Dancing in the Streets
The last couple of weeks have fallen well short of the super-duper mark. I’ve not been a well girl but am better now, so will spare the tedious details. Anyway, I have been keeping my head down so not a huge amount to report.
I had a dose of retail therapy this week - took myself off to the Easy DIY superstore and spent lots of money on a cartload of bits & pieces from my huge list of jobs to start of finish. Best of all, I got myself a lovely power drill, something every girl should have in her wardrobe. Partly this was prompted by the big mirror smashing to smithereens on the living room floor a couple of weeks ago, having slipped off the loose hooks the painter had hung it on. When I told him about this, he said how sorry he was but that he had thought (he didn’t say this at the time of course!) that it wasn’t secure, because that wall was so difficult…. So I think I will hang the next one myself to avoid a future littered with antique mirrors flying about the place.
I stripped off the yucky floral vinyl from my bedroom walls, which is a great relief. The paper backing remains on the walls and I will decide at some stage whether to paint directly onto that or strip it properly. As I am increasingly leaning towards using gloss paint, it may be prudent to leave the paper on for easier removal when I come to my senses and want to change it again.
The only other things I have got round to are putting up some curtain rails in the spare bedrooms and finishing off painting the inside of the wardrobes in one of them. The curtains I bought are too short so I will have the fun and games of returning them this week. I thought about going today but the only time I have tried exchanging something before I discovered that they don’t do customer service at the weekend. It was a different shop but still, not worth the risk.
Unbelievably, I had found exactly what I was looking for at Easy - a timer plug to put on the electric boiler to stop it actually literally boiling the hot water. Very smug about that - until of course I got it home and found that the plug on the boiler is actually bigger than the standard socket. Well, I say 'standard' - HAH! -in fact, there is no such thing. I already knew about the four different types of socket dotted around the flat and have invested in all sorts of adaptors and extensions (never the one you want where you want it and oh the sparks some of them send off...) so to find there is in fact a FIFTH type of socket probably should not have surprised me but it was quite depressing. I guess I will take the plug off the boiler and go down to the electrical supplier and ask them whether it is anything special or could I please change it for something I can use with the timer.... Then of course, I'll have to change the socket to accomodate it too.
Apart from that, I’ve been staying close to the bathroom, reading a lot and lolling about in front of the TV waiting to get better. It is shocking how many episodes of CSI there are out there and more so the number I can identify within the first five seconds. I watched plenty of Gilmore Girls and ER. Why doesn’t anybody show Gilmore Girls on UK TV? Maybe my standards have just slipped so much in the absence of BBC that I am enjoying some real tat! No, there is some REAL tat on cable here - anyone who argues that US TV is better than British should be made to familiarise themselves with the entirety of its oevre before uttering another word. Whoever buys the stuff for Channel 4 must have to sit through all this drivel before they find a gem like Frasier. What a depressing job!
Daytime TV has been an eye-opener, but then I seem to think it is pretty dire in the UK too - it is something I generally avoid. I have been trying to watch the Argentine channels and work out what the hell they are talking about but it remains something of a mystery. The fact is that some of it is so bizarre, it turns out I have understood the Spanish but the very fact of what is happening is beyond my comprehension. For example:
There is some programme where an old man in a suit has a big table with different kinds of sandwiches displayed on it. He talks to a woman reporter who is out and about in sandwich shops asking people about ingredients, who buys them etc (riveting stuff.) All the while, three girls in bikinis are inexplicably standing about in the studio behind him. Then the old guy talks to a nutritionist about the sandwiches, all very serious and scientific… then eventually, the girls in bikinis get to choose a sandwich each and stand around eating it in the background while the old guy ekes out a repeat of the small amount of sandwich-related information he had gleaned from the nutritionist, who stands there nodding and clutching her clipboard. The girls are asked whether they like the sandwiches they chose, two of them nod, their mouths too full to speak. The third says she wishes she had chosen a different one but this one was OK. The programme ends without any explanation being offered for the girls being there or indeed being in bikinis. It seems to be on every day, though the bikinis and the sandwiches change.
