R.I.Chalmers Passionate About English

Asod’s Fables
The Grasshopper and the Ant

One day a young grasshopper was lazily sunning himself under the bright spring sun, trying out his newly discovered musical talents. A column of ants chanced to pass nearby, each labouring under an enormous seed many times its own weight.

“Look at you!” said a little ant, pausing for a moment. “Lazy good-for-nothing! Is that all you intend to do all spring long? Sun yourself and play that infernal racket?”

“Yes,” said the grasshopper. “And all summer, too.”

“And what will you do when the winter comes?” mocked the little ant.

“I’ll worry about that when the time comes,” sang the grasshopper. He stretched a toe to bring his leg into tune and played a merry marching piece that might have been enjoyed by the passing ants if they had not been passing so urgently by.

The following day the column of ants again passed the grasshopper and the same conversation with the little ant took place, as it did throughout the entire spring and well into summer.

One day in late September the middle-aged grasshopper was playing one of his more accomplished pieces which involved both legs, both wing cases and the bringing together of both antenna for dramatic effect, when the column of ants trudged wearily past. They were dragging with some effort the last seeds of summer. Some were so worn out by the toils of the spring and summer that they could barely carry themselves let alone the heavy burdens that weighed them down. Others were noticeable by their absence.

The little ant dropped his burden and glowered up at the grasshopper. “Still tossing it off, I see,” he croaked.

“That’s a vicious rumour,” laughed the grasshopper. “I haven’t done that for months, not since I was a young lad. But I am still enjoying my life to the full, if that’s what you mean.”

“Wait till winter,” cautioned the little ant, and the other ants who had been listening chorused, “Yes, wait till winter comes.”

“Got no choice but to wait for it,” said the grasshopper. “But remember, it comes to all of us in the end.”

As sagaciously predicted by the grasshopper winter duly arrived. The first snows of winter came, then the second and third. Soon the snow was falling steadily and pretty soon most of the grass and all of the few remaining seeds were hidden beneath a crisp carpet of snow.

“Where are you going little ant?” enquired the elderly grasshopper. He was sitting on one of the few blades of grass which yet brought a touch of colour to the otherwise featureless landscape. He no longer felt the hunger of his youth and he was too old even to so much as nibble the leaf. Instead he was watching the sun begin to set for the last time with a deep sense of contentment.

The little ant seemed hardly to notice he was there. It staggered robotically, its legs chilled almost to a standstill by a lifetime of toil and the encroaching cold.

“And where are all your little friends?” said the grasshopper.

The little ant looked up at him and his antenna twitched convulsively. “Dead!” he whispered. “Dead and replaced by the New Ones. And to think we worked so hard all spring and all summer, and for what? So that a new generation could come and take our places and throw us into the dust!”

“And your wonderful queen?” enquired the grasshopper. “Where is your wonderful queen?”

“Oh, she’s just dandy,” said the little ant bitterly. “Snug as a bug in her palace, she is. And she’s still being waited on hand and foot by poor fools like me. Living the life of Riley, she is. And the bitch never once had the decency to mention that us workers only live a year if we’re lucky and the drudgery don’t kill us off first. Seems to me it’s ‘plenty more where you came from’, as far as she’s concerned.”

“That’s bosses for you,” said the grasshopper. “Poor little misguided ant.”

“And what of you?” asked the little ant, sensing that the grasshopper might truly be feeling pity for him.

“I’m dying too,” said the grasshopper. “But I’ve no regrets. I’ve enjoyed a wonderful life. And I know that next spring my children will come into the world and they too will understand the importance of living for the moment and of enjoying life to the full.”

“Mind if I rest here a while?” gasped the little ant. “I don’t think I can go on another step, and I’d sure like to hear at least one tune before it’s too late.”

The grasshopper smiled down sadly at the little ant. Then, gathering the last of his strength, he brought to bear all he had learnt in a lifetime of practice and began to play.

