A tale of sun, wine and pub emails; TOON AND COUNTRY.

Byline: DAVID BANKS

HIGH on the dusty plateau between Madrid and the Portuguese border sits the little town of Almoharin, from whence this column comes.

I arrived a day late - having misread the flight times - to stay with my old Sun pal Big Roger and his lovely Gisela, deliver a pound of onion sets to be planted on his four-acre finca (surely a case of coals to Newcastle) and inspect progress on the house they are building. But there is little rest for the itinerant columnist.

Barely had I taken the weight off my feet and downed the first of many glasses of a robust Rioja than I was collecting a clutch of email responses to last week's incoherent ramblings.

Mary Matthewson from North Middleton wanted to know whether I might speak to Roddam Women's Institute later in the year.

Any thought of refusal was instantly banished by her mouth-watering PS: "We are a very friendly WI and put on a good supper at the end of the evening."

Mary, it's a deal!

Reader Margaret Patterson wanted to reassure me that not all of my readers were as befuddled as fellow columnistas Hann and Gutteridge when it came to deciphering the 'missing letter' which had turned my wife's flight to Nepal into an elopement with someone called Neal.

"You will be relieved to know that some of us out here are switched on," she reassured me.

But there were, as ever, the grumblers: a pub landlord emailed The Journal's beer columnist Alastair Gilmour to ask (following my words last week): "Is David Banks a fool?

Balls to the pub but give the village hall a grant? Punch him for me, please."

Alastair himself appended his own headmasterly 'Come-to-my-study' comment with the scholarly observation: "My gripe is with your phrase 'a pub is just a place'. Let's discuss."

You will be unsurprised to learn that we've agreed this discussion should take place at a pub yet to be chosen "over a pint or two".

Meanwhile, perhaps I can explain my feelings about 'community' by offering a snapshot of life in Almoharin, a small town/large village of some 2,000 souls and five bars in the western Spanish province of Extremadura.

Extremadura is similar to Berwick in one respect: its annual income per capita is the lowest in the land. And Almoharin has something in common with my own Border village of Crookham: huge community spirit.

Result: last Sunday the bars were empty while some 200 or more villagers traipsed seven miles out of town to a field beside a local hermitage which houses the statue of Our Lady the Virgin, patron saint of Almoharin.

There, vast trestle tables bent under the weight of home-made food and drink.

When the women weren't skipping or singing or dancing, and the men could break away from endless football games among the fig and olive trees, they were touring the picnic site urging delicacies and beautiful wines and liqueurs on their neighbours.

More energy than our retirees' village can display, I'll grant you, but no more commitment to the community than Northumbrian villages like Crookham can muster.

And yes, Almoharin has also lost a bar recently; like ours it stands empty and shuttered but, more likely than not, will be revived as soon as the village finds a new patron saint for its drinkers.

Can Crookham and dozens of other deprived hamlets across our region pray for a similar miracle?

EXPAT pensioners like my friend Roger, weary of the pound's plunge against the euro which has cut their monthly allowances by 30%, held a protest rally at which a hundred croaky voices chanted the familiar battle cry "What Do We Want?"

Sadly, given the age and general befuddlement of the protesting pensioners it quickly turned into "Why Are We Here?" followed finally by "What Were We Saying?"

Happily, most of them managed to find their way home.

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"They toured the picnic site urging delicacies and beautiful wines and liqueurs on their neighbours