That is a serious informational programme… the entertainment shows have good, old-fashioned comedy Chinamen, half naked ladies, men dressed as half-naked ladies, dwarves, comedy queers… oh, how can I begin to describe what they get up to?
They have Big Brother going on here at the moment too and I was lucky enough to catch a lunchtime talk show that was dissecting all the relationships and illustrating their points with clips. Of particular interest was the time the contestants were *rewarded* for their week’s toil with a muddy pole-dancing party. So all the good-looking young men and women got muddy and did pole-dancing. Hmm, don’t they just get plied with booze until a fight starts in the English version? The funny thing was, they all seemed to be enjoying it. There is so much I don’t understand in the world, come to think about it!
Wheel of Fortune is good though!
Last Friday I went with Belen and some chicas to a show at Dandi in San Telmo. Dandi is a rather chichi tango-themed hotel and the show is something they put on every weeknight in the bar. The reason for going was that our mate Oscar Acebras is one of the acts - he comes on and sings and plays his guitar, sometimes accompanied by the three old geezers on piano, violin & bandoneon at the back of the stage. The idea is that it looks at tango through the decades, with dancers coming on in different clothes and dancing different styles. It is cute, though I have to say I am not sufficiently expert to be able to tell the difference in dancing between some of the segments. Also, I was very confused by the 1940 piece, which had the girl in a short sparkly dress and their dance was nearly over before I remembered that fashions were probably rather different in Europe, what with the War and everything. They were up to 1960 when the power to the building failed completely. It had been flickering off and on earlier and finally plunged us all into darkness, cutting off the amplifier in the middle of a song. It was one of Oscar’s though, so he just kept singing and the musicians soldiered on. It was really exciting and when he finished, everyone whooped and applauded their spirit. Someone came on and announced that they were giving up and we were all welcome to come another day to see the show in full.
In fact, the power came back on but the show didn’t. We went up to the dance salon and sat there waiting for a glass of champagne on the house that we had been promised but which the chap had clearly forgotten and eventually somebody reminded him. Then the milonga started and we ended up staying for that, though it was a bit lame. The DJ was dreadful and the sound system kept jumping around and deafening us and there was not really anyone except Oscar and the waiter to dance with. That is often the case at Dandi - it depends really on who is staying at the hotel upstairs and whether they go down for the milonga. It is not really a popular place with milongueros and the only other local people who go are the students from the studio in Palermo which is run by the grumpy people who put on the milonga.
There had been a plan to go on to Canning but it never happened for some reason. By half past one we were starving, so ordered a big plate of empanadas. A rather late and inadequate supper really. It was hard to chat too because the music was so loud - I am not at all sure why I stayed actually. I had said I’d leave earlier and go on my own to Gricel because I am not a big fan of Canning and it is a long way off but I was talked out of it. Oh well, sad to say, we probably all got hooked in to something we hadn’t planned on doing by the promise of a free glass of champagne!
We saw in the Cuparsita at three, then went our separate ways. I felt increasingly dodgy on the way home and luckily managed to get in the front door and into the lift before passing out. No idea what happened there but I came to some time later in a cold sweat wondering where I was etc etc. Funnily enough, I had just read The Time Traveller’s Wife (highly recommend it!), in which one of the main characters keeps coming to in strange places so that was the first thing I thought of. Anyway, I hadn’t ben time-travelling (!) and clearly I wasn’t as ‘better’ as I had thought. I’ll skip over the details and say I had added a nasty bump on the head to my previous complaints and was a bit wary of going anywhere for days after that.
So, it’s not always fun and steak and tango here!
