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Recommended by my sister who says it is a cross between Peter Mayle (A Year in Provence, etc.) and Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, etc.). I'm looking forward to reading it! " — Jane, 7/27/2013 Oh no not another move-to-rural-utopia memoir. But I forgive this one because it's strictly non-pretentious, non-precious, gentle and funny. And rather well-written. " — SP, 2/7/2013 An uncharacteristically flattering portrait of the author. It’s a Polyphoto, and they would have taken a hundred or so to get this one. There were, it was true, a hell of a lot of lemons. They hurtled past, borne on a stream of water that bubbled nearby; in places the road was a mat of mashed fruit, and the earth beneath the trees was bright with fallen yellow orbs. I remembered a half-forgotten snatch of song, something about a lovelorn gypsy throwing lemons into the Great River until it turned to gold. A very enjoyable read with a humourous quirky look at ex-pat life on a farm in Spain. Looking forward to the rest of the trilogy. " — Jaff, 9/14/2013
For many years we ran the sheep, and I would shear in England and Sweden to make ends meet. But we never made any money at it and eventually we had to sell up just to pay the extortionate demands of the bank. I was heartbroken and went to sea (see “Three Ways to Capsize a Boat”). A: No. I hated anything to do with handymanism. I had to learn to do things for myself though because it was difficult to find anyone to come all the way out here to work. So, I became a builder, carpenter, electrician, plumber, decorator — the lot, achieving at best only a very modest ability. My heart’s not really in it. I have to say that the building of one’s own house is a very great pleasure though. I’ve come to consider — foolishly perhaps — the thought of living in a house built by somebody else as faintly distasteful, like wearing other people’s underclothes. Chris Stewart and his wife Ana leave England to go to Andalucia to live their dreams as farmers in the mountains of Spain. One summer day the shearers came. My job was to catch the sheep for them and roll the wool. I was so entranced by the business of sheep shearing that I persuaded them to take me with them on my free days, and in return for rolling the wool and catching the sheep, they would teach me how to shear. It was something about the grace and the beauty of the work… and the sheer physical hardness, the manliness of it, that attracted me. It was, along with agriculture itself, something of an epiphany; I suddenly knew my destiny. There are now much fewer matanzas; people seem to be forgetting the tradition. Bernardo still keeps pigs. Miguel and Mercedes up the river in the Puerto now buy a dead pig in a plastic bag from the freezer shop, but they still retain the old customs in that they invite over the whole village for a glass or two of costa, and everybody takes home a piece of choice meat as if they had been all day helping dispatch the pig. It’s a good way of bowing graciously out of the tradition.
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Well, this is no good, I don't want to live here!' I said as we drove along yet another tarmac road behind a row of whitewashed houses. 'I want to live in the mountains, for heaven's sake, not in the suburbs of some town in a valley.' My mother wept every time my sisters and I went away to boarding school. Later in life I asked her why she sent us. “It was what people of our class did,” she replied with a little sniffle.
Lo mejor del libro es la naturalidad. Este extranjero viene y no idealiza al mundo rural, tampoco se idealiza a sí mismo. Tiene sentido del humor y se nota que ama el lugar en donde está. Eso hace que a una casi le den ganas de tomar sus pilchas y buscar su propio paraíso-no paraíso agreste. I have admit I came to this book with low expectations. The story of an Englishman’s escape into rural Spain seemed to promise only the same endlessly repeated tropes: the hapless foreigner making their way in a strange land, the contrast of dreary modern life with the pure traditions of the unlettered, the isolation of cities compared with the communality of the country—you’ve heard it all before.Finalmente la espantosa sesión llegó a su fin. "Maravilloso.", dije con un suspiro, "¿No conocen otras tonadas?". Eduardo y Manuel me analizaron frunciendo el ceño. "De acuerdo, vamos a tocar otra". Me estaba bien empleado.
Estaba tan lleno de entusiasmo y alegría que me sentía mareado. Cogí una naranja del árbol, la primera vez que hacía algo así. Resultó ser la peor naranja que jamás había comido."
Christopher 'Chris' Stewart (born 1951), was the original drummer and a founding member of Genesis. He is now a farmer and an author. A classmate of Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel at Charterhouse School, Stewart joined them in a school band called The Garden Wall, and they later formed another band with schoolmates Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips, called Anon. This band eventually became Genesis in January 1967. Stewart appears on the band's first two singles, "The Silent Sun"/"That's Me" and "A Winter's Tale"/"One-Eyed Hound." Although several demos from Stewart's time with Genesis appear on the Genesis Archive 1967-75 box set, he is not credited with playing on any of them. (Peter Gabriel seems to have played drums on a couple, and the Christopher 'Chris' Stewart (born 1951), was the original drummer and a founding member of Genesis. He is now a farmer and an author. A classmate of Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel at Charterhouse School, Stewart joined them in a school band called The Garden Wall, and they later formed another band with schoolmates Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips, called Anon. This band eventually became Genesis in January 1967. Stewart appears on the band's first two singles, "The Silent Sun"/"That's Me" and "A Winter's Tale"/"One-Eyed Hound." Although several demos from Stewart's time with Genesis appear on the Genesis Archive 1967-75 box set, he is not credited with playing on any of them. (Peter Gabriel seems to have played drums on a couple, and the rest do not feature drums.) A: Ana and I had farmed in England for many years before we came here. We knew about sheep and farming in Britain. Nevertheless, there was, and still is, an awful lot to learn. I have many mistakes, but I think that little by little we are making some progress. Q: You learned many new traditions and customs when you moved to las Alpujarras. For instance, Matanzas — what was that like? Little by little we adapted to life on our remote farm in the mountains, and the farm adapted to us. We had a daughter, Chloé, and lived a life of some considerable hardship, but great happiness, trying mostly in vain to scratch a living from the unyielding earth. To make ends meet we collected seeds and I sheared sheep all over the Alpujarra. This made us enough to scrape along, and took us to the wildest and remotest parts of our new country. After eight years of struggle Mark Ellingham came to visit us one summer, and suggested that I write a book about our experiences. With great reluctance I agreed, and set about writing “Driving Over Lemons”. The book was a great and unexpected success, but even better than that, I discovered what it was that I really wanted to do with my life: I loved the writing, and although there’s a part of me that’s a little sad no longer to be a sheep shearer, or a sailor, or a musician… and although I still find it hard to take seriously the idea of work that doesn’t get you dirty, I have a wonderful time being a writer.
A lyrical portrait of a couple integrating themselves into one of Europe's most beautiful regions. Stewart's writing conveys his amiability...and he has a particularly good ear for dialogue. (Anthony Sattin Sunday Times)
Richard E. Grant's Spanish reading list
This poor man met really not nice people in Spain. It made me sad to see how poorly he was treated, repeatedly. Man. I should have loved this book. When I pulled the off the shelf at Half Price Books I knew I had to have it. It was perfect for me. Not only was it a travel memoir, one of my great weaknesses, but it was a travel memoir about Spain. Add onto that a quirky story and I'm sold. I was quite devoid of musical talent, couldn’t even tune the thing, but in the knowledge that a minimal mastery of this sonorous wooden box would secure me all the sex and love I could cope with, I persevered. I practiced till the blisters beneath the blisters on my fingertips were blue. In time, I achieved a certain pathetic proficiency; I mastered a Bourrée by Bach, a couple of simple pop songs, and found myself a mate. Maybe I should have known. After all, the title says "an optimist in Andalucia." That optimism definitely permeated the book. The problem was it wasn't just over Stewart. You could feel it over every moment and every character. It watered it down and even though he was writing about an area of the world near and dear to my heart, I found myself just not caring.
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