Fear stalks the land

The stories of huge water bills in Spain are legion. Not for the cost of the water, which is usually very reasonable, but for undiscovered leaks.

Everyone in Spain has a water meter. Leaks on the supply side, before the water meter, are the problem of the supplier but, once past the meter, the problem is yours.

The water supply to our house is not sophiticated. A plastic tube is buried in a shallow trench under the dirt road that passes the house and a spur brings water to our meter. Our supply is no more than a thick plastic hose buried only inches under the garden. When it gets cold we often lose water for a while until the pipes unfreeze. Because of this I check the water meter regularly to make sure that the consumption seems reasonable and normal. The past couple of times the reading has been a bit high. Six or seven cubic metres instead of the usual three or four. I didn't worry too much. We've run the irrigation system on the garden a couple of times and there is a more general use of the hosepipe to water plants here and there. We also use an aljibe, a big rainwater tank, to water the garden but even then a few hundred gallons from the piped supply seemed explicable.

Maggie said to me the other day though that she could hear the sound of water running in the tubes. Sure enough, with an ear pressed to the wall, it was obvious. I checked the meter carefully and it was confirmed; the smallest needle was creeping inexorably round.

All of our pipework is buried under concrete floors and behind ceramic tiles. Unless it was a simple problem with the taps we were going to be smashing tiles and digging up floors. Yesterday the plumber confirmed the worst. It wasn't the tap. We needed to reveal the pipework and the plumber suggested a builder who came and smashed the marble in the shower cubicle, cutting his hand in the process. The leak wasn't in the uncovered pipes.

This was bad. Sleepless night bad. Something else would have to be dug up, maybe the floor of the shower, maybe the tiled floor. The plumber came back today with a man who had a listening device to find the source of the leak. He found it and the plumber has now dug up the floor of our bedroom to reveal the dodgy pipework. He's still in the middle of doing it as I type. He's gone to get specialist soldering kit.

The good news is that he's found it. Even better he found it underneath the first tile he lifted and he's only had to dig up two tiles to gain access. The bad news is that we have no spares for the tiles dug up and whilst it's a common design the chance of getting an exact match are slight. In the walk in shower the destroyed marble is going to be hard to replace too.

Well, said the plumber, at least you won't need a boat now but maybe you'll need a new rug.

Interview for Expat Blog

The people from Expat Blog asked me if I would answer a few questions. I said yes. Here are the questions and answers

Why did you choose to expatriate to Spain?

We'd been to Spain lots of times on holiday and we were taken by the country, with its habits, customs and with its people. Life in the UK had become one huge round of work with almost no private life and with the sale of our house we were in a position to up sticks and give it a go.

What were the procedures to follow for a British national to move there?

As European citizens all we needed to do to move to Spain was to cross the border and settle here. Obviously we also needed to go through all the usual processes like getting an NIE and later a “residencia”, signing up to the local padrón, registering with the health services, doing all the things associated with buying or renting a house. We'd brought a car with us which also needed re-registering but as to the actual move that was as easy as deciding to do it. No paperwork at all.

How long have you been in the country? What is your current family situation?

We came as a couple in autumn of 2004 and we brought a cat with us too.  No children. So we've been in Spain for going on eleven years as I write.

Are you currently working? What are the local labor market's specificities?

My partner had taken a job as a teacher in a bilingual private school before we arrived. The job had been advertised in the UK and she had also done the interview there.  She went on to have a series of teaching positions through a project organised by the British Council which meant that she worked in state schools after the private one. She also spent a year out of the country. She is now registered as self employed and has a small business organising bodega tours called Secret Wine Spain. She also has some private English classes and does some part time work with a local estate agency. 

I did not have a job when I first arrived but I found work with a local furniture shop. When we moved to a different part of Spain I found work as an English teacher in a private academy. We have changed location twice since then and I have found work as an English teacher in both cases without too much difficulty. Finding jobs in Spain is not easy. Unemployment is a huge problem.

