Is it a car, is it a skirt? No, it's a glass!

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 staff that he paid her a bonus and tried to hire her, then and there, for the next season.

At a festival the temporary staff on the bars aren't trusted to handle money but someone has to, so the bosses get someone to run a cash office in whom they have more confidence. These money handling trusties take the money from the paying punters and change it into little tokens which then become the currency of the festival. It's a doubly good trick because, as well as limiting pilfering, not all the tokens get changed into goods. If, for instance, the tokens are worth 1€ and they are sold in blocks of 10 with the charge for a beer being 3€ there will be a good number of people who buy three beers and have one useless token left over. It's not a huge intellectual leap for friends to pool the left over tokens or for people to queue at the cash office to turn the tokens back into money but both processes are a bit of a faff. The end result is that lots of people go home with a couple of plastic tokens and the organisers get to keep the euros that bought them.

The cost of a small glass of beer in Spain varies but it's still not that unusual to get a beer for as little as a euro, maybe 1.50€. In a decent sized city normal bars might charge around 2.50€ and, if the bar specialises in good looking servers and is trendy - sorry, straight fire - then you can pay a lot more. Nonetheless, even in posh restaurants, restaurants with Michelin stars and strange names, restaurants with oddly named craft beers, I don't think I've ever been particularly shocked by the price of beer; it's not like buying a beer in Paris. One of our local bars charges as much as 6€ for high alcohol (often Belgian) beer and I think that's as much as I've ever paid in anywhere normal. 

At festivals there will be a beer sponsor. They'll have all the bars and serve their, usually, very ordinary lager in plastic glasses at inflated prices. Nowadays the tendency is that you will need a token to buy a reusable plastic glass in a pretence of being environmentally friendly. Festival beer is as expensive as beer gets - 3€ or 4€ for a small glass is pretty usual. The first time it's a shock but by the fifth glass nobody cares much especially if the bands are good.

There are lots of ways to ask for beer in a bar. By name for instance or by the size of the glass. When Britons want a, nearly, pint sized glass (as in Pulp Fiction we have no quarter pounders or pints because we have the metric system) you can ask for a tanque or una jarra. A small glass of beer is usually a caña. The size of a caña varies - in Madrid it tends to be around 200ml but, in the Basque Country, a caña is around a third of a litre. In Castilla y León they have smaller measures that are called cortos, in Andalucia tubos are common and so it goes. Bottles are usually botellín or quinto for the 200 ml size and tercio for the 330 ml size. Again there are regional differences, in Cataluña for instance I think the 330 ml bottles are called medianas by the locals, and there are litre bottles or litronas. Young people and seasoned drinkers often order beer in litronas to share.

Recently we've been to see three bands in the music festival in Cartagena called the Mar de Músicas. With our allocated seats located I went to find the bar and I was pleased to find that the bar staff dealt in cash (and cards). Maggie's wish for a vodka was thwarted though - only soft drinks and beer. I order a couple of cañas and paid the 3€ each. Beer in hand I now have time to read the price list and I notice that they have a bigger, squashy, plastic glass which contain as much as a litre and the price is 7€. This sort of big plastic glass is habitually used for cubatas and cubatas are mixed drinks in the rum and coke, vodka and lemon style. At the Mar de Músicas, and at most festivals, you don't have to go to the bar. Men and women with beer filled backpacks wander the auditoria happy to bring it to you. Near us a couple of young women were ordering beer; they checked prices and quantities and eventually asked for a big plastic glass full of 7€ worth of beer and two smaller empty glasses. They were going to share. As they ask the price their question is "How much is a mini?". I'd forgotten that's what the big glasses are called. Spanish irony I presume.

Don't it always go to show

Maggie and I may be among the last few people in the world who are awoken by a clock radio alarm. A thirty year old clock radio at that. The wake up programme is Hoy empieza todo on Radio 3, a contemporary culture and music station. We don't listen for long, even if we're very slothful it will only be about twenty minutes though the programme stays on in the background.

