Life in the UK

I've just been back to the UK. Here are a few things I noticed.

Beer. I went in a pub and bought a pint of bitter. I had no idea what to ask for from all the strangely named brews but whatever I bought tasted like proper British beer. I have nothing against the beer I can get in any bar in Spain but the stuff I was buying in England was much more interesting. I had to be sure though so I visited a fair number of pubs.

Heat. It's hot in the UK. It was sometimes a tad cold outside but inside it was roasting. I haven't walked around in shirt sleeves inside in Spain for months. It was horribly dark though. Grey.

Streetfood. From time to time people eat in the street in Spain but, generally, only where there is some sort of event - like a Mediaeval Fair or fiesta. In the UK people were walking down the street eating all sorts of take away food. In Cambridge the woman on the bench next to me polished off a whole tray of sushi using chopsticks whilst the wind blew and the sky drizzled.

Restaurants, takeaways and food outlets were everywhere. We have plenty of bars and restaurants here too but the huge variety of food in the UK was noticeable.

Shops seemed much more adventurous than the shops I have become used to. There are plenty of interesting places in bigger cities here but I was in St Ives and Ely, as much as Cambridge, and even there the breadth of retail was impressive.

Work. Lots of people asked me about my work and I responded by asking about theirs. Work is a long way down the list of conversational topics in Spain: long after family, food, Spanish, the weather etc.

Money. No wonder everyone in the UK waves their credit card at the machine to pay for everything. Things seemed expensive to us though I suppose price bears a direct relationship to income. Nonetheless things do cost a lot of pounds and you would need to carry a lot of cash to keep up. I know young people use credit cards more than older people here in Spain but the terminals are not as obvious and ubiquitous as they are in England.

I was constantly taken unawares by cars driving on the wrong side of the road. More than once I thought a car was out of control simply because it was on the side of the road I am no longer accustomed to.

English. Everyone tells me that the UK is full of people from different countries but it was great to be able to speak freely and competently. Well except in Starbucks where successfully buying a cup of coffee seemed to require passing the specialist subject round on Mastermind.

Police. There weren't any. Short of the vested and impressively armed police at the airport I didn't see a police officer on foot. In Spain the police walk around all the time.

Bags. We still get plastic bags when we buy things in Spain. It struck me as a good thing that they are not given away with gay abandon in the UK but it did leave me struggling with armfuls of small items at times.

Skin. I nearly forgot this. In all seriousness I asked Maggie's niece if there was a fashion for women to wear very white face makeup with bright red lipstick and pronounced eye makeup. The answer was no. Apparently Britons are a fair bit paler skinned than Spaniards.

And a special mention for the guided bus. It's an ordinary bus that can be driven around the streets but, between Cambridge and St Ives the bus runs along the route of the old train lines in a sort of concrete conduit with little guide wheels sticking out to the side. Most impressive.

Pine processionary caterpillars

Our visitors often ask us about snakes. We set their minds at rest. A few ask about scorpions and dangerous spiders. We reassure them about those too but nobody has ever asked us the much more pertinent question as to whether we have problems with caterpillars.

Caterpillars are not usually perceived as a threat but processionary ( the English word is actually processional but everyone uses the Spanish word adapted to sound English) caterpillars can cause problems to humans who tangle with them. Dogs, which tend to sniff and paw things they come across can get into big trouble. Cats don't usually have problems with the caterpillars because they are supremely indifferent to any life form that doesn't feed them.

The pine processionary moth usually flies around May to July and only lives for a day or so. On that day the moths have to get busy. They have to mate and the successful females then lay around three hundred tiny eggs usually in the foliage of  pine trees though some firs and cedars are also targets. Just so I don't have to keep repeating tree types we'll pretend they only live in pines. The eggs take about a month to hatch.

Once hatched, the tiny caterpillars start to eat the pine leaves. Over time they pass through five growth stages which are technically referred to as instars. The caterpillars strip the leaves or needles from the trees but usually the foliage grows back. At each instar the beasts moult a skin and increase in size. At the third moult these gregarious little caterpillars build a nest which looks a lot like spun white candyfloss in the branches of the pine trees. At the fifth and last instar, which is usually sometime between February and April, the caterpillars come out of the tree and search for a place to pupate. This year, with the much warmer winter, they are already on the move and there are more of them because fewer have been killed by cold and frost.

When they leave the tree they do so in a long line. A neighbour, who came to warn me that the caterpillars were on the move told me that she'd seen or heard of a line that was five metres long. There are lots of Internet photos of caterpillars which have been easily persuaded to form circles which just go round and round and round. In this processionary stage each caterpillar follows a scent produced in the stomach of the caterpillar in front. None of the websites I read explained what drives the caterpillar at the head of the line! To digress slightly I heard a news story recently which explained that the way the caterpillars maintain a constant speed can be taught to drivers as a way of stopping the formation of traffic jams.

Eventually, when the caterpillars find a good place to dig a burrow underground where they can pupate, the line will disperse. While the beasts are on the move they can be a danger to humans and other animals. It's the hairs on the caterpillars that cause the problems. If the caterpillar feels under threat they can eject both a tiny cloud of toxins and little toxin loaded hairs which are harpoon like and stick to flesh really well.

In humans this toxin usually leads to unpleasant and very painful rashes and eye irritation which can last for several weeks. Dogs sniff the caterpillars, maybe they bat them around with their paw. The frightened caterpillar releases hairs which stick to the dogs nose or tongue. The dog licks at its paw. In turn the dog's tongue will become irritated, sometimes so much so, that they have to be amputated to prevent sepsis and necrosis - infection and gangrene. Some dogs have such a severe reaction to the poisons that they die through kidney failure.

I know that most people around here go hunting for the nests on or near their land, cut them down and burn them. This advice was repeated on several websites but there were lots of warnings that this could go terribly wrong as tossing a nest onto a roaring fire can be an effective way to spread the little hairs around in the smoke and rising air. A couple of websites suggested drenching the nests with water first as even the loose hairs are loaded with the toxin.

There do seem to be lots of methods for dealing with the caterpillars at almost every stage but I suspect that many of them are not particularly effective. One I read about several times was to break the nests particularly in cold spells so that the caterpillars die of cold without the protection of the warming cocoon. Several of those websites suggested that for the out of reach nests a good blast of light shotgun pellets would do the job!