Was it difficult to find accommodation there? What are the types of accommodation which are available?

We bought a house almost immediately. There are now thousands of properties at very reasonable prices in Spain as a result of the bursting of the building bubble a few years ago. Whilst we have continued to own the house we have also moved, for work reasons, something like six times and we have never had the least difficulty in renting a property. We have always used an estate agency to help us find a place and although this is, perhaps, the most expensive way to do it we have also found it quick and safe.

How do you find the Spanish lifestyle?

Living in Spain is the same as living anywhere. You have to go to the supermarket, watch the telly, listen to the radio, cook, clean, do the laundry and suchlike so a lot of the lifestyle is to your own making. 

We have nearly always had work which means that our hours have become quite Spanish,  I would never think of having lunch before 2pm. for instance. Our Spanish is good enough to be able to say what we need to so that we are not lost on an island of foreignness. We know lots of Britons who live in a bubble almost isolated from Spain. It's quite easy to listen to British radio, watch British TV, buy British newspapers, visit British websites etc. At home your mealtimes can be British ones and your food British style. Here in Alicante there are thousands of us so we can also use British plumbers, British builders etc. if we want. 

I still find Spain interesting and exciting. I like the events that start at 10pm at night or at least are billed to but actually start at midnight. I like the heat of Alicante and Murcia and the slightly anarchic nature of lots of the leisure activities. There is always something going on, culture is strongly valued and people are generally pretty open in social situations so that it is easy to make superficial friendships. 

Have you been able to adapt yourself to the country and to its society?

The country is European. It works well. In basis it is very similar to the UK. People complain about the bureaucracy for instance but bureaucracy here is simply different to the UK rather than being excessive. It is a safe country, it's a law abiding country, it's a democratic country so, as I said, in all the basic things it is very similar to the UK. Obviously there are thousands of differences but it's all in the detail. Food is a good example – it is quite different but only at the level of recipes – it's not a vegan society or one where animals have to be killed in specific ways or where religion prohibits or limits certain foods. 

The one thing I cannot stress too much is the difference in language. Here, as everywhere, you can get by with English but without Spanish your life will be harder, your social contacts fewer, your isolation greater and your potential for being happy reduced. Think about the number of times that you need to use language to explain or understand things – when you ring the mobile phone company to complain about the bill, when you need a plumber to staunch the flood in your kitchen, when your car breaks down at the side of the road, when you're with the doctor. If you do not have Spanish those things become hard and a daily problem.

What does your every day life look like in Spain?

Just like the UK. Work, cooking, telly, internet, radio, driving around, doing the garden. The difference is when you venture out of home and even then you will usually be with other Britons (or at least other English speakers) so that although you may be surrounded by Spain you are actually in a little British bubble.

What has surprised you the most at your arrival?

How cold our house is in winter. We'd been in Spain several times in the winter but if hotels are warm then houses aren't. It's perishing. The houses in Alicante and Murcia have next to no insulation. Central heating, carpets and curtains are a bit unusual – the houses here are set up for warm weather not the cold. Winter is purgatory. I should stress that this is not the same if you head for Salamanca or Galicia – anywhere that has colder winters – because there the houses are equipped for the colder weather.

Any particular experience you would like to share with us?

There would be hundreds but the one that came to mind straight away was of the village meal. We live in a village that has about a hundred residents. We are members of the local neighbourhood association.  Each July, as part of the local fiestas, we have a meal for members of the association. The tables are set up under the trees outside the local social centre and fifty or sixty of us sit down to eat. It's always warm, the conversation and drink flow, the bulbs hung in the pine trees twinkle, the air is alive with the sound of crickets. It is just lovely.

What is your opinion on the cost of living in Spain? Is it easy for an expat to live in there?

I think it is probably cheaper to live in Spain than the UK but then again incomes here are derisory. Although he obviously has lots of other sources of income the salary of the Country's President for instance is about 80,000€. Members of my family earn that much in the UK for perfectly ordinary jobs.

