Free The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society by Chris Stewart

serious. I know that man a little bit, and I certainly know the type. He’s one of those hijo de puta ham barons from Trevélez. People like that expect to get what they want; and when they don’t get it, they get nasty.’
    ‘Lord, I thought he was just messing about…’
    ‘No, not a bit of it; that’s the way those people are. Up here, they run things. They do exactly as they like and they don’t let people stand in their way, especially not foreigners. They’re the bastards who tip their used salt into the river instead of loading it up and taking it down to the sea.’
    ‘Well, a bit of salt in the water’s not too much of a threat. I’m not going to be shaking in my boots about that.’
    ‘I would be – they tip dozens of tons in, and the water of the Trevélez River is high in salts anyway. My father lost a whole orchard of apricot trees because these bastards tipped their waste salt into the river. A small trick like that could lay your farm to waste.’
    All in all, it hadn’t been the best of days.

    The heat of July grew more and more intense, the short nights barely giving respite to the burning air, as one long stultifying day rolled into another. July and August are the hardest months to bear in the Alpujarras, as the swelling heat is given voice by the ceaseless screaming of the cicadas, and even the smallest task drains you of all your energy. It’s a time when all right-minded people cave in after lunch and take a long, deep siesta.
    However, this simple pleasure is not always as easy to achieve as you might think, because the heart of summeris also the time that visitors start arriving. For some reason people from the northern hemisphere like nothing better than to stalk across mountains in the fierce midday heat, arrive on the terrace of a complete stranger and blast their hopes of waking naturally from a siesta. In the past month I had been dragged from my slumbers by, amongst others, a Danish hiker, a German ornithologist, and a man from Dorset who told me that he had borrowed my last book from the library and read most of it, and would I mind signing his map and posing for a photograph?
    So it was that one August afternoon, replete with gazpacho, tortilla and salad, and pleasantly lulled by wine, I retreated to my bed, in the hope of sleeping undisturbed. I was lying on my back in bed – that being the best way of dissipating heat (and why dogs in summer lie with their bellies in the air) – and was peering lazily behind closed eyelids at the thoughts ambling through my mind. This is a trick I’ve discovered to slip more quickly into a light doze. You try not to follow any thoughts in a conscious way but just watch as they go by. Little by little, as you lie bathed in sweat, the thoughts become more disjointed, their rationality dissolves, rogue elements appear, and you find yourself skimming the upper hills of dreaming before descending into the valleys. This is a delicious moment, the moment before you dip into sleep. You say to yourself, ‘I must be asleep because that last thought didn’t make sense,’ and then all of a sudden you’ve overcome the curse of the heat, and you’re deep down in the veils of Morpheus, cloaked in mindless sleep.
    At this point, often as not, a fly will attempt to dart up one of your nostrils, jarring you straight back to irritable wakefulness. You get up and shut the shutters – housefliesdon’t fly in the dark – but once disturbed it is not easy to regain that sweet oblivion. You manage at last and, ah, such pleasure, and then all of a sudden there impinges on your consciousness a shuffling, as human noises are heard moving forward on the terrace – perhaps a ‘Hello, there!’ or a whispered ‘Do you think anyone’s in?’ A visitor has arrived.
    Grumbling to myself, I ratch about for something to cover my ghastly nakedness and stumble out into the glaring light to face my uninvited guest. ‘Oh-h,’ they greet me, a slightly falling note