Life in Culebrón

The world being connected, as it is nowadays, it would be quite possible to live our life here more or less isolated from things Spanish; we could behave as though home were still Huntingdon. We try not to but we could. With time things change and so de we. As an easy example the food we eat and the way we buy things has changed radically. Ordering takeaway food to eat at home via my personal phone, without making a call, and having someone deliver it on a bike would have seemed incredible in my youth. Clothes change, habits change, tastes change, everything changes down to the way we speak. Although I've kept my distance and even stayed at home recently I have never shielded or social distanced but I know people who have. I'm not that interested in keeping up with the UK. I tell my sister that I don't know the names of British politicians. She doesn't believe me. She's partially right in that I do half recognise maybe four or five current British political names bu...

It's an old photo. December 2007 I left the bathroom wearing just a t-shirt. Well, jeans and shoes and stuff too. My intention was to put on the hoodie that was hanging on the kitchen door but, as so often nowadays, I was distracted by something else and I forgot. It wasn't till I began to feel chilly that I remembered my original plan.  My overcoat was also hanging from the same hook as the hoodie. Time for that to go into storage I thought. The overcoat, a long dark overcoat, is probably my favourite coat. It came with me from England. It was two or three years old when we got here so it must be closing in on 20 years old now. The lining's a mess and if you look at it closely it's got that sheen on some of the seams to bear witness to its longevity. March is the month when the weather starts to take a turn for the better here in Alicante.  The t-shirt incident and the coat reminded me of a story I'd read, as a youth, about a civil servant and an overcoat - Dostoye...

I have innumerable stories about going to the cinema. I started young and I'm still adding to the store. As an eleven year old I marvelled as my Auntie Lizzie sobbed while watching The Sound of Music. When I was fourteen my dad insisted that we went to a bigger cinema in Leeds to get the full Cinerama effect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was well over 30 when I tried some sort of gruel that Poles prefer to popcorn as I watched a Swedish film with French subtitles in a Warsaw cinema. In Banjul I wondered if the running and shouting antics of the audience for a Kung Fu film would turn violent. As a student in the 1970s I recall scraping together enough loose change to see Last Tango in Paris with someone who really thought it was about dancing. In Madrid, in the early 80s, I sat, rifle-less, on a grassy knoll one August evening for cinema in the park. Hooking the speakers over the wound down car windows at a drive-in in Pennsylvania. Delighting in seeing season after season of black an...

I got my hair cut last week. As I'm sure you know I go to Alfredo . One of the tiny pluses of Covid 19 is that Alfredo has cut down the number of appointments he takes in an hour. If it used to be one every 15 minutes it's now one every 20 minutes and if it was one every 20 minutes it's now one every half an hour. This is to give him time to disinfect things and to make sure that there are not too many people waiting or sitting together. It also means, that for most of an appointment, there's just me and him in the room; so nobody extra to smirk at my Spanish. I said good morning and Alfredo said, "Do you know there are 54 Nationalities living in Pinoso?". I had to say that I didn't. The last time I'd seen the figure it was "only" 42. "I wonder why?," he asked. Being an immigrant myself I had answers. I likened it to the Bengali population settling in Brick Lane or Spaniards congregating in West London - friends tell friends that a...

I didn't do the 11 plus exam at school. It was just being phased out as I went from Junior to Secondary school but I was part of some survey to see if continuous assessment gave similar results to the old style exam. The question I remember was: Which is the best pair? Peaches and ice cream Peaches and cream Peaches and apricots The correct answer is peaches and apricots as they are both fruit. The question is obviously designed to mislead. Spanish tests love to do the same. A sample driving test theory question for instance shows a tram and a car arriving at an unmarked junction and asks who should give way. The answer is the tram. There is a general rule to give way to traffic from the right at unmarked junctions. Obviously the likelihood of such a junction existing is minimal. The question tests something theoretical and unreal with no real practical application. Spanish education is a bit like that too. One commentator remarked that the Spanish way, for a course for trainee car...

Driving in Spain is like driving anywhere. Well no, it's not like driving in Mumbai or Sana'a, but it is like driving in places that have reasonably organised traffic. Most people keep to most of the rules most of the time. By that I mean it's like driving in Dublin or Munich or Mirfield. The cities are busy, towns are busy but Spain has lots of space for not many people and hundreds of Spanish roads are dead quiet. Where we live the roads are very quiet. It's a joy. Last Wednesday were in Elche and I left an obvious space so a car, joining from a slip road, could pop into the main traffic flow. The driver waved in acknowledgement. I was surprised; I wondered if he were foreign, like me. Spaniards do not, generally, acknowledge any assistance on the road. Flash someone in for instance and there is, usually, no answering flash, no quick flip of the hazard lights nor any little wave. Actually, if, as a pedestrian, you hold the door for someone entering or leaving a buildi...

On Monday afternoon I was going through the programmes for the local theatres. We booked up a couple of events. That put a little smile on my face. Goody, goody, I thought. Out and about a bit, I thought. Away from the house for a while, I thought. Those were my thoughts as I crossed the patio and the living room heading for the kitchen to make a cup of tea. If someone were to ask me if I were a theatre goer my answer would be diffident at best. Now and again, sort of, well no, not really. But, as I waited for the kettle to boil I started to think about it. I went to see a loads of plays when I was at University. At the time I knew a lot of drama students, some of whom were young women, maybe that was one of the attractions. Another was that the Gulbenkian Theatre was on campus and free. It was also really close to the Student's Union. The bar in there was very useful when I thought that I was going to die of boredom whilst watching a Congreve play. It gave me the incentive to get ...