Monday, October 30, 2006

Aaarghhhh!!

Do you remember Jonathan Richman? At one time it was him and the Modern Lovers - Roadrunner was a hit I think and something like Egyptian Reggae too.

I saw a piece in the paper to say he was doing a tour in Spain: in fact he is on at a place called El Garaje de la Tia Maria next Saturday in Murcia which is only about an hour away. That much I got from the paper.

Today I did a quick Internet search to find the phone number for the club so I could get a couple of tickets. Plenty of listings information but no phone number. So I rang directory enquiries - no such place listed (mind you directories have still failed to give me a single number in the two years I've lived here so that was no big surprise). I tried again on the Internet. Nothing. I tried contacting Jonathan's record company for help but the email bounced back. I tried to send an email to the Murcian Tourist Offie but their website appears to be down.

I think Spain still has a fair way to go on this Information Society thing!

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Voting

When we first came to Pinoso we put our names down on the "padron" - nearly everyone does. The padron is a sort of local authority register, it's an essential piece of paper for sorting out lots and lots of things like healthcare, vehicle registration etc.

At the same time I made sure that we registerd to vote. UK citizens can vote in local but not National or European elections here. I maintain the right to both a National and European vote in the UK.

I knew that the two processes of padron and voter registration were separate but the woman at the Town Hall who dealt with me didn't seem certain about the process for registering voters even though she found a form from somewhere for me to fill in.

Local elections here are coming up in May so I thought it was about time to check that my right to vote was secure. If I weren't on the list then there should still be time to sort it out.

When I got to the Town Hall the woman was a bit brusque. "None of you English are registered to vote" she said, "I have a stack of forms here but none of you ever bothers. You just live in your own little World - blah, blah". I made it pretty clear that I had filled in a form and I wasn't that keen on hearing her diatribe about Brits and their habits. What I needed was her to check if I was registered.

She checked; I was registered.

We both calmed down a bit and I was happy to agree with her that it's a dreadful thing that most Brits seem so apathetic about their right to vote - after all I had the moral high ground here.

None the less she does have a point. It's not a tricky process to register to vote and it is an obvious way to participate in a community. And, of course, a minority that votes has much more sway with local politicians than a minority that spends money in bars and restaurants.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Chewing on a mountain

The area where we live is famous for a white marble. The quarries work 24 hours a day all year round to cut the stuff. Articulated lorries loaded with one or two big"square" blocks trundle around the roads heading for this or that factory.

This is the quarry in Alguena; as you can see it isn't pretty.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Giving blood

I like living in Spain and I ofen find myself defending its institutions and methods against other Britons as they moan about this or that. But I am a bit fed up with the Blood Service.

I've been turned down twice by the blood people in Alicante province because they don't trust British blood. The first nurse who turned me down put it so succinctly; "Mad Cows".

Nonetheless, I heard an appeal to the immigrant population in Murcia to give blood. Now Pinoso is oly 3kms from the "County" border with Murcia so I thought I may as well ask them if they wanted my blood. I sent them an email about 10 days ago. I expected the answer to be no but I also expected a reply. So far nothing. So my second email was a little less formal. It started "Are you having breakfast, or is it siesta time?"

Actually I sent a snotty email to the tourist people in the local town of Petrer too.

It said "I have a bit of a problem with the "What's On" calendar on your website. It's not much like a calendar is it? If it were there would be some dates in it.

I'm English and because of that my family hasn't been attending these events since time immemorial. There's a bit of a test of a good advert - who, where what and when. But maybe the idea is to keep it a secret - just for Spaniards."

I appreciate that my Castilian may well be dodgy but I'm also pretty sure the recipients would get the gist of my messages. A "sod off" wouldn't have caused me much grief but being ignored is.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

On Azorín and small scale Spanish museums

Maggie and I went to the nearby town of Monóvar yesterday to have a look at an exhibition of photos. They were taken in the town at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries. The exhibition was in the museum and study centre dedicated to the writer Azorín who was born in Monóvar in 1873.

All I knew about Azorín before I went to the museum was that he was a writer and a reviewer who used a pseudonym (his real name was José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz) and was one of the Generation of 98 which had something to do with the Spanish American war of 1898. By the time I came away from the Museum what I knew about Azorín was that he was a writer and a reviewer who used a pseudonym and was one of the Generation of 98.

