Rachel in Buenos Aires

Free Ride Home

2008-05-28T23:47:00.004-04:00

The gaps between posts just get longer and longer. My life became focussed on much more personal stuff that I just didn't want to write about and neither have I had the time.

Hey Ho!

Anyway, if anyone still looks, here's a little snippet. I went to the cinema this evening with Carmen to see the new Indiana Jones film. Apart from annoying points like "how did the baddies catch up if that staircase had disappeared...?", (love preposterous stories but not keen on inconsistency!) it was good fun and we came out about as amused as we'd expected to be.

It is suddenly winter here and very cold when we came out about quarter to eleven. We walked around the corner to Carmen's bus stop and noticed that across the road the underground station was still open - a bit late for Bs As where the underground system generally shuts down about half past ten. Well, I had been about to start the fifteen minute walk home but a train could halve that, so I went to look.

The barriers were open, the lights were on and the escalators were still running, so I tripped down to the platform and - miraculously - a train was just approaching. Only when it stopped and the doors didn't open did I realise there weren't any people in it, so I turned and started walking back along towards the exit.... The driver's door opened and a head popped out, so I said, "Hi there, is that it then, all the trains stopped already?" and he said, "Yes, about twenty minutes ago, we're taking this one back to the terminus. Where are you going?" So I told him, he winked at his co-driver and they offered me a lift! I hopped in.

It was fab. Nothing huge or momentous, just a special little experience to treasure.

They let me through into the carriage via their cabin and I had the whole train to myself. It is only three stops but it felt so exciting passing through the empty stations along the way - no bustle, no sweat, no crowds, empty train merrily swinging around the curves like a girl skipping through daisies. That must be how the Queen experiences transport.

Thinking about it afterwards, I never felt unsafe and feel a bit guilty that I am even considering it now.

So, I'll just post that and see if it inspires me to take this up again.

Besos,
Rxx

Sheepish Hello

2007-10-17T19:41:00.000-04:00

Erm, been busy is all!

With what and whom: http://www.tangotaxidancers.com/

Go on, take a look!

I simply do not have the time to sit about writing about cockroaches! Happy to say in fact that I have not had any cockroaches to write about all this year. What I do have though is a lovely live-in boyfriend and a budding business with him and a great team of tango dancers. My big old living room is occasionally transformed into a tango studio or a meeting room. My spare bedroom occasionally has a small boy or 3 for the weekends. Not at all what I signed up for but I am not complaining.

Well, not today anyway.

Today finally there is warm sun after a miserable, long, cold winter that has broken all records.

I have Jan and Keith staying from London, which is lovely. Also in town are newleyweds Michael & Oswaldo, with whom we have already put away a fair old wodge of steak and Malbec. At the weekend we have a programme of Cabaret the musical and some actual cabaret for good measure.
Who says it's all tango tango, tango...?

Other highlights since - er blimey - June when I last wrote...

....Chris visited for a very short but lovely week and we packed a lot in; steaks, sightseeing, a bit of tango (not helped by Aerolineas Argentinas losing her luggage on the way out and cancelling her flight home)...

... Daddy also visited for 3 weeks (which is more like it if you are thinking of coming!) We had a really lovely time, despite unseasonal bad weather, and he got a lot of sleep away from his usual day to day worries. We went up to Iguazu Falls for a couple of days and were both absolutely blown away by the whole experience. I doubt it is possible to exaggerate how amazing it is.

Daddy also did this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7gziwPQmmI

amongst other things.

... Marisol & Alfredo also came over again, very busy getting stuff organised for their Windsor milonga...

...Eduardo & I danced in the Bs As and World tango championships but didn't get very far. Still it was fun.

Of course there is very much more but if I make my old mistake of trying to write about it all at once, I shall never even post this.

Besos

So Much to Say...

2007-06-10T10:20:00.000-04:00

Hello Blogland, long time no see!

Executive Summary:
After a sad month without Club Espanol, Julio opened up Chique again at Club Galicia, smaller & not as elegant but fingers crossed for him. I met a lovely man there and have been too busy falling for him to do any blogging. It's been bloody cold here & I had a quick bout of 'flu. Fantastically excited now because my lovely friend Chris is coming out next week for a short visit. Had a couple of brushes with bureaucracy & seen a bit of Argentine democracy. We have had some incredible biblical weather here and it transpires my flat needs a bit of weatherproofing.

Alright, so I won't go into all the details, partly because it has been 2 months - thanks for pointing that out, Elizabeth! - and I don't have either the time or the stamina to fill you in on all of that.

The post-Club Espanol period was a bit odd. I did have a feeling of mourning, albeit more at the level of a lost hamster than a dear friend. Clearly, life goes on but it was interesting how much I had fixed on that milonga as a point of constancy in mine. While it was absent, I went to a few other milongas - some familiar, some not - but nothing else really does the same thing for me. Nino Bien - well, I never really liked that place anyway but we went the night before Good Friday and it was packed to the gunnels with strange people; kind of a Sunday driver syndrome, very uncomfortable on the floor and off it. A couple of good evenings at Porteno y Bailarin, including one when Alberto Podesta sang. He used to sing with the di Sarli orchestra. Amazing to hear him singing at the age of 85. Had a lovely evening at Club Sunderland with Francis, Carmen and some American ladies. There I saw Miguel again after some months and we danced a couple of tandas. I also went to a new milonga with Kikki & Eduardo, called los Mareados. It is in a conference room of a modern hotel and probably needs to build up its ambience a little. I danced there with a young man who almost dropped me when he realised, thanks to his friends' laughter, that he was tangoing to a milonga. Yikes. Old favourites like Gricel and El Beso provided some better times.

I took a short trip out of town, which was nice enough, though these long bus rides are no picnic. Once again, sooo grateful to have a happy knack for falling asleep in strange places. I went to a place called San Luis, which is not on the tourist trail and for good reason. It is a dreary little town but has some very nice countryside around it. I rented a car while I was there, which was interesting and in fact just as well given the dreariness of the town itself. Driving was not at all difficult, although I did try to change gear by fumbling about with the door once or twice. It makes me want to travel Argentina more, there are some stunning landscapes to be seen.

Then on the 4th May, Chique - the milonga formerly held at Club Espanol - started again in its new home, Club Galicia (San Jose 224, esq Alsina). Well, what can I say? It was a very exciting evening and deeply satisfying all round.

The anticipation walking the three blocks there from my home was lovely in that tingly slightly nervous sort of way. It was great to get in the door and be greeted by the same staff who were always there at Espanol. I had little chats with a couple of them while I waited for a tanda to finish & Monica to show me to a table. It was lovely to see so many familiar and friendly faces dancing by and I greeted a few people on my way down the dance floor.

The venue itself is nothing like Espanol. It is about half the size and has none of the elegance and little of the charm, so whatever evolves from this, it will be a different milonga. Where Espanol has wedding cake plasterwork, wooden pannelling and ornate gilded mouldings, Galicia has a rather rustic finish and huge gloomy oil paintings of Spanish peasants hanging on the walls. The floor is probably its best feature - large, well-worn wood and really lovely to dance on.

The music is still the best in Bs As in my opinion, provided by DJ Dany and one gorgeous tanda after another. There were several but not all of my favourite geezers there and I danced with most of them. I danced with Julio and he was obviously relieved that people had come out to suprt him and said he was a bit nervous about how it would all pan out. Other people I spoke to were excited that it had opened again but not very enthusiastic about the venue, so we shall see if it really gets off the ground.

An odd thing happened. Early on in the evening, I noticed somebody watching me dancing quite a lot. Obviously people watch but this guy was staring and clearly talking about me with Teresa. Anyway, I let it go but later he came up to my table to introduce himself. Normally I give people pretty short shrift when they come up to my table but as he started off by saying he was a friend of Teresa's I heard him out. Anyway, long and short, he wanted me to dance with him in the Metropolitan Tango Championships. As you know, I've heard that one before! Still, he was quite cute, so I said that I knew I could dance but we should see if we could dance together before agreeing to anything. So two half tandas later, I had agreed to meet him at Nino Bien on the Saturday night and enter the heat.

All in all, the first night of the new Chique was very exciting. It was accompanied by a massive thunderstorm too, which I merrily walked out into when hunger overtook me around ten. Not befoer I had sung a couple of bars of 'my favourite things' to a cluster of Americans cowering in the doorway searching the deserted street for a taxi. Great to live within walking distance and I celebrated that by walking home singing at the top of my voice! Well, the storm easily drowned me out and anyway there really was noone around to hear.

So, I went to Nino Bien on the Saturday and met up with the mystery man. Linda came along for moral support and made a couple of little videos which are on youtube now. We didn't get through - not surprising after so little dancing together, plus some artistic differences about the hold which left me very uncomfortable (you can see this on the video). The people who won were fantastic too. Anyway, after the competition, we danced on and it turned into quite a romantic evening - lone couple tangoing til the Cumparsita plays, everyone else long gone and the staff clearing away the tables... then walking home hand in hand through the rain. Then sending him packing to find a bus out to Nunez at five o'clock in the morning! Hey ho.

We decided to try again in another heat but in fact started dating and didn't get round to doing that for another week. By then of course, I had persuaded him that a close hold is the way to go!

That time, we entered in barrio milonga out in Urquiza and amazingly enough we did get through to the semifinals. I was exhausted and got a bit cranky with him when he wanted to enter the milonga section too and would not stick to my provisos that there would be no traspie or trick footwork. I just stopped dancing and glared at him. In fact, I almost walked off the floor. Still, luckily by that time the votes were in for the tango section and nobody could be put off by the total milonga meltdown.

So since then, I have allowed him to move into my flat, closely followed by a German film crew who were making some short piece about the tango and tourism. I really won't go into any details but it has been an exciting time. Not at all what I was looking for but what the hell - I followed my nose to Buenos Aires and am following it with Eduardo too. It all seems very right for now and we shall see what happens.

I had a lovely birthday and a party with lots of ladies here and lots of food, including two lovely cakes, hand-made by Eduardo. Then I had the flu when we got a sudden cold snap here and for the first time in I don't know how long, had someone to look after me, making fresh orange juice & interesting soups. Fab. I could get used to this boyfriend business!

Best birthday present was finding that my friend Chris's lovely husband has given her a birthday gift of a ticket to Bs As, so that she can come and visit me next week. What a star. I am so excited and can't wait to see her. Though she may arrive grouchy as I have rather taken the piss with her baggage allowance and made all sorts of requests, including a suitcase full of my old sheets & towels... we shall see.

There is a whole tedious story about endless rainstorms here in the Autumn and cracks in the rendering of the building and great patches of damp on my newly decorated walls and the apparent impossibility of the managemet company to do anything about it and my general feebleness in tackling them... but I think this is enough of a catch-up for now.

Chin chin, R

Rapidito

2007-04-07T18:59:00.000-04:00

.... Lovely word that translates nicely as 'a quickie'...

I have had blogging on my mind lately but as you can see, not done much about it. I now have broadband - haleluyah! - and yes, have spent hours and hours skipping about the ether reading all sorts of things in other people's blogs. It is odd to think that people stumble upon and read mine in the same way - it is essentially a tool for keeping in touch with people I know. They sometimes send me messages, so I know it happens. Hey ho!

It is interesting skipping about and seeing what other people are doing with their blogs. Sometimes you just wonder, "who the hell is supposed to be reading this?" or indeed, "who the hell do you think you are to be writing this?" A lot of it is banal - and I hold my own hand up to that accusation - but strangely gripping. I suppose there is a touch of real life soap opera to it.

Anyway, blogging about blogs, how very self-absorbed!

So, the terrible, devastating news from Buenos Aires is that the best milonga in the world has been forced to close by evil money-grubbing landlords. I am gutted. Club Espanol was the most constant thing in my life here and it gave me SO much, I cannot begin to tell you how big a hole it is leaving in my life.

I was at the last one (naturally, have only missed about 3 since I've been here) and found out during my first dance that it was going to close. I could barely dance I was so shocked. The whole evening I was close to tears but I made sure I danced with all my favourite guys, though of course it was a shock to everyone so nobody was able to say where they would go in future. I hate to think I will never dance with some of them again. I hate to think I will never dance on that gorgeous big floor again, especially as the evening wore on and the crowds dispersed and you could glide about like angels.

Not sure I can write any more about it now, I am off to a party in a mo and don't want to arrive morose. I just pray that Julio who ran the milonga will be able to find another venue that has some magic in it. I was lucky enough to dance the last Cumparsita with him at Club Espanol, which was rather bittersweet.

Tragic.

Still, life goes on, eh? And I have a party to get to, so more another day.

R x

Tango Physics

2007-03-24T18:50:00.000-04:00

Here is something Michele emailed me recently which I think is very clever indeed. It is by a chap called Mike Barrow and appears on yahoo tango chat room:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tango-uk/message/4543

I think we would all have a better knowledge of tango if we understood the fundamental physics underlying it. I have been researching the academic journals and for your education and enjoyment I have summarised the current state of knowledge. It answers such unresolved questions such as:

Why is tango so difficult?
Why do you never see three people dancing tango together?
Why collisions occur on the dance floor.
Why tango exists.

Some knowledge of quantum physics is desirable but by no means essential. Now read on...

Tango Physics

The laws of physics apply to tango just as they do to other phenomena. Here is a summary of current knowledge, obtained from leading text books and recent research papers. Some of the more advanced theories must remain speculative, pending further research.

Basics

Tango consists of the interaction of electrically charged particles operating within a musical energy field.

There exist just two types of elementary particle: the tanguera particle and the complementary tanguero particle. The tanguera particle (or simply tanguera) is electrically charged by the addition of high heeled shoes and a glamorous dress. The quantity of charge is directly proportional to the height of the heels and inversely to the quantity of material in the dress.

In contrast to the tanguera, the tanguero particle is more easily and economically charged. The very appearance of a suitably charged tanguera isusually sufficient to charge the tanguero. Some tangueros find themselves already charged on waking up in the morning, for no apparent reason. The quantity of charge appears totally unrelated to the tanguero's shoes or apparel. Indeed, it also seems to be based on the tanguera's shoe height and dress material.

Having complementary charges, the tanguera and tanguero are naturally attracted to each other. The force of attraction is proportional to theproduct of their individual charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them (the inverse square law). As this distance approaches zero (the so-called close embrace) the attraction increases without limit, leading to important and potentially unstable quantum effects (see below).

The charges of two such particles in a close embrace cancel each other (being of opposite polarity) and the couple become electrically neutral, thus attracting no further particles. This is why you hardly ever see three particles dancing together. (The Tango Lesson was trick photography. ) It also explains why couples (which are electrically neutral) can collide with each other.

Two tanguera particles have charges of the same polarity and are therefore likely to repel each other, especially if wearing similar shoes or dress.

Two tanguero particles are able to happily co-exist in spite of the similarity of their charges. The exception to this occurs in the presence of a single tanguera particle, when one of the tangueros attaches to the tanguera and the other is ejected.

Interactions of particles

Tango particles interact within a chamber known as a milonga under the influence of musical energy supplied by an orquestra or, more cheaply, a portable CD player.

The particles resonate with the application of the musical energy. Ideally the particles resonate in proportion to the energy supplied (the basic energy of Argentine tango, or 'beat' for short). However, not all particles resonate at the appropriate frequency.
Those which do are said to possess the property of musicality. Tanguera particles are particularly strongly attracted to tangueros possessing this property.

A tanguero at the extreme of the distribution, usually resonating at an excessively high frequency relative to the beat is known as the null tanguero particle. Continued contact with the null tanguero will usually cause the tanguera particle to become completely
electrically discharged and to leave the dance floor.

Newton's laws of tango

1. A tanguera particle will remain at rest or continue in constant motion unless acted upon by a force, usually applied by the tanguero particle.
2. A tanguera of mass m, acted upon by a force f exerted by the tanguero will move with an acceleration a according to a = f/m. Beyond this, it is generally unwise to refer to the mass of the tanguera particle.
3. For every tango teacher there is an equal and opposite tango teacher. E.g. if a teacher says one should never lead with the left hand, then there exists somewhere a teacher who says this is permitted or even encouraged. If one teacher says the cross should be led, there is another who says it isn't. This is why one should never change teacher, except in extremis.

Tango and chaos theory

The discovery of the mathematical theory of chaos in the 1980s shed new light on some unresolved mysteries in tango. Just as a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can cause a cyclone in Europe, so a misplaced step in one part of the dance floor can cause, through a consequential series of collisions, avoidances and sudden changes of direction, several particles to trip over each other some time later in another part of the milonga.

This is particularly likely if a new (i.e. inexperienced) tanguero particle enters the dance floor, holding an excessive charge due to the close proximity of so many charged tangueras. Attempting to restore its equilibrium and shed excess energy, it moves at high velocity with many sudden and unanticipated changes of direction. This initiates a
series ofcollisions which turns an initially orderly dance floor (low entropy) into one of disorder (high entropy).

Chaos also reveals itself at the level of individual particles, for example when executing a giro. The giro normally progresses according to the well-known Salas-Naveira equations of motion. However, a tiny perturbation to the initial step can become magnified in subsequent steps such that the two particles complete the giro in totally the wrong positions or, in the worst scenario, fly apart completely. This solves the mystery of why the tango is so difficult.

Why tango particles exist

Very occasionally two particles resonate together with perfect symmetry and harmony, in time with the beat. The force of attraction between them increases as the distance between them decreases until they effectively become, for a short time, a single particle (a singularity in mathematical terms). These are the quantum effects referred
to above and they lead to a tear in the very fabric of space-time itself and the particles disappear from view, into a state known as nirvana (in the popular imagination this is often located in the Buenos Aires area of Latin America). No communication with the particles is possible during this time. The particles only reappear when the energy supplied by the musical field is turned off. We can only speculate where the tango particles go. The particles themselves are quite unable to explain since, for them, time has slowed to a standstill (in accordance with Einstein's theory of relativity). Indeed, some of them are incapable of speech for several minutes on their return. However, there is general agreement that this state of nirvana is the very reason for the tango particles' existence.

Tango teachers

2007-03-24T18:31:00.000-04:00

Another blatant plug for some friends. Again, a link to their website appears top right on this page. Avid readers will remember Romina and Carlos from my fist visit here 2 years ago, then from my lessons and Susan's with them last year, as well as the various shows of theirs that I have mentioned and their generous loan of a dining table. So far this year, I have been very lazy about starting up again, though there are many things I would really like to work on.

Still, anyone visiting who wants good clear instruction in a nice studio in San Telmo should get in touch. They are increasingly busy, so best book ahead. And tell them I sent you!

Or you can catch them giving group lessons in the glorious setting of Confiteria Ideal, 384 Suipacha on Wednesdays at 4pm or Thursdays at noon.

They do a regular show at another historic venue - 36 Billares on Avenida de Mayo - on Tuesday nights. It used to be Wednesdays, but we discovered that that had changed when I confidently organised dinner there for all the English who were here last October. We sat open-mouthed at the rather touristy show that was on offer instead, so always check ahead for details!

Tango Yoga

2007-03-24T18:12:00.000-04:00

This is a blatant plug for my friend Carmen. I am far too lazy to yoga, although there is a studio right across the road from my flat but she gets a lot out of it and from what I have heard she gives a lot too. Any visiting yoga aficionados would do well to look her up.

The four secrets of a good Tango Dancer

Connection -emotional connection and the creativity that comes out of it - that´s what makes Tango Argentino a unique dance. And it is the first secret of a good and dancer.

Be it "salón", "milonguero", "del centro", or "Nuevo" style, if there´s no emotional connection between the one who leads and the one who follows, they may be doing interesting and nice steps, but they are not dancing "tango".

And the emotional connection is a very delicate question -hard to attain and easy to lose.

If suddenly, during a tango class, or in the milonga, we are overwhelmed by our fears (about forgetting the steps, not being attractive, say) and allow these dreadful thoughts to block our heart´s energy, the emotional connection cannot occur. This is more likely to happen to dancers from foreign countries who are not accustomed to being in touch with their emotions.

To attain a good emotional connection with the partner, we need to know and be able to manage our emotions even on those occasions when our self-esteem is seriously threatened. And in this case we cannot use the old trick of hiding our emotions behind a wall of physical/muscular tension, because our body then wouldn´t be able to yield freely to the dance. So, whether one is an amateur in the milonga or a professional facing a performance, in order to manage our emotions, we need to learn how to breathe properly, and how to combine our breathing with our movements, so that our muscles give way to our expression. And perhaps what´s more, we´ll need to know and learn to deal with our daily emotional blocks, so that they do not interfere in our dance as well.

When we start to dance tango, it also starts an emotional healing process. Be it because we receive more embraces than usual; because our social life expands; we are more in touch with members of the other gender; or because our physical limitations and/or our social or partneship troubles show up. Tango moves our emotions deeply and strongly. So, an opportunity to know more about ourselves in relation to other people is offered to us. And this can be a real challenge.

The second secret of a good tango dancer is the disassociation in the movement of the upper and lower body. Our chest must always face the chest of the partner, while the hips some times must turn away to one side or the other. Other times, our hips must keep motionless while the chest leads or follows the partner, all the time doing the foot steps and following the beat of the music. All this requires a very flexible spine, otherwise we cannot move as the dance requests and, sooner or later, the spine might suffer an injury.

Likewise, the disasociation of the upper/lower body must occur not only to the rhythm of the music but also around our own axis (the third secret) to keep our balance and not pull our partner off his or hers.

Most students arrive at their first Tango class without knowing about their physical/emotional axis at all, and some even have posture problems, diminishing the possibility of following directions properly, and making the teacher´s work harder.

Each person´s body is different, so it needs different exercises to attain the tango posture/figures that require a deep rotation of the spine or to correct the posture in order to find out its own physical/emotional axis and do the elegant/cat-like walk of Tango.

During the Workshops and Classses of Dance Yoga, we discover our own axis and explore how to keep the balance during the movement and in relationship with our partner. We elongate our muscles using breathing and "no effort" techniques to attain a good disassociation of upper/lower body in rhythmical time. We play with different exercises to achieve a flowing and sensual dancing/walking. And, most important, we learn to manage our emotions to attain the best Emotional connection with the partner, and thus, do creative dancing.

When we apply what we´ve learned to our tango lesson we are able to follow the directions of the teacher in a much easier way and the teacher is able to give his/her best, both accomplishing a higher level of work.

But also, DanceYoga leads us to the fourth and most important secret of a good dancer, which underlies the other three (connection, axis, disassociation). This well-kept secret is the deep physical and emotional relaxation.

The gifted dancers are those who are able to blend their emotions with the music and express them with their movements/steps. This is only possible with a complete surrendering to the moment and the joy of dancing. Attaining such a blissful state requires a deep and aware physical, mental and spiritual relaxation -which is an art itself.

During the Workshops and Group Classes of DanceYoga we practice these four secrets in a general way. During private lessons (singles or in couples) we attend to the personal needs, with much deeper, faster and long lasting effects.

See top right bar for link to her website.

Contact me

2007-03-24T17:52:00.000-04:00

I have set up a new email address as the old one is getting increasingly dodgy. People keep complaining that they can't leave comments here as the process is just too difficult, so email me and if you say anything interesting, (flattering and positive!) I will censor and post it.

Apparently if I put a proper link to the new address here on the blog, some spam robot will pick it up and immediately start sending me offers on "genuine" viagra, "genuine" Rolexes and "genuine" college degrees etc (who *answers* these emails?!!!! How depressing that there are enough of them to make these scams viable businesses...), so you can work it out for yourself.

It is:

inglesitaportena at yahoo dot com dot ar

OK.

Raquel

Paperwork

2007-03-23T09:30:00.000-04:00

I have been looking into the business of getting residency here in Argentina and am back to a state of ambivalence about it. It is apparently perfectly legitimate to come and go on 90 day tourist visas, which can be extended for another 90 days once at the Immigration Department, then replaced by popping over to Uruguay for lunch when that expires. A lot of gringos do that for years.

The main drawback is that I am not allowed to work legally here or set up in business without the proper paperwork. Much as I like lounging about, even I have my limits.

Talking to Michael & Oswaldo though, whose knowledge of the UK system is pretty thorough for one reason and another (congratulations btw on getting that sussed), I did get spooked into deciding that I should get permanent status here. The idea that I could some day be refused entry, and thereby access to the cupola and the milongueros, horrifies me.

The first problem I discovered when I started asking was that I should have brought some key documents back from Blighty and as I do not know exactly where my birth certificate is, it will have to wait until I next visit. So anyone else considering this should find out what documents they are going to need before they travel. I suppose that just the fact of having my birth certificate here would mark me out as permanent - or is it a normal thing to carry about with you? Hey ho!

The next thing is the criteria for getting residency are tricky. My best bet would be if I could show that I have rental income outside of Argentina, which of course I do. I’d have to put my tenants on a two year contract though, which they may not be too keen on. Either that or just find some chap who could marry me, which under Argentine law would not put my assets at risk when we divorce (yes, I have checked!) as they are clearly mine at the outset. Still, there are plenty of possible pitfalls in entering into that sort of contract for that sort of reason. Note, I do not entertain the idea of actually wanting to marry somebody for romantic reasons!

So the next thing was the news that, although I am expecting to pay ownership tax here on the Bs As flat anyway, it transpires that if I take up permanent residency, I also have to pay 1% ownership tax on all my assets - including the property in London. That is a hell of a lot of money to the Argentine Government for something which I do not honestly think is any of their business! I could not really get round it by not declaring the property, especially if I have shown them that I do get rental income from it.

More research required clearly but for the time being I am back to Plan A and expect to acquire over the years some knowledge of restaurants and hotels in Colonia and Montevideo! I shall try not to drink a lot and buy whole cow hides every time I go though…

License to Get Ill

2007-03-23T09:18:00.000-04:00

This week, I have been interviewing sales reps for the various private medical plans which have been recommended here. It is a whole new world for me as I have been lucky enough with my health that the rather dishevelled NHS has always been adequate for my needs.