Housing is generally cheaper, transport is cheaper, clothes are about the same, food is about the same, eating out is cheaper, alcohol is cheaper, furniture is expensive, second hand cars are ludicrously expensive, electric is a bit more expensive, water varies but is generally cheaper, car tax is less, “rates” are less, income tax is about the same, fuel is a bit cheaper, banking is expensive etc.

How do you spend your leisure time? What are the activities which are accessible to expatriates?

I do anything I want to do in my leisure time that I would have done in the UK. Sports facilities are good, theatre is everywhere (though it's in Spanish), I go to the cinema a lot though all the films are dubbed into Spanish unless you have specialist cinemas to hand as in Madrid or Barcelona. Eating out is something all we rich foreigners do (rich in the sense that we are not usually economic migrants) Going to local fiestas is also a common pastime. If you want to para-glide then you can, if you want to dance you can, if you want to join a classic car club or the local chess club you can. The list is as endless and as limited as it would be in the UK.

What are the differences between life in Spain and in England?

I think I've answered that in lots of the other questions. 

What do you like the most about the country?

Another question that I can't answer simply. I like the things I like and they may not be the same as someone else. I liked the rivers and hills over in the North West when I lived there, I like the sweltering heat of Murcia City in summer, I like rice with rabbit and snails, I like Spanish radio and the colour of the Med is something to behold. I like the crisp blue winter sun, I like having a brandy with my coffee sometimes in the morning, I enjoy the conversations with my students, I like having figs trees in my garden. 

What do you miss the most about your home country?

Nothing really. I occasionally think nostalgically of the outdoor Shakespeare season at Tolethorpe and the Ely Folk Festival and, every now and again, I get a craving for a pork pie or Stilton.

Probably the thing that is most different and I miss most is being able to express myself precisely. I was trying to explain myself to a Spaniard the other day, who had corrected my Spanish, when I had used a particular construction. I had said what I meant to say and I have subsequently checked that the grammar was correct. The difference was between the thought that I wanted to express and the thing that the Spaniard thought I wanted to express. It wasn't an important difference but the gap was unbridgeable. The difference was between wonder and think – “we wondered about” was what I wanted to say, “we thought about” was what the Spaniard was sure I wanted to say. 

If I ask for a beer in a bar in Spain and the barman goes huh? I presume I have said something wrongly. If I ask for a beer in the UK and the barman goes huh? I presume he has not heard.

Would you like to give any advice to soon-to-be expatriates?

Learn Spanish.  Number one without a doubt.

If I were choosing my main home again I would not have chosen to live where I am. We are a bit isolated from Spain. There's no bar in our village and no shops so we have to drive. Another few years and that may be a problem. If I were doing it again I would choose a village, town or city that offered me the facilities I was looking for and then find a house that I liked.

What are your plans for the future? 

Well I should be cooking the lunch now but otherwise just to get on with the day to day I suppose.

Fame again

There have been quite a lot news items recently about a shortage of blood donors in Spain. I heard one such item on a programme I often listen to as I drive to work and so I wrote a comment on their Facebook page.

This is what it said: 

Oí algo sobre los problemas de donación de sangre en vuestro programa y recientemente hay muchas noticias sobre la falta de sangre en España. La mayoría de los británicos que viven aquí, muchos con una historia de donación en el Reino Unido, no pueden donar por un decreto que tiene algo que ver con las "vacas locas" de los años 90 y la posibilidad de contraer la enfermedad de Creutzfeldt-Jakob - algo que no pasa. Un sencillo cambio de ley y, de repente, tendríamos más donantes. Espero que entiendas mi versión de español

Or more or less as a translation; 

I've heard something about the problems of blood donation on your programme and recently there have been a lot of news items about the lack of blood in Spain. The majority of the Britons who live here, many with a history of blood donation in the UK, can't give blood because we are banned by a Royal Decree which has something to do with the "mad cows" of the 1990s and the possibility of contracting Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease - something that hasn't happened. A simple change of the law and, hey presto, we'd have lots more donors. I hope you understand my version of Spanish.

