So the boat trip was cancelled. Like I alluded to last week.

Which was a shame but watching the few vessels that were out tossing around in the waves, I was pretty glad we were on shore.

However it was still a poniente. The hedge on a wing. That’s not what I said. The hairdryer wind.

But as we said a few weeks ago, lo es que lo es. It is what it is.

And surprisingly it’s the same number of words in both languages.

I do have a small issue with the boat trip. For some reason as I get older I seem to get more and more impatient when not much happens.

Which on previous boat trips has probably led me to drinking more beer than appropriate.

This year because of the extreme dehydration effects day to day, I have reduced the number of beers by one and replaced it with a non-alcoholic drink.

Still beer or described as such but little or no alcohol.

I’ve even discovered one or two that are quite drinkable. If my younger self could see me now…

Apropos of nothing here’s a traditional Andalucian dinner of eggs, chips and ham. Delicious 🤤. Photo by author

So the boat trip was cancelled.

We then had the weekend of football games. Copa Mundial or World Cup, whichever takes your fancy.

The England-France runners-up match was an absolute revelation. I cannot remember the last time 10 goals were scored in a world cup match.

Apparently surprisingly recently in 1982. Hungary 10-El Salvador 1.

And then the final itself between España and Argentina.

Spain had entered the match with a potential result of the lowest number of goals conceded by any team in the World Cup. At the start of the match they had conceded only one goal, to Belgium.

It does seem like the whole of the world was supporting Spain. For some reason I cannot imagine why…

As L pointed out to me, the tactics employed by Argentina were more akin to rugby than football.

And as the end of regulation time approached, with only a disallowed goal to Spain in the game so far I was beginning to get a little concerned.

Would it all come down to penalties?

You could not imagine Spain losing after twenty-ish attempts on goal against none in regulation for Argentina.

By now it was approaching midnight here, and we were sat on the terraza upstairs, hearing the world go by. There wasn’t much to watch really. It was too dark…

For much of regulation time we had been serenaded by the neighbour up the road, who appears to know more about football than everyone else on the planet combined.

I’ve certainly learned a number of new Spanish swear words from the verbal output from the gentleman!

And then a roar emanated from just about everywhere in the town. And you ended up thinking “yep, I think Spain has got a goal”.

It all calms down a little.

And a few minutes later another, if even greater, roar announced the final whistle in the match.

It then felt like we had moved to South London, i.e., to Tooting.

It sounded almost as if every car owner under the age of about 40 leapt into their vehicle and started driving around the streets of Estepona.

That was then followed up by the fireworks. Including some that appear to be being set off in the road just round the corner.

The first one that was set off came as such a surprise, I thought my shorts had changed colour…

Reefed it before I got out. Let’s try that one again: Good grief it was loud!

Mejor.

In fact the car horns were still noticeable at 1:00 that morning.

Before the match we had been eating dinner at a curry house in the town. And various supporters of both denominations had wandered past.

Apart from the assault on one’s ear holes by the dreadful hooters everybody seemed to be carrying – either self-blown or by a fitted can – one thing was very noticeable, or rather, more noticeable by its absence.

From my memories of the UK any gathering of football supporters would be accompanied by a huge police presence.

Here, not a lot. In fact for the entire time we were eating and returning to our house, we didn’t see a single policeman.

I mentioned this to our Spanish teacher’s boyfriend. He said there were a couple they noticed. The fountain by the Ayuntamiento, the town hall, had been commandeered by the winning supporters and two policemen were directing traffic so that nobody got hurt.

Gotta love this place.

Our Clase de Español on the Monday evening did not cover much by the way of Español but plenty by the way of football.

If you wanted to you can get upset about something like that but we were so pleased for Carla and Javier. It really didn’t make a difference.

I always look forward to the visit of Isabel our cleaner on Thursdays.

And this week was no exception. Some weeks I have immense trouble trying to keep up with the speed of her talking but this week everything went swimmingly.