There are pheromone traps to attract the males - the lads go looking for a bit of hanky panky but end up trapped. The girls have to do without. Result no eggs. Then there are several "traditional" insecticides which have to be applied in the autumn. The treatment that seems to be most in line with current thinking and, apparently works well, involves using bacteria. There are a couple of effective processes. One interrupts the life cycle of the caterpillar whilst the other poisons their food.  Oh, I nearly forgot, there's another method that seems eminently sensible. That's to put a physical barrier in the way, the main basic design seems to be like a cone or envelope which the caterpillars walk into but then can't escape from (though I'm not sure why). Another one was simply to put a walled moat around the base of the affected trees using flexible plastic in which the caterpillars drown.

Blue tits and other tits apparently love to eat the caterpillars so a longer term solution my be to attract birds to breed nearby.

The information about who to turn to for help was very contradictory. It seems that some town halls will send people to remove the nests. There were also lots of adverts for commercial firms very happy to remove the nests and caterpillars for you - at a price. I saw it suggested several times that Seprona, the environmental arm of the Guardia Civil, has a statutory responsibility to destroy the nests but there was nothing on the Sepona website that I could find to confirm that. If you want to give it a try the Seprona number is 062.

Otherwise the best advice may be to stay away from pine trees for a while!

Knobs and knockers

I didn't use to notice English much. Maybe it came as a bit of a surprise when the radio alarm burst into life and I hadn't the faintest idea what Brian Redhead or John Humphrys was saying to me for the fleeting seconds of semi consciousness before I woke up. Then that was a long time ago. The fact that there were still clock radio alarms proves it.

I'm very aware of language now. For one thing I live in a place where speaking easily isn't, like breathing, just second nature - it's something that has to be striven for. On top of that, my students, well the ones who don't shout all the time, ask me questions about English. They seem to want rules. They want rules of grammar. I'm not a big believer in grammar. A set of rules invented after the fact to make sense of something that is essentially random in my opinion. I don't know a grammar rule without exceptions and, in many cases, the exceptions are much more common, in everyday speech, than the regular stuff. If language weren't illogical then Arabic speakers, French speakers, Chinese speakers and English speakers would obviously have chosen the universally correct word rather than using بيض, œuf, 雞蛋 and egg to describe the same thing.

Students aren't happy when I tell them that, for quite a lot of things, the answer as to why we use this formula or that expression is because we do and there is no rule they can learn to remember it and no better explanation to be found.

Lots of the people I have worked for have told me that I should always speak English when teaching. Generally, I try to but, to be honest, when it is a direct swap and I know the Spanish I just give the translation. How long would it take to describe an egg? How many other words would you need to describe along the way? And I don't think that saying huevo is the Spanish for the English word egg is going to spoil anything. After all, when all the the roundish reproductive bodies produced by the female of many animals consisting of an ovum and its envelope of albumen, jelly, membranes, egg case, or shell, according to species translation is over the typical Spanish speaking student is going to remember, or forget, huevo.

I always think that things, in the sense of nouns, have a direct translation. Logically things like car, boat, bone must have direct translations. Some things, the less solid things, may have cultural differences built into the language so that we need to add a bit of interpretation to find an equivalent or useable word. Take an idea like nice, agreeable, pleasant and you will guess that the English variations lead to other variations with differenet nuances in Spanish.

I've run into a couple of odd cases recently though. Spaniards don't seem to have a single translation for door handle. That's a standard house sized door with a standard household handle sort of door handle. Hook came to my attention again recently too. You'd think that a hook, in the sense of a reduced size version of a Captain Hook like hook bought from an ironmongers, as an option to a screw or a nail, would be easy enough but, in a class with just six students, there was no one word that was acceptable to all of them.

Funny old world isn't it?

The annual census figures

If you live in Spain you are supposed to register with the local town hall. Lots of people don't for one reason or another. For instance when we worked away, but still owned the house here in Culebrón, we couldn't register with two town halls at the same time. People who don't have their papers in order don't usually register (though they can) just in case it causes them problems. For EU Europeans it's reasonably easy to avoid registration so many simply don't bother.

Based on this registration, Pinoso, our home town, the one that "owns" Culebrón, had 7,654 residents at 31st December 2015. That's a tad down from the 7,912 on the same register at the end of 2014. The town hall website says that those 156 men and 102 women fewer are "mainly" foreigners. In the December 2015 figures 6,609 are Spanish and 1,045 are foreigners.

The 1,405 foreigners are made up of citizens from 43 countries. We Brits are way out in front with 489 of us. Morrocans next with 112, Ukranians 69, Ecuadorians 63, Dutch 32 and Bulgarians 30. That leaves 250 people for the remaining 37 countries.

If you are ever in Pinoso you may get the impression that there are more Britons than the figures suggest. The town halls only register their own of course. Only a few hundred metres down the road from our house is the border with Monóvar. Pinoso is in Alicante province but just 3kms away is the border with Murcia and the towns of Abanilla, Yecla and Jumilla all have frontiers with Pinoso. People living in those municipalities don't get counted in the Pinoso figures but for many of them Pinoso offers the nearest supermarket, bar or restaurant.

Advertising for Expat.com

I am returning the favour to a site that hosts my blogs so if you are not interested in a website dedicated to Expats then I suggest that you read no farther.

I've been writing a blog since January 2006. I like the idea that people read it but, to be honest, it's probably more for my own entertainment than yours. Nowadays I always add links back to my blog from Google+, Facebook and Twitter and, every now and again, I do a bit of half hearted promotion. Sometime in the past that included getting the blogs that I was then writing registered on another website called Expat Blog. It was Expat Blog that asked for an interview about me and Spain for instance.

Recently Expat Blog changed its name to Expat.com. Today I got five or six emails from them asking me if I could help promote their new website. Fair's fair I thought. You scratch my back and all that.

If you got this far why not have a look?

Underwear, grapes and bubbly

I missed out on the red underwear last night. I forgot all about it. Blue and grey I think. And when I was looking for some background on the underwear I came across another New Year's tradition that I didn't know about. It makes sense though and ties in with a famous Christmas TV ad. And, of course, the grapes, the grapes.

