Life in Culebrón

There used to be an advert with a lad pushing his bike to the top of a steep hill to deliver his Hovis bread. The tagline was "as good today as it's always been". The clear suggestion was of pedigree, that Hovis was real bread, proper bread, the sort of bread that our grandparents ate and that was good for you. Hovis always stressed that their bread was, "made with wheatgerm". I remember being taken aback when I heard that the word wheatgerm was maybe a bit of sleight of hand. It's true, a loaf with added wheatgerm is better, health-wise, than a loaf made from processed white flour but, apparently, Hovis is basically a processed flour bread spiced up with a bit of wheatgerm. The stuff you really want, for all that colon cleansing fibre, is wholemeal where nothing has been removed from the wholewheat grain. For years, in Spain, I thought that bread sticks - the sort of bread that onion toting, beret wearing, stripy T-shirt clad Frenchmen, add flavour ...

There are a lot of Catholic saints. One for every day of the year with plenty to spare. Not that long ago if you were born in Spain on such and such a date then the saints for that day were a good name choice. I could have been Felix or Fulgencio for instance. If your parents decided to go with a different name then you get a second birthday, just like a Royal. So, as my parents went for Christopher, I could celebrate in July as well as on the day of my birth in January. Not all saints have the same clout. San Anton, for instance, gets a lot of attention. He's the saint for animals and there's a lot of blessing of pets all over Spain, in his name, each January. San Isidro, the saint who looks after workers, is another popular one. There are lots and lots of widely celebrated saint's days. On the other hand, San Esteban, Saint Stephen, so popular with we Britons, is a forgotten man in Spain. And whatever words Shakespeare chose to put into Henry V's mouth Crispin Cri...

We once asked Eduardo if he would sell us a beer. He has a restaurant in the village. He was there, the door was open and the sun was shining but he said no explaining that he didn't run a bar but a restaurant. That seems to have changed and Eduardo's now has cars parked outside, and presumably customers inside, most mornings. On Wednesday mornings, or at least for the past three Wednesday mornings, we've joined the throng and gone in. We've eaten a late breakfast with some Spanish people from the village and some local, though not Culebronero, Britons. I like going there. I like supporting a local business and I like doing something community. When we were there today we bought some eggs. One of the expats keeps hens and she has found a ready market for their eggs in our neighbours and in us. A couple of weeks ago Maria was saying that she had been waiting for the man who brings the gas bottles - he hadn't shown up before breakfast time so she'd left ...