That said, I did pop out last Sunday evening to hear Orchestra Imperial playing as part of the Buenos Aires Tango Festival which has been on for 10 days and is just coming to an end somewhere across town as I type. It was in the street outside the Gardel museum over at Abasto. It was a lovely balmy evening and the band were fine, though I would not go out of my way to hear them again. There was a nice little crowd and some people were dancing in the street. Not me: apart from feeling a bit feeble, it is always hell on the feet - and the shoes - so it has to be worth it and there wasn’t anyone there I wanted to dance with.
Another festival concert I went to was on Friday outside the ecological reserve. It was los Reyes del Tango, who I have heard a couple of times before and are great. There was something odd going on with their sound system though, it may have been the difficult acoustics - being outside, under trees and next to a lake. Rather beautifully, the moon was very nearly full up above and between songs, the sound of the frogs or insects chirping was amazing. Some people were clearly having memorable romantic evenings there but I sat quietly in a corner.
The big open air milonga was supposed to be last night by the Obelisk, with two different orchestras and somebody said they were laying on a proper dance floor but I doubt that. I had a plan to meet up with some friends and go to Palermo to look at the total eclipse early evening, then come back into town for the dancing in the street. Sadly, it clouded over in the afternoon and started to rain, thus eclipsing the moon, the sun and the tango. Boo!
So I went out later to meet Gaby at El Beso and had a really nice time there instead. Some guys I haven’t seen since last year were there and I danced with them and had nice chats catching up on this and that. It’s funny, they say “Raquel! Where have you been? How are you in all this time?” So I say “I went to England for a holiday, to see my family and deal with some obligations - you know, taxes and the like - but I am happy to be back. How have you been?” and bless them, they say things like “Oh, none of that is important now that you’re here, I forget it all when I see you and everything is alright!” And yes, dear reader, I lap it up.
Actually I had a couple of dreamy dances last night and will definitely go back to El Beso on Saturday nights. I followed my usual policy of not dancing with anyone who actually has to come and ask me, except in the case of a ridiculously young man who ran in as if he had to tell me about some kangaroo trapped in the ol’ mine shaft. He offered his hand and told me he could dance and he’d really appreciate it if I would just indulge him for one song. I was intrigued but knew it could have been dreadful. In fact he could dance but was doing it so frantically and without much idea of what my feet might be doing, so it was quite an effort. After the first one, his keen little face was looking at me and he said “was that alright, can you suffer another?” I told him it was fine but he needed to calm down a bit and we got better and better as the tanda went on. He was insanely grateful for some reason. I asked him where he usually danced and he said Rio Negro - he was just in Buenos Aires from the provinces for a quick holiday and was incredibly excited to be in a real milonga with a real lady (yeah, yeah, that ain’t no lady…) It was very sweet.
I got home about four and slept late this morning. There was half a plan to go with Carmen to the Glorieta for some open air dancing this afternoon but it was another cloudy day and a bit cool, so I have stayed home and been domestic. Pretty sure she will have gone to La Ideal instead. After I have done this, I’ll grill up a nice bit of steak and probably go out to Porteno y Bailarin a bit later for some more catching up with my dancing. Can’t be out too late though as I have just noticed a little stream of water running down the kitchen wall so I will have to be up early to call the plumber. I can’t do much about it myself as it is coming from behind the kitchen cabinet and taking that off is definitely a two-man job.
Oh, one gorgeous Buenos Aires detail is that some of the big jacarandas on the avenues are still valiantly putting out flowers, though they are in full leaf, so the trees have a halo of purple. But also, there are these other amazing trees (which probably have a name that I could find out easily enough) which have been flowering all last month in various shades of white and pink. I have not been out with the camera yet but I will and I hope that all the rain we have had this week will not have done away with the display.
Yes, it has been raining a hell of a lot this week and the TV news is full of stories about areas flooding and how one neighbourhood simply won’t drain even days after a storm. Thursday morning was one of the worst storms I have ever seen here - and this place does do stonking storms. I suppose the Autumn is setting in.