Here in Argentina, there is a public health system, but everyone is very scathing about it and says that only the poorest of the poor use it. A common joke is that as long as you are dead, they will see you straight away. Although I have to say that people here do tend to be very scathing about many things, which have actually turned out to be fine in practice, it is not something I want to take a chance with given the not-so-super prospects if I follow in my mother’s medical footsteps. Who knows, I could be dancing the tango at a sprightly 96. On the other hand, I could be making strange noises and keeling over any time now!

What with owning the flat now and staying in one place for such a long time, it looked on close inspection like travel insurance was not likely to cover much if I got sick here, so I took the radical step of not taking any out this time. Yikes!

So the parade of minor ailments that has passed through my system a lot of the time since I have been back has given me the impetus to do something about it. My friend Gabi started sending me information about medical plans minutes after learning that I had passed out and I have actually followed up on them and had reps in my home this week talking up their plans.

I have rejected at least one simply because I didn’t like the rep. She was not very straightforward and I got the impression she was trying to take advantage of my foreignness. Apart from that, she said she had lived in London 25 years ago and found the fog a real problem. Eh? I pointed out that that problem had been solved in the 1950s and she looked at me blankly. Then she said how awful it was to have temperatures of minus 40 in the winter and I said “In London? In 1981?” and she assured me it had been that cold with snow so deep it was impossible to get out the front door. Eh?

I think I have chosen a company called Medicus. They can cover me for the whole of Argentina and in fact, I can extend to international for an extra four quid a month as and when I go out of the country. It costs a little over five hundred quid a year, which includes everything except glasses and false teeth. Of course, being English, I am just adjusting to the notion that I have to pay at all before I sign the contract, though it has to be said that it is easy to spend just that on routine dental work in London, so I am certainly not going to claim this is a rip-off.

The main reason this plan is better than the others is that total cover starts the day after I sign the contract. So I could sign up now and spend the next week having check-ups, getting vaccinations, being prodded and scanned… or even developing a life-threatening disease if I so choose. I could start a whole new career as a hypochondriac in fact. The other reason is that there is a choice of facilities - some of the plans are linked to one hospital only.

They even offer psychiatry, which might be a laugh. Especially in Spanish. I do need to practise my past tenses and how better that telling a total stranger about my childhood.

Trees

2007-03-22T18:25:00.000-04:00

Some photos of trees. Buenos Aires does trees very well indeed. There are seriously huge old ones in the plazas and avenues and the local government is forever planting more. The poor buggers have quite a job to do battling with heavy pollution. Not sure they're winning but we have to thank them nonetheless!

The national tree of Argentina is the palo borracho - or drunken stick - so named after the ability of the trunk to swell up as it stores water. Actually down here in Bs As they don't get all that swollen but apparently in the northern regions of the country they have the sort of bellies you generally only see in late maternity or on lunchtime habitues of the pub. Here are some flowering in shades of pink and white along Avenida 9 Julio. I could have got closer but I wanted to get the weird cupola in the frame:

A jacaranda last week - still putting on a show although it officially finished flowering a couple of months ago:

Lots of Jacarandas before Christmas, with the added bonus of Linda looking pretty cool in the foreground. We were on our way to a big shopping expedition and asked the driver to stop because the trees were so gorgeous. This is when they were in full bloom before coming into leaf:

Rubber tree in Plaza Congresso, the size of a very large house. Somewhere I have a guide book to Bs As from the 1920s, which has a photo of this tree already an impressive size. There a several of them in town and they have to be seen to be believed:

Palm trees in the Plaza de Mayo. If they could only talk.

Plumbing

2007-03-22T18:01:00.000-04:00

It is two and a half weeks since that last post - makes it sound like a confession! The plumber is finally here with his lad and they have just removed the wall cabinet after struggling with it for almost an hour. They are currently hacking into the wall behind to locate the source of the leak and with any luck fix it.

Funny thing was, I did call him the day after the last post. It was late morning and at first all seemed fine, we had a nice conversation about our trips back to our respective homelands and he promised to call me and then come over on the Thursday as he would be very busy until then. I asked him about all the music he had been so looking forward to hearing in Bolivia and off he went, regaling me with stories of parties and endless nights of song and spicy food. He sounded stranger and stranger - under the influence at 11 on a Monday morning? Well, people do keep funny hours here, so it was not unreasonable for a chap who often has to work through the night to be unwinding twelve hours later than yer average. But it was bizarre. He is such a sweetie, very clean-cut, always professional and polite - it was an incongruous encounter. The final theme was what a great lady I am and it was hard to get him off the topic and indeed off the phone. In the end, I said, so you’ll call me to confirm when you can come over to look at the leak on Thursday? And with another slurred compliment or two, he agreed.

So, he never called and he never turned up. I guess he had forgotten the conversation. As if by magic, the trickle of water down the kitchen wall dried up and I let the matter drop.

Then last weekend, I noticed the rusty rivulet had reappeared on the tiles. Bugger! I also happened to be going upstairs for something and saw to my horror that that whole wall is soaked; clearly the leak had continued but for some strange reason had been temporarily out of sight. It could probably be explained by geography or physics. Maybe there is now an ox-bow lake in my wall!

So I called the plumber again and said I have this water running down the kitchen wall from behind the cabinet. He said “Oh, how dreadful, I will come and look as soon as I can, which I am afraid will be Thursday.” It was like having the same conversation all over again, only this time he was sober. He seemed completely unaware that we had already spoken so I can only surmise that he was indeed off his face first time round.

Anyway, back to his usual self, he appeared on the dot when he said he would and has knuckled straight down to the job. We have had a little chat about the lack of spicy food in this country and now I have left them to get on with it.

There, he has finished, put in new pipes, cemented the over the hole and put the wall unit back, for almost three hours work which I have payed him eighty pesos - a lot of money here but about £13 back home. I have people coming for lunch on Sunday, so I certainly hope it stays fixed.

I asked him to let me know when he is performing - I would love to go and hear him sing Bolivian folk songs. Must remember to follow that up.

Dancing in the Streets

2007-03-04T19:59:00.000-04:00

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

Hem Hem!

2007-02-18T10:27:00.000-04:00

Anyone would think I didn't want to go dancing...

After writing all the blog yesterday - and it took a lot of editing I have to say - I went online to post it and found that Google, who are taking over the universe, have taken over the blogging site. So I had to jump through a few hoops before I could post it. On the plus side, they did let me put a smattering of photos into the text.

Then I started wondering whether ill-ejicated readers would be confused by the title of the post, so I did a google search on 'Back in the Jug Agane' and ended up clicking on loads of links to the blogs of other people who had used the phrase. It was quite interesting in a way and I can see how easy it would be to piss your life away on the internet... maybe I will do more of that when I have broadband and am not paying by the second to be online!

The whole thing left me feeling a bit square-eyed so I did a bit of cooking - some sort of spicy mince thing - and sat down to eat in front of the tv... It was still ages before El Beso was even due to open so I let myself get drawn into this science fiction film with that pixie-ish English actress and that actor who is married to Susan Sarandon. It was good actually. No idea what it was called. Then when it finished at half eleven, I went and cleaned my teeth - at which point the choice is to get dressed and go out or get undressed and get to bed. Without really thinking about it, I did the latter and before I knew it I was curled up with a book.

So as yet, no other milongas.

The sun is shining like crazy today and it will probably be quite mild out there after yesterday's cold snap. So really I should get out there for a walk. There is some sort of bicycle marathon on today around the city, which I will have to avoid. The Ecological park is always nice though it will be crowded on a Sunday. Same goes for the Recoleta cemetary. Maybe I will just go to Palermo for a mooch.

Hhhm, mustn't tire myself out too much or I won't get to Porteno tonight either!

Cheers,
Raquelita

Back in the Jug Agane

2007-02-17T19:14:00.000-04:00

Saturday mid-February; oops, two months since the last post.

It is cold today and the wind is howling about the building like Wuthering Heights, whistling in all the windows. Today is the second day of rain in a row, bizarre! I woke early on Friday morning to one of Buenos Aires’s amazing electrical storms. Luckily, I awoke before the rain got going and was able to shut the shutters and windows to keep my lovely wooden floors safe and dry. It was a while before I could get back to sleep, so I lay in bed watching the room light up with every flash and listening to the rain getting heavier and heavier outside. My bedroom windows stayed open - there is a covered balcony outside them so the rain never gets in and the heat of Thursday was still quite something.

The rain continued until late yesterday afternoon, when I threw on some clothes and ran out to the local shops to get a few things. Most desperate was white spirit because I am painting again and I knew the *fork handles* hardware stores would be closed on a Saturday.

This morning it was raining again and (relatively) cold at 20 degrees. I almost need to put socks on and as it is am wearing a three-quarter sleeved t-shirt. Brrrrr! So what better than to sit at the computer and try to blog a little?

As you may know, I have been to Blighty for Christmas and January - which was an interesting and rather mixed experience. I have been wondering what to say about it, it was so odd. Now I have been back a couple of weeks, the trip has passed into that dreamlike thing that always happens to holidays.

It is a very strange thing to go back for a holiday to a life you are leaving behind, where some things are exactly the same, some have moved on a bit and others are irrevocably changed. It was harder to leave it this time; it felt more permanent and it was clearer to me what I will miss and not miss. I will miss the friendships that stand on foundations decades thick, as well as those that spring up easily in a common culture and language. I won’t miss the weather and I won’t miss the whingeing!

As any fule kno, the English weather is a chiz. I landed a couple of days before Xmas in fog at minus 2 degrees. Here’s a picture from the plane.

We were held on the apron while the ground crew defrosted one of the planes that had been sitting at a gate overnight and whose flight had been cancelled before they could get it out of our parking space. Actually it was lucky I was flying with BA as short haul flights were all cancelled so if I had come in on one of the European airlines, I’d have been stuck in Milan or Frankfurt or some such airport for Christmas. What horror - no sprouts!

The sun did not show for a week. Then it came out for a couple of hours. Then it rained thin, icy rain. Then it was another week before the sun came out. And the cloud was so LOW! Actually physically oppressively low. I woke up on New Year’s day, despite having had a lovely evening with my sister and her friends, feeling pinned to the bed by deep, deep woe. I just wanted to bury my head under the covers until it was time to come home. How bizarre. Probably a good thing in a way to remember how ghastly it can be to be alive. Well, I say that as if I needed or wanted reminding!

Anyway, I saw a lot of people but in many cases it all felt a bit inadequate. Some people spent the time just ranting or moaning on about some bloody topic, whether or not it was of any interest to me, which was a bit of a shock. Are my conversational skills so poor that I can’t change the subject? Must do something about that! Not that my having moved to South America is intrinsically more interesting than their day to day worries! Overall, there was the dawning realisation that that isn’t my life any more and all of those relationships must change.

Avid readers will know that the highlights of my visit were going to be meeting my new niece Marnie and attending Michael & Oswaldo’s wedding. Hurrah for both of those things!

Meeting Marnie:

Marnie came to my Dad’s house on Christmas day and was a real peach. We had a lovely day in fact. Apart from Marnie and her parents, one of my sisters came with her family and we got my Mum out of the nursing home for the afternoon. So that was ten people to cook lunch for and a baby to cuddle. The nephews on the whole were very well behaved and generally delightful - one small strop which isn’t bad for such a big day. The food was excellent (of course, I cooked it mostly!) and the cuddles plentiful.

I saw Marnie a few times after that and she is adorable. It is odd to think that I will never know her as well as I have known my other nieces and nephews, simply because I will rarely be there. The others are all up and running now and know who I am when I talk to them on the phone but it will be hard to get any sort of rapport going with her.

The wedding was just fabulous. The ceremony was in a lovely room in Marylebone town hall. It started with the strains of Ethel Merman while we waited for the boys, then they came in and made their vows - which seemed mainly to do with sharing a life of eating and drinking - and there was the rather dry civil partnership bit - and a swapping of rings and signing of the register. Then lots of hugging & kisses and photographs and meeting of old friends and new faces and a smattering of tears & showtunes throughout.

After the ceremony, we went off to a private room at Rules in Covent Garden for lunch. It was excellent. We ate and drank well, Oswaldo made a toast and yes, there was some singing. It was so nice to meet their friends and I think we all would agree what a lovely bunch of people we are! The room was just bursting with goodwill. I love weddings. It happened to be Michael’s birthday too so a cake appeared at some point but by that stage everyone was too stuffed to eat any more, so it was taken away and boxed up.

The happy couple, over the threshhold and straight into a number:

In the evening, we went to their flat for more drinking, lots of cheese and some serious non-stop renditions of showtunes. It took weeks to get ‘No Business like Showbusiness’ out of my head and now I risk it all by typing that… I’ll be singing it again for days! Yes indeed, I have already started. It was joyful. Not always tuneful, but joyful certainly! The strongest picture in my mind is of the happy couple doing a rendition of some number from Wicked where the witch starts flying. Oswaldo, eyes wide with wonder, giving a commentary on the number and how it was staged, then catching up with Michael who has carried on with the song. I think I would hate to see the actual thing just in case it interferes with my memory of their rendition.

It really was a fabulous day.

There were other highlights, but it would be a mistake to list them all. Same goes for all the things I didn’t get round to. I'll stick to the two most howling omissions: I did not make it either up to the North or out to the West to see some of my favourite people. It was extra nice though when a couple of people made journeys to come to me. I think I need to plan better next time. Daddy has suggested I have a big party at his house and I think he is right.

I got shot of an amazing amount of stuff while I was there and Daddy can now see daylight from the window under the stairs. We took crates and crates of books to Oxfam, some of which I may regret but there is no point keeping them indefinitely and there was no question of shipping old paperbacks out here. Ditto the boxes and boxes and bags of clothes and trinkets that went to the hospice shop. It was quite a relief really to shed possessions. Amazingly, there is still quite a quantity of stuff I will have to deal with one way or another next time I go back but happily Daddy doesn’t seem all that fussed about giving it floor space.

I have not been dancing much since I got back for one reason and another. The first week I was a bit out of it with a cold and jetlag. Then this week I have been on a mission catching up with friends because I had let that slip so badly last year and I feel I need to make more of an effort with my social life. I went out for drinks or food on a couple of what would otherwise have been good dancing nights.

Needless to say, I have been to a couple of top evenings at Club Espanol, where I was welcomed back by many familiar faces and warm embraces. This week, I had an almost out-of-body experience dancing some walzty di Sarli milongas with one of my favourite milonga dancers. It was quite late, so there was a lot of room for manoevre on the floor and we just glided around. I had my eyes closed and just the biggest smile on my face. I told him it felt like flying and I think he was pretty chuffed. He tried to explain to me why - or rather how - I am a good dancer but I didn’t quite get it. It wasn’t the usual nonsense, he was actually trying to explain something. Damn my half-baked Spanish! Anyway, I left after that because I could not hope to have a better dance.

Last night, Kikki asked me to join her and some friends at a new milonga and I was all up for that. Something - white spirit maybe, I really should wear more when I’m painting! - had brought my legs up in an unsightly rash and it was way too hot for tights, so I went through all the wardrobe possibilities and ended up in a pair of unsuitable black trousers and a sparkly t-shirt - not very tango. By the time I was ready to go, it was already eleven (Kikki had said she’d be there around ten, it was an early milonga) so I went down and hopped in a cab. When I was almost there, I reached into my bag to change my shoes and found I had brought the wrong ones. It was the really high foxy red ones which would have looked and felt all wrong with an outfit that felt all wrong already. When we pulled up outside the place, I just sat there and didn’t like the look of it. The taxi driver made some joke about all the old folk sitting in the window of the lobby and I just thought ‘forget it!’. So without even getting out of the car, I asked him to take me back home, which he thought was hilarious. We had a nice old chat on the way and he asked me if I’d like to go out for a beer. I did actually consider it but ultimately am still too English for that! So, he just dropped me home and insisted on undercharging the fare.

It would have been too late to go back to that milonga with the right shoes so I thought of going to Gricel instead, which is a later finish and which I rather like but I could not get over the feeling that it was not meant to be, so I just watched a bit of tv and went to bed.

Tonight I am planning to go to El Beso, tomorrow to Porteno y Bailarin. What will stop me? Square eyes from all the typing maybe.

Oh, and of course you want to know about the flat. It was so nice to come home to. Cupola sitting cheekily on the terrace as ever. No disasters in my absence, though there was a substantial quote waiting for the electrical work that needs to be done. My nice neighbour is away so I will wait til she gets back to discuss it with her. Once the new supply is in to the building, I have to get a lot of rewiring inside the actual flat, so expensive times ahead. It will be lovely to have all the electrical sockets the same and hopefully more of them, we shall see. I’d like to get the lights onto a separate circuit from the power but that is apparently unheard of here and may require too much excavating of walls & ceilings.

I have made a big long list of things still to be done, top of which is finishing off the spare rooms ready for guests. So all those promises, people… !

Then there are many, many small details to be attended to, like door handles, catches & locks, before I have another big push and get started on the maid’s quarters upstairs. It will need gutting and some substantial work and I have not yet decided what it will become.

I also have some dreary bureaucratic things to attend to, which will no doubt take time and stretch my Spanish. I have a stronger more down-to-earth feeling coming back this time. It is my life and I have to make it work. It is still a big adventure but the quality of it has changed, so I have to make changes too.

So all in all, happy to be back, a bit wistful about the visit to London and a little daunted by what I have to do now, though the steak and the sunshine will see me through.

Oh good, the sun is coming out! Whizz, whizz!

A Side Order of Photos

2006-12-16T14:46:00.000-04:00

Once again the blog site is not letting me upload photos with the text. Maybe there is just too much text! Whatever, here are some pics and you can decide whether or not to read what they are all about.

The living room now, sitting end:

and the dining end:

The chandelier in pieces, making a puzzle out of the crystals:

And in full twinkle:

My lovely clean rustic kitchen:

Spare bed number one:

Spare bed number two:

That will do for now. I have to go out this afternoon or NOBODY gets any Xmas presents!

A Great Leap Forward

2006-12-16T14:25:00.000-04:00

Long time no blog - again. Well, I have been very busy and it is now very hot here, although that hardly counts as an excuse for not sitting down for an hour or so and typing up a progress report.

Much has happened in the flat. I now have a proper, functioning, grown-up and CLEAN kitchen.

It took a lot of hard graft and a little hair-pulling but of course now that is behind me, it no longer matters. I can cook. I can sit here happily without looking over my shoulder and under my feet for cockroaches. In fact I haven’t seen a cockroach for over a month, which is surprising as the summer is definitely here.

Some of this was probably already in train last time I wrote so I may repeat myself a little and I will try to stick to the highlights. I had all the ceramic tiles ripped off the kitchen floor to reveal the original granite tiles. Then I went out and bought an angle-grinder and spent a couple of filthy dusty days grinding the filth off the surface to see how they would come up. They are a bit damaged in places and there remains a difference in colour in the places where there had been furniture before but on the whole I am happy with it. It still needs a last fine abrasion and to be grouted and polished but there was not time to do that before fitting the units.

The units are solid wood and were custom-built by a carpenter, then delivered already assembled, which was a surprise to me. The plumber and his lad had to carry them up to the fourth floor, on the way knocking off a fire extinguisher and inhaling most of its contents. The worktop was built by some fancy kitchen company and is lovely stainless steel with a double sink in the middle. In fact, the carpenter had forgotten about the sink when he built the base unit and for some reason placed the drawer section underneath where it would be. Luckily, I noticed that before paying the balance and got him to dismantle it partly and move the drawers over to the side.

The ceiling, which had been covered up by a suspended tongue-and-groove ceiling that served as a penthouse for the cockroaches, also took a lot of work to put right. The old plaster was uneven, full of holes and in places had several layers of gloss paint. All around the edges had been gauged away to remove the corner mouldings so that the philistines could fit the wretched wood. So the paint had to be chipped off and it had to be plastered and filled to come flat again. It isn’t wedding cake perfect but it is OK to be a little rustic with the wooden kitchen.

It is hard to believe that all that work and all that time have passed and I can sum it up so briefly!

What else? The plumber has also changed the yucky plastic basin in the bathroom for a nice cleanable ceramic one, which makes washing a much more relaxing experience. I no longer look at the thing and wonder what is lurking in the cracks!

He has also ripped out the old laundry and put in a new sink - an interesting item that has a built-in wash-board in case I ever need to scrub anything by hand. Hmmm, sure the cleaner will enjoy that. Next to that is the other new marvel - a washing machine. No more bagging up my laundry and lugging it down the street to the incredibly rude woman who then boils the bejesus out of it and won’t give it back for a couple of days. Yay! At the rented flat I was in before, there was a nice service nearby who came and collected my laundry and brought it back to the door - but still boiled the bejesus out of it in the meanwhile, which is not ideal when most of your clothes are bright colours or black.

Next to my new laundry is a spiral staircase which goes up to the maid’s room, which was always a bit ropey at the bottom. Ha ha, “a bit ropey” - it turned out that it was largely held together with old bits of carpet (that amazing glue again) and supported on a pile of bricks! How lucky am I that none of the people I have traipsed around showing off my flat went through the rusted steps and sued me for every last tile on the cupola!

Anyway, that has been fixed by a friend who just happened to have a giant soldering machine from a past life fixing cars. What with that and the angle-grinder (how I love power tools!), he has made a pretty good job of making it all sound again. It is now painted English Green and holds hefty humans without wobbling.

Up the stairs is the maid’s room and a WC to which the water supply has been cut. I am not planning on fixing either of those up the til some time in the future. I have half a notion to knock a big new window in the wall which I could use as a door to the roof terrace. I doubt the building will let me do that though. They won’t let me have a barbecue up there in case I damage the impermeable membrane that protects my ceilings from the weather, so I doubt I will be allowed a door.

The building is governed by a consortium of the owners of each flat. We each own a percentage of the whole thing according to the square metres in each property. It may be cubic metres actually but I’m sure you don’t care about that if I don’t! We had an annual meeting a short while back, so I dutifully moved my regular appointment with Romina and went along. Yikes! As it happened, the meeting was not quorate, so could not officially take place. Nonetheless, there was a lot of heated debate on a couple of topics, chief among them the supply of electricity, which needs upgrading to take account of everybody’s electrodomesticos. I have noticed that the lights tend to flicker when the fridge resets itself and am also a little surprised that the lights and the power all run off the same single circuit, so I was aware that I’d need to rewire here.

Yes, I know that should have happened before the decorating but it was not feasible.

Still, my needs apparently are not the problem. It is the people who like to close themselves in with air conditioning who are spoiling it for the rest of us. Now, apparently something similar happened with the gas supply some years ago and at that point all the neighbours fell out. It transpired that the people who had earlier worked hard to renovate the building and make it as lovely as it now is, also changed the bylaws in a way that was neither legal nor fair. So huge arguments erupted and some suing was undertaken and the result now is a lot of politics I will never be able to get to grips with. On one side is a woman who speaks English and on the other a man who doesn’t and who gets angry very quickly and then talks incredibly fast. Guess which side gets my sympathy!

The non-meeting turned into an explosion of argument in Spanish, which I clearly had no chance of following. So when the meeting was reconvened a couple of weeks later, I kept my regular appointment with Romina and signed over my vote to the neighbour on my floor; thereby making an enemy of the angry man, who actually wagged his finger in my face as he told me off a couple of days later! Lovely.

Anyway, still no resolution with the electrics but I gather that the management company are getting some figures together and then we have to make some sort of decision. Whatever it will be, it will be expensive to get a new, heavier supply into the building and then run cable up to the 4th floor. Then after that, I can get the place re-wired. So not happening any time soon I hope.

Things already seem to be winding down a bit for the hot months and at 36 degrees who can argue? Apparently January is a lot hotter so everybody goes to the seaside.

I think I will add a link to the BBC 5-day forecast for Buenos Aires. At the weekend there was a Chelsea-Arsenal match on one of the sports channels, which I didn’t watch for long (obviously!) but which was interesting for the crowd shots - all woolly hats and big winter jackets and cold, miserable faces.

Happily, this building is really well-designed and all I have to do is open a few strategic windows and there is a delightful through-drought which means the flat never gets unbearably hot. Some afternoons I close the shutters in the front to stop the sun beating in and so far I have not even needed to buy a fan. Quite a relief as I loathe air conditioning and would hate it if that was really the only answer.

But what else has happened here apart from the kitchen and the laundry?

Well the mundane stuff is that most of the decorating is done. In a day or two it will all be spick and span, apart from my bedroom where the only thing that has been decorated is the insides of my wardrobes, which I had a bit of an obsession with having clean early on.

A couple of gorgeous young men with some heavy machinery spent a couple of days this week working on the wooden floors in the two spare bedrooms. They have sanded off all the crap and varnished. They have come up absolutely beautiful. It is hard to imagine the cat-stinky carpets in there now.

Yesterday I assembled the single bed I had bought earlier in the week in one room, and in the afternoon some chaps arrived with the double bed and put that together in the other spare room. So all I need is mattresses and light fittings and those bedrooms are up and running.

I went back to the antiques & flea market district to look for more stuff the other day and only came back with a brace of wall lamps. For some reason, people who had been helpful before seemed to be taking the piss a bit with their prices, which annoyed me. I enjoyed the flea market though and had some nice chats with some of the sellers.

One of the chief things I was after was my perfect chandelier for the living room - it is so difficult to choose. Since I was quite little, I have wanted a chandelier and I always thought it would be big, dripping with crystal and definitely not brass - but when you actually go out and look at a thousand different chandeliers, it is really hard to fix on one that will do the trick. In the end I got down to two in the flea market that I liked, both silver, both tall and curvy, both adorned with crystal petals. The difference was in the layout of the bulbs. Anyway, it was hot and I was tired, so I memorised as well as I could what they looked like and determined to go back in the week and get one or the other. So of course, when I got home and sat looking up at the space where it would live, I realised that silver just would not do and I really needed something warmer with the white walls.

So back to square one with the chandelier!

The other revelation to me that day was that I really didn’t want a 3-piece suite in the Louise XV style to go with the other furniture. I sat on lots of them and imagined them in the living room and I liked them less and less. Then in the evening, there was an advert for something on TV, during which there is a brief glimpse of a huge modern fuchsia pink sofa and my heart was filled with joy at the realisation that I knew what I wanted to sit on….

I know, but it’s my house!