Who knows, maybe someone might hear it, dust off the legislation and let me exchange half a litre of blood for a sandwich and a can of pop. No tea and biscuits in Spain.

If you want to hear it, and of course you will, the bit should be on the official embedded thingy below but I'm not sure it works - we've got Internet problems at the moment so I can't be sure. If not you might try this link at 13 minutes and 55 seconds for the programme Primera Hora 16/06/15.

Primera hora - 16/06/15

A cinema, a parade and something on words

Here are some ramblings from this weekend.

Once upon a time Pizza Express used to serve really good pizzas in interesting buildings. The person who launched the restaurant chain was a chap from Peterborough called Peter Boizot. One of his other ventures in the town was to try to restore the old Odeon Cinema to its former glory as a single screen venue. I've not been to Peterborough for ages but I have this vague recollection that the venture failed. People must prefer multi choice cinemas.

Spain, like everywhere else, has multiplexes in amongst fast food franchises and out of town shopping centres. The big, single screen cinemas are a thing of the past. Youngish people, twenty somethings, I taught in Cartagena still talked nostalgically of the city centre cinemas so it can't be that long ago that they disappeared. Nowadays the old cinemas are gone, boarded up or used as retail outlets.

Years ago, on holiday, I saw my first ever Rus Meyer film in a cinema in central Alicante. On Saturday as I Googled the films from a restaurant table on my phone I was surprised to find that there was a cinema, Cine Navas, just 400 metres away. And, for once, Google maps wasn't fibbing. It was all pretty run down to be honest but it was still pretty impressive, acres and acres of velvet curtains lined the walls and the floor was raked downwards from the screen so that you naturally looked up to the screen. Quite different to the tiered seating of today. The screen was big enough but the image was a bit dull and the soundtrack less than crisp so I wondered if it actually was a real film. The film by the way was terrible - Viaje a Sils Maria or the Clouds of Sils Maria in English I think.

When we came out of the cinema we could hear music. At the top of the road there was a parade. We went for a nosey. Hundreds of people were walking along the street wearing "traditional" clothes. We presumed, and I later confirmed, that it was an early procession as part of the "Bonfires of St John." Nowadays this big Alicante festival is usually given its Valenciano name of Fogueres de Sant Joan rather than its Spanish or Castellano name of Hogueras de San Juan. It marks the Saint's day on the 23rd but it also turns around the shortest night of the year. Huge statues are burned in the street. I like San Juan, it's a very community festival in lots of places with people lighting little fires to cook food, setting off fireworks, jumping over waves to get pregnant etc. San Juan seems also to be a signal. People go and open up their winter long abandoned beach or country house ready for summer.

We'd been in Alicante on Saturday to collect some visitors for one of Maggie's Secret Wine Spain bodega tours and we'd taken advantage of being there which meant spending money. So Sunday was quieter. Very quiet. Too quiet. I polished the car and, as I did so, I listened to a podcast from the radio about the visit of the Beatles to Spain. The Spanish expert on the Beatles explained that their first single Lips Me hadn't been a big hit. I had to listen three or four times to eventually decide that Lips Me was Please Me. The pronunciation and also the mis-titling of Please Please Me didn't help. Later in the programme I was told that the big break for the Beatles was thanks to Harrison Knight. I thought of the people I could remember as being associated with the Beatles - not Brian Epstein, not Mal Evans nor Neil Aspinall nor that American chap because he was an Alan something. Then it struck me. A Hard Day's Night.

This sort of strange pronunciation of English words is very common here. English is fashionable so using an English word in place of a perfectly good Spanish word is rife. There is also a tendency for the English way of saying something to supplant the more usual Spanish form. Lots of English language sounds are very difficult for many Spaniards, hence the mispronunciation. There is a second problem too. If a Spaniard knows how to pronounce an English word correctly it often isn't recognisable to other Spaniards who haven't studied English. So words are intentionally mispronounced to make them intelligible. Sometimes there is a sort of recognised half way house type pronunciation. I can usually guess at common words but names are a real problem - trying to interpret the names of music artists on the radio is by turns a lot of fun and frustrating.