So that is all from a slightly less enthusiastic than usual little me! Fingers crossed I will be properly full of beans (or steak) next time.
R x
I had a dose of retail therapy this week - took myself off to the Easy DIY superstore and spent lots of money on a cartload of bits & pieces from my huge list of jobs to start of finish. Best of all, I got myself a lovely power drill, something every girl should have in her wardrobe. Partly this was prompted by the big mirror smashing to smithereens on the living room floor a couple of weeks ago, having slipped off the loose hooks the painter had hung it on. When I told him about this, he said how sorry he was but that he had thought (he didn’t say this at the time of course!) that it wasn’t secure, because that wall was so difficult…. So I think I will hang the next one myself to avoid a future littered with antique mirrors flying about the place.
I stripped off the yucky floral vinyl from my bedroom walls, which is a great relief. The paper backing remains on the walls and I will decide at some stage whether to paint directly onto that or strip it properly. As I am increasingly leaning towards using gloss paint, it may be prudent to leave the paper on for easier removal when I come to my senses and want to change it again.
The only other things I have got round to are putting up some curtain rails in the spare bedrooms and finishing off painting the inside of the wardrobes in one of them. The curtains I bought are too short so I will have the fun and games of returning them this week. I thought about going today but the only time I have tried exchanging something before I discovered that they don’t do customer service at the weekend. It was a different shop but still, not worth the risk.
Unbelievably, I had found exactly what I was looking for at Easy - a timer plug to put on the electric boiler to stop it actually literally boiling the hot water. Very smug about that - until of course I got it home and found that the plug on the boiler is actually bigger than the standard socket. Well, I say 'standard' - HAH! -in fact, there is no such thing. I already knew about the four different types of socket dotted around the flat and have invested in all sorts of adaptors and extensions (never the one you want where you want it and oh the sparks some of them send off...) so to find there is in fact a FIFTH type of socket probably should not have surprised me but it was quite depressing. I guess I will take the plug off the boiler and go down to the electrical supplier and ask them whether it is anything special or could I please change it for something I can use with the timer.... Then of course, I'll have to change the socket to accomodate it too.
Apart from that, I’ve been staying close to the bathroom, reading a lot and lolling about in front of the TV waiting to get better. It is shocking how many episodes of CSI there are out there and more so the number I can identify within the first five seconds. I watched plenty of Gilmore Girls and ER. Why doesn’t anybody show Gilmore Girls on UK TV? Maybe my standards have just slipped so much in the absence of BBC that I am enjoying some real tat! No, there is some REAL tat on cable here - anyone who argues that US TV is better than British should be made to familiarise themselves with the entirety of its oevre before uttering another word. Whoever buys the stuff for Channel 4 must have to sit through all this drivel before they find a gem like Frasier. What a depressing job!
Daytime TV has been an eye-opener, but then I seem to think it is pretty dire in the UK too - it is something I generally avoid. I have been trying to watch the Argentine channels and work out what the hell they are talking about but it remains something of a mystery. The fact is that some of it is so bizarre, it turns out I have understood the Spanish but the very fact of what is happening is beyond my comprehension. For example:
There is some programme where an old man in a suit has a big table with different kinds of sandwiches displayed on it. He talks to a woman reporter who is out and about in sandwich shops asking people about ingredients, who buys them etc (riveting stuff.) All the while, three girls in bikinis are inexplicably standing about in the studio behind him. Then the old guy talks to a nutritionist about the sandwiches, all very serious and scientific… then eventually, the girls in bikinis get to choose a sandwich each and stand around eating it in the background while the old guy ekes out a repeat of the small amount of sandwich-related information he had gleaned from the nutritionist, who stands there nodding and clutching her clipboard. The girls are asked whether they like the sandwiches they chose, two of them nod, their mouths too full to speak. The third says she wishes she had chosen a different one but this one was OK. The programme ends without any explanation being offered for the girls being there or indeed being in bikinis. It seems to be on every day, though the bikinis and the sandwiches change.