The little ant thought it was the most glorious thing that he had ever heard, and even the sun seemed to pause to listen awhile before it bled itself into the snowy horizon. The final darkness followed and descended like a comfortable blanket over the aged grasshopper and the exhausted little ant.

Moral: Non est, crede mihi, sapientis dicere ‘Vivam’: Sera nimis vita est crastina: vive hodie.

“Believe me, wise men don’t say ‘I shall live to do that’: Tomorrow’s life’s too late; live today.”

Martial 40-104 ac

Posted under Lifestyle, Society

First published in the magazine, Invaluable, in 2002

Curse of the Mummy

by
R.I.Chalmers
Around four-and-a-half thousand years ago the great pharaoh, Khufu’s mummified body and a fabulous collection of his most valued possessions were sealed up in the Great Pyramid at Giza. Watching its construction, Khufu must have been satisfied that such a fortress of limestone and granite would keep the grave robbers at bay for all eternity. He could never have foreseen that his tomb would end up ransacked, that his possessions would be lost forever, and that his final resting place would be in a jar in an apothecary’s shop.

Khufu’s fate shows that if the potential rewards are great enough no building can hope to keep the criminal at bay. An ingenious criminal will always find a way in to a building, however secure it may appear to be. Yet Khufu and his treasures might have remained intact if as much thought had gone into keeping the thieves in as out.

Provided that the rewards are likely to justify the effort involved, today’s burglar, like his ancient Egyptian counterpart, will first identify the quickest, easiest and safest route into a building. In a third of burglaries he will get in through a rear window. Windows are often the weakest point in the house, and the back of the house offers the best protection from prying eyes.

His biggest fear is of getting caught. Every second he is in the house he runs the risk of discovery, so his escape route is his lifeline. Provided he can get his head through, the burglar can easily worm his way through any opened window, but with an angry householder snapping at his heels a small transom window will prove his Nemesis. He needs a bigger hole to scurry out of and the most suitable exit will be either the front or the back door.

With most householders now security conscious securing an escape route should be the burglar’s greatest challenge. Millions of pounds of government money has gone into making the public aware of the benefits of good quality locks on doors and windows. The Home Office recommends a five-lever mortice deadlock kitemarked to at least BS3621 on both front and back doors, along with bolts top and bottom fixed with good, strong screws and fastenings. For front doors it also recommends an automatic deadlock that can be locked from the outside. The government literature also recommends fitting laminated glass to windows and doors, and key-operated window locks.

The advice is sound. A burglar is unlikely to risk attracting attention by smashing a large pane of glass. He will be prepared, however, to smash a smaller pane of glass in a window in order to reach through to slip the latch. Window locks provide the window with multiple locking points that prevent the window being prised open or opened from the inside. Mortice locks and deadlocks make formidable obstacles for those without the keys.

Even if the determined burglar does manage to get inside a house where the householder has followed sensible crime-prevention advice he will be faced with the difficult problem of getting back out with anything larger than an ornament or two. Even if he has free run of the house while his courage holds, and can search all the cupboards, cabinets and drawers for items of value, if sensible precautions have been taken small valuables will be hidden away in a floor safe or other secure place. Larger valuables such as electrical items and furnishings are less conveniently hidden away, but however bigheaded the burglar may be he will never persuade a grandfather clock to squeeze through a small kitchen window.

Fortunately for the burglar the bolts on the inside of the door are useless once he is inside, and the best mortice lock is worthless if all he has to do is to turn the key in the lock. And as he passes your state-of-the-art computer system through the window to his mate in the garden he no doubt gives thanks to St Gates, the patron saint of windows, that an unlocked window-lock offers a similar level of security as a paper safe.

Despite government advice, in two out of ten burglaries an unlocked door or window means that the burglar does not even have to use force to get in. More alarming is that once inside, the burglar often has no trouble at all in getting back out by a door or a larger window. All too often the police attend the scene of a burglary to find that the burglar who has struggled to squeeze through a small window has simply walked out through a door. The door will often have a key in the lock, “in case there’s a fire”, or a simple latch lock that was lazily pulled to behind the busy householder. Occasionally the unwitting occupant will have even provided the burglar with a getaway vehicle in the form of a car in the drive and the keys on the kitchen table.

