With five episodes so far in our tour of Andalusia, a couple of destinations remain. In April I will be going to Seville and Cadiz and I look forward to giving my account of those two fascinating cities. Seville is the capital and largest city in the region and dates back over two thousand years. Cadiz is more ancient still; one of the oldest towns in Europe. I will be travelling by plane, bus and train. Meanwhile, we will be taking a break in our hideaway in Elviria, Marbella. A break, for me, means doing nothing much at all. 

We’re going on a holiday now

Gonna take a villa, a small chalet

Costa del Magnifico

Yeah, the cost of living is so low

Scribbling is allowed, in whatever form I decide to record worthwhile memories. Some painting or prose, or both, will emerge. This acrylic is a moment captured last Spring in Elviria, just a few kilometres east of Marbella. That rippling blue rectangle is a familiar motif in Hockney’s Californian paintings and sum up that mood of ecstatic indolence at the heart of swimming pool culture. To be sure. There are a couple of musical equivalents; though less than one might suppose. Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s rendition of Loudon Wainwright’s The Singing Song is one and Nightswimming by REM another, if not quite the right time of day. Closest is Dire Straits, with Mark Knopfler’s Twisting by the Pool. A rare fun rocker from the bluesy Geordies, it is a retro take on the Spanish holiday boom for sun starved Britons in the early sixties. The song doesn’t appear on any of the band’s studio albums, and first surfaced as a single 1983. It was a firm favourite as an encore, as I witnessed at  Stadium gig in Dublin the early eighties.

Yeah (yeah), gonna be so neat

Dance (dance) to the Euro beat

Yeah (yeah), gonna be so cool

Twisting by the (twisting by the)

Twisting by the (twisting by the)

By the pool (twisting by the pool)

So, while I hope to be pumping ink with my biro, or painting my next masterpiece for over the mantelpiece; more than anything else I will be

Twisting by the pool (twisting by the pool) twisting by the pool (twisting by the pool)

We’re twisting, twisting by the pool, twisting by the pool, twisting by the pool

Twisting by the pool (twisting by the pool) twisting by the pool (twisting by the pool)

We’re twisting, twisting by the pool, twisting by the pool, twisting by the pool