It was a nice museum with some interesting furniture, lots of cameras and a fair sized library in the attic. The pictures of Monóvar and its people were cracking, we were made very welcome by the curator and it was free which made it all the better. But, not one of the photos had a caption, there were no info boards about the writer or about any of the exhibits and it is only in doing the internet research afterwards that I realised the link with the Monóvar photos was that Azorín's brother took some of them using some of the cameras on display.

The house is not atypical of the smaller Spanish museums and galleries which seem to regard giving information away as being some sort of sin.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Birth of a river

The river, the Rio Mundo, starts where all the water trickling from a limestone cliff face comes together to form a stream which heads off downhill.

Maggie and I went to have a look. That's Maggie on the bridge. The other photo is the waterfall that marks the beginning of the stream. I thought it looked a bit English but then it's a while since I've been in any English woodland

Just a turn in the road

We drove around today and, at one point, I felt a bit sleepy. So we stopped for a few moments. Us apart there wasn't another human made sound to be heard - no cars, planes, radios or children. Just trees, birds, the breeze in the grass - that sort of thing.

Spain is one of the noisiest countries in the World but it's not full; so it's dead easy to find a bit of peace and quiet. Lovely

Monday, October 09, 2006

The Day of the Valencian Community

9th October is a Fiesta in the Valencian Community.

It was the day, in 1238, when King Jaime I, a Christian King, rode into Valencia having driven the Moors out.

100 years later the town council thought it would be a good idea to have a party to celebrate the centenary of the victory. Somehow this one off party became an annual event marked (as are so many things in Spain) by setting off fireworks, especially rockets.

In the 18th Century, after the Spanish War of Succession, celebrating Jaime's victory was banned. As a bit of subversion the local bakers started to make sweets in the shape of the outlawed rockets. The Valencians somehow associated the rocket shaped sweets with male genitalia and, as a bit of an afterthought , they started to make other sweets from marzipan in the shape of the fruits that grow in the province (more fecundity!). A bit of free association and the day became associated with lovers.

It became the tradition for men to give the little marzipan sweets, wrapped in the hanky, to their womenfolk: a local St Valentine's day if you will.

I understood that the sweets and hankies were available in all the cake shops throughout Valencia but in our bit of Valencia, in Pinoso, all the cake shops were shut fast. So my modest attempt at a little romance came to naught.

There was some dancing going on outside the Town Hall though.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Wine harvest

The tractors chugging down the side of the road, their trailers loaded with grapes, are less noticeable on the roads this week than they were last. I presume the harvest is nearly done.

Just across the track from us are vines that have weeds growing between them which is most unusual. I suspect that the field has been abandoned but nobody remembered to tell the vines so they got on with growing.

Odd looking grapes aren't they?

Nice to know they're there

Spain has lots and lots of forest fires. They are always a big summer story with TV coverage of planes and helicopters dropping tons of water on inaccessible forests whilst grimy firefighters struggle against walls of flame.

Today, when we came home from town we saw plumes of smoke near our house so we went to have a look. They turned out to be bonfires, made up of post harvest tree cuttings, started by a local farmer.

Whilst we were there a couple of blokes rode down the hill on motorbikes. They were from an agency called something like the "Forestry Fire Prevention Service".

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Eduardo's

Eduardo is a character who runs a restaurant in our village. His restaurant is called Casa de Eduardo - Eduardo's House.

His restaurant is a big barn of a place which he keeps warm in winter with a combination of an ordinary fire in a grate and an almond shell burner.

The serving staff consist of him and his plump son, Sergio. Sometimes the child Hector helps out too. The cook is Eduardo's wife - we've never been introduced so we don't know her name.

The food is pretty ordinary but it's never bad and the prices are made up on the spot. Usually it's 10 euros for a chop and chips type meal, 12 euros for a local speciality like rice or gazpacho and 15 euros for anyone he doesn't know or like.

So today we go in. We're a bit late, just after 3pm, but today that isn't a problem. Three tables are occupied and one is reserved. With a bit of dithering we are offered a table and whilst we're still standing we're asked what we fancy to eat (this is a regular game.) What've you got? Everything! What about some paella says Maggie, OK a nice rice dish says Eduardo, some toast, a few spreads as well? Yeah, that's fine and maybe a salad. The usual to drink, some red wine - fine- oh and some water. Then we sit down. The food was perfectly good, Eduardo talked to us about some of the other people in his restaurant once they'd left. We weren't offered a digestif after our pudding and coffee as we usually are but the price was 12 each.

We take nearly all our guests to Eduardo's.