I change the bedclothes on Friday. As I fought with the duvet cover the main presenter on the programme was talking to the organisers of a "pop" festival that runs in Miranda de Ebro in Burgos about 700km from home. They said that they were giving away a package of two tickets, travel and accommodation for the festival and to enter all you had to do was to make a comment on their Twitter account.

Now I've never quite mastered Twitter but, eventually I posted something as to why I wanted to go. I said I was old (and may die before the next one), because I was poor (and I wouldn't be able to afford to go with my own resources) and because I was English so that understanding anything around me was more or less impossible. I added that one of my delights was complaining and that at a festival at two in the morning I could complain mightily about my aching back.

Yesterday evening someone from the programme sent me a message via Twitter and asked whether I would go to the festival if I won. The messages went back and forth in very dodgy Spanish on one side but the last message said "Me das un email y un teléfono para gestionarlo todo?" - can you give me an email address and a telephone number so that I can arrange it all.

I presumed that I had just won something. I broke out the gin that I'd promised myself I wouldn't drink.

This morning, three minutes before the clock radio burst into life, I got another Twitter message. "Lo siento Chris, al final en la última ronda no os ha tocado! Quizás el año que viene." Sorry Chris, in the end, in the last, round you didn't win. Maybe next year.

Very disappointing.

Benicàssim

Spain is full of "pop" festivals. I think the biggest is now the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid but the one we were at over the weekend, the Festival Internacional de Benicàssim or FIB, certainly used to be the biggest. There are lots more - Primavera Sound, The Barcelona Beach Festival, Bilbao BBK Live, the Rototom Sunsplash Festival, Low Festival, Sonorama, Arenal Sound and many more.

We were last at Benicàssim in 2008. That time we were in a very small tent and we slept on stones. Although we still tell stories about seeing Enrique Morente, Calvin Harris, Leonard Cohen, Morrissey or La Casa Azul we decided that we would never do it again. At least we would never camp again. We were too old, too bone breaky. So now, with me drawing my pension, Maggie decided we would go back and we'd stay in a tent. She called it glamping. I didn't argue. I like festivals. I have to be honest that I much prefer the first bands on. I like them because everything is more comfortable - no moshing, the dope smoke comes in wisps rather than clouds, beer spilling and glass throwing is at a minimum, the bars are empty and the toilets are passable but, even better, the bands try really hard in the hope that they may become enormously rich and famous. There may be only be a few score people watching them but, maybe, one is an A&R scout. And, for the audience, there is always the possibility that as someone in that elite audience years later you will be able to say -"Ah, yes, we saw Bowie (or Beyonce, U2, Rihanna, Bob Marley, the Fugees, Elton John, Madonna etc.) in the back room of a boozer in Scunthorpe in 1965", changing the names, places and dates as appropriate.

We've looked at going to Sonorama, in Burgos, and BBK a couple of times but, by the time we look the hotels are already full. With sharp rocks to the forefront of our minds we've generally gone to just one day of a festival and chosen local events or ones where we have found somewhere more sybaritic to stay. The Low Festival has been a favourite and I used to enjoy SOS 4.8 till it disintegrated but we've also done much smaller festivals like EMDIV and The B side because they are local.

So, back in Benicàssim, near Castellón, about 250 kms from home. Maggie likened the glamping to life in a refugee camp. Living under canvas, cramped, very public with rubbish everywhere and an inadequate infrastructure. I think I'd prefer to be at the worst festival than, say, at Bidi Bidi in Northwestern Uganda but the comparison was solid. Obviously she didn't really mean it and I wouldn't want to trivialise the human suffering that refugee camps represent but I could see the parallels even if we had nothing but good weather, we were unencumbered with dependants and our washing machine was waiting for us back home. On the other hand it is true that, if you are used to an en suite bathroom and you need a toilet at 6am then having to slide onto the floor, pull on some shoes, unzip the front door of your tent, go ouch!ouch! with the sharp stones, weave between the disgusting detritus on the ground, say hello to the all night drinkers and walk hundreds of metres to get to the toilets that have had a more or less endless stream of backsides parked on them for 96 hours and which, despite the best efforts of a couple of cleaners, are less than spotless and come with a sort of toilet paper laden impromptu paddling pool on the floor, can feel like a bit of an effort. At least at 6am there is no twenty minute queue.

