Miranda in Italy

‘Get­ting to Man­ana’, pic taken by Dan

Spring lasted two days in Andalu­cia, but there were wild­flow­ers every­where for those two days

What were you doing in Eng­land before you moved to Spain?
I was liv­ing in the shadow of the Arse­nal Foot­ball ground, work­ing as Gar­den Edi­tor of Coun­try Liv­ing mag­a­zine, writ­ing a load of books about the finer points of cush­ions and can­dles, bring­ing up my two sons in an ama­teur­ish kind of way and watch­ing my life flash past. A cou­ple of years of Sudoku and Spi­der in Andalucía were the per­fect cor­rec­tive, slow­ing time down to a glacial pace.

Why did you decide on Andalucía?
Post­cards. One was a breath­tak­ing fla­menco dancer with a three dimen­sional meringue skirt in shock­ing pink and lime green. The other was a Moor­ish tum­ble of white houses among reg­u­lar tufts of olive trees snaking down a chalky hill­side. Sugar cube houses were there in abun­dance, but I the only fla­menco dancer I saw dur­ing my ten years in Spain was at Sadler’s Wells. I wanted warmth, space, alarm­ingly manly men who would nip out for a drink or ten on horse­back and be trot­ted home, slumped uncon­scious in the sad­dle. I wanted to sit out, glass in hand, watch­ing Tech­ni­color sun­sets, breath­ing the fra­grance of jas­mine and datura. After 20 years in Lon­don I was search­ing for peace, beauty and a mav­er­ick cul­ture where Nanny did not rule.
Also I could afford the South of Spain.

The May Fes­ti­val of the Patios in Cor­doba fol­lowed the Fla­menco Fes­ti­val. Bril­liant excuse to visit.

And flights were cheap.

What were the highs and lows of set­tling into your new life in Spain?
The com­plete absence of fla­menco dancers doing their shop­ping in the local super­mar­ket came as a bit of a blow. It took me for­ever to mas­ter nurs­ery school Span­ish, though it has to be said that none of our chick pea farm­ing neigh­bours on the baked clay hill­side were much good at the sub­junc­tive either, con­ver­sa­tion con­sist­ing almost entirely of com­ments on the rain or lack of it. Find­ing a dead cat in the hold­ing tank whose water we had been drink­ing was a bad moment. I wasn’t wild about bull­fight­ing, and I was puz­zled – in a land where rose­mary and oregano grow wild — by the stolid plain­ness of the food. The Great Wall of Bureau­cracy was not good, with the extra con­fu­sion of being arbi­trar­ily assigned two sur­names so that nobody could ever find the pre­vi­ous cru­cial doc­u­ments.
Mere pec­ca­dil­loes. Every­thing else was fab­u­lous. Liv­ing on a build­ing site in a roof­less finca with nippy snakes and small bit­ing things was secretly rather exhil­a­rat­ing. I loved the muta­ble view of end­less blue and pur­ple hills stretch­ing to a sun sink­ing in a halo of e num­bers, the extra­or­di­nary land­scape and flora of El Tor­cal, our beau­ti­ful house and Moor­ish court­yard, genial Paco at the bar, the jas­mine, the fies­tas, my paint­ing mates, the slow loris pace of it all.

We had spec­tac­u­lar sun­sets over mauve and pur­ple mountains

When and why did you decide to write Get­ting to Man­ana?
I have a lousy mem­ory and I wrote a jour­nal to doc­u­ment the – impor­tant to me – act of courage, of step­ping off the tread­mill. I wanted peo­ple like me to read it and feel that they could escape from sell­ing their soul to pay the mort­gage. It kept me sane when there was no run­ning water, elec­tric­ity, or any means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the out­side world. Get­ting to Man­ana was a place to ven­ti­late, but also to cel­e­brate. I loved my time in Spain.

Our daily walk in Spain was full of flow­ers, large pug marks, mys­tery beasts and giant sun­warmed rocks

An amaz­ing moment of suc­cess in the court­yard garden

How did you then end up run­ning a riad in Mar­rakech?
Badly, is the short answer. We were way out of our depth in the most for­eign cul­ture you can find just a three hour cheapo flight from Lon­don. It seemed like a bril­liant invest­ment at the time. Per­suaded by a Moroc­can friend that let­ting a house in Mar­rakech was a short cut to undreamed of wealth, we bought and restored a roman­tic, long-abandoned riad in the Med­ina, the old quar­ter, a Unesco Her­itage Site. Some­how, up until this moment, we have failed to make a bean. But we live in hope. At least it stopped me spend­ing the money accrued from the sale of my Isling­ton house on shoes. Unlike Get­ting to Man­ana, Cin­na­mon City could not be called a love story. But Mar­rakech is a great place to visit – take the Tar­ifa boat and the overnight train from Tang­ier — with the most thrilling shop­ping. See www.riadmaizie.eu

What made you choose your cur­rent home in Italy?
Two things made us decide to leave Spain. With­out a TV we couldn’t keep up with the local con­ver­sa­tional sta­ple, which revolved around ‘Coro­na­tion Street’. And the spher­i­cal baker down the hill built – with fla­grant dis­re­gard for the law, being a chum of the mayor – hideous orange houses ever closer.
From our enor­mous partly hab­it­able farm­house we now have a view of the Teron­tola rail­way line, a recy­cling plant and a car demo­li­tion yard. But the hills are alive with writ­ers and painters; there are jazz, opera and ball­room danc­ing beneath the stars; every tiny ham­let can offer you inven­tive, deli­cious and fat­ten­ing food; and wher­ever you look – apart from our house, of course – there is some­thing stun­ning upon which to feast your eyes. We pay our elec­tric­ity bill in a fres­coed palace, and the Co-op has a view of a turquoise lake with three green islands and a flotilla of yachts.

What are you work­ing on at the moment?
In the teeth of uni­ver­sal Italy-fatigue, I am writ­ing yet another book about Italy. I can’t help it, I love it. And the pecu­liar truth is that an expe­ri­ence doesn’t seem real to me until I have writ­ten about it. I don’t know what I think until I’ve writ­ten it down. I’m also hop­ing to retrieve and com­plete two-thirds of a screen­play I started (about an Eng­lish widow who has an Indian adven­ture) which Final Draft seems to have con­signed to obliv­ion. And I want to fin­ish my scary novel about a haunt­ing.
Apart from that, Sudoku and Spider.

And your plans for the future?
Dan Pearce, the won­der­ful man whom I met on the day I returned from buy­ing the finca in Spain, who has shared the fun and the fright­ful­ness of it all, asked me to marry him. So that’s what we’re going to do, this August, in another fres­coed palace.
Other major ambi­tions include a) keep chick­ens and b) com­plete an intel­li­gi­ble sen­tence in Italian.