DAVID BENTATA

  Chapter 15 – THE FORTUNE TELLING GYPSY WOMAN © I really do not know how to start this chapter. Perhaps the best way is from the beginning. November 1967 La Linea - Bar "El Jockey" ... now the "OKAY" in the middle of the Calle Real. It was a Sunday afternoon. Our young gang ( la panda ) of guys and girls had spent the day in Campamento, swimming on the beach (long before it was polluted), horse riding and then at "El Jockey" for final drinks and tapas before returning home.   Those were carefree days, quality times we never appreciate until now that they have gone. It would be my birthday few days after this as we sat there laughing, joking, having a " biberon " of Cruz Campo with tapas of boquerones and tortilla de patata . A Gypsy woman approached our table selling balloons. Now we may have been young, but we were well past the age of balloons, but maybe because we were so happy, laughing and gay (oh whatever happened to the meaning...

  Additional to Chapter 14 I received a very heart-warming comment to chapter 14 regarding my late mother "Tete" Bentata. This was from one of the carers that looked after her during her 10 years in the Jewish Old People's Home, Angelita Muñoz Torres. During the early part of those years the staff at the Jewish Home were more or less permanent. This allowed for the creation of a very personal relationship between staff and residents. This was true also of the cleaners as well as the cooks. This system was later changed by the Elderly Care Agency to a rotating basis, much disliked by all residents. The home then was situated at the end of Line Wall Road, between Hambros Bank, the old Toc-H and the College.... yes, at the end of Lovers Lane! Visiting residents was easy since the location was very accessible. Today it has been transferred (ostensibly temporarily) to what was the Private Ward in old St Bernard's Hospital. Though the new facilities are undoubtedly fa...

  TIA HANNI’s BRACELET This is the story as I remember it. No doubt if any of my older cousins read this, they will correct me (they usually do !). But the story stands on its own merits and so I will share it here with you. Apparently, there was this precocious young lady, sometime in the late 1800s, whose name was Hannah Benoliel. It seems that her sisters and her girl-cousins too, had all managed to get married, but Hannah was not. She was not ugly, on the contrary, but somehow or other suitors did not survive with her for long. In those days this was considered something of a tragedy that a young girl from a good family could not get married. "Hannah!" " Si, Papa ..." "Why do you turn down all suitors? Are you waiting for Prince Charming on his white horse?" " No Papa ...." " Entonces ????" "Papa, they are rather shallow. They talk sweet nothings and more nothings than sweet!" "Pero tu no eres Einst...

  LOVE IN MONTREAL - (part two) Peter had to go to work next morning, so after a hurried breakfast and the barest minimum of instructions, he left me to explore. Although the size of the streets and some of the shops had me amazed and enchanted, people are people whether in Gibraltar, Montreal or Timbuktu. I am not a shy person by nature, so talking to people in shops, restaurants and pizza parlours came easy to me. All the more so since thanks to Bro. Murphy (aka Malvaloca) at the Grammar School he had hammered enough French into my head and I could even hold basic conversations in French. It was funny to realise that Canadians in Montreal speak a type of Yanito, though in French and English. Mr Corso and the Gib Tourism Minister would have been proud of me as I spread the SPQR/British Gibraltar matchboxes to everyone and told of our political sorrows everywhere I went. I did not visit EXPO'67 that day. Instead I familiarised myself with the area and on instructions from Peter,...