Oops! Ha, ha!

I seem to have started to say uuf! when something goes wrong. This is a difficult word to spell. It's not the same as pah! or oops! It's more like a phew!

Spanish cockerels go kiri kiri kiri. Obviously no Spaniard has ever heard a cockerel. If they had they would know that cockerels go cock a doodle doo. It's the same with the strange half words, half grunts that we, and they, use to express surprise, to explain away a small mishap to be sarcastic and the like.

PG Wodehouse knew that we Brits made specific noises under specific conditions. I remember the books emphasising HAH!! when the hapless hero was caught out by the stern and  haughty aunt long before his final salvation thanks to Lord Emsworth, the Port and Lemon or Jeeves. It is only in the last few days that I've caught on to the fact that Spaniards emit different non word sounds to us.

This explains why one of my colleagues often seems to dismiss most of my humorous comments as mere tomfoolery with a half mouthed, half nasally blown khah!

Up to now I'd thought it was because she thought I was a fathead.

Back to Benidorm

It cost more this year. 15€ more to be precise. We set out earlier and I think we maybe got an extra meal. Otherwise it was very much the same. In Spanish style we stuck with what we know and went to the same hotel. Benidorm remains as unique as ever.

Maggie said the best part for her was in a bar with a motorbike/Hell's Angels theme and live music on the seafront. I think the bit I enjoyed most was when someone asked us if we wanted to go into a bar - free drink he said. He wasn't the first to ask nor was he the last but, for some reason, we went into his place and not the others. There was a group of girls on a hen party and later a bunch of blokes out for a stag night. They were all in fancy dress and it seemed a bit desperate as they tried, so hard, to have a good time in a tacky bar on a coolish evening in a quiet Benidorm. There was a bloke who took off his shirt maybe in the hope of attracting one of the girls with his six pack. Unfortunately for him any physical plus was nullified by the minus of his drink fuelled inability to walk.

On Sunday we crossed the whole length of town to the Gran Hotel Bali, until recently the tallest building in Benidorm and for many years the tallest building in Spain. There are four taller skyscrapers in Madrid now but Benidorm, amazingly, still has the most high-rise buildings per capita in the world. We intended to go to the observation floor of the tower but the cloudy day and the draw of the paid for school dinner quality food in our hotel were too much and we didn't make it. A treat for next time.

We were with the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association of course. Just like last year. Actually we didn't interact with our Spanish neighbours as much as last time because of our unwillingness to initiate conversations in Spanish so it wasn't really as interesting. We have nobody to blame but ourselves and we still had a good time.

Finally, a word of warning. The Benidorm City Bus Tour has to be one of the least informative tours in the world with, apparently, nothing of note along the whole length of the journey.

I'll name that tune in one

Many, many years ago I had quite a good collection of salsa, cumbia, son and other Latin American music. A colleague I gave a lift to soon grew tired of my conversation and turned on the tape player to be greeted by Celia Cruz. He wasn't impressed with the Latin sound. "Don't you have anything British?" he said as he shuffled my tapes. Finally, with a little whoop of joy, he found Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "Now there's some proper music," he said, as he pushed the cassette into the slot and began to hum along. He was an educated chap, I'm pretty sure he knew Beethoven was German but that isn't the point. He was culturally in tune with Beethoven in a way that he wasn't to with Los Van Van.

Pinoso has a nice theatre, the Teatro Auditorio Emilio Martínez Sáez, named for an ex Mayor of the town. The walls of the theatre are lined with light wood panelling and the ceiling slopes gently from the back of the circle to the rear of the stage - you know the sort of place - pretty typical for its 2002 opening date. Tonight, on our way from Culebrón back to Cartagena we stopped off at the Auditorio to see a performance by the Elda Chamber Orchestra.

The programme, in aid of a cancer charity, had lots of titles that we didn't recognise along with lots that we did. When it came to the tunes though we recognised them all. Canon de Pachellbel may be spelled oddly but we were pretty sure what to expect whereas Oh Luz de Dios didn't really give us any clues until the musicians struck up what I recognised as either O Tannenbaum or The Red Flag.

It was an enjoyable little concert, nothing too strenuous, but, all the way through, as an unknown title became a recognisable tune I came back to a thought about a heritage shared across Europe.

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The picture is from the Telepinos Facebook page