Non of us have the resources to build ourselves a pyramid, nor would we choose to live in the dark, suffocating confines of such a building that perfect security would require. However, all of us can ensure that the burglar leaves with nothing more than a sense of frustration simply by making it as difficult to get out of the house as it was to get inside.

Keys nesting in a basket in the kitchen attract a burglar like nestlings attract a cat, while keys impaled on hooks behind the door prove efficient traitors. Sheath keys in their locks and you stab at the very heart of your home security. Spare keys should be deposited with family or good neighbours, or should be hidden out of harm’s way along with any other small potential pickings.

The Great Pyramid’s six million tons of stone make it the most massive building ever constructed. Its purpose was to protect Khufu and his possessions and it failed. Yet our modest homes, frail in comparison, can far more successfully guard our assets if the right precautions are taken. Allow a burglar access to your house keys and your household security becomes as effective as the medicine made from Khufu’s mummy.

© R.I.Chalmers 2002

Posted under Clips

I know what a whale feels like. I don’t mean that I’m immensely fat and try to avoid Japanese tourists wherever possible. What I mean is that I have just been eating camarones. Camarones are small shrimps. I say small, but they are actually tiny, and their tininess, and the fact that I was dropping them into my mouth by the thousand, made me think of whales. Whales eat krill, and camarones remind me very much of krill.

Shrimp, or prawns, come in a wide range of sizes here in Spain. You have giant things as big as your hand and you have the tiny camarónes at the other end of the scale. To show you what I mean, I took a photo of a standard sized Spanish prawn from my refrigerator next to a Camarón and my finger for scale.

You can see that the standard Spanish prawn is rather a handsome beast, and as succulent and delicious as a succulent and delicious thing that has just visited a salon dedicated to making things as succulent and delicious as possible.

The camarón, on the other hand, seems somewhat pathetic and about a succulent and delicious as school dinner gravy.

A friend of mine does not like camerones because she believes that they devour the corpses of dead people and animals that happen to end up in the sea. For my part, this does not bother me. I am not adverse to drinking a bottle or two of chilled Perrier water, which gets its flavour, if legend is correct, by percolating through old plague pits before emerging from the Perrier spring.

I thought about my friend’s reasons for not liking camarones and decided that as I was about to eat the corpses of many thousands of dead animals I was not too far removed from them myself and so bought a quarter of a kilo. The cost was 2 Euros. The haul was immense.

As you can see from this photograph, you do get a lot of camarones in a pound. To give a sense of scale, I took a photograph with a ruler in the foreground. The markings are in millimetres.

You eat these tiny shrimp by the handful. The texture is like crunching on soft-bodied ants, but the flavour is exquisite. (I don’t wish to offend any ants here, and am open to the possibility that they, too, possess an exquisite flavour if eaten by the handful – though I have yet to know what an anteater feels like) If you can steel yourself against the natural squeamishness of having to chew down on heads, bodies, eyes, and other bits, a mouthful of camarones is a seafood-lover’s delight.

If you are lucky enough to visit Spain, look out for camarones. You will find them freshly cooked like in the photos above, or in an small fried pancake called a “Tortilla de camarón”. These tortillas are a great way for the squeamish to eat camarones. The camarones are buried in a pancake of flour, parsley and garlic, and you would never notice their eyes staring mournfully up at you from your plate. Their eyes are so small anyway that it is hard to imagine anyone noticing them.

A delicious plate of Tortilla de camarónes

A traditional recipe for this dish

Half a pound of live camarones. If you can’t find them in your local supermarket, try inventing a machine that will shrink anything you point it at (like the one in “Honey I Shrunk the Kids”) and point it at fifty pounds of king prawns. If the Camarón turns out to be a bloke with a beard, you’ve got the wrong kind. He’s a popular Spanish flamenco singer. See below for details.