Showering was an even more public spectacle. Most, though not all, did it dressed in swimwear. There were plenty of showers, maybe a hundred, all fed by cold water but with a lot of abandoned shampoo bottles and toothpaste and fag packets floating in the gutters. Some of the showers dribbled onto the concrete floor constantly whilst others didn't work at all. I was impressed with the unerring accuracy of the one stream which always drenched my towel wherever I hung it.

I was talking to a Spaniard from Navarre, from Tudela. He was a hardened festival goer in his early 20s but he complained that he was finding it hard work. He grumbled about the distances between the tents and the campsite facilities, between the campsite and the festival site, about the distances on the festival site, about the poor beer and about the unremitting heat. It never got above 33ºC whilst we were there which is hardly hot for Spain. Bit of a moaning Minnie in my opinion but it certainly wasn't comfortable and the blisters on my feet are still making it difficult for me to walk after two days at home. Be that as it may we got to see a lot of bands and we met some very pleasant people. Oh, and there was beer too. Some of it, a certain quantity of it, interfered with my vision!

Most of the young people were as concerned about how to keep their phones functioning as anything else and proved infinitely resourceful.  I was equally impressed with the effort that so many put into sorting out their outfits for the evening. The effort that some of the young women, put into their hair and gluing on the facial rhinestones astonished me. My only preparation for the evening was to sniff my armpits before concluding that my t-shirt was good for another few hours.

Festivals suit my short attention span. With three or four stages on the go all with overlapping bands I can watch someone do three or four songs and then move on without feeling guilty. With some of the bigger acts it's much more likely that you will see the full set but not always. We wandered from The Kings of Leon to Jess Glynne for instance. Eclectic or what? It's difficult to say how many bands we saw, working on needing to hear three songs minimum to say that you saw a band, it was probably close on 30 which isn't bad at all. There were very few of the "usual" Spanish Indie bands, presumably because there are so many British Fibers, but the range was still pretty good. From the very neat George Ezra, to the surprisingly impressive Fatboy Slim or the very annoyed Action Bronson to Alien Tango where the guitarist flaunted his Murcian heritage by wearing the traditional baggy shorts or zaraguelles.

I'm really glad that Maggie forgot just how uncomfortable we were eleven years ago.

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Lineup: Kings Of Leon, Lana Del Rey, Fatboy Slim, Franz Ferdinand, George Ezra, Jess Glynne, The 1975, Vetusta Morla, Marina, Action Bronson, AJ Tracey, Alien Tango, Barny Fletcher, Belako, Bifannah, Black Lips, Blossoms, Cariño, Carolina Durante, Cassius, Cora Novoa, Cupido, DJ Seinfeld, Ezra Furman, Fjaak, Fontaines D.C., Gerry Cinnamon, Gorgon City, Gus Dapperton, Hot Dub Time Machine, Kodaline, Kokoshca, Krept X, Konan, La M.O.D.A., La Zowi,  Mueveloreina, Mavi Phoenix, Octavian, Or:La, Paigey Cakey, Peaness, Project Pablo, Sea Girls, Soleá Morente & Napoleón Solo Superorganism, The Big Moon, The Blinders, The Hunna,  Yellow Days, You Me At Six.

Getting down

Spain is full of fiestas. Fiesta is an idea that we foreigners living here begin to get a glimmer of but which most of us never quite understand fully. It's not just a street party or a carnival. A proper fiesta is based on traditions, sometimes traditions based on beliefs. Fiestas are a collective expression of a community; it's not about somebody organising something and other people watching. Fiestas are commonplace, often nearly ignored by locals yet usually loaded with symbolism in the clothes, dances, music, songs or other manifestations such as language and bonfires. Recognising, and altering, those symbols is something often passed from generation to generation. Fiestas are periodic and repetitive - with the same basic things happening year after year.

