Shades of antiquity in the olive grove

WE WOKE early, hearing voices in the olive grove, and looked out to see men and women moving about in the dappled sunlight, laying a carpet of green plastic netting around a tree.

Men struck the branches with long bamboo poles, and the olives fell.

Women took up the corners of the ‘carpet’ and shook it so that the fallen olives rolled to the centre. They picked out the leaves and twigs, to leave only the fruits. Holding the carpet so as to make a funnel, they poured the olives into a sack and then went on to harvest the fruit of the next tree. Behind them, the morning sun shone on the bright, white shoulders of the Sierra Nevada, covered in snow. It shone out of a vast sky, infinitely blue.