What's the time?

When only the rich had pocket watches and lots of people worked in the fields having a chiming public clock was an important asset for any town.

Last week we bumped into a chap called Manolo Telegrafista who is the custodian for Pinoso's clocktower, La Torre del Reloj. It's one of Pinoso's few "monuments" and Manolo asked us if we'd like to have a look. He suggested a group of about four or five so Maggie, a couple of pals and myself met Manolo today at 11.30 the idea being that we'd get the maximum number of chimes.

It was a good visit. Manolo told us all about the builders, how bits had been salvaged from earlier clocks and he included lots of little human touches such as the notches carved in the metalwork to help the innumerate builders put things together in the right sequence for instance. In fact he was keen to tell us about anything that he could think as we gazed over the townscape and countryside beyond from our vantage point 26metres higher than the highest spot in the town.

I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the tower when we were there which is why the time is wrong.

We should have known

Electric prices in Spain have just gone up. The overnight, low tarrif has been abolished. Bad news, but no, good news. Poor people with limited electricity supply no longer have to pay the standing charge.

Electricity supply in the countryside in Spain is a bit hit and miss. Pinoso, the town, didn't get electric till 1974 and the supply was very limited. Most houses had supplies of just 1.1kw - enough for the lights but not for much more. Over the years of course the situation improved and the standard now is to have a supply of 5.5kw - still low by UK standards but useable enough.

The cable that supplies power to our house isn't thick enough to carry 5.5kw and our contract is for just 2.2kw. The standing charge for the supply is based on the contracted power so we pay less for our 2.2kw than someone who has a contract for more.

One of the changes with the new increased charges was that people who contracted less than 3.3kw would no longer have any standing charge at all. It looked like the increases were actually going to benefit us. There's a catch though. When we had the house rewired the electricians put in a fuse board that allowed us to draw more power than we were actually contracted for. Effectively we had a beefier power supply than we were paying for. And Iberdrola, our power supplier, isn't stupid. They know there are lots of people like us so one of the conditions of the "no standing charge" is that there has to be a circuit breaker fitted that would limit the amount of power we could draw. As we like tea, and need to boil the water, we wont be getting the circuit breaker fitted. So we'll continue to have to pay the standing charge. Phooey!

Step 3: The materials

We still haven't got the permission to go ahead with our roof repair but everyone seems certain that we can start without it! Anyway our builder, my employer, Charlie, has ordered the bulk of the materials and a chap with a lorry came by and dropped them off this afternoon.

It can't be long now before they start to rip the roof off. Lucky we bought that tent to go to Benicassim.

Pestilence

I've always thought that the thing that sold me our house here in Culebrón was the tree lined driveway. A gentle arch of trees. But the pines are going brown and dropping needles and Maggie and I are worried that they have some sort of disease and will have to be cut down.

We've just had some people from the environmental department at the Town Hall out to have a look and they have taken some samples away. Let's hope it's something fixable.

Just like the olden days

I'm not the organiser, I'm a facilitator. What we are looking for is your ideas. At this stage we won't be judgemental about those ideas. Those were the sort of phrases that Carolina, the woman who was looking after the session used as she set things going. It was like a time warp. I have been involved in stuff like that for more than half of my life.

I'd gone back, with Maggie this time, to the next meeting about implementing Local Agenda 21. We were asked to wear stickers with our names on. We had an agenda and a time-scale. We were asked to write our ideas on bits of paper and as we read them out they were stuck onto the wall beneath an appropriate heading like Education, Environment etc.

To be fair it was a good do. There were another couple of Brits there and though our Spanish had it's dodgy moments we all contributed something. Maggie mentioned drains and street lights and educational opportunity, Laurie did abandoned animals and institutional racism whilst Manolo wanted a museum and Jesús wanted to introduce a community bank and workshops in traditional local crafts. And Carolina kept the whole thing in order and to time.

We felt we'd earned the drinks and tapas we went for afterwards.

Sleeping on rocks

Normally I only write things here that are either about the quirks of life in Spain or about things in and around Culebrón. Self indulgence though; I just couldn't let this pass without a word.

Maggie and I bought a small tent and went 300 kilometres up the road to camp in a field full of rocks and other tents occupied by people who were half my age. We swilled ourselves under cold, communal showers, avoided (well I avoided) those plastic hut toilets that slowly sink into a pool of some oozing liquid and we complained bitterly about paying the prices for water, beer and sandwiches charged by the organisers.

In other words we went to one of the summer music festivals. Ours was at Benicassim. There were about 170,000 people there over the four days. I'm not sure what it's music mission is but the line-up seemed to boast ex celebs. (Leonard Cohen, Morrisey, New York Dolls etc) and those newer bands whose names pop up all over but who may or may not survive for long (The Ting Tings, Babyshambles, Calvin Harris etc). We probably saw about 20 bands in passing of the 100 or so acts who were on offer

Good fun in a masochistic sort of way. And those young people were all jolly pleasant. I was particularly impressed by the woman who thought I had nice hair.

Real news

On Saturday Maggie told me that there had been a lorry fire on the road about a kilometre from our house. I'd been inside, cleaning, so I hadn't noticed.

We were told about this lorry fire by at least ten people on the Saturday. Gossip is currency here. This morning someone told me that there had been two motorcyclists cut in half and then reduced to ashes in the accident. My morbid curiosity aroused I checked out the story.

