Life in Culebrón

Around 6.30am, as dawn breaks Eduardo the cat starts to moan and demand food outside our ground floor bedroom window. The bathroom is a bit of a favourite for a late night visit amongst we older people. I tend to go to bed later than Maggie. All in all then one or other of us is often wandering around the house in the dark. Last night Maggie, pestered by a singing mosquito and contemplating a "call of nature" noticed that the normal Christmas tree like lights were missing from the bedroom and living room. No glowing LEDs on the modem, alarm clock, anti-mosquito plug in, TV or satellite box. Eerily dark. A power cut of course. Power cuts are not an unusual event in the countryside, well not in our house anyway. Our power supply is rudimentary to say the least and we often lose power for a few minutes. Occasionally it's longer. We left the house today with the power still not restored. When we got home all was well. Doing the maths from the flashing alarm clock the ...

"Good evening, sir," said the Guardia Civil, "Alcohol test." Thus saying he passed me a mouthpiece sealed in cellophane which I cracked open before attaching it to his breath meter thingy. I blew into the machine - "Correct," said the Guardia. "You may proceed." And proceed I did. That's the second time I've been stopped for a random breath test in Spain. It was about three in the morning and I was just joining the motorway to drive back to Culebrón. We'd been to the Low Cost Festival in Benidorm to see a few bands. I understand why the police were waiting. When we'd watched some of the early evening bands we had several acres of space around us and we were surrounded by nice people chatting gently. By the time we got to the bigger bands the space was less than that required for the proverbial cat and the crowd was a little more boisterous. By the time we watched Vetusta Morla at about 2am we had only Ryanair space and everyon...

I was wandering home from the village yesterday evening. I'd just been to watch San Jaime and San José get their annual walkabout on the shoulders of the villagers. After all our village fiesta is held in honour of San Jaime. Last year when I was taking my snaps I tried hard to get shots without the ubiquitous small vans in the background, without tractors and without the recycling bins. This time I decided that they were an integral part of the fun. More than that I decided they were actually a symbol of the relevance and the continuity of the event. In the procession the Carnival Queen and her Maids of Honour were in a traditional costume. Everyone else (priest excepted) wore ordinary clothes. It's an interesting idea "traditional costume" - most young Alicantino women seem to be wearing shorts this summer or at least clothes bought from Zara, Mango and Stradivarius. They are unlikely to ever wear long pleated skirts and shawls. So, at some time in the futur...

The maximum temperature in Stavanger, yesterday was 16ºC and the minimum was 11ºC. In Kirkwall, on Orkney 14/10ºC. In London 23/13ºC. In Alicante, just down the road, it was 29/20ºC and in Doha in Qatar 45/31ºC. No real surprises there then. The highest temperature ever recorded in Spain is 47.8ºC in Murcia on 29 July 1976. Murcia is about 50 minutes from here by car.  The highest temperature ever recorded in England is 38.5ºC in Faversham, Kent on 10 August 2003. No big surprise there either. Over the winter our perception was that Cartagena was warmer than Culebrón. In summer it's just the reverse; warmer by day in Culebrón but still warmer overnight in Cartagena. We think that it's a lot stickier in Cartagena now than in Culebrón. The figures for yesterday bear out our perception. Cartagena max. 29.5ºC, min. 21.2ºC, humidity 65%; Culebrón (Pinoso really) max. 30.3ºC, min. 15.4ºC, humidity 58%. It's a while since I've been in the UK in summer but, if I were t...

Here in Alicante and just across the border into Murcia we eat a lot of toast with grated tomato  - particularly at breakfast or brunch time. It's also very common to get either bread or toast served along with little dishes of grated tomato and all-i-oli as a free appetiser before a substantial meal. Easy enough, nothing too complicated. Then I came across this piece written by a Catalan. You will see that they take the whole thing pretty seriously. The writer is disparaging of our ready pulped tomato - the devil's work! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ingredients to prepare it couldn't be easier – bread, ripe tomatoes, olive oil and salt. There is a second option which is to toast the bread and rub garlic on it but that's a matter of choice. In Catalonia which, claims this snack as its own, they use “pa de pagès” or “peasant bread” which is the typical rounded loaf found in bakers the length and breadth of Spa...

We went to see our pal Pepa this weekend. She has a Casa Rural up in Teruel in a place called Fuentes de Rubielos. I never quite know how to translate casa rural - rural house isn't right and although I always tell my students to use country cottage that doesn't really convey the same idea. It's somewhere people rent for a holiday and it's usually in the middle of the countryside. Anyway Pepa owns one. There are tens of them in Fuentes de Rubielos and hundreds in this part of Teruel province, part of the ancient Kingdom of Aragon. I've always thought staying in a casa rural would be the perfect recipe for getting bored in 24 hours - reading is great but it can also become a chore and how many times can you walk up a hill for entertainment? Pepa surprised me by saying that there are all sorts of activities on offer for people who stay in the houses - bird watching, astronomy, furniture making, canyon running and a recent addition - first you hunt out your t...

One certain way to bring the rain is to hang out some washing or maybe to wash the car. To bring on a heat wave wear a nice thick coat. Well we've just spent hours cleaning the house and, coming in from the South there are some very dark clouds. I don't think it's rain; it could be smoke from the forest fire that's burning out of control in Valencia at the moment or, more likely, it's a dust cloud blowing in from North Africa ready to coat all our newly cleaned surfaces with a layer of orange dust.