we hadn’t met before, her mother introduced us. We both failed to greet her with a besito, just said 'Hi', which in Spain is less than you'd offer a tortoise. Why, for goodness' sake?

It's because the instant intimacy of kissing just doesn't come naturally to us creatures of the cooler North. We've even developed the air kiss to avoid actual contact. Yet it's so nice, this Spanish physicality, it feels so right when you get used to it.

Men don't generally kiss other men in Spain but they do touch each other to an extent that would raise eyebrows in Britain. Look, for example, at Antonio and Ramón, two senior citizens, slowly approaching each other in the street. They pause, exchange a word of greeting, then both reach out to hold the other's arm or shoulder while swapping a bit of news, before moving on.

Look at those two younger guys wearing skateboard gear. They do the vertical handclasp favoured by youth and American presidents, then they pat each other on the arm, then one of them punches the other playfully in the chest.

You will never see two people greet each other without some form of physical contact. I've got used to people rubbing my upper arm as though offering comfort - 'Keep your pecker up, things can only get better!' but they're not doing that at all, they're just saying hello, nice to see you. Waiters and waitresses who know you may lean on your shoulder while taking your order.

I love it all and I'm gradually improving my contact skills. I can even rub somebody's arm with convincing fluency.

But here's a health warning: never carry this behaviour back with you to the UK. When you've experienced someone going rigid with alarm at being hispanically hugged you'll realise that, like fresh bananas, goat cheese and Barcelona football shirts, this kind of behaviour just doesn't travel well.

Floating heads

It happened as she was trying to leave the sea. She slipped, staggered, lost her balance and ended up rolling on her back, helpless. Ventura is of generous proportions and no longer young.

It's always a bit up-and-downy where sea meets beach, you expect ripples and ridges in the shallows, but sometimes the tides, winds and breakers sculpt a deeper step. So when wading in you're faced with a sudden plummet up to your chest in cold water - shriek! - and when you're trying to get out it's like scaling a hill of coffee beans.

Both of these can be entertaining to watch, but Ventura's current plight, struggling on her back like a turtle, was alarming. It doesn't take long for someone to drown even in shallow water, or panic and have a heart attack.

Her companions, still in the sea, were splashing towards her and I ran down the beach to lend a hand. By the time I got there a younger woman had pulled Ventura right way up but was now dealing with an escalation of the crisis as the top half of Ventura's bathing costume had treacherously released its contents.

I studied my toes for a few moments while that was sorted out, then helped the young woman lift Ventura to her feet. We guided her up the beach to the shower, which the ladies use as a changing area. She was trying to smile but clearly shaken. 'It's the sand shifting under your feet,' she explained, 'and the water dragging at your legs. I just, you know...' Of course. But you feel daft when you fall over.

The other ladies returned to the sea and we followed. Now, J and I bathe in order to swim - healthy exercise as well as primitive pleasure. These ladies do not swim. They stand motionless in the water up to their necks, a flotilla of heads among the ripples, doing nothing at all except chatting. Why, you might wonder, would anyone go to all this trouble - changing into costumes, struggling in and out of the sea, showering, getting dressed again - if they're just going to stand and chat? They could do that far more easily over a nice cup of coffee.

Okay, let's ask the lady with the green flower-pot sun hat. Why do you bathe in the sea? 'Well, it's good for you,' she replies, 'sea water is good for the body.' If you press further, 'why?' like a toddler trying to drive everyone nuts, she adds 'Well, of course it's good! Good for your skin, good for your muscles, your joints, your circulation...' What a daft question, everyone knows sea water is good for you.

Maybe she's right. Maybe there's something mysterious in sea water other than plastic bags and nitrate run-off that subtly benefits the human body. But I think it's just that people like water. We're all descended originally from the sea sponge. This informal seaborne tertulia, discussion group, is popular because it's enjoyable to natter and gossip while being gently massaged by the waters we came from.

They give up in winter when the sea gets chillier. Ventura has given up altogether because she's scared of falling over again, which is a shame. But there you are, growing old gracefully often requires meek acceptance of the inevitable. Each year some leave the tertulia and others join, while the earth turns and the moon circles and the tides come and go, and that's how things are.

Revenge of the shrimp

Preliminary confession: this story is not really about La Gomera, it's a life-or-death story that could take place anywhere. But it happens to have taken place here, so I'm going to relate it anyway.