That is a serious informational programme… the entertainment shows have good, old-fashioned comedy Chinamen, half naked ladies, men dressed as half-naked ladies, dwarves, comedy queers… oh, how can I begin to describe what they get up to?
They have Big Brother going on here at the moment too and I was lucky enough to catch a lunchtime talk show that was dissecting all the relationships and illustrating their points with clips. Of particular interest was the time the contestants were *rewarded* for their week’s toil with a muddy pole-dancing party. So all the good-looking young men and women got muddy and did pole-dancing. Hmm, don’t they just get plied with booze until a fight starts in the English version? The funny thing was, they all seemed to be enjoying it. There is so much I don’t understand in the world, come to think about it!
Wheel of Fortune is good though!
Last Friday I went with Belen and some chicas to a show at Dandi in San Telmo. Dandi is a rather chichi tango-themed hotel and the show is something they put on every weeknight in the bar. The reason for going was that our mate Oscar Acebras is one of the acts - he comes on and sings and plays his guitar, sometimes accompanied by the three old geezers on piano, violin & bandoneon at the back of the stage. The idea is that it looks at tango through the decades, with dancers coming on in different clothes and dancing different styles. It is cute, though I have to say I am not sufficiently expert to be able to tell the difference in dancing between some of the segments. Also, I was very confused by the 1940 piece, which had the girl in a short sparkly dress and their dance was nearly over before I remembered that fashions were probably rather different in Europe, what with the War and everything. They were up to 1960 when the power to the building failed completely. It had been flickering off and on earlier and finally plunged us all into darkness, cutting off the amplifier in the middle of a song. It was one of Oscar’s though, so he just kept singing and the musicians soldiered on. It was really exciting and when he finished, everyone whooped and applauded their spirit. Someone came on and announced that they were giving up and we were all welcome to come another day to see the show in full.
In fact, the power came back on but the show didn’t. We went up to the dance salon and sat there waiting for a glass of champagne on the house that we had been promised but which the chap had clearly forgotten and eventually somebody reminded him. Then the milonga started and we ended up staying for that, though it was a bit lame. The DJ was dreadful and the sound system kept jumping around and deafening us and there was not really anyone except Oscar and the waiter to dance with. That is often the case at Dandi - it depends really on who is staying at the hotel upstairs and whether they go down for the milonga. It is not really a popular place with milongueros and the only other local people who go are the students from the studio in Palermo which is run by the grumpy people who put on the milonga.
There had been a plan to go on to Canning but it never happened for some reason. By half past one we were starving, so ordered a big plate of empanadas. A rather late and inadequate supper really. It was hard to chat too because the music was so loud - I am not at all sure why I stayed actually. I had said I’d leave earlier and go on my own to Gricel because I am not a big fan of Canning and it is a long way off but I was talked out of it. Oh well, sad to say, we probably all got hooked in to something we hadn’t planned on doing by the promise of a free glass of champagne!
We saw in the Cuparsita at three, then went our separate ways. I felt increasingly dodgy on the way home and luckily managed to get in the front door and into the lift before passing out. No idea what happened there but I came to some time later in a cold sweat wondering where I was etc etc. Funnily enough, I had just read The Time Traveller’s Wife (highly recommend it!), in which one of the main characters keeps coming to in strange places so that was the first thing I thought of. Anyway, I hadn’t ben time-travelling (!) and clearly I wasn’t as ‘better’ as I had thought. I’ll skip over the details and say I had added a nasty bump on the head to my previous complaints and was a bit wary of going anywhere for days after that.
So, it’s not always fun and steak and tango here!
That said, I did pop out last Sunday evening to hear Orchestra Imperial playing as part of the Buenos Aires Tango Festival which has been on for 10 days and is just coming to an end somewhere across town as I type. It was in the street outside the Gardel museum over at Abasto. It was a lovely balmy evening and the band were fine, though I would not go out of my way to hear them again. There was a nice little crowd and some people were dancing in the street. Not me: apart from feeling a bit feeble, it is always hell on the feet - and the shoes - so it has to be worth it and there wasn’t anyone there I wanted to dance with.
