SOLtalk : Small Talk diary pages

Residents
Day

Nerja’s Residents’ Day will be on Sunday, April 27, on the new square, Paseo Nuevo, behind the town hall, above the underground car park.

Opening time for the stands is from 11am to 3pm. There will be a stage with dancing and singing during the day and bars offering typical food and drinks from different countries. The bars and the stage will be open until 7:30pm. Some 53 stands of foreign associations and clubs from Nerja and surroundings will participate showing their activities.

Dog racing
night

A dog racing night is being held at Bar El Playazo on the Playa El Playazo, Nerja, on Friday, April 11, in aid of the Nerja Donkey Sanctuary.

Tickets are €10, available from the bar or the sanctuary, to include a buffet meal. In another move at the bar, which has become very popular for its live music on Saturday nights, there will be lunchtime barbecues every day, starting on March 16.

Players
celebrate

The 20th anniversary of The Nerja Players was celebrated at the Hotel Al Andalus last month.

Founder member Trevor France and current president Norma Smeeton gave a potted history of the club, adding that over €5000 had been donated to local charities.

The players will be presenting Alan Bennett’s award winning drama “An Englishman Abroad”, at the Nerja Cultural Centre on March 5 at 9pm.

Find out what happens when Guy Burgess, disgraced British diplomat and former Soviet spy, has a chance encounter with stage actress Coral Browne in

Trevor France and Norma Smeeton
with the anniversary cake

1950s Moscow. Bennett explores the contradictions and complexities in the character of the exiled Burgess and examines issues of loyalty and betrayal, patriotism and principle with customary perception and humour.

Following the play there will also be a selection from Alan Bennett’s popular “Talking Heads” series. Tickets are €8, available from the theatre box office. All profits will be donated to local charities.

Following on from the sell-out Christmas Old Time Music Hall evening staged at the Cultural Centre, Norma Smeaton, the show director and president of the Nerja Players presented a cheque for €800 to Cudeca, the cancer charity.

Accepting the cheque from Norma (centre) outside the shop in Nerja were Katie O’Neill, Cudeca’s shops co-ordinator and Laura Haggis, the charity’s events co-ordinator.

Exhibitions
open

An exhibition of new works by Spanish artist, Antonio Valverde (sculptures) and Danish artist Soren Kent (paintings and ceramics) opens on March 14, from 7 to 9pm at Galeria Krabbe, C/ Rosarico la Joaquín, 12, Frigiliana, Tel: (+34) 95 253 4214. The artists will be present and the show runs until April 12.

An exhibition of work by Christine Rodel, “sin palabras”, has opened at Casa de las Palabras, C/Bronce, Nerja, and runs until March 15.

Help
for
Sri Lanka

Two Lions Club in Nerja has contributed €8,000 to help with the construction of new houses in parts of Sri Lanka devastated by the 2004 tsunami. Much of the cash was raised from the Lions’ charity stall at Nerja’s Sunday car-boot sale. The money has gone towards the building of five new homes in the affected area.

The Lions also celebrated their annual Peace Poster Contest in the Nerja Cultural Centre. The organization sponsors this activity which is coordinated with all of the elementary schools/colegios in Nerja as part of their annual Peace Day. All pupils from the ages of 11 to 13 may participate in drawing a poster. This year the theme was Peace Begins with Me (La Paz Comienza Conmigo).

The pupils of each colegio select the poster that they themselves consider the best.This receives the second prize in each colegio. In addition in each colegio a poster is selected by lot, which receives the third prize, to indicate the appreciation which the colegios and the club attributes to each drawing and each pupil’s participation. The first prize in each colegio is selected by a jury composed of three people with experience in the field of art, one of whom is a member of the club.

Some of the children
at the prizewinning at the Cultural Centre

All of the winners receive a diploma and a voucher for a shop in Nerja: €100 for each first prize, €75 for each second prize and €50 for each third prize.

Old
wine

Click to visit
the Nerja DFS
website

“Wine Related Antiques” is the next lecture of the Nerja Decorative and Fine Arts Society on March 11 at 6pm in the Nerja Cultural Centre. The lecturer is John Ericson BA (Hons) CertEd Med.

