Spanish Shilling

I am  still in Oklahoma for a couple of weeks to come, staying with my son who runs the local water  company. He is fond of fast cars, when he has the chance, and we have just been for the Porsche Weekend in Arkansas, with a side trip to Missouri. 

We drove there - three of us - in three separate vehicles: an old red souped-up Corvette (me), a 2023 Corvette, and my son's Dodge Hell-Cat (fast on the straights, terrifying on the corners). There we found some five-hundred Porsches at the hotel in the small resort of Eureka Springs, on view together with their proud owners. Later, they would drive slowly and noisily through the streets in caterpillar style. One of the cars exhibited at the fayre and for sale was a Porsche GT4: I had driven it up there last year in another adventure. 

We carried on, that second day, to a peculiar resort in Missouri (me now driving the modern black Corvette with its elderly owner beside me, a splendid character who once invented a system to clean oil from impurities and has not drawn a sober breath from that day forward). Our destination was a place called Top of the Rock, a large and peculiar castle high in the Ozark Mountains. There's a golf course apparently, but we had parked and were bussed straight to a massive building which is built in huge rough-stone blocks. Inside there are terraces, several restaurants, a whisky bar, a museum and other wonders too. After refreshing ourselves - we are now eight - with a scotch or two, we went to a private room for our dinner.  

And so we come to food in America. Or at least, in the Mid-West. It's usually very good, huge and generous proportions, talkative waitpersons (ours was called Dan), although it ain't cheap no more like it used to be. Plus that tip, now twenty or even twenty-five percent.

I've always eaten well over in America, and will need to go on my regular crash diet when I get home again to Spain. 

The next morning, now once again in Eureka Springs, we decided to walk down the road from the motel to an eatery about two blocks away for breakfast in a nod to the Stop Oil people. The idea of sidewalks and even bicycle lanes here are still in the future: in most of America, everyone drives. 

Our drinking friend wanted to break his fast with a Bloody Mary with a bit of bacon sticking out of it (this is America folks, they've never heard of celery), while I ordered something rather more modest, along with several cups of cawfee. 

At the next table, a lone diner was seated with his back to us. Here and there, a staff-member would sit with him for a minute or two in conversation. I learned that he was travelling around the country on foot, carrying an eight-foot tall wooden cross. As he left, I went outside to speak with him. He called me 'Brother' and told me that he left his job and gave away his house and car almost four years before. Since then, he has walked across fourteen states with his cross and the clothes he stands up in (refreshed here and there by admirers). He looked good for another twenty states or so.

And talking of the Lord's Work, a few nights later, back in Oklahoma, I was invited around to an old Cherokee's house for an evening of Inspirational Songs (two guitars, a drum box and a pair of singers - it reminded me in that respect of a flamenco evening back home). My daughter in law is a member of this admirable tribe. We thus joined in with some of the neighbours, singing for an hour or so - songs in both English and Cherokee, making me - and I'm sure about this - to be the only Englishman to be ever serenaded in that language. 

And let's end where we began: Driving fast cars around the countryside. I even got stopped the other day and interviewed by the local TV as, er, 'President of the Tulsa Porsche Club' (standing in temporarily for my son, who is camera-shy), valiently explaining why we were all driving domestic muscle-cars that day ('Porsche-owners have to work all week to pay for them' I explained). 

As above- there are two more weeks of adventures to go...   

The debate and approval of Pedro Sanchez for president is done. All the small parties voted for his candidature - only the PP and Vox (plus one maverick deputy from the PNV) voted against.

I'm in the USA right now, but the wonders of the Internet put me as close to the action as if I were sitting in the public gallery of the parliamentary chamber. 

It's been a long road to get this far. The local and regional elections of last May were disappointing for the Government and consequently, national elections were called with what turned out to be ambiguous results. The PP won the most seats, but not enough - even with their far-right Vox allies - to take the house. The PP leader Feijoo tried in the two-day debate in late September, but fell short by a tiny margin. Then came the chance for Pedro Sanchez (sorry, there are no accents on this keyboard). 

To get this far, Sanchez had to court a number of small parties - including the regionalist ones.  One of these is the Junts per Catalunya, with its erstwhile leader Carles Puigdemont living in exile in Belgium, fearful of capture and imprisonment (like some of his associates) after the illegal referendum for independence in 2017. Sanchez needed the Junts, and the price, now agreed, was an amnesty (it will affect around 400 people in all). Some consider this as a coup d'etat, but it is better to think of it as a solution to the Catalonian unrest, which has lasted over a number of years.

