Cristmas 2010 England and Spain

As the year of 2010 drew to a close there were a riot of parties. The first was the Spanish classes party. This party was in a bar which is within the park itself. All the classes were there and we as Brits, sang our Christmas carols, whilst they sang theirs, which are very different to ours.
The party ended with the male Spanish teacher telling us all jokes. A few, including myself stayed on when all the older end had gone and visited a local nightclub. I don’t remember when I got home, but I remember laughing a lot.

                                          The other Spanish classes.

                                          Los Alumnos Inglés

I went home for Christmas and spent quality time with my daughter and grandson. We also went to a local park for the day feeding ducks and playing on the amusements, then later we spent a lot of time time with friends and family. There are no photos here. This was my private time with the people I missed so much in sunny Spain.
Before I left to visit other friends in a different city the English weather gave us an impromptu display of Christmas spirit in the form of three inches of snow. This is how I left the little village where I had spent so many years whilst my family grew.

                                       My daughters garden.

At that time my son lived in York and I spent a day with him in the Shambles and later at his house before going to my other friends house in a different suburb of York.
(The old streets of the Shambles are famous throughout Yorkshire. Old is a relative term. The streets of the Shambles would be around two or three hundred years old, The walls of the City are Roman and after they left there was a Viking settlement here. In all the history of York spans over two thousand years.)

                                         The Shambles.
Whilst I was at my son's house the Salvation Army came down his street playing carols and singing. They do this every Christmas, but I had to walk to the other side of the street because I did not want anybody to see the tears streaming down my face.
It is always the little things you miss when you are away from home.

For The New Year I stayed with some friends in York. I had not seen them in a year and I  was looking forward  to having time with these old friends again. We had walked miles together in Spain and had shared many good times. We had our first pint together in a local bar with a roaring fire. I had tears in my eyes again. This was a perfect homecoming for an ex pat.

 The next day we had a few beers in a typical English bar called the Bluebell.  After the living in Olvera and it's one beer fits all policy it was a pleasure to see all the guest beers lining the bar in the bluebell.

For Old Years Night  went to a local bar where they had set up a Casino night for adults and children. We played for monopoly money and everybody joined in. Between us we won £400,000, but the winner that night had £1,500,000. After the count up the guy who won first prize took home a big teddy bear. Everybody had a brilliant night.

This was one of my best Christmases.

One of the New Years night revellers left a supermarket trolley in the middle of a frozen lake. We spotted this surreal scene on my last morning walk with my friends and their dog before I returned to Spain.

  
As always, when I was sat waiting to board the plane back to Spain, I was eager to return , but sad to leave.

Grazalema exhibition 2010

During 2010 I was painting some of my best pictures.

I painted two aircraft for the Buntisford restoration group, who were restoring two English Electric lightnings. The paintings showed one of their Lightnings intercepting a TU95 electronic surveillance aircraft known to NATO as Bears. The lightning was a very unusual aeroplane of enormous power.
Designed in 1962 it was able to do things then that modern day designs are only just now capable of. In 1984 a 22 year old lightning intercepted a U2 spy plane at 88,000ft. The pilot of the U2 later reported that he was very surprised that the attack came from above him. Later the same RAF pilot
flying a Lightning in a NATO exercise along with F15, F14, F16, F104 and Mirage aircraft were challenged with a stern intercept on a loaned Concorde flying supersonic. Only the Lightning caught up with it.

 The horse I called full of fun, but it recieved a lukewarm reception.

                                As well as my dappled stallion.

 

 I painted my meadow after gathering together all my photographs of the plants I had seen over the years.

Finally I painted Grazalema dawn. This was my favorite place near to Olvera. I would walk in this valley in the autumn Sunday mornings.
Not a kilometer from this scene is the little rural school for the valley.
I bet they don’t have more than twenty pupils. It was always the silence that amazed me when I walked here, with only the buzzing of the insects as they passed. The air was always crystal clear and cool in the mountains.
In 2010 the founding artists of artistandalucia arranged an exhibition in Grazelema. Our host was Clive at the tourist information office in Grazalema. Grazalema is a pueblo with quite a big tourist influx each week, with coach trips from the coast and surrounding areas. It is quite a good venue to sell pictures.

At the very beginning of artistandalucia we were a group of painters of very different styles and backgrounds. We intended to exhibit as often as we could, sometimes individually, sometimes as a group. Often the places we exhibited were too large for one artist and so we put our best paintings in as a group.
We had been running a twice a month mercadillo in Ronda, a very busy tourist town. We were all good friends then and it was fun to meet and talk. We would often paint under the trees at the Alameda, or just sit with our paintings on show hoping for a sale. It was a day out with friends.

One of our first members suggested Grazalema Tourist office as a venue for an exhibition and when we contacted him Clive was all for it. We arranged the exhibition for September and all started preparing for it.
On the day I was ferrying people up to Grazalema and decided to call in at the paper kiosk in Olvera after a tip off from Clive. Clive had a contact with the Diario de Cadiz and they had given us a full page spread. They had requested several photos of the paintings of the members to use as a leader.
They printed my painting of Grazalema dawn as a sample of artistandalucia on the culture page and given us a write up about the exhibition which was inspiring.