It's driving me mad, this tickle. A crumb or something on one of my tonsils. I discover that by arching my tongue upwards at the back I can scrape it against the tonsil but that just makes it worse, the tickle becomes a sharp little stab like a pinprick. Strange and slightly disconcerting.

Peering into the bathroom mirror, mouth wide open as at the dentist's, I can't see anything suspicious. But wait - when I persuade my tongue to lie down flat, maybe there's just a tiny glint of something right at the back?

With the bedside torch I confirm the diagnosis. There is a tiny hair sticking out of my tonsil. A cautious probe with a finger fails to make contact but produces a warning heave.

Pause for thought. How did a bit of hair get stuck in my tonsil? Doesn't take long to work it out. This is a summer weekend and we had indulged in lunch at a local café, sitting outdoors in the sunshine. Persuaded by Toñio the proprietor - 'These are wonderful, fresh this morning, a few hours ago they were swimming in the sea' - we ordered a plateful of shrimps. He was absolutely right, was Toñio, really fresh shrimps are a revelation. Subtle, delicate, a sea breeze captured in a little pink body.

You get in a terrible mess mind you, as the pile of discarded heads, legs, tails and carapaces begins to take over the plate, but that's part of the delight, this is hands-on stuff, real food. But (here we're getting to the core of the story) these creatures also have long, spindly whiskers attached to their heads. Not silky soft like a cat's but stiff and brittle like porcelain needles. Ahah.

So the situation seems to be that I have a fragment of shrimp whisker stuck in my tonsil. It can't be left there because for one thing it tickles and for another it could cause - well, who knows, inflammation, infection, swelling. You can choke to death on a swollen tonsil.

Got to come out, but how? Fingers are never going to do the job, the tonsil is just too far away. I take a small pair of tweezers from the first aid cabinet and have a go with those. Holding the tip of the handle I can just about reach the tonsil with the business end, but in order to tweeze I need to get my finger and thumb in there too... As I struggle it suddenly occurs to me that if the tweezers slipped out of my grip and the swallow reflex kicked in, things could quickly get much worse.

I explain my fears to J, who is watching. I realise I'm sweating. 'Longer tweezers?' she suggests with commendable clarity. She hands me the long, pointy tweezers we use for extracting splinters. Better, I can get closer with those. But still not quite close enough, and I can't see what I'm doing because my fingers are in the way and... I'm beginning to curse, always a bad sign, nerves giving way.

'Let me have a go.' I hand J the tweezers, glad to transfer responsibility and become a patient. I perch on a stool with mouth open like a gargoyle while she fishes with the tweezers, then leaps backwards when I suddenly heave. She's having the same trouble as me - even these longer tweezers are not up to the job.

Pause for thought, again. What we need is even longer tweezers. Inspiration: in my toolbox I have a pair of long-nose pliers. Need a bit of cleaning up first, remove bike oil and grit. I wipe them over with medical alcohol which seems the correct thing to do anyway before sticking them down my throat.

All up to J now, there's no way I can get involved. She gingerly introduces the pointy end of the pliers. All I can see is yellow handles waving around beneath my nose.

A childhood image springs to mind, a river barbel with gaping jaws trying to bite my dad's fingers off as he probed for the fishhook.

I feel a tweak in my tonsil. 'Got it!' She has, she has! Vast relief. She holds up the shard of whisker still gripped by the pliers. Insignificantly small but clearly evil, needle-thin and fragile as fine china.

Just to check I rub the tonsil with the back of my tongue. Uh-oh - a sharp little stab of pain. There's more in there. It must have snapped. This is fast turning into a nightmare.

'You'll have to go to the hospital,' J says, giving up. She's right of course, they'd have something better to fish with than long-nose pliers. But, I dunno. I mean, it's only a little bit of shrimp whisker.

'Let's have one more go.' The thing is, though, this whisker is sticking out sideways. So she will have to try and extract it the same way, sideways, rather than hoping to yank it straight out. This is the kind of thing you learn by experience.

Gamely, J takes up the pliers again. I hold myself rigid as a stuffed barbel while she manoeuvres the pliers between my teeth. She is grunting quietly with concentration. My tonsil reports a tickle. It goes on and on. Is that something sliding I can feel, a slight pull as of a needle withdrawing?

Finally she pulls the pliers out of my mouth and holds them up triumphantly. She's got all of it this time. It's extraordinarily long. How on earth did that much whisker manage to bury itself in my tonsil, without my noticing it at the time? But then you don't really feel a hypodermic syringe either.