Words on a page

Reading is a funny thing. When I worked in the UK I grew to hate reading. I had to wade through so many pages of so much verbiage full of TLAs (three letter acronyms,) where spades were never spades. Nowadays I'm back to reading for pleasure, well pleasure and for the information that reading provides.

I try to read novels in Spanish. Sometimes I can't understand the books I choose but nowadays I can read most novels without too much difficulty. That's one of the reasons that I usually read on a Kindle because it allows me a dictionary for those key words I don't know. Obviously I'm reading the read the book because something about it interests me but there is also a part that is about trying to improve my Spanish through the practice, the vocabulary and the language structures. More importantly though I'm trying to get a handle on the culture. Not culture in the Cervantes or Shakespeare sense - culture in the description of how life was or is, the historical context, the commentary on everyday life.

My dad used to buy the Express. A friend still reads the Daily Mail everyday. Once upon a time a newspaper, a snapshot in time of the news filtered through a politically biased colander, gave us our view of the World. I haven't read a printed newspaper for a while now. I generally read the news on my phone collected through a newsreader app. The app collects local and general news in Spanish. I also read Spanish news in English from both a Spanish and a British source. There are politically divergent slants on the news from the "papers" and a strange national bias between British and Spanish sources. The truth is though that I can't keep up with the quantity of news. The phone app provides about 400 articles a day but Twitter and Facebook add plenty more. My patience threshold is well below that.

My reading habits probably point to some form of psychologically dodgy behaviour. This wish to become more au fait with the place I live. It extends to the books that I have read in English this year too. After reading a Spanish novel about an uprising in Madrid during the Napoleonic era I went looking for another novel about the Spanish Penninsula War or the War of Independence as it's called here. I found one in English and read it without realising that it was part of a series. Like Magnus once I've started I like to finish so I read all five books only to find that book five did not complete the story. Book six is due out next week. I have it on pre-order. I hope that gets Wellington past Vittoria and heading for Waterloo.

I realised the other week that things must be seeping in. Bear in mind that I often forget what it is I went for by the time I arrive in the room. So I am not at all surprised when I cannot remember a Spanish name. It doesn't matter how obvious Gutiérrez Mellado is, as a name, to a Spaniard because names for me are Brown, Smith and Chalmondley. Nonetheless in a couple of chance conversations I was able to come up with the name of a Spanish David Attenborough equivalent, a knapsack wearing, protest singing MP, two Spanish diplomats who saved Jewish lives in the Second World War and a handful of Spanish authors. When a conversation turned to politics I was perming any two names from Manuela, Ada, Cristina, Cifuentes, Colaua and Carmena but my Spanish partners were stumbling too and, names aside, I knew what was going on and why which was surprisingly gratifying despite my stumbling.

That aside I just love it when a book drives me forward. The myriad times when finishing a book becomes a joyous imperative. Those times I can't stop when I should - just a few more pages before I go to bed or to work or whatever. And the way that the same words used  in a shopping list can be used to make poems sing or a novel vibrate is just astonishing. The occasion when a phrase in a book has to be re-read because it has just caused a total surprise. I have to admit that it's a lot easier for me to spot the beauty of a phrase as simple as "at the still point of the turning world" in English than it is in Spanish but I jotted down "sin periodismo serio no hay sociedad democrática" the other day so maybe that's coming too.

The LSC, DfEE and NYB nearly took it off me but not quite. 

En español

The other day I wrote an essay for my Spanish class. It was that essay which gave me the idea for the blog about trademarks and names. I got the corrected essay back today and there were few enough mistakes for me to bother to correct them on my original. So here, for my two or three bilingual readers, is my attempt at complaining, hopefully in a light hearted way, about a few things Spanish. Nothing new in the content but waste not, want not, as my old uncle used to say - that was before he was dead of course.