Half a pound of semolina flour, or chickpea flour will do just as well. Both are pretty much impossible to get where you are anyway.

Half a pound of finely chopped onions, and I mean finely chopped. Non of your wishy-washy diced stuff.

2oz of fresh parsley

Water to make the dough

Extra virgin olive oil for frying not drizzling!

Salt – extra virgin Mahatma Gandhi sea salt. This will make the camarones feel more at home.

Dump the flour in a bowl and little by little mix in the water to make a slightly liquid dough. Throw in some salt to taste.

Throw the live camarones into the mix with the onion and parsley. Leave it for an hour.

Spoon tortilla-sized plops of dough into the extra virgin olive oil and fry them on both sides (obviously! Why am I even telling you this?) until golden (not black and carbonised)

Eat them. Tell your friends about this great website.

DANGER! This is the wrong type of camarón for your recipe:

This is the right type:

Translation? Sorry! A picture says a thousand words, so switch off your speakers and watch the film. There are thousands of pictures and millions of words.

Posted under Lifestyle

Over the past few weeks I have been experiencing problems with IE7 and Dreamweaver. IE7 would take an age to open and Dreamweaver CS3 was taking up to a minute to open the site manager dialogue. Dreamweaver CS3 was also having great problems when trying to connect to the MySQL database when updating pages.

I tried all manner of solutions but none worked. Then I did a deep search of the web and discovered that the answer was devastatingly simple and very annoying – SKYPE!

I had Skype set up to open with Windows. Not any more. Skype is a great product, which helps me keep in touch with my family back in the UK. However, as I rarely answer the phone anyway, let alone Skype calls, I now only open it when I want to make a call.

I also discovered that there was a setting in Skype that was responsible for the problems I was experiencing. The solution was as follows.

1. Open Skype and go to the tools setting on the toolbar.
2. Go to Options.
3. In the Options dialogue got to Advanced
4. In Advanced, click on the Connection icon
5. Near the top of the page there is a check box that says: Use port 80 or 443 as alternatives for incoming connections. Uncheck this.
6. Click Save
7. Exit Skype
8. Restart Skype

Your problems should now be solved.

My system is an acer 5520 with a Turion64 dual core processor, 2GB RAM. I am using Dreamwever CS3 version 9, build 3481 and IE7.

Since the “fix” I have not had any more problems and my productivity has increased thanks to the new found speed of the software.

Posted under Technology

Burglars break into more than 760,000 British homes each year. Other countries suffer a similar level of such crimes. For the householders, burglary is one of the most traumatic of crimes. Though your empty property may be out of sight, its security will never be far out of mind. Fortunately, there are some sensible precautions you can take to increase both your home security and your peace of mind.

The biggest risk factors for domestic burglary are poor security and low levels of occupancy. Victims of burglary are less likely to have security measures in place at the time of the incident than non-victims. Security is effective in thwarting at least some offenders.

Burglars want an easy, risk free life, and do not want to get caught. They avoid getting caught by taking care to select the right home to break into. A pile of mail gathering behind the glass of the front door, a cluster of milk bottles on the doorstep, or a newspaper sticking out of the letterbox, are some of the signs they look for. Couple these with an overgrown garden, curtains that never close, and rooms in perpetual darkness and you might as well invite them to break in.

The burglar first identifies the quickest, easiest and safest route into your home. In most burglaries, he targets a door, by forcing a door lock or breaking a door panel. At other times he gets in through a window. In over a fifth of cases he simply walks in through an unlocked door.

If you value your possessions, you will have five-lever mortise deadlocks, fitted on both front and back doors. You will have an automatic deadlock, that can be locked from the outside, fitted on the front door. You may also have fitted laminated glass to doors, and key- operated window locks on every window.