Anne Igartiburu and Ramón García were last nights presenters as the camera focused on the clock tower of the 18th-century Real Casa de Correos in Madrid's Puerta del Sol. Numbers in the square were limited for the first time ever. Just 25,000 people. The ball in the tower slides down, the clock begins with the quarter chimes - not yet, not yet — a pause then the twelve chimes. On each chime we have to pop a grape into our mouth. One for each month of the year. The grapes have pips. The grapes, well nearly all of them, come from near us from the valley of the Vinalopó. Eat them all before the bell tolls fade away and you will have good luck for the year.

The story goes that the tradition of the grapes is a marketing ploy invented by the wily grape growers of Alicante after they had a bumper harvest about a century ago. There are other stories that tie the tradition to rich people from Madrid copying a French fad. Whatever the origins the lucky grapes - las uvas de la suerte - are now as symbolic of New Year as Auld Lang Syne is to Britons.

The typical grapes are white Aledo grapes which are harvested in late November and December. They are protected by Denominación de Origen or D.O. status which means that there are specific rules about how the grapes can be grown and harvested. When buds first form in June and July they are wrapped in paper bags and kept covered as they ripen. Originally this was done to keep off a plague of moths but nowadays the growers say it maintains the flavour and concentrates the aroma of the grapes as well as slowing down their maturation.

We had proper grapes this year because we were in a restaurant and they supplied them but sometimes, when we've not been sure where we are going to end up at midnight we have taken the precaution of buying a small can of ready peeled, de-pipped grapes so that we are ready when the time comes.

We should have been wearing red underwear too and to do it right the underwear should have been given by someone else. I've heard it said that this is a general good luck charm and that the tradition started because red was such a vibrant life affirming colour. Nowadays it's often associated with good luck in love. I'd have thought that might have had more to do with underwear being removed.

Grapes for general luck, underwear for luck in love and gold for luck in things financial. After eating the grapes, Spaniards, and Britons in Spanish company, generally drink cava, the sparkling wine most of which is produced in Catalunya. Apparently we should drop something gold into the glass of bubbly, drink the entire glassful in one go and retrieve the gold to assure our financial success in the coming year. The Freixenet Cava telly ad always features lots of gold

We didn't get a cotillón in the restaurant. A cotillón is a a fun bag with party poppers, paper hats and suchlike. I only mention it here because I was amused by the name for the thing that has a curled tube of paper that flicks out and screeches when you blow into the mouthpiece. I don't know if we have a consistent name for them in English as my Googling produced party horn, screamer, tweeter, squeaker and noise-maker but in peninsular Spanish they are called matasuegras - mother in law killers. Ho, Ho.

Happy New Year.

A time for everything

My hair was getting a bit long, a bit difficult to brush through. I don't work Fridays and I wondered if Alfredo the barber had a spare slot. He told me I could come in at 9.20 in the evening if I wanted. I presumed he was extending his working day for me as shops generally close at 8.30 or maybe 9pm. As I was sitting in the chair I suggested he was working a little late. Normal sort of day he said.

From time to time Maggie still meets up with the people she first worked with when we arrived in Spain. One of her ex teaching colleagues has recently decided to return to the UK. In fact he's been there for a while but he is in Spain at the moment with a van to collect his stuff. We agreed to meet for lunch in Gran Alacant one of those developments on the coast where Spaniards are outnumbered by Northern Europeans. We chose an Indian restaurant with an English name, a set meal written in English and staff who looked as though their grandparents came from South Asia but that they were from Neasden or Stalybridge. We sat down to eat at around 1pm. It's not very usual to eat before 2pm in Spain. In fact lots of restaurants don't start serving till 2pm. This one did.

Well I suppose time is relative.

A nation of writers

I once worked with someone who was keen on illicit drugs. He came from Huddersfield but we were working near Newcastle and he was having trouble finding a local supplier. He picked up what we used to call a sexually transmitted disease and ended up at the local GUM clinic. He told me later that finding a supplier in the clinic was the work of minutes and he wondered why he'd never thought of it before.

If you want to find Britons in Spain the Post Office would be fertile territory. In the Pinoso office at least we usually outnumber Spaniards. I've been told, by a Spaniard, that this is because, until recently at least, there had not been a big tradition of reading and writing in Spain so the Post Office never became important to ordinary people. I have to say that I thought the analysis lacked academic rigour.

Today I was reading the local news over a lunchtime coffee. There was a piece to say that Pinoso had twenty one restaurants featured on a website called gastroranking.es which is a website that compiles the results from a range of other websites of the TripAdvisor type.

I had a look and I was quite surprised to find that the top rated places in Pinoso included places I would not have instantly thought of. The outright winner is very popular with both Spaniards and Britons but the rest of the top performers included places that I certainly don't care for. Risking the possibility of being ostracised by my own all I can think is that maybe the Post Office literacy comment is more accurate than I suspected. Maybe there really is very little tradition of writing by the home population and that extends to restaurant reviews.

Cobbling it all together

Our palm tree is fit and well. You will remember that I was alternately worried about it bringing down power cables or being eaten by beetles. Well everything sort of miraculously self resolved. All I do now is spray it with some deadly chemical every six weeks and that's it. Just another routine job.

I bought the pesticide from the bodega. In their shop they sell all sorts of things for we horny handed sons of toil. Much later I was checking information that I'd heard on the local radio about the the beetle plague with the local environment office. I mentioned my spraying regime. The Park Ranger I was talking to, you could tell she was a ranger because she had those trousers that are baggy behind the knee and have lots of unexplained and apparently useless flaps, asked me if I had a certificate for handling pesticides. I don't of course. No problem she said. Nobody is going to bother you about it but really you should either do the course on how to spray safely or get a professional to treat your tree. As it stands I am apparently on the wrong side of the law if I spray. I remembered her advice when I saw a poster outside the shoe shop advertising a spraying course.

A few weeks ago I was shovelling down some breakfast longanizas and tortilla in Eduardo's when David asked me if I used any chemicals in the garden. He had heard that, from the beginning of October, only people who had been on the appropriate courses about handling pesticides, herbicides and similar would be allowed to buy them. His advice was to stock up before the law changed and that's exactly what I did.

