Handing on the baton. Now transformed into a paint brush

The heavy burden of high office, which I mentioned a while back was weighing me down, has at last been lifted from my shoulders.

Last week saw the end of my stint as President of the Community of homeowners at Los Sauces, in La Cañada, which belongs to the municipality of Paterna, in the Spanish autonomous community of Valencia. Los Sauces means the Willows, and if there’s a willow to be seen anywhere in La Cañada, I’ve yet to spot it.

Please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Los Sauces. That would only mean that you haven’t been following this fine blog, written with great care and considerable pains only for your entertainment and edification. I admit you may never have heard of it anywhere else, but here at least you have no excuse for not knowing about it. 

As for Paterna, if you don’t know it, I can only point you to the latest remarkable film by the outstanding Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory. In it, Almodóvar brings together stars he made famous, in particular Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Almodóvar assures us the film is not at all autobiographical, which is why he shot much of it inside his own apartment in Madrid.

He also has Antonio Banderas playing a film director who feels deeply distressed about the fact that his favourite actor, now back in Spain, left to pursue a career in Hollywood many years back. Funnily enough, by pure coincidence, Almodóvar is a film director who got very upset when Antonio Banderas cleared off to Hollywood years back to pursue a career there before returning to Spain.

I hope that makes clear that the film is hardly autobiographical at all.

The director (that’s the character, not the one who made the film) has flashbacks to his life as a child, living in a cave. An attractive, airy cave, with plenty of light. But still a cave.

That cave, along with many more like it, some still inhabited, is in Paterna. And if you don’t think the municipal council of Paterna has worked to death the use of one of its caves in an Almodóvar film, then you know nothing of the marketing urges of local government.

So there’s the setting for you. 

As I explained last time, my time as president has been dominated by work repairing the communal swimming pool. That at times involved me making two or three phone calls a day to the contractors we took on for the job. You know the kind of thing. “You said, ‘complete by Thursday’ and it’s Friday today. With no progress. When will you be showing up?”

I kept going around a cycle that ran from promise to hope to disappointment only to start off again with a promise.

Fortunately, the presidency of Los Sauces isn’t one of those hotly contested offices for which people are prepared to lay out time and money to see themselves appointed. Indeed, it isn’t even elective. If it were elective, it would be hard to find candidates to run. So, instead, the post passes from house to house, with no option offered to the next unfortunate resident.

Isabel, my worthy and dedicated successor

It was with joy that I handed over to my unfortunate neighbour Isabel when my term ended. The work on the swimming pool wasn’t totally complete. There are some finishing touches to be done, and as always with the kind of inadequate outfit we had sadly taken on, there was cleaning still to carry out. But the pool’s full of water, two months later than hoped, but still full and entirely usable. Indeed, with the heat we’ve been having, the water is now at a temperature where even I, who can’t bear getting into a cold swimming pool, can simply stroll down the steps into the water with barely a hesitation as the level moves higher and higher up my body.

But my joy grew still further when I saw the enthusiasm with which Isabel was throwing herself into the task. In particular, there was ironwork which had been allowed simply to keep rusting for many presidencies (including my own). She was out there at 6:30 in the morning scraping and painting. It had to be that early, since by 9:30 the temperature’s already well on its way to the 30-degree level it reaches regularly these days (and that’s 30 degrees in real money, none of that Fahrenheit nonsense) (well, OK, if you have to have it converted, 86 degrees).

A great job. And undertaken by the President

I’m impressed by the way the gate looks. And I’m impressed that the work was done by the President. I’m a fan of the philosophy that says, “if a job’s worth doing, it’s not beneath me to do it”. I would have loved to have more bosses in my long and patchy career seeing things that way. I’ve repeatedly got tired of people who regard themselves above the tiresome daily tasks we mere mortals have to carry out.

I’m glad our president is setting us an excellent example.

In the meantime, Danielle and I are celebrating my release by spending some time away from La Cañada with its 30-degree temperatures. Instead, we’re cat-sitting in Madrid for one of our sons who, with his partner, is now on holiday in Greece.

However, Madrid being Madrid, that only means we’re now enjoying temperatures of around 40 degrees (OK, OK, 104). Without our fine, newly-repaired swimming pool. Thoughts of which are more than ever attractive.