Cuando vivía en Ciudad Rodrigo buscaba el lavavajillas en un supermercado pero no puede encontrarlo. -Perdona, ¿dónde esta el lavavajillas, por favor?-pregunté a un reponedor- El mistol está cerca de los congeladores, al fondo -me dijo. Fue la primera vez que escuché este sobrenombre para el lavavajillas. A veces, en Inglaterra lo llamamos Fairy Liquid pero, normalmente, utilizamos un genérico – washing up liquid – detergente para fregar platos. Ya sé que hay muchas cosas que tienen estos sobrenombres – supongo que minipimer, kleenex, danone y los demás no son exactamente sobrenombres, no es como llamar a los Ecuatorianos “Panchitos” por ejemplo, ni es exactamente un neologismo como wasapear o sexting. Sobrenombre servirá. Y por eso, por el uso de este nombré en aquel supermercado, compré Mistol por la primera vez.  Me gusta, es un detergente bastante fuerte y tiene una gama de olores y colores. Pero una pregunta ¿por qué tienen las botellas ese pico tan gordo? Creo que es un pequeño timo, una estrategia de marketing, para que despilfarre el costoso líquido. Pensé en ello la última vez que estuve en un supermercado y compré Fairy – este sí tiene un pico del tamaño adecuado.

Me gusta otro líquido que hay en España – el café. En la mayoría de los sitios el café está muy bueno. Es un placer sentarte en un bar, pedir un café y mirar todo el mundo pasar frente a mís ojos. Pero soy inglés. Levantamos un imperio sobre el té, pues, claro té, gin tonic y una marina poderosa, y de vez en cuando quiero tomar un té fuera de casa. Los Turcos, los Chinos, los Árabes, hasta la mitad del mundo, tienen sus ideas sobre el té. Nosotros también. Y nuestra idea no tiene nada que ver con el té español. Nos gusta una variedad de té que se llama Broken Orange Pekoe – es un tipo de té negro. Normalmente lo tomamos con una gotita de leche y, quizá, azúcar pero, claro para gustos los colores. Lo hacemos con agua hirviendo y la mezcla necesita tres o cuatro minutos para extraer todo el sabor de las hojas sagradas antes de añadir la leche. Los españoles saben mucho sobre comida y bebida, son dueños de una gastronomía impresionante, pero no tienen ni idea sobre el té. Lo hacen con agua templada, creen que se puede calentar el agua en un microondas, los peores, las más canallas, ponen el sobre en agua fría y calientan el agua con el sobre dentro. Muchos ponen leche caliente y, de vez en cuando te sirven un té que parece un café largo de leche o un cola-cao - un líquido pálido, débil, un candidato ideal para la guadaña - demasiado débil para seguir vivo. No; los españoles no saben nada sobre el té y cuando no me apetece un café en un bar o restaurante no me queda otra opción:-ponme (no nos gusta la deferencia de usted) una copa de Magno, por favor- ah, sí, los españoles saben mucho sobre el brandy.

