TRAVEL TALK

Evening Star, Issue 20316, 26 October 1929, Page 2

TRAVEL TALK

No, HI. [Written by the Rev. H. 0. Fenton. for the ‘ Evening Star.’] Bilbao is a most modern town as regards tho control of traffic. ” At frequent intervale in the main street occur notice boards bearing the legend: “ Passage do Pietones.”_ I noticed that people were crossing the road here, all traffic being temporarily held up. 1 therefore coniluded that I must bo a-Pieton, or possibly a Pietone, though I was tolerably certain I was not a Pietones. The first (or the second) of these conjectures proved correct. I had nearly crossed the road when I cut a corner by about a yard, immediately a “bobby,” policeman, or “copper,” or whatever name that individual is called in Spain, directed me back into the straight and narrow way. vVhen 1 later discovered that to cross the road at any spot other than a Bietony place would have meant an appearance at court and the handing over of a Certain amount of coin, 1 began to hav a respect for the bylaws of the Bilbao Town Council.

.1 must also pay a special tribute to Spanish drivers. In Paris if a son of Nimshi drives so furiously as to knock down a pedestrian, it is tho unfortunate walker that is lined for being a public nuisance to tho- motor driver. Jehu himself escapes scot free. In Spain, however, I suspect that the driver pays the penalty of an accident, and probably has to compensate the man he has knocked down. At any rate, he drives with the utmost caution. In the country, I should add, he invariably puts on his brake when approaching the vast number of pigs, piglets, hens and their families, calves, and kittens that seem to regard the highway as their most acceptable playground. Even an English motorist usually leaves it to the duck to get out of his way m time. If tho duck happens to be rheumatic the flock is minus one. Tho main street leads into an octagon. At least it would be an octagon if it had eight sides. It has only six, but if 1 called it q sexagon yoii wouldn’t have known what I meant, and would have thought I was talking high faintin’. Well, you must not cross this sectagon on foot; you must walk round it on the footpath if yon want to pursue your journey down the main street. Bilbao places a high value on the life of its pedestrians. I have previously mentioned the ex istence of a certain bank in Bilbao. That bank was my bete noir. For my bedroom window was only distant about 12ft from the back windows of the bank. And the charladies used to arrive every morning punctually at 5.30. It must be distinctly understood that I have no objection to the bank being hosed, and groomed. It probably is a most necessary proceeding It is the manner of the doing of it that causes me to see red. For the inhabitants of Bilbao, like all Spaniards, go to bed on the morning of the day after the one on which they get up. Also they make sufficient noise to drive away any chance of sleep from such misguided individuals as shall have sought to woo the clreaingod before midnight. In those circumstances naturally one is considerably sleepy at 5.30 a.m. Now, those charladies. on their entry into the bark, proceed at once to (a) sing loudly; (b) open wide the windows, which, being on the shady side of the building, were of the largest possible size; (c) sing more loudly; (d) play Football with' empty buckets; (e) sing more loudly still, if possible. To a person with only n, modicum of music in his composition there was no difficulty in classifying their voices. There was, first, a piercing soprano whose timbre rivalled the shrieks produced by the wooden axles of the ox carts revolving in their ungreased sockets; second, an unabashed mezzo; third, a contralto who had evidently strained her vocal cords in attempting to balance the efforts of tho first soprano. The quartet was completed or Sunday mornings bv tho presence of ore of the less '-oral sex, probably f,, _e insignificant half of tho alto. His light baritone was lost when the chorus lifted itself into _ he region designated. “ mf ” in musical notation. Once three-quarters of the musical society was late, and the leading soprano had an ecstatic five minutes of solo all by herself It was a good job she had opened tho windows, otherwise the hank authorities would undoubtedly have had to repair a quantity of broken glass. When the others had managed to push open the door against the volume of sound they evidently considered that No. 1 had taken an undue advantage of them. For thev lifted up their voices “ con fuoco ” and ‘ If” from 5.37 to 6.48 a.m. My Snanish was not ooual to determining the exact gist of their lay. or rather lays, since they all sang different words at the same time, but apparently it was something use this: — First soprano. U dir tys lutremoeetha tin kymop. Second soprano: Isa wu inaqni ten ewd des sat mas son sund aymor ning

Alto: Mis sus tom kimsca has cnkit tens. At 6.48 there came a silence as refreshing as a long pause in a wearying sermon Ha! I said, they are either preparing to hoof the tin buckets over the tesselated pavement, or they have begun the waste paper basket sweep This latter, in case you don’t know it, consists in eacii player putting a shilling into the pool and taking a waste paper basket. At a given signal the contents of the W.P.B.s are tipped out on to a desk and the person who first pieces together a complete letter out of the torn fragments annexes the kitty. It is a kind of glorified jig-saw puzzle, and is much appreciated by the writers of the letters, who unfairly accuse the bank of divulging private correspondence. At 720 1 doze off to sleep, only to be awakened five minutes later by the banging of the windows as they are being closed to keep out the heat for the resf oi the day. I was fortunate in striking the patronal festival of one of the churches in Bilbao. My notice thereto was attracted by the simultaneous crashing of the peal of four bells, which, unlike Jerusalem, did not seem at unity with themselves. I got there just in time to photograph the procession, which was headed by a real Basque band of two pipers and a drum. At Santander I heard a gramophone record of the Basque pipes—a speciality of the province, as one would say—and I was very glad to have heard and seen the real thing. After the pipers came the choir and clergy, vested and 'carrying the image of the saint. Then the town brass bard, and then the congregation, two dogs (grown-up), two pqppies (at the playful age), and a goat (ap-nare-tlv of vintage grnw+h). As both hands and the poal of bells were all performing at the same time, the result resembled a talking film with an impediment in its vociferation. I went into the church with the crowd, and had my attention at once distracted by the number of black

lace mantillas ail round me. To be absolutely candid, I had better add that faces underneath the aforesaid headgear were extremely pretty. The organist had got together a very strong choir, with heaps of tenors, and proceeded to pit his organ against the lot He won easily; the choir were a bad second; and the congregation did not even run. There was a beautiful perfume in the air. I tried to ascribe it to the incense, but eventually discovered it came from a huge bunch of carnation.; some one was carrying. The clock was an hour fast. During the course of the sermon I detected the hand of a strategist behind that advanced hour. On my left was a man who 1 am sure was a reformed pirate whose last lapse was still of recent date On my right were too little girls in skirts so much befiounccd that their length and breadth were about equal. Their small brother was trying to read a comic paper, but was dispossessed by the younger girl. 1 don’t blame her, either, for the preacher seemed out for a time-endurance competition After half an hour he stopped to mop his over-heated thinking bos. We all stood up and turned our priedieus round Alas —false alarm—ho was only entering the second lap I study two statues placed high up against the windows One was of a very fat monk, the other of a thin layman. The former was reading by means o’ a lamp; the latter was apparently growing out of an iceberg or snowdrift, and would have made a good advertisement for “ frigidaire.” The organist—bless his imagination!— put down three consecutive pedals and threw the preacher, who was overflowing his banks lik-> the Leith, somewhat off his balance. Three large men approached the pulpit, and I hoped were a deputation from the congregation to ask him to relinquish his perch. At any rate, the torrent was not only abated, but also cut off at the source, and we exchanged the pesetas we intended to give to the collection for coppers of ten centesimos During the afternoon it rained hard I burgled a house and took shelter. Imagine my delight when on leaving I found the house belonged to a policeman ! However, I left undetected. I must have met the “ bobby ” later or in the afternoon on the pier, and smiled at him enigmatically. (To bo continued.)