Avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning

Ingrid told me a story. She holds with the majority view that telephone sales people should be made to run around dripping wet wearing only a towel to see how they like it. One day though a chap phoned trying to sell a combined electric and gas supply package and Ingrid positively welcomed the call. She was enthusiastic. She would be delighted to take advantage of the offer. By Ingrid's account the man handled the unexpected situation well. He remembered his training and kept on extolling the virtues as he completed the draft contract. It all fell apart at the address stage though. Ingrid lived in an old half timbered cottage with green wellies in the porch and a big red Aga in the kitchen. "Aah, I'm afraid we can't offer piped gas to your location," said the salesman, "your  house is too rural." "I know," said Ingrid, "why didn't you?" Then she put the phone down.

There's no piped gas in Culebrón either. Piped gas in Spain is generally only available in relatively large towns. We make do with gas bottles. We buy the lighter, Cepsa branded aluminium bottles from the shop at the bodega in Pinoso though we also have a couple of the heavier steel Repsol bottles. We could have the bottles delivered but we're not that organised.

Gas kills lots of people in Spain. Often people cobble together ingenious but lethal heaters that explode and demolish the building around them. Sometimes death comes more quietly in the form of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The legislation says that you should have your gas system and appliances checked at installation and every five years after that. Sensible legislation in my opinion. We had it done five years ago. We had it done again today. So now, if the grim reaper comes to call we can be pretty sure that it won't be in the form of flesh tearing shards of sharpened metal or the lack of oxygenated blood.

May I bring this meeting to order

It was the Annual General Meeting of the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association today. As is now usual we were greeted effusively by lots of people. As usual we had the meal beforehand. As usual we had a choice of rice and gazpacho. As usual Maggie and I sat with Mari Luisa, Daniel, Marisa, Carol and David. As usual there was a gap next to us at table.

With the tables put away, the paella pan scrubbed clean and the prawn heads picked up off the floor it was time for the Annual General Meeting.

The AGM is always a bit disorganised. At least by UK standards it's a bit disorganised. When I say a bit disorganised read absolute chaos. Sometimes there is an agenda but today there wasn't - no minutes either. Of the four key members of the committee - Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer and Secretary - only the Chair and the Secretary were on hand. With little else to lean on the meeting hinged around the accounts.

The slightly inebriated Secretary started by eulogising the Village Mayoress and the President of the Neighbourhood Association. He made more or less the same remarks every hour for the remaining three or so hours of the meeting. He employed quite colourful  language too - very Kenneth Tynan.

The original fifty or sixty diners dwindled down to maybe ten people. I drank five whiskies, generous whiskies, from a bright pink J&B bottle, during the meeting. The President resigned but, as nobody was willing to take her place, the Secretary suggested she stayed on another couple of years so that she would resign at the same time as the village Mayoress. This apparently made sense. I was happy. She is one of the few people in the village with email.

We were told that the Village Hall didn't really exist as a legal entity which was why we couldn't let any Tom, Dick or Harry donate a gas cylinder to fuel the stoves to cook the paella. That's why gas featured in the accounts! We heard a few times how the President took full responsibility for not delegating responsibility. It's true that she mopped up her own spilled G&T. The President and Secretary complained that nobody was willing to help at Villazgo or carnival time. I dared to speak. "I think it's because we don't get asked." The Secretary  told me I was wrong. Fortunately nobody else heard because they were all talking to each other. I was on the front row. The President asked me if it wasn't true that the trip to Benidormm had been excellent, I agreed, it had. It was decided we would go to Benidorm again.

I was going to have a sixth whisky and see it out but, for no real reason, I chose to slip away instead. I didn't quite see where we were going.

Except Benidorm of course

Bouncing off the ionosphere

I like listening to the radio. Getting your news from the radio obviously has it's disadvantages (no pictures) but radio does have the huge plus of portability and not being attention seeking. The Internet and television are nowhere near as compatible with driving, shaving or showering as is the radio.

