POLVO ENAMORADO

2 de marzo de 2006

Dearest daughter Helen:

Yesterday was what we called Ash Wednesday marking the beginning of Lent. I dont want to come about any religion or sort of things. That is the title of a book of poems of T.S Elliot a poet your mother and I liked quite a lot and I remember she was working at it when at college in Endsleigh, Hull we met and started to go our (that was the plot for a novel as well). So it has a sort of sentimental significance for me or at least I think. Ashes in Spanish is polvo and there was a famous poet in our language which is the equivalent to Dryden in yours who wrote a poem with this beautiful ending polvo soy mas polvo enamorado I am powder only but powder in love.

The idea that portrays is that the bonds of love are stronger than the bonds of death. Quite romantic isnt? Well this morning perhaps I got up in a poetic mood. I have been trying to write to you but I dont know what to say in order that you dont misunderstand me but I am pleased that all thing go well and that you are away for three weeks taking a course or somethings, so in order to cheer you up and encourage I am writing to you and I hope I do the right thing.

Is Bob back from manouvres in the Circle Polar Artic? Poor lad hope he dindnt freeze.

And I remember the last time we talked on the phone long ago you said you liked Madonna and everytime I saw Madonna on telly I thought of you. Really you look somewhat a bit like her (style and kitsch) in that beautiful photo you sent me in the garden in which you looked to the camera all serene and full of pose with your beautiful red hair -dont die please- and curly. You were seventeen or something and you were the spitting image of Mum.

Well what shall I say about me? Things go well. Everything is under control in Piedras Vivas. On Monday I phoned your sister Cristina living in Galaway at the moment. she was a bit low. She works in the catering of the University Hospital and one patient said to her You look spanish dont you. Yes. And what does she do a beautiful girl like you in a horrible place like this and she started to cry. Pobre coranzocito. You know she needs to get a good level of proficiency in english so she qualifies for a good job. But she is very impatient. to command English took me a lot of time and a lot of suffering and work and also she said she doesnt understando those bloody Irish. They speak to quick.

Well that happened to me in Hull pronunced ooll. Oh dear I had a bit of a job understanding those uncouth outspoken northeners. But Cristina is very nice. She has a golden heart, and she is quite intelligent. she looks much like her mother, not me, but she is tall and brown. I gave her your e mail - hope you dont mind and also mums number in Cornwall in case she wants contact you.

I think you shall be quite pleased and emotive encountering her and you will notice how we are normal people with ups and downs our virtues and defects, very spanish you know but all this family likes you and I think it wont be a bad thing for the prospective future if you keep in touch with them. Of course, you have your own life organized over there but this side of the channel they always shall be there. Any way, I am pleased Mum cut the bushes and the tree branches so she can have more light perhaps less privacy now that comes the spring. I am very pleased that Suzanne is well and coping. Here in Spain all the teachers are most on temporal leave because of disease as many of them had a hard time dealing with sullen pupils Brooklyn style carrying some of them knives, forks and even guns la madre que les parió.

There have been cases of aggressions and beatings to teachers. In my days it was we the teachers who belted and caned the insolents. Oh god I didnt have patience. I found that job exhausting and I admire Mum because she is an excellen teacher. Question of temperaments. I hope you have inherited her patience and thoroughness my dear. This weekend we might be at last going to Asturias. I am enclosing in other archive a photo of the house of the Castrillón nearly four centuries old and now empty if we dont repair it will fall down. I would like to hear from you when you finnished your diligencies and maternity course. I am sur that if Cris calls you are going to be nice to her.

I have to go now, my Helen. Un beso de papá

Antonio Parra