Life in Culebrón

I t turned out to be a bit of a porky. They told me I'd be in hospital for about 24 hours to fit a peg  - a stomach feeding tube. It's nothing more than a plastic tube that leads directly into my stomach. It will be needed when my throat has closed up so much with the radiotherapy that I can no longer eat through my mouth. In fact I'm here till Monday. I thought this was the last of the pre-treatment things to be done before the real fun starts. I've been running around the province getting bloods done here, a talk to a dietician there and CAT scan at another place. The talk with the radiotherapy hospital in Alicante actually turned into quite a session. Information given, they made a sort of death mask (and I'm not being maudling, it's just what it reminded me of) by shaping a heated plastic mesh around the contours of my face. The idea is that I will be held in place by the mask as they blast me with rays and the grid, just like in a game of battleships, will ...

In the majority of Spanish bars, with most cold drinks, you will be given some sort of accompaniment. A few olives, a handful of nuts or a nut mix, a few crisps, maybe some panchitos (generic for cheesy puff, Monster Munch sort of crisp type things that aren't crisps) or even sugary sweets. You won't, generally, get anything with a coffee or tea, except maybe a biscuit. Obviously only the insane drink hot drinks with anything but bakery products. Some bars are more generous than others and some only serve the extras at given times. Something that used to be common, as an accompaniment, but aren't so much nowadays, are altramuces, lupin seeds.  To digress, as I so often do, as I mentioned frutos secos (the nuts or nut mixes) I remember that they caused me problems when I was teaching English. To me it looked like a direct translation - dried fruits. So I'd go into a long spiel with the students about how the things that had a shell that had to be broken to get to the edi...

Last June, that’s June 2023, I went to the doctor and said that I had the sensation of a lump in my throat. She felt around a bit, said it was probably nothing, but asked for a consult with a specialist from Ear, Nose, and Throat. In Spanish, that’s otorrinolaringología, and I’ve already got into the habit of saying otorrino, so that’s what I’ll probably use from now on. The request for the consult was ordinary priority. It took nearly a year for the otorrino to see me - May 28th this year, in fact. He shoved a camera up my nose and down my throat and recognized the potential for throat cancer straight away. He dropped some pretty broad hints to me as well. Doctors though, very seldom, give bad news until their experience is backed up with test results. He set the ball in motion. He ordered an MRI scan, a resonancia, and things started to move.  For the resonancia, the thing where you lie down in a big tube that makes a lot of noise while you try to stay stock still, the state syst...

Instead of thinking about Red Letter Days or Bank Holidays in Spain, you have to consider working and non-working days. The non-working days, which are very similar to, but not the same as, British public or bank holidays, are set by three levels of government: town halls, regional governments, and the national government. This means that days off differ in every town and every region. Only the days designated by the central government are definitively the same throughout Spain. The only infallible way to know when there are holidays in your town is to consult the lists of "días no laborables" published by various sources, such as newspapers and chambers of commerce and easy to find with any search engine. I've written similar pieces before. It's not an easy read but Alison asked me to do it again, so I'm going to try a different approach. I'm going to presume that you live in Spain, and I'll use six municipalities in three different regions as examples. I...

A couple of weekends ago, we went to the Low Festival in Benidorm. Maggie, my partner, knows that I like festivals. She doesn't. She doesn't like the push and the shove and the constant standing and, generally, the music does nothing for her. She's decided on her favourite musicians now, and she pretty much sticks with them. She doesn't discount newer stuff; it's just that, generally, she finds it falls short of her established preferences. I'm going to try to do a piece here on the accessibility of music, but I know I'm going to meander and wander around the houses. So, what I want to say is that music is very accessible in Spain. From local concerts by town bands to municipal festivals for pianists or guitarists, through any number of styles and formats of music supported by local town halls for no other reason than that they see it as their job to enrich the cultural life of their populations. In the bigger towns, small, commercial, performance spaces co...

Have you noticed that the Spaniards drink their beer cold? I mean cold. Not chilled; cold. If you go into a bar, run by people of other nationalities, in Spain, the difference can be noticeable. That idea of crisp, cool and refreshing is one of the reasons why telly adverts associate friends laughing together, eating together, swimming at the beach and drinking beer together with summer. Beer isn't a traditional Spanish drink, it didn't really take off  till the 1970s and it wasn't till 1982 that beer took over from wine as the biggest selling alcoholic drink.  Spaniards notice when Britons, and other Northern Europeans, put ice in their wine. Odd really considering that Spaniards pour their hot coffee and tea over ice all summer through. When you're out and about, when it's too late at night to drink beer or wine, and we move on to mixed drinks nearly all of them get ice. When the Spanish mix a copa - spirit and mixer type drinks like rum and coke or vodka and lemo...