So the next morning, I set off down Belgrano Avenue to walk back up, looking in the furniture shops for my sofa. As it happened, I got off the bus right by a great big junk shop, so I had to take a look in there first. An hour later, I came out having spent two hundred pounds on the following:

A pretty wooden single bed;
Two cute bedside tables;
A gorgeous little whiskeria, which is the perfect size for my TV, stereo AND has a bottle rack for the vodka etc;
A low, solid oak round side-table with a glass top;
A 1.9m wide, three-panelled mirror to hang above the sideboard;
My chandelier!

I was ready to pay a lot more than that just for a chandelier if I could only find one, so I was a happy girl. There’s a coffee table in that shop too that I may go back for but I do not want to end up cluttering the place up with furniture.

Then I went on to Av Belgrano, thinking I had probably had enough luck for one day, so que sera sera with the sofa quest. The first shop I went into was one I had seen from the bus several times before and always had a feeling there was something in there for me. (I usually go into new shops on that kind of hunch and very often it is entirely wrong but for some reason I still do it!) Anyway, this time I was right and although I was disappointed in my fuchsia pink vision by the hopelessly dreary fabric options, they had something actually far more suitable; a giant modern corner sofa covered in sort of moss green chenille which will go with everything. There was some pissing abut with my Visa card, then some pissing about with the dollars I offered instead, but eventually they let me buy the wretched thing and it was delivered the next day.

That night, I dismantled the chandelier and washed all the crystals, then actually got in the bath with the metal frame to get all the dust and grime off it - well I knew it would have plenty of time to dry out before it would come into contact with the electricity supply and that really was the only way to get the whole thing clean without doing my back in. I had to count out all the crystals and all the holes and rearrange them so it all looked even again. Like a big maths puzzle. My fingers are scratched to hell by fixing all the wire links but it looks superb. I was going to put it on a dimmer switch, but it turned out it has two settings that allow you to have bright or soft lighting anyway, so there was no need to do that. I love it! Twinkle, twinkle, big old chandelier!

Once again I am going into too much detail but at least it isn’t all bout dead cockroaches!
The result now is that the flat is furnished and looks fabulous.

Apart from all that, my social life and dancing excursions have been very low key indeed. So much so that I have a whole load of catching up to do with people I haven’t seen for weeks. Often I seem to have stuck to my minimum - which is the milonga at Club Espanol on a Thursday. Last week was especially super-duper; it was one of those when I just danced like a demon and had to stare fervently at the floor to sit out a couple of tandas and rest my poor feet. Dreamy.

The latest highlight though was a flying visit by Michael and Oswaldo who dropped in on their way to Brazil. How fantastic is that? It was so exciting to see them here and we went out and ate steak three evenings in a row before they flew off again. They wanted to see a show, so we went and looked at the places in San Telmo but found they were such a huge rip-off that we just went to Bar Seddon and ate instead. They also wanted to see me dance, so I took them to Confiteria Ideal which they just loved. None of *my* men were there, so the dancing wasn’t the best but enough for them to get the general idea.

More people come and see me, please!

It has been such a long time, there is so much else to say but I am going to post this now and try to adorn it with photos.

TTFN, Raquelita.

Pics for Yesterday's Post

2006-11-12T11:17:00.000-04:00

My brother and his brand new baby Marnie (photo courtesy of my sister Elizabeth):

All I saw of Colonia; Heloise at the restaurant:

Alison, cow & beanbag in the living room:

Alison encountering one of the blights of Buenos Aires:

The English in my living room (photo courtesy of Ros):

Jacarandas outside my local church, as seen from my kitchen:

The kitchen ceining, half repaired:

The kitchen floor, partly revealed:

OK, me on the rug:

Back Already

2006-11-11T22:11:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back and only a day later! All I have to do is switch on the computer instead of the TV...

I have an hour or so to kill before Romina and Carlos come round with some furniture they are lending me, so will do a quick bit of typing. Where to start? It has been a while and much has happened. Obviously the initial euphoria has waned a little but I still have mornings when I wake up and wander through to the living room, throw open the French windows and sigh with happiness at what is out there. Then of course I go through to the kitchen to make my coffee and sigh with exasperation at the mess it is in.

Still, that is no different to what it would be anywhere else in the world and I remind myself I have only been here two months and a lot has been done in that time.

All I have to do is go up and look at the cupola and it all seems worth it!

The best news of all is that I am an auntie again, though it was very difficult knowing that my new niece will be a couple of months before I get to cuddle her. Here is the brand new Marnie with her proud Daddy:

Well, no she isn't as the blog is not accepting pictures again! Will try another posting just for pics.

The Spring has sprung in Buenos Aires. It is gorgeous most of the time, with the occasional day that looks and feels wet and dismal like Manchester and clears the filthy air for a short while. The most beautiful thing about the Spring is the jacaranda trees blossoming mauve and fragrant all over the city. They are amazing and ever so slightly ghostly. The flowers are starting to fall now but they have been going for some weeks, so we can’t complain. I’ll try to take a couple of pictures before they come fully into leaf. Gorgeous.

So - quick summary of progress in the flat. All the living room, vestibule and hallway are now painted white, which is a huge improvement. One of the spare bedrooms is decorated, although I am waiting til the second one is done before having both floors cleaned up and laminated. My bedroom remains the same, though I have sorted out the insides of the cupboards and did finally unpack my suitcases.

The kitchen is where the main saga has been - appropriately enough as it was where most of the filth and sacrilegious abuse of an old building were to be seen. First the suspended wooden ceiling came down, to reveal that there had been a plaster ceiling with mouldings around the edges. These had been hacked out in order to tile the walls with some truly ugly floral motif and make way for the tongue-and-groove cockroach penthouse.

Then when I dismantled the filthy old kitchen units, I discovered that there was a lovely patterned granite floor underneath the weird platform on which the base unit had been built. Although I guessed it must continue under the cracked ceramic tiles, I reckoned there would not be time to have it all ripped up, so had that part of it cemented over instead.

The more I sat in the kitchen and looked at the hideous tiling, the more I came to loathe it and when it transpired that the kitchen I had ordered was going to be delayed, I decided to have all the tiles ripped out. At that time Alison was staying, so I had to wait til she was gone.

So, up came the floor tiles and there indeed was the original floor. It is still covered in a layer of cement residue but I have bought an angle grinder and my little handyman is going to get to work on revealing it properly. I have done a corner of it with wire wool and elbow grease and I know it comes up OK. It is clear though why the old slut had it tiled over - most of it is white but ingrained with …. You guessed it, filth! Anyway, the angle grinder makes short work of that. Sadly it also makes a lot of dust.

In fact it was like the battle of the sexes here the other day, with the cleaner at the front of the flat trying desperately to leave at least one room dust-free and the men at the back making more and more of the stuff and merrily leaving the doors open to maximise coverage. We were all walking dust around the floors anyway, so the poor cleaner didn’t stand a chance. She will win out in the end though and harmony will reign.

I have been overruled on the question of tearing out the wall tiles as that really would take too long. Save that job for next year. It fact, with rather rough plastering over the ceiling, it doesn’t look too bad. So that will all get painted quickly before whenever the hell the kitchen units and the worktop turn up.

The units have been made by a carpenter out in Villa Crespo who was recommended by my lovely Bolivian plumber. I went to look at them last week and pay the final wodge of money but realised that he had made them wrong - the section with the drawers was positioned underneath where the sink should sit, which is clearly useless. So he had to take the whole thing apart and move the drawers over. He tells me it is all done now and I can go to look again on Monday.

The worktop is being made by another company who everyone say are the best in Argentina. Not sure why but as they are just downstairs here and not that much more expensive than anyone else, it seemed like the best option. It is all one piece of stainless steel with thick wood backing and a double sink in the middle. For some reason, Argentina offers either that or a marble worktop with sinks set underneath and I have a bit of a thing about the rim of crud that gets caught in those ones, so I have gone for the uber-hygienic option. Not that the filth here freaked me out or anything - oh, no!

I think the base unit may have to go out through my bedroom and along the balcony to get into the kitchen through the servant’s entrance because the normal door to the kitchen is very narrow. Yikes, should have thought of that sooner but to be honest I didn’t realise it was going to arrive fully assembled. Hhhm.

The balcony outside my bedroom is piled high with bags of rubble though, so all that has to go downstairs to be left on the corner for recycling. Somebody will want it. People will take anything here. In fact there is a whole nocturnal army of people called cartoneros who live off everybody’s rubbish. A bit like the Wombles I suppose but on a larger scale.

All the domestic and commercial rubbish goes out on the street in the evening and these people come and sift through it bag by bag, taking out all the cardboard, the glass, the plastic bottles and polystyrene for recycling, plus anything else that they might find useful for themselves or to sell. For the most part, they are very well organised and put what they don’t want into black bags for the bin men to collect after midnight. Sometimes though it all goes horribly wrong and the streets get covered with some very yucky stuff I won’t go into.

I think it is very enterprising of people to do this and though it is a deeply unpleasant job it has to be better than just wasting everything tipping it into a hole in the ground or out at sea. If they can make an honest living of it, good for them. I am squeamish enough though that I separate all my rubbish for them, so they don’t actually have to go through my bits of steak gristle and coffee grounds to get the good stuff. The couple of times I have thrown out clothes, I have folded them up clean and put them in a couple of plastic bags in with the recycling stuff, rather than just out with the general rubbish. So I hope they are having another life somewhere.

In fact, you rarely get just plain begged at here although there is a huge number of seriously poor people. What does happen is that people will come up and down the trains or the traffic lines, selling small things for a peso or two. Very often it is useless, ghastly little cards with Garfield or the Blessed Virgin and some sickly inspirational message. I never buy those! But if it is something vaguely useful like biros or hair bands or torches, I usually do. Often it is stickers which I end up giving to street children who probably go straight off and sell them again.

Yesterday I was on the underground and during the short journey, ten different people in quick succession came through selling stuff, which was a little overwhelming so I didn’t buy anything even though one or two of them might have been useful. Then a small boy - probably eight or so - in urchin attire plus Elvis sunglasses came in and started singing really badly but with great gusto. Sadly I had to get off the train before he got to me for money. I would happily have kidnapped him actually, he was so sweet. I hope to see him again one day but of course I do hope he goes to school instead!

So what else is new in the flat? More plumbing to be done - I have bought a new vanitory unit for the bathroom and a new sink for the laundry, although thanks to the random rules in electrical shops concerning what they will take as ID to back up a credit card, have so far failed to get the washing machine. Anyway, the old laundry is coming out - more bags of rubble - and the plumber will put in the new one and hang some wall cupboards that the carpenter has made to match the kitchen ones. I hope all this happens quickly - ha ha ha.

I have bought a TV and had cable installed, though annoyingly this does not come with broadband, so I will wait for that til I am back from London in the new year. Also got a stereo but so far have been unable to run the iPod through it, so haven’t used it for much. It plays DVDs, which is odd but useful. Oh, and I have to send the TV back because it rather bizarrely starts off with a black and white picture and only goes colour after it has warmed up.
As you can imagine, my Spanish is being stretched by home ownership! My vocabulary is also a little weird, so don’t anybody try a normal subject like politics because I am likely to turn the conversation round to different kinds of plaster.

Last week Linda took me out to an area her architect had shown her where there are some great antiques shops. So - we bought stuff for our flats and resolved to go back soon and buy more. I am having another bed like mine renovated and delivered here for one of the spare rooms. I also got a huge sideboard in the same style - it is Louis XIV or XV I think, but am no good at these things.

Then there was an amazing shop just choc-a-block with chandeliers. Chandelier heaven it was. Overwhelming though; I was tired by then, having seen too many beautiful things, so I decided not to make any decisions. In fact the guy said he could bring a selection of chandeliers over to the flat so I could see what looked best in situ. Who ever would have thought that would happen! I can’t wait, I have always wanted a great big chandelier and now finally I have the perfect room. Will it be crystal, will it be brass? Will it be iron, will it be glass? To clean it will be a pain in the arse! See, I have poetry in my soul.

In a sense, I am not keen on buying furniture as it will only clutter up my huge and gorgeous room but it can’t really be done without. I have more-or-less decided to get a 3 piece suite in the same style. I have sat on a few and they do seem to be big and comfy. Of course, none of the ones I have seen is upholstered in anything approaching acceptable, so will have to find the perfect fabric too. Hhhm, I wonder, pink or purple?

Well, Romina and Carlos have just been and gone and I now have dining chairs. Blimey! Table to follow tomorrow and they are offering all sorts of other stuff that is cluttering up their house and might be of use to me. I’ll have to go over and take a look before saying yes to it all. Shame they could not stay for a drink and a catch-up but next time they will. I showed Romina the mess that is my kitchen at the moment and promised to have them over for a meal as soon as it is all up and running.

I can’t wait til the flat is in a better state so I can actually get more of my social life back. I didn’t even go to Club Espanol this week as I was knackered and encrusted with rubble from the ceiling. There wasn’t a hope in hell I could get clean and start feeling like a girl in time to catch my favourite boys, so I just carried on working til the sun went down.

In fact, Michael and Oswaldo will be here for a flying visit right about the time when the flat should be looking gorgeous and I can start being sociable, so I just can’t wait for that.

We went to Porteno y Bailarin on Sunday as it was Carlos’s birthday (the cheeky host with the little hat) and he had promised to give the demonstration again with his business partner Jorge. They did it once before on Jorge’s birthday and it was just the most hilarious thing. I took film of it with my little camera but it came out very dark. I’ve made a DVD of it and it comes up ok on the TV with the brightness up to the maximum, so I will give that to Carlos next time I go. If I can ever work out how to adjust the brightness on the actual film and how to load it onto you tube or something, I will do that and link to it from here.

The other thing that has kept me busy was having visitors in Bs As.

First Heloise came from South Africa, which was just great. She was not here for long but we spent some quality time together, eating excellent steaks in my local restaurants and drinking some rather good wines and just generally chatting away as if we had known each other forever. Not often you meet someone like that so I loved every minute.

We also went over to Colonia for a day, which is a little town across the water in Uruguay. Chief reason for going was that I needed to renew my visa and as Heloise had in fact been before, she just led me straight to this great little restaurant she knew and we sat there all afternoon over a very long lunch. Then on the way back to the ferry, we stopped into a craft shop and I bought a really beautiful cow hide. Yes, it was a bit of a strange impulse buy I admit but it is a thing of beauty and looks great on my wooden floor.

It has already been the backdrop for a couple of photo shoots, it is irresistible. Alison went home with some lovely pictures of her on the cow. Heloise took a sweet one of me, which I may or may not post below…

And that’s all I’m admitting to with the rug.

So then Ros and Hazel came from London, closely followed by Anne and Italian Linda, and Alison, who stayed here with me. For that of course, I had to get one of the spare rooms decorated, though in fact I failed to get a proper bed in in time so she had to make do with the amazing all-purpose fold-out bed I got for Susan (it is now back in the living room being my sofa).

It was a little weird at first having all those London faces here in my new life but not at all unpleasant. We had some lovely meals and time together, though Ros is threatening to go back and tell everyone I ate fish one time and vegetarian pasta another, so my reputation as a carnivore is in some danger! It is true too, though she did also see me tuck into a couple of bits of beef, so I hope I can salvage something!

The nicest thing was spending time with them out of context, as in milongas there are few people you really get to know more than superficially. Ros in particular is always busy organising something and Alison is always a bit quiet.

I rather rashly invited them all and a few local Brits over one Saturday night for a little party, thinking I could just go to the lovely baker and get a stack of empanadas to feed them with. But yikes, she closed early that day, so I had to go to the grocers and make a quick decision about what I could throw together to feed a dozen people who were due to arrive in 2 hours…. I settled on chicken satay and got the butcher to cut me a load of chicken breasts, while I ran round the shop picking up peanuts and likely looking ingredients. I had made the chocolate refrigerator cake in advance, so pudding was easy. I got a load of fruit an Alison set to work making it into a big salad. I threw a load of pasta in a big bowl with some olive paste and chick peas and smoked tomatoes (God, I wish I could remember where I bought those babies!) and made a salad of that. I don’t know now what went in the satay sauce - I just kept adding stuff to the food processor - but it came out nice and spicy, and I managed to marinade and bake the chicken in time so I got away with it.

In fact, the girls came over again in the morning and we made a brunch of the leftovers, so that was good. Poor Ros had been having sleepless nights courtesy of some party animals in her building, so we all got on the internet to find her a good hotel so she could enjoy the last couple of days. It was the Art Deco Suites on Libertad and she recommends it if anyone is coming out here. Moving her out of the flat meant we missed the chance to go down to La Plata for the day but it seemed to be worth it.

Hazel was here with her teenage nephew and I saw less of her than of the others. She discovered some pretty whacky museums though, so I must try to make time to follow her recommendations.

Well, that’s going to have to do for a posting for now as I am starving and it is nearly eleven o’clock. Definitely time to fire up the grill and get some steak out of the fridge… Then I may even be in bed before midnight. Still struggling through Middlemarch, which I started at the beginning of October. I now have a lovely stack of books that all the lovely visitors left behind and I am a quarter of the way through the epic saga of provincial life. There is a lot more writing than there is story!

Busy busy busy

2006-11-10T11:22:00.000-04:00

Sorry, sorry! And thanks to people who have sent concerned enquiries - I am still alive but what with an influx of English ladies during October (Oh alright, they weren't THAT much trouble) and all sorts of work happening and not happening in the flat, blogging has not been at the top of my list of things to do. That and a suspicion that the last couple of entries were rather too detailed and I ought to be getting out more. I will get round to it, honest.

It is not just you I have been neglecting - yesterday I missed Club Espanol because I had been up a ladder all day scraping, so by five o'clock was filthy & knackered beyond any hope of looking like a chick in time. I'd probably have got there really late, been placed in a far corner and quietly gone to sleep there.

So this is just a holding post to say hello, all is well - if rather dusty and a little fraught - and as soon as I have my new kitchen installed I will sit down at the table and type a heavily abridged version of how it got there and other stories.

Cupolas Ahoy!

2006-09-21T23:10:00.000-04:00

OK, moving my darling cupola up the blog, because I love it SO MUCH! In fact, I will also save it as my photo, to save much scrolling up & down large blog as sure you are all as much in love with it as I am and want to see it as often as possible.

Here it is:

And here are some others - the place is smattered with them if you ony remember to look up in this city, they surprise and delight you in unexpected corners...

This is the one on Club Espanol, it is gold and has an angel on the top, sigh!:

These two face each other on Avenida de Mayo - the one on the right is loved and cared for, the one on the left rather neglected:

Just across the road is Palacio Barrolo, probably the zaniest building in town. The architect apparently studied Dante's version of heaven and hell and applied the numbers to this design, using the appropriate number of exits, entrances and levels. The cupola is extraordinary and enormous. Next door there is another fabulous building with two cupolas, one of which has been converted into a luxury flat which is available to rent (if you are rich and visiting), search for 'Mayo' on www.bytargentina.com:

Here is one a little out of town on Acoyte and Rosario:

And here is the Mummy of them all, the Congresso or Parliament building:

There is a gorgeous Rusian Orthodox church in San Telmo with a starry one but I do not yet have a picture of that. Aren't digital cameras a wonder!

pip pip!

Before Photos - Living Room

2006-09-18T22:14:00.000-04:00

Underlay, Underlay!

2006-09-18T01:05:00.000-04:00

What a week of fun it has been, and how transformed the flat already. Well, bits of it of course: I haven‘t touched the maid‘s quarters yet.

You will have to excuse the headline for this post. I spent many tedious dusty hours ripping the cat-stinky carpets up from the small bedrooms. The back bedroom was not too bad; the carpet came up without much of a struggle and I was able just to roll it up and take it through to the living room to be reincarnated as a dust-sheet while the painter did his incredibly messy stuff with the horrible cheap paint.

Oh but the front bedroom - the horror, the horror. The filthy blue carpet in there turned out to be glued tight to a filthy beige carpet underneath, which was in turn glued tight to the floor boards. The two carpets would not come up together as they were too dense to manœ vre, so I had first to rip them apart.

I can tell you now that if you ever need to stick things to each other or to the floor, go straight to Argentine carpet glue, it really works a treat! One of my friends happened to call me three times over the course of 2 days, and every time I came to the phone panting and saying I had been struggling with the carpet. I was not believed and have suffered some merciless teasing as a result. Anyway, from time to time, I would sit down on the floor to catch my breath, bemused that of all the things I could be doing in South America, here I was wrestling with a filthy old carpet.

So the silly, silly thing that lifted my spirits and made me take up my pliars and start ripping afresh…. You guessed it, I would say aloud to myself “underlay, underlay, underlay, yee-hah!” and I am simple enough that each time it made me laugh out loud.
Here you can see, I am half way through the second layer:

Now it is all up, a lot of the lower one especially had to be pulled thread by thread off the glued boards, as the backing had deteriorated and came away in my hands.

I am delighted to find potentially decent floorboards underneath, though in both cases they have been horribly abused and will need some sympathetic handling if they are to face the public.

In the front bedroom, before so helpfully doing the two-stinky-old-carpets-better-than-one trick, somebody had had the bright idea to paint the floorboards black. Deep sigh. So now I have to remove the remains of the super duper adhesive as well as a layer of black paint. To be fair, where the adhesive did actually come up with the carpet, in some places it pulled the paint with it.

There are also spillages from the oil-based paint on the wainscot to contend with. Much of this has to come up before anyone can go in there with a sander and level it for laminating. I bought some ecological paint-stripper at Easy last week and have tried an experimental square foot but conclude that I will go back to Easy and get some of the serious chemical stuff I fondly remember burning my little fingers to blisters with as I spent my childhood stripping banisters. (Note to all friends who are now parents - yes, you can scar them for life!)

In the back bedroom, some very messy painters have had several goes at the floors and walls and cupboards without recourse to a dust sheet. The result is lots and lots of paint sploshes on the bare boards. Happily in this case, there was not much in the way of carpet adhesive, so I should just be able to get it sanded and laminated. There is a bit of woodworm in some of the boards though, so I have to cross my fingers that some more lethal chemicals and a bit of stopping will be all that is necessary. Thank heaven we do not have the EEC interfering with the lethal chemicals trade down here in South America!

What else?

Oh last week I was bemoaning my choice of fridge - well it turns out fine, it is a perfect fridge and I have taken it to my heart. I love it almost as much as I love the hoover. I can keep any kind of food I like in there, even the sugar, safe from the cockroaches - hurrah! Also, I had a housewarming party on Friday evening and found the fridge an excellent size for catering.

Very Englishly, I bought a stupid amount of booze for the party and went only a little over on the food. So I now have a couple of dozen bottles of wine, half a dozen of champagne and a crate of beer, all of which I must hide from the decorator, who insists he works better when a little merry. He certainly sings more and is cheekier - and since in fact the standard of the work is no worse, I should probably humour him. Nonetheless, I will hide most of the booze.

The food was mostly supplied by an artisan baker around the corner. She made fabulous empanadas - small pasties that are popular all over South America and everyone claims as their own local dish. They were so good. I ate about ten of them during the course of Saturday and was deeply disappointed to swallow the last mouthful. Must go back there. She also made me a couple of trays of pastries, dry ones and custardy, creamy ones. I wasn’t so impressed with these but then I am never much of a one for the puddings. I am highly likely to go back there tomorrow for empanadas!

The only thing I actually made for the party was chocolate refrigerator cake, inspired by Julie-Good-Housekeeping-Anne, who made it a couple of times when she was here. It is so scrummy and so easy to make. Everyone was very impressed with it too and sadly they pretty much scoffed the lot, so I shall have to make more. I served it on this wild plate I bought in a sort of yard sale the other day. It is an oval serving plate painted with fish that stare out at you. It really caught my eye and only cost me a quid. When I got it home and cleaned it up, I saw that it was Welsh, so maybe there is just something comfortingly British about it.

As I type this, I am finishing off the gorgeous juicy black olives that Sam and David brought to the party. I must ask her where they came from. Also finishing off one of the open bottles of wine, so typos & howlers may be more populous even than usual.

I got such a huge thrill walking into my living room and seeing lots of people I like, getting to meet each other and being wowed by my good fortune. The friends who had been here the week before saw quite an improvement, with the removal of the dividing door and the mostly white-painted living room. We hadn’t been able to finish the woodwork but it was done enough to transform the place. So very much more elegant and suitable than that ugly, dirty orange paint with all the picture ghosts imprinted on it.

In fact, all weekend, I have been walking into that room and marvelling at it.

Carlos and Romina, my lovely tango teachers, came on Friday and got incredibly fired up about the whole place. They are so sweet and generous and really happy for me. Carlos wants to lend me some antique furniture he never uses as it will fit well with the style of the flat. Apparently it is in the French style, rather like my bed. I will go over to their place and take a look at it. They are also planning to whisk me off to look for stuff to put on the walls. At the moment I have a few things but there is a fair acreage of wall space that could be livened up.

Kikki and Eduardo came too, so I was delighted to have two professional dancers here to christen the floor with. I chose a beautiful Francisco Canaro tango and started off dancing with Eduardo, then he passed me on to Carlos, who passed me back to Eduardo - it was lovely and people bothered to applaud. Then everyone danced for a while, so the floor has been put through its paces. It is such a great space. Must have more parties! Here I am dancing with Eduardo:

and with Carlos:

And ten with Ed:

Oh and I now have a key to the roof, so was able to take everyone up to look at my darling cupola: the demented pepper pot, as Elizabeth so aptly called it. On the second trip up there, at about three in the morning, there were people doing something which may well have been perfectly innocent by the light of a mobile phone. That’s Argentina for you!

Just in time for the party, I bought a kitchen table and chairs, so had increased my furniture ownership sufficiently for people to sit and chat. It was a really nice evening and when the last people had gone and I had cleared away a bit I called Susan in London, who I had really wished could be here.

The new furniture - table & chairs plus little hall table which is at this moment serving as my desk and saving me from hunching over computer from a beanbag. Spot lovely roses from Kikki ans Susan's straw hat on the wall; v.decorative in absence of framed pictures!:

Got to bed by five, which wasn’t bad really. Then was woken by the doorbell at 2 on Saturday afternoon by one of the milonga guys who had not been able to come to the party. He thought he would just drop by and wish me well but as I looked like a hag, I told him on the intercom that I was sleeping and he said he would drop by another time. Must retain some mystery with these people!

