More gas - and taxes

Fed up with the lack of response from the REPSOL people (who I'd asked twice to come and check our bottled gas appliances) I rang the CEPSA suppliers instead. I liked them better instantly. The woman on the phone said what good Spanish I spoke. Lovely person. So, of course, I believed her when she said a technician would call today at 9am.

He didn't actually turn up till 9.07am but that aside he was excellent. He checked the pipes, tubes, connectors, carbon monoxide levels and what not, made some suggestions about improvements, nattered to me all the time, making the odd grammatical correction, and gave the set up a clean bill of health. Nice to know I'm unlikely to be suffocated or blown apart if I have a shower or cook a pizza.

I also went with a friend today to try and sort out some Social Security and Tax queries. Not the sort of offices you'd choose as a holiday destination. The people we talked to were uniformly courteous, friendly, helpful and informative - one chap who said he wasn't allowed to give us the information without lots of official paperwork - pointed to the details we needed on his computer screen and nearly winked; souls linked in conspiracy.

It reminded me of the old Ice Cube song Today was a Good Day (I didn't even have to use my AK) one of those days when things went well.

I know! - let's have a barecue in the street

The district of Santa Catalina has a week long fiesta to honour its patron saint. Yesterday, after the effigy of the saint had been moved around a bit everyone got down to the serious business of lighting bonfires in the middle of the street and cooking some food.

I somehow can't imagine Huntingdon Town Council being keen on the same sort of event.

Getting the gas checked

There's not a lot of piped gas in Culebrón so we use butane gas bottles collected from one of the local depots.

Each year there are lots of stories in the news about blocks of flats torn apart by gas explosions. I'm pretty sure that most of the explosions result from people trying to jury rig some sort of connection between the gas cylinder and a dodgy appliance but I'm not that keen on being ripped apart by fragments of exploding gas cylinder so I thought I'd arrange a safety check. Actually I'm supposed to do it every two or three years (I forget which) as a legal requirement. And, of course, insurance won't pay out if a butane cylinder rips a hole in the wall without an official document to say that a qualified technician has confirmed that the jubilee clips on the rubber hoses are good and tight.

So I popped along to our local supplier a couple of Saturday's ago to arrange the check. I went back last Friday to remind them. Not a sign to date.

Stranger in a strange land

The Neighbourhood Association organised one of its meals for this afternoon. I went along, by myself. My Spanish was awful and the chaos that was the village meeting afterwards, with tens of people all talking at once, with the chairperson putting her fingers in her mouth, to try and whistle everyone into some semblance of order, didn't amuse me as it has so many times before. This time it infuriated me. What stupidity. Maybe I just don't belong.

Language problems

When I rang Telefonica (see below) I didn't really have much difficulty with communication. As always I was a bit faltering but I got the information I needed easily enough. Yesterday though I had to phone HSBC in the UK to activate a credit card I had to resort to asking direct questions of the operator to check that the card had been activated because I couldn't understand what the man was saying!

The Information Society

We buy our telephone line and our Internet connection from Telefonica - very much like BT, the privatised ex state telephone company. Telefonica has a dreadful reputation in Spain though I've had generally good dealings with them.

We recently had an automatic and "free" upgrade from a 1mb to a 3mb connection. When the first bill of this new regime came (long after the money had been liberated from our bank account) I noticed there was a new item - the Internet Security Pack. It looks, from checking the Telefonica website, as though this is part of the package for the 3mb service. In effect our free upgrade is actually costing 3.50€ per month more.

Just as it happens our annual subscription to Norton anti-virus is due to expire in 4 days time and the anti-virus package that Telefonica include in their service is McAfee which sounds reputable enough. The price for either service is more or less the same. So I thought I would take the line of least resistance and simply accept the Telefonica software and let the Norton subscription lapse.

I should have known better. I'm not exactly computer shy but it must have taken me three hours to fight my way through the labyrinthine Telefonica website to get the thing loaded up.

The real point is that this just happened. No notification in the bill. No emails to inform me of the changes and it took me several minutes of searching the bill to find how to decline this new service should I so wish.

