For Becky’s Square Odds.
An oddly attractive use for some kitchen chairs
SpainValencia
The oddly charming drainpipes of Valencia
SpainMooching round Valencia old town, you may notice at roughly eye-height, little faces adorning the drainpipes. Quite what they’re for is in dispute: they may be the logos of local metalworks from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, or they may be some kind of local tradition connected with warding off evil spirits. A few are fairly new, but mostly, they’re beginning to vanish as old and rusting fixtures and fittings disappear. It’s a shame, because these are charming: if a little odd.
For Becky’s Square Odds.
And Marsha’s Photographing Public Art Challenge #36
A Pair of Oddballs
Festivals, SpainThis year, it’s not too early to go to the fantastic street carnival, Las Fallas, which takes place in Valencia in February and March every year. You’ll find fanciful figures, fireworks and fun. But if travelling’s still tricky, we can join this pair of oddballs on their motorbike, whom I found a few years ago in the museum devoted to this special festival.
For Becky’s Square Odds
With thanks to Sue of Words Visual, for reminding me about this doughty pair of old crones,
Love your Library visits Valencia
Books and reading, SpainWalking down a busy main street in Valencia a few years ago, my eye was caught by a welcoming shady square. Through the palm trees I could glimpse a few columns – maybe Roman remains? and a steady stream of people drifting in and out of a handsome building.
Curious, I investigated. It was a library. The Central Public Library of Valencia. I went in.
How spacious, airy, beautiful and welcoming it was! Later, I discovered that this building had once been the first psychiatric hospital in Europe, founded in 1409 as the initiative of one Friar Juan Gilabert Jofre, to care for the mentally ill. It was called Hospital de Folls de Santa María dels Pobres Innocents – the Hospital of the Poor Innocents. This actual building was begun in 1493, and was and is in the form of a Greek cross, which housed the different wings of the hospital. It added general hospital facilities in the 16th century and also suffered a destructive fire.
During the 1960s, hospital facilities were moved elsewhere in the city, and the authorities began the site’s demolition: the church, the pharmacy and old medical school are gone. There was an immense public outcry. What was left was saved, and the building retained and developed as a library and archive service. Those columns I saw outside are not Roman, but surplus to requirements when the building was redeveloped.
It’s a fabulous place. Not only is it a welcoming, light-filled and serene space, it’s a busy one. It’s right by two of the city’s universities, so study areas are busy with students as well as the general public. The collections seem vast: the English section, for both adults and children was well-stocked, At one point I sat down in the section devoted to newspapers and periodicals and browsed through recent copies of the Times and Sunday Times and some more academic publications in English. Of course other European nations were represented too. There were book groups advertised, including a monthly one for children in English (obviously aimed at Spanish children, rather than any resident English ones); an ‘introduction to philosophy’ group for children; reading groups for dissidents; for theatre-goers; for students of Valencia’s social history, as well as the usual more general ones; photography and cookery workshops; lectures (‘Football now and as it used to be’). I was beyond impressed. Here’s a gallery of this library community at work on one ordinary weekday afternoon – before the pandemic – I don’t know how it will have changed.
Meanwhile, what have I been reading this last month? Reviews for most of them will appear over the next few Six Degrees of Separation posts.
Fiction:
Gabriel Chevallier: Fear.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Delphine de Vigan: Based on a True Story.⭐⭐⭐
Donna Leon: Beastly Things.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Patricia Lockwood: No One is Talking About This.⭐⭐(abandoned)
Sakaya Murata: Convenience Store Woman.⭐⭐⭐⭐
Jane Smiley: The Strays of Paris.⭐⭐ (skim-read)
Sarah Winman: Still Life.⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Non Fiction
Allan Ahlberg: The Bucket⭐⭐⭐
Charlie Gilmour: Featherhood.⭐⭐⭐⭐
Ann Patty: Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin.⭐⭐⭐
For Bookish Beck’s Love your Library.
Street art: a tour of Berlin, Spain, and ending up in England.
Blogging challenges, Catalonia, England, Germany, London, SpainIt was in Berlin that I first really discovered a love of Street Art. Maybe it’s because I got some background understanding by going out for the afternoon with Dave, of Alternative Berlin Tours. I learnt the difference between graffiti, street art, stickers and transfers, and something of the political anger and activism that can inform so much of it: particularly near the former Berlin Wall. This has now been re-invented as The East Side Gallery and I don’t show anything of that here because many of its images are so well known. Here are some examples we saw in Dave’s company, or exploring later on our own.
Having done Street Art Module One in Berlin, I was ready a year or so later to do Module Two in Valencia, It was here that I met an irrepressible type who peoples doorways and random bits of street furniture, painted by David de Limón.
And it was here too, as we once had in Seville, that we encountered street artists doing their day – or occasionally night – job.
Here are a few more:
And here’s one just for Past Squares …
And we’ll have a whistle-stop tour of Spain and view a few more:
Granada’s a place to relax too. 
An ancient city with Arabic, Jewish and Christian roots, Tudela has embraced street art too
Maybe this is my favourite image of all, a bit of fun created from damaged plasterwork in Seville:
Although – hang on – no. My real favourite has got to be in Manor House Gardens, Hither Green, because the artist appears to have designed this image with my granddaughter in mind.
With thanks to Patti for providing us with a chance to wander city streets this week in quest of images that amuse, provoke and stimulate us. It’s the perfect moment to join the Photographing Public Art Challenge too. As well as Monday Mural. All this and Past Squares and Monday Window too … This is taking multi-tasking to a new level.
