The Car II

The driver who bumped into my car says it wasn't his fault. It does't really concern his insurance company at the moment whose fault it was as he has comprehensive insurance. If, in the end, they have to pay out, because it was his fault, he'll lose his no claims bonus. If it turns out to be my fault they'll get their money back by making a claim against my insurance company. If that happens I'll lose my no claims bonus and I won't get my car fixed. But whoever's fault it was he will get his car fixed by his insurance company.

His insurance company won't worry about me. They'll expect my insurance company to look out for me and even to make a claim against them, on my behalf, for third party damage. Unfortunately my company won't be doing that for me because of the legal assistance problem explained below.

My insurance company only insures the "third party" i.e. the other car/driver. I can't make a claim to get my car fixed because my insurance doesn't insure my car - it only covers third parties - in this case the other car. So I have to wait for the other driver's insurance company to approach mine probably to ask for payment for the repairs they carried out on their client's car. They may only do that if he claims it was my fault and it may take months if not years. At that point my insurance company may contest the point to avoid having to make the payment. Or they may decide it's too much hassle and just pay up. I don't know how insurance companies behave and they probably won't tell me.

I am left in the middle with almost nowhere to turn to make anything happen. Normally this wouldn't come about because part of the insurance policy would be Legal Assistance. That is I'd have insured myself for someone to act on my behalf in a situation just like this one. But, when I took out the insurance, I said that I had breakdown cover from a car club. Breakdown cover is normally sold as an integral part of a Spanish insurance policy. What nobody told me at the time was that "breakdown cover" was shorthand for "breakdown cover and legal assistance" so when I turned down the breakdown I turned down legal assistance too.

Tricky isn't it? And boring. I bet you that most people who've got this far have lost the thread of the argument. Now imagine trying to do this in Spanish. Difficult technical language, complex concepts, lots of ifs and buts.

I've talked to lawyers at the car club, people at the brokers, the Guardia, the local police and now I suppose I'll have to go the consumer's office. They all think it's a shame. They all symapthise but none of them can suggest anything other than to sit it out and see what happens. In the meantime my car looks a mess, has dodgy lights and will almost certainly run out of "MOT" before anything gets settled. I'll probably just end up taking it off the road and scrapping it and accepting the loss. Quite bad news.

Being on the telly

I was interviewed by the local telly, TelePinos, at the car club do on Sunday. I didn't feel to do very well at the time but I saw myself on the local news. I thought I sounded OK, the Spanish was far from perfect but it was reasonably sensible and I certainly grinned a lot.

Hooray, now I can pay tax!

My boss waved a piece of paper under my nose as I was on the phone at work today. It was my contract of employment, signed and dated by someone official.

I am no longer an illegal, cash in hand worker. I pay taxes and I have rights through the Social Security system.

Not such a great success

Despite the car being a bit of a jalopy nowadays we're still members of an old car club. The SEAT 600 Club of Orihuela in fact. Theyd asked me if I could organise a little excursion and I said yes.

It was very simple to organise. I asked Roberto , the man who owns and runs the wine bodega and oil mill in Culebrón if he could do a guided tour. "No problem" he said "We do it all the time". I asked Eduardo a the local restaurant if he could do a meal for thirty to forty people. "No problem" he said "We do it all the time".

As the day got closer the numbers went up. I spoke to Roberto "I can deal with ay number". I spoke to Eduardo, he said his restaurant could hold lots of people but he was dithering a bit about the menu. I contacted the Spanish secretary of the car club and asked him to speak to Eduardo just to make sure everything was sorted. That conversation took place.

The cars were due in Pinoso at about 11 this morning. We got there at about 11 and the cars were waiting. We were late. Not such a good start. There were nearly 40 cars and about 90 people. More than expected.

We drove to the bodega. The Spaniards milled around. Roberto led them to the big shed that is the modern bodega. He gave away a few samples. He never spoke to the assembled crowd; no mention of the process, the history of the bodega, no visit to the old, oak panelled, vaulted ceiling bodega. Absolutely no mention of the olive oil they produce there. People bought stuff from his shop.

The President of the club and I went to speak to Eduardo in his restaurant two hours before kick off. No way I can deal with 80 people he said (the number who wanted to eat). He changed the menu, for the worse. I wondered if he had been drinking.

People disappeared because there was too long a gap between the bodega visit and the meal but at 2pm everyone was back to eat. The meal was very ordinary and the servings scanty. It was served in spurts of activity with long periods of waiting in between. I consoled myself with quite a lot of wine.

I had a bad day Spanish wise too. Generally my Spanish has been a lot more certain over the last couple of weeks so it was a bad day to find myself alternately tongue tied and babbling. If I'd been able to speak better I wouldn't have sounded so stupid when I spoke to the local TV cameras. I would have asked Roberto to speak to the masses. If I'd been able to speak to Eduardo I'd have played hell and told him to get his finger out. Well, more probably, I'd have asked "our" Spaniards to do it on my behalf. But as it was I just stood there, did nothing and watched it fall apart. Very disappointing especially as today was the day for the Neighbourhood Association meal. We missed that to go to this fiasco.

