Life in Culebrón

A couple of weekends ago, we went to the Low Festival in Benidorm. Maggie, my partner, knows that I like festivals. She doesn't. She doesn't like the push and the shove and the constant standing and, generally, the music does nothing for her. She's decided on her favourite musicians now, and she pretty much sticks with them. She doesn't discount newer stuff; it's just that, generally, she finds it falls short of her established preferences. I'm going to try to do a piece here on the accessibility of music, but I know I'm going to meander and wander around the houses. So, what I want to say is that music is very accessible in Spain. From local concerts by town bands to municipal festivals for pianists or guitarists, through any number of styles and formats of music supported by local town halls for no other reason than that they see it as their job to enrich the cultural life of their populations. In the bigger towns, small, commercial, performance spaces co...

We went to see the Bob Dylan concert in Alicante yesterday. I'm not a big fan but I have to accept that the man's a living legend, a Nobel Prize winner. How could I not go if he was just down the road? After all, there may not be many more opportunities to see him, given that he's not exactly a spring chicken. Besides, the ticket price wasn't bad. Overall, it seemed like a good idea. I even bought the album for the tour, Rough and Rowdy Ways, so that I'd recognise the songs. So, we saw him. I thought the concert was terrible. It reminded me of another concert we went to back in around 2005. That was Van Morrison, and he was at Terra Mitica just outside Benidorm. In both cases, we were a long way from the stage. In both cases, the artists played their songs and hardly acknowledged the crowd. In both cases, the stage lighting was just so they could see, not so we could see them. There was no sort of light show. In both cases, the audience seemed secondary to the perfo...

Being remarkably hip and cool, or whatever you say nowadays for being hip and cool - straight fire Gucci maybe - we go to see a fair number of contemporary musicians. Just so my mum understands I mean pop festivals. We go to see the town band too so, really, we're neither hip nor cool. Never mind. At a music festival, in non Covid times, the security check at the entrance was to look for anything unsafe and to root out food and drink. Nobody likes to pay festival prices for beer or for a rum and coke. Festivals aren't permanent events, more or less by definition. The jobs they provide are temporary. Most of the staff are temporary. And temporary tends to unknown and unknown tends to untrustworthy. Years ago the daughter of one of my work colleagues went to Ibiza for the summer season to work in a bar. The young woman turned up, sober and unstoned, on time, every day, for the whole of her contract. Her boss was so unused to this responsible behaviour from his young, temporary ...

We went to see a band at the Mar de Músicas in Cartagena a few days ago. The Mar de Músicas is a series of musical concerts held over a couple of weeks in the Murcian city of Cartagena. Spain was quick to open up theatres and cinemas and audience venues in general after the total shutdown in the Spring of last year. The venues adapted. Things, generally, had to be booked online beforehand, even for free events. The programmes started much earlier than is normal in Spain. The capacity of venues was drastically reduced and there were all sorts of restrictions about entering and leaving the venue and where you could sit. I have felt much less safe in supermarkets, where the tussle for the unblemished and tasteless tomatoes went on much as before, or in bars and restaurants, where friends and acquaintances greet each other effusively, than I have over the Covid time in a theatre or cinema. Some of the Covid measures were a nuisance. I don't like giving my phone number and email address...

I don't remember the film title but I do remember the little gasp of horror from the audience as Michael Douglas padded across the room in half light heading for the bathroom. The reason for the concern was that he had a sunken, old man, bottom and, though I haven't dared to look recently, I suppose mine is too. So far as I know I have no chronic illnesses though I know from people around me that your luck can change in seconds. I do often feel old though. Old as I feel the pain in my knees. Old as I realise that I'm gasping for breath after climbing a few stairs. Old as my arms ache after a bit of sawing. My feet hurt all the time, and the tinnitus is really loud. And so on and so forth. I'm getting old. No, let's be right about it, I am old. I know that people around me refer to 45 year olds as middle aged but all I can suppose is that they failed their "O" level sums. Covid, and the responses to it, have kept us all quite hemmed in for a while now. Of...

We went to a concert by La Habitación Roja last night. When I bought the tickets, only a week or so ago, the event was scheduled for the Teatro Principal in Alicante - all green velvet and gold leaf. Theatres have, obviously, been hit hard by the Covid thing and one of the reasons I bought the tickets was to do my bit for a local institution. A few days later I got an email to tell me that the venue had been changed to the bailey of the Santa Bárbara Castle in Alicante. Safer they said. Fewer viruses in the open air. The castle in Alicante is on top of a big hill. Although it's a fair drag you can walk (or drive) to the castle on a road that starts from near the Archaeological Museum. On the seaward side you can get to the castle by using a lift that is accessed through a long tunnel. Along with the details for the change of venue the organisers said that the car parks behind the castle would be open and that the lift would be working. Yesterday, a few hours before the concert w...

Last year we couldn't go to Yecla, to the Jazz Festival. We went to St Petersburg instead. Tough call - eighth largest town in Murcia or the jewel of Tsarist Russia. We went to Yecla in 2015, 2016 and 2017 though. Absolutely cracking event, usually five nights. The bands are often really good - good enough to cost money with Amazon later. And the acts are introduced by one of the wise, avuncular Radio 3 DJs which adds to the fun. Even better it was free and, because it was free, you could sit where you wanted. Given that the Concha Segura is all red velvet and gilt choosing between stalls, boxes and the dress circle is a difficult but pleasurable call. We even tried the Gods one year. All we had to do was to turn up early enough to get the full choice. The Festival started yesterday but Lord Grantham, Maggie Smith and the rest won out. Dubbed versions are fine but the once a week English language version film is better. Downton Abbey in Spanish? Hardly! Just before we set o...