If I Had a Dog, I'd Call it Los Barcos...

This is the sort of
GIF I'd use.

It's time for the monthly Ramble and aren't I glad about that. Because if I had to write  an update after the week just gone, my opening paragraph would be 'WTF???' Repeated forever in bold, next to a GIF of a dropped jaw. (For readers from the future, the UK just got a new PM, she tanked the economy, and we're all fucked.)

So let's delve into some escapism. But first, a quick preamble. 

Perimenopausal insomnia is the worst. Yep, I'm not mincing my words. I imagine all versions of insomnia are bad; mine happened to kick in at forty-three along with a load of other unwelcome symptoms. For the first time in my life, I've been awake for two to three hours, most nights. And it's boring. I'm not stressed, there's nothing playing on my mind, I just have to ride out the time from 3ish-6ish and wait to drop off. But it was during the small hours that I rediscovered my latest obsession. 

It's Eldorado. Boom. Straight in. Remember it? The BBC soap that began in 1992 and was axed after a year. I LOVED it. Course I did. I was fourteen and it was on TV. What else was I going to do at 7pm, three night a week?  It got slated by the critics and some of the casting was questionable, but I watched it religiously. Fast forward thirty years and I recently found it on YouTube, in the middle of a sleepless night. I gave the opening episode a go. That bought back memories, so I watched the second one. Then the third. And... well you get the drift. I'm re-hooked and obsessed.

Gwen and Drew Lockhead.
Do better, Drew.

(Patricia Brake and 
Campbell Morrison.)

It's a lot of fun. It's also sexist as hell. Every male character seems to regularly comment on the body of female characters. Middle-aged father of two and husband to Gwen, Drew Lockhead says, 'I wouldn't mind giving her one', in episode one, as he watches Ingrid in the town square. Stay classy, Drew. Then there's seventeen year old Fizz married to early-fifties Bunny. Or Dieter, the twenty year old that's sleeping with forty-something Trish. All a bit dodge. Then there's the bandying about of gay slurs, the casual racism and xenophobia, and the - quite frankly - unbelievable moment when busy-body, Olive King, says the N-word. She's lamenting the change of title of that Agatha Christie book, but the idea that it would have been broadcast at 7pm, blows my tiny mind. 

Polly Perkins plays
Trish Valentine

But those are the negatives. Definite negatives, let's be clear. But there are positives. There's a camp breeziness to the thing. No storyline lasts more than a couple of episodes, so there's no high stakes or stress. Trish Valentine (with the twenty-year old lover) totters about in heeled mules, white leggings and a blingy top. She sings show tunes at Joy's Bar and is a riot. Sweet, gay, Freddie is grieving the death of his long-term partner, and being a kind sage to everyone that needs him. He's out and proud but sensitive and damaged. It might feel like a gay trope today, but the fact he's there at all feels revolutionary, when you think of when it was made. And then there's the international cast. Danish, French, German, and Spanish characters rub alongside the British ex-pats in the community of Los Barcos. It was certainly a massive vision. The BBC paid for the construction of the poolside apartment block and the Old Town houses in the middle of the Spanish countryside. You can't accuse them of lacking ambition. 

Time capsule stuff right here.
Dieter, Fizz, and Pilar.

But the most fascinating thing about rewatching it now (all 156 episodes) is how much of a time capsule it's become. It's a treasure trove of early nineties representation; with attitudes, references, and politics, wrapped up in the guise of a soap opera. There are several comments about the Barcelona Olympics. Freddie makes a joke with Dan Quayle as the punchline. There are frequent references to the European project, with the Brits now considering themselves 'proper Europeans'. There are times, when this proud Remain voter felt quite teary at what's been lost.

It's not just the mechanics of Brexit that break my heart while watching it. It's that when I saw this first time round, I had my whole life ahead of me. Europe was right next door. People went interailling and backpacked. I was learning German, which school said was important because the future was European. I was excited to get out there and see it all. 

So what happened? I suppose I did see quite a lot. I travelled cheaply and with ease, in my twenties and thirties. But the fact that my country - the one whose national broadcaster made an internationalist soap opera about ex-pats living in Spain - has now closed itself off to its nearest neighbours, will forever make me mad. 

As a forty-four year old sleepless woman, I no longer need to be seduced by the imagined glamour of ex-pat living. But I wish I had the choice to be. So if all I can do to feel part of the world I was promised at fourteen, is watch Eldorado throughout the night, that's what I'll do. 

Have a lovely week, folks.