Life in Culebrón

Twenty years ago, more, I was walking out of Covent Garden, probably via Floral Street, maybe King Street. It was love at first sight. In the window of Emporio Armani; a charcoal grey suit. I walked away twice but I was drawn back. The chap in the shop wasn't like the man in the Aquascutum shop a few years before who had explained to me that if I were just looking that's what the window displays were for. Mr Armani's man was welcoming and persuasive. My credit card groaned but bore the strain. I wore suits a lot then and I always felt great in the Armani. Like a dinner jacket it had a magical back straightening effect. In fact, once upon a time, I had suits and shirts and shoes and trousers for almost any occasion from a barbecue to a wedding. Maybe a new tie for a funeral or new shoes for a naming ceremony but the basic kit was there. It's not the same now. I have jeans and T shirts and hardly anything else. I never iron. I do have several pairs of chinos and quite...

Coming home was just brilliant - that feeling of being in Spain when Spain is almost a parody of itself. It's not really hot but it's very definitely summer. Probably in the low 30s. Nice and warm, hot enough to make anyone sweat, hot enough to make it dusty, hot enough for those sudden gusts of wind to be very welcome and nearly hot enough for a spaghetti western snake to slither by. I finished teaching the last of my courses this morning. No more work for a few weeks. I'd celebrated with a beer and a chat in the market square. The streets were lunchtime deserted as I went for bread. The cicadas sang. My sandals kicked up little swirls of dust as I walked. In the car, on the way home, I had the windows open and the new Florence on quite loud. Loud enough for the bloke working on putting up the dodgems in the market car park to look up as I passed. I waved and wondered why he was working at such an odd time. Coming around the Yecla-Jumilla roundabout they're redoing...

Irene (pronounced something like eeh rainy not eye reen) runs a little charitable setup called Gatets sense llar del Pinó s. Google translates the Valencian to English as Homosexual kittens of the Pinós but I think that may be a Google glitch! Translated to Spanish it says Gatitos sin hogar de Pinoso which is something like Homeless Pinoso Kitties. Maggie looks at Irene's Facebook page quite often. She'll say "Oh, look at this poor old cat, with three legs and a duff eye that has been abandoned" and I'll respond with something along the lines of "Well, we've got plenty of space, what's another cat to us?" Maggie thinks of the feeding, the damage to the house, the things being pulled off the shelves and the vet's bills and common sense saves the day. But, a couple of weeks ago there was a picture of a few weeks old Siamese like kitten with watery eyes on the Facebook page. Usual comment from Maggie, usual reply from me. I'd reckoned wi...

Each of the little villages associated with the small town of Pinoso, the pedanías, have a weekend fiesta sometime over the summer. It's the turn of Culebrón this weekend. It's happening now. So far we haven't been to anything that's been put on at this year's fiesta and I suspect that we won't be going over for the rest of the event tomorrow. To be honest the programme isn't that important, it's more the idea that the village is as full as it ever gets, that people are around and that they do things together with a lot of laughing as a part of the recipe. In the past the event had a sort of curtain raiser in a meal organised by the Neighbourhood Association the weekend before but that hasn't happened twice in a row now, possibly because of differences of opinion between a couple of key village personalities. As I haven't rejoined the Association this year I wouldn't be able to attend even if it had happened! People who have a "wee...

My mum was unhappy about the heat in St Ives, in Huntingdonshire, unbearable she said. Somebody here in Pinoso was complaining to me about how hot it was too but, because I keep a little record in my diary, I thought I was aware that, so far, both June and July have been a little cooler than usual. So I did a bit of checking. I was a bit surprised how difficult it was to find full sets of data for past years  and I could only really get fullish sets for 2013, 2014 and most of 2015. All of these results are from the same weather station so any microclimatic differences are evened out. And it seems to be true. Both June and July this year (so far) have had lower maximum temperatures than in the previous quoted years. Mind you the difference isn't really that much and the nightime temperatures are much as usual. In 2013 in Pinoso the highest June temperature was 35ºC, for 2014 it was 32.5ºC, for 2015 it was 37ºC and for 2018 it was 31.5ºC In 2013 in Pinoso the highest July temp...

I'm sure that you remember that Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland had a bit of a problem with Oliver Cromwell. Charles was executed on a cold day in January 1649 and a Republic declared. Cromwell headed up the Republic as Lord Protector and, on his death in 1658, the title passed to his son, Richard. The army overthrew Richard in 1659 and invited Charles I's son to be King. It was all made official with Charles II's crowning in 1661. His first parliament ordered that Cromwell's body, and those of another couple of people responsible for the death of the old King, be dug up and hung. The heads were then stuck on a 6 metre long poles near Westminster Hall. Cromwell's head kicked around until 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge When the Hapsburg, Carlos II of Spain, died in 1700 he left no heir. The Bourbon family took over and they have kept Spain in monarchs ever since despite a couple of hiccoughs along the way. For ins...

I bought a book, second hand, from the Spanish Amazon site. The book is in Spanish but it was sold by a bookseller in the US, I think. It's called Plazas de España, Squares of Spain. I was rather expecting a version of a treatise on the architecture, development and use of the public square in Spain suitably dumbed down for a plebeian audience. It had a bit of that, in the introductory pages, but the bulk of the book is a selection of photos of some of the more impressive squares with one of those factual and instantly forgettable descriptions. "This square, built in a Rococo style with Neoclassical additions ordered by Carlos III, is one of the most ornate of all Spanish squares." It reminded me of some of the terrible guided visits we've been on - to your left a crucifix from 1752 inspired by Michael Angelo and, over the fireplace, a scene from the Battle of Lepanto painted by Plácido Francés y Pascual in 1871 - now if you'd follow me we'll move on to the ...

Just thinking about the last blog, about being in Madrid and about going to the pictures. Yesterday we went to see Love, Simon or Con amor, Simon. I pronounced the name Simón in a Spanish sort of way and the woman on the cash desk came back at me with the English pronunciation. I've said in the past that this can be a bit strange at times. Trade names, film titles etc. can have a variety of pronunciations that are neither Spanish, in the usual link between letters and sounds, nor English in the sense that we say a word exactly as we want to. So, I'm in Madrid, years ago. I've been drinking beer because it's easy to ask for but I want a whisky. I look at the array of bottles behind the bar. White label - odd pronunciation with the silent h and that w and probably labble instead of label - guiyt labble? Bells, double ll, a sort of y sound - Bays? Johnny Walker - odd letters to pronounce both j and w - ghhhonni wallka. And then I spy it, the obvious, the easy - J&B...

There was an advert when we went to the cinema this afternoon for Coca Cola. It is about the people responsible for the success of Coke in Spain over the past 65 years. The funny thing in watching it was just how "Spanish" it looked. There is, for instance, a shot of a door with a polished aluminium door knob. The wood veneer, the colours, everything looks, and is, Spanish. It's the same with the men walking up the road in their fluorescent and grey overalls. I've seen those very same blokes getting the set meal in scores of restaurants in Spain. I've opened that door. So how did those Coca Cola people make the advert look so Spain? After all we live in Spain but I don't think that anyone could argue that our microcosm represents the totality of Spain. The very first time I went to Madrid I wasn't that impressed. There didn't seem to be anything notable in the Coliseum or Eiffel Tower "must see" mould. There were plenty of interesting b...