Earlier in the week I had my list of things to organise, people to call etc and walked away from it several times on account of the fact it is so hard to speak Spanish on the telephone. Eventually, I had a stern word with myself: this is my life now, and a lot of it has to be in Spanish! So I picked up the phone and called the estate agents about removing the ‘for sale’ sign from one of the balconies, called Carmen’s plumber about coming to price up all the work, and called the café on the corner for some food.

Amazingly enough all of these things happened, which is such a thrill - I can make things happen in Spanish! I have also found out about getting broadband and cable TV, though I haven’t ordered that yet. There is so much to do that I will put it off until my enthusiasm wanes and I start longing for old episodes of ER and CSI to fill my evenings. I had quite enough of that while I was treading water and worrying whether this purchase would ever come off.

Hurrah, hurrah, it did!

My lovely and helpful, generous estate agents Natalia and Mina came to the party with their husbands. I hope now we have so bonded over the hideous purchase that they will remain friends. They had to leave early for babysitters but made sure everyone stopped to toast me and the new place first - and Natalia enjoyed the chance to correct my Spanish when I said thanks to everyone of coming (sic). She has been stretching her English the past couple of months to make sure I knew what fresh horrors were holding it all up, though it transpires she held back on quite a few details so that I would not run away screaming. It seems I was not as tactful as I had thought when I tried to help with her English! Hey ho.

I have yet to get the electrician to come and OK the wiring. In fact, I have myself already ripped out a few of the clearly dodgier extensions that have crept in here over the years without blowing myself up at all. There are at least three different types of socket in Argentina, though now they seem to be trying to standardise as all the new things I have bought have the same type of plug. There is a roaring trade in adaptors of all descriptions, as I discovered when I dropped in to the electrical store down the road. There was a lot of mime involved and eventually I got the ones I needed.

Now I discover from the neighbours that there is a plan to get the electricity supply to the building changed, so I should wait until that has been done before re-wiring the flat. As I am largely doing cosmetic and practical alterations for now, it should not really matter if I later have to get plaster and tiles ripped up to embed modern cables in the walls.

My first piece of proper post arrived yesterday morning and how lovely that it was a wedding invitation from Michael & Oswaldo - people I love - for January, so something to look forward to in London.

Today was a very lazy day - fair enough! - lots of hoovering and mopping of vast floors but more interestingly, cleaned and painted inside of one of the cupboards in my bedroom. I am determined to eradicate DNA traces of previous occupants sufficiently that I feel I can unpack my suitcases without contamination! No, it really is that dirty here. Spent some time - yet again - pondering over the anticipated cleanliness of the homes of murder victims in CSI… How can there possibly ever be so few people’s fingerprints, hair, skin cells? Anyway, now have one section of many-sectioned-wardrobe bright red inside and almost ready to receive clothes. Yay! Also spent huge amount of time on the phone catching up with Sarah and all her exploits as a parent to two stroppy little girls and partner of no-nonsense Yorkshireman.

The other thing this week was that my cleaner came on Tuesday afternoon and was simultaneously disgusted by the hitherto unknown level of filth and excited by the challenge that it presented. She had said that she’d need to be away by six, as she lives miles out of town and has a strapping boyfriend to feed of an evening. I had to throw her out at half past seven when I was going out myself, although she suggested she could carry on working until I got home… then she tried to under-charge me! She also tried to find other slots in her week when she could come back and I could see she was just itching to have a go at the condemned cooker for the sheer satisfaction of getting it clean. I told her she wasn’t allowed to go near it, it is too disgusting. Still, she could not help herself chipping the grease off the kitchen walls with Cillit Bang. How lovely to have a vocation. Next week, she may bring like-minded friends.

So, that is the shape of my week. I did go to Club Espanol on Thursday and had a lovely,lovely evening. It is the only place I have been to dance in the last couple of weeks as generally knackered and unwashed.

Last night I took Linda to see Carlos and Romina do a show downstairs at Confiteria Ideal. They were great and there was a super tango singer on the bill too. Unfortunately, there was also the most extraordinarily bad couple performing for the tourists. They were an absolute travesty. They could have been runners up in 1982 for the Wilmslow ballroom dancing league, still believing that meant something in the world. Unbelievable. Obviously and badly choreographed so that they covered all the steps that might be expected of them but it was done so deliberately and painfully and way off any of the beats available in tango music. They had the Come Dancing cheesey grins on too and kept doing that stupid head-flicking thing people always think is the tango. Now THESE are the people the government should be drugging and throwing out of planes. (sick I know - and I should point out, they don’t do that here any more!)

Anyway, it is half past one - I have been up almost twelve hours, so will post this and try to embellish it with a few pics, then get back to my heavenly, snuggly bed. Maybe I should sleep on Susan’s bed - aka the sofa - to avoid gloss paint fumes from my wardrobe. Tchah, the hell I will! Now, where’s that wine bottle?

Adios amigos,

Raquelita

Actually, that is worth a PS - with all the undisputed richness of the English language, I regret
that we do not have a little suffix for making things little. They have it in German - you can stick -chen on the end of a word to make it a little and hence darling version of the actual noun - in fact it is doubly useful as it renders the noun neuter and solves all sorts of conjugation problems. They use it even more in Spanish in the form of -ita/o to really lovely effect. I think the closest we get is maybe ‘little old man’ which is quite sweet but nothing like the ability to make a word affectionate by extending it. So Raquel, which is my name in Spanish, becomes Raquelita and surprisingly often, people will use that. To go back to the little old man, one of the guys I dance with refers to himself as a viejito - little old man - in fact he is boasting that he can still dance up a storm, butit is a lovely and simple linguistic device. If somebody has something to ask but doesn’t really want to bother you, they will say “una preguntita” which is a little question, rather than una "pregunta" which would be a plain old question. ‘poor thing’ is ‘pobrecito’ from pobre meaning poor. I could go on for hours with examples - but I just wonder why that hasn’t emerged in English.

nighty night

Daft as a Brush

2006-09-10T22:40:00.000-04:00

Today was a day for crossing things off the big list but in the stupidest way possible.

Number one - the fridge. Everyone here has been telling me I have to go to a neighbourhood called Boedo and visit all the shops there comparing prices before I buy any electrodomesticos - super Spanish word for white goods. So off I went, out into the gorgeous warm spring day, skipping round to the Subte station on a mission. Got to Boedo and looked about the place but failed to find more than one big shop; a Hiper Rodo, so thought 'stuff it, I'll just buy one here'. I spent an age looking at fridges, deciding what I like and do not like, want and do not want and of course getting a bit dizzy about the prices.

The criteria were; taller than me, freezer with shelves in the door, no stupid snappy-off handles, plenty of shelves & compartments inside; shiny and easy to clean; made in South America; not super-pricey.

I narrowed it down to three and, after a chat with the salesman, settled on an Electrolux. He said to be honest they all come from the same factory in Brazil but this brand has the best quality control. They had it in stock but could not deliver until Tuesday so he suggested that for an extra 2 pesos (40p) I could hire a chap who was waiting outside with a pick-up truck, so I agreed and he went and sorted that out for me.

There are usually at least two stages to buying anything here but electrodomesticos have especially bizarre systems - probably to put you off wanting to bring anything back. First the salesman puts your details on the computer and enters the order; then you have to go and wait in a queue for the cashier, who needs to see your ID all over again; then once all that is done, you go to another desk that exists for no good reason and have your receipt stamped. Then, you have to drive seven blocks (!) to the warehouse, have the receipt taken off you, hand in a voucher, get everything stamped again and get a few bits of paperwork back. Then you wait for somebody to find your fridge and bring it to you, watch them unwrap it so that you can inspect it before it leaves the premises, wrap it up again and hand it over to the delivery guy.

As soon as I saw the thing, I started to doubt my choice. It was huge. Diego, my delivery chap, had had some trouble getting into the driver's seat of his van and it turned out he worked alone, so how was he going to manage the wretched thing? Is there a lift, he asked. Yes, but there are a few steps too, I said. No problem, he said.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

We got back here and he took one look at the front door and saw the steps and announced it could not be done. Did I have any friends who could come and help? Was there a porter? On a Sunday evening at the drop of a hat - no!

After a lot of measuring and humming and hah-ing in the street and telling me about some operation he is going to have which I gather was for a hernia and repeatedly telling me that the fridge was very big, a mate of his just happened to call on the cel phone (starting to suspect I was set-up here!) and agreed to bring a big strong lad and carry the fridge up to the fourth floor for me for an extra 30 pesos. Not bad business for them and to be honest it is less than six quid so I am not really complaining.

So they arrived, reeking of alcohol, picked up the fridge and carried it all the way up the stairs as it was indeed to big to go in the lift. They lugged it into the kitchen, after first claiming it would not go through the door. Then on the way back down, they said the lift was like something out of Castle Dracula - cheeky buggers! Anyway, I paid them and they tore off in their rickety old van, most likely back to the pub to toast the daft cow.

Back up in the kitchen, it was clear that the fridge really is far far too big. Why did I insist on the shelves in the freezer door and not go for the nice wide, shallow model - why? So I moved it across to the other side from where I had wanted to place it and realised that the doors open the wrong way and are not the type that can be taken off and reversed. So I have a huge fridge that I will have to walk around every time I want to get anything out of it. Well, I am not about to get Laurel and Hardy back to send it back to the shop, so tough. At least I will have a clean and safe place to keep food.

Then I went out again, smug that I had found another branch of Easy on this side of town simply by looking it up on the internet. So off to the tube & across to Constitucion, a vast old railway terminus, which seemed to offer the closest public transport.

Why, when taxis are so cheap?

Of course, there was not a taxi to be seen at the station to go the rest of the way, so I set out on foot and regretted it within minutes. What was I thinking - walking around behind an old railway terminus? In any city in the world that's a dangerous thing to do. It was pretty bleak and stinky and dimly lit but I walked with purpose and happily nothing happened. It is not often that I feel spooked but there I really did.

On the plus side, if any visitors ever need to know where they can find hookers, I will be able to tell them very precisely!

Bought a great chariot-load of stuff - tools, paint stripper, shower curtain, cushions etc. etc. and left it all with the car park security guard while I went to hail a cab. Cabbie very sweet and security guard ditto, so I got home safely, no thanks to me.

I have started putting up the shower curtain rail and realised why there wasn't one there before... also started ripping up the cat-stinky carpets and found wooden floors underneath. Hurrah! This is very hard work as in fact the carpet is firmly glued to ANOTHER CARPET, which is in turn firmly glued to the floorboards. Sigh. My plan to use these carpets to protect the living room floor during painting will most probably be abandoned as I hack them out with knives and spatulas. Getting the glue off will be a nasty job too.

In short, it seems I have bad a busy and expensive day without really hitting the mark. To top it all, there was nothing open this evening to get a meal, so I dined on cheese triangles!

So, enough blogging and back to the carpets before whatever nutritious value that supper contained evapourates.

Got My Mojo Risin'

2006-09-10T01:15:00.000-04:00

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Saturday night, home alone in new flat:

one happy bunny, it took a while to sink in and stop feeling overwhelmed by space and filth but oh, what bliss now;

sitting very comfortably on my purple beanbag in my ridiculously huge and largely empty living room, listening to some heavenly tango waltz music on the iPod, taking the word ‘laptop’ a little too literally and probably setting myself up for thigh cancer;

had a lovely long chat with my Daddy on the phone earlier and still amused by his lunatic humour and darling desire to help, even after 40 years of being my Daddy;

French windows open and balmy air oozing around, untrammelled by furniture or other obstacles - slowly, slowly taking over from cat-stinky, fag-ridden atmosphere bequeathed by previous incumbent. Buses occasionally rumbling past (can’t complain about the noise, the bus service here is excellent!) ;

just eaten my first steak in the new home, brought to my door by very nice lady for all of 8 pesos (a quid and a half!) with the best chips I have had since I got here. They had clearly been potatoes until about half an hour ago and maybe sitting in the package for the half a block walk from the restaurant made them taste like chip shop chips so I savoured every one! After a week of pizza hot for supper and cold for lunch, it was extra fab;

not planning on dancing tonight as tomorrow I really must go and invest in some white goods. I was going to do that today but after a silly amount of time responding to emails and an astonishing amount of time hoovering up the cadavers of a thousand and one cockroaches (had the fumigator in yesterday - v.effective!), the day was as good as spent.

The kitchen here is beyond cleaning (I have tried with mucho elbow grease and an increasingly toxic and abrasive array of products but it is too encrusted with decades of grime), so it all has to come out as soon as I can engage the services of a plumber. Very sweet friend Carmen is working on that for me. Meanwhile it is take-aways and tepid bottled drinks all the way. Must measure the lift to see how big a fridge I can get in there, though delivery people probably won’t argue about carrying it up 4 flights of stairs as they would in England.

Ok, the listing thing isn’t working as a literary device, so I shall just revert to ordinary sentences and paragraphs.

Sensibly, decent mattress was at the top of my urgent shopping list, so I have been enjoying the sleep of the just, even if the lack of fridge or indeed washing-up facilities has deprived me of the food of the gods! Still, after a disgruntled week and a half on unsatisfactory bedding in the temporary abode, I was painfully aware of what a sleep person I am. Sure Mrs Thatcher with her 3 hours a night or whatever it was would not have cared, but something tells me that is not the only difference between the two of us!

Hoover next on the list and hurrah, I love it. I hoover in the morning, I hoover in the evening, all over this flat! If Moulinex want to bung me a free mixer for advertising, I will happily tell you that their Boogie is a powerful and rather cute new friend. What the hell, I will tell you that for nothing - and it is a bit purple! It really sucks - in the sense that sucking is what a good hoover should do. It has a bag already full of cat hair and cockroach cadavers, so I won't be recycling that one!

I did eventually manage to get out today but not very far. I went over to Okko on Santa Fe, a sort of Habitat but with lots of oriental furnishings. It is odd here that there is little middle ground when it comes to shopping. Stuff is either cheap and looks it, then falls apart, or it is very expensive and often falls apart anyway - so there are huge gaps in pretty much every market you care to think of for reasonably-priced, functional things. Anyway, all I was after was a drainer so that I can finally wash up the many glasses I had rather craftily bought in anticipation of well-wishers, champagne etc. but now do not actually want coming into contact with the filthy sink! Of course, am now in possession of a plastic bowl and a drainer but still there are about 30 glasses and half a dozen used mugs awaiting attention… well blogging is so much more important; it will free me up from writing half a dozen long emails every morning. Yeah, right!

As if I am up in the morning!

Actually, I discovered last week that the French have cunningly spotted the gap in the market and sent over Carrefour hypermarkets to make a start on filling it, so I got several super things there and will go back for more. Otherwise kitting this place out is going to be either insanely expensive or insanely wasteful & short-term if I buy cheap. Did I mention the flat is huge?

The ceilings are three and a half metres high. I was standing on the little balcony today and realised that here on the 4th floor, I am at eye level with the 7th floor of a building across the way. Yikes! So will need lots more paint than in the London flat!

A friend is coming round next week to get going on the painting. We will get the living room looking decent at least. My plan is to do a fairly cosmetic job initially, then strip things down and do it properly over the next couple of years. That way, it can be presentable and functional sooner. Belen has a good craftsman who can work on restoring the mouldings and that sort of thing but he is quite busy just now.

My cleaner from the old flat is coming over too to catch up and I hope she will be in a position to take on some rolling-up of sleeves etc. She is such a sweetie, very practical and a total perfectionist, even if a little prone to moving things about the place for no apparent reason.

Ambitiously enough, I am planning to have a house-warming party on Friday coming, so had better actually start planning it, rather than just asking people! Need a table and a couple more places to sit. If I have no working kitchen, I will at least get rid of what I can and buy in empanadas & cake. Also need to clean inside bedroom & bathroom cupboards so that I can actually bear to unpack bags currently still in vestibule on ugly but easy-to-clean-and-disinfect ceramic tiled floor. The vestibule is about the size of my living room in London, by the way. Here is the vestibule, replete with worldly goods and Julie-Anne's fantastically helpful (nearly all gone now) cleaning equipment:

I feel inspired to measure the living room now… it is nine and a half metres long, so what is that, about 30 feet? The fatter half is four and a half metres wide, the thinner half is three sixty. Pretty big anyway, and it has a beautiful varnished wooden floor which everyone tells me is very valuable. Well, if we can dance on it, I will be happy. Here is some of it, freshly relieved of some ugly concertina doors in the middle:

The panelling in the arch has windows in it, as is the case all over the flat, and at some point much of this has been painted over. The doors and frames are also rather nice wood underneath layers of chipped and filthy paint. So there will is a fair acreage of paint-stripping to be done.

Thank heaven for rubber gloves and lethal chemicals!

The cockroaches will most definitely not be invited on Friday - if they turn up, they will be trodden on by some of the fanciest shoes on the planet! Actually, maybe I should ban an Comme il Faut shoes in case of stilletoe marks on the floor.

Glad I am not a Buddhist or in any sense worried about grand scale insecticide. In fact, should I not be congratulated for sending them on up the ladder towards nirvana rather than castigated for killing the little buggers? I did think about taking a picture of the massed cadavers but it is an image I would rather forget and you dear people never need see.

I will invite a couple of the guys I dance with at my beloved Club Español, though they will most likely take it the wrong way. They were so sweet on Thursday - pointing out that I looked different and quite radiant, so I told them about the flat and to a man they were warm and congratulatory, even excited about the cupola. One wrangled the address out of me and sent round a lovely big white azalea on Friday morning with his congratulations. He wants to dance with me next year in the campeonato. Maybe I am still naïve about all the compliments but I have never had a problem brushing off unwelcome advances and on the whole I love the charm and ease of it all. I danced like a demon on Thursday with all my favourite people - fab. Left exhausted with huge smile on face. By the way, I do go on about Club Español, and how gorgeous it is, so here is a pic. If you know who to look for, you can see Susan and Julie-Anne dancing:

Well, now I must go and crawl into my big, comfy, cotton-sheeted, feather-duveted bed (thanks Carrefoure!) and hope to get up in time to buy a fridge tomorrow. Maybe a stereo too. Very happy to live without a TV though as there is so much else to keep me occupied.

I only wish the dear friends who have coaxed me through some unhappy times on London could loll about in the mood I am in now. I am, as I said at the start, one happy bunny! If I get hit by one of the frequent and enthusiastic buses here, you will know that I had a smile on my face, even if the wholesale cockroach slaughter - or a judicial holiday, some idiot intermediary or industrial action at the Heaven Registry - bars me from reaching a better place in the hereafter!
Oh go on, scroll down and take another look at the cupola!

Who needs drugs when there’s Buenos Aires?

Cheers!

New Home

2006-09-05T12:52:00.000-04:00

Very exciting day yesterday; finally, after months of just the weirdest problems, I signed the papers and handed over the money for the new flat. When I say 'handed over the money', I did quite literally hand over the money, in cash, which had been brought into the country for me by a finance company. It was odd indeed to be handling such a vast wad of cash. I wanted to take a picture of it but a hideous last minute argument erupted and the whole deal almost fell through, so it didn't seem quite right to be taking out my camera. Anyway, a wad of ten thousand dollars is only about an inch thick - which is not quite as impressive as I had hoped. I should have asked for it in small bills!

Natalia, my lovely estate agent, had arranged for me to stay in an empty rental apartment out in Palermo for the last ten days or so. It was a bit miserable to be honest - noisy, uncomfortable & cold - but I am so grateful to her for doing that. The cute place in town where I had been since April had been let to someone else, so I had to move from there before I had my own home to go to. Natalia also arranged for a nice man with a van to schlep all my stuff out there and then back again yesterday afternoon. Mostly, it is all still sitting in the vestibule as I will not unpack until some serious cleaning has been done. The place is thick with filth.

I am now sitting in my pyjamas in the back bedroom on a carpet thick with cat hair, surrounded by unbelievable filth and wondering where to start.

Oh what joy though - I have my own place in Buenos Aires! It is quite huge and has the cutest cupola on the roof (see below for picture).

My first visitor was Romina, who comes to me once a week for English conversation. I took her up and showed her the cupola and she said "How pretty, but what purpose does it serve?". A very formal sort of phrase that made it sound as if she was questioning the cupola's right to exist, when really she was just a bit curious. So I said that it is just there to be beautiful, though in fact it also serves as a sort of shed.

I had had to run out and buy my first bits of furniture before she came as the kitchen table and chairs that I was expecting to have been left were gone. Round the corner here is Avenida Belgrano, which happens to be the furniture district, so I traipsed up and down and in & out of likely looking shops to see if I could get a couple of chairs. It dawned on me that I was likely to end up with something really crappy if I bought in a hurry, so I changed tack. Amazingly, just as I was thinking that I had better get back and that surely Romina, who is very young, would not mind sitting on a suitcase, I saw a gorgeous pink beanbag hanging in a shop with a sign on it saying $100, which is a little shy of twenty quid. I went in and found they were leather and available in all sorts of colours. A very nice man pulled one down off its hook and let me sit on it and I almost went to sleep on the spot. I told him I was going to carry it back up Belgrano and he nodded to the van outside and said he'd give me and the beanbag a lift home, so I said I'd take two! Delighted that my first bits of furniture are a pink and a purple beanbag, though the standard of furnishings will have to improve if I am to rent the place out ever! Here are the beanbags and Susan's bed which is pressed into service as a sofa (yes it does have a mattress, what kind of a hostess do you think I am?!). Makeshift coffee tables include Julie-Anne's box of precious stuff that I am - erm - carefully storing for her:

Then later Linda came and toasted the place and after she left a few other friends popped round with thoughtful offerings like wine, champagne, a dreamcatcher, a huge cream cake and a chair - so we sat and drank and ate cake and chatted about all sorts. They had some good leads for workmen, which I must follow up as there is a huge amount of work to be done here. Spot the amazing cream cake Miguel brought over...

Belen stayed after the others had gone and we chatted on until after one this morning. She seemed impressed with my Spanish and we laughed about our first meeting last year and how we had struggled to communicate.

When she had gone & I was on my own, I skipped around the flat again taking it all in. Then after failing to talk to my sister in LA, I spent a couple of hours emailing before getting the single mattress off the bed I bought for Susan when she came out in July and arranging it on the antique bed frame I have bought with the flat. The last owner helpfully took away the mattress, which is a blessing if it was anything like as filthy as everything else here. I find it hard to believe that anyone could live with this much filth. Oh, she also took most of the light fittings off and didn't leave replacements, so that's a job.

Hhhmm must buy a huge ladder, these ceilings are so high.

But first: proper mattress, hoover, bucket for Sugar Soap Michele so kindly sent over, heavy duty gloves & pliars for ripping up foul cat-stinky carpets. I have a hammer & will probably also need a crow-bar of some sort for pulling out the bizarre concertina doors that have been put in the middle of the double living room. Yay, tools! I went to a shop called Easy at the weekend, which is a sort of B&Q / Home Depot, and got quite excited at the prospect of buying tools. What am I like?

This afternoon I have some important paperwork to file, so I will go and disinfect the bathroom and find out whether the shower works...

Club Español Rocks

2006-08-11T01:43:00.000-04:00

It is Thursday night and I have a big smile on my face. Funny because I was in a foul old mood today after sleeping badly the past couple of nights, mostly through fretting about the apparent lack of progress on my flat purchase. It keeps running away from me for one reason after another and has been a very stressful process. I am told that it is nearly there but then I thought we were going to complete in early July, so it is hard to know what to believe.

Anyway, enough about why I was in a foul mood today, I just was. Over the past few months I have developed a rule of thumb that if I doubt I want to go dancing, I tend radiate something that leads me to have a poor night of it if I do go… so best not to.

Still, I put on some loud disco music, changed into a new skirt, did my make-up and thought about it. After all, it is Thursday and that means Club Español , my favourite milonga. I hummed and ha-ed about it, not least because the new skirt, although very plain, is one of these stretchy things with a fold-over waistband and the top that goes best with it shows a fair old expanse of midriff. I should say that I have lost weight and changed shape since I’ve been here, so I have my waist back and a flat tummy, but this is the first time the midriff has been out in public for some time and I was nervous on its behalf. I hovered inside the front door and in the end just decided against an evening brooding in front of the TV and in favour of one in a glorious room full of heavenly music, watching some beautiful shoes dance by… so off I set.

It was very busy when I arrived but Pato the nice waitress saw me, came and gave me a big kiss and led me by the hand to a reasonable seat. Sadly, after a few weeks of coming either with people or not at all, I have lost my habitual excellent place at the bar and the host was suggesting a seat right at the back.

My plan was really just to sit for a while and watch the shoes go by until I felt like dancing but very soon a guy I really like to dance with, but rarely get the chance to, appeared in the doorway to catch my eye and I was off. It took half a tango and a lot of concentration to relax my shoulders and actually fall into his embrace and start dancing but when I did, something magical happened - as it sometimes does in tango - and my cares fell away. The Spanish came out ok between dances too, which is always gratifying. Sometimes I just stand there saying como?como? until it is time to dance again and all the subsequent pauses are just embarrassing.

Ah bliss. This was closely followed by a lovely tanda with another favourite dancer, a nice rest, then two tandas in a row with a guy who had mysteriously stopped dancing with me about a month ago but has clearly reconsidered. It is unusual to dance two tandas in a row with the same person and not really cricket - but I didn’t mind if he didn’t! The second tanda was some of my absolute favourite Caló tangos, so I just closed my eyes and we danced like in a dream.

I sat out a bit after that because sometimes it is nice just to let the feeling wear off on its own. Like the taste in your mouth after a delicious meal - it is a shame to erase that straight away, even with a decent cup of coffee.

As I went out tired this evening, I was more determined than ever not to get up for any unknown entities, bad music or bad dancers. I did well on that front as I managed to fix on people I wanted and was very successful in getting them all to dance with me. Well, actually one gave me a nice smile and slipped away but to be fair he had already put on his sweater to leave that is not bad going. At one point I was sitting out a tanda that hadn’t started well, when a song I adore came on - it must have shown in my face because Angel, a nice tango teacher was nearby and had also been sitting that one out, gave me a big smile and a nod and off we went.

