Showing posts with label Radio 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radio 3. Show all posts

Friday, August 30, 2019

Don't it always go to show


Maggie and I may be among the last few people in the world who are awoken by a clock radio alarm. A thirty year old clock radio at that. The wake up programme is Hoy empieza todo on Radio 3, a contemporary culture and music station. We don't listen for long, even if we're very slothful it will only be about twenty minutes though the programme stays on in the background.

I change the bedclothes on Friday. As I fought with the duvet cover the main presenter on the programme was talking to the organisers of a "pop" festival that runs in Miranda de Ebro in Burgos about 700km from home. They said that they were giving away a package of two tickets, travel and accommodation for the festival and to enter all you had to do was to make a comment on their Twitter account.

Now I've never quite mastered Twitter but, eventually I posted something as to why I wanted to go. I said I was old (and may die before the next one), because I was poor (and I wouldn't be able to afford to go with my own resources) and because I was English so that understanding anything around me was more or less impossible. I added that one of my delights was complaining and that at a festival at two in the morning I could complain mightily about my aching back.

Yesterday evening someone from the programme sent me a message via Twitter and asked whether I would go to the festival if I won. The messages went back and forth in very dodgy Spanish on one side but the last message said "Me das un email y un teléfono para gestionarlo todo?" - can you give me an email address and a telephone number so that I can arrange it all.

I presumed that I had just won something. I broke out the gin that I'd promised myself I wouldn't drink.

This morning, three minutes before the clock radio burst into life, I got another Twitter message. "Lo siento Chris, al final en la última ronda no os ha tocado! Quizás el año que viene." Sorry Chris, in the end, in the last, round you didn't win. Maybe next year.

Very disappointing.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Not knowing what you don't know

I think that we do pretty well at getting out and about. In fact the last few days have been a bit of a culture fest.

Just tonight we were at the Yecla Jazz Festival. On Saturday it was the open doors day in Petrer when we visited the Castle, a Civil War machine gun emplacement and some other stuff. Oh, and earlier on Saturday we went to an animal rescue centre outside Villena that majors in apes and monkeys. On Sunday I popped in to see the Fallas "monuments" in Elda and, spurred on by all this activity, I also got around to booking a couple of events for this season at the Teatro Chapi. And right on our doorstep I signed us up for a visit to the local salt workings. I even got to the cinema twice last week and, if the second film hadn't been so incomprehensible to me, I might have made it three.

I mentioned the Fallas event to a Spanish chap I was talking to this morning. He'd never heard of it. Moors and Christians in Elda he said; didn't even know they had Fallas. I can't say I blame him. I had the full 136 page glossy event magazine and I couldn't find most of the structures they were going to burn. There were times and events and lots of photos of young women in traditional frocks in the programme but it was a bit short on locations. Elda Tourist Office is in receipt of one of my snotty emails.

It was lunctime. I was driving home after buying the ingredients for today's gastronomic delight whilst Maggie was driving back from an appointment in Petrer. We both heard José Miguel López presenting his show on National Radio 3 from the nearby town of Yecla. He was there to host the Yecla Jazz Festival which started today.

So, this evening we popped over to Yecla to hear the free concert by Miyram Latrece. It was excellent stuff. Good crowd, splendid musicians, lovely atmosphere. I think Miryam was a bit carried away by the event; she described Yecla as "lindisma" - really pretty. I like Yecla myself but describing the town as pretty is pushing it a bit.

There are plenty of things we know about that we choose not to do but I often wonder what else me miss simply because we don't know it's there?