Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia – Special Anniversary Edition (with new chapter 25 years on)

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Pinché un trozo de cabra y fingí quedarme extasiado por el ritmo, dando golpecitos con el pie en un vano intento de encontrar el compás. Mientras golpeaba con el pie, masticaba con furia el detestable trozo de ternilla de cabra que tenía en la boca. La canción se paró de forma abrupta y, una vez más, los músicos me miraron inquisitivamente. Pero esta vez mi integridad como crítico musical fue salvada por la ternilla de cabra que oportunamente se me había quedado atragantada en la tráquea." True, we don’t have the benefits of rubbish collection, postal delivery or street-lighting… but you can’t have everything. Little by little we adapted to life on our remote farm in the mountains, and the farm adapted to us. We had a daughter, Chloé, and lived a life of some considerable hardship, but great happiness, trying mostly in vain to scratch a living from the unyielding earth. To make ends meet we collected seeds and I sheared sheep all over the Alpujarra. This made us enough to scrape along, and took us to the wildest and remotest parts of our new country. After eight years of struggle Mark Ellingham came to visit us one summer, and suggested that I write a book about our experiences. With great reluctance I agreed, and set about writing “Driving Over Lemons”. The book was a great and unexpected success, but even better than that, I discovered what it was that I really wanted to do with my life: I loved the writing, and although there’s a part of me that’s a little sad no longer to be a sheep shearer, or a sailor, or a musician… and although I still find it hard to take seriously the idea of work that doesn’t get you dirty, I have a wonderful time being a writer. And of course it’s all true. It’s funny too, and if the book has a message – which I hope it does – then it may be that laughter is the best way to cope with adversity.

Chloé has left home now, passed through the school system and on to university in Granada, where she’s studying languages. I cannot think of anywhere in the world where I would have rather seen her grow up than in this little Spanish town. It gave her, among other things, confidence, ease and social mobility. Manuel hizo lo que le pedían, entregándole una a su padre y sentándose luego a su lado con la otra. Las afinaron un poco, tocaron distraídamente unos acordes,y pasaron a trancas y barrancas a una tonada popular alpujarreña. Everywhere there remain the traces of Spain’s richly textured history, the caliphate of Cordoba that, when the rest of Europe was still in the Dark Ages, was “the Ornament of the World”. The kingdom of Granada, with its incomparable palace, the Alhambra. Beautiful riverside Sevilla, where all the gold and silver stolen from the Americas was landed and swiftly squandered by Church, monarchy and nobility. One summer day the shearers came. My job was to catch the sheep for them and roll the wool. I was so entranced by the business of sheep shearing that I persuaded them to take me with them on my free days, and in return for rolling the wool and catching the sheep, they would teach me how to shear. It was something about the grace and the beauty of the work… and the sheer physical hardness, the manliness of it, that attracted me. It was, along with agriculture itself, something of an epiphany; I suddenly knew my destiny. So what happened? Why am I not head over heels for this story? The writing was quite good, the descriptions were also nicely done. There is nothing glaringly obvious throughout the entire length.Stewart's publisher, Sort of Books, announced plans to release yet another Stewart memoir in 2009, this one focused on sailing, entitled Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat.

I read this book to satisfy a biography and Earth day/month challenge. I became interested in this book because my pre-Modern Iberian ancestors very probably came from this area. And they were likely to have been farmers and farm workers. Sea cual sea la máquina que consigamos, lo que no queremos es una con ruedas de goma. No sirven para nada. Esteban tiene una de ésas, y además es un buen conductor pero es un sinvergüenza, así que no iremos a verle. Chris Stewart and his wife Ana leave England to go to Andalucia to live their dreams as farmers in the mountains of Spain.

A lovely, gentle book. Brilliant tales of a life a world away from Birmingham. Looking forward to reading the next two. A: As I write this, the sky looks nasty over to the west. I suspect we’re about to lose the bridge again — so, more bridge building. But, apart from that there are endless projects — planting more olives and oranges, rebuilding the stone walls of the terraces everywhere, re-cutting water channels, re-foresting the hillside, just generally trying to revive the place and see if it can’t make us a living instead of being a bottomless pit in which to throw money. We’re also registering with the appropriate authority as an organic farm. There’s also modifying the house a bit to see if we can’t enjoy at least a modicum of comfort. We keep busy. I knew nothing of Chris Stewart before I read this, and only after did I realise that he was the lead drummer in Genesis which is rather impressive!