Another festival concert I went to was on Friday outside the ecological reserve. It was los Reyes del Tango, who I have heard a couple of times before and are great. There was something odd going on with their sound system though, it may have been the difficult acoustics - being outside, under trees and next to a lake. Rather beautifully, the moon was very nearly full up above and between songs, the sound of the frogs or insects chirping was amazing. Some people were clearly having memorable romantic evenings there but I sat quietly in a corner.
The big open air milonga was supposed to be last night by the Obelisk, with two different orchestras and somebody said they were laying on a proper dance floor but I doubt that. I had a plan to meet up with some friends and go to Palermo to look at the total eclipse early evening, then come back into town for the dancing in the street. Sadly, it clouded over in the afternoon and started to rain, thus eclipsing the moon, the sun and the tango. Boo!
So I went out later to meet Gaby at El Beso and had a really nice time there instead. Some guys I haven’t seen since last year were there and I danced with them and had nice chats catching up on this and that. It’s funny, they say “Raquel! Where have you been? How are you in all this time?” So I say “I went to England for a holiday, to see my family and deal with some obligations - you know, taxes and the like - but I am happy to be back. How have you been?” and bless them, they say things like “Oh, none of that is important now that you’re here, I forget it all when I see you and everything is alright!” And yes, dear reader, I lap it up.
Actually I had a couple of dreamy dances last night and will definitely go back to El Beso on Saturday nights. I followed my usual policy of not dancing with anyone who actually has to come and ask me, except in the case of a ridiculously young man who ran in as if he had to tell me about some kangaroo trapped in the ol’ mine shaft. He offered his hand and told me he could dance and he’d really appreciate it if I would just indulge him for one song. I was intrigued but knew it could have been dreadful. In fact he could dance but was doing it so frantically and without much idea of what my feet might be doing, so it was quite an effort. After the first one, his keen little face was looking at me and he said “was that alright, can you suffer another?” I told him it was fine but he needed to calm down a bit and we got better and better as the tanda went on. He was insanely grateful for some reason. I asked him where he usually danced and he said Rio Negro - he was just in Buenos Aires from the provinces for a quick holiday and was incredibly excited to be in a real milonga with a real lady (yeah, yeah, that ain’t no lady…) It was very sweet.
I got home about four and slept late this morning. There was half a plan to go with Carmen to the Glorieta for some open air dancing this afternoon but it was another cloudy day and a bit cool, so I have stayed home and been domestic. Pretty sure she will have gone to La Ideal instead. After I have done this, I’ll grill up a nice bit of steak and probably go out to Porteno y Bailarin a bit later for some more catching up with my dancing. Can’t be out too late though as I have just noticed a little stream of water running down the kitchen wall so I will have to be up early to call the plumber. I can’t do much about it myself as it is coming from behind the kitchen cabinet and taking that off is definitely a two-man job.
Oh, one gorgeous Buenos Aires detail is that some of the big jacarandas on the avenues are still valiantly putting out flowers, though they are in full leaf, so the trees have a halo of purple. But also, there are these other amazing trees (which probably have a name that I could find out easily enough) which have been flowering all last month in various shades of white and pink. I have not been out with the camera yet but I will and I hope that all the rain we have had this week will not have done away with the display.
Yes, it has been raining a hell of a lot this week and the TV news is full of stories about areas flooding and how one neighbourhood simply won’t drain even days after a storm. Thursday morning was one of the worst storms I have ever seen here - and this place does do stonking storms. I suppose the Autumn is setting in.
So that is all from a slightly less enthusiastic than usual little me! Fingers crossed I will be properly full of beans (or steak) next time.
R x
posted by Rachel in Buenos Aires at 7:59 pm
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