Spanish guns in Andalucía
Finals were looming and revision was pressing. But I could not allow myself to become focussed. My notes were a mess and I had no desire to rectify things by trying to fill in the gaps. Part of me wanted nothing to do with it all. I felt that it was superfluous to life. Real life was in the clubs, with friends, travelling, seeing the stars, the art music, love and wonder. There was too much to see and do. I burned with it. To sit inside and paw through turgid notes, to memorise facts that held little interest seemed pointless. I loved nature; I loved animals – that was all that was important. Whether it had diagnostic characteristics that separated it from another was of no interest. I wanted to marvel at the living things, to watch their mystery and feel the awe. My course had only served to reduce those wonders to moribund names, turgid descriptions and measly parts. The living specimens were much greater than the sum of their parts.
Yet part of me knew that having a degree would make life easier. I might have more time for the music, wonders, travel and love.
I knew that was bollocks. You only sold your soul once. There were no percentages to freedom.
Inside I was already lamenting the end of my life. I wanted to prolong it.
I was torn.
I knew I owed it to my parents to make a go of it. They had sacrificed a lot. Pragmatically there was no decision to be made. Yet I vacillated and could not begin to try.
Like a bolt out of the blue I was temporarily saved.
The second year Botany group had organised a trip to Spain. Unexpectedly a number had dropped out. They had space on their trip. We entomologists were offered those places for free. It was an offer too good to turn down. We jumped at it.
The trip was mighty close to finals but I reasoned that it would relax me down. When I came back I would have three weeks. I could do three weeks of intensive revision and I’d be alright. That was surely better than six weeks of half-hearted mooching.
We went.
Spain was hot. The botanists went off to do their tedious transects, specimen identification and investigated succession, various habitats and such. Our intrepid band of entomologists, all four of us, devised our own investigations. This involved bottles of exceeding cheap but very drinkable wine and a lot of lying around in gulches laughing, playing guitar and chattering. Fortunately the insects were plentiful and came to us. All we had to do was collect some in specimen jars to take back at the end of the day in order to demonstrate how industrious we had been. Praub even went to the trouble of recording them and writing out descriptions and various notes. He enjoyed that sort of thing. I was amazed when he produced a detailed 30 page typed report that he’d photocopied and bound for us. It certainly looked as if we’d been busy.
Pete and I had great fun hunting out the incredible big black scorpions that skulked under rocks. There were big snakes in the rivers and we caught a few really big ones without knowing what they were. I also found the most enormous toad. In terms of insects we were finding glow-worm, preying mantids and an array of beautifully coloured beetles and bugs. We did not even have to search for them. They crawled over to us as we lay on our backs in the gulches.
All thoughts of exams had faded away. The sun, friendship and wine were working their magic.
We wandered down to the beach. It was too cold for swimming but a scuba diver was diving for sea-urchins and feeding us the delicious raw eggs. We ate Spanish crusty bread with fresh orange juice and thought we were in heaven.
On our last day we were so full of life that we decided to go for a jog. We set off down along the dusty road and turned a corner. Facing us was a machine gun post with a bunch of surly faced Spanish military. We turned right around and headed back the way we had come half expecting some shouting and a few bullets to come flying our way.
Nothing happened but we had received a reminder. The fascists were still in charge in Spain. This was paradise with a sting and it wasn’t from the scorpions.
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