Life in Culebrón

Once, when I went to Sunday School, they gave me a little cross folded from a palm frond. The Spaniards do Palm Sunday on a slightly bigger sale. We saw a couple of stalls like this today and they seemed to be doing a brisk trade getting ready for tomorrow.

Alicante province is a bit short on architectural excitement. There are no Salamancas, Trujillos or Cuencas around here but when we have pals over from the UK we often take the to the fabulous modernist house in Novelda and then go on to this church on the hilltop. A bit like a poor persons Gaudí

We have a few fruit trees in our garden. The Spanish system is to ensure that the ground betwen fruit trees, vines etc. is clear of weeds and back to bare earth to avoid the spread of fire. Each year Maggie and I clear the weeds that have grown in the garden over the winter. This year we've had a mild winter and a bumper crop of weeds. Quite where to start is a little daunting This is Maggie looking daunted

Still nothing to write about. Over the weekend we joined a band of Brits at some garden centre in Caudete to hear a a talk by the authors of a couple of books about gardening in Spain. We ate in the cafeteria of a huge ironmongers. We went to see Forest Whitaker with a Spanish accent take over Uganda and today, with the times slightly awry because of the clocks change, we saw a few classic cars in Culebrón before going on to a mini fair in Pinoso organised by the friends of the wine. Maggie likes to be friendly towards wine.

It's a while since I posted anything so I thought I ought to; just to prove I'm still alive. The problem is what to Blog? It could have been our jaunt last weekend to Calasparra (but buying a beer and a few tapas doesn't provide a lot of material) nor did the onward journey to Caravaca de la Cruz, where they have a remnant of the "One True Cross" kept within an ornate box that looks a bit like the "French Resistance" cross of Lorraine. It could have been the Tour of Alicante bike race that flashed by our door yesterday (except that we only saw it from 200 yards away). But generally what we do is to go to work, come home and slump in front of the TV so I thought I should maybe do that. The TV output here is both similar and dissimilar to that in the UK. There are far fewer soap operas and "Wuthering Heights" type dramas and their game shows are as crass as they come. Slipping on banana skins is the height of humour. Game shows usually have women...

Even in Culebrón we've made 21º or 22ºC for the past three days and nightime temperatures have not dropped below 9ºC. Maggie says it has been hot at work in Elche with 25ºC days.

We were in the Gods sitting on hard wooden steps, fortunately with plenty of squirming room, in one of those brilliant ornate wood and gilt theatres. The fat man next to us was very cross with the talking woman at the front; "ssshhhhh!". This was after nearly three hours of Flamenco. The man must be a fundamentalist - mind you a chap on our other side had risen to his feet, clapping and shouting olé, olé, olé after a guitarist had done his stuff just a few minutes before. Maybe we were the only non believers left at that point. Throughout the evening, lots of people amongst the audience had drifted away never to return. If you think Flamenco is lots of big dresses, arms in the air, clicking castanets and stamping you'd be sort of right. But real Flamenco, the stuff that old men talk about over a few sherries down in Andalucia, is called Cante Jondo. This is the "emotional" Flamenco. It is performed by an oldish man with a slightly too tight, shiny suit and an op...

There are district and local elections due in Spain on 27 May. Nationally the Government is Socialist (PSOE) but lots of the 17 Communities and Town Halls (inluding the Valencian Community and our local Town Hall) are held by the political right (PP). Votes are matched against a list of candidates so each contesting group, at whatever level, puts forwards its candidates in order. How many of the list get elected depends on the proportion of the vote the group receives. If the system were in use in the UK you wouldn't get those "shock defeat of Micael Portillo" stories. There was a meeting in a local restaurant yesterday to "present" the local candidate for Mayor on behalf of the PSOE. I'd nearly gone to a meeting last week when a locally strong political party (The UCL, a sort of slightly right wing Lib Dems) presented their candidate but the lure of slippers and a brandy proved too much. I made a bit more effort this time mainly because I've been going ...