The car

I knew it would all go wrong.

My insurance company says that because the car only has third party insurance (that's all I was offered because it's over 25 years old) there is no legal assistance included. This seems to mean that they are unwilling to talk to the other insurance company on my behalf. My brokers said I should talk to my car club (AA type equivalent) who do provide legal assistance. My car club said I would only need legal assistance if the man who ran into me contests the claim and even then only if there is any real doubt about his culpability and that my insurance company should deal with it.

So the car club says it's not their problem and the insurance brokers say it's not theirs.

I went to ask the Guardia Civil (traffic police) what I could do. They say the insurance company has an obligation to pursue the claim on my behalf and if they won't I should make a "denuncia" - a sort of official complaint against them.

As you can imagine these are all pretty difficult conversations in my version of Spanish!

Hogueras

I mentioned the Santa Catalina fiesta a couple of entries ago. Well tonight they have bonfires in the street, they're called Hogueras. The cameraman from the local telly told me there were 75 of them all together. Families who live in the area invite their pals around and cook bits of food in the embers of the bonfires.

Chasing away the autumnal blues I suppose.

So that's what 2,470 kilos of wood looks like

We burn wood to keep warm in Spain. None of that new fangled central heating for us.

Last year we had a pile of tree trunks and wooden debris around the house, which my trusty axe and I turned that into chunks that would fit into our, rather small, wood burning stove.

This year we had to order some from a wood merchant. I rang several people to check prices and eventually ordered my mixed load of 2,000 kilos of almond, olive and oak from Juan who said he give me a ring to confirm the actual time but that it would be sometime this morning. He charges 11 centimos per kilo. When the wood turned up at 4.30 this afternoon it was Simón who brought it. I liked Simón, he complimented me on my Spanish.

There was a problem; his lorry would not quite fit under the trees in our drive so he had to drop the wood on the track just outside our house. I now know that 2,470 kilos is 50 wheelbarrows full. It's piled in our wood store, in our garage and alongside the wall outside the garage. It took just short of 4 hours to shift it all even with Maggie doing her fair share of the work from when she got home just after 6pm.

Another Year

It must be close to Santa Catalina's day because the district of Santa Catalina in Pinoso is having it's fiesta to honour their patron saint.

Last year we went to the crowning of the Carnival Queen but, as spectators who knew nobody, it was too boring for words. This year we gave it a miss. We went back today though to get our free beer and free paella. We got the beer, or rather I got one, as being the habitual driver I can only ever have one. The paella is cooked in a huge pan out in the street - technically the pan is the paella so I should have written the rice is cooked in a huge paella out in the street - but who cares?

It was supposed to be served at 2pm; at 2.30 there was no sign so we cut our losses and came home. Some of this is because, for one reason and another, I was in less than a brilliant mood, but part of it is the "been there, done that syndrome".

I always thought Steinbeck had it wrong with Mack and the Boys and another sunset; how could anyone get fed up with sunsets? Maybe I just read him when I was too young.

Oh, and as you can see we saw the Carnival Queens. Well you can only be certain we saw their backsides but I assure you we saw their fronts and sides too.

Mushing

There was some Mushing going on in the village of El Seque close to Pinoso this evening. El Seque is small; it makes Culebrón look large. They don't have a lot of tarmac in El Seque.

Mushing is where a bunch of dogs, the dogs that I'd think of as Huskies, pull a sled behind them with a chap on the sled. For the picture to look right the man has to have big furs on and there need to be snow shoes tied to the sled.

In El Seque they do it just as dusk falls, the drivers have those torches that fasten to their heads and the sleds have wheels. The Huskies are the same though.

Actually it got more bizarre than that. I suppose a wheeled version of a ski sled is rather innovative and using the dirt roads that run through and around El Seque is just because the people who want to have a go don't happen to live near Fairbanks, Alaska. However, the first few competitors were lads on mountain bikes with some sort of harness that attached their one or two dogs to the bike. Now that was a bit odd.

It was good to see though. I wonder if a van selling pie and mushy peas would have done well!

Poor old car!

Thud! the car stopping dead. Bits of metal tinkling to the floor.

Maggie and I were on our way to get a cheap evening meal. We were both fine and otherwise it was just bent and twisted metal. Front wing and bonnet on mine front wing on his - more damage to the Audi on balance. No doubt there's a paper chase to come. No claims bonus to lose, maybe a dodgy insurance company that doesn't like parting with cash. And how long without the car even if things go smoothly?

The man in the Audi called the police, as one has to in Spain. We were in the local town so they knew him of course but they seemed pretty even handed. Though using Spanish under such circumstances was a bit tricky and he spoke to the police in Valenciano (the local language) just to make sure that I wouldn't understand.

Both of us remained reasonably calm although he was saying I was going too fast, didn't have lights on etc. My counter argument that he failed to stop at the Give Way sign was backed by rather more evidence - the broken glass and plastic in the road!