With millions spent on persuading householders to fit good quality locks on doors and windows, getting back out should present the burglar with as big a problem as getting in. Unfortunately many people leave spare keys lying around inside the house.

All too often, the police attend the scene of a burglary to find that the burglar, who has struggled to squeeze in through a small window, has calmly walked out through the door. The door will often have a key in the lock, “in case there’s a fire”, or a simple latch lock that was lazily pulled to behind the busy householder. Occasionally, the unwitting occupant even provides the burglar with a getaway car in the drive and the car keys on the kitchen table.

Your empty property should always look occupied. Deliveries should be cancelled, and a trusted neighbour available to take in those that you cannot cancel. If there are no neighbours, family or friends available, you can make alternative arrangements for your mail through the local post office.
A family member, a friend or a neighbour may even be prepared to call in to the house each evening and morning to close and open the curtains. The lights can look after themselves, if you invest in a time switch or two. If you are leaving a house unoccupied for an extended period, an alternative to this informal caretaker arrangement is a house- sitter.

House-sitters not only make sure that your house is safe, but they also have the added advantage of looking after the garden, the houseplants and even pets. An agency will put you in touch with responsible people, both singles and couples, who will look after your property while you are away. As both the householder and the house-sitter benefit from the arrangement, a typical house-sitting arrangement comes without payment.

Having made sure that your house looks occupied, do not compromise your security by advertising the fact that you are going away. Not everyone standing amongst the crowds at the airport or station is a passenger. Display your home address on your luggage labels and you provide valuable intelligence for the more professional criminal. If you must put an address on your luggage, make sure it’s your work address, not your home address.

A small safe is an ideal place to secure your house and car keys, your smaller valuables and jewellery, and those irreplaceable items like marriage certificates, cherished mementoes and personal papers. Make sure the safe is proof against fire and flood, too, for added peace of mind.

Technology now provides the means to enhance household security to a level that will deter even the most determined burglar. Alarm systems vary in sophistication and in price. Some are simple stand- alone systems designed to draw attention. Others have multiple sensors and can be remotely monitored.

Regrettably, surrounded by car and house alarms, an indifferent public will often ignore the sound of an alarm. A more effective system is a monitored alarm. Once triggered, these systems alert a monitoring company who can call the police. These systems are more expensive than a stand- alone system, but give greater protection.

You do not have to go to the expense of paying for a remote monitoring system, as there are ways you can remotely monitor your house yourself for continual peace of mind. Some alarm systems can be programmed to telephone an alert to a friend or neighbour, who can then check on the premises and call the police and you if necessary.

If you have no one to keep an eye on the house you can install a remotely monitored closed circuit television system. With the development of computer technology, the Internet, and Cyber Café’s, remote monitoring has become easier than ever. Systems are now available that offer simple installation and maintenance, and are ideal for home security.

The local police will be happy to point out weaknesses in your defences that you may well have overlooked. You should also inform your local police station if you are away from home for any length of time. The police will keep a discrete eye on your property, and will at least know who to contact if anything does happen. The local police station is also a good source of up-to- date crime prevention literature if you don’t have access to the Internet.

Encouragingly, recent surveys show that the number of burglaries is falling, while the numbers of households investing in home security is increasing. With the average cost of a burglary amounting to around £1400, a modest investment in security could prove very cost effective, and will at least give you the peace of mind to really enjoy your time away from home.

Posted under Society

When the great pharaoh Khufu died the priests sealed his mummified body and a rich collection of his most valued possessions inside the Great Pyramid at Giza. As they sealed it shut, the priests must have thought that such a fortress of limestone and granite would keep the grave robbers at bay for all eternity. They could never have imagined that thieves could ever ransack the world’s strongest tomb. They could never have imagined losing the great Pharaoh’s treasure forever, or that his body would find its resting place in an apothecary’s shop, ground up for use as a medicine.