In fact, I needn’t have worried about the midriff either as it received a couple of nice
compliments all of its own.

At about ten, I was just changing my shoes and paying for my mineral water when over came Judy, an Australian woman I met here last year who has just got back to Bs As after a hideous year teaching maths in one of Lambeth’s sink secondary schools. So we went out for a natter and a big old steak. For a change in factI forced myself to have some fish but regretted it as soon as I saw her steak. I think I am addicted to steak! Anyway, it was nice to see her, even if her stories of home are numerous and grim.

So that’s it. Who knows what tomorrow will bring; with any luck some good news from my lawyer but I am not holding my breath for that. I just wanted to write about tonight because it was a perfect tango evening and I hope makes better reading than moaning on about banks and lawyers and all the other crap that has been preoccupying me lately.

Buenos noches amigos,
Raquelita!

Susan Woz 'Ere

2006-08-07T16:20:00.000-04:00

My my, hasn’t it been a while! I’ve had a few complaints about not writing in the blog lately, so here I go. A lot has been happening but I will stick to the highlights.

The main highlight has to be Susan’s 3 weeks here. She came in mid-July after a trip to New York to catch up with her family & friends up there.

The first 2 weeks she stayed with me and in the middle of that we flew up to Salta, an old colonial city which is built in a lush valley just short of the Andes, in the far North-West of Argentina. Really beautiful. The city itself is extremely pretty and has the craziest churches. We had a couple of odd experiences trying to find restaurants recommended by the Lonely Planet guide, stumbling instead upon first an enormous and ornate burgundy painted church, then second a fantastic open air crafts market and a load of bars and restaurants with folk dancing that had somehow slipped the attention of the Lonely Planet researcher. Or maybe they misinform deliberately to give the traveller the feeling that she has discovered something entirely for herself... Hhhhm. This is the church they failed to mention:

And this is the utterly fabulous PINK cathedral church on the main square:

We took two trips out of Salta: up and down the valley to the north and to the south. On reflection, it might have been better to hire a car and have the freedom to stop and linger where we wanted but drivers in Buenos Aires are so atrocious that I have been rather put off driving in Argentina.

Going north, we went up across the Tropic of Capricorn to a place called Humahuaca about 10km from the Bolivian border, stopping on the way at towns and villages and lay-bys either to look at the crafts and trinkets markets or have lunch or just gape at and take photos of the amazing rock formations and mountains. The landscape is truly stunning. The Andes apparently were formed by the crash of an Atlantic and a Pacific tectonic plate and in the foothills you can see how the land at the periphery buckled in the process. It is on an enormous scale. Then there is the effect of thousands of years of wind and water erosion revealing the strata that the ages had laid down to make those rocks in the first place. Apart from its sheer size, the main difference between this and the other big geography I have seen before - like the Gorges du Tarn or our own little Cheddar - is that the layers of rock here are brightly coloured and some are seriously stripey. We saw pink mountains and red ones and psychedelic ones too. This is because of the wildly different mineral content in the layers of rock which, when exposed, oxidise to create the bright colours. Cheddar must be full of very dull minerals! These photos do not do it justice.

I will blow my own trumpet a little and say that our tours were conducted all in Spanish, so I had to listen hard and interpret everything for Susan. Geography was never a good subject for me but luckily a lot of the words are very similar so all I needed was to have my ear in to the accent. I was very relieved when the guide admitted he did actually speak some English and gave us a potted summary of his spiel - it was exactly what I had already said to Susan. Very glad I hadn’t just sat there and made it all up!

Hamlet beginning with P, note the stripey mountain, the pink one and the green one...

The best thing we saw that day was at Tilcara. Somebody had discovered and excavated a prehistoric (pre-Inca) town on the top of a high foothill and they had also partly re-built it in places to show what it would have been like. The views from the top were stunning but we were also blown away by the cactus that lived amongst the ruins. Huge things like the ones you see in cowboy movies. Stupidly I had let the battery run down in my camera but a sweet Australian woman let me put my memory chip in her camera to take a couple of photos - Susan and I both love this one.

(Well, once again the blog site has had enough uploading photos, so I will have to come back to it. No, have tried time & time again, even tried deleting the cupola but to no avail. Will stick pic elsewhere if poss.)

We would happily have spent a day mooching about the ruins at Tilcara. As it was, we held up the bus for half an hour before leaving for the long drive back.

Despite being exhausted when we got back to Salta after 12 hours on this excursion, we managed to stroll into the main square and on to a restaurant we had liked the look of the night before. We ate the biggest steaks yet, uncharacteristically dressed up with rich sauces and vegetables. In fact the garnish on Susan’s would have been a meal in itself. Somehow we polished our plates, though we were groaning full by the end of it! We ate really well in Salta, only one duff meal in what looked like a nice family restaurant but was on a level with a Happy Chef! A couple of times I had excellent fresh local fish; something you have to look hard for in Bs As, so a welcome treat.

The second excursion was down the valley to Cafayate, a nice little town in a major wine-producing area of Argentina. On the way, we went through the part of the valley that is a major tobacco-producing area and Susan had to stop me interpreting the commentary about that out of sheer boredom. Are there tourists who want to know all the production and export statistics? Probably but we ain‘t them. There was also a lot of battle talk about Independence struggles way back when.

Anyway, there was more stunning landscape and the further we got from Salta, the less lush the valley and the more cactus we saw. The vegetation was very interesting as a marker of the changing climate up and down the valley. See, I could almost get interested in geography when it is on this scale. None of your ox-bow lakes! We did go to a vineyard and taste some wine but didn’t buy any, partly because they only let us taste the cheap stuff. In town, we went for lunch in a place recommended by the Lonely Planet guide (should have known better!) where the service was unbelievably slow and the food nothing special. There was a lovely young couple from New Zealand on the tour who came with us and it was really nice having their company. They had been on the Humahuaca tour too, which is where we met them. They were doing South America on their way to London to be accountants for a couple of years. Oddly though, they would sit on the bus reading their books and when we asked why they weren’t agog at the landscape, they said ‘Oh we have all the landscape we need in New Zealand.’ So why travel?

Susan and I both really enjoyed Salta and happily wanted to do the same things at the same pace, so made for good company. We mooched around town, in and out of the crazy churches, looking at all the beautiful silverware on offer and buying a few shiny things to adorn ourselves with. One day we wandered down to the cable car which takes you up to the top of a very high hill - it would probably be regarded as a mountain in the UK but next to the Andes, it is a mere molehill! It has fabulous views of Salta and the valley and has been laid out nicely with gardens and waterfalls and a couple of shops at the top. We sat in the café, chasing the shade of the umbrellas around our table, and drank our way through a couple of litres of fizzy grapefruit pop. The most amazing thing happened as we sat there: the Andes were over in the distance in misty layers of blue and, as we watched, some of the cloud lifted and a whole new layer of mountains appeared. They were just huge. I am not sure this reproduces well enough for you to even see the extra layer of mountains at the back but have fun looking.

It was a tropical mid-winter up there, very sunny and quite hot in the sun but suddenly very cold in the shade and when the sun went down in the evening.

Back in Buenos Aires, we both suffered from the change in altitude. Odd really as most people suffer when they are actually up there. Poor Susan had one of her migraines triggered by the discomfort and lack of sleep, so had to spend an afternoon in bed. I had had a hideously painful time in the descent to Bs As airport, which sometimes happens to me if there is a problem with the cabin pressure. My sinuses go crazy and my head feels as if it will explode. It is ferociously painful while it is happening and aches for some time after.

We went out to dance while Susan was here though she had mixed success getting partners. It was quite a blow really as she is such a lovely dancer but, as Linda pointed out, it can take a while to build up regulars and even the ones you do think are regulars can suddenly behave as if they have never seen you before. In the last week she was here, we more or less gave up on the tango. Still, she enjoyed mooching around town, looking up at the fabulous buildings, riding the antiquated underground trains, doing the odd spot of shopping, eating one heavenly steak after another, taking lessons with Carlos & Romina and whatever else we got up to. The last week she was here, she stayed with Linda out in Palermo. It was very sad to see her go and we are working on convincing her to take an early retirement…

Some other people have been and gone. As I type, Julie-Anne is up in her flat packing to go back to Blighty for a few months to earn some hard currency so she can come back in the new year. Very sad but it has to be done. We are going this afternoon for a last dance at Confiteria Ideal. The milonga there is a bit hit & miss on a Monday afternoon, so I hope that one or two of her favourite old geezers are there to make it worthwhile. We went last week with my little digital camera and the hope of filming each other dance but didn’t have too much luck with the chaps. I filmed Julie-Anne dancing with a funny little man called Adolfo, who really played up to the camera. It was enough for her to see herself move. There was no-one I wanted to watch myself dancing with, so I didn’t get her to return the favour.

Today has been dark and wet and gloomy. At lunch time there was a mighty thunderstorm and a downpour, so probably good to get that out of the way before Julie-Anne has to fly tomorrow. No comfort for the poor plane-load leaving town on today’s flight of course, but I don’t know them, so who cares! In fact, it has been winter weather since Susan left. No complaints really because for the most part, it has been mild if not warm. Not once have I wished I had a proper winter coat and only once have I resorted to a hat and gloves. I am so glad not to have had to suffer the heat that has been raging in the UK this past month - sounds disgusting.

I have been trying for some time to buy a flat here and have had one wretched problem with it after another. At the moment it is held up while the vendor sorts out some title transfer issue hanging over from her father’s death 15 years ago. All very straightforward I am assured, except that the courts have just had a 2 week holiday. Now I am hoping that it will not be long but given the history of unexpected hurdles, I will not be holding my breath. The flat is gorgeous (or will be) and huge and in a building with a roof terrace and a cupola on top. I am enamoured with the cupola, which is why I am trying to be patient about the transaction, though it is very stressful. I do realise that having removed most other sources of stress in my life, there is a bit of room for me to absorb this!

So, in summary: still here; still loving it; had the first big visitor; still tangoing, though maybe not so frantically; still trying to buy my flat.

Hoping to write more soon.
Raquelita

Carelessness

2006-07-01T20:39:00.000-04:00

To support one team in the World Cup that gets knocked out in a penalty shoot out may be described as a misfortune, to lose two etc. etc.

What a swizz! Last time I try to show an interest in sport, I'm telling you now!

They should have played David Owen... and that Mickey Rooney, what was he thinking?
Let's hope that Malcolm McClaren has a better line-up for the next tournament....

Seriously, we girls were watching the match and could not work this out: during that extra half an hour they stuck on at the end, why were all our boys crowded up at the other end of the pitch defending the goal - surely Rrrrrrah-beeen-sohn's job? Then one of them would get the ball, kick it all the way down to our end, past the one England chap who wasn't trying to be goalie, who then hadn't a cat in hell's chance of scoring on his own. This was usually the uber-gangly Crrrrrah-ooooch, who would do his best to step over and around the little chaps from Portugal, but with nobody there to pass the ball to, he would always lose it and off it hurtled to the other end. England surely has a poor history when it comes to penalty shoot outs and without 2 key strikers - the lovely David substituted because his hair gel was starting to fail (hurty knee, indeed) and Mr.Potatohead for styling himself as the new Vinny Jones - surely they should have been trying to score during the actual play? What are we missing boys? If they had some clever strategy that is invisible to girls, it didn't work! Were they just bored running up and down? I know I would have been. Was it some sick gamble on breaking the dismal record with penalties?

My guess is that the post-match coverage in England will be that they threw it away. I would not argue with that, expert that I am. Over here, it is steadfastly maintained that Argentina was the best team in the tournament, played the better match yesterday and was only beaten because the Germans were really, really lucky.

Incidentally, on Thursday evening I suggested to one of my dance partners that it would just be rude of Argentina to beat Germany on their home ground. Clearly my Spanish isn't good enough to make jokes yet! I shan't be trying that line again, I may even have to avoid the guy I said it to for a few weeks!

Hey ho.

So that is it for the football. I did just catch the last few minutes of France beating Brazil but only so that I would not phone Michael while it was on in case Oswaldo was watching it. What on earth made me think they would be following the football I cannot imagine! Except of course that I had been, which is rare enough. Now if there was a musical about men in shorts...

Back to the tango tonight. The milongas have been very sparsely attended these past couple of weeks and one or two have had to close due to lack of interest. Some say this is because of the football and others because it is the low season for tourists. In some ways it is nice because the floors are less crowded but it can be a bit dire if there are not enough people to get a good atmosphere going. I should have thought to go to Salon Canning while things are slack. It is the one I hated last year but kept ending up going back to for various reasons. It has a great floor but there is rarely any chance to make the most of that, plus it is a long way to go to have a crap time so I have avoided it so far. I will go to El Beso tonight, it is not far from my flat and one of the better places for single people on a Saturday night. With any luck there will be plenty of commiserating going on about the footie. One reason I did not go out last night was I thought it might be difficult being English on such a sad day. Now we are even, for my own personal reasons I am comfortable! Sorry England!

I think I have only danced twice this week, which is unusual. I even had to cancel my lessons as I have had meetings set up with some wretched flat business which I will write about when it is all over. Enough to say for now that it has been very stressful and I was almost prompted to get on a plane to Scotland and run riot with a machine gun in an HSBC call centre. Funnily enough, if you say that to them, they WILL put you through to talk to somebody in your branch.

Now I am back in the mood for dancing, romancing, giving it all tonight.... as the Nolans so aptly put it. So, I shall post this and go to fire up the grill for my big old steak, then probably grab forty winks before tarting up and shipping out.

Adios amigos!

There's a Kind of Hush

2006-07-01T09:53:00.000-04:00

Oh dear. Argentina's bubble really burst yesterday in a penalty shoot out with Germany. It really is about winning, taking part isn't the important thing! Maybe it is in Ukraine or somewhere that doesn't expect to do well in football but in Argentina it is part of the weft of their being and they are wounded. For someone who has never been interested in taking part OR winning, it is all very strange. I have been assured by Marisol in England that the place is as just as football crazy as here, she suggests that being an outsider makes it seem more so. My sense in England though is that we never entirely believe that our team will actually win anything. So when England loses, there is a sense of inevitability about it even among hard core fans. Still, I am no expert; it's taken me forty years to show the slightest interest.

My English neighbour came down yesterday and we sat with popcorn and juice and watched the match on cable tv. Of course, we are girls and our commentary would have driven any man insane, but for each other we are probably perfect football company. One of her students had been trying to explain the offside rule to her and we had an earnest discussion about that and decided it was a bit stupid. If I had a fiver for every time a guy has tried to explain offside to me - OK women too, Paddie and Sarah! - I could probably fly to Germany and buy a ticket for the next match. I think I understand it now but still maintain that it is a bit stupid. I wondered when the shorts had got so long and we moaned about that for a while. Julie-Anne had a good foot massage to ease the tension of her morning on the phone. We were both looking at the screen when the goals were scored at least. When the extra time was over, we strained to understand the commentary and work out what would happen next. I had read on the BBC website that FIFA had stopped one of the barbarous practices that used to decide a draw but was not sure if it was the golden goal or the penalty shoot-out. We soon found out which. I think England went out on one of these last time. The first to miss was my favourite cutie on the Argentine team, very sad but he can come to me for consolation if he needs it! The second to miss was the one who looks a bit like my uncle Archie and seems quite out of place on that dark latin team. A fight broke out on the pitch and again we strained to work out why. The anger seemed to be directed at one of the officials but I haven't been to the BBC website to find out what that was all about. So we nibbled on the last husks of popcorn until all that was left was the bits that hurt your teeth, then Julie-Anne went home.

After the match, I was at a bit of a loose end, having spoken to my estate agent and found that our meeting was postponed until Monday because the vendor's lawyer had taken the day off to watch the match. So I put on my trainers and went for a walk in town. Along Chacabuco/Maipu, down Diagonal Norte to the Obelisk, it was quiet and moody. A surprising number of shops and businesses seemed to have opened up, but heads were hung low and still shaking slowly in disbelief. Men sat in cafe windows looking dejected, some still staring open-mouthed at a blank tv screen where the unthinkable had been played out before them. A lot of the flags seemed to have gone from car windows but probably one person in three was wearing either football strip or some item of blue and white striped clothing. They had all been watching the match, confident that their team was unbeatable, and they all looked wounded now.

Down at the Obelisk, which is the popular centre of the city rather like Trafalgar Square in London, there was a pathetic scene. The police were there, lined up in their riot gear; clearly they had planned ahead for the parties just getting bigger with every win. Somebody in the commissariat is probably busy right now cancelling a lot of over-time for 9th July. All they had to watch over though was a dozen or so forlorn fans in their Argentina strips, with blue and white scarves which should have been held high in jubilation hanging limply at their sides. I had to wonder why they were still there - the fans or the police for that matter - but maybe they just were too stunned to form an alternative plan. The police were probably damn well going to stay and get their over-time as they had no doubt had to miss the match to earn it. I don't suppose many had the stomach to watch it on video when they finally did go home.

Along Avenida 9 Julio - incidentally the 9th of July is yet another national day for Argentina and the possible confluence of that and the World Cup final had promised great things - the traffic was starting to get going again, though for a Friday afternoon it was remarkably fluid. Normally all 26 lanes (well roughly, drivers here are not quite sure what those white lines on the tarmac are for exactly) are chock solid at this time. The forty-foot inflatable footballer who has been standing proud between the towers of the Pan Americana Hotel had already gone. How on earth they had disposed of him so quickly is anyone's guess. I looked up to see if they had just cut the painter and let him float away to be somebody else's problem but if that was the case, he had already made his escape. I imagined he was laid out flat somewhere being packed away for 2010.

By the time I got to Av. Santa Fe, things seemed more normal: maybe because this is one of the main shopping drags in Bs As and so a magnet for the people whose interest in Argentina's football prowess is less strong. I had a bit of a mooch but soon came to the conclusion I was in no mood even for window shopping, so I headed down Talcahuano to where Julie-Anne had said there was a Disco supermarket that sold bacon. We had been talking about bacon sandwiches during the match and so this seemed the obvious thing to do! I loaded up on luxurious things that are not available in my local supermarkets - jalapenos, olive paste, real mustard, herbs, goat cheese etc - but could not find any bacon. I had left my mobile phone at home so I could not call Julie-Anne to ask where the bacon was hiding and ended up paying a small fortune for all the stuff I hadn't gone in for. A small fortune here is about what I spend in a weekly shop in Sainsbury's but you soon get used to thinking that the peso is equivalent to the pound, even though the exchange is about 5-1. Still, at least when I get my sudden hunger pangs there is a better chance that I will go to the kitchen and find something I actually want to eat.

So, this afternoon it is the England quarter final with Portugal. I'm not honestly sure what to hope for! Will I have to lay low for a while if they win? Already I decided not to go dancing last night as a gesture of sympathy. Of course I wondered how many of the guys would have the desire to be out there but people know here that you can dance away heartache, so maybe I missed a good night. If England go through to the next stage after turning in such lacklustre performances ealier in the tournament, we expats will probably have to take a bit of flak. My knowledge of football - well any sport really - is limited in the extreme. Still, I do recognise skulking when I see it and the business of holding the ball at the back of the pitch and passing it slowly back and forth while the other team bounce around at the other end waiting for some action reminded me so much of me and Caroline hiding in the 'deep field' during rounders matches at school, looking up occasionally from our chats and even once attempting to catch a ball that was coming straight at me (arms open wide, eyes scrunched closed, stepping gingerly backwards out of the way - of course I missed it). We shall see.

Hhhmmmm, I wonder if David Owen's playing today...!

If England win and you hear nothing for a while, do contact the Embassy!

Establishing Shots

2006-06-24T14:19:00.000-04:00

These are some of the key sights in Buenos Aires, what my sister Elizabeth calls the 'establishing shots' as they would be the first things that get shown in a movie to tell you where it is set...
I am being a bit lazy because these are all within a 5 minute walk from my flat - of course there are others which I will no doubt photograph in due course!

The Obelisk on the crossroads of 9 Julio (widest avenue in the world, it is 20 lanes where I usually cross it and wider elsewhere) and Corrientes (the bustle of theatres & all night bars). Any Argentine will tell you what this commemorates as they are all very well educated on their own history. I'm not and have forgotten what it is there for!

Av 9 Julio, looking towards the Public Health Department and some dense pollution. Taken about an hour before an Argentina match, hence the lack of traffic.

Hhhm, more to follow, the thing has stopped uploading pics, so I will come back to it, honest.

Futbol!

2006-06-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

Buenos Aires today is dark and rainy. I woke up at ten, despite having an early night last night and a 2-hour siesta earlier in the evening. It is so unfair that sleeping is not an Olympic event - I would be proud to represent Britain and would surely bring home medals in both sprinting and marathon snoozing. I was glad to wake up though, as I was in the middle of a very detailed and disturbing dream. It is a recurring theme that has been with me for at least twenty years and involves me watching an aeroplane, knowing it is about to crash. The circumstances are always different and the level of panic changes every time but of course it is never pleasant. In last night’s, I was in the garden in Somerset with two of my sisters when an Air Lingus jet went over, flying backwards with just one wing. My sisters thought this an amusing sight but of course, I knew it was going to crash, which it duly did a little way outside the village. Anyway, I won’t bore you with the rest but I woke up before actually reaching the wreckage this time. Over to you Dr.Freud!

So it is an unusually miserable day here, which may cheer anyone who is enduring an English summer. So far, the winter here has been ridiculously mild. There is a cruel wind that comes in off the South Atlantic and can chill you instantly to the bone but it is infrequent. On the whole, the sun is still warm on the skin and it shines most days. It sets at about 6pm, so there is none of that hideous business we have in England where the winter days seem only to last three hours (I know, I should get up earlier!).

A good day in fact for sitting at home and watching a football match.

Well, what luck! Argentina is playing Mexico this afternoon, so the whole town will be closed anyway. This country is totally taken up with the football, much more so than England though you may find that hard to believe. They are very keen on flag-waving anyway, so there is always an excuse to hang the blue, white and blue from any available position but at the moment it is ubiquitous. I had to go to the post office last week during the Sweden match and it was like walking through a ghost town. This is the main street in a capital city in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Most of the shops I passed were shut. Those which were open had radios or TVs on with people huddled around, following the commentary intently. A near miss - and there were plenty that day - was met with a roar of disappointment up and down the street. They didn’t need to win as both teams had clearly qualified for the next round but they would have liked to. In the post office, I was the only customer and the one guy serving was catching up on his paperwork while his colleagues could be heard in the back office following the match. Every now and then, one of them came through to tell him there was still no score.

The previous week, Argentina wiped the floor with Serbia Montenegro and there was jubilation in the streets of Buenos Aires. Again, I had to be out and about in town during and after that match, and was amazed and impressed by the reaction. There is a tradition of throwing paper around in celebration - probably a bit like the US ticker-tape parade - so all the offices who can open windows must spend the days leading up to a match furiously shredding old documents. Then when victory is in the bag, they open their windows and throw it all out. It is pretty to watch at the time but blimey what a mess it leaves! I had to go round to the banking district and at times needed to wade through clumps of shreddings. Down at the obelisk, such traffic as there was had stopped and a big party was going on with horns and flags and singing and dancing. And no, not pints and pints of beer. That really is not how things are done here. People cannot understand why the English would get plastered while watching an important match, how can you concentrate if you are pissed? How can you commit to memory every beautiful pass, missed opportunity etc? And how can you remember it all afterwards? People seem happy and alive enough without excessive alcohol and I love that that is the norm.

All weekend, a particularly elegant goal was replayed on the TV, one station set it to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, starting with the first possession of the ball and following it being passed elegantly down the pitch, past the other team who might have been lamp-posts for all the resistance they gave, ending up suddenly in the net. Finally, I could see the point of watching football! I doubt that will have too lasting an effect on me though.

I have watched a few of the matches on TV, largely because everyone wants to talk about it and I would rather discuss football than the Royal Family. It is a good way to start a conversation and any chance to speak Spanish is welcome to me. I had been limited to telling people that Rooney is known as potato head as a diversionary tactic to cover up my lack of knowledge. Sarah has filled me in on the thing about his toe and the thing about that hooker but so far I haven’t needed them. England’s first couple of matches were lacklustre beyond belief, so I hope it is not a treasonable offence to diss them in front of Johnny Foreigner! The last match involved quite a bit more running about and fancy footwork, so that rather redeemed them. What I love is the commentary on the TV because it is SO fast I can barely make any of it out. In the Argentina matches it is unashamedly partisan, which they do not really do in the UK in case anyone gets offended. It’s all “Oh jolly good goal to the foreign team, we really should have seen that coming!”. But here they are right behind their own team and talk up a frenzy of excitement. There are a lot of words that come straight from the English without translation - like goal and corner; others which get directly translated, e.g. mid-field becomes something like medio-campo. Best of all are the pronunciations of the English names: Rrrrrrrah-been-sohn, Crrrrr-aaaaa-ooch, well I am not even going to try spelling out how they say Garragher but it is very fruity indeed. Rio Ferdinand of course sounds the least exotic from this angle.

So, half way round the world and for once in my life, I know the names of the England football team and have taken time out to watch them play. What a place of wonders this is.
The BBC seem to think that Argentina is going to win the cup, I hope they are right. This is a town that knows how to party!

Meanwhile, if anyone needs any pale blue and white striped items - you name it - they are all available here in abundance. Including winter jackets for any size of dog, toys, suitcases, napkins, toothpicks… the list goes on. This is a people unafraid of waving - and wearing - their own flag.

A Couple More

2006-06-09T17:46:00.000-04:00

Some beautiful and mesmerising pampas grass twinkling in the sun in the Ecological Park at Costanera Sur.

Marisol and me leaving my favourite milonga at Club Español by means of the gilded lift.

One of my favourite places in Buenos Aires is the Recoleta cemetary. It is stunning and fascinating. These are two of the many angels who caught my eye on a recent visit.

This is my favourite tango photo so far. In case you can't make it out, it is a couple dancing... see her foot, his leg, the twirling haze...

