Life in Culebrón

My mum, that's really our mum but I often claim ownership, lives in Cambridge. She's 94 years old and she doesn't remember much. Telephone conversations between us are often very, very short and completely non sequitur because she doesn't really know who's talking to her about what. Most of the responsibility for caring for Mum falls on my sister. I'm happy to believe that the main reason for that is because she lives closest but I know that the real reason is because, between the two traditional sexes, just one usually gets lumbered with anything associated with care. The other has a pressing need to pop down the pub. To salve my conscience, and, I suppose, to see my mum, I've taken to popping over to England to visit her every couple of months. Well, that may be being a bit economical with the truth. I think I've done three trips between December and the first week in March and the next one is planned for May. Because of where Mum lives, I can do the w...

Years ago we very nearly bought a house in the Murcian town of Caravaca de la Cruz. It was a new flat and it looked nice. The last time I saw the building it looked decidedly scruffy. Our purchase was thwarted by a misspelled email address. The property had already been sold when we turned up in the agent's office. One of the selling points of that flat was the new airport at Murcia. It was billed to be opening very soon and Caravaca would be only a short motorway journey away. I don't remember the year exactly but it was around 2002. On Monday the last passenger flights used the airport at San Javier, near Cartagena, the one the airlines call Murcia. The day after the new Murcia airport, at Corvera, just over the Puerto de la Cadena from Murcia City, opened for business. The first flight was a Ryanair out of East Midlands. We'd have had to wait quite a while for all the problems to be ironed out.