Generally radio here is reasonably good. There are stacks of local stations full of local news and stories. Nationally the news coverage is fine with a range of political views spread amongst the various broadcasters though politicians don't get anything like the cross examination that they are subjected to in the US or UK. News aside speech radio doesn't have anything like the breadth of, for instance, BBC Radio 4 (drama, arts, comedy, documentary reports etc)  but with my "Proud to be British" hat on I suspect that very few radio stations in the world do. Sports coverage is enormously important and takes up hours of air time. Sport is synonomous with football though basketball, tennis, Formula One, cycling and golf get the occasional look in.

We have a classic music channel, Radio Clasica, which is a lot like the BBC Radio 3 of yonks ago - a bit highbrow and a bit tedious. There's nothing like Classic FM

Not knowing how to describe it adequately I'll call it pop music. Pop music gets badly treated here. I've said before that the commercial channels tend to play a limited range of songs over and over again: They play far too much dated music (not so much Beatles as lots of "Hips Don't Lie" Shakira) and the playlists change so slowly that you're sure the programme you listened to today has exactly the same content as a programme you heard six months ago.

The state broadcaster has a pop music channel too - Radio 3. A quick look at their website and you can see that they're a bit staid but, then again, it looks hopeful enough. The very first programme I listened to on Radio 3 was playing modern Spanish indie bands and the next had modern world music. Hopeful I thought. Radio 3 does have some good programmes but it also has far too many presenters who prefer the sound of their own voice to the music and they play far too much really old stuff. It also has minority programming like country and western or jazz at peak times.

Now I realise that young people can access modern music in so many ways that radio is not now the key medium it once was. On the other hand the eclectic nature of radio does mean that it can do some of the sifting for you. The radio is on, in the background, you like something, you check it out on Spotify, YouTube, Internet radio or Facebook and then, if you really like it, you download it to your computer or phone and it's yours.

I've been fretting about this for some time now and this morning when I popped into town and some bloke was droning on about some macrobiotic festival in Madrid instead of playing music I decided to do a bit of complaining. And that's what I've just done. I banged off an email along the lines of asking Radio 3 what sort of music policy it has that allows it to broadcast just three 1950s flamenco tracks per hour at ten in the morning - or something along those lines. Actually I should be honest. I wrote an email and then asked a couple of Spanish pals to correct my grammar so that I didn't come across as a fool. It was interesting that they made very few changes but they chose to make my language much more formal.

The website was opaque of course so sending the message wasn't easy and I don't suppose they'll reply but at least it formalises my right to complain.

Moonstruck

There's a bit in Moonstruck - actually it could be in any film featuring Italian people in the United States but I'm pretty sure it was Moonstruck - where the family sits down to eat mountains of spaghetti and behave like Italians. The film came to mind as I dithered between Spotted Dick and Lemon Meringue.

I'd been out all morning and I hadn't been anywhere near Spain. At one point there was a gang of us hanging around a petrol station just out of Barinas. I was one of them. I had an alcohol free beer in hand and I was enjoying the sunshine as I wandered around looking for a poster advertising the loss of a dog. A chap who was blowing up the tyres on his van shouted across to the pump attendant that the place had a very foreign feeling today. The petrol man just laughed.

We were on a car treasure hunt. This one was to raise money for Barney's dog rescue. There must have been about forty of us involved as we drove hither and thither counting the number of arches here and the purpose of the flagpoles there. Perfectly good fun. Our endpoint was the White House restaurant in Fortuna where I feasted on liver and onions. I even considered ordering a cuppa to finish the meal just to maintain the Britishness of it all.

I'm aware of my Britishness much more here than I ever was when I lived in the UK. I'm reminded of it every time I try to coax one of my students to pronounce would like wood and not like gwud and every time a waiter gives me that second glance as I order something.

I went for the mixed fruit cheesecake in the end by the way.