Today as I drove to work I had the local radio on again. This time I heard how the containers for phytosanitary products have to be disposed of in an approved way and that not doing so is a serious offence with attendant fines. Now my guess is that they are talking about the farmers, who spray thousands of litres of the stuff on their crops and then dump the chemical tubs all over the countryside, rather than me and my one litre bottle. The principle, nonetheless, is the same.

It's obvious that something has been going on in relation to agricultural spraying. There was David's news, the conversation with the ranger, the news item on the radio and the training course poster.

To be honest, I have no idea how I kept up with things when I lived in the UK. I suppose it would be a mixture of things - an information leaflet here, a news item there and, maybe, a conversation down the boozer to top it all off.

We, we Britons, don't generally keep up quite so well here. We're disadvantaged because we live on the edge of mainstream society. Most of us don't watch the home grown telly, share the same WhatsApp messages, read the home grown press, live with a Spanish person or even have the same sort of  bar room conversations. Our news tends to be filtered by someone who understood the Spanish in the first place or who has heard it passed on in a sort of Chinese Whispers way.

A few years ago there were sweeping tax changes. Perfectly reasonably the Spanish media centred on those things that would directly affect most people - income tax changes, sales tax changes, pension and salary freezes. In amongst those measures were increased duties on air fares. To your average Spaniard the air fare news was inconsequential but to a retired Briton living in Spain on a pension paid from the UK, paying no Spanish Incom Tax but flying "home" every few months the key bit of information was simply not reported.

So, often, it's not the lack of information that surprises me it's the fact that we somehow manage to cobble it all together one way and another.

Broken mugs and Timberland loafers

I heard a loud crash in the kitchen and a louder curse from Maggie. She'd dropped a mug which we got free with some Fontaneda digestive biscuits (McVities to you and me) when we lived in Santa Pola. That would be about eleven years ago now. "It was nearly an antique," she said, sadly.

A little while ago one of my nephews got married. Originally I intended to go to the wedding but airlines and bosses conspired against me to make it more or less impossible or at least impractical. Looking through the wedding list I siezed on sending a canteen of cutlery. I remember the myriad times that my mum would comment on a tea caddy spoon, a vase or some other trivial household object and say - "That was a wedding present from Uncle So and So." I rather like the idea of permanancy amidst the never ending change.

We have quite a few chipped tiles on the floor and lots of things that were new when we moved in here in 2005 are definitely looking a bit tired now - then again they also make the place look lived in, worn in - like it's ours.

This morning I decided to clear my summer sandals from the bottom of the wardrobe. There were a pair of Timberlands that I bought specifically to come to Spain. I thought that Spaniards, like Italians, probably didn't wear socks and I wanted to fit in. As I put the summer shoes away I pulled out some sensible black Oxfords much more suitable for the coming weather and I dragged out a Harrington windcheater that I bought when I first started working In St Ives back in 1996 I think. Perfect for the light chill of mid October.

The MGB, Mary the cat and I crossed the border into Spain eleven years and ten days ago now. Long enough to remember that such and such was a gift from so and so or came from here or there. Slowly building a history.

And you all feel so superior and expert

One of my little jokes is that I like paying Spanish taxes. I say it gives me the right to complain about Spanish politicians. Now I'm going to argue that after eleven years here I have a right to express an opinion about Spain.

I wrote a little essay for a Spanish class I do and I posted it on this blog. It was no more than a writing exercise for the teacher but when it was done I thought it was a whimsical look at things I noticed in Spain - good coffee, bad tea, uninformative notices - little inconsequential things. Perfect for the blog.

Nobody much comments on my blog but I got one about that article. At first the chap (I think it's a man) was just putting me right. I said there was no good British style tea to be had in Spanish cafés and he told me about the varieties, methods and what not of making a range of teas all of which were available in Spain. Fair enough, not the same point but fair enough. As his reply lengthened though it changed tone. He doesn't seem to be too keen on we Britons. Again, fair enough, if his experience of us is bad then that's his experience. He didn't seem to care for me much either or at least what I write.

He also made a comment on an article I wrote about swearing. My basic premise was that Spaniards swear less forcibly but more frequently than Britons. As you may imagine my post was full of explanations, qualifications and exceptions. Now here we had a different mode of attack. He simply told me that I was wrong. I don't think so. I may have a different experience to him or a different interpretation but I am not wrong. I can see swearing on the television, hear it on the streets and in the bars and I have been unpleasantly surprised by the frequency of swearing amongst my sub teen pupils. It may be true that I notice the use of strong English language swearing by Spaniards more than the home population. After all I know what it means and how forceful its meaning is because I am English but I would not notice it if it were not said.

This chap though did make me wonder about the generalisations that I make in a lot of the posts. We all gather information from around us and extrapolate - all Swedes are blonde, all Ecuadorians are short, all Andalucians are full of the joys of life. All obviuosly untrue but all good healthy stereotypes. So when does extrapolation become stereotyping and when does stereotyping become offensive? When a Spaniard tells me that all the English wear socks with sandals I smile. Everybody knows that's what we Britons do. When I get told we are all drunkards I think of the news stories showing all those Britons in Magaluf paddling and crawling in pools of beer and puke and I smile again. If I were feeling combative I may rise in defence of all the sober Brits, dismiss the sock myth or even argue the merits of socks to avoid scarred feet and stinking sandals.

I was about to start this paragraph with "I like Spain, I like Spaniards" but then I realised that's not absolutely true. There are plenty of things about the behaviour of some Spaniards, things that are common enough for me to rashly declare that "all Spaniards do this or that" that I definitely do not like. I don't like all of Spain either. Some of it, is in my opinion, a blighted wasteland. There are things I think are actively stupid here - penalising private solar electricity generation and the relatively recent "gagging law" spring to mind. Then again I found plenty to complain about in the UK before I left and I could, Peter Green style, keep you amused for hours complaining about the behaviour of some of my compatriots living here. There are lots of bad similarities between the two counties too - the overbearing pride that "we" did this or that in things like history or sport, the rewriting of history and the jingoistic and chauvanistic in general.