The priest’s failure to keep Khufu’s tomb secure shows that if the potential rewards are great enough, no building can hope to keep the criminal at bay. An ingenious criminal will always find a way in to a building, however secure it may seem. Yet Khufu and his treasures might have remained intact if as the priests had put as much thought into keeping the thieves in as they had to keep out.

If the rewards justify the effort involved, today’s burglar, like his ancient Egyptian counterpart, first identifies the quickest, easiest and safest route into a building. In a third of burglaries he will get in through a rear window. Windows are often the weakest point in the house, and the back of the house offers the best protection from prying eyes.

His biggest fear is of getting caught. Every second that he is in the house he is running the risk of discovery. His escape route is his lifeline. If he can get his head through an open window, a burglar can easily worm his way into the house. Getting back out with an angry householder snapping at his heels is more difficult. These rats need bigger holes to scurry out of and holes in houses do not come bigger than the doors.

With most householders now security conscious securing an escape route should be the burglar’s greatest challenge. Millions of pounds of government money goes into making the public aware of the benefits of good quality locks on doors and windows. Most security professionals recommend five-lever mortice deadlocks on both front and back doors, with strong, bolts top and bottom. For front doors most also recommend automatic deadlocks that you can lock from the outside. As well as locks, they also recommend fitting laminated glass to windows and doors, and key-operated window locks.

The advice is sound. A burglar is unlikely to risk attracting attention by smashing a large pane of glass. He will, however, smash a smaller pane of glass in a window to reach through and slip the latch. Window locks provide the window with multiple locking points that prevent the burglar prising open the window or opening it from the inside. Mortice locks and deadlocks make formidable obstacles for those without the keys.

A determined burglar may well manage to get inside a house, even when the owner has followed such crime-prevention advice. Once inside, however, he will face the difficult problem of getting back out with anything larger than an ornament or two. He might have free run of the house while his courage holds. He might rifle through all the cupboards, cabinets and drawers for items of value. But if the owner has taken sensible precautions, they will have hidden all small valuables in a floor safe or other secure place. Larger valuables such as electrical items and furnishings are less conveniently hidden away. However big-headed the burglar may be, he will never persuade a grandfather clock or LCD television to squeeze through a small kitchen window.

Fortunately for the burglar the bolts inside a door are useless if he can touch them. And the most secure lock is worthless if all he has to do is to turn a key to open it. As he climbs out of the French windows with your computer he no doubt gives thanks to St Gates, the patron saint of windows, that an unlocked window-lock offers similar security to a cardboard safe.

Despite government advice, in two out of ten burglaries an unlocked door or window means the burglar does not even have to use force to get in. More alarming is that once inside the burglar often has no trouble at all in getting back out by a door or a larger window. All too often the police attend the scene of a burglary to find the burglar who has struggled to squeeze through a small window has simply walked out through a door. The door will often have a key in the lock, “in case there’s a fire”, or a simple latch lock the busy householder lazily pulled to on the way out. Occasionally the unwitting occupier will have even provided the burglar with a getaway car in the drive and the keys on the kitchen table.

None of us can build ourselves a pyramid. None of us would want to live in the dark, suffocating confines of windless fortress. However, all of us can make sure the burglar leaves with no more than a sense of frustration simply by making it as difficult to get out of the house as it was to get inside.

Keys nesting in a basket in the kitchen attract a burglar like baby birds in a nest attract a cat. Keys impaled on hooks behind the door soon prove efficient traitors. Sheathe keys in their locks and you stab at the heart of your home security. Deposit your spare keys with family or good neighbours, or hide them away in a strongbox with any other small potential pickings.

The Great Pyramid’s six million tons of stone make it the most massive building ever built. Its purpose was to protect Khufu and his possessions into the afterlife, and it failed. Yet our modest homes, frail in comparison, can far more successfully guard our assets if we take the right precautions. Allow a burglar access to your house keys and your household security becomes as effective as the medicine made from Khufu’s stolen mummy.

