Life in Culebrón

There was a time when every Spanish film was about the Spanish Civil War, usually about the aftermath and the rough handling of the losers by the nasty winners. Fortunately that has changed nowadays and we get a good spread plots and genres. Most Spanish films are made with TV money and with subsidies from film funds. This means that they look a bit like those BBC funded films, quite modest in scale, with production values that betray their small screen destinations. If they have a historical theme (and lots do) they are nearly always shot in a sort of muddy brown colour and use the Spanish equivalent of thou to prove their authenticity. Obviously they are voiced in Spanish or, to be more accurate, Castilian. Actually, unless you're in one of the big cities it's nearly impossible to find a film in its original language - everything gets dubbed into Castilian. Colin Firth, King George VI or el Rey Jorge VI has a nice Madrid accent. The Goyas are the Spanish equivalent of the O...

Eduardo the cat isn't keen on the journey between Culebrón and Cartagena. In fact he definitely doesn't like it. His protest is a loud wailing from the start to finish of the journey. Sometimes his protest is reminiscent of Bobby Sands. Eduardo the cat isn't keen on the flat in Cartagena. Warmer than the unheated parts of the Culebrón house maybe but lacking in key elements such as the ability to wander freely and the opportunity to slaughter smaller species of animal. We were packing up to go. Cats may have smallish brains but Eduardo spotted the signs. Glum expressions on our faces, movement back and forth to the car with bags and boxes. He's learned the trick; run away and Uncle Geoff turns up to feed him. It's worked well when we have had no option, when work awaits on Monday morning 110 kms and ninety minutes down the road; on a schedule. Tonight though we waited him out. He thought it was safe. He came back to soak up the heat in front of the gas fire. H...

Villazgo is an event in Pinoso to celebrate the town's independence from the nearby town of Monóvar in 1826. It takes place in the town on the Sunday nearest to February 12th and it's one of the nicest festivals that we go to each year anywhere. Villazgo is a celebration of local culture so the stalls are loaded with local crafts, industries and traditions like wine making, basket weaving and shoe making. In the side streets they organise traditional games, basically the local handball and a version of horshoes called caliche. On the stage the town band plays traditional music and the dance groups like Monte de la Sal don the traditional gear and get up and do dances from the local area. Hundreds and hundreds of people wear black smocks that were the everyday work gear around here for years. Perhaps the best bit though is the food fair. You hand over a few Euros in return for which you get ten tickets, a tray, a wine glass and a ceramic dish. You then go from stall to stall...

As we left Cartagena yesterday it was a pleasant, sunny day and 18ºC. Six hundred metres higher in Culebrón we were down at 15ºC but it was still sunny and pleasant. Inside the house though it was pretty arctic with the motionless cool air in the living room literally taking my breath away. One of the photos has the cat Eduardo sitting in front of one of the gas heaters that we use to keep the rooms warm. In the living room we also set the air conditioner to heat, that plus two gas heaters and we can get the room nice and warm. The trouble is that the heat just vanishes as soon as we stop pumping the calories in. The other photo with those nice air gaps around the kitchen door perhaps indicate why! Alicante country houses of a certain age just aren't insulated in any way.

I mentioned last week that I go for a haircut when the hair starts menacing my ears. It's much the same with the palm tree in our garden. Not that the palm has ears, at least I don't think it has, though it is a grass apparently and lots of grasses do have ears. No, in the case of the palm tree the time for a trim has come when the fronds start to scrape the roof of the mini as I park up. And that's what happened as we came home this afternoon. Not being a traditionalist I don't shimmy up the tree using a rope harness nor do I lop off the fronds with a billhook instead it's a pruning saw and a set of stepladders -  more Tunbridge Wells than Elche but, then again, there aren't that many palms in Kent.

Back at the end of 2009 the Government introduced some legislation which said that bars shouldn't be cooled below 26ºC in summer or heated above 21ºC in winter. Obviously the measure was designed to save power and to help reduce the country's carbon dioxide emissions. I remember thinking at the time that 21ºC wasn't very warm. Spanish bars can be cold and unwelcoming spots in winter with their tiled floors, tiled walls, hard, unpadded chairs and open doors. Fortunately the bar owners have taken no notice. Only the other morning I was warming my frozen hands around a hot cup of coffee in a nice warm bar and later mentioned to Maggie how much more comfortable bars are than they were only a couple of years ago. But now some consumer group has been going around stirring things up and publicising the fact that the bars are failing to stick to the law. Killjoys.

We really haven't done much recently partly through work, partly through sloth and partly because it is relatively unpleasant out when the sun isn't shining. Weekends in Culebrón tend towards tasks of one sort and another or maybe the exact opposite as we take the opportunity to forget about chores and work. Yesterday though Maggie was keen that we did something other than vegetate. She suggested a trip to the seaside at Santa Pola but I baulked at travelling the 60 or so kilometres each way for no real reason. I was happy to go somewhere but with a bit more purpose. In the end we settled on going to Alicante because there were a number of exhibitions on. We saw the photos of Alfredo Calíz at the FNAC shop in Alicante (nice use of colour but not many snaps) and later, at MUBAG (Fine Arts Museum) we saw a show that covered the Spanish Avant Garde from the 1960s to the 80s - informalism, abstraction, op art, hyper realism etc. Next it was MACA (Contemporary Art) where there w...

I popped into Alfredo's in Pinoso this morning to get a trim. I don't like it when the hair grows over my ears. Up to that point I don't really notice my hair except for thinking that it's very white. Alfredo does a perfectly decent job for a very reasonable 8€. The conversation usually centres on the weather and Cartagena. As I waited an oldish chap pottered in and Alfredo called his dad to deal with his client. I watched and marvelled as with shaking hands he wielded the cutthroat and hair trimmer. A trust established over the years I suppose. There's nothing special about a haircut in Spain. I've been to trendy haircutters here where they offer coffee and wash my hair before and after and where young women with piercings and low slung trousers quiz me carefully about the style I want before cutting my hair to look the same as it always does. I've been to lots of those nondescript places that once had pretensions to trendiness but where time and client...