Life in Culebrón

I like to be active, not climbing hills or doing press-ups active, but doing something out and about. I'm not keen on work as a substitute. I don't need to paint walls or clean the kitchen, prune trees, shop, cook, clean toilets or keep drains clear to keep myself occupied. We're all a bit work obsessed in my opinion. I did a lot of it at one time, the paid sort, and now I look back on it and wonder why I wasted all that time. The pay, obviously, but that doesn't explain its centrality in British society. So here I like to get out and about. We go to fiestas, we go to events, we visit castles, we go to the theatre and concerts and the cinema. We see exhibitions, we go to talks and tramp around forests for stargazing and to hunt out scorpions. Some things are never repetitive, even though you've done them before, because each event is different enough to make it potentially memorable. On the other hand there are some things which are so much of a muchness and start t...

Interesting week this week. Out and about in Spain much more than usual. Last Saturday, the Neighbourhood Association of our village, Culebrón, organised a coach trip to a couple of towns over the Murcia/Alicante border. We went to Cehegín and Bullas. As always with the neighbours, the vecinos, it's the human bit that makes it interesting. I'm not a particularly outgoing or effusive person, but that doesn't mean that, as we waited for the coach to arrive and as people drifted into the agreed setting-off point, there wasn't an awful lot of cheek-kissing, hearty handshakes, backslapping, and a general bonhomie that always makes me grin internally. We got to Cehegín and did our bits of wandering around, looking at museums and churches and whatnot, but the real focus of any outing with Spaniards is the meal. The restaurant that the organisers, María Luisa and Inma I think, had chosen in Bullas was absolutely cracking. There was a busload of us, 50 plus people, and the meal ...