Life in Culebrón

I knew we were going to be OK when there was no flood of woodland creatures down the hillside. Either the fire burned itself out or those brave firefighters did their stuff. When the next door neighbour rang me to confirm that all was well I was watching an old film where a Spanish speaking Morgan Freeman is the US President and Robert Duvall is the commander of a spacecraft sent to intercept a giant meteorite heading for Earth. People died in the film. We were luckier in Culebrón.

As I type the Guardia Civil and local Fire Service are making their way up the track that runs past our house and out to the pine covered hillside behind us. It's on fire. There are hundreds of such fires every year in Spain. The island of la Gomera in the Canaries has a big one at the moment for instance. The photo is there, not here.

Terrestrial digital television, free to air programmeing, sent as a digital signal to a standard TV aerial is available in Spain just as it is in the UK. Buy the box and from then on there is no extra cost. The Spanish have plans for turning off their analogue TV in a couple of years a bit behind the British. The other day I noticed that I'd lost two of the key channels Antena3 and Telecinco. This usually happens when a couple of new digital channels become available so I retuned the box. Instead of gaining channels I lost more. Eventually I climbed on the roof and wobbled the aerial around a bit - maybe it was a bit loose after last weeks high winds - safe back on the ground I tried again. Success. We now have 34 free to air TV stations and 8 radio. One of the new ones is called "Learn English". I think it must be owned by a bloke who wears a zip up cardigan because every time I've passed by he's been on.

I do a Spanish course at the local Adult Ed. Centre. Each year all the Education Centres in the district have a get together. The individual towns take it in turn to host the event. Last year we went to Monforte del Cid, this year everyone came to Pinoso. We started with breakfast, what else, then went and had a look at the Sports complex, we saw a promotional video about the town, went to the wine making co-operative and a marble cutting factory. Onwards to the town's theatre for a formal presentation of a book that showcases work from the students at each of the centres. There was a playlet too by the group from Villena about injustice. Finally a walk through town, passing the few sights there are, and on to the gardens outside the shrine at Santa Catalina where we tucked into some local food. Quite clever planning really as marble and wine are the main exports from the area and all the food at both breakfast and lunch was local to the area. There were nearly 500 people who turne...

I went on a charabanc trip with the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association today. We went to the Cuevas del Canelobre, a limestone cave, full of stalagmites and stalactites, at Busot and then on to Guadalest a small, fortified, hilltop village once completely isolated now completely chocca with tourists. The thing that impressed me most was that as we got back on the coach after the trip into the cave, at around 12.30, everyone, and I mean everyone, on the coach started to complain about how hungry they were. Emergency rations appeared all over the bus. They'd missed their mid morning snack and lunch wasn't planned till 2.30pm. Hours away. And the first thing we did when we got to Guadalest? - we went to the restaurant and asked if we could have the food a bit earlier than planned. Good day though.

It's Book day here in Spain on Wednesday because on 23 April 1616 Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra author of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha died and Spaniards make a big thing of Don Quijote and Cervantes. And on that same day in 1616 William Shakespeare also cast off this mortal coil. Maggie gets a day off work on Wednesday. She thinks it's to celebrate St Georges day for the one English person in town - she may be right. St George is also the patron saint of Catalunya, the area that contains Barcelona.

I've been doing a lot laughing, shouting and snorting at the radio and TV this last week or so. After winning the General Election the Socialists had a bit more procedural bother than usual getting both the Speaker and the President in place. They seemed to ride it out with a few merry quips. The Opposition leader has been having his problems as well. The President of the Madrid area, who looks well hard to me, keeps saying she won't be running against him for the leadership of the party at the next conference. He must be very relieved to hear that! In the last couple of days we've had the new Government Ministers appointed. The chap from Pinoso stayed on as Finance Minister but there were a lot of women new to post including the Housing Minister - the first minister since the restoration of democracy not to have been born under Franco's dictatorship. The picture I liked best of all was the new, pregnant, Defence Minister, Carme Chacón, stepping out to review the troops...

I got into my car and drove the wrong way down a one way street in Pinoso this evening. Mind you, I didn't have a great deal of choice. When I'd parked there it had been a two way street but, with the new No Entry sign in place I was pointing the wrong way.

The Excelentisimo Diputacion de Alicante has a programme to bring music and theatre to the unwashed masses. Tonight they sent their cultural ambassadors to bucolic Pinoso, the last outpost of empire before crossing the border into the badlands of Murcia. Sir Les Patterson musn't have been available as they sent two dinner jacket wearing men and a woman in a long frock. The woman, a soprano, was taken to striking poses as she sang (the rather dodgy photo is the front of the official programme) whilst one of the men played the pianoforte and the other sang. They did a few operatic songs from Puccini, Dvorzak and Tosti for the first half an hour and then after a short break, during which the woman changed her dress, they came back and did some Spanish opera and bits of zarzuelas from the likes of Leucona and Arrieta. There were about 150 of us there to see them perform, so the theatre looked a bit empty, but to judge from the cries of "Bravo!" and the hearty applause I thi...

A young man is sitting at a hotel bar in Los Angeles having a beer. A young woman approaches him and says "Are you in the rock business?" "I am", he says. "Well, if you'd like to sleep with me I'll be back here at midnight". The young woman leaves. The young man drinks his beer pensively and, after a while, turns to the barman, who overheard the whole exchange, and says "Not the sort of offer we geologists get very often". Thirty or so years ago I did a degree in geology. Tonight at the "House of Wine", a sort of local exhibition and conference centre in Pinoso, there was a presentation of a new book about the local mining industries, mainly salt and marble, based on the writings of some old time geologists. I thought it might be interesting. I even took money to buy the book. The book had been sponsored by a local savings bank and the town council so first the bank manager and then the mayor said hello to the thirty or so peop...

I'm a bit of a fan of cheese and onion rolls myself. Nowadays I can get them in most bars if I ask, but for years they were denied me here in Spain because, to most Spaniards, cheese and onion sounds like a bizarre combination. Sandwiches - bocadillos - in Spain aren't exactly exciting. Often tasty but not adventurous. Cheese, ham, tortilla, lomo, squid and maybe tuna are the staples. In certain areas bars will offer things like black pudding, bacon or anchovie but there certainly isn't the variety or combination that you would expect in any sandwich shop or petrol station in the UK. Over the weekend I was in Valencia with my chums Pepa and Jaime. We went into the centre of town to a cafe bar, packed to the rafters with customers. The food on offer was mainly sandwiches. There was a choice of types of bread and the fillings were varied and mixed. I had one with pork, lettuce, beetroot and corn. My Spanish hosts thought I'd be pretty impressed by this daring new food co...

Generally in S pain, at home, when I eat bread, I eat stuff that looks a lot like Mother's Pride with that "normal" English loaf shape. When I go anywhere near a bread shop or a supermarket I usually pick up a breadstick. I've always thought of that as being as standard a shape for Spanish bread as Mother's Pride is to English. But, the other day I bought a crusty round loaf, the sort that I would call a cob in the UK. It set me thinking because that's what we usually get when we go in slightly better restaurants; slices cut from a loaf. So I asked a Spaniard what was the traditional loaf for this area. He said it's the rounded one. Particularly one called Pan sobado, the sort of bread that doesn't have a lot of "bubbles". Apparently it keeps well and even improves after a couple of days.