They come over here stealing our jobs and sponging off the state

When we lived in Santa Pola we met a chap called Masis, an Armenian, who had come to Spain illegally. He had paid someone for a dodgy ticket to Paris as a route into Spain and he was working long hours for pathetic pay with no protections. Eventually, because of a political amnesty on illegal immigrants Masis was able to get his paperwork sorted out.

Masis rang this morning to say that I had missed the grand opening of his new restaurant on the seafront at Santa Pola when I was over visiting Maggie last weekend.

I hope he makes a fortune.

Catch 22

This was the question to the customer service department of my bank:

Please can you tell me how I obtain an electronic signature for email?

And this was the answer

Dear Sir/Mrss:
According to 16 article minister rule law ECO/734/2004 of march 11 about departament bank clients (B.O.E. 24/03/2004), we inform you that to attend your consult you need to have electronic signature according to the rules law 59/2003 of december 19, about electronic signature (B.O.E. 20/12/2003).

Tostas

Perhaps not all that revolutionary but dead yummy. Everywhere we went in Salamanca province the bars sold tostas. Bits of toasted bread covered with a tasty topping - I liked the bacalao con gambas (cod and prawn) but I think Maggie's favourite was the morcilla con queso (black pudding and cheese). There were literally hundreds of varieties with fish, meet, veg and fungus toppings.

It was never in doubt

This is the MG back in Culebrón. It never missed a beat in the 883 miles. The AA route planner says it's 837 miles from Land's End to John O' Groats.

Shops

Whilst I was with Maggie in Salamanca province we went to the provincial capital of Zamora. These shops (and lots more like them) were noticeable although similar shops still exist all over Spain.

They're like shops not opening on Sunday - quaint but reassuring

All Saints

Today is a holiday in Spain. All Saints or Todos los Santos.

Maggie asked one of her Spanish pals what she would be doing with the day off. "Nothing special - out to decorate the grave and then a big family meal - usual stuff"

An MG Adventure

The plan was simple. I was going to visit Maggie in Ciudad Rodrigo for the holiday weekend. I'd bought the bus tickets to get from Elda to Salamanca and Maggie would pick me up from Salamanca.

The bus was at 1.15am and I waited in the bus station. No life. No bus. Eventually, around 2am I rang Maggie to say I wouldn't be there as planned. It turned out there are two bus stations in Elda.

The first train wasn't till 7.30 in the morning but I know that train is often full. Anyway driving back to Culebrón and then returning to Elda for the train in the five and a half hour gap seemed a bit pointless. The next bus wasn't till 11.15 and there would be the problem of exchanging the tickets. Anyway the Madrid - Salamanca people were on strike so I'd been concerned about that leg anyway and, of course, any re-organisation would basically mean that I arrived towards the end of Thursday rather than the beginning. What's more it was now 2.30 in the morning and I was in Elda, ready to go and feeling bitterly disappointed.

So, in the end, I put some petrol in the MG and headed off up the motorway for Madrid and Ciudad Rodrigo.

That MG and I have been a long way together. As well as being my everyday car for ten years we used to do those jaunts all over the UK with the various MG clubs. There were trips like the 1500 miles around Scotland to bed in the new engine, the outing to Gibraltar a couple of years ago or even the journey that brought me, the car and Mary the cat to Spain . But those were in the days when Barclaycard and I had an understanding about keeping the car on the road come what may.

The car I set off from Elda to Ciudad Rodrigo in is not the one that was regularly serviced, lovingly washed and generally molly coddled in every way. No, this is the car that's filthy and rotting away, the one with damage at the front end, the one that somebody rammed into only a few days ago.

Despite that I rather suspected we would make it. We may have the occasional splutter and misfire, the lights may be a bit dim for Spain's unlit, unmarked motorways, the noise level may be rather high by today's standards and the wind whistling in through various holes may make it less comfortable than your modern motor but for all it's failings I prefer the MG to any other car I've ever owned and, even in its current state it's still more fun than all the other motors I drive about.

And make it we did. From Alicante across the flat plain of Castilla la Mancha, through the relatively light but fast Madrid traffic, across Castilla y Leon with so many famous place names and finally to Ciudad Rodrigo. More or less the entire breadth of Spain - despite my occasional dozing off, despite the Guardia pulling us over near Salamanca and despite the indicators going on the blink we pulled into town in fine shape. Now all we have to do is go back the other way.