A todo el mundo le gusta hablar. Es muy natural, y aquí a los nativos les gusta preguntar sobre todos los detalles. No importa que haya un folleto, una hoja informativa, una octavilla o un cartel, colgada en la pared, con toda la información. Para los españoles preguntar y pedir es un deporte nacional. Es tan natural que sirve de excusa a los maleducados - las personas que se saltan la cola y dicen, como explicación de todo, -solo una pregunta.... -está perdonada por toda la cola desesperada sin remilgos. Nosotros somos distintos. Somos bastante tímidos en este asunto, tenemos nuestras costumbres. No nos gusta molestar a una persona, no queremos hacer perder el tiempo a los demás con tonterías. Por eso, habitualmente, preferimos leer la información. Un ejemplo muy cotidiano sea en un bar o restaurante, es: -Hola, buenos días, ¿tienes una lista de tapas o una carta, por favor? -Vale, señores, hoy tenemos un guiso de ternera estupendo, un arroz meloso muy rico, una lubina de primera -etcétera. Creo que para muchos restaurantes sería un pecado capital, peor que la lujuria o la gula, tener una carta escrita. De vez en cuando sí, hay una carta. -Pues,vamos a tomar cuatro croquetas de jamón, unos chopitos, las almejas...... -Lo siento no quedan ni chopitos ni almejas y las croquetas son de morcilla pero tenemos un guiso de ternera estupendo, un arroz...-. Pero mis favoritos son los eventos. -Eh, Chris, aquí hay un cartel que dice que hay fiestas patronales en el quinto pino, -ah, sí, y ¿cuándo son? -Uff, no lo sé, no hay ninguna fecha. O -Eh, Chris, aquí hay un cartel que dice que habrá un circo en el pueblo  -ah, sí, y ¿dónde estará? -Dice que está en el sitio de siempre. Supongo que todo el mundo, todo el mundo español, sabe cuál es el día de cada santo y cuáles son sus fechas o cuál es el sitio de siempre, pero yo no. Claro, no me queda otra opción - al bar. -Camarero, -¿Sí, señor, en qué puedo servirle? -Bueno no he podido encontrar ni las fiestas ni el circo y, en este momento, no me apetece un café, por favor, ponme una copa de Magno.

In the wind

In most Spanish bars the gents is a normal household type toilet. The sort we men leave the seat up on. In some places, like cinemas, shopping centres or motorway service stations there will be stalls and, usually, a row of urinals too.

Personally I prefer urinals. Less chance of unintended spillage. My experience though is that Spanish men don't. They choose to use the stalls and a lot of them neglect to lock the door. This can cause a degree of embarrassment from time to time. ¡Uuff; perdón! 

I wonder why the preference?

Get me an aspirin and an elastoplast will you?

It was a few years ago now. I was in  a small supermarket. The product organisation escaped me. I'd found the washing powders and bath cleaners but the washing up liquid was laying low. Breaking with my usual stubborn silence I asked a shelf stacker where it was. The Mistol is at the back, near the freezers," she said.

Just as we Brits use aspirin, escalator, biro, trampoline, thermos, sellotape, catseye, dormobile, durex, bubble wrap, photoshop, stanley knife, armco, JCB, fibre glass and lots more trademarks to describe generic products so do the Spanish.

So Mistol is a brand of washing up liquid. I bought it that day, just grateful that I'd found the stuff. It's good stuff, it smells nice, it has lots of flavours. There is a little dodge, a little marketing ploy, with Mistol though. It has a really wide spout in relation to most other brands of washing up liquids. The liquid gushes out and gets used up very quickly. I've decided it's an abusive design and I've bought Fairy again the last couple of times.

Obviously I don't know all the Spanish trade marks that have become household language but these are some of the ones I've noticed. Actually as I worked on the list it became so long as to be boring so I cut it down. Bimbo is used for sliced bread, Danone for yoghurt, Avecrem for stock cubes, Casera for a sort of lemonade often mixed with cheap wine, Bic for Biros (see how whimsically I write?), Dodot for nappies, Rimel for mascara, Kleenex for tissues, Táper or Túper (mispronounciation of abbreviated Tupperware) for plastic food containers and Post-its for, well, Post its.

I suppose these words change with age and possibly with location. I hoover up (not often enough according to Maggie) but I don't think it's a popular generic term amongst younger people or amongst people from the South of England. I had something similar with aspirin, aspirina, which is a Bayer trade mark. I asked for aspirina in a chemist's in Yecla. The chemist asked if I were sure and produced the trademarked brand at, say, 4€ and a generic at well under half the price. I went for the cheaper brand. I only use them to ward off heart attacks after all. The chemist obviously thought this was all a huge joke and spent the next few minutes coaching me in the pronunciation and rhthym of ácido acetilsalicílico, acetylsalicylic acid. Years later, now fluent in ácido acetilsalicílico, a chemist in Cartagena took me to task. "For God's sake, don't be so prissy, say aspirina," he said.

