Life in Culebrón

Today, the 5th, Bonfire Night, has been rainy. Until today, the month had been deep blue skies and temperatures in the high twenties. You don't fool the trees though - it may still be warmer here than most summer days in England but it's Autumn; time for leaves to fall. Raking or sweeping them up has become one of my daily jobs. I collect them in one of the capazos, big, bendy 55 litre buckets. Once they were made of woven esparto grass now they are rubber or plastic. So simple and so useful. There is a lot of fallow land around our house so something as innocuous as fallen leaves are easy to dispose of. Not so with the prunings from our various fruit trees or the mound of fronds left behind after our palm got a long overdue haircut. If I owned a trailer I could haul the prunings to the local tip. Sorry, I shouldn't call it a tip any more. It's an ecopark where they collect, sort and recycle waste. I presume that, at the ecopark, they shred the garden waste for compo...

A faint aroma of woodsmoke accompanied me to the shower this morning. Presumably a sensorial reminder of a short stroll along the beach in Alicante last night amongst the tens of impromptu mini bonfires, or hogueras, there. One of those essential, but detail, elements of celebrating San Juan, St John the Baptist, in any number of coastal Alicantino towns. Strange stuff around midsummer; midsummer day on the 24th of June, the midsummer of Puck, Bottom, Oberon and Titania. How is it that summer begins, the summer solstice is on the 21st, and then a couple of days later it's midsummer? Lots of Spanish people say that Midsummer Night is the most special night of the year. I like it too. Something special about the long day, the short night and the promise of night-time warmth in the name alone. In Cartagena I remember that every street corner had some group of family and friends setting fire to something or hurling bangers around. In a slightly more restrained Lincolnshire I have t...

As I drove home this evening I scanned the countryside for bonfires. I listened for the whistles and bangs of fireworks. There weren't any of course. It may have been Bonfire Night in the UK but there is no celebration here to mark the failiure of the Gunpowder Plot. From what I understand Guy Fawkes Night has basically died out in the UK anyway. For me, as a boy in West Yorkshire, it was a big event. We spent weeks beforehand collecting wood and sitting around telling ghost stories, eating potatoes charred on the outside and raw inside after their ordeal by makeshift camp fire. There was toffee, bonfire toffee, sticky enough to challenge even the strong young teeth I had then. The Parkin didn't come till later, in the kitchen at home. The big night on the 5th involved setting off any fieworks we had managed to scrounge together. When they were exhausted the bonfire became the focus of our attention for a while. It's amazing how one side of your body, the part facing ...