This is clearly the shrimp's ultimate weapon. Dead though it may be, it will do its best to wreak a sly and terrible revenge.

Postscript: please don't let this discourage you from ordering fresh shrimps, they're great. Just look carefully before you pop anything into your mouth...

San Juan and a revelation

Feli and Lali were perched on the wall side by side like twin Humpty Dumpties, watching the sea and an oddly murky moon climbing into the twilight. I touched them both on the shoulder. 'A bit dangerous, sitting here!' Their legs were dangling above a sheer drop of several metres to the beach. But Gomerans are good at heights, they've lived with precipitous drops all their lives. Our neighbours shuffled along the wall to make room for us: 'Sit down, sit down,' but we declined. Too high, too much smoke. 'We'll see you later.' They smiled and nodded tolerantly, accustomed to foreign eccentricity.

The smoke that stung the eyes and yellowed the moon came from the beach below, where party revellers were camped around half a dozen crackling bonfires. They were here in honour of San Juan and later there would be dancing, but as always we'd arrived far too early. It's difficult not to arrive early for Spanish festivities because they always start terribly late. Rule of thumb is to add an hour to the published start time before you even think of turning up, and you'll still be early. But Gomerans are good at waiting too, they are patient people, and an hour to wait is an hour to chat and joke and celebrate being Gomeran.

We retreated further from the beach to escape the worst of the smoke. Mixed with the fragrant and carcinogenic aroma of burning timber was the acrid stench of scorched meat from handheld barbecue forks. I'm not a big fan of bonfires but don't ever say that on San Juan's day.

Also down there on the beach was Leandro the loudspeaker man, plugging cables into black boxes and aiming vast black boomboxes menacingly around him, clearly determined to leave no refuge. Of the musicians there was no sign, no doubt because they were sensibly gathered in a distant bar to ease themselves into the mood.

The festival of San Juan Bautista, John the Baptist, is one of the many Catholic festivals that have appropriated a pagan equivalent. The bonfires were originally intended to inspire the sun at the midsummer solstice, its finest moment, to blaze on in glory rather than sinking towards winter. The strategy has never worked all that well but people live in hope, and the bonfires of San Juan still hold mysterious powers. If you jump over one it cleanses you of evil spirits, or something of the sort, and this forms an important part of the San Juan festivities in some towns. Like bull-running, its main function is for young men to demonstrate their fearlessness to other young men and the more naïve of young women. (Brighter ones say no way, José, no father of my children is going to leap over bonfires.) I have no idea how John the Baptist came to be involved with this, and I doubt if the Pope does either. Stop asking questions, just enjoy.

Around ten o'clock I tired of trying to get a good shot of the peek-a-boo moon and began to worry that the smoke might have ruined my camera. (It didn't.) Put away camera. We wandered up and down the track behind the beach wall, greeting people here and there. Most of those now arriving were hauling insulated food boxes the size of treasure chests, their kids following behind with six-packs of beer and cola. Down on the beach a few near-naked youths were still mucking about in the waves then scootling back to their bonfires to warm up. By now I was also worrying that the fog of smoke swirling around us would leave an indelible scent of burnt resin on my fleece jacket. (It did.)

Leandro the loudspeaker man had turned his attention to the microphones, darting around on the podium under a red spotlight like a performance art event. Adjusting the volumes. Hola? Hola, hola! Tap tap tap. Sí! No! Uno dos tres. No sign of any musicians yet.

Heart slowly sinking while the moon escaped into the clearer air above, I realised that not only had we arrived too early, we had arrived far, far too early. The dance was not going to happen until well after midnight. It would continue until six or seven in the morning, when everyone would wobble off to buy hot chocolate and churros.

This is entirely typical, not only in La Gomera but in the whole of Spain. Which leads me to a theory I've just developed. A revelation I attribute to the festivities of San Juan. How is it, do you suppose, that the Spanish in the fifteenth century managed to overrun such vast swathes of territory, including most of southern and central America, in the face of fierce opposition from so many millions of native warriors?

I think I know. Imagine the two opposing bands - invading Conquistadors and defending Indians - camped for the night on opposite sides of the valley. Oil lamps flickering, meat roasting, wine splashing into mugs. As the stars take hold, supper over, the natives settle down under their goatskins for a good night's sleep before tomorrow's bloodshed.

