Life in Culebrón

I've mentioned before that the weather in Spain can be quite extreme. Sun, wind and rain can all be just a tad on the over the top side. Actually I don't mind the sun at all. Here in Alicante province it always gets warm in July and August and the lower temperatures of May, June and September would still be a glorious British summer. In my opinion it's one of the delights of living here but Britons, Spaniards and probably Burundians seem to be constantly surprised that it's warm and several complain about it. True enough it can be destructive and it's not good when it's always sunny and it never rains and the reservoirs empty and the word drought is everywhere. There's often a breeze in Culebrón, it can be a stiff breeze. We get those dust devils passing by quite frequently in summer - mini tornadoes. Suddenly a breeze springs up from nowhere, slams all the open doors shut, makes the windows rattle, sends dust everywhere and then is gone. But when it does bl...

Have you ever noticed how things can be difficult to find in Spanish supermarkets? It seems to me that these Spanish shops arrange their products to a logic that I didn't share and I've had to learn.  Imagine I want peanut butter. My Britishness tells me to look for it with the jam or honey but my recent experience tells me to look for it near the chocolate bars, near the Nutella. Peanut butter isn't a good example because peanut butter is about as Spanish as celebrations on the 4th of July. Nonetheless, the next time you're in a Spanish supermarket, provided you're not Spanish, look around and I'm sure you'll find things that don't quite mesh with your idea of where they should, logically, be. Why aren't the crackers with the pitta and other bread substitutes? Why is the juice distant from the pop? Why are the kitchen and toilet rolls not alongside the cleaning products? In Pinoso we have quite a few supermarkets and each one of them has a differen...

There's an ad on the Spanish telly for erectile dysfunction. I see it when I watch the local version of Wheel of Fortune. Maybe it's a reflection of the age of the early afternoon TV audience. The person who tells us about the product wears a white coat, a doctor's coat. He has a beard, a bit of a paunch and specs. He's white. He looks like the sort of doctor your average white Spanish, set in his ways, male with an erectile dysfunction might trust. It's the white coat though. The uniform of the trade. You'll see uniforms everywhere in Spain from Mercadona to Civil Protection. We popped in to Bar Mucho for a beer the other day. We went in minutes after it had opened. We were the first customers of the day and the young Spanish server was cleaning down tables. The music in the background was reggaeton or reguetón - Spanish language music. Normally the background music in Bar Mucho is international English language stuff. I've heard or read various pieces abou...