Life in Culebrón

Interesting week this week. Out and about in Spain much more than usual. Last Saturday, the Neighbourhood Association of our village, Culebrón, organised a coach trip to a couple of towns over the Murcia/Alicante border. We went to Cehegín and Bullas. As always with the neighbours, the vecinos, it's the human bit that makes it interesting. I'm not a particularly outgoing or effusive person, but that doesn't mean that, as we waited for the coach to arrive and as people drifted into the agreed setting-off point, there wasn't an awful lot of cheek-kissing, hearty handshakes, backslapping, and a general bonhomie that always makes me grin internally. We got to Cehegín and did our bits of wandering around, looking at museums and churches and whatnot, but the real focus of any outing with Spaniards is the meal. The restaurant that the organisers, María Luisa and Inma I think, had chosen in Bullas was absolutely cracking. There was a busload of us, 50 plus people, and the meal ...

I was a bit worried about Spanish music when we first got here. I was worried that I didn't know any. I suspected that "Viva España" didn't count. After all, one grows up with music. It insidiously surrounds you. It comes at you in shops, on adverts, from the telly, and in films.  I'm bad with music. When the musicians on stage incite the crowd to clap along I'm the only one in the audience out of time. The level of my rhythmic incompetence may be demonstrated by my being barred from using the triangle in my infant school music class; I was relegated to the benches. In secondary school I was beaten when the music teacher, carrying out tests for new members of the school choir, accused me of singing so badly on purpose. I don't remember song lyrics or titles particularly well yet, despite all these failings, I still know hundreds of songs that I never tried to learn. This is perversely opposite to the handful of poems that I've struggled to memorize and...

Ten years ago I saw the Pet Shop Boys at the old SOS 4.8 Festival in Murcia. I expected them to be terrible but they were just the opposite. They really engaged with the audience. At one point Neil was talking to us. He said how much he and Chris had enjoyed sitting in the Plaza Cardenal Beluga, in front of the Cathedral in Murcia, with a drink and a snack. "It's beautiful, isn't it, that Cathedral?" The home crowd roared its approval. He's right though. Whatever you think of its purpose Murcia Cathedral is quite a building. Although the current building was started in 1394 the part you notice first, the frontage or facade, is Baroque in style. To my mind Baroque architecture means that it has lots of twiddly bits just like Baroque music is Handel, Monteverdi and Vivaldi. But, I have a duty to my loyal readership (hello Derek!) to be a bit more specific. Wikipedia tells me that Baroque Architecture is a highly decorative and theatrical style. It began in Italy in ...

If Britons, young Britons especially, still drink tea then "Shall I put the kettle on?" must remain a common question in British households. As long as I can remember, in houses where I have lived, one of the potential answers has been "Well, if you think it will suit you". Just in case you are not a native English speaker the English language uses something called phrasal verbs. To put on is one of them and it has several meanings. Two of the common meanings are to cause a device to operate and to wear. This means that "Should I put on the Television?" and "Should I put on a tie?" have the same basic structure, both make perfect sense, yet the meanings are completely different. The answer to the kettle question is a deliberate confusion of two of those meanings. It's not much of a joke though some of us find it weakly humorous. Strictly Come Dancing is a British TV show. It's a programme where personalities are paired with professional...

As I shaved I was listening to the radio, to the part they call a tertulia, that's the bit where pundits, usually journalists, talk about the latest news. They were talking about inflation and about electric prices. They had some boffin who knew all about the electric market. One little tidbit he dropped in at the end of his section was that every Spanish electric bill has a QR code which leads to a webpage maintained by some sort of Government quango, the "National Energy Commission". By using that code/website, you get a direct comparison between your last bill and the market in general.  To explain it all properly would take pages and pages. It's quite complicated stuff, so I've kept this as short as my ponderous writing style will allow. The Spanish electric market has two sorts of contracts for we household users. One is in the controlled market. The other is in the free market. The controlled price varies from hour to hour. It's an almost incomprehensibl...