Next, the review and some more things about writing: Tomorrow, I hope.

Alas, April has begun today and many things have gone askew, then straightened out. Do take a look at Sue L’s book, the one about the mistakes writers make about horses. It’s excellent and I will write a review once all these geek things are sorted out.

Q

Everything else stops. Crowds collect at the roadside, around the switchback corners, gullies and precipices and specially near the water fords . We had forgotten about it this time but two years ago we’d have laid in groceries and settled in for the duration as the roads to our old farmhouse in these Cordoba mountains, would have been closed. This portion of the FIA World Rally Drivers
It is often thought that “El Rally” is about cars, drivers, navigators, raucous fans and curvaceous groupies (such is the power of old memories that the word ‘pit popsie’ creeps in). Nope. Not in Argentina. Here these Rallies, grand leftovers of the glorious days of Open Road Motor Racing aren’t about cars at all. They are about weeks of planning, laying in provisions, studying the route maps and gathering the gang or the family or even alone and getting to the selected spot well before it’s taken or worse, the roads are closed.

Roll back a little, though, to provisioning: it’s almost impossible to describe the delicacy of this operation. While Citroën and Suabaru and Ford and company are pushing their engineers and designers to their utmost and beyond with test benches and blueprints a huge array of experts, even more finely tuned in their art are at work. They may be from all walks and stations of life: wealthy to charity cases; CEO’s to vagrants. The only thing they have in common is that they are (with extremely rare and commendable exceptions) male. Their drawing boards are the counter tops of butcher shops, and their subject matter is beef. They would call it ‘carne’ for meat, in Spanish but meat here is bovine, only and exclusively. Cuts are selected, discussed, examined, by each customer with the butcher, and customer with customer and with hangers on This is a subject in its own right, especially in the small towns here, where there will be an average of fifteen butchers per town square, there are friends or hangers on that sit around on benches provided for them, in the shop. They have deep wisdom not only of beef, but are knowledgeable on most of the town’s affairs: on this occasion they are also quite possibly the best source on the prospects of the different rally teams , as well as the routes, best watching spots (highly kept secrets in general) and any policy changes that haven’t made it into the news. Once the beef has been selected there will follow a slightly quicker, but no less important, addition of sausages, offal (sweetbread, kidneys, and so on) . A very minimum will be one pound overall per person, plus a little more (another two pounds) just in case. Surprisingly to an outsider, even those with apparently low purchasing power will manage to gather enough ‘meat’. Next would be a good stock of wine, red and not usually fussed about very much; reasonably drinkable is good enough, but enough. Lately Fernet Branca, an amaro liqueur with very high alcohol has become very popular. It was supposed to be a digestif but in this case its booze.

The well equipped rally watcher will also have a portable grill which isn’t a problem: most cars have them in the boot all the time (I’ve known cases of the grill being there when the spare tyre wasn’t). Note, there is not much else: meat drink and oh yes, bread. Wives, girlfriends make salads and things. Rallies take a long time to deploy so the different watcher groups would begin to spread out along the route many hours earlier, half a day or more (some camp out overnight). Certainly well before roads are closed. By now it should be obvious that this is the more important part of the event. Cars race by, the leaders then a fairly long interval to the rest of the rally cars roar by. Some arousal among spectators at the first distant rumble, cries of encouragement and boos ripple down the route then quick inquiries, numbers matched to cars, screams of wild excitement as the cars slither and skid, fly and thump and sploosh (nothing like a stream and a mighty splash). Then passionate arguments about positions, possibilities and identities which soon subside. Meanwhile there is one of the group that remains unmoved, the one whose mettle will be tested this day, the asador, tending his grill over the hot coals as he fusses and mumbles invocations over the spread out cuts and sausages. Not long after the first spread of cars have passed the rest will join him and the wine, which has been flowing quite freely all along. After the leaders have past most will remain here, by the griller, who will provide bits gradually but with increasing frequency into a crescendo of food that at some undefinable point about mid afternoon, will have become lunch. It will descend into a pleasant and desultory evening, many a siesta under the sparse scrub of these mountains and well into dark, the roads open again and everyone rolls home.

But this year has been different. It is early to say if the Shadow of Darkness comes creeping over, probably not. But there was no meat. Just like that. Because of soybeans. Not because this nation of carnivores has become suddenly vegetarian, no one seriously wants to eat soybeans, not here certainly but the Asians do, in large quantities and there is the beginning of the stirring unease that even crept into the rally: Farmers began to get good prices for soybean for export, government wants more than it can get off the standard cuts it has always taken so levied an extra tax burden, farmers retaliated with a strike just as the crop is due for harvest, stopped all produce from getting to the markets with all the usual bells and whistles of strike action, pickets, threats and so on. Nothing unusual. Except that the sides of beef did not get to the butchers in time to provision the rally.

I was actually about to write a review on Susan Huffman’s 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Horses today but on the midday radio news there were interviews at the rally roadsides; the leading question was “… and what are you having for lunch?” followed by the most sorrow filled replies: “a little bit of pork … some chicken legs and they are so very small!”. Then the interviewer with a cautious ray of hope to a desperate people “But apparently the trucks are getting through”. If the cars had not been able to get through it may not have been so important. No meat.

Q

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