There are, within towns and cities, fiestas and fiestas. Some are only fiestas in name because they were designed by tourist boards or trade associations. They don't fit the spirit of the definition above. They can be big, they can be enormous, but they do not, necessarily, represent the spirit of a community. You'd have to ask a local to be sure but I think that, for instance, San Juan in Alicante is one of those seminal fiestas. If you go and watch the parade it's impressive but the real San Juan is not in watching - it's in participating. In getting into a barraca and eating, drinking and dancing with your friends, in sitting around a bonfire with people you met at school etc. It's one of the reasons I like the Easter celebrations in Spain - the Church may think they're religious events but I think that they are much more an expression of a community. Here in Pinoso I think Santa Catalina is like that, in Valencia the Fallas and in Ciudad Rodrigo the encierro at Carnaval. There are thousands of others. I should say that in these days of mass tourism some of the fiestas may lose some of the spirit of that description. I know a couple of Valencianos who think that Fallas is just one huge commercial inconvenience nowadays aimed at tourists. The Wine Horses in Caravaca struck me as one enormous booze up and people have said the same about the Bando de la Huerta in Murcia.

In fact it was to the Bando de la Huerta that we went yesterday. A bando is usually the sort of thing that the town crier reads out, a proclamation. Town Halls here still pin bandos to their noticeboards. As an example in December last year the town of Yecla issued a bando banning the collection of wild plants, like holly and ivy, connected with Christmas. In this particular case, so Wikipedia tells me, the bando is a programme, often with a critical political message, for the fiesta written in verse. Huerta is the key word here though. The dictionary definition I knew, before living in Murcia, was market garden but it's a lot wider than that - it means the fertile, irrigated land of Murcia (and Valencia). It's the countryside, the agricultural land.  From that quick look at Wikipedia it seems that the Bando was originally a festival organised by rich people to mock the peasants in the countryside with their funny habits and clothes but, nowadays, it's a celebration of the traditions and customs of the countryside and the wealth and harvests that it produces.

We've been around this area for ages and it's the first time that we've been free to go. We didn't stay long and we didn't participate. We just watched some of the parade and we were even a bit late in arriving to see all of that. Apparently Pinoso had a group in the parade and we missed them for instance. One of the reasons we were a bit late was that we couldn't find anywhere to park. The city centre was closed off, cars were parked, and double parked, everywhere. Obviously everyone wanted to get in on the act. Outside all of the bars there were piles and piles of men and women drinking and talking and wearing waistcoats and "traditional" dress. Very odd to see young men with modern haircuts, piercings and tattoos consulting their mobile phones, beer in hand, wearing zaragüelles, a type of big, baggy, white boxer shorts and often alpargatas, the shoes we Brits call espadrilles. In a way that's where the fiesta was. In just the same way that it was in the Floridablanca gardens where a barraca, a sort of temporary HQ set up by a peña, one of the neighbourhood or interest groups that participate in the fiestas, was in full swing and oblivious to the passing parade as they served traditional and typical Murcian food and where there would be folk music, displays of bygone days and the like. We could see the fiesta around us, everywhere but we didn't really get involved.

Just to say that the Wikipedia article about the Bando is about 10 pages of A4 long so there is lots more to know about this event if you're interested. Bear in mind too that the Bando is just one of several events happening in Murcia this week as a part of the Spring Festival.

Missing the boat

I just said goodbye to Maggie and set off to watch people walk up to the repeater; the masts on top of our local hill. I have no idea why but, every year, hundreds of people hike up the hill in the pitch dark and then have a bit of a party. But I didn't go. As I walked to the car I thought it was a bit cold, a bit miserable and a bit dark. In fact I'm sitting on the sofa, with el Intermedio on in the background, well that and lots of perfume ads for Mother's Day on Sunday.

Last Saturday we planned our afternoon carefully - early show at the flicks, back via the supermarket with just enough time to unpack the cereal and canned tomatoes in time for an 8.0 clock concert in the local theatre. It didn't quite pan out though. First we need to master the 24 hour clock so we can tell the difference between 18:00 and 8 o'clock. Fortunately the local press posted their report on the Pinoso website promptly. I was able to read the report before I expected the event to start! So, at least, we didn't get to look foolish by wandering around a closed theatre.