In fact, my general view is that the UK and Spain are, nowadays, pretty similar places. It's not a popular view. I voiced it on a forum about what culture shock people could experience coming to live in Spain. I said there were lots of differences, some of them quite wide differences, but that none of them were of the big kind - no general prohibitions on personal freedom, no threats to basic safety or democratic organisation, not even different clothes. Just another European country. I was thinking about big things like education, healthcare, and the visible economic indicators. The flood of posts after mine listed everything from cruelty to animals and much more visible corruption through to slow Internet connections and poor bank services as evidence that Spain would dish out plenty of culture shock. I stick to my opinion.

And what's the point of this rambling? Well it's to say that I have spent something like 18% of my life in Spain and I'm reasonably clued up about the country. I've visited all but one of the provincial capitals, In a Munro sense I'm missing just one of the Balearic Islands and one of the autonomous cities. I may have been a tourist in most of those cities but I'm not a tourist in Spain. I watch Spanish telly, read Spanish press, wear Spanish clothes, drive a Spanish car, work in Spain, eat Spanish food, buy in Spanish shops. I know what's going on. Anyway it's my blog, my experiences of some of the things, the little things, that happen to me and around me. That's what the blog description says. A personal view, a personally biased view, but not an uninformed view.

I did suggest to the commentator, who wrote in a mix of Spanish and English, that if he were still trying to improve his English we could continue the discussion over a couple of pints of whisky or some tepid tea. He turned me down. He said he'd been considering it until he saw my posts.

Now maybe if I'd promised to wear my Union flag shorts!

The title is taken fom one of the comments. It refers to Brits in Spain and probably more specifically to me.

En español

The other day I wrote an essay for my Spanish class. It was that essay which gave me the idea for the blog about trademarks and names. I got the corrected essay back today and there were few enough mistakes for me to bother to correct them on my original. So here, for my two or three bilingual readers, is my attempt at complaining, hopefully in a light hearted way, about a few things Spanish. Nothing new in the content but waste not, want not, as my old uncle used to say - that was before he was dead of course.

Cuando vivía en Ciudad Rodrigo buscaba el lavavajillas en un supermercado pero no puede encontrarlo. -Perdona, ¿dónde esta el lavavajillas, por favor?-pregunté a un reponedor- El mistol está cerca de los congeladores, al fondo -me dijo. Fue la primera vez que escuché este sobrenombre para el lavavajillas. A veces, en Inglaterra lo llamamos Fairy Liquid pero, normalmente, utilizamos un genérico – washing up liquid – detergente para fregar platos. Ya sé que hay muchas cosas que tienen estos sobrenombres – supongo que minipimer, kleenex, danone y los demás no son exactamente sobrenombres, no es como llamar a los Ecuatorianos “Panchitos” por ejemplo, ni es exactamente un neologismo como wasapear o sexting. Sobrenombre servirá. Y por eso, por el uso de este nombré en aquel supermercado, compré Mistol por la primera vez.  Me gusta, es un detergente bastante fuerte y tiene una gama de olores y colores. Pero una pregunta ¿por qué tienen las botellas ese pico tan gordo? Creo que es un pequeño timo, una estrategia de marketing, para que despilfarre el costoso líquido. Pensé en ello la última vez que estuve en un supermercado y compré Fairy – este sí tiene un pico del tamaño adecuado.

Me gusta otro líquido que hay en España – el café. En la mayoría de los sitios el café está muy bueno. Es un placer sentarte en un bar, pedir un café y mirar todo el mundo pasar frente a mís ojos. Pero soy inglés. Levantamos un imperio sobre el té, pues, claro té, gin tonic y una marina poderosa, y de vez en cuando quiero tomar un té fuera de casa. Los Turcos, los Chinos, los Árabes, hasta la mitad del mundo, tienen sus ideas sobre el té. Nosotros también. Y nuestra idea no tiene nada que ver con el té español. Nos gusta una variedad de té que se llama Broken Orange Pekoe – es un tipo de té negro. Normalmente lo tomamos con una gotita de leche y, quizá, azúcar pero, claro para gustos los colores. Lo hacemos con agua hirviendo y la mezcla necesita tres o cuatro minutos para extraer todo el sabor de las hojas sagradas antes de añadir la leche. Los españoles saben mucho sobre comida y bebida, son dueños de una gastronomía impresionante, pero no tienen ni idea sobre el té. Lo hacen con agua templada, creen que se puede calentar el agua en un microondas, los peores, las más canallas, ponen el sobre en agua fría y calientan el agua con el sobre dentro. Muchos ponen leche caliente y, de vez en cuando te sirven un té que parece un café largo de leche o un cola-cao - un líquido pálido, débil, un candidato ideal para la guadaña - demasiado débil para seguir vivo. No; los españoles no saben nada sobre el té y cuando no me apetece un café en un bar o restaurante no me queda otra opción:-ponme (no nos gusta la deferencia de usted) una copa de Magno, por favor- ah, sí, los españoles saben mucho sobre el brandy.

A todo el mundo le gusta hablar. Es muy natural, y aquí a los nativos les gusta preguntar sobre todos los detalles. No importa que haya un folleto, una hoja informativa, una octavilla o un cartel, colgada en la pared, con toda la información. Para los españoles preguntar y pedir es un deporte nacional. Es tan natural que sirve de excusa a los maleducados - las personas que se saltan la cola y dicen, como explicación de todo, -solo una pregunta.... -está perdonada por toda la cola desesperada sin remilgos. Nosotros somos distintos. Somos bastante tímidos en este asunto, tenemos nuestras costumbres. No nos gusta molestar a una persona, no queremos hacer perder el tiempo a los demás con tonterías. Por eso, habitualmente, preferimos leer la información. Un ejemplo muy cotidiano sea en un bar o restaurante, es: -Hola, buenos días, ¿tienes una lista de tapas o una carta, por favor? -Vale, señores, hoy tenemos un guiso de ternera estupendo, un arroz meloso muy rico, una lubina de primera -etcétera. Creo que para muchos restaurantes sería un pecado capital, peor que la lujuria o la gula, tener una carta escrita. De vez en cuando sí, hay una carta. -Pues,vamos a tomar cuatro croquetas de jamón, unos chopitos, las almejas...... -Lo siento no quedan ni chopitos ni almejas y las croquetas son de morcilla pero tenemos un guiso de ternera estupendo, un arroz...-. Pero mis favoritos son los eventos. -Eh, Chris, aquí hay un cartel que dice que hay fiestas patronales en el quinto pino, -ah, sí, y ¿cuándo son? -Uff, no lo sé, no hay ninguna fecha. O -Eh, Chris, aquí hay un cartel que dice que habrá un circo en el pueblo  -ah, sí, y ¿dónde estará? -Dice que está en el sitio de siempre. Supongo que todo el mundo, todo el mundo español, sabe cuál es el día de cada santo y cuáles son sus fechas o cuál es el sitio de siempre, pero yo no. Claro, no me queda otra opción - al bar. -Camarero, -¿Sí, señor, en qué puedo servirle? -Bueno no he podido encontrar ni las fiestas ni el circo y, en este momento, no me apetece un café, por favor, ponme una copa de Magno.