May weather

Only a little while ago one of the chief weather forecasters from the state TV broadcaster came to Pinoso to celebrate the 25 years of weather data collection in the town. She was here to praise the efforts of a local chap called Agapito Gonzálvez better known as Cápito. Because of him Pinoso, which is no more than a village really, has a weather station that provides data for the Spanish equivalent of the Met Office - AEMET or Agencia Estatal de Meteorología.

Each month the Town Hall publishes Cápito's summary of the previous month's weather. Here is my summary of his summary.

In May we got eighteen days of sunny and cloudless skies and another twelve with sunny spells  - that leaves just one sunless and cloudy day. The highest temperature, of 38ºC, was recorded on the 14th of May - that was one of the seven days when the temperature got above 30ºC. The lowest temperature was 5ºC on the 23rd May which was one of the five days when temperatures dropped below 7ºC. The mean maximum across the month was 27ºC and the mean minimum was 11ªC. We got 10 litres of rain per square metre for the whole month but 7 litres of that fell on the 7th. Rain fell on just three days across the month.

I agree, it's desparate isn't it?

Stone built

Culebrón is a part of Pinoso. Pinoso is a part of the province of Alicante but Pinoso, like Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana, is a frontier town. There are no adverts for Viagra here but there are different languages and different holidays. Even if it's only with Abanilla, Jumilla and Yecla there is definitely a border, the border with Murcia Region.

We have plenty of hills of our own in Alicante. Looking North from our front garden we have the Sierra de Salinas (1238m/4061ft) and the Sierra de Xirivell (810m/2657ft) is to the South. Indeed the garden itself is at about 605m/1984ft but over the border, into Murcia, the Sierra del Carche is higher still at 1372 metres or 4,500 feet. Maggie has tried to get us to the top a couple of times before but today we finally made it. To the very top, to the geodesic point. Admittedly we didn't walk, we went in a little four by four, but we got to the top.

It was pretty crowded and very cosmopolitan at the top of el Carche. There was a Swiss man with Argentinian, Mexican and Belgian clients for his parascending "course." Down the road a chap, probably Ukranian, was assembling his hang glider before hurling himself into the void. There were two Spanish cyclists and I think the chap on the scrambling bike was Spanish too. Then there were four Britons.

On the way up we stopped off at a Pozo de Nieve, a snow cave built in the XVIIth Century. Before the advent of fridges and ice making machines people built these big holes in the ground, lined them with stone walls, well over a metre thick, and used them to store ice. The one we saw today apparently goes down twelve metres though, as the conical roof has now caved in, it's a little shallower than it was. It sounds as though ice was big business at the end of the XVIIIth Century. For instance, Valencia, the city, used two million kilos of the stuff each year. The ice was used mainly for medical procedures, principally to bring down fevers. Ice was even exported from the port of Alicante to Ibiza and the North of Africa.

The caves worked like this. In Spring, when it was reckoned no more snow would fall on the high mountains, men would climb to the high slopes, dig up the snow and take it to one of the pozos where it was compacted to form ice. It must have been cold, hard work without modern tools or fabrics and wearing esparto sandals! When the well was full they would cover the ice with earth, vegetation and timber. In summer the men would return to the ice wells, cut the ice into blocks and transport it, by night, on the backs of mules and donkeys, to the nearest large town where it was sold.  I heard something on the radio about sthe research done on this commercialisation of ice and snow caves. The researchers explained how, in some places, there were chains of snow caves which allowed the hauliers to work in relays and so move the ice more quickly down to lower ground.

Whilst we are on stone constructions I thought I'd mention cucos which are stone built sheds. They were built principally as shelters for shepherds and herders moving livestock along the cañadas, the drovers pathes, that criss cross Spain. The cañadas were introduced by legislation written in the reign of Alfonso X in the XIIIth Century so the cucos have been around a long time too.