Then there was a message on the village WhatsApp group. It said that the new bell on the little chapel would be inaugurated at 19:00 on the 29th. I copied the event to the diary on my phone for Sunday. We haven't been to a village event for ages. On Saturday, as we were rushing around to get to the, unknown to us, well underway, concert we could hear the bell in the village going potty. "They must be rehearsing for tomorrow," I said. They weren't of course. I'd just got the date wrong.

If it goes on like this I'll  somehow contrive to miss the Festicolors run on Saturday. I just checked the time, in case, and I was reminded that there will be the monthly silent protest outside the Town Hall against gender violence but there is also a star gazing event organised by the "housewives" group that had slipped me by.

It's amazing what goes on in a village of fewer than 8,000 souls but even more amazing is just how little it takes to keep me amused.

A damp squib

We've been to a few music festivals here in Spain - pop festivals, mainly indie bands - generally pretty close to home. I did investigate going to one near Burgos and another near Bilbao this summer but, even months ago, all the hotels were gone and we're far too old for that sleeping under canvas nonsense. A second factor in deciding against was that, when I did the sums and compared it to my monthly income, I decided that the best thing to do with the coming summer is to sit in the garden, perspire gently, listen to the cigarras sing and read books borrowed from the library.

Last century I worked for a youth club charity. We decided to hold a major fundraising event and we even hired an event organiser. She was well out of her depth and the event was destined to be a squalid failure. But the morning of the event dawned stormy and thundery; rain was falling in torrents. The event went ahead because everything was ready and there was no alternative. The dismal event and the financial losses were all put down to the weather.

In the book that we Britons call Don Quixote, often quoted as the masterpiece of Spanish literature, a work of two volumes with 1250 pages there is not a mention of rain. In Spain, if it rains, events are often scrubbed. Usually they are re-arranged but sometimes that's just the end of them. There's always next year.

I like festivals. I like the short sets and the multi stage thing. If one band isn't too good there is another to listen to and if they are no good either then there are vegetable noodles and falafels to buy. The truth is that I'm a bit old for festivals though. If I have to stand up for too long my back aches and my legs really begin to hurt. Maggie has a similar, but much more painful, problem with her hip. My contact lenses are another problem. They're fine till around 11 or maybe till midnight but, after fourteen or so hours in my eyes my blinking becomes non stop. There's another thing about later evening. The bar is now more battle ground like than earlier, the toilets are repulsive and the number of stoned (does one still say stoned for drugged up?) and drunk young people makes for more collisions and spilled drinks which have a negative effect on my good humour.

But I also have a theory. The headline bands at the festivals are probably doing alright. They probably spend their time travelling around the country in a Transit (does one still say a Transit as the generic for a mid sized van?) but they've given up the day job and they have a couple of albums behind them. They are, in a word, successful. And whatever happens tonight isn't going to change that. Their current reputation is made and their future will depend, not on tonight, but on their new songs and future albums.

The same isn't true of the bands at the beginning of the running order. If they do well tonight people might go out and buy their music (does one still buy music or does one simply steal it?) The opinion formers, looking for something to pad out their blogs, video channels and Instagram accounts, might say something nice about them. You can see, too, that the bands themselves get a buzz out of being on a big stage with a lot of kit. They put a lot of effort into doing as well as they can and they often look to be having a hoot of a time. Besides which the toilets are still smelling sweet, the bar is easy access and nobody is crashing into me because their motor control functions have been compromised.

We were going to a small festival in Elche this evening. The bigger bands, like Love of Lesbian and Sidonie, we've seen several times before, others, like Elefantes and Casa Azul, we've seen too but not so many times. Some of the bands on the running order like Kuve, Polos Opuestos, Atientas and Women Beat were all new to me. I was looking forward to it. Then, yesterday, via Facebook, not via the ticket agency that took my money, I find out that the event has been postponed and split in two with one day on the 20 April and another on May 12. We could have booked up lots of other things for this weekend but we didn't because of Elche Live. And why is the event cancelled? Because there is a high probability that it will rain this afternoon. Pathetic.