Some Pretty Pictures

2006-06-09T16:37:00.000-04:00

So, I have been asked for more pictures of the city and of the shoes. I will oblige sooner or later. Meanwhile, have a look at these:

1) Linda, Alfredo, me & some gaucho on the ranch (ps, spot the winter clothing...)
Linda & Marisol admiring the gauchos

The gauchos on their fabulous horses ride standing in their stirrups at a full gallop, trying to catch on a little pencil a small ring which hangs from a piece of string overhead.

Violet Beaumont Dances her First Tango

2006-05-18T16:18:00.000-04:00

This is my beautiful god-daughter Violet, staying up late and dancing the tango with a man she'd never met before in a bar London at my leaving do back in March. Who says I don´t give good moral guidance?

Some very dark photos!

2006-05-17T15:34:00.000-04:00

Finally I have lightened up those photos of the competition to make them easier to look at. Sadly, I have been abandoned by the schmuck I was dancing with, in favour of some rich lady who has flown him off early to Europe for a tour of tango teaching. Lucky old Europe! So no more competition dancing for me but what the hell, it was fun to have a go and it is great to have a certificate saying I am a bloody good dancer! At least that is my rough translation from the Spanish...

The old versions:

It Takes the Biscuit!

2006-05-13T18:52:00.000-04:00

Well muchachos, today I have some news, so am resigned to sitting down typing for a while to get the blog back up and running.

In summary, life in Buenos Aires has been pootling along in an extremely agreeable manner. I have my little flat set up as I like it, have been eating very well and dancing probably five days a week. I have taken up again with the lovely couple who gave me private lessons last year and though their prices have doubled, they are still one of the best bargains ever. I have a search agent working to find me a flat to buy. Oh and last night I came first my heat in the qualifying round of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Tango Competition!

Shall I start with that?

Well, I was at my favourite milonga - Club Español - on Thursday, not in the best mood as I had stupidly left my bank card in the cash point and had to sort that out so missed a precious hour of the milonga. There are usually plenty of super dances to be had at Español and this week was no exception, though I was getting rather more than is considered prudent with a chap everyone who has been here will know, Jorge (El Turco) who teaches classes at several milongas and who is quite shameless in offering his services to everyone who passes through town. He is a lovely dancer. Now I am sure I have mentioned many times that the Argentine male is, on the whole, a bit of a charmer and the constant compliments are easy to take if a girl remembers her good grace and a large pinch of salt. So Jorge is constantly telling me I am such a good dancer, gorgeous, blah blah blah. In the middle of the evening, the floor was cleared for a heat in the first round of this big city-wide tango competition that is running here over the next couple of months. The standard was from good to fabulous and generally the best people won, according to a panel of judges and a popular vote. One of my favourite dancers won the milonga section dancing his usual cheeky style with a tall woman from the States. May who used to dance and teach with Michael in London also won with her very suave new man.

So, back to me! After the competition, I danced again with Jorge and he suggested I enter the competition with him in one of the other heats. Naturally I assumed I had misunderstood him or that it was yet another schmooze but he was persistent and, as it turned out, one of the women at my table spoke German and so we had a three-way conversation which established that I had understood him correctly, he did want to dance with me in the competition. The usual reflex "Oh dear no, I couldn´t possibly" was over-ridden by a rather mischievous "What the hell!" So I agreed.

Most of Friday I just laughed.

It was odd not to be at all nervous but I really had no hopes or expectations, do nerves didn´t come into it.

So, Friday night at El Beso - not the busiest milonga, I must confess - the lovely Belen gave up her other plans and came to watch me, which was very much appreciated. Also cheering me on was a new friend who I met a couple of weeks ago and seems interesting. I danced with a few people before the competition, including one in a rather extreme milonguero hold that I can still feel straining my neck today, and a couple of regular favourites. The actual competition was upon us rather suddenly, though had my command of the language been more advanced, I might have known to expect it. I gave Belen my camera and asked her to record the moment and she did get a couple of snaps that I will try to upload soon. Sadly, she could not work out how to take movie clips so I have yet to see myself dance.

We had to dance to a couple of tangos chosen by the DJ to make sure it was all improvised. Of course, I did not see the other couples dance, I just concentrated on following Jorge, and picking myself up from time to time on my most common errors as pointed out by my teachers Romina and Carlos: keeping my feet on the floor, taking parallel steps, holding my torso down, relaxing my shoulders etc etc and I hoped to heaven he would not lead me into a double or triple giro as I almost always get lost in those and end up skipping around trying to catch up with myself! Happily, he probably remembered that as a weak point and I was only aware of one small trip in my footwork. Every now and then I put in a little ankle flick to make it seem that I was in control of my feet but I am still not one for fancy footwork and flying knees, so kept it all very low-key and got through it without any disasters, which is all I wanted.

Then there was a pause while the votes were taken and counted and in the meanwhile a couple more tandas were played. I danced with some other people who said I had been fantastic and was going to win, which I took with the usual pinch of salt. Maybe I should mention that the last time I won (or even entered) anything was a slow bicycle race at the age of twelve, so I am not being modest, I just am not in the habit of either taking part or wanting to win.

We had to go up and get certificates to say we had entered, then stand around on the dance floor being watched while a whole bunch of stuff was read out and finally the results came in. Couple number 2 came in runner-up and go through to the semi-final - applause and cheering and much kissing of cheeks. And the winners, in a coincidence of opinion between the judges and the popular vote .... us. Well it was all I could do not to laugh hysterically I was so astonished. There was more applause and cheering and kissing of cheeks such as I have rarely known. We got more certificates and a prize of a book and a CD. What a shock. There is a small scrap of paper I have to hang onto, which is our ticket to compete in the quarter finals in early June.

Then we and the other couple had to do an exhibition dance to a really long and very slow tango and that was in some ways harder than the actual competition because it dawned on me by then that everyone was watching! Also I had to stifle the urge to laugh and laugh and laugh so that I could actually control my body.

Hilarious.

People started leaving pretty soon after the copmpetition was over. There is another bigger milonga on the next block and there is a general migration from one to the other at about 2 in the morning. We stayed til about half past, then Jorge kindly took me and Belen out for dinner to celebrate. Yes, England, dinner at half two in the morning. I was so glad Belen was there to keep the conversation going and ocasionally interpret into French when I had totally lost the plot. Also good to have a chaperone!

Jorge dropped me off at home at half past five and I got straight on the phone to Susan in London with the news. Her joy was exactly what I needed to make it all real.

Now I shall post this and I´ll come back another time with more general stuff. Sorry to anyone who had given up expecting me to post again.

Cheers muchachos!
Raquelita

Rachel Back in Buenos Aires

2006-05-02T18:22:00.000-04:00

Rachel Back in Buenos Aires

Well I realised today that it is a year exactly since I was sitting in Milan airport typing in my last post on the blog, so I spent a long time typing up some stuff about being back here and saved it onto my flash drive, but I cannot open it on this crappy computer! So tough, I will try other means another day and meanwhile just say all is well here and it really is where I want to be right now.

Hasta la vista babies,
R xx

This is the entry I had planned to post:

Back in Buenos Aires

So, this time last year, I was sitting in Milan airport killing time. I never did go back and edit the results of the dodgy keyboard because when I read it back, I quite liked the rough and ready effect.

It took me almost a year of working on my flat to make it presentable for sale, then pulling out of the sale at the last minute despite getting a reasonable price for it, then doing it up again for rental which was another thing entirely - new boiler, new kitchen, the unbearable business of finding workmen willing to take money off me, the inevitable business of getting on my knees and up ladders and getting on with it. Finally, finding tenants and moving out what remained of my stuff. Oh, what stuff I possess! No matter how much you throw out and take to the charity shops, there is still a mountain of trinkets and clothes and books and just amazing accumulated stuff. It is all boxed up and stacked under the stairs at my father’s house. Well, if he will have five children, he has to bear the consequences!

Today it is three weeks since I touched down at Ezeiza airport. One of the scariest landings ever. The airport had been closed all morning due to fog and there was talk of us diverting to Montevideo to refuel and wait for the runway to clear. We were in a holding pattern for some time, in glorious sunshine, then started a descent into the cloud. But it wasn’t cloud, it was fog, so there was literally no end to it and before I could see the runway out of the window, we were on it. I could barely even see the wing it was so dense, so heaven knows how the pilot managed to take us down so smoothly on instruments alone. I had been sitting next to a very young man on his gap year who has probably been eaten alive by now. His naivety was stunning at times. It is such an interesting age - when you know so little but you have to get to grips with the world and everything seems possible one minute and hopeless the next. The point at which I realised that he was talking to me as someone of his parents’ generation was a little alarming but his mother sounds quite young and funky, so that took the edge off! I gave him a lift into town in my taxi, which seemed a nice motherly thing to do, and let him loose on Buenos Aires. I wonder how he got on.

The first ten days or so, I rented my friend Linda’s spare room and we spent a lot of time together eating big old lunches and going to milongas. Then I moved to a little flat in town which I really like and am on my own agenda, which I also really like. Time is just slipping through my fingers already and I have not danced at all as much as last year. I suppose there is less urgency as I have at least six months here but there is something odd about my attitude at the moment that I can’t quite pin a tail on. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t have to account for it to anyone but myself!

It has been good to see some of the faces I remember from last year, especially Belen, and now I am settled I will have to make a bit of an effort socially. Buenos Aires is still the busy, busy, noisy, dirty place it was last year and I love its energy and its gorgeousness. Some things have clearly changed already. The economy seems to be on the up, quite a few things are more expensive. Entrance to milongas for example, while still generally less than two quid was generally around one quid last year. Internet cafes tend to have doubled to 40p an hour, though it is still possible to find them at 20p if you don’t mind all the letters having been rubbed off the grubby keyboards. My lovely tango teachers have doubled their prices too. A quick look in estate agents’ office windows shows that property prices have been increasing apace, so I had better get a move on if my little stash is going to buy me anything reasonable. If anyone fancies a good medium-term investment opportunity ….

Wary of time slipping through my fingers, I drew up a list of things to do this week and have already made a bit of progress.

I have started looking into that whole property-buying business and talked to a couple of helpful Brits who have already done it. My first step is to get the local police to visit me at home and give me a certificate to confirm my existence. This I take with my passport to a tax office where I can queue for a few days to get some sort of ID card. Once I have that, all I have to do is get the cash - yes, cash - into the country. Either I go across to a bank in Montevideo in Uruguay, to which my bank can wire the money, and come back here with tens of thousands of dollars stuffed in my knickers or I take the more civilised but still bizarre route of using a service that brings in cash via the US and gives it to me in a suitcase. Either way, apparently I will have to sit in a room with several people while they count and check every note. Hey ho! Of course, somewhere between the bureaucratic thingy and the cash thingy I have to find a property and that process will probably involve getting out of bed in the morning. Life can be tough!

My list of things to do this week included signing up for Spanish classes so I’ve spent some time researching schools and prices online and looking at what is on offer, I think I will wait a little until I have really done justice to Michel Thomas, whose method is working wonders and who has the immense benefit of being free. Then I’ll start paying for classes when I am more advanced and have some serious questions to ask. The Michel Thomas course is very intuitive and it has been sinking in in patches, though there are still huge gaps. What I really need is to talk to more people. Taxi drivers are great for that and I have had some good conversations with people in shops & bars too. And of course at milongas, but there is a limit to how useful vocabulary is going to be about how beautiful my eyes are or how smoothly I dance! I had a long taxi ride on Sunday out to the Feria de Mataderos with a very chatty driver. He said he preferred the Brits to the Americans, even though that was not the common view (yikes!). When I asked him why, he explained that the UK had gone to war with Argentina because we were provoked, not because we thought we were in charge of the world like the States does. He also talked about people he knew who had fought in the Falklands and when I suggested that that war had been good for Argentina as it had brought down the military junta, he agreed and said that Galtieri would be like Castro now if they had won. I had to admit, I was wondering whether Galtieri was still alive but apparently he is. We talked about the education system and how he had disappointed his father and he tried to draw me into a conversation about Charles and Diana but I resisted rather forcefully and he shut up! It is quite a boost having conversations like that and in fact a taxi is a nice quiet (usually!) and contained environment for a chat. Milongas are always noisy and busy and you always have an eye on the next dance.

I’ve spoken to the British Embassy about registering with them while I am here and it seems to be the thing to do. They are only open in the mornings though…. I may try to drop in there tomorrow on my way to meet Debbie’s friend Heloise who is here for a very quick holiday and staying in a hotel in Recoleta, the fancy part of town where most of the embassies are. We are going to get a bit of culture and do a bit of boutique-hopping. I may see if I can lure her to a milonga but she said on the phone that she is no dancer. I may leave the embassy to another day as it seems likely there will be queues and forms and conversations to contend with.

Also on the list is tango lessons, so I am going on Friday morning to Romina and Carlos who were so great last year. I think my dancing has improved a lot in a year and the sort of compliments I am getting seem to confirm that. I am still not one for decorations and kicks but every now and then it annoys me that I don’t come up with the goods when I have the sort of lead whose style that would go well with. So that is probably something to work on, though I do not ever want to be a flashy dancer as my own taste doesn‘t really stretch to women whose ankles and heels are constantly twitching and whose knees fly about the whole time.

I have not bought any new shoes yet and I haven‘t put that on the list as something tells me that will happen in its own good time. I only brought two pairs with me, my comfiest black suede ones and the foxy foxy killer red ones. The latter have only seen one outing thus far but I’ll take them out for a spin later.

So what else to say? We did a couple of very touristy things, with mixed success. In my first week, Linda’s landlady suggested we go to this show called Opera Pampa which is not something either of us would have considered otherwise. At its best, there was some truly amazing horse-riding and at its worst there was some horribly twee choreographed dancing to a rather biased take on Argentine history - happy native peasants frolicking in the fields, that sort of thing. On balance, I’d rather have cut the crap and gone to a rodeo but it was largely a good-will exercise anyway. Then we offered to take said landlady out for lunch and somehow that turned into a whole day out in Tigre, which is a rather beautiful place in the river delta. I’d like to go again and see it properly. The other touristy thing was a trip to an estancia (ranch) about an hour’s drive from BsAs to have a big old barbecue and ogle at some gauchos. That was great fun, we went with Alfredo & Marisol, some really lovely London friends who have also been in Bs As the past few weeks but sadly have now gone back. There will I hope be quite a bit of coming and going of people while I am here and that will probably lead to a few more touristy outings - so I won’t need to initiate any of that. Linda and I are off to the opera next week to see another Verdi I have never heard of. Something about Vespas! Watch this space.

All is well; this is where I want to be right now and I am deeply happy, excited, content and proud of myself for making it happen.

That will do for my first post of 2006.

Rachel in MilanAirport Again

2005-05-02T06:26:00.000-04:00

Monday now,onmy way home adhave some time to kill in Milan Airport. So I am sittingata funny little machine with a dradful keyboard - will edit this later! - and hope that it will stay working long enough for me to post a brief note. It has alrady spat my phonecard out once so maybe this will all be lost.

Anyway,had a nice enogh flight here,sitting next to a sweet young Belgian man on his way home frma month inBs As with his girlfriend. I made him promise to try the tango next timehe is over there. I have wandered around the airport and can confirm that it is rather dull and I still have a couple of hours before my flight to London. Long enough I suppose for the baggage handlers to rifle through my stuff and take out my fabulous new shoes... please God can the tiny tiny padlock scare them off!

I will write more about the last couple of days inBs As when I get to London but oddly enough I ended up back inSalon Canning both nights, even thogh tha had probably beenmy least favourite milonga. The concert I was rushing off to on Friday night was a real treat - it was the Buenos Aires Tango Orchestra playing in a splendid hall inside the Congresso building, and they wre joined by an old maestro whose ninety-first birthday it was; Carlo Garcia. The music was fantastic and it was a vry emotional occasion for a lot of the musicians. Aftr that Belen and her friend Gabriella andI wnt to a parilla on Corrientes, where I had my second steak of the day... what a life! We sat there chatting about everything and soon it was close to one in the morning. They reckoned that Canning was the best bet, despite my reservations, so off we went. Actually it was pretty much as I had experienced it whenI wnt alone: lots of cliques and not much room on the dance floor. We did stay for the exhibition dances, which wre much better than the previous lot, then went around the corner to the Armenian club, which was much better. I danced a few but we didn't stay long. It was a really lovely evening and different to have girly company.

Saturday was a running around day, not entirely successful butI did get a couple of small things to take back, and go to Flabella's in time to collect the shoes they'd made me. Funnily enogh, I bumped into American Francis at the Obelisk, who came with me to the shoe shop and then on to Tortoni for one last taste of their hot chocolate. That took up the only possible slack in my day so I neither packed nor got over to the Sofitel for Michael & Oswaldo. I had my last lesson with Romina and Carlos early evening, then went on out to Palrmo for dinner with Kikki, Francis and some Argentinian friends of theirs before heading - again - round toCanning for my last milonga. I think I have mentioned before that Saturday night is really for couples and that was indeed the case atCanning. However thatwas its redeeming point thatnight - you could actually see the floor and use it for more thanshuffling about. Being ina group, there was no problem withthe cliquiness either, so it was not a bad send-off.

I got home a little after three and started packing. It took long enough, even though I didn't have to spend time deciding what to take. Still, I managed a couple of hours of sleep and a good shower befor the landlord came at nine on Sunday to give me back my deposit and get his keys. This machine ismaking funny noses now,so I will sign off and publish this before it disappears! Mor later, R

¿The Last Post?

2005-05-01T21:46:00.000-04:00

Right, half past six Friday evening and I´ve arranged to meet Belen for a concert at seven, so time for a very quick catch-up, which may be the last thing I post in Buenos Aires. I can barely believe it but I am leaving on Sunday. Trying to think of raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens etc but nonetheless close to tears most of the time.

On Tuesday evening, my nap over-ran so severely that I woke at half past midnight and as the milonga I had planned to go to finished at one, I finished off my book and went back to bed. My foot was already playing up by then too, so I thought it best not to take it out and torture it.

On Wednesday, I did a small amount of limping around shoe shops and have ordere a pair to be made for me which I hope will be pretty fab. I bought some others but am happy to say have not gone mad with the shoe shopping, bearing in mind the great sack of shoes I have waiting for me at home. In the evening, I went to see The Producers in Spanish, which was interesting but not as good as I had hoped. It plays here as a Carry On farce and poor Ulla is reduced to Barbara WIndsor-type wiggling and pouting that is a bit of a shame. The line "Wait until they hear abouthtis in Argentina" is left in but the lover from the Argentine in Along Came Bialy isn´t. People laughed at completely different things than in London and the shock value was much diminished - maybe if it had been a musical about torturing students then drugging themn and dropping them out of aeroplanes into the Rio Plata it would have touched more of a nerve.

After that, I went to a Milonga at Nacional which was pretty ropey. Of all the venues I Have been to, that is the most lacklustre and it seemed that someone had been in with the ugly stick before I arrived. Anyway, I met a very nice young French woman who had just arrived and had the pleasure of being the old hand and passing on a bit of wisdom. The evening was also notable for my having a twenty minute conversation in Spanish with a Porteña lady who didn´t dance but was there with her brother. Phew!

By Thursday morning, my left foot was killing me so I went to a pharmacist across the road and explained my dilemma. Well, if I had known you could buy serious drugs here without prescription.... heaven knows what it is they sold me but it has worked a treat! Pain largely gone, swelling down to barely noticeable propertions. If I have time, I will go back tomorrow and see if they will sell me another packet to take home.

I had an unsuccessful souvenir hunt - such tat on offer! - then my class in the afternoon, followed by a return to Club Español, which has to be one of my favourite milongas here. No time for details but it was great til my feet just failed me. At the end, I went with Francis, an American, and Kikki, a Swede, to the splendid Cafe Tortoni for a heavenly hot chocolate.

Today I have been out to lunch and on a tour of La Boca with the parents of my landlord, which was very intreresting as they grew up in the neighbourhood in extreme poverty with immigrant parents.

I´m pretty much out of time now & must hop in a cab and get to this concert.

So I have just tomorrow left and so much to do. ...

Hasta la vista!

It Takes Toes ...

2005-04-27T17:27:00.000-04:00

Ouch!

My left foot has started complaining about all this work it has been putting in when it is supposed to be on holiday. The joints of my big toe are quite painful and I am actually having to walk with a limp. It isn´t gout, it´s a softer pain than that but still, it threatens to mar these last few days of opportunity. The pain killers I have tried are not making any impact on it, Dominique´s universal ointment seems to help a little and I have been taking Elizabeth´s arthritis capsules all the while, but I don´t know what else to try, short of putting it in a sling! The sensible thing seems to be to put my feet up but I think my foot would actually have to fall off entirely to make me want to do that. I managed fine in my class this morning and actually noticed a lot of improvement. As it is the walking which is hardest, I may just have to give up on any last shopping or gallery trips, which is a shame as I have run out of clean clothes and feel like an injection of culture.

Hhhhmm

Anyway, quick update. After all that typing, my nap on Monday evening over-ran so I missed out on Lucy´s birthday milonga at Leonesa and went straight to the place Beatrice had recommended at Hotel Bauen on Callao. I arrived around midnight, and it was busy but not heaving. This was only its third week in operation but the hosts clearly know how to pull in a good crowd. This is the only milonga I have been to in a hotel, it is a lot like those tourist hotels around Russell Square and did make me wonder whether any of them has a decent ballroom. Would it be possible to set up a Bs As style milonga in London? Some market research required methinks.

The floor was lovely - big and wooden and no potholes that I fell into. Actually, I don´t know whether I have mentioned floor hazards before on the website but some of these places have dangers underfoot that do test your balance, especially if you are being led into some fancy bit of manoevering when you discover them. Happily I haven´t fallen over yet, though it doesn´t help my tense old shoulders if I know there is a pothole coming up. I danced as much as I wanted, even though it was a bit hard for me after an afternoon gazing at the screen to see well enough to catch the chaps´ eyes .

I danced a couple of nice sets with a Turkish chap who lives in Geneve and we chatted quite a bit in French about the tango scene in Europe. First and best is Paris, as Susan and Linda have been discovering lately. Next is Istanbul, which Linda knows a little too. Geneve is good too apparently but he had nothing to say about London.

I also danced a few with a lovely man called Charlie, who reminded me a bit of ballroom Robert for his enthusiasm and his singing. He spoke no English at all, which was good for me as we chatted quite successfully in Spanish. This is possible only when people ask the right questions and I get to sound reasonable with my standard answers but he was astonished I had only been speaking it these past three weeks. I know, these Argentine men are easy with the compliments - my beautiful eyes, my amazing dancing, my pretty face and for the more honest ones my nice accessories - so I do take them with a pinch of salt. Still the fact is, I am quite pleased to have picked up at least enough tof the language to get by.

It is fantastically irritating that I typed a whole load more than this yesterday but it was lost when something went funny with the blog site. I had only saved it up to here, so that serves me right. It is now Thursday and I am going to post this now then go to Club Español for an early dance.

The lessons have been going really well and I strongly recommend Carlos & Romina to anyone who is coming out here. God, I hope that somebody notices a difference when I get back to London!

Ten days to catch up on

2005-04-25T21:06:00.000-04:00

Alright Muchachos, it is now Autumn, which is what it should be here, and cold enough outdoors for me not to mind sitting and typing for an hour or two. When I got home on Saturday night/Sunday morning, a mighty wind was getting up around town and as I wound down over a mug of chamomile tea and an old episode of Friends, shutters and loose cables clattered and crashed about in the light well outside the window. By the time I surfaced on Sunday, the world was fresh and damp after a night of serious weather. The water trays on the window boxes were full and the wind was still howling around. A good day for whacking up the heating and lounging around at home.

So, the last time I wrote properly in the blog, I was off for a nap then an evening at Salon Canning. Now, there is a statue of George Canning in Parliament Square so I think he was some sort of statesman. Maybe I will look him up in an encyclopaedia when I get back, so that in my next visit here I can be as informative about Canning as I was about Sunderland.... I´m sure they will be fascinated, although I doubt that anything about Canning will draw such horrified attention as my exposition of the Geordie accent. Funnily enough, Salon Canning had been mentioned to me so often as a top milonga that I found it rather disappointing. A big room, it was nonetheless very crowded, with a lot of much younger people than many of the places I have been to (these are probably the people who normally have jobs to go to, so can´t stay up all night during the week). It does have a nice floor - big, square and wooden - but the crowds made it difficult both to make the necessary eye contact to get a dance, then when that was accomplished to do anything more than milling around. The person in charge sat me at a table with a couple of other single women, one of whom looked pretty forlorn and became increasingly so over the next hour as she failed completely to get a dance. She gave up in the end and left. The other woman did much better, but she seemed to have a lot of friends there who came up and asked her to dance. It seems that the younger people do this more than the nodding method, which is a bit confusing for us foreigners and also a bit of a shame. I am a huge fan of the nodding method and have learnt not to feel guilty about extremely exaggerated and determined ways of looking away when someone I do not want to dance with is trying to catch my eye.

I did have a few dances at Canning but not many and none of them very satisfying. Even dancing with Ricardo Vidort was a bit dreary, though it was nice to chat with him. I did have one comically apalling dance with an old geezer who seemed to think that he was playing a big bandoneon, not dancing with a woman. His interesting method of leading was to push imaginary buttons on different parts of my back, expecting me to translate this into instructions for one move or another. I have come across milder forms of this before, but usually accompanied by some other more useful information through the frame. I skipped around as best I could, then at the end of the first song I said "I´m terribly sorry, this doesn´t work for me", he agreed and we gave up. It may be that he danced for decades like this with a wife who understood but for me it was utterly hopeless.

There was a demonstration by a Japanese couple in deeply curious garb. They danced as if the whole point was to show off the girl´s underwear from as many different angles as possible. Judged in those terms it was a great success and they must have worked harder than I ever will to achieve it. Actually, it might have looked good on ice but it fell short of my exacting standards for the kind of tango I want to watch. Purely a matter of taste of course and they were generally very well received. I didn´t stay long after they had danced and was probably home and in bed by three.