Just nodding off nicely when, over there on the other side, one of the foreign invaders starts twanging some strange white-devil instrument, the others join in singing and before long there's uproar, you can't hear the wind in the palms or the babble of the stream for the stamping and shouting and strumming carried pitilessly on the cool night air. They're still at it as the sun peeps over the hill, finding the Spaniards fired up and ready for anything, the natives bleary-eyed and knackered from sleep deprivation.

This, I now believe, is the secret of Spain's extraordinary success as a colonial adventurer. Its people do not need sleep. They can party all night while others fall senseless around them. San Juan, this year as other years, was honoured and serenaded without our help. Soon after eleven, with the bonfires burning merrily but still no musicians, we gave up and went home, vanquished like the Indians.

What's your favourite?

She approached us with a wide Canary Islands smile, a slim, attractive lady in a summer-bright dress. Much more ominous was the cloud of nine-year-olds swirling around her, each clutching a little piece of paper.

Friday evening. We're seated outside a café on the pedestrian main street, chilled rosado wine catching the last of the sunlight to paint glowing blobs on the table. Couples stroll, toddlers tumble, old folk sit on benches complaining about politicians, Real Madrid and their arthritis. Newly-arrived tourists trundle their suitcases far too fast, still anxious from the journey, they'll take a day or two to relax... We're just sitting here watching it all, nothing really, people doing what people do.

'Excuse me, are you English?' The youthful cloud has arrived, wafted towards us by their smiling leader. She speaks excellent English with only the mildest of accents. She's a teacher. We fear the worst.

We are, we admit, English. 'Ah, I thought so!' The children swirl closer, gathering around our table like pigeons spying peanuts. 'These children want to practise their English. Do you mind if they ask you a few little questions?'

'Err...'

'It won't take long. They're very easy questions!' She's got a lovely smile, and the kids are standing there meekly with their little pieces of paper... Oh okay, fire away then.

'Thank you very much!' She points to the first girl in line, over on our left - 'Yolanda!' The back of Yolanda's paper is decorated with mysterious squiggles in coloured crayon. The front of it holds her list of questions, which she's going to ask in what she believes to be English. We wait for her to select one.

Yolanda plunges in confidently: 'Do you like La Gomera?'

Got it! 'We love La Gomera!' J responds, and everyone smiles. Going well so far.

'What's your favourite colour?'

Tricky. J's favourite colour is not one of the rainbow seven. 'My favourite colour's blue,' I offer boringly, giving time for J to plump for the honest response: 'My favourite colour's turquoise.'

Teacher helps: 'Ah yes, that's turquesa.' See, not difficult. Yolanda nods and consults her paper, getting into her stride, but it's time to move on to Ricardo fidgeting beside her. Ricardo wears scruffy jeans and will undoubtedly want to get his eyebrows pierced someday soon. He wishes to know what we like for breakfast. Prompted by a wink from teacher we give him the works, full English, fried eggs and bacon, sausage, tomatoes and the rest... lots of good vocabulary in there, not that Spanish kids really need to learn 'baked beans'.

Ricardo scribbles something on his paper then goes for the big one. 'Do you like football?'

This is aimed directly at me. I haven't the remotest interest in football. And look, I'm not going to lie about it to these kids, they need to know the sad realities of life. 'Umm, not very much.'

Teacher chuckles nervously but it's okay, Ricardo interprets my response as too ridiculous to take seriously. He carefully articulates his follow-up: 'What's your favourite football team?

I grab a name from the fog: Arsenal. Ricardo looks bemused. Try again: Manchester United. That's more like it! He nods and writes it down. Every boy across the entire planet has heard of Manchester United.

There are about ten of these cheerful little interrogators and soon they know everything there is to know about us - favourite colours, favourite island, which fruit we like best, which pudding. It all reminds me of the long-gone days when, briefly, I taught children of this age in a primary school. Get them involved and they'll plunge into anything up to their armpits, they're very rewarding.

My vino rosado is getting warm and teacher wisely hurries things along so as not to drain our goodwill. After Sandra has rounded things off with only the tiniest hiccup - 'Do you like best... Do you like cats or dogs best?' - we're invited to visit them at school whenever we want. We exchange names, all of us. Not going to remember any of theirs for long but maybe they'll remember ours, greet us in the street one day soon, hello Janine, hello Peter, what's your favourite sandwich?

Arturo, the café proprietor, has been watching from the doorway. He grins as the teacher wafts her students away, waving. 'They gave you a hard time!' No they didn't, we rather enjoyed it. How often do you get the chance to spend ten minutes talking exclusively about yourself, with an attentive audience noting your every word? Short of being Prime Minister, this is as good as it gets.

