Life in Culebrón

I don't really have much to tell you about gardening. The problem is that it's over a week since I blogged anything and, as I've spent a lot of those day in the garden doing the sort of damage that is usually reserved for logging companies in the Amazon, it was all I couuld think of to write about. We have a garden that I think measures about 1,000 square metres. Small by Spanish country standards but big in British terms. We have a lot of fruit trees such as figs, peach, nispero, almonds, plums, apple, pomegranate, cherry and quince; lots of ivy, lots of pine trees, and plenty more. The trouble is that I'm not much of a gardener. I can tell a tulip from a daffodil from a rose but that's my sort of level. Nature, colourwise, always strikes me as a bit monotonous. When a rose blooms, or the almond trees are in blossom (like now) there's a touch of colour in the garden but I consider  the countryside to be lot of shades of green and brown - for most of the yea...

I got a letter from the tax people yesterday. Now letters from the tax people are not written in normal, everyday Spanish. They are Brontesque in style. With the envelope ripped open and the single page scanned it looked bad. There were lots of words I didn't understand but it was clear that the Revenue, Hacienda, were unhappy about the tax I'd paid on my pension. Tax people can be nasty. Tax people take your house and send you to prison when you're naughty. Unless of course you are very, very rich in which case they are extremely nice to you. I explained my situation last year in a post on Life in La Unión  Just a quick recap. Normally, if you are a Spanish resident, your worldwide income is taxed in Spain. However, I have a local government pension from the UK and there is an agreement between Spain and the UK that government pensions are taxed at source, in the UK. So far so good but where I turn into Al Capone is about my additional voluntary contributions. They pr...

David Collins died this week. He was cremated today in the Santa Pola Tanatorio. We went along as old friends. David used to live in Pinoso though he's lived in Catral for years now. I think, because I gave him a hand with his computer, he suggested me as a possible worker to his daughter Julie. At the time she ran a furniture shop called RusticOriginal. I ended up working there and it remains my favourite job of those I've had here in Spain. It's the first time I've been inside a tanatorio in Spain - the translation in most dictionaries is funeral parlour but a good number of them seem to have the facilities of a crematorium too. I've never quite worked out the system for Spanish funerals and cremations and I decided against doing the research and describing it here. I get the idea though that the tanatorio is where close family stand vigil as it were and receive other family members, friends and colleagues. Someone in Cartagena told me that they often used t...

It was quite early, maybe around eight in the morning, but the newsagent in Chatteris was open. I was on my way to some absolutely essential meeting I'm sure. Chatteris is a town in the Cambridgeshire Fens, stories of incest, potato headedness and child swapping abound. Chatteris was not in the fast lane of the (then) 20th Century. A couple of older women were in front of me, they were buying but chatting. After waiting nearly five minutes I asked if I might just have a packet of Hamlet and be gone. I had the correct change, it would be a quick exchange. The woman behind the counter wasn't having any of it and didn't heistate to chide me for my hurry. On Monday I was in the library cum youth centre in Sax. Six of us were gathered around a table parked at an edge of the big barn like room. We Brits outnumbered the Spaniards two to one. The idea is that it's a sort of group language exchange - I have no idea why we use a room large enough to stage a concert in. My fel...

For years and years I've had a bit of a deal going with some friends who have a holiday home here in Spain. They pay money in sterling into my UK account and I pay Euros into their Spanish account using the FT exchange rate. They get money to pay their direct debit bills and I got enough to service my Amazon habit. The more usual methods of transferring money can be quite costly. There are all sorts of schemes and methods but most of them make their money by giving below the "money market" exchange rates (the ones that say no commission) or by charging a fee. To give an example for small amounts, say £300, my normal method is to use an account I have with the Nationwide. They charge me £1 per transaction plus 2% of the amount. So that's £7. Actually that's as cash so it's a bit different but the figures are illustrative. Recently Cliff told me about a scheme that he had heard described as peer to peer. It's what my friends and I have been doing ...

We'd popped in to town to do some exciting jobs - buy screen wash was one of them. I was also going to bank some money. Take note of the opening sentences and be warned now that this blog is not going to be the usual emotional roller coaster ride of an entry. My phone rang when I was in the bank queue. It was our next door neighbour to say that Iberdrola, the electricity supply people, wanted to get into our garden. You will remember I talked to Iberdrola about moving some supply cables that were either menacing or being menaced by our palm tree. Nothing has happened for months. The discussion that I'd had with some Iberdrola employed tree trimmers had suggested that we were talking thousands of euros if we got the cables re-routed and I'd quietly let the whole thing slide. We hurried back from town. I feared the worst. I could imagine the euros flowing out of that bank account to pay for new cables, new installations and a new meter. The three blokes said they wante...