That was the mid-point of my stay and may well have been the low point really. It was followed by a weekend nursing a digestive system that didn´t really want to leave the flat, so I missed the last opportunities I might have had to dance with Miguel before he went off again on his travels. He told me on the phone that he had had a fantastic Saturday night at Club Sunderland, with the sickly star Carlos Rivarola doing his best to get up and dance. It was a bit depressing to have missed that but que sera, sera. It may well be that I just needed to re-charge a little.

On the Sunday afternoon, I did venture out to San Telmo to look at this famous antiques market and the general touristy shenanigans. It was fun, it has clearly grown over the years to include crafts on peripheral streets and tango music at every turn. I remembered Paddie and John taking a holiday in Cuba when neither of them really likes salsa music, coming back loathing it with a passion. I must say, anyone who doesn´t ike tango music should stay well clear of Buenos Aires as it is impossible to avoid.

After a couple of hours meandering on nothing more than an Alka Seltzer and a couple of crackers, I was suddenly starving. This coincided with passing a place called Cafe Seddon, so I went in and sat down, just as a tango singer started to croon accompanied by a much younger man on an electric piano. They were great and the perfect accompaniment to my meal, though it is hard to carry on chewing when someone is directing a tragic song right at you. Towards the end of their set, he turned one number into a sing-along and I realised that I was the only gringo in the place as everyone else knew the words. It got better; it turned into a tango karaoke. First one woman got up, clearly not a professional but powerful and well rehearsed, then her mother belted out Mi querida Buenos Aires to a huge applause. Finally, a young man got up and announced his engagement to the woman on her cell phone at his table, then he serenaded her with a magnificent theatrical number, during which I was used as a prop - probably some puta trying to lead him astray - but he held his hands to his heart and addressed the rest of the song to her, ending up on his knees with sweat pouring down his face. I caught they eye of the pianist and we shared a big laugh at all of this.

I ended up spending much of the evening there, extending my quick supper with a coffee then a glass of wine. There was a pair of fabulous tango dancers who came on from time to time and danced a couple of tunes and I chatted with them as well as the musicians. Well, I say chatted but of course that is an exaggeration! The singer was called Ruben Guerra and had some sort of history with Triollo, a top tango musician from forty or fifty years ago. The cafe itself is really nice, with high vaulted brick ceilings and a big shiny wooden floor. The bar in the centre is huge and the walls have huge dark wood and glass display cabinets, like in an old pharmacy. I put aside the nagging feeling that I hadn´t danced all weekend and just enjoyed doing something different.

By Monday, the sun was out and I had a new energy for getting the most out of the trip. Finally, I had communicated effectively with Michele´s friend Belen and arranged to meet her at Confiteria Ideal for a chinwag and an afternoon milonga. We had a nice coffee and managed with my little Spanish and her little English to discover that we both speak French, so that made conversation a lot easier. We both try to talk the hard way, then when it gets impossible, we revert to French to clear up the mess.

In fact, I have noticed while trying to get to grips with Spanish that my poor little brain is sending me all sorts of other languages when it can´t carry on in the one I want. So the languages I do have are very close to the surface: twice I have met Germans and fallen straight into speaking to them in pretty good German, despite barely having used that for twenty years or so (yikes!). The half dozen or so words of Italian that have lodged in my head over the years have made an appearance and I astonished myself and a shop assistant the other day by launching into a question in Russian. I have had no chance to use the expression "I don´t speak Hungarian" but it´s right there, ready and waiting! It is extraordinary what your brain stores up for a rainy day. It makes me wonder what else is still in there.

Anyway, we went upstairs to the milonga at Ideal and had a fine old time. I bumped into big Michael from London, whose last day it was in Bs As, and it was nice to have the chance to dance with him here. As his lovely wife doesn´t tango, she wasn´t there and he had to leave quite early to catch up with her. Ideal is probably the most obvious place to dance here, so in fact there were several people there who one or both of us knew, which made me feel very much part of the scene. We both danced a lot and I tried to take some pictures, though I kept that to a minimum. I don´t know why really, it is a touristy place so no-one would be at all surprised to see a camera. What I must do before I leave is get someone to take pictures of me dancing.

We stayed at Ideal until it closed at ten or eleven, then drifted out into the night and parted at the Obelisk with a promise to talk on the phone and meet up again later in the week. Belen said that some other English people were coming out and suggested we all meet up. It is nice to have a big old chat without struggling for words but I didn´t come out here to dance with English people, still I hope my enthusiasm was not too reserved!

Tuesday was scorchio here, so I put on a frock and some strappy sandals and went out to meet Miguel for lunch. We had a lovely time, he is so incredibly enthusiastic about his city and kept thinking of things he wanted to show off - like the different kinds of trees, his favourite old buildings, some beautiful avenue, a specialist shop - and diverting up and down the streets around his neighbourhood pointing them all out. He took me for a delicious lunch at his local restaurant and ordered some typical dishes he thought I should try, including an entree of cold roast beef with cream and tuna sauce which was interesting and of course a huge grilled steak. I kept quiet when he made some disparaging comments abut vegetarians who think they can ever understand Argentina and so really know the tango...

After lunch we had a little walk and he took me to his favourite shoe shop, which was shut, and with running commentary we went through a small arcade and into a shop selling typical Argentinian clothing. Here we had a long conversation about the relative merits of Scottish and Argentine wool, beef etc (thanks Daddy!), the wearing of kilts in such a cold country (streuth) and I was called upon again to have an opinion on Prince Charles. I said I would not want everyone in the world discussing my business, the helpful shop assistant said "but there were three people in that marriage" and happily Miguel changed the subject. Slightly surreally, he also gave me some helpful information about cotton lingerie and tried to find a shop that had a good brand. If I was relieved not to have to shop for shoes under his scrutiny, I was doubly relieved when we couldn´t find the right pants shop!

On Tuesday evening, I went to Teatro Colon to see I lombardi alla primera cruce (or something like that I don´t have the programme with me). It was fantastic, though a ludicrous confection born out of some allegory about nineteenth century Austrian politics, which may be why it hasn´t been staged in London for some time (still, they keep putting Wozzek on, which is ludicrous and crap, so what do I know.) The accoustics at the Colon really are amazing, even I could tell the difference; the clarity of the voices filling such a huge space without distortion was quite striking. To be honest I´d have happily lost the first act, as it is mostly recitative and is about an old feud between a pair of brothers, the naughty one - bass, dressed in black - ends up killing their father. By Act II none of this seems to matter, the woman they had fought over is inexplicably dead and for some reason the good brother - tenor, dressed in blue - has seen fit to leave Lombardy to its own devices and take his teenage daughter off to the crusades. Had it not been for this dubious bit of parenting, we´d have lost all the best tunes as it is the daughter who lifts the whole thing up with some gorgeous arias and a lot of good sense about the futility of such vain warmongering. After the best part of three hours, there are only two people left standing on a stage where recently-forgiven naughty brother has just died and a great pile of dead infidels lies before the burning city of Jerusalem. Powerful stuff and probably quite timely if it were to show in London or Washington.

I had nice interval chats with the couple sitting next to me, including a discussion of the relative economic situations in our two countries. Blimey!

I wasn´t quite ready to call it a night after the opera, so I ducked into a dreadful cafe by the Obelisk and have a cafecito and a plate of panquekes to keep me going. I had the foxy red shoes in my handbag and was on my way to Bohemia for a bit of a tango on the way home. Now, Bohemia advertises itself as the salon that never closes but I say that is not worth much if nobody comes! How fantastically disappointing - a group of half a dozen or so people was leaving as I arrived and that emptied the place. The women on the door were very apologetic and one of them suggested I could try going in and see what happens but I wasn´t up for sitting in an empty room hoping some lone tanguero would turn up to sweep me off my feet. I walked home and did a bit of tango homework to burn off the sugar and caffeine.

Wednesday I had a lovely long wak in the Reserva Ecologica, a big park at the edge of the city, which came about when a land reclamation project was abandoned and all sorts of flora and fauna just arrived to take it over. There is more pampas grass that you could shake a feather duster at and it is very very beautiful en masse. I may have to take a trip out to Worcester Park when I get home to see it in captivity! Bird watchers would enjoy it. It also seems to attract a lot of human mating activity, with teenagers snogging on benches and people emerging ruffled from the pampa onto the main footpath. The park goes up to the River Plata, which isn´t really a river, it is more like the Wash looking out to the North Sea. If it were a river, you´d be able to see the other side! It is a big brown expanse of water with huge container ships being tugged along it to the docks.

When I came out of the park, I hopped in a cab and got him to take me down to La Boca, the poorest neighbourhood of Bs As by the old port, home of the tango and of Maradona´s famous football team. I didn´t feel any desire to get out tof the cab and take a closer look at any of this but was glad to have seen it. The area called Caminita appears on lots of Bs As guides and is quite colourful, but it is a small tourist trap in the middle of an area where people live in decrepit houses cobbled together out of corrugated iron or old timber. It is serious poverty, although there are plenty more people in this city who are worse off and live on the streets. The driver was very interesting and made the most of a fare who just asked to be shown around the area. We drove around the Bonbonera football stadium, a big ugly concrete thing that means the world to millions of Porteños. I made some reference to the hand of God, which the driver thought hilarious.

That evening, I went to Viejo Correo, a really nice club with a great atmosphere, even if it wasn´t all that well attended. I was a bit tired after all the walking, despite my two hour nap, so was content that there were not so many people to dance with that I would want to stay out very late. The place has a lovely big floor of checkerboard ceramic tiles and the walls are an interesting eclectic mix of carpet, polystyrene tiles and some sort of "I can´t believe it´s not cobbles" stuff. This is probably something to do with the accoustics rather than an interior decorating crisis. I´d love to go back here on a slightly busier night but I am running out of nights now, so that may have to wait til my next visit.

The music was interesting, the DJ was obviously trying to break away from the standard repertiore, though he frequently failed to spot that nobody got up to dance. In Argentina, they play three or four numbers in similar style usually by the same orchestra, then break these up with a bit of disco or a comedy tango. At this point everyone sits down and you only get up again when you have secured a partner for the next set. So if the DJ chooses to put on something a bit off the wall - like four slow but jaunty tuba milongas - to which nobody responds, there is a while to wait before the next set. That aside, all my dances were good´uns, including that chap Rueben who had sent a message across to me the week before so that I would turn around and catch his eye at some other dance.

I ran out of men at about half past two, so I got down off the foxy, foxy heels and headed out for a cab.

On Thursday I met up with Belen again at Club Español. Now this is a place I wish I had discovered sooner, it is gorgeous, has a great floor, loads of people I knew and is a block and a half along the road from my apartment. Juanita was there, which was a shock as I didn´t know she was coming out here. In fact, she won a prize with her cloakroom ticket. This is a frequent thing at milongas: about three quarters of the way through, a draw is made of all the entry tickets and prizes might be a packet of biscuits, a bottle of champagne, your dinner bill or a pair of shoes from the sponsor. It is great fun and breaks things up for a couple of minutes.

Also at Español on Thursday was Oscar Acebras, the lovely tango singer who comes to London from time to time. I danced with him at Balham last year rather disastrously but happily he didn´t remember me from then and was delighted to meet me on the grounds that I am a friend of Michele´s. We danced a couple of times with much more success. He feigned astonishment that I have only been dancing a year and a half, but I am getting quite used to all these lovely compliments and take them with a pinch of salt. Rueben was there again, as was Lucy Alberto who seems to run a few of these things. They both greeted me like old friends, which is another thing I like about this place. There were a couple of tango teachers there on the lookout for foreigners, so I danced with them and took their cards, though I have no intention of going to them as I have settled on my teachers for the rest of the stay.

Belen introduced me to some other English people but not until we were leaving, so I wasn´t sitting there chatting about the weather all evening, which is a relief! We did chat a bit to some locals in the single ladies enclosure, who I hope to see again this evening. In fact there are three milongas I wanted to go to this evening, so I had better get on with this and get napping!

Club Español is lush - like an embassy or, of course, a gentlemen´s club. It has a swanky looking restaurant downstairs which I would love to try but maybe that is something to look forward to when I am here with Susan and Linda - alright ladies? The lift is in a wrought iron cage, itself not unusual in Bs As, but this one is painted with gold. There is a sweeping staircase and just adornment and marble, marble everywhere. The milonga was very crowded when we got there but happily thinned out later on as the afternoon crowd sloped off to their steakhouses.

Oh, that has made me hungry!

Right, my teachers are a sweet young couple called Romina and Carlos, who were recommended by Dan and Judy. I have been going to public classes here and there, which has been interesting and useful but really I needed to get some serious, personal and sustained attention. So I´ve been to them every day exept Sunday and will continue to do so until I leave. Romina works with me on technique and we giggle a lot whan I keep making the same mistakes. Slowly, I think I am ironing out some of my worst flaws but there are plenty more to go. Then I dance with Carlos and they both observe and correct what I am doing. It really is the best attention I could get and ridiculously good value. I´d recommend them to anyone. I have to say I always knew that Leroy, our London teacher, was good but now that I have been here and experienced a lot of different styles, I appreciate just how good he is. I only wish more English men would come to his classes and take advantage of what he has to give.

On Friday, I had another day out walking around; this time in the parks of Palermo. There is a botanical garden there, which sounds grand but is only as big as my local park in Vauxhall and is bordered by some seriously busy roads. It is no Kew Gardens but it does have some fab trees and a huge population of cats. The mosquitoes from my apartment must have caled ahead to warn their brethren that I was coming and I was pursued as by demons. So I gave up on that park and went across to the zoo. I had expected to find it a bit depressing, as zoos so often are, and without the company of a small child to brighten up the experience it didn´t seem promising. But in fact I liked it so much I spent the rest of the afternoon there. True, one or two of the animals looked unimpressed - the polar bear and the condor seemed suicidal for example - and many of them had tiny spaces to live in but there wasn´t a hint of ropiness in their eyes or in their fur and for the most part the animals were pretty perky. Maybe the ropey ones are swiftly transferred to the parilla. The zoo also has some lovely buildings and is set out in a very pleasing way. When it closed, there was some sort of craft market going on outside, so I had a meander along that before ging home for my nap.

I misfired for a second time that week in my choice of milonga, going to a place that was on the tango map and in Tangauta but which turned out to have a disco on that evening. I took a look inside and though the building was rather lovely, the disco was heaving with people so I made a hasty retreat and was glad I had left the business of drinking coffee until I was actually there this time.

Four hours typing but I´m nearly there!

Saturday, what did I do on Saturday? Who knows! In the evening I went to Club Gricel again, which was celebrating some anniversary or birthday and all decked out with balloons and banners. Carlos and Romina had beeked a table to get some of their students dancing in a social setting and it was fun to meet some new people. I spent much of the non-dancing time chatting with a lovely Australian lady whose name I have rather disgracefully forgotten. She was there with her partner Barry, a very enthusiastic ex-ballroom champ and a lovely dancer. I had possibly the worst ever dance with a strange and slighty smelly old chap whose lead was a total mystery to me. I tried to make my excuses after one number but he refused to let me go! So I was stuck with him for the rest of that set and try as I might, I could not get anything out of it at all and skipped and tripped around with - apparently - a right old face on me.

So, back to Sunday, when it got cold and windy and I stayed indoors most of the day. I did venture out for a walk late in the afternoon just to brush away the cobwebs and feel like I had actually had a day. I strolled across to the swanky part of the centre, where I think Michael & Oswaldo stayed in Feb. Ooo-er! Still, coming from Knightsbridge I´m sure they felt right at home. There is an arcade that has all the designer shops from Sloane Street and a few fur shops that beggar belief. One called Breeders has a window display of the most gaudy fur coats dyed day-glo colours; inside, a tiny stick of a woman was trying on a jacket so hideous it had to be high fashion. Anyway, that´s not really my thing, so I doubled back towards home and - you guessed it - had a little nap.

When I went out it was to a place that has been on my list all this timeand has also been mentioned pretty often so I was keen to see it, though hpoing it would not turn out to be another Canning. Porteño yBailarin is a great place, the music was lovely, I had some great dances and rather stunning company at my table in the form of Beatrice, a Uruguayan lady who comes over every month to get her fix of the tango. We chatted quite a bit, mostly in Spanish I have to say as she has a lovely understandable accent. Most of the time though she was dancing and with the amount of time she must have spent getting herself ready and manouevring herself into that dress, I should bloody well think so! Just remembered what I did on Saturday - I spent the afternoon at a hairdresser gettting all the old layers of l´Oréal stripped out and something a bit more uniform in its place. Well, I´m worth it! Came out with the sleakest, shiniest Barbie hair ever. Now I know how they do it but I don´t suppose I will rush to have that again, it is a shock to see myself in windows and mirrors looking coiffed.

Anyway, Porteño y Bailarin was top. I had a couple of bad, bad dances and realised that both were with people nobody in the know will dance with. This is where being adept at ignoring potential partners comes in - once you know you don´t want to dance with them, all sorts of details in the environment become worthy of inspection in an OTT show of looking the other way. It wasn´t terribly busy but there were enough people to keep me dancing til half past three and I could have stayed longer, except that I knew I had to get up this morning for my class at eleven.

So here we are, it is today, Monday. This time next week I will be back in London. Boo! I do miss people of course but I am not really looking forward to going home and I´m sorry boys but I am not really looking forward to dancing with the English men. I wish they would come out here and catch the fire of the tango and learn to choose decent aftershave, be more charming, be less embarrassed and dance better - yes, that is selfish of me but I think they would enjoy it too.

Now, I really need a nap!

Tonight I will go to one or two places, depending on how much power the nap gives me. I have pushed back the times of my lessons this week as I think I will try to fit in as much dancing as my feet can stand but should probably do some shopping too or nobody gets any souvenirs, including me!

I hope that satisfies the people who have badgered me for more news... I am not about to read it through, so I hope it all makes sense.

Adios chicos!

Indian Summer

2005-04-20T16:35:00.000-04:00

Hola!

Buenos Aires is having an Indian Summer, it has been scorchio and this may be the last day of decent sunshine, so I am not going to spend it in the internet shop typing any more than I have to. I have some notes and will come back in when it is gloomier and update the blog.

Just know for now that I am well and happy and ready to have a bit of a blitz of lessons and milongas before I go home at the end of the month. I also still have a list of places to see and will probably do a bit of shopping too, though the business of packing up my possessions before I left London has left me with a strong feeling that I do not need any more stuff, however lovely, cheap, sentimental etc etc it might be! Anyway, I´ll be back....

Right; off to explore the Reserva Ecologica and finally get a look at this big old muddy river they are so proud of.

Hasta la vista babies.

Plumbing Adventures

2005-04-15T22:56:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to all who have emailed and left comments here on the blog. It is extremely gratifying that anyone takes the time to read this at all, let alone get a kick out of it! Do keep ´em coming.

Philip, if I wanted the thrill of a rowdy football match, I have my pick in London! I shall ignore your advice, much as you ignored mine in Las Vegas; and I shall care about as much as you cared missing out on all those great shows and Elvises!

John, I am doing my best with the Spanish and finally, finally making some sense of it. All the classes are in Spanish, so I have no excuse for not knowing words like left, right, foot etc. But people who speak good English are always keen to practise and I often opt for the line of least resistence!

Paddie, yes the foxy, foxy killer heels have been out, and they will be out again over the weekend. I am a bit scared of tripping in them though as they are higher and spikier than anything else I possess, so it is one more thing to remember not to stab myself while crossing or uncrossing my feet. And there are SO MANY important things I have to remember while dancing, some of which will I hope one day come naturally to me.

Yesterday was a rainy rainy day here in Bs As. Happily, it only seems to rain for a day at a time and now the sun is shining. I awoke late morning when the phone rang - Debbie calling from South Africa to say hello and tell me how she´s been settling back in after her holiday to London for Niki´s wedding last month. Cute. It is a small world really. I´ve sat in my living room in Bs As talking to my sister in Los Angeles, Dominique in Hong Kong, Debbie in Johannesburg and now one of the tenants in London worried that the inscrutable lady upstairs is about to cut off their water supply. And of course the BT 1571 lady as my Daddy seems to be out or screening his calls whenever I ring.

So I spent yesterday morning at home reading, then went out to the Teatro Colon, which is one of the world´s top opera houses. Daddy had told me about it on the way to the airport and he knows a thing or two about opera. It is a splendid place, more like Versailles than Covent Garden. I took the hour-long tour, which included some time in the Presidential box watching the resident orchestra rehearse, then a solo violin recital in the Presidential reception room. Then they take the tour down into the bowels of the place, which stretch right under the huge Avenida 9 Julio and include carpentry, scenery painting, costume and shoe workshops as well as practice areas for the performers. We saw some ballet dancers going through their paces, which was interesting. I booked myself a ticket too for next week to go and see a Verdi opera called the Lombards and the First Crusade, which I had never heard of and Daddy reckons has not been performed in London in his time. I wonder why - we shall see!

As it was glorious sunshine today, I went over to the smart area of town, called Recoleta. It is mainly for this area that Buenos Aires is called the Paris of the South and it´s a fair comparison. One of the main draws though is its cemetery, which is quite incredible. It is said that it is cheaper to live a life of extravagence than to have your eternal rest here (cheaper still to do neither!) and indeed it is a lavish place. It is the first time I have felt inspired to take out my camera, so expect all my holiday photos to be of stone angels and decrepit memorials. The place is laid out like a small town and each family has its own ´house´ in styles that range from the baroque to the bizarre, with some serious statuary and poignant stained glass panels. Many of them have clear glass windows, through which you can see the coffins stacked up inside. I don´t know enough about decomposition etc but couldn´t help wondering how that all pans out. Some families have presumably died out - or maybe fallen on hard times - as the memorials are allowed to fall apart; coffins too, alarmingly enough. There were no bones on display though, so maybe there is some level of decrepitude that they are allowed to reach before the authorities step in and tidy up. Evita´s grave is there, though it is nothing special to look at. There are all sorts of generals and worthy citizens who founded this or that according to the brass plaques on the memorials. One memorial has a life size statue of a man in a dressing gown, which was a bit strange until I looked it up in the guide and found he was some famous boxer.

Also in Recoleta is a complex of parks, one of which has this stunning huge shiny metal statue of a water lilly, which opens its petals in the morning and closes them at sunset. It is set in a big round pond with water cascading off the sides and I spent a long time walking around it looking at all the reflections. It is something to do with some architect friend of Outi´s in London, but I can´t quite remember what. From there I walked up to the new national library, a hideous concrete building that is apparently of some merit: hey ho, call me a philistine!

So, I have made some effort to take in the sights and next week I will make another. I´ll probably kick myself when I get back to London but I feel sort of at home here and not really drawn to sightseeing.

Last night I went to a class at Gricel that was being taken by Miguel Angel Pla, the fantastic tango teacher who I have mentioned before and who I knew slightly from his visits to London. He teaches here with a beautiful young woman called Mariella, and I will go again to her lessons after Miguel has left Bs As next week. It was an interesting lesson and I have taken away more homework to get my giros and boleos to come more naturally. As ever, he criticised the tenseness of my shoulders which he cannot really understand. I told him it is because I am English which he seemed to think was a joke! How I am ever going to master the business of relaxing the top part of my body yet keeping my legs lively and my arms just the right place on the floppy to firm spectrum, I do not know. Miguel seemed quite uninterested in giving me any private lessons while I am here, probably because he knows I am quite lazy between times and will never be a great dancer. It must be depressing to teach someone like me!

Sometimes I look at other people dancing and I absolutely cannot believe that I can do it. Sometimes even when I have just sat down from doing it I cannot believe that I can do it.

So where else have I been dancing this week? I mentioned briefly that on Monday I went to a lesson with Ricardo Vidort (thanks Michele for clearing that up!) , who is a lovely teacher of the old school. He is another one who can get hold of you and make you dance well, although it is slightly disconcerting that his heavy smoking makes him wheeze as he dances. I met a chap there who I recognised as the Michael with the pony tail who teaches in New Malden. We chatted for a while before he had to go back to Mei for his supper, then on for their last all-nighter before getting on a plane in the morning back to London. I didn´t dance with him and as he only ever dances with Mei in London, I doubt I ever will.

After that lesson, in the fabulous Leonesa centre, I stayed on for the milonga and danced with a few people before my rumbling tummy sent me home at half past ten. The lady who runs it had to come up and give me a hint to look behind me for the nod and a wink as there were people there who wanted to give me a test run! She had been sent over by a lovely and rather cheeky dancer called Rueben, so I was glad she had pointed that out.

Tuesday night I went out to el Beso, which looks much more like a nightclub as we know it but of course all the dancing is tango. In fact, following a suggestion by my sister Elizabeth, I found a great website with photographs of some of these places, so I have put the link up on the right hand navigation bar - do take a look. It is the sort of place where then man takes your ticket and tells you where to sit; in my case this was on a bench wedged between a couple of other single women. It was already quite busy when I arrived and looking around, I noticed quite a few faces from earlier milongas. This included a couple of men I had had had no chemistry with at all, so I was able to avoid looking them in the eye - great system! I do wish we did it in London. In fact I wonder now whether they were doing it at the milongas I went to in Hong Kong - I thought they were just being unfriendly!

Rather heartbreakingly, the man with the pink shirt from Ideal was there (in a different shirt!) but he didn´t give me the nod all evening. The music was all rather heartbreaking too that evening and I felt quite overwhelmed at times: wanted to smoke one minute, pick somebody up the next, burst into tears a moment later. I didn´t do any of those things and ordered an Irish coffee instead. When I got home I called Dominique in Hong Kong and had a distressing chat with her, so a good cry about that did at least get some of the emotion out.

Well, the internet place is about to close, so I´ll just say that I had a quiet day on Wednesday with plumbing adventures - a constantly flushing toilet is no joke! - and am off to Salon Canning tonight - after my steak and my nap of course.

Adios amigos!

Gotta Dance!

2005-04-12T16:45:00.000-04:00

So, where was I?