The whistle

Raising her hands to her face, she stuck both forefingers into her mouth like Dracula fangs. Breathed in, blew out and emitted a shriek that could shatter a kidney stone.

'That's the whistle,' our host Eusebio explained superfluously. 'That's how you make the noise. First you learn how to do that, then you learn how to say things.'

He was talking about the famous whistling language, of course, the silbo gomero, that used to ring across the deep, wrinkled valleys of La Gomera. No wonder the Spanish conquistadors had such a bad time trying to crush these people, the whistle alone would be enough to send any sane soldier scuttling back to his troopship, chainmail ringing.

We were gathered in our neighbour's house in the village to celebrate the arrival of the new year, many years ago, when conversation turned to the silbo. It took a few glasses of wine to get Luzma loosened up enough to perform, being a little shy in front of these two foreigners, although she knew us well enough by then.

'Say something, Luzma,' Eusebio commanded. Luzma was okay now, the first whistle had relaxed her like a steam engine shedding pressure. She poked her fingers into her mouth again. This time her whistling was modulated, a tuneful warble like a blackbird singing into a Rolling Stones amplifier. When it finished our host Eusebio got to his feet, took the wine bottle from the table and topped up her glass. She warbled again, briefly.

'She was asking you to...'

'Refill her glass. Then she said, thank you Eusebio.'

Luzma was whistling again with an oddly mischievous expression. Eusebio listened, said 'Uff!' then sat down, shaking his head and pretending to be shocked. His wife Carmela explained, chuckling: 'She told him to drop his trousers to see what's inside.' Luzma cracked up with laughter. Country humour soon turns earthy.

Many of the earlier-generation Gomerans such as Luzma can still do the silbo and most can understand it. Sadly, you rarely hear it in the streets these days, although sometimes a guy will hail a friend across the town square: 'Juanito! Come and have a beer.'

As a tourist you're most likely to hear the whistle as a demonstration in a restaurant. That's fine, it's genuine enough, no play-acting or deceit, but there's an obvious risk that the silbo could turn into a cabaret act. It could forget its roots and become as false as the Disneyland flamenco dancing you can suffer in any Spanish tourist hotel.

I suppose even that would be better than the alternative, that it should fade and die, supplanted by the mobile phone. But the good news, the really good news, is that the Gomerans and the world in general realised in the nick of time what they'd got here and set about saving it. Schoolchildren now learn the silbo as part of their weekly curriculum. Even better, it has gained global recognition as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, which will ensure funding and support although it sounds a bit posh for what Luzma does.

Now and again the council runs a competition for young whistlers from the local schools and colleges. And they are very, very impressive. If you don't believe the silbo is really a language, watching one of these competitions will convince you. The participants compete as teams of two, a whistler and a listener. The whistler is handed a slip of paper with a message typed on it. The messages are pulled at random from a box and the competitors have no idea what they are until they're handed the paper slip. And the messages are not about galleons on the horizon or goats falling into crevices, they're things like:

Romina, we're going to the beach this afternoon, come with us and bring your radio.
Rafael, tell Rubén I met his brother and he wants to borrow his bicycle tomorrow.

The listener can request – by whistling, of course – a repeat of anything they haven't understood, then they have to say aloud what the message was. Mostly they get it right, either completely or nearly. It's astonishing.

How does it work? There are learned books and research papers about this, but basically the silbo is a phonetic representation of the Spanish language. You can hear that in the sound of it, a warble that mimics the words and intonation of the spoken language. A skilled silbador, a whistler, can represent at least four of the spoken vowels individually and perhaps all five. The consonants are mostly doubled up, one sound for two or more consonants, but that's good enough to be perfectly intelligible.

And no, I can't do it. I would love to be able to whistle across the square 'Hey, Antonio, fancy a beer?' but so far I haven't even managed the carrier signal, the raw noise. A local expert who knows everything about Gomeran culture showed me how to whistle by mouth alone, no fingers: 'Roll your tongue into a tube – like this – then put it behind your teeth and...' There it was, the piercing blast.

If you really want an ear-splitter though, to reach across a ravine, you poke one knuckle into your mouth while the other hand cups around it to focus the sound. I've tried everything, one knuckle, two fingers, tongue rolled like a cigar, but all I produce is a damp hiss or a bat squeak. Maybe Gomerans are born with some special gadget behind their teeth.