Who could deny that drinking wine and the collection of antiques are among the most pleasurable of pursuits? As more and more people take an informed interest in wine there has been a corresponding increase in enthusiasm for wine related antiques. As well as being fully functional, many of these items are intrinsically beautiful and this talk illustrates some of the more popular items such as drinking glasses and decanters, as well as wine labels, funnels, coasters, bottle rings and, of course, corkscrews. The lecture is sponsored by Dr Rik Heymans of Nerja.

There will be an extra lecture on March 25 at 6pm in the Cultural Centre entitled “Santiago de Compostela - Saints, Pilgrims and Holy Places” by Helen Syjsling.

The apostle of the west: images and imagination, holy pilgrims, pilgrim saints and pilgrimage shrines on the way. What kind of image have we developed through the centuries of St James? In what different ways is James portrayed and why? What was the role of the holy pilgrims, pilgrim saints and shrines on the pilgrimage to Santiago? Helen will approach this subject from a different angle and illustrate her lecture with slides. This lecture is sponsored by Viajes Verano Azul, Nerja.

Non-members welcome at all lectures, €10 at the door. Membership enquiries, Avril Toyne, (+34) 95 864 0176, further information, Ruth Lucas, (+34) 95 253 4282.

Bridge
dates

The King of Hearts Bridge Club’s ninth annual Discover Nerja International Bridge Tournament will be held on March 12-16, with mixed pairs on March 12 and 13 and open pairs on March 14-16. Phone Eva or Amit for details, (+34) 95 252 7020.

Nerja Bridge Club will hold three special events in March in addition to its normal duplicate sessions on Mondays at 7pm and Wednesdays and Fridays at 2.30pm. These are the Charity Simultaneous Pairs (with EBU master points) on the14th, an Open Teams of Four event on the16th and a celebration of St Patrick’s Day on the 17th. Details and full information are available from Colin on (+34) 617 534 342.

Serenade
for
Gershwin

The Serenaders are presenting an evening of George and Ira Gershwin’s song hits at the Nerja Cultural Centre on March 12, for the benefit of the Costa Animal Society.

Born in Brooklyn in September, 1898, success came for George Gershwin when he was just 21 with his song Swanee. The sheet music alone sold over a million copies, whilst Al Jolson’s recording sold more than two million. On Broadway, the Gershwins created such hit musicals as Girl Crazy, Lady Be Good, Funny Face and their Pulizer Prize winning Of Thee I Sing. In a relatively short period of time, his Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris and Concerto In F found their way onto the international concert stages.

All this laid the groundwork for his opera Porgy and Bess which contained such original melodies as I Got Plenty Of Nuthin, It Ain’t Necessarily So and My Man’s Gone Now. All these lyrics were written by his brother, Ira. He never lived to see his masterpiece performed as he began to suffer the first symptoms of his illness. Despite his pain, within little more than a year, in 1937, he had produced the scores for three musical movies. After some agonising months he was diagnosed as suffering from a brain tumour and died five hours after emergency surgery.

Charity
walk

There will be a sponsored charity walk from the Nerja offices of De Cotta McKenna y Santafé on Calle Diputacion, 6-2A, to The Garden Restaurant in Frigiliana, via the Rio Chillar river bed, on Sunday, April 13, 2008.

Cost of participating will be €10 and all proceeds will go to Fundación Cudeca so they can continue to offer free of charge a “special kind of caring” to terminally ill cancer patients within the province of Málaga.

The walk is being organised by De Cotta McKenna y Santafé and Cudeca and the Garden Restaurant in Frigiliana will lay on some hot food for all who arrive at the finish line. If you are interested in participating, getting your business involved and putting a team into the event or helping with sponsoring refreshments along the way, please send an email by clicking here or call (+34) 95 252 7014 and book your place or team in with Helene Gray.

Aid
for
Zimbabwe

A ‘surprise’ charity evening in aid of the poor of Zimbabwe is being organised by Pamela Cooper at the Hotel Al Andalus in Maro on March 10. Tickets are €12 and include tapas.

Zimbabwe is, of course, now one of the poorest countries in Africa and many people are virtually starving. Robert Mugabe has reduced the country from one of the richest in Africa, able to export grain to its neighbours, to one which now cannot feed its own people. Go along and support this worthy cause. More information from Pamela on (+34) 95 252 2103.