The header image comes from the top floor of an apartment block in Málaga.
‘How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun’
Blogging challenges, England, India, SpainAt the moment, we all need the glow, the zing that a good splash of yellow can provide. Luckily, Jude has provided the perfect opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour. Let’s have an injection of gutsy, vibrant lemon, amber and gold alongside our long awaited Covid vaccines.
I’d thought of showing those springtime flowers we all love – aconites, daffodils, primrose, tulips and kingcups. But maybe I’ll save those for another day. Here’s a complete hotch-potch of yellows to cheer up a day which, here at least is thoroughly and dismally grey.
The sign that greets me whenever I leave the house 
A shop and its reflections in Granada 
My first friend in Bangalore: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city 
William, obligingly wearing yellow, at Newby Hall. 
Advance guard at Le Tour de Yorkshire 
A puppet at the Museo del Titere, Cádiz 
A pinted door in Valencia. 
A back street in Seville. 
Garage door in Seville. 
Another Seville door 
Valencia 
A Seville building in need of a make-over gets one …
To view any image full size. just click on it. The quotation of the post title is by Vincent Van Gogh. No wonder he liked sunflowers. And the header photo shows one word from another quotation. Wander round the St. Paul’s area of London and you’ll eventually uncover the whole sentence, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room: ‘What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?‘ What indeed? In this area of London, enough to fill an entire guide book.
Zest up your day with toast and marmalade!
Blogging challenges, Food & Cooking, SpainIt’s that time of year when the house is permeated by the bitter, bright, clean and honeysweet smell of marmalade-in-the-making, as a pan of carefully cut up peels, juice and sugar bubble away enticingly in the kitchen to make this year’s supply of Seville Orange Marmalade. Is anything more guaranteed to wake you up and start your day with a zing than a couple of slices of toast and home-made marmalade?
I first wrote about it here, on this day in 2011. I wrote about it often. But our most memorable marmalade year was two years ago, when I wrote about it again, on almost this day.
Up above your head, in many a Spanish street, are oranges, glowing orbs of colour that brighten the cityscape. And two years ago we were in Valencia, home of the orange. Finding windfalls abandoned in the Turia Gardens, we gathered them and brought them home. What could be better than marmalade made, by you, from oranges you’ve harvested yourselves?
It turns out that my first marmalade post was written on 21st January. Today is the 22nd. I hope this isn’t a hanging offence, in the world of Flashback Friday.
A district and its doors: El Carme, Valencia
Blogging challenges, SpainWhen we were in Valencia, we stayed in the old district of El Carme, just within the old city walls. It had its glory days in the 19th and 19th centuries, but fell on hard times. By the 1980s, and into the ’90s, people referred to the area as ‘H&M’ – that’s hashish and marijuana. Anyone with any choices moved out. As dilapidated buildings collapsed – like here….
…. street artists moved in. Followed by other creative people, attracted by low rents and prices. Now El Carme’s narrow streets are vibrant, buzzing, crammed with bars and fashion boutiques.
No bars, restaurants and shops here. But in other ways this is a typical street in El Carme.
And yet its wealthy elitist past lives on, in its doors. Why did such tall narrow houses have such magnificent doors? Well, the rich wanted to live here. They needed to express their individual wealth in some way, since spacious grounds were out of the question. Doors then. Doors through which a man on horseback could enter. Maybe a carriage too. Stables and servants downstairs. The noble family above. No two doors were the same. Here’s a small selection.
This is my entry – my first – for the popular Thursday Doors challenge, which I first learnt about from Judith’s ever-interesting blog, Beyond the Window Box.
Click on any image to view full size.
Ragtag Saturday: Foraging in Valencia for marmalade in England
Blogging challenges, Food & Cooking, SpainOne of the joys of being in Valencia was walking down streets and through parks lined with orange trees. It’s orange season right now, so they were looking at their best. They’re bitter Seville oranges of course, the ones we use for marmalade. Juicy sweet ones would probably be too much of a temptation for passers-by.
Orange trees in Valencia.
Last Sunday though, when we were walking in the Turia, we spotted fallen fruit under many of the trees. A forager by nature, I couldn’t leave them there to rot. No, we had to gather them, so that when we returned home, we could have a very special souvenir of our holiday. Home-made marmalade, cooked from fruit gathered in Orange Central: Valencia.
Foraged oranges.
Part prepared…..
Chopped and ready for the final bit of cooking.
I can’t show you the finished article. The marmalade is simmering on the stove as I type.
Today’s Ragtag Challenge is: cook
P.S. …..
Ragtag Saturday on Sunday: The river that isn’t a river
SpainYesterday, I showed you a Valencian scene from centuries ago: a man fishing in the River Túria.
No, the water you see isn’t the river. Cooling ponds and watercourses break up the space.
Come with us now to see it as it is today. No longer a river, but a long sinuous public park wandering the northern edge of the old city centre. By 1957, the river had flooded once too often. Too many homes had been lost and livelihoods ruined. The city made the bold choice to move the river, and give the vacated space not to a road, not to housing, but to the people, as a park. At any moment of the day you’ll find commuting cyclists, dog walkers, joggers, families, elderly couples, sporty types – all enjoying this 9 km. long space.
Today, we were there too, walking under ancient 15th century bridges, through cool wooded glades, all the way to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències, Valencia’s iconic futuristic cultural and leisure centre.
So this is part two of my contribution to Saturday’s Ragtag Challenge: and no river in sight.
From Pyrenees to Pennines 
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