Festival time

I see that Adele was on at Glastonbury. I don't imagine that a Spanish festival would think to go for that same sort of mix - Enrique Iglesias alongside Vetusta Morla? Last year, as I remember, Florence inherited the top spot in Somerset, now something like that I can imagine. Indie band turned money spinner alongside the long line of competent but unexceptional bands yes, one time big pop act now reduced to second or third class status, yes, but current big industry acts, no.

I like plenty of Spanish bands but I'd be hard pressed to tout any of them as material for world domination. To date there have been no Spanish Kylies or Abbas or U2s. Luz Casals, Paco de Lucia and Mecano aren't really of the same clay.

We've been to quite a few Spanish festivals like SOS in Murcia, Low in Benidorm and FIB in Benicassim. We've also seen some Spanish big name acts from old timers to plenty of current top forty stuff and tons of indie. We've done hardly any big name international stuff though. Yesterday, more or less by chance, we ended up at a mini festival in the nearby town of Elda. We'd never heard of the festival, EMDIV, but we saw some unneeded tickets for sale on a second hand site and we ended up with them. Small scale stuff indeed. Just one stage, seven bands with DJ sets in between for the roadies to do their work. There were some filler bands, local stuff with a local following like Gimnastica and Varry Brava, but three of the Spanish bands were quality acts, standard festival fodder, Zahara, Sidonie and Supersubmarina. There was a nice enough band from Ireland too, the Delorentos, who seemed to have a really good time.

I was alone for a while whilst one of the DJ sets was on. Lots of young people were jumping up and down and singing along. Even with the music there to listen to I have no idea whether the lyrics were English or Spanish. I have albums by Supersubmarina and Zahara and  I vaguely recognised a couple of tunes but the chances of me singing along (only under my breath of course) are pretty remote. I did sing along to some old Fat Boy Slim stuff though. It's an age thing I suppose. I think it may be too late for me to learn a new repertoire.

It was the same concern when we were trying to decide whether to go for the unknown bands at the start of the day or turn up for the mid order and headline bands. It was pretty obvious that we would not be doing the full fourteen hour stint. My legs won't hold me up for that long, my contact lenses would make my eyes sore and probably I'd just fall asleep anyway. Going early had the advantages for snaps, if there's light the photos tend to be in focus, but, then again, a band on a stage in broad sunlight doesn't look quite right. Early also has space advantages. I like a bit of space around me, I like being able to move around. When it gets to 2am and whether it's the drink, the drugs or the pure exuberance that makes young people jump up and down (fine) and crash in to me (not so fine) I don't like it. I don't like being, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner until the set is over and the crowd moves off to the bars, the food stalls or the toilets.

We went early. We were there to hear the very end of the second band set, we watched three bands over the next four or five hours in relative comfort with good viewing positions, very little vomit or beer spilled on us and the chance to get a drink, go to the toilet and try some of the, always interesting, festival food. By the slightly late running 1am band it was a bit more unpleasant. The brusque passing manoeuvres, the constant dodging to avoid burns from fags or flaring joints and the wobbly neighbours made us retreat to somewhere near the mixing desk, on the edges of the crowd. We watched for a while but it was cocoa time and we were home by around 2.30.

Espadas Family "The Musical"

I reckon I was the only person in the audience who wasn't a mother, father, sister brother, uncle or other relative of someone on stage. There were fat girls, thin girls and the occasional boy. There were parents on stage and youngsters with learning and physical difficulties.They danced and sang. They were wired up to headset mics and they did acrobatics too. There was a father in the row in front of me who could hardly contain his enthusiasm every time his daughter appeared on stage. Waving, clapping - close to orgasm.

The poster said The Musical by the Family Espadas. In aid of a not for profit setup that works with youngsters with disabilities. I had no idea what to expect but there was nothing much on at the flicks and the house is freezing so why not something at the local theatre?

It's not the sort of thing I go for really but I had a whale of a time. I laughed and clapped a lot and I even understood a few of the jokes.