A few things that crossed my mind when I was trying to think of a blog entry

It stopped being cold in our house a few weeks ago now. I forget quite when but suddenly we weren't using the gas heaters, I started to pad around the tiled floors in bare feet as I got up in the morning. Winter was gone and there were flowers in the garden. Last week, I think, it was warm - a few days in the 30ºC bracket. I folded up my pullovers. That turned out to be a bit premature. I've needed a woolly the last couple of days.

I was just about to go to work, Maggie was on her way home after work. We were together. We decided a quick snack was in order. We chose a roadside bar café that we haven't been in for years. It was a mistake. It was scruffy, barn like, dark and a bit dirty. Nonetheless we sat at the bar, ordered a drink and surveyed the tapas in the little glass display cases. Lots of them looked like food left on the plates piled up by the side of the sink after a good meal; perfectly nice when freshly prepared but well past their best now. We ordered a sandwich instead but as I ate and surveyed the sad looking tapas their aspect began to lose ground to their potential taste. I wondered about ordering something. I didn't, but I nearly did.

I work in Fortuna, It's a small forgotten town, or maybe a village, in Murcia. Litter blows around the streets of Fortuna. The traffic misbehaves. Dogs, or dog keepers, misbehave. Our local town is Pinoso. it's a small forgotten town, or maybe a village, in Alicante. I have always thought of Pinoso as just another no mark town, the one I happened to end up in. I now realise we fell lucky. It's a clean, inexpensive, well organised, little place.

The election campaign this time has been odd. Not that odd but not exactly to formula. There have been lots of leaked news stories that have affected big candidates as usual but there are new names all over the place touted as possible victors. The clever money is on the collapse of the two party hegemony. At least two of the "important" high profile politicians don't have a manifesto to speak of. They think it's not important. Policy isn't the thing this time it's who you trust.

In our own local elections I went to an election meeting where they had no manifesto either. It'll be out tomorrow I was told. It's well past tomorrow now but I haven't been able to find one. I have to confess that my search has been a bit half hearted. Working, as I do, till around 9pm I've found it difficult to get to any of the meetings but the publicity about when and where they are taking place has been a bit thin on the ground anyway.

Still on the elections I was surprised to hear a very partisan interview on the town radio yesterday where the interviewer fed one of the candidates the questions he wanted. "Words of wisdom" commented the interviewer after one response. The interviewer is one of the candidates for the same party as the interviewee. I stood up for him in the social media when his candidature was announced.

The elections are on the streets though. We were having a drink. When only one other table was occupied we could hear its occupants making their predictions for the vote. A second table was occupied later. They talked about the elctions too - they had clear views on some of the candidates. "I'm not telling you who I'm voting for," said the female to the male partner, "it's a secret vote."

Apparently it's the fiftieth anniversary of the European flag - the one with the yellow stars on the blue background. I was, as so often, listening to the radio and some chap was talking about the flag's anniversary. We fly the flag a lot in Spain he said, the same in Italy. In Britain they hardly ever fly the European Union flag because of their feelings towards Europe.

It was International Museum Day, IMD, this week. In Cartagena, where we used to live, the Night of the Museums was a huge and joyous family event with the museums open for free till 2am, on a Saturday evening nearest to IMD and all sorts of street events alongside. I wondered if there was anything happening close to Culebrón this year as Cartagena is a fair distance away. There were 138 events listed for Spain and another 295 for the rest of Europe though the nearest to us was some 40km away. Out of curiosity I wondered who was doing what in the UK. At first I couldn't find anyone but, with a bit of probing, I found that the Auckland Castle Museum and the Thackray Medical Museum were doing their bit.

I am reminded of the oft quoted headline, puportedly from the Daily Mirror in 1930. Fog in Channel Continent Cut Off.

Wrinkled skin

On the second day I lived here, that is the day after the MGB, Mary the cat and I arrived in Spain to join Maggie, I went to the Town Hall in Santa Pola to register on the padrón. The padrón is a local register of inhabitants. Town Hall's like to have people on their padrón because it increases their funding from national and regional sources. Without being on the padrón it's difficult to access some services.

There were some problems with the paperwork; some tiny little defects. The Town Hall needed the landlord's signature. She was in Switzerland. They needed Maggie's signature. She was at work. I went to the Estate Agent, who had rented us the flat, and asked for advice. She forged the absent landlady's signature. Back at the Town Hall I forged Maggie's signature. As I wrote it with a pen borrowed from the clerk it wasn't much of a forgery. "Ah, the landlady and your wife came back unexpectedly." said the clerk as he stamped our padrón and we became official residents.

Today I had to set off for work within the hour. Maggie had just finished her job for the day and was due to get her nails done. We decided a quick snack lunch in a bar would be just the job. It all went dreadfully wrong, The service was slow and Maggie left after a salad and some indifferent mushrooms. I waited for the double portions we'd ordered to eat together to come. There were some Britons sitting very close to our table. Abandoned by Maggie I started talking to them. They were pretty new to the area. In the few moments we talked I heard that the electricity supply wasn't in their name, that they did not have the deeds for the house, that their water pipes seemed to be leaking and that they weren't registered with anyone for anything.

I began to dole out my ten year old wisdom, most of which is certainly out of date. I mentioned local people to contact to sort this and that problem. More importantly I helped them with their pudding order. They wanted ice cream as well as the fruit salad.

