I have been meaning to write about Felix for ages. I have known him for almost as long as I have owned Masia Lavanda and he has worked for me a great deal of that time. You will have read about him here and there in my blogs.
I have asked Felix several times whether he minds me taking his photo, and he always says no. I also asked him whether he minds me writing about him and the answer is always the same. You have to be sure, and so I am sure he wonders why he has never seen anything come out of all my photos of him yet. It is simple. I have taken so many that the thought of tracking them down in the quagmire of my various hard drives was daunting.
I should be more organised but the truth is that cameras today have lots and lots of pixels and these take up memory quickly and all I had to travel with was an aging laptop, grossly inadequate for holding my collection and for accurate image processing. I could not exactly board Ryanair with a powerful desktop computer and screen. Nor could I carry around a plethora of external hard drives. The result is that my images were scattered around three countries in various states of readiness and I forgot what is what and where and if catalogued properly.
So I kept on putting it off while taking yet another photo of the photogenic Felix. Last week he said that he read about the recently deceased Jxxxx on my blogs and he looked at me with what I took to be a questioning gaze, and I realized that I had better get on with it. Jxxxx has been a small part of my experiences here, but Felix is key to most of the first 12 years. He is my neighbour, he is an artist, he is honourable. He is peaceful. He is intelligent, and softly spoken. Something I could learn to be more like.
However, now I live permanently in Spain and have a lot of time between family and friends visits, and doing free communions and visiting my ailing mum in Holland. On top of that, my computer in England blew up quite literally, but like a long fused string to a pile of dynamite – slowly. This gave me time to rescue most of the hard drives before they were all corrupted. Then we sold the house and so I gave myself of a brand new maxed to the hilt iMac. And a new Mac air pro. Latter is great and former is a dire disappointment. Apparently it was not a good year for this model. Bloody hell, sounds like wine.
So, finally here is Felix.
Felix and his wife Merce (a wonderful salt of the earth type, hyper-intelligent to boot) believe in making the most of their natural resources and using nothing artificial. Like me, they live off–grid, and I remember a simple, but tasty meal in their house with several of their grown children. As it got darker, we sat in the twilight drinking red wine from his native village, with one solitary light bulb in the room that could barely illuminate the shadows cast by the stone walls. Eventually they lit a fire and Merce sat in a chair to the left of it, while Felix stretched out on a stone sofa on the other side and rolled yet another cigarette of homegrown tobacco. All around the room the fruits of their labours lay scattered; bags of almonds, cured olives, and pomegranates; tomatoes, walnuts and dried figs. It was an artistic mess that if I could, I would have painted it in the style of my favourite Old Dutch master Jan Steen. It was the real deal.
Yet, I came across Felix at a very stressful time of my life and in some ways he played a part in that stress for he worked for me under the guidance of a local conman who cheated and treated me badly. But I believed then and believe now that no fault could be attributed to Felix as this convincing character and myself spoke in French, not Spanish as I had not mastered it yet. Felix followed the orders from the crook and I did not understand what he was saying and still worked in England anyway. 3 days a month visit is a foolhardy plan to run a project!
Truth be, I am very grateful to have come to know Felix. It is too easy to tar everyone with the same brush and I am immensely happy that I put my doubts aside and asked him to continue when the conman was revealed, and that he agreed. His spirit and generosity is embedded in all the sculptures he has made on my land – for free!
If it were not for Felix, with whatever he thinks of me, I would not be where I am, with what I have, and with the finca I have. I would not have the beautiful restored animal pens, the natural hand-hewn terraces, or for that matter, many living trees. The casita would still be a horse stable, and the boys would not have had the joy of sleeping in the restored stone wigwam with birds and bats (sarcasm here folks). I cannot think of anyone else who could knock up an Ibex cut from stone in a day and just to disguise my septic tank! Felix’s stonework, including the hand cut terrace outside my kitchen door, has transformed Masia Lavanda into something reminiscent of the past and quite unique.
But more than that, without Felix as my neighbour, I would not have learnt how to harvest my olives and almonds that he pressed with his alone, without those of other farms. You cannot imagine the thrill of having your very own organic, wild, uncontaminated oil that is so fruity and heady that you can drink it. Having him and his wife Merce living on the mountainside around the corner makes me feel that I have found a place that really is safe from this fracturing world. It is a credit to them both that they have raised their children in the back of beyond and that all of them are bright and gutsy and well placed to step out where ever they wish. In fact, three are super successful in the modern world while the fourth one has decided to stay and follow his parents’ life. All come back to visit and slot straight into the life they once thought was all there was.
So I am gushing, and that is another part of the reason why I have not got around to writing about Felix. But here I am, slightly piddled on the Rioja that he and Merce love so much, and that I have shared with him during many a mid morning “almuerzo. I don’t want Felix to look at me questioningly again and so I am just getting it out. It is the beginning of December and the skies have been emptying their all on the land for the best part of November and it is now getting cold. The wind is icy and at times fierce. I am holed up so what else to do?
Out come the hard drives, and the archives, and here we are. For you Felix, who more than anyone I know, seems to have the secret of a successful life on this planet.
I hope you do not disapprove.
P.S. I need about 12 dry stone walls repairing due to a plague of wild boar here Felix. But they are still here! So, what is the point…
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