Life in Culebrón

Do you remember that Guinness advert with a bloke on the surfboard? He waits. I can do that, not the surfing thing but the waiting. I don’t start to get cross or feel I need to check that someone knows I’m there. I just settle back and wait. I always say it’s because I’m a trusting sort of chap. I rely on the kindness of strangers. I expect people to get to me in the end. If I were on a tube train that ground to a halt in the darkness, I wouldn’t be one that decided to get off and walk. I’d expect someone to come and get me—sooner or later. If it were a lift, I’d prop myself up in the corner and wait rather than getting all Bruce Willis. It helps that I expect to be kept waiting. I always take something to do as I wait - usually a book. I’ve covered quite a lot of pages in waiting rooms recently. Health appointments are a bit like rabbits—every one breeds several more. In order to speak to some sort of specialist, there are any number of steps to be taken beforehand. From time immemori...

If news headlines are anything to go by, it seems the UK is battling a real knife crime problem, with over 53,000 incidents last year. Spain isn’t entirely in the clear, there are knife attacks here too, and in some cities, particularly Barcelona, there has been a big jump in stabbings this year. Nonetheless the problem is much less marked here than it is in the UK. It’s a case of one country dealing with a major crisis and the other keeping a cautious eye on a growing trend. I don't think of myself as having criminal tendencies. I might admit to the odd traffic infringement now and again and I probably pinched a few envelopes when I was working but I'm no Samuel Little. The other day though I found myself in a situation that hardly registered at the time but might actually have gone remarkably pear shaped. I went, with a pal, to the Foreigners Office in Alicante to help him with the renewal of his identity card. Before going through the security scanner to get into the buildin...

I'm not that keen on air-conditioning. When Maggie went to the UK for a few days a couple of weeks ago, I enjoyed turning off the aircon in the car and riding around with the windows down. I don't care for that "climate control" icy blast or the more insidious slow freezing of your knuckles. Then again rolling down the windows, with the resultant noise and the buffeting hot wind, isn't that comfy either. My main, anti aircon, gripe isn't temperature related - it's more about shutting the world out. One of the hallmarks of living in Southern Spain is that it’s hot in summer. It seems a bit perverse to come somewhere warm and then struggle to cool spaces to the point that they would be considered cold at other times of the year. Sometimes, it’s a blessed relief to settle back in an air-conditioned space, after getting super hot, but that’s not the same as maintaining a room at Stavanger in December levels with the Spanish summer just beyond the door. If I we...

As I get older and older, I often find myself remembering one thing from another. The link may be tenuous but that doesn't stop me. So, we'd just been to see María Terremoto in concert at the ADDA, and very good she was too. We'd done well; we'd driven through Alicante in both directions without putting a foot wrong, and parking had been dead easy. As we eased back onto the motorway heading for home, I commented on the white lines. They were nice and bright. They reminded me of a trip many years ago when the lines were far from bright. It was 2007, and Maggie had moved for a job in Ciudad Rodrigo. I was going to join her when a building job on the house in Culebron was completed but, for now and for the coming long weekend, I'd got a bus ticket to go over to see her. It's a long way to Ciudad Rodrigo, more or less on the Portuguese border, but I was hoping to get my head down on the bus. I knew the bus station in Elda; I went there for the 2 a.m. bus. It never c...

Every country has some sort of ritual, some sort of symbol, that pulls at the heartstrings and brings tears to the eyes of the true patriot. Maybe it's as the Stars and Stripes ripples in a gentle evening breeze, moments before the flag is struck, standing, hand on heart, thinking land of the free and home of the brave. It could be a Promenader at the Royal Albert Hall on the Last Night exercising their lungs to sing "Land of Hope and Glory". Sometimes the thing is official – "La Marseillaise" for the French almost anywhere and everywhere, or the adulation of the potato, the official state "vegetable" of the good folk of Idaho – and sometimes it's just the ink-black silhouette of a bull. If you've been to Spain you know how that one-dimensional bull stands sentinel over the roads and motorways of the country. If not, maybe you have friends – they may not actually be good friends – who have brought you back the mug with that black bull firmly as...

I like to be active, not climbing hills or doing press-ups active, but doing something out and about. I'm not keen on work as a substitute. I don't need to paint walls or clean the kitchen, prune trees, shop, cook, clean toilets or keep drains clear to keep myself occupied. We're all a bit work obsessed in my opinion. I did a lot of it at one time, the paid sort, and now I look back on it and wonder why I wasted all that time. The pay, obviously, but that doesn't explain its centrality in British society. So here I like to get out and about. We go to fiestas, we go to events, we visit castles, we go to the theatre and concerts and the cinema. We see exhibitions, we go to talks and tramp around forests for stargazing and to hunt out scorpions. Some things are never repetitive, even though you've done them before, because each event is different enough to make it potentially memorable. On the other hand there are some things which are so much of a muchness and start t...

Maggie suggested we should marry. It wasn't that, after a 32-year-long trial period and 28 years living under the same roof, we were ideally suited; it was because she thought it might be easier to arrange for care and nursing if we were legally bound. I was my usual enthusiastic and romantic self. I said fair enough. The list of documentation for a civil marriage in Pinoso is not too onerous. Proof of identity and sometimes proof of address. Something to prove that you are free to marry – single, divorced or widowed plus a full birth certificate for each person. Foreign birth certificates need an apostille and have to be translated, by an official translator, into Spanish. That translated birth certificate can be no more than three months old at the presentation of the paperwork to the Justice of the Peace. On top of that we would have needed a couple of Spanish speaking witnesses when we handed over the documentation and later, at the ceremony, two more to sort of represent each ...

Maggie and I got married down in Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago. The chances that I won't blog about that are very slim so we'll leave the details for now. Anyway, after a few days on the Rock, with friends and family, our wedding party dispersed and we newlyweds toddled off to wander around Andalucía. Our first stop was Seville.  Now I'm not sure how many times I've been to Sevilla but, without trying too hard, I can easily bring eight or nine visits to mind. The very first time I was there I stayed over three weeks and, as historic centres don't change much, I've always felt to know the heart of the city quite well. The terrible thing is that, looking back at my photo albums, it turns out that the last time we stayed there was fifteen years ago. Seville is a great place to visit. It's just full of Spanish clichés, it brims over with history, culture and life. I've had some interesting experiences in Seville over the years, not all of them pleasant and...

Spaniards can happily talk for hours about food. One never-ending topic of conversation is the “best” way to make almost any traditional dish, from fabada to cocido. This piece is about paella, or maybe rice. For a few years, I have made a rice dish at home that I describe as paella to Maggie. I would never make the mistake of describing it as paella to any Spanish person. I would always describe it as rice with things. That’s because I added things that are “not allowed” – like pepper and onions – and I use pre-prepared caldo, a ready-made broth, to cook it in. However wrong my version was it was a quick and easy meal for me to cook that we both liked. The principal taste came from the broth prepared by a company called Fallera, who ruined the whole thing by discontinuing the broth. Since then, I have tried several other ready-prepared broths and I’ve liked none of them. Next, I worked my way through a couple of varieties of packets of powdered flavourings that can be added to the wat...