As I drove away there were two thoughts uppermost in my mind. The first was just how confusing I had probably been. For someone who was having trouble with the translation of the word for hake, the fish, talk of various Spanish processes must have been first rate gobbledygook. Padrón this, escritura that  with Iberdrola and gestores up the ying yang. It had probably been confusing for me too all those years ago in Santa Pola. The second, much more rewarding, thought was that I'd had no trouble at all getting them ice cream and fruit salad.

Extrapolate as John D.W. Bottomley, my one time chemistry teacher, used to say.

Support for corvidae

The music festival season is just beginning to warm up in Spain. We usually try to get along to at least one event. It's good to hear a band that goes on to greater things - "Calvin? great musician! First time I saw him he was on the tiny fourth stage just by the latrines at half past six in the evening" It's good to hear new bands in general and I always look forward to those vegetable noodles they serve in the overpriced food areas too.

So I was reading an article, in Spanish, from a national newspaper. It was suggesting ways to keep the costs of festival going to a bare minimum. It suggested coachsurfing (sic). Fortunately for me coachsurfing was hyperlinked and when I followed the link there was a little piece about couchsurfing (sic). Taken along with the rest of the article about how nice someone had been to some tourists I decided that it was about an internet method of finding a floor to kip on. Someone who would put you up on their couch for a fraction of the price of the cheapest hostel. I have no idea whether couchsurfing is in use in the UK but there is a fair chance that it is - it's just new to me. I may know what wotless and glamping mean but it's imppossible to keep up with all the linguistic changes from a couple of thousand kilometres away.

Back in our living room I was watching some late night current affairs programme. The subtitles were on. They repeatededly mentioned crowfunding (sic) which is a fair phonetic interpretation of the word the people were using during the debate. I guessed straight away that it was not some crow support charity but a mispronunciation of crowd funding. Similar things happen all the time. I'm never quite sure whether the word is basically an Englishism given a Spanish twist - like WhatsApp becoming wassap or whether some Spanish person has decided that an English word or phrase will do the job better than a Spanish word and invented something that only exists here. Not to stray too far a really simple example of the latter would be the word parking, which is a well established and widely used Spanish word, that translates as car park or parking lot.

English words crop up in the middle of educated Spanish speech all the time. Today, in maybe an hour or so of radio listening, I noticed base camp, hotspot and peacekeeper. Often the words are pronounced to Spanish pronunciation rules so that they become unintelligible to my Brit ear. It's quite strange to maybe hear a new phrase or word on the radio or TV only to realise, when I see it written down, that it is some perfectly simple English word. Change the stress, as my students do, on ear to make it sound like a West Country exclamation and you'll appreciate how easily and quickly it can happen.

At least I've worked out a strategy for one thing that used to flummox me all the time. I get to the cinema and the title is in English. I often tried, unsuccessfully, to guess the Spanish pronunciation. Now I just say the title in English and follow it up with a Spanish phrase which says "I hate it when the titles are in English." We all have a bit of a laugh and the success rate on trouble free ticket buying has skyrocketed.

Going native II

We, no let's be honest, Maggie has just had the patio around our house extended. It looks good and it means less ground for me to keep clear of weeds.

Maggie is a bit of a comlpletist. I was impressed enough with the slabs of marble laid crazy paving style but, for Maggie, they are not enough. She sees plants in pots and garden furniture. She can taste the summer drinks. She mentioned fountains. She's already decided what sort of garden furniture. Not the sort of stuff you get from B&Q or Homebase with wooden slats and nice green brushed cotton cushions. No, Maggie knows that the beating Spanish sun of summer and the 20ºC daily tmperature changes of winter destroy the stitching on nylon chair webbing and anything made of wood. Plastic goes hard and brittle whilst metal colours are doomed to fade except for the reworking of the colour scheme by various layers of rust. Stone, concrete and ceramics are the answer.

She didn't really mention this to me until we were in a local garden centre staring at the stone tables with matching benches. Some were shaped like toadstools. Some were covered in Andalucian style painted ceramic tiles.

"I think I'm turning Spanish," she said, "I think these look nice."

When we first arrived she thought the style of furniture was too hideous to contemplate.

Valencià hasn't used boxed question marks since 1993

Going to the bank on Spain is a pain in the backside. The queues go on for ever. There aren't enough tellers whilst there are far too many bank workers shifting paper around on their desks and waiting to sell some dubious financial product. Lots are at breakfast too.

For a number of reasons, so tedious that even I would hesitate to record them, I've had to go to the bank at the beginning of each month for the past several months. Despite being in the largest bank in Spain there isn't a branch in Pinoso. I have the choice of being charged 6€ to process the payment locally or driving to nearby Monóvar, if 15 kms is near.

Queues in Spain are usually orderly but amorphous. Often the routine is that as you get to the people hanging around to be served you ask who was last there. You take your turn after them. The next person joining the queue after you asks the same question and your place in line is now secure. This system has multiple issues for non Spanish speakers.

The phrase to use is ¿Quien es el último? It's a phrase within my linguistic grasp though I'm usually lazy and simply ask ¿El último? These phrases have a semantic drawback in that Spanish has gender. The word último is masculine so there is a possible charge of sexism. To avoid this people sometimes choose to say ¿Quien es el último o la última? which adds in the feminine possibility even though she always seems to come second. It set me thinking about how difficult it must be to write a phrasebook and how such a simple question, and ones like it, have manifold forms (as they do in English.) I was nearly at the teller and ready to be quizzed about my identity even though I was paying money into my own account when a young woman came in to the bank. "L'últim?"- she asked. It's the same same question but in the local Valencià language.

Ah well, for those of you old enough to remember. Bouncy, bouncy. Drop your panties, Sir William, I cannot wait till lunchtime. My hovercraft is full of eels.

Coo-ee, coo-ee, Mr Shifter, Light refreshment?

The advert that featured the line Coo-ee Mr Shifter was broadcast in 1971. In the Seventies PG, the tea people, not only abused their plantation workers (allegedly) they also abused animals. Chimps dressed in clothes mimicked human actions in a series of TV adverts. Mr Shifter was a piano mover. The idea of workers, workmen, having tea breaks and being offered tea by the home owners where they are working is a part of British culture.