My favourite bit of Spanishness was when the elder daughter of the family, the one who wanted to go to Ibiza and live in a commune, was spoken to directly by God. You're looking for peace and love? - then get thee to a nunnery. Next scene up dancing nuns with a fetching line in popsox.

The West End is only a bit of rehearsal time away.

El Misteri d'Elx

Tangible World Heritage sites, on the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization list, include places like the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian Pyramids or, in the UK, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, The Ironbridge Gorge and the old maritime parts of Liverpool. Spain has lots and lots of sites with forty four all together putting it third in the world ranking behind China and Italy.

But not all heritage is "bricks and mortar" - heritage also includes cultural traditions. A good British example might be pantomime although it seems, from a bit of Googling, as though the UK has not yet joined the list of countries which subscribe to the UNESCO definition of what intangible cultural heritage is. Spain has and things like the Human Towers of Catalunya, Flamenco and the Whistling Language of the island of Gomera in the Canaries are all there.

The Elche Mystery play, or in the local Valencian language el Misteri d' Elx, was given the staus of  Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2001.

This play only takes place for a couple of days in mid August each year just before Assumption - the Christian festival which celebrates the taking of the earthly remains of Mary, mother of Jesus, to Heaven. It takes place in the basilica church in Elche and it has done so every year, without fail, for 600 years. Apparently it was a close run thing in 1632 when it took a Bapal Bull from Pope Urban VIII to exempt it from the ban on performing theatrical works in churches.

Despite Elche being just 50km from Culebrón we've never seen the play and it seemed ridiculous to let the event slip by us yet again this year. A quick check on one of the Internet ticket sites and we were in. Front row, only row, on the Puerta del Sol balcony. Just 17€. Well, on the site it was marked as a seat. In fact it was just a space, about 45cms wide, for us to lean against the rail. Nearly everyone else had seats but as recompense we had a splendid view of the action. The heat in the church was impressive. It wasn't actually that hot, maybe around 29ºC, but the humidity was incredible and looking down from above anybody and everybody was fanning themselves. A sea of hand fans in constant motion.

Although I'm on the cradle roll of the Weslyan Chapel in Elland I'm not much of a Christian but, being English and of a certain generation, Christianity came as more or less a standard extra. I know a few parables, the old version of the Lord's Prayer and I know who did what at Christmas and Easter. That didn't help me at all with this story. I didn't have a clue what was going on.

In fact the play was about as boring an event as I have ever witnessed. I don't think I was the only bored person in the audience either. Looking through the telephoto lens of my camera it was easy to spy on people playing with Facebook and WhatApp on their mobile phones. The play was all sung in an ancient form of Valencian and Latin by an all male cast. It lasted for about fifteen hours though my watch must have failed as it measured the actual performance as only lasting about two and a half hours. The watch seemed to work fine before the event, after the event and even in the intermission but during the event no. There were a couple of impressive bits when a trapdoor in the ceiling of the church opened and first one and later five people were gently lowered to the ground wearing angel wings, singing, playing harps and ukeleles (well that's what Maggie says they were though I suspect she may be jesting.) Actually at one point there were two ropes on the go with the five piece being joined by another couple of angels. It must be quite an experience to be hoisted up and down the highest part of a cathedral sized church whilst being required to sing or play an instrument.

Another good bit was that the human Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mary, was replaced by sleight of hand by the carved wooden Mary that represents Mary of the Assumption the Patron Saint of Elche. It was she who was hoisted up into the heavens amongst the harps and angel wings amidst the applause of the retreating audience who headed for the fresh air without any shouts for an encore or curtain call.

Despite it being boring, incomprehensible, sweltering and painful I am really glad I went and I would recommend it to you.

String and glue

I may well be wrong. I haven't checked last year's programme against this. Nonetheless it seems to me that the Pinoso Fair and Fiesta has been simplified because there isn't any money. And, in being simplified I think it has been improved.

When I wrote about the fiesta a couple of years ago I made a point that maybe the event had lost some of it's purpose. I suggested that the rich and mobile population of Pinoso could now seek out entertainment and goods whenever it wanted. The Fair and Fiesta had become less relevant. Maybe by changing its focus it can regain that relevance.