Saturday night, having expected a quiet night in I got something quite else. Miguel came and picked me up from outside my building. He was late, so I spent ten minutes chatting with the porter downstairs about Buenos Aires and London and Prince Charles. Everyone wants to talk about Prince Charles but it took me some time to work this out because he is called Prayinsa Carlos and Camilla is pronounced Cameezha. I managed to convey my indifference to the match and that I think it is a bad thing for the whole world to watch people as if they were in a zoo. Clearly this is not what is expected but I´m not about to brush up on royal gossip and would rather get the vocabulary to discuss something interesting!

As I type, there is a demonstration about something or other approaching down Maipu. These are a fairly frequent occurrence in Bs As and I am afraid I don´t take the trouble to find out what they are about. Always they are led by someone banging a huge drum and often there is a person with a loudhailer either singing or shouting about the injustice du jour. Today it is singing of a repetitive refrain, accompanied by a Notting Hill type of whistle. They have stopped outside the building next door, so maybe that is the home of the wrongdoers, which would make sense, we are a block away from the HSBC building and there are stacks of other big businesses and banks around here.

But I digress! After collecting me, we went round to get Dan and Judy in San Telmo then on out into the suburbs in Miguel´s little Fiat to another genuine community milonga in a sport and social club called Pedro Echagüe. Another marble floor surrounded by tables. Couples, very well turned-out in their weekend finery, sat and ate and waited for the dancing to start.

Most of the evening I danced with Miguel and I have to hope that I have been improving by osmosis. I certainly had great fun and am amazed but delighted that someone of his talent would spend so much time dancing with a novice like me. The other great joy of that evening was watching the dancers: people who had probably been dancing together for decades yet could still make each other giggle with a sudden change of pace or an unexpected twist. This is the real tango, as Miguel explained, echoing something Michele had said in an email from London last week. She talked about "the guys who have the Tango in their blood and just can't not dance! They love it so - and it's very 'catching'". It is so very true and on the whole something rare in London, maybe not surprising in the country that has offered Morris dancing to the world.

Here at Pedro Echagüe were old couples who clearly loved to dance, had to dance. Even people unsteady on their feet when they approached the floor were transformed and inspired to elegance, grace and downright cheekiness as soon as they started dancing. They hold each other comfortably, naturally and their footwork is impecable. Although they know each other´s moves and share the same timing, there is nothing choreographed about what they are doing and the spontaneity is evident. It is bliss to watch this kind of dancing and desperately sad that there is a large generation gap in the tango which means that this is unlikely to survive when these people hang up their heels.

When I told Miguel where I had been dancing, he was quite sniffy about Ideal, saying it is just full of tourists (although as I pointed out, I had only danced with one foreigner when I was there) but he reserved the utmost contempt for Club Catedral. It is billed as an edgy, punky sort of place and I wouldn´t argue with that. It is an old warehouse which still has its rough wood floor and high beamed ceiling. All sorts of broken chairs and tables are arranged around the place, straight out of a skip and no attempt to patch them up - a bit of a hazard in a short skirt and tights but I did find one chair that was smooth enough to sit on. The place was lit, well just about lit, by a home made chandelier about 4m in diameter and all around the vast walls was more junk and artwork, or maybe the junk was artwork; it was hard to tell. A huge portrait of Carlos Gardel hung above the band platform, though I doubt the great man would have been too impressed by it all. My favourite thing was a huge Argentinian flag hanging on one wall, on which someone had scralwed "NO TODO ES ROCKENROL". Anyway, I took a class, which was interesting enough despite starting an hour late. It was good to go right back to basics but alarming that I could so easily pass as a beginner!

Once that was over and the dancing started, I really lost interest in the place. It was far too flamboyant for my taste - look at me dancing rather than gotta dance dancing.

My other class last week was with a lovely lady called Mimi, who clearly commanded more respect from Miguel although he didn´t say anything about her. I had enjoyed the class, even though it was in Spanish and felt I did learn something.

Miguel very kindly drove me around at the weekend, taking all of us home on Saturday night at God knows what hour, then coming bcak to collect me for lunch on Sunday. He had invited me to meet his family and eat a fish that had been caught by a friend of theirs in the River Plata. The family was very sweet, consisting of a sister and her husband, their son and four grandchildren. There is a daughter too but she is a psychiatrist and could not make it for lunch on account of some patient emergency. A book I have been reading about Buenos Aires makes great meat of the Argentinian preoccupation with psychiatry and I had thought it a bit exaggerated. Maybe not. The people were charming and the fish was delicious. Miguel´s sister is very talented with her hands and since retiring has made a living from knitting and crocheting beautiful things. I think I will call him this week and ask if she could make something for me.

I went home and made a couple of calls while Miguel had his nap, then in the evening we met up again to go to an outdoor milonga in a bandstand in a suburban park. Again this was one of Michele´s recommendations, so I was very happy to do that. We danced once and said hello to a few people but didn´t stay long. We drove instead beyond the City limits to a place called La Barraca, where there was a milonga and the opportunity to eat. It is a splendid venue, again it is a social club of some standing, and its architecture reminded me of the Soviet Russian resort toen of Sochi; curvy white concrete and palm trees outside, maroon curtains and marble floors inside. Who should we bump into but Dan and Judy, so we sat with them and ordered a meal.

Again, the standard of dancing was fabulous and as the place was fairly sparsely attended, we had every opportunity to observe while eating. We also danced a lot and I hope that by osmosis my technique is improving. As the evening wore on, the moves got more complicated and by the last dance, Miguel was doing all sorts of hooky things and somehow I was keeping up and not tripping over. I rather wish I had someone here to film me dancing so I can see whether it looks as good as it feels.

Oh dear, I am getting carried away but I must go now and let in the cleaner. She is coming at two, although in Bs As (again, it suits me so well!) punctuality is not really a virtue. Not a single class that I have been to and not even the concert started on time. I love it!

So, no time to tell you about the class yesterday with Ricardo Vidort. I know his name from London and I think Leroy talks about him, but I can´t remember what it is that he says... someone remind me in an email please!

Ciao-ciao!
Raquel

Time is Flying

2005-04-11T20:44:00.000-04:00

So, Monday afternoon has come around again. I was a little panicky when I realised that I´ve been here ten days already and in three weeks time I will be back in Blighty, tapping my toes and feeling like it was all a dream. I am already looking forward to my next visit to Argentina, when I hope to have a bit more time to go up to Iguazu Falls on the Brazilian border, Salta up on the other side near Chile, and down to the glaciers near Tierra del Fuego. But this trip now is all about tango.

The weekend just gone was fantastico. Obviously I didn´t come back here after getting my nails done on Friday as it occurred to me that fresh nail varnish and keyboards are never the cleverest combination. Instead I went home and had a little nap. Then, after a supper of grilled steak and potato crisps, I dressed up and took a cab to Club Gricel. I´m sure that when I am home I will not quite believe that I went out alone after eleven to a club where I might not know anyone and where my ability to communicate is severely limited. Hey ho! I hooked up with Daniel, who had so sweetly been teaching me Argentine Spanish the day before at l´Arranque, and sat with him and some other pupils of Mimi.

The club got very busy very quickly, so there was not much room either on the dance floor or off it. The surprising thing was that there was a bit of a bumper cars element on the dance floor; I thought that people here knew better how to use a small space. Anyway, it was a pleasant enough evening, despite Daniel´s insistence on getting some champagne that made me feel a bit off. I bumped into the Americans Dan & Judy again. I had seen them at l´Arranque the night before and in fact we had gone out for some supper afterwards. They may well think I am stalking them as I then saw them on Saturday and Sunday nights too.

The important thing is that my foxy, foxy killer heels came out with me on Friday night and had a twinkle around the dance floor. They didn´t get to do any real dancing as space was limited, but they´ll be back!

On Saturday, I did get to this concert that my landlord was playing in, and it was great fun. He explained to me on the phone that the reason I hadn´t been able to get in the week before was that the front entrance of the theatre is closed. He couldn´t explain why there wasn´t a note on the door suggesting that potential punters might like to walk around the block and get in at the back but he did agree that that might be a good idea! It is a family show called Minga and is set in a tango cafe. There is a small band in the corner playing lovely tango music while half a dozen acrobats do tango-themed tumbling and trapeze work. A fun way to spend an hour and a peso (20p!) on a weekend afternoon. There were loads of children in the audience and one of the nicest things was watching their enrapt little faces.

I had thought I would have a quiet night in on Saturday. Some Australian women I had met on Friday night explained that Saturdays are the night of the week when couples go out together, so there are slim pickings on the dance floor for us single girls. Through the week husbands and wives go their separate ways to dance but Saturday nights are pretty much part of the marriage contract when they make up for the week´s misdemeanours.

Still, so much for that. Miguel called early evening and asked if I would like to go out to a special dance so of course I said yes.

I have to go - I have a class at six - so will come back and tell more about the weekend tomorrow.

Still at it

2005-04-08T18:38:00.000-04:00

Just a quickie - popped in to the internet cafe quickly while awaiting an appointment to get my nails done... well, it is so cheap here it seems rude to do them myself!

The dancing is good; I´ve been to a couple of interesting different venues - Club Catedral, a bit anarchic and not the kind of dancing I like: l´Arrenque, very traditional tea dance - and had a couple of classes. It turns out my problems are exactly the same here as at home - quel surprise! Still, that helps with the vocabulary.

The language problems remain and I guess that it would (will?) be a matter of years rather than weeks before I can truly get to grips with the Argentine tongue. The really strong accents change just about every consonant to a mutation of zh, so it is very hard to spell out mentally the words that are being spoken, then translate them into something recogniseable. That said, once I explain that I do not understand and why, people could not be nicer about slowing down and articulating more clearly. A chap in the class I went to yesterday took it upon himsdelf as a matter of national pride to teach me some Argentinian and we did indeed converse at the milonga. On my way here I did a bit of a Niki Jackson and started up a conversation with a chap in the lift (!) which carried on up the street. I can´t really say anything interesting yet but the will is there.

Time up - I may come straight back here and edit this with my shiny nails but failing that, will post next week as this place is not open at the weekend. It is a gorgeous day here too, so I may save it and come back on a rainy one.

Hasta luego, chicos!

The Real Thing

2005-04-04T19:31:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I arranged to meet Miguel Angel Pla, the tango teacher who I know slightly from his visits to London. He was going to a dance that night out in the sticks at the Sunderland Club and put me in touch with a Canadian couple who were going too. The dance wouldn´t even open until eleven, so it was clearly going to be a late night. My attempts to talk to Michele´s friend Belen were laughable, thanks to the paucity of my Spanish and the thickness of her accent... must try harder!

Occasionally I looked at the TV to see whether the Pope had died yet and of course eventually he had. I have 80 channels on cable, half of them have had non-stop live broadcasts from Rome for the past few days and as they are all saying the same thing, I had some hope of working out what they are saying in Argentinian but it has been a bit forlorn. I´ve been able to understand it on the Spanish channel and the Italian one but the accent here is still very difficult to crack. People can understand my Spanish but their responses are largely mysterious, as so many of the consonants are changed to variations on ´zh´. I think my vocabulary is expanding though, from the TV subtitles and generally looking around at notices.

I went out wandering the streets much of the day. I came first to the internet cafe, intending to post the exciting news about the Confiteria Ideal, but it was shut. In fact the area just around my flat was pretty empty at the weekend as it is predominantly financial and business. So I headed off towards Avenida Corrientes, the Shaftesbury Avenue or Broadway of Buenos Aires. My landlord, a musician, had said he was playing in a concert of tango music that afternoon and I thought it would be nice to catch it but when I found the theatre, it was all shut up. So I did a bit of bookshop browsing instead, bought a copy of "The Peron Novella" in the hope of improving myself, then went for a coffee and a cake at el Gato Negro - a lovely old fashioned coffee shop.

To my delight, I discovered that The Producers has just opened here... What better way to learn the language than to hear something I know very well translated? I found myself singing "quiero estar productora"... Must get a ticket for that!

After a siesta, I had a light supper and got myself changed for dancing. Dan and Judy came to collect me at the flat and we took a cab out to the Sunderland, arriving on the dot at eleven, at which point there were about three other people there, none of them dancing. Miguel had said that there was no point getting there early and another time I´ll believe him. He arrived long after midnight, by which time it was hotting up.

The Sunderland Club has been hosting tango events since 1921, it is the real thing. The venue is about as unlikely as its name suggests. With apologies to any Maccams who read this, the name doesn´t exacly conjure up a world of glamour and terpsichorean delights, does it? Although I know as well as anybody might that there is plenty of fun to be had in Sunderland - and so it proved. It is in fact a basketball hall, the size of a small hangar. (Well, if I knew about these things, I´d probably say it is the size of a basketball hall but there you go.) The walls have all the notices up for the teams and at the far end were those racks of benches that may be called bleachers. The floor is not one I´d want to be jumping about on, made as it is of those reconsituted marble floor tiles. Fine for dancing though! It had the atmosphere of a community hall and was laid out with trestle tables and plastic chairs. The tables filled up with family groups and there was much to-ing and fro-ing between them as people met and greeted. Some people ate, some drank, some just danced. Goodwill buzzed around the room: Dan said it was like the sort of community event which sometimes happens in his little Canadian island town, but in London I know of nothing like it. except possibly a wedding or a christening party. Maybe the Queen´s silver jubilee comes close.

For entertainment, there was a very flashy couple who came on and demonstrated two tangos. Legs all over the place and not really my cup of tea. Then the organiser picked out some punters to demonstrate and they were absolutely excellent - none of this vertical splits malarky or heels and knees flying around, just classic moves danced with skill, elegance and exquisite timing. Then there was a beautiful singer called Roxanne, who Miguel had introduced me to earlier, and who he later told me had been in London with Tango Por Dos. Well, that show was the first time I ever saw the tango and how thrilling that she was partly responsible for me being there at all. If only I´d had enough Spanish to elbow through her admirers and tell her that!

I danced a bit with Miguel, who was frequently distracted and waving over my shoulder at his many friends but, as ever, a joy to dance with. The friends of his who came to say hello between dances all smiled broadly and gave my big kisses on the cheek, without even being introduced - very friendly these Argentinians. As it was much more of a social event than just a dance, I didn´t do any of the looking around and staring so the only other people I danced with were a couple of Canadians at our table. It was a lovely evening and apparently would go on until five but we left some time after three to get back into town. Our cab barely seemed fit to reach the end of the road but somehow it kept going.

After rising late on Sunday, laughing at myself for even thinking I´d missed the Archers, I went off to the Feria de Mataderos, again out in the suburbs. It is a bit like a country fair and has loads of craft stalls, street food, live music and gauchos (cowboys). The gauchos had a street set aside where they had put down a load of sand to soften the tarmac and they had some sort of horseback competition to thunder along the road one by one, standing up in their saddles to insert a pencil in a ringsuspended from a ribbon over the road. There were mini-gauchos too; one seemed no older than my nephew Ben and his legs were not even long enough to allow his feet to dangle down the side of the pony. Easy to see how the John Wayne stance develops.

So - all is well in Buenos Aires. It seems I have spent much of today typing, so I shall sign off now without so much as a read through to check my spelling and get something to eat before I go to find this class.

Hasta la vista!

First Tangos in Buenos Aires

2005-04-04T14:24:00.000-04:00

Rachel in Buenos Aires

And tango I did!

On Friday morning, I sat at home with my Spanish tapes playing in the background, Hazel´s and Michele´s recommendations spread out before me and the Buenos Aires A-Z in hand. After working out where and when everything was, the choice was clear: about four blocks away along the street behind mine is a place they both mentioned called Confiterie Ideal, which had an afternoon milonga. As added incentive, Michele had pointed out that this street is home to a cluster of tango shoe shops.

It did take a bit of courage. Anyone who told me before I left London that I was being brave, now I know what you meant! I will confess to wandering into a few shops on the way to distract myself - ooooh, those heavenly beautiful shoes!! - and I did almost walk into an adult cinema that seemed to be at the address I was after and almost sent me right back to the flat. What I was looking for was two doors down and something else entirely.

The Confiterie Ideal is simply fabulous. Think Prague after communism, or Vienna in ´The Third Man´ - very grand and very down at heel. The building went up in 1912 and has high moulded ceilings, white marble floors and walls clad in mahogany panelling, generously punctuated with huge mirrors. Above the panelling though, the plaster is bare and pock-marked; great holes remain in the mouldings where a suspended ceiling may have been removed; an assortment of fans hang down, some working, others just covered in dust. I daresay one day somebody will restore it to its former glory but I am so glad to have seen it in all its shabbiness.

The ground floor is a huge ritzy tea room but I didn´t let myself be distracted by the cakes. The music drifting down the marble staircase drew me up, around the ornate iron lift to the tango hall. Luckily for me, another single woman arrived just ahead of me so I watched and followed her in. I paid my ten pesos (less than two pounds, a little over three dollars) and asked where to sit, then in I went. What a gorgeous place. A couple of hundred tiny tables arranged around a vast area set aside for dancing. The place was very busy and on each table, there was something to indicate that it was taken - a drink, a jacket etc. Right at the far corner of the dance floor, I found my spot - on the front row with a perfect view of all the dancing.

I changed into the gold strappy dance shoes I bought in China last year: for my first milonga I wanted something I knew I could dance in and didn´t dare try the foxy, foxy killer heels that Linda gave me before I left. Barely had I done up the straps and looked up to survey the scene, than I picked up a signal from a man in a pink shirt. Next thing I knew, I had nodded at him and he was approaching me for a dance. Magic! It had sounded impossible in London, this obscure way of getting a partner, but in fact it is the easiest thing in the world. If you want to dance, you look around at the men and if there is someone you want to dance with particularly, you can stare at them. If they want to dance with you, they hold your eye and slightly tilt their heads. To say yes, you nod back and stand up; to say no, you look away and he comes no further. It is pretty subtle but at the same time quite clear. In fact a couple of men actually walked towards me in order to catch my eye because the floor is so big you´d need bionic eyesight. I tried the ignoring thing when someone was walking towards me and it did make him change direction. On the whole though, I didn´t feel like being too picky and I danced for most of the next four hours.

So, the man in the pink shirt was a lovely dancer; he was experienced enough to test out my limits and flexible and forgiving with me when I reached them, missing a couple of his cues for moves I could not follow. At the end of the first song, I said "Gracias para mi primero tango en Buenos Aires!" which I think means "thank you for my first tango in Bs As". He looked a bit stunned and I said I danced in London and had arrived yesterday, then he took my face in his hands, planted a big kiss on my cheek and said "bienvenuto en Argentina". How perfect is that! So we danced the rest of that set and chatted a little too. He was very complimentary about my dancing and said he was glad to catch me on my way in as I would soon be spoilt by all the attention. Just what a girl wants to hear!

The men were mostly a generation or two ahead of me in age and mostly quite charming. On the whole, they were very good dancers, although I did have trouble with a couple of them, much as in London. One held me too low in the back in a vice-like grip that made it really hard to move. Another held me at arm´s length and gave such a subtle lead that I just tripped around hanging onto him for the first half dance. I had watched him dancing very elegantly with an elderly lady earlier and thought how much they looked like Geoff and Mary Midgeley - however incongruous that might be. Anyway, by the end of the set, I was more or less following him. Then I danced with a man who dressed a lot like Saul from the London ballroom scene and had about as many moves. Well, rough with smooth - I shall be careful not to catch his eye again! There was also a man a lot like Danny deVito, who got me dancing some serious clippy moves to those dramatic Pugliese numbers.

My favourite partner was Oswaldo, a lovely gentleman with thick white hair and the moustache of a retired general. I felt as if I was responding really well to his lead and I caught myself in the mirror a couple of times and thought I looked pretty good! Again he was very complimentary and charming. He came back later to dance a milonga and we had a terrific skip around the floor, including some new steps for me. It is always gratifying when new steps come in and I manage to pick them up and not trip over. We chatted quite a bit and I hope to dance with him again. I know he will be at Ideal this afternoon but I think I will leave it today as I hope to go to a class this evening.

I stayed until the dance finished at eight in the evening, then strolled home taking a slightly scenic route down some new streets. It will be fairly hard to get lost here in the centre as the city is laid out on a grid and I live on the biggest main street, within view of the huge Obelisk monument. There was a record shop open, so I bought a couple of cheap CDs - Pugliese, Gardel and something folksy with a gaucho on the cover sporting the biggest beard. The supermarket was open too, so rather than go to a restaurant, I popped in and filled a basket with some unrecognisable stuff to try out, plus a huge steak for about 50p. The wine section was too big to ignore, so I had a quick look round and chose a bottle called Aberdeen Angus, in honour of my father´s insistance that the only reason the Argentinians have decent beef is that the cattle come from near his home town in Ayrshire, Scotland.

It was a nice friday night in, with my grilled steak and red peppers, a glass of wine and the new music on the stereo. I was in bed by eleven and up at half seven the next day - it seems I have found my natural time zone!

Rachel in Buenos Aires

2005-03-31T21:51:00.000-04:00

Rachel in Buenos Aires

Well, I am here - sitting in my local cybercafe on a street called Maipu, which is between my flat and the big old tourist trap shopping street Florida. Actually, now that I have sat down, I´m starting to feel that funny swimming about that means my brain is somewhere in the foothills of jetlag. I have checked my email, so that works - many thanks for the sweet messages (if you want to comment on this thing for all to see, you have to register.)

I have´t done too badly so far.

After a series of queues at Heathrow and a very late take-off into cloud so low it may have qualified as fog, we lost more time coming into a thunderstorm in Milan. It´s always fun to have torrential rain and lightening when you are hurtling through the sky in a big can, especially if the can sounds like it is being driven by a giant rattling two-stroke engine. It was time to start working on my laid-back latin attitude but with the tight connection time getting tighter and tighter, I did´t really do too well. Milan airport was ghastly. Not a hint of jet-set glamour. It is the sort of old-fashioned airport where the planes park out on the apron and somebody turns up a bit later with some stairs, down which the first in the queue can look out across the storm for any sign of a bus. True to the stereotype of bus drivers the world over, when he does turn up, he parks just far enough away from the bottom of the stairs to give himself a good laugh at everyone running and getting soaked. Then once the bus was full of soggy people, he found something else interesting to look at until the mood took him to drive us to the terminal. Ai carrumba! So, I had ten minutes to find my way to the right gate and hope that it was still open. But no, more sadists at the security gate. All men, they stood laughing and barking at me as I went in and out of the scanner and beeped every time. In any sensible airport, there would just be a woman there to frisk me and send me on my way but Oh no; I even had to climb half way through the X-ray machine because my stuff got stuck on the conveyor belt and it can´t have been in their job spec to be of any assistance. I ended up running up the escalator clutching all my jewellry and the belt from my trousers and feeling utterly humiliated. Only to find that the whole airport was in disarray because of the storm. So I made the connection and had another hour to wait before we were cleared for take-off. I realised later that I had lost my lovely ring in the process, a present from my sister Christine. Poosible excuse for a bit of shopping!

My delight at having two empty seats next to me didn´t last long as some woman came and requisitioned them both. HOWEVER, I found a suitable punishment in subjecting her to my very first ever Spanish conversation. I reckoned either it would be so painful that she would go back to her own seat or I could get in some practice. The fantastic thing is that it worked (up to a point of course, she was very patient and encouraging!). Needless to say there was a lot of pointing and gesticulating and a smattering of distant schoolgirl English thrown in. She warned me about Bs As´s tourist traps, in particular the so-called ´taxi boys´who prey on gringo women. Apparently I´m not to believe anyone who says that they love me in a tango venue, he´s only after my money! I say I can spend it as I please.

¿Too much detail already?

The cab ride into town was a bit shocking. Talk about deathwish driving. Anyway, he got me to my apartment block and I was actually early to meet the landlord and agent. How´s that folks - me early for an appointment at 9 in the morning... I laughed. SO I left my bags with the super and took myself around the corner for a coffee. It was quite thrilling to order and then pay, all by the use of spoken Spanish!

The apartment is fine, if a little spartan. I am about to go and get some shopping at the supermarket which is very conveniently just next door. Doubt I will be able to resist a few cleaning materials and I may spend a mindless evening getting rid of other people´s finger prints from all the doors! I am too tired to think of dancing today and I need something to keep me awake until bedtime.

I´ve been out walking this afternoon, just around the centre of town and up to Michele´s recommended ATM machine. I´ve mooched into a few shops, had my first steak and chips lunch and even been to a beauty salon for a bit of a tidy-up. When I get home I will call Michele´s friend and see about meeting up some time. That is all quite a lot of spoken Spanish in one day, not to mention twice sitting alone in cafes, so I call it a good start.

Tomorrow, the tango....

Hasta la vista

Raring to go

2005-03-29T12:50:00.000-04:00

Sunday night, the end of a lovely family day and finally it seemed really upon me that I am off to Buenos Aires. Everything was set up and all I had to do before Wednesday was pack my bags and learn Spanish.

Well, I also had to get my flat ready for the people who will be staying here while I am away. This took a little longer than anticipated; it appears I live in some squalor! I've spent many an hour sorting through the ludicrous amount of stuff I own, taking difficult decisions (how many paint-spattered pairs of espadrilles does a girl need? for example) as I shift it all out of the cupboards and sort it for rubbish, recycling, charity, eBay, keeping. I don’t think of myself as a shoe person and yet I have filled one of those huge woven plastic bags just with shoes – and that is after chucking out the espadrilles. Some more thinning out required when I get back, I think. I can’t even begin to express my horror at the clothes.

How hard can it be to learn Spanish, anyway?

It was the 6th of May 1998 when the idea first came to me to go to Buenos Aires. I went to a tango show that evening in London and came out so excited I just wanted to sell up and move to Argentina. Of course, in the morning I found I had other things to do and anyway I could just about acquit myself in ballroom dancing by then. Despite Susan’s encouragement, it was another five years before I even attempted the Argentinian tango. I don’t know what I was thinking, putting it off like that, the tango is fabulous.

So now it is Tuesday evening, I am surrounded by boxes and still have one room left to tidy. This time tomorrow I will be on an aeroplane somewhere over the South Atlantic. I've booked a taxi from the airport and a flat in central Buenos Aires for the month - all on the internet, so possibly a bit of a leap of faith. If all goes well, I will post my progress on this site.

So watch this space. Adios for now.