Life in Culebrón

There's a shoe museum in Elda. It's not surprising; shoes were big business along the valley of the Vinalopó. They still are but, as you might imagine the industry has taken a battering from the Chinese. There are often pieces in the local papers about Chinese firms based here importing shoes from China and then bunging them in boxes marked "Made in Spain" before shipping them all over Europe with names that sound Spanish or International. Stories about counterfeiting of branded shoes abound. Spanish workers regularly march around with banners or go in coachloads to Madrid and dump shoes in front of Government buildings. Anyway, ther's a shoe museum in Elda. It's a big building, a modern and quite impressive building with interesting displays as I remembered and I hadn't been there for a while. So when I went to Elda to sign on yesterday I thought I'd have another look around. I've been here in Spain a while now and lots of things that used t...

One of the few poems I know is Auden's Night Mail - the one that has the clackety clack rhythm. For we Brits mail and trains go together. Maybe it's no longer a reality (doesn't all the mail go by road or air nowadays?) but we old folk still talk about Mail Trains. I certainly expect a post box at a railway station. So just now, when I went to collect Maggie from the train as she arrived in Petrer from Cartagena I took a couple of letters to post. A waste of time. Not a letter box in sight, not on the platform nor near the station nor even on the nearest main road. A whole culture to unlearn and relearn still.

I got back to Culebrón today and this bird was in our living room.

Really I have nothing to report. Well nothing in the way of an insight into Spain unless you want to read my stupendously insightful 500 words on street names in Spain as published in this month's TIM magazine . I think the article is on page 8, it's called 1066 and all that . Third article I've had printed in the magazine. But I did want to make sure that you knew that Life in Culebrón was still alive. We were here for the weekend. It's been rather nice actually. Away from the hustle and bustle of Cartagena. Paradise for Edi the cat who has been able to get out of the house and slaughter all sorts of small lifeforms. Last night we went, with some English pals, to take in one of the Moors and Christians parades in the nearby town of Crevillente. I wasn't looking forward to it all that much (seen one M&C seen 'em all) but we actually had quite a good evening. We even stopped for a beer on the way home in the town of Aspe. Sitting out at 11 in the evening ...