I've got it into my head that initiative has taken over from cash as the way of making an impact. As Ernest Rutherford said "We've got no money, so we've got to think"

Take the opening ceremony. In years past that used to be somebody giving a speech from the Town Hall balcony before the great and the good of the town trooped off, en masse, to stroll around the fair and take the front row seats for some musical event.

This year the square in front of the Town Hall was brightly lit. They made use of a big screen (the Town Hall has television production facilities) to warm up the crowd and then they introduced all the Carnival Queens by parading them through a passageway formed by a dance troupe. For the cost of a few spotlights and a bit of computer wizadry the organisers turned the opening speech into a bit of a show. The speech, like last year, took place on a dais in amongst the crowd so that ordinary people were much closer to the action. It all felt much more participative to me. The fireworks afterwards were set off right in the heart of the town using an empty building plot. A simple change but so much cosier.

Yesterday there were classic cars in a square that isn't usually used for much. I've noticed in the programme that the events are much more evenly spread through the squares and open areas of the town.

Classic cars, very cheap to arrange and a bit different. There was some gachamigas cooking going on in the same square. Cheap and cheerful again. Oh, and there was a little band trogging around the streets playing some regional instuments. Very jolly. Later it was judging the decorated streets. I have no idea how it actually works but I can see a model for that - get your 50€ grant from the Town Hall to deck out your street. So some streets ask for the grant but they have to put in a bit extra. People from the street get involved. The town looks pettier and the band comes down your road along with the Mayor.

We're off into town tonight to see some music and we've paid for a concert on Saturday night. We've still to get along to one of the vermouth sessions (old hat now) but the wine tasting is new. As is the idea of a paella competition rather than the usual free giant paella (which apparently cost 5,000€ last year.) There's lots more that's different and I must say that being less of a consumer and more of a participant feels better to me.

All in all it seems a much more grass roots sort of festival. If that's the thinking then I reckon it's good work on somebody's part. I'd heard that we were into a post industrial phase, a return to pre industrial revolution thinking. Now all we have to do in Pinoso is to tag it up as being sustainable and we'll be very 21st Century.

A nice evening in front of the telly

"Good evening, sir," said the Guardia Civil, "Alcohol test." Thus saying he passed me a mouthpiece sealed in cellophane which I cracked open before attaching it to his breath meter thingy. I blew into the machine - "Correct," said the Guardia. "You may proceed." And proceed I did. That's the second time I've been stopped for a random breath test in Spain.

It was about three in the morning and I was just joining the motorway to drive back to Culebrón. We'd been to the Low Cost Festival in Benidorm to see a few bands. I understand why the police were waiting. When we'd watched some of the early evening bands we had several acres of space around us and we were surrounded by nice people chatting gently. By the time we got to the bigger bands the space was less than that required for the proverbial cat and the crowd was a little more boisterous. By the time we watched Vetusta Morla at about 2am we had only Ryanair space and everyone seemed determined to crash into us, jump on our feet, cover us in beer or burn us with one of their strangely smelling cigarettes. This is very boring stuff when you are completely sober. I have no problem at all with the police keeping unsafe drivers off any road.

Whilst we were being suitably outraged by being jostled and bumped into I started to chuckle. Unlike the time we went to Benicassim a few years back I was definitely the oldest person I saw all evening. I must have been one of the few people on the whole site who did not need to use the keypad of my phone to communicate urgently with someone or upload a few snaps or videos. I could have given a lift to everyone else there who was, like me, wearing long trousers (that's an exaggeration, I've only got a four seater but if I'd had a people carrier...) and my Ramones T shirt came from a gig when Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee were all still alive.

I was chuckling because I was having a whale of a time. All those young people bouncing up and down. All those bands that sounded just like tens of bands that I've listened to over the years but which were still different. The way my whole body was vibrating with the sound. All that sustainable, eco friendly talk that still left stinking toilets and mounds of rubbish strewn around and a car park full of jostling vehicles of every shape and size including VW camper vans.

Maybe I should have been at home curled up with a good book and a nice cup of cocoa. No, not quite yet.