In fact a motorbike rider, a young man, crashed into the front of a lorry. The impact caused a fire, the biker slid underneath the lorry and was, indeed, burned beyond recognition. The lorry driver was unharmed.

Sweet

One of the local choirs sang a few songs last night. The recital started at 11pm, to avoid the heat, and they did about a dozen tunes. Nothing special really but, then again, there is something rather nice about closing down a street, setting out a few chairs, installing a choir and giving away fizzy wine and cake when it's all done.

Someone said to me the other day that Spaniards like to complain about the summer heat but that they really look forward to summer - it's just like one long party with a group of friends - she said.

And, as an aside we were in Murcia yesterday afternoon which has a reputation for being a little warm. When we came out of the pictures there was a breeze, a hot breeze, like a large scale fan heater. The thermometer on the car suggested a comfortable 38.5ºC

On dogs

We're a nation of animal lovers. Everyone knows. We Brits are appalled at the way the Spaniards let their dogs wander unattended, how dogs are left to fend for themselves and, worst of all, how the Spanish simply abandon their dogs when they go off for their annual holiday.

I was talking to a British woman who runs a local charity to look after abandoned dogs. She tells me that lots of Britons are upping sticks and returning to the UK or are taking their long summer holidays outside of Spain. She tells me that these people are abandoning their dogs.

Agenda 21

When I left Huntingdon, a little under four years ago, Agenda 21, the initiatives around sustainable development, were well under way.

Tonight, in Pinoso, the process started - or at least the bit of it that has anything to do with participation from the citizenry of the town got under way.

It was a straightforward enough process. It was a public meeting. At 9pm, the advertised start time, there were six of us there. The hosting councillor and the mayor turned up at around 9.10pm. by 9.30pm we were maybe 50 strong and we started. I thought I was in trouble when the welcome was in Valenciano (the local language) but fortunately the main presentation and Power Point display was in Castillian ("Spanish"). We were all invited to get involved in small scale round table groups. I put my name down but I made it clear that I may have a bit of a problem with the language!!

A matter of life and death

We have a relatively large garden in Culebrón. Lots of fruit trees, flowers and all sorts of shrubs and bushes as well as a rather fine collection of extremely hardy and vibrant weeds.

The soil is good, the sun shines so with the adition of a drop or two of water everything bursts into life. The weeds for instance seem to be able to undo the work of the most potent herbicides known to humankind in about two weeks and reach heights of 30 to 40cms without my noticing. However, take away the water and lots of the stuff that doesn't really live here justs wilts, withers and dies. The fig trees, the olives, almonds, the pines, the oleanders, rosemary and palm trees for instance just plod on with or without a drink but things like the vines and the tomatoes just admit defeat and go gently into that good good night when they go thirsty.

We have an irrigation system. A system of hosepipes that run around the garden with little spigots dug into the pipe at various intervals. The water dribbles out and waters the whole garden (well it misses a bit actually but we use a hosepipe connected to an electric pump to drag water from the rain water cistern, or aljibe, to water the rest). Some of our irrigation hose has split so we bought a couple of hundred metres of new hose to replace the dodgy bits. It's a nasty little job but the system really does work well so it's worth the maintenance required.

Still booting

My bosses at RústicOriginal still run the car boot sale every Sunday at their out of town premises. I don't go very often but Maggie carefully explained to me that we were in urgent need of geraniums and that attendance was both desirable and necessary

It really has become a bit of a local institution - Brits by the bucket load of course but the Dutch, Germans, Moroccans, Ecuadorians, Ukranians and Spaniards are there both as buyers and sellers. This is a Spanish stall.

On being dead

We've never been invited to a Spanish funeral but we have seen plenty in passing. People don't dress up in suits and posh frocks; apparently Franco said that people had to wear clothes without colour - white, black or grey - and the reaction, after democracy returned, was to turn out in ordinary clothes. The mourners often clap when the casket is carried to the car for transport to the cemetery.

Cremation is a growing trend amongst Spaniards but, until recently, the Catholic Church was dead set against it. So it is still quite unusual to be cremated. Burial is the standard option.

People are buried in niches, a sort of dexion shelving system, horizontally and vertically ordered - the photo at the top left. The memorial stone that covers the access to the niche usually contains a picture of the person. Richer families buy a block of shelving set in a small mausoleum. Our local cemetery has recently installed a set of smaller shelves for people who want to inter the ashes of their friends and family in a dignified manner - thats the photo at top right.

Is there too much religion on the TV in Spain?

Not normally, but that is a Praying Mantis on our telly isn't it?

What a nice man

There is a dirt track, a couple of hundred metres long, to our house from the main, tarmac, road. Over the winter the rains have dug impressive cañons into the earth, some maybe 25cms deep. Ruts deep enough to make even modern car suspensions work pretty hard. Very joggly woggly.

Outside, now, the local farmer seems to have decided to grade the track. He only really uses the track when he's driving a tractor or some huge four wheel drive so he can only be doing this as a neigbourly gesture. Good stuff

Step 2: The Town Hall

Yesterday morning Maggie and I took the architect's plan to the Town Hall. They have to give us the go-ahead for rebuilding the roof.

There is a little saying amongst the expats here; just one more piece of paper. And that's exactly what we needed. They wanted us to provide a Nota Simple, a document that shows that the house is free of all debt. I had to go back with it but, so far as we can tell, it's now just a wait for the Town Hall to send us the letter to say we can start. I have no idea what we could do if they were to turn us down