The PP (which could have avoided this if it considered the interests of the country over its own) called for massive protests across Spain during the ten days running up to the investiture. This naturally attracted the Vox and other unsavoury groups - sundry fascists, the Desokupa folk, Fake-news experts, the right-wing media, anti-abortionists and other religious nutters and, for some reason, the appalling American broadcaster Tucker Carlson (tipped in some circles as Trump's running mate). Then there are the Youtubers and other keyboard warriors working their nefarious magic from home. 

Outside the PSOE offices in Calle Ferraz in Madrid, the protests have been particularly colourful. Signs such as 'Sanchez: Spain isn't for Sale'. 

We should remember the number of public companies sold to private interests (or even vulture funds) by the PP in past times (such as Telefonica, Antena3, Repsol, Endesa, Aena, Gas Natural, Iberia...). Of course, as we see these protesters wrapped in their Spanish flags, or singing Cara al Sol, we are reminded that there's more to patriotism than just hating the Catalonians.

The point is, that the PSOE and its allies have the majority and are thus equipped to run the country.  Spain has been without a government since the elections this August. This has now been resolved. Following the vote, party leaders traditionally must congratulate the president. Feijoo approached President Sanchez, shook his hand, and said: 'this is a huge mistake'. The (probable) future leader of the PP is Isabel Diaz Ayuso, who mouthed from the public galleries 'hijo de puta'. Bad losers, hey!

Right now, I'm in Oklahoma staying with my son Daniel. I'll be here for the month of November, including a few days trip to Colorado in his muscle-car, and also to Porsche Weekend in Eureka Springs to the east, in Arkansas.  Daniel likes his cars, and knows people who like to race them.

That first day, we were driving up the forested hill from the local town, rounded a bend, and found a double-wide house on the back of a truck coming in the other direction and occupying the entire width of the road. In America, they usually build  their houses out of wood and then haul them to wherever they are needed. Preceded along the route - at least as a rule - by a van with a light on top and a sign saying 'Caution: Wide-load'. 

This one didn't. We had to swerve off the road into the ditch. Otherwise it might have been a case not so much of a car driving into the side of a house as a house driving into the side of a car.

My boy's car is a cobalt-blue Dodge Challenger 'Hell-Cat' which has a powerful acceleration and has over seven hundred horsepower. He picked it up second-hand, and in its favour, it can be used as a sober vehicle for taking granddad for a ride, or for some volume-shopping down at Walmart. The boot ('trunk') is massive. 

And thus it came to pass that, on my second day in Daniel's town (an hour north of Tulsa), we drove down to the track at Hallett, a circuit somewhere south of Tulsa. We were going racing. 

They give you a talk at the race-track. Drive with your window open (in case you need to be rescued). Wear a racing-car helmet. Empty the trunk of anything loose. Watch the flags. Don't do this, don't do that. There were around twenty drivers (and one passenger) taking this all in. Anyone have an electric car? No? Good. We hope no one's been silly enough to bring a Hell-Cat? (Laughs). 

There are several groups of five who will drive for fifteen minutes - the first time for practice and getting to know the track - no passengers. So I went over to the stand to watch them go.

Later, it was time for my ride. I put on the helmet in the enclosed space - it's not easy - and we drove down to the chequered flag and then, away...

Daniel is a good driver, but the Dodge weighs a lot and, as happens with American cars anyway, it doesn't do corners very well. It has excellent acceleration, but we had to slow down long before any corner to get around it.

There are a couple of nasty corners at Hallett. All went well, although after the session was over, we found we had burned the brake-pads - perhaps not surprisingly. 

We stayed for lunch and talked shop with the others. I told them about my Citroen back in Spain. I don't think they were very impressed.

After lunch, Eddie invited me to ride in his new Lamborghini STO. Eddie is a master behind the wheel and once I had crawled into the car and somehow managed to put on my helmet after putting the back of the seat down to *flat*, we took off. 

A car like this holds the road and is so much lighter that the Dodge that it zipped around the corners with incredible grip. Gosh, it was fast. An amazing experience and my thanks to Eddie for the ride. 

I shall be asking Santa for one of those.