Piracy





A few years ago I came home after work and found a couple of guys on my land with nine sacks of olives they had picked from my trees. I am not a mean person and if someone had asked me to pick a sack of the fruit for their needs I would have said yes and whilst you are at it you can have the lot. No problem.

It might sound romantic to have twenty odd olive trees on your land but the practicality of it soon wears off. The harvest is very hard work. First some nets have got to be spread around each tree and the said tree shaken incessantly until the last of the olives (always the top ones) had the good grace to fall down. In the vast olive groves they have motorised vibrators that do the job on each tree in seconds.

Then that lot has to be bagged by hand and then driven to the nearest olive press. Sometimes a matter of 50 kms there and back. Once there all your bags are poured into a huge funnel and in minutes your olives have produced so many litres of real virgin first cold press olive oil. You do not pay but the press owners keep a certain amount of oil as payment. They mix it with other harvests and send it by tankers to Greece, Italy or France where it is going to be sold in fancy bottles with artistic corks and snazzy labels proclaiming that the oil is a genuine local product. Agricultural piracy.


I challenged the thieves on my land but there was not a word in reply. They just loaded the sacks in a small van parked on the lower track of my property and left without a word. Years in this country have taught me not to try to read any vehicle number plates on ancient charabancs and in any case I did not have my glasses on my nose. Piracy in the groves.



Well, I said to myself, that is it for this year. I am one of those idiotic persons who wake up in the morning and immediately find, voluntarily or by accident, anything that can complicate life. So, every year, before taking the bulk of the harvest to the nearest almazara (olive press) I used to keep half a sack and went through the tedious process of preparing the olives for marinating. How very quaint to invite friends for drinks and offer prissy little dishes of your own olives adorned with the ubiquitous bay leaf, thyme, the odd garlic clove that nobody touches and the obligatory fresh sprig of olive twig to make sure that the guests know what they are supposed to appreciate.

The process is tedious and matches watching paint drying anytime. First find a heavy flat stone that fits comfortably in your hand. Then you will need a table or a bench which will be impervious to oil stains. This excludes marble which is porous. If not treated properly or of poor quality it will greedily absorbs oil, red wine spills and food colouring. No amount of skills, miracle products or Mrs Beeton´s tips will get the stains out. So I used to cover a garden table with heavy plastic. And here you go. One by one you smash the olives and throw them in a bucket of heavily salted water in which you have sunk a bunch of a mountain herb called alcedra or alcedera. This herb keeps the olives crunchy. The spelling differs from village to village so do not jump at my throat telling me to keep to my own language as it happened in the past. After a while the plastic will be a mess of oil. Console yourself with the thought that olive oil is excellent for your hands. The cats think so too and have great fun paddling in the sleek and parading on all your best pieces of furniture. There again olive oil is the best furniture polish. Pity about the silk cushions though.

Finally you crack the last one. With a stick give the whole thing a few good stirs to dissolve the salt. Cover and forget it for about three months. Have a glass of wine. After that time drain the olives, rinse well and leave them to dry in the sun for a day or so. Bottle in clean jars, fill with olive oil and add whatever herbs take your fancy. Serve with drinks. You will find that most foreigners can't stand olives and all your hard work has been for nothing.

But your hands feel good and the furniture gleams. The silk cushions have added class to the local landfill.

So, in a way, I was not sorry to see my harvest disappear down the mountain. I would have liked to have been asked though.

The same scenario happened every year when my nispero trees managed to bear quite a lot of fruit. They were there when I bought the land and eventually we planted a small orchard around them. We are not particularly fond of nisperos: all stone and very little flesh. Again I used to make chutneys and pickles. One year a car stopped by and in full view of us having a drink on the terrace they stripped the trees in seconds. By the time we closed our mouths against the flies they were gone. "No chutney this year" I mumbled. "Don't like nisperos" Chris mumbled back. It was not the point. That family did not look too well off and if they had asked to pick the fruit I would have given them old bags to carry it. Piracy in the orchard.



A few days ago a lot of people were stunned watching on TV what happened to the container ship that had to be beached in Devon. The "Napoli" had struck the rocks in awful weather and could have broken in half, spilling its own fuel and loosing the 2068 containers she carried on deck. Wisely the authorities decided to beach her on the shingles of Branscombe village. Unwisely they delayed getting powers to avoid what followed. Some containers, still sealed, had slid off the deck and had settled on the beach. The carnage that followed, thanks to amateur videos, showed people at their worst and their most ignorant. Opening containers with crowbars and grabbing out whatever they found to take home was pure crass ignorance. Some had travelled 700 miles through the night to gather packets and packets of Pampers nappies. Others were showing off sitting on new motorbikes they thought they were going to take home. The looting went on until finally the authorities stepped in.

There are strict laws on shipwrecks. The Merchant Shipping Act of 1995 is relevant to the case of the Napoli. "All wreck material which comes from UK territorial waters or outside UK territorial waters must by law (section 236) be declared to the Receiver of Wreck. Wreck is defined as anything which is found in or on the sea, or washed ashore."  Finders who report their finds to the Receiver of Wrecks have salvage rights. The key issue is that all wrecks belong to someone; an individual, a company, insurers or underwriters. After one year of the report to the Receiver and efforts to trace owners have failed the wreck or goods belong to the Crown or whatever State. It is then at the discretion of the Receiver to sell the wreck or goods to the salvor, usually at a minimal price to accommodate the salvage rights. It is a long process but it is the law. Those guys on that Devon beach could have well hoisted the "Jolly Roger". Piracy on the beach.



The same laws apply to Spain but with one even tougher clause: the 50 metres of beach upwards from the high water mark is called Zona Maritima and belongs to the State. With whatever is on it. This is why so many beach bars have run into problems over the years.

I had to admire the expediency of the Spanish authorities when the refrigerated ship "Sierra Nava" ran aground in the bay of Algeciras last week. Tugs and salvage ships surrounded the stricken vessel immediately and nobody could have managed to steal a sausage out of that hull without being escorted ashore and charged. The Salvamento Maritima was first on the scene.

Because grabbing whatever is found on the beaches or at sea without reporting it is theft.

Nobody is perfect.


Our house during the war was adjoining a small holding whose owners were heavy collaborators with the occupying power. They had a lot of chickens and egg laying hens in the compound next to our boundary. That sour faced couple sold all their produce to the powers in charge without thinking that my Gran who looked after a vast brood of children could have been glad of a few eggs or an old hen from time to time.

So my cousin and I devised a system. We stored scraps of potato peels and soaked them in the most lethal alcoholic brew my grand father used to distil illegally in the coal house. Then we hooked chunks of the foul peel on any bits of wire or disused safety pins, attached it to a length of string and carefully, with a stick, pushed it under the fence towards the chickens.

There is always one. One of the birds came to investigate, picked at the peel, found it tasty, picked again and eventually got unsteady on his legs. Drunk as a lord it fell flat on its chest. It was a simple matter to grab our stick and pull him under the fence to our side. Piracy in the farmyard.


Sometimes I like to look back on our ingenuity as survival. In fact it was theft.

My Gran never questioned the provenance of the odd dead fowl in the scullery. Wise woman.

JOCELYNE

P.S. The last instalment of Mister Bear adventures "Mister Bear is at home" is on www.spanglefish.com/listing.asp