There is a frost on the ground outside our house today as I type. We have two blokes, José Miguel and Manuel his brother, tearing up the old concrete and laying a path between front and back gardens and building a patio.

They started work yesterday. It was cold then too. Maggie asked if they wanted a cup of tea, or as they're continentals, a cup of  coffee. They politely turned it down and waved a bottle of water at her as though that were a suitable alternative.

When I was a Mr Shifter in the furniture shop here and I delivered stuff to British houses a drink - hot or cold depending on the season - was always the first offer. In Spanish houses it wasn't unusual to be given a drink but it was always at the end of the job as the sweat dripped from me. Water was the normal  offer with beer coming a close second. The purpose was different though. In Spain it is for practical reasons - like thirst. For we Britons it is a social custom too.

Rather reassuring

It's not Christmas in Spain yet. Not by a long chalk. No lights or trees in the streets. But today, in our house, it suddenly became Christmastime. True we've done a couple of subtle things before today but not so as you'd notice. We bought our lottery tickets for el Gordo Christmas lottery, we finished our Christmas cards in the last couple of days and I bought some more figures for our nativity scene a while ago.

This nativity thing is a personal sort of crusade. A couple of years ago I spent a fair bit of cash on some hand crafted figures for our Belén. The idea was to be a little Spanish and start adding to the nativity scene every year. The marginalised poor in the shepherds one year then the kings to represent the different continents, the wealthy and so on. It didn't go to plan because Christmas was cancelled last year by Maggie's absence in Qatar and our consequent meeting in Sri Lanka. It wasn't worth putting up the tree or the lights in Culebrón  as I avoided the perishing cold of interior Alicante for the much milder climate of La Unión. No tree, no lights, no Christmas food and no new figures. This year though Christmas is on so I got down to the Regional Artisan Centre in Murcia city and handed over 90€ for some kings. Poor people, the shepherds, are good but you never go wrong buying the rich.

The cards were interesting, Well sort of dully interesting. We bought some charity cards from Corte Inglés when we were in Murcia weeks ago but we needed more. Not many cards to be had in Pinoso but one of the local tobacconists had two packets. There were maybe fifty cards and we bought thirty of them. The shop owners were amazed. We explained about the old tradition of sending cards to people we hadn't spoken to for years, about sending cards to addresses that we were pretty sure were no longer correct and about sending cards to people who may well be dead. Nice tradition though - with a different quality to Facebook or email. I love getting cards.

But today we buckled down. It was wreath on the door, Chinese shop Westward leading star with a comet like tail of flashing LEDs fastened to the outside of the house and the tree. 

The tree we got in Huntingdon from Woolworths maybe sixteen or seventeen years ago now. It was bought to grow old along with us. Every time we drag it out of the scruffy box and attach the same wesleybobs (glass baubles to you unless you're old and from West Yorkshire) I always think what a good choice it was. Bit of a change with the tree this year through. We had to change its location because of some furniture changes since Christmas 2012. I took the change in my stride though because I was buoyed up by the inevitability of it all. A nice fino sherry to start then whisky (though I can no longer afford a decent Islay and have to do with blended) helped the process along. Nat King Cole roasting chestnuts on an open fire then a choir from Kings. Como siempre - as always. 

It had been the same outside. There were a series of hooks for the lights, the string on the wreath was the right length to hang it dead centre and the correct height on the door. In truth I'm not a big fan of Christmas. Lot of fuss about nothing in my humble but I do find, as my remaining time shortens, that whereas, in the past, I disliked the annual sameness of the process I now value at least one part of the inevitability of it all. And that part was today.

Tap, tap, tapas

As far as I remember the first ever time we got involved in a tapas trail was in Sax which is a small town about 20 km from here. It was probably in 2005 and I remember it well because afterwards we went on to a meal in the village hall organised by the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association. Certain members of our party had had a little too much to drink and they were unable to fully participate in the village AGM afterwards leaving me as the sole speaking British representative.

Tapas trails, rutas de tapas, are a simple idea. Somebody, usually the Chamber of Trade or the local Shopkeeper's Association persuades a number of bars and restaurants in their town to sell a bite sized snack and a drink, usually either beer or wine, for a bargain set price. They persuade other sponsors to cough up a prize. Then they produce a route map cum leaflet and, within the set dates, punters skip from bar to bar eating the tapas and drinking the drink. Each time the participants have something on the trail they get a stamp on their leaflet. The punters have a good time, the bars get more trade and the towns look busier.

In Sax I think each bar gave clues to a puzzle. Solve the puzzle and win a prize. In Cartagena, where we lived the tapas trail was a big deal with about seventy places taking part and thousands and thousands of tapas served. Everyone who handed in a leaflet with at least six stamps got a free entry to one of the city museums and there was a draw for a bigger prize.

Earlier Pinoso trails may have passed me by but, to the best of my knowledge, the first tapas trail here was this summer. It was tied in with the performances of a couple of classical Greek plays. We made a bit of a half hearted attempt to get involved but we hadn't checked the leflet properly and asked for one of the tapas on a Tuesday when the route only ran from Thursday to Sunday. We felt so stupid we threw the leaflets away and skulked at home till it was over.

There is another Pinoso tapas trail running at the moment. It is blessed with a name in Valencià. It started last Thursday and runs for the next three weeks with afternoon and evening sessions from Thursday to Sunday. Top prize is a weekend in a spa hotel and there are meals out to be won too. There are just fourteen bars involved but each one is producing a couple of tapas so the range isn't bad for a town with 8,000 people.

We asked a couple of sets of our British chums if they fancied doing a bit of the route with us. I think it was a new experience for both couples. It was a good evening. They got tapas in four places but, because I had to come from work I was a little later and just did three. The tapas weren't bad but they weren't inspired either. Most were a bit samey, something on a bit of bread, toast or cracker. Maybe I'm being a bit hard because I was denied the more amusing half of the experience as I had to drive home afterwards. Nonetheless it was excellent to be doing something on home turf

We were in good company too. There were lots of gangs of friends and couples with the leaflets doing just the same as us. Which bar next? We kept seeing the same people strolling from one bar to another just as we were.