Because the car is over 25 years old I could only buy third party insurance for it so unless things go smoothly this could be the end of the line for the poor old car. Bit of a ropy end to what had been quite a nice day. We didn't enjoy our meal much.

The Osborne Bull

It was apparently fifty years ago this week that the first Osborne Bull was put up alongside a trunk road in Spain as a way of advertising the Jerez-based company's new brandy: Veterano.

In the 1990s a law was passed banning roadside advertising for alcohol and it nearly did for the bull. The company fought back though and there were a whole series of public protests against its removal from the lanscape. Eventually, in 1998, the Osborne Bull was named a 'national treasure' and its place besides so many main roads in Spain was assured.

Just another lesson

A pal, Alice, locked her car keys inside her car yesterday and for one reason or another I became the person to sort this out.

I approached the problem like an Englishman used to using the phone and computers.

No she wasn't a member of a car club so the "AA or RAC" option was out the window.

I checked the online Yellow Pages for a locksmith (cerrajero), none listed. I rang directory enquiries who weren't quite sure where Pinoso was and the technology didn't seem to help them so I had to suggest which towns to check for locksmiths. I got 3 numbers. One chap was out of the area till Monday, one said it was his dad's phone and he didn't know where his dad was and the third number was actually a private house.

Change of tack, I looked on the Pinoso Town Hall website for the number for the local police. Only the emergency number was listed. There was a number for the Guardia Civil but they must have been out for lunch. The call to them obviously transferred from their fixed line to a mobile number but nobody answered before the time limit on the phone system cut me off.

Now I'm getting cross. So we get in my car and drive to the local police station. The chap is dead helpful. "You don't want a locksmith, you want a metal worker/blacksmith for locks - there's one just across the road there."

We went to the blacksmith. He was nice too "We only deal with houses, garages, that sort of lock - you want a chapista." A chapista is a car bodywork place. He told us where there was one.

On the way to the bodywork shop we passed the local Fiat dealer where both Alice and I are customers (her car is a Fiat). It seemed sensible to ask the Fiat man if they had master keys or something. "Nothing like that I'm afraid but what you need is a chapista, there's one around the corner."

The chap at the chapista (Sorry, I couldn't help it) was very pleasant. No problem he said, we can get you in the car in a few minutes. And he did. And it only cost 15€.

Different place, different systems.

Esta lloviendo a cántaros

Or, it's raining cats and dogs.

It's been pouring down all over Spain for the last few days. There was a severe weather warning for our bit of the World yesterday; they reckoned we would get up to 50 litres of rain per square metre in one hour and a total of 120 litres in 12 hours. That's a lot of water. It has been very moist and quite depressing. My washing has been on the line for days and even the stuff inside the house takes ages to dry.

The good thing is that the reservoirs have increased their reserves by 1.8% since the beginning of November but, even then, our local reserves are still at only 9.5% of capacity.

I suppose I should be pleased that we're getting some rain at last. We could always buy a tumble dryer.

Pinoso Half Marathon

It looks as though about 500 people turned out to run the half marathon organised in Pinoso today. The weather was cool and damp and although, thankfully, I don't know anything about running it seemed to me that it would be a good day for it.

On seeing, and not seeing, Jonathan Richman

On the Murcian Tourist Information website it said "Murcia se prepara para acoger el regreso del gran Jonathan Richman, uno de los creadores más excéntricos y divertidos del pop de los últimos 30 años * Garaje de la Tia María, Avda. Miguel de Cervantes s/n - Murcia * 04/11/2006" or, in English, Murcia gets ready to welcome the return of the great JR one of the most excentric and amusing pop artists of the last 30 years at Aunt Mary's Garage, Miguel de Cervantes Avenue, no street number, Murcia.

So despite not having tickets (see previous post) we decided to drive down and see if we could get in. In the dark, in the wet, in quite heavy traffic we found the street and we found the club. It was still an hour and a half to the advertised kick off so we weren't surprised to find the doors shut fast. We went to get a meal and we paid nearly 40€ for it.

The club was open when we got back, there were lots of youngsters in an assortment of hooded tops, baggy jeans and short skirts. Not quite the crowd we'd been expecting. The advertised ticket price was 15€ per person and that's what we paid. 70€ so far.

The air was heavy (and I mean thick) with dope smoke. A lad just behind us passed out through a mix of booze and drugs. We felt a bit old, a bit out of place. Maggie read her ticket which was for a band called La Excepcion (see photo). But on the walls were posters advertising Jonathan Richman! The address was right, the club name was right, time was right, the price was right but the music was wrong. La Excepcion were awful (and I mean dire). We left; we asked the man on the door "Oh, that's our other place", he said, "about 100 metres up the road in the Sala de la Tia Maria. (Aunt Mary's room - spot the subtle difference)" We strolled around in the rain a bit but we couldn't find it. We got back in the car and drove home. Disappoined, foolish and worse off.