Posted under Society

“Andalusia and flamenco are two concepts which cannot be separated, and neither one can be fully understood apart from the other.” This statement from Juan Polvillo, one of Seville’s leading dance teachers, perhaps best explains why so many aficionados from all over the world come to the city to study flamenco.

If you want to dance you have to come to Seville. The teachers are there. The atmosphere is there, is a common belief held by many students who study the dance form. Often you can be in a bar and a small group with a guitar will just start playing and people will start to dance. There is a passion and a naturalness about flamenco in Seville that you just do not find anywhere else.

Many students find it difficult to study flamenco in their own country. There are few dance schools outside Spain, and if a student wants to progress they have to travel to Spain, and Seville in particular. Some of the greatest teachers of flamenco teach or have taught in Seville. The Andulusian city is, after all, the birthplace of flamenco.

There are many forms of flamenco. These include, the Tango, Bulería, Alegría, Garrotín, Guajira, Tango de Málaga, Solea por Bulería, Caña, Seguiryia, Tiento, Sevillanas, and the Rondeña. Each form has its own choreography anc there are various parts to each dance such as the letra, the escobilla and the silencio.

Schools normally have classes of between ten and thirty students. The classes specialise in the different techniques with lessons that allow students to master the use of the arms, the practice of footwork, and turns.

Schools also teach the techniques of the Bata de cola, the traditional skirt, and the Mantón de Manila, or shawl, in forms such as the Solea, Alegría, and Solea por Bulería. To complement dances such as the Guajiras, Alegrías and Caracoles, students also learn traditional fan techniques. The compás, or rhythm, is integral to each form and students learn to distinguish the different types of compás from the simpler rhythms of tangos to the more complicated rhythms of the bulerías. Many classes have guitar accompaniment.

Typical courses last two weeks and cost around three hundred Euros. The price normally includes three hours tuition every day, Monday to Friday, with other classes of compás y palmas, the handclapping.

Besides the cost of the course, and the necessary airfare to Seville, students must find suitable accommodation for their arrival. For most students who have no contacts in the city the Internet is one of the easiest ways to find a place to stay. Many students find accommodation through many of the local websites. The amount that you pay for accommodation depends on whether you want a one-bedroom apartment or the cheaper alternative of a shared flat or a stay with a family.

A typical private room in shared accommodation in the centre of the city close to the schools will cost around two hundred and fifty Euros a month. This compares very favourably with even the cheapest hotel accommodation in one of the city’s many pensions. Prices rise during Semana Santa, the Easter Holy Week, and during the city’s spectacular Feria, the traditional April Fair, when tens of thousands of extra visitors descend on this vibrant city.

Flamenco is a wonderful way of making friends and meeting people from all over the world who share a common interest. Many classes will have students from as far afield as Slovakia, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, and France. The Japanese are also very interested in flamenco and most courses have some Japanese students.

With so many nationalities, language is not essential, though for taking the classes it does help if you speak some Spanish. Students are normally advised to relax, listen, look and learn. They are also told not to worry about the lessons too much and just enjoy the experience. Most of the students who have the energy and the obsession for flamenco go to Seville and most have a great time.

Obsession is a word that is as synonymous with flamenco as Seville and Andalusia. For many students flamenco becomes a little bit of an obsession. Like drugs, it gets inside you. It comes from the soul. Great dancers have an extra, almost indescribable something known as “duende”. It translates roughly as soul or spirit and it’s been described as the artist becoming the dance, instead of the artist doing the dance.

Most students would agree that flamenco is a passion. It is something that you have to have in your soul. Many students have said that once they have seen it once they just have to do it. They can’t stop. For many it gets to deep inside their soul.

Flamenco and Andalusia are inseparable and obsession plays a big part. While Seville exists, flamenco will exist, and students will flock to the city in their thousands each year to satisfy that something in flamenco that searches for everything, all their weaknesses, all their strengths. It is this something that can only be defined as “wonderful” that will keep flamenco forever alive.

Posted under Lifestyle