Neighbours

Nobody knows what to say on these terrible occasions. There are established formats of course, but they sound just as inadequate in Spanish as they do in English: my condolences, deepest sympathy... nothing comes close to being sufficient. Today I just said how sorry I was and did the rest by handshakes, hugs and kisses.

Eusebio, who always tries to be philosophical about life's tragedies, commented quietly 'Oh well, one neighbour less, then,' but his eyes were having none of that and he had to look away and blink for a while.

We were there to say goodbye to an elderly lady, one of the villagers, who had reached her nineties in reasonably good shape but then slowly succumbed to arthritis, poor circulation, shortness of breath and the rest of it, all those things that finally wear you away if nothing nastier gets you first.

I was genuinely very sad that she'd left us. We had known each other for a great many years, waved from across the street, chatted now and again when we called in to visit. 'You know, I think of you two as family,' she said not long ago, which is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. I'm not sure whether I had to turn away and blink like Eusebio, but I'm doing it now anyway.

All of which is not to see if I can depress you, it's just to illustrate how important is this thing called a neighbour. They're important anywhere but in a small village on a small island, the title of neighbour has particular significance. I upset one of our fellow villagers many years ago as I was introducing her to some visiting English friends: 'This is Dolores, who's a sister of María, the lady we met earlier who is the grandmother of etc etc...' - introductions can get complicated when everyone is related to everyone else.

This was in English of course, so then I had to explain in Spanish to Dolores: 'I was just telling them that you're the sister of María who is the grandmother of...' but I got no further. Dolores interrupted me with an astonished 'And I'm your neighbour!' Explanation enough in itself, what's all this rabbiting about who's related to whom? The important thing is that we're neighbours.

Lesson learned. Being a vecino, a neighbour, conveys a recognised status. You don't have to live next door or along the street - a vecino is anyone from the same village or area of town. People will greet you in the supermarket with 'Hola, vecino!' Our village association is an Asociación de Vecinos.

Mostly we neighbours all rub along happily and benefit hugely from the companionship. I have to admit here, however, that Gomerans are no more saintly than anyone else and we have our share of clashes and conflicts. Ada who lives on her own has a somewhat prickly relationship with Pilar, another widow of the village. 'She comes round here day after day,' Ada complained the other week, 'asking me for sugar. I always give it to her but do I ever get it back? Nunca jamás! Never ever! And she expects to get a cup of coffee as well. Why should I supply her with sugar and throw in free cups of coffee? Eh?'

'You could knock on her door tomorrow morning and ask for some flour and a free bun.'

Ada didn't find that amusing. 'I'm not going to ask her for anything! But if she thinks she can keep coming round to my house...'

But they get on pretty well really and Pilar still visits. They need each other. I know of a small village in the interior of the island, in a deep valley, where the entire population has drifted away to the towns except for one old lady who refuses to leave home. Her only neighbours are one or two foreigners who have bought old cottages and turn up now and again for a holiday, but half the time she has no neighbours at all. She's thrilled if a goat pops its head around the door.

She should give up and move to our village, bringing a couple of kilos of sugar to make friends with Ada and Pilar.

Illustration: detail from a watercolour by Jackie Page

Where do all the carrots go?

She waggles the broccoli head towards me like a club. 'So what are you going to do with this?'

'Eat it!'

Facetious response. She is being serious. 'Claro, of course, but how do you cook it?'

'Well...'

'You boil it?'

'No, no... No!' Suddenly the accusation that I might boil broccoli, or anything, seems to demand strenuous denial. I sense an eagerness, an edge of discovery in this searching question from the market stall assistant, habitually a quiet woman who just gets on with the job.

'So what do you do with your broccoli?' she demands, pointing it at my heart.

It's not often I get the chance to expound our method of cooking vegetables - people tend to drift away - so I seize the moment. 'I chop it into small pieces,' I tell her with a chopping motion of the hand (Spanish requires whole-body communication) 'and cook it in a pan with a lid, adding just a very little water. So it steams, really. Then when it's nearly cooked I add a little olive oil.'

She nods approvingly as though I've passed a test. 'So you eat it as a salad.'

Well no, not salad. Or perhaps... yes, thinking about it. What she means is that we eat the broccoli as a food in its own right, not as an ingredient. That's right, I tell her: we eat it as a salad.

She places the broccoli on her weighing scales in satisfied silence. There's a feeling that we've touched on something fundamental here.

I've puzzled for many years over one of the most extraordinary aspects of life on this island. The place is full of fruit and vegetables, they grow them by the truckload, they sell them everywhere. There are four permanent greengrocery stalls in the local market and several more on Saturdays, specialist greengrocery shops in town and fruit-and-veg counters in every little supermarket. People emerge with shopping bags bulging with broccoli, carrots, leeks, green beans, peppers, tomatoes...

But as far as we've been able to establish, they never eat any of it.

Explain, please. Okay. Take a typical fiesta here in our village (see the story dated 6 October 2015) which largely revolves around eating and drinking. There is a conveyor belt of food that begins around midday and lasts all afternoon. First up is a rich stew of garbanzos, chick peas, in meat stock. Next come plates of fried pork, eaten with bread or just with more fried pork. Then chunks of goat cheese to be eaten with home-baked bread before the next course which is bacalao, salt cod, accompanied by potatoes boiled in their skins, Canary style, and served with the mandatory oil-and-garlic sauce called mojo.

No vegetables yet, you'll notice, unless you include potatoes. Now comes the prize dish of the day, fried goat meat eaten in French style with your fingers, off the bone. A palate-cleansing salad would go down well after that... but you won't get one unless you bring your own.

Then we're into the puddings, cakes and ice lollies.

Long ago we learned what to expect at these banquets and we prepare by cramming down salad and fresh fruit in advance to lessen the craving. In fact we have a reputation as lettuce-eaters. The other day, after a splendid fish dish in a local restaurant, the proprietor Jacinta said she’d told the cook to give us plenty of salad garnish because she knew we’d eat it. We left only the fishbones. This is almost unique behaviour, everyone else sends their plate back with the salad garnish untouched.

Yet the vegetable farmers and greengrocers here are thriving! They drive all-terrain vehicles with chromium-plated cow fenders and GPS navigation, they build palaces with orange-tiled roofs. They are selling all the fruit and vegetables they can pile up on their counters.

So where on earth is it all going?

Theory 1: The restaurants take it all

This is easily knocked down. You will never be served carrots, broccoli or any other vegetable with your fish or meat here, not even as an optional extra. It’s true that any restaurant will prepare you a wonderful mixed salad, a visual and gustatory delight, but it’s salad rather than vegetables and mostly the foreign visitors who order them. No, this can’t account for it.

Theory 2: The locals eat vegetables at home although not in restaurants

No, they don’t eat them at home either, we’ve been to lots of family meals and we have never glimpsed a dish of carrots. If there’s a salad it has been created especially for us. They do eat oranges.

Theory 3: It’s the resident foreigners who buy it all

Well yes, we foreigners buy fruit and veg of course, but there aren’t all that many of us. Simple observation at the market stalls shows Gomerans hugely outnumber foreigners.

Theory 4: It all goes into soups and stews

This is slightly more convincing. Soups and stews are very much part of the local cuisine - but can they possibly eat enough soup and stew to account for such quantities?

Theory 5: People take health-giving baths in vegetable soup, like Cleopatra bathing in milk

Don’t be silly.

Theory 6: They indulge in midnight vegetable orgies, crunching carrots furtively by candlelight in the kitchen

Nope, that’s us.

I give up, it’s beyond me. Perhaps the goats get it all, the ancient secret of Gomera's wonderful cheeses.