Life in Culebrón

I was once a Geologist. The trick with geology is time. Imagine that if, every year, a stream were to cut a groove 1 millimetre in the ground. In two years the groove would be 2 mm deep and in 10 years it would be a centimetre deep. If the stream were to follow the same line for a million years the groove would be a kilometre deep. Just for my mum make it a sixteenth of an inch a year and the valley would be nearly a mile deep. Now the earth is about four and a half billion years old. Just in case you're never sure what a billion is nowadays that would be 4,500,000,000 years. Obviously it's not possible but if our 1 mm a year stream flowed, non stop, in the same place, from the beginning, the groove would be 4,500 kilometres deep or about 500 times as deep as Mount Everest is high. When I studied geology I found out about graptolites, brachiopods, lamellibranchs, belemnites and all sorts of other fossils large and small. I particularly approved of trilobites. I thought th...

Apparently, on average, we Pinoseros - the population of Pinoso - produce 500 kilos of rubbish each year. Of that just 28 kilos is recycled. Rubbish collection isn't done on an individual basis as in the UK. Instead there are big rubbish bins placed at strategic positions in the villages, towns, cities and throughout the countryside. Individual householders have to carry their household rubbish to the bins. Collection in the towns is usually every night whilst in Culebrón collection is twice per week. There are recycling bins too. Generally it's green for glass, blue for paper and cardboard and yellow for containers. There isn't discrimination within those three categories so the empty shampoo bottles, the tetrapaks and pop cans all go in the yellow container. Green, blue, clear and brown glass all go in the green container. I'm told that people have jobs separating the different classes of waste but any time I've ever talked to Spaniards about this the majo...