Home and away

There's a strangeness about being home and yet being a foreigner.

Last week I asked the lad who served me coffee how his birthday celebrations had gone. He'd told me his plans the last time I was in. I got the full story. Later, in the same bar and in the same session a different, and new to me, waiter asked me if I wanted another coffee. He asked in broken English - to him I was just another foreigner.

There were a lot of political meetings running up to the local elections. I went to one of them and the prospective, now elected, candidates were lined up against the wall in a show of solidarity at a political rally. A couple of them greeted me by name. We knew each other because I'd taught them a bit of English. I'd actually worked alongside another of them several years ago.

Alfredo, the barber, nods through the window - he cuts my hair and I didn't get his daughter through her B1 English exam. And so it goes on and on with example after example of knowing both Spanish and British people in Pinoso.

We've been here a while. If a road in town is sealed off, and they often are, I know how to skip around. If I need knicker elastic, tracing paper or knitting needles I know which shop to use - actually nowadays I'd probably go to the Chinese shop but I'm sure you take the point. There are new things to learn all the time. We're as local as local could be and yet we are still foreigners.

I walked past one of the three British run bars in town and there were a bunch of young (to me) people outside. They were talking estuary English. My father, who was so politically incorrect that I probably wouldn't speak to him nowadays, if he were still alive, used to describe people speaking languages other than English on the streets of England as jabbering. I wondered if he would think the same of our very noticeable presence on the streets of Pinoso?

We Britons are obvious here. Most Spanish people I meet presume I know next to nothing about Spain. I'm not surprised. From what I can see the majority of my compatriots have very little idea of the country around them. I don't mean in the sense of filling their car with fuel, buying bread, getting a drink or paying the electric bill. They are perfectly well able to get on with their lives but culturally, linguistically, geographically and historically they are clueless. It's a choice. I have never worried myself too much about football yet I know people whose very existence would be much meaner without the beautiful game. Lots of Britons here are much more "integrated" than me but there is another group who continually surprise me with how little they know of the place they have chosen to immigrate to. It's that choice though; they have chosen a sort of voluntary isolation.

He hasn't been on at me for a while but there used to be a Spanish bloke who read and commented on this blog. He blamed me for the hubris that lots of Europe lays at the door of we Britons but he also took me to task for my British perspective on things. That's true. I do. I must. Just in the same way as his viewpoint would be a Spanish one. Our backgrounds are coded in through years of experience. I remember, years ago, in Cuba. I forget where we were, Trinidad maybe or Cienfuegos. We were beginning to get the idea that everything in Cuba was in short supply even if you had dollars. "Do you have alcohol other than rum?," we asked. "Of course, for tourists we have everything," said the owner. I missed the irony. "Okey dokey, she'll have a red wine and I'll have a beer, please." The man came back and put down two rums - "Here's the beer and here's the wine," he said. It's often not a good idea to presume that you've got the measure of a place.

The Spanish health system, the medical system, traffic law, the voting system and the way that parliament runs are exactly similar to the UK. Well they are in broad-stroke yet they are completely different. The British first-past-the-post voting isn't the Spanish party list D'Hondt method of proportional representation. Actually even the mechanics of how you vote, crosses on paper and lists in envelopes is different. The effect is the same though and both produce democratically elected governments. Externally verified end of secondary schooling GCSEs are not the same as the internally marked ESO, the certificate recognised as the successful completion of obligatory secondary education, in Spain. Both have a similar purpose and similar recognition by employers or higher education establishments too. Nearly everything has a different equivalent from electricity bills to the etiquette of using a knife and fork.

All of this is because someone commented on one of my blog entries. The one about washing up. I could write the blog with any number of perspectives. I've generally written it based on the things that happen to us or around us. I've wondered about making it more current affairs and I've wondered about doing the sort of information pieces that I used to do for the TIM Magazine. In the end though I decided to stick with the mundane and everyday with references to those wider issues as I bumped into them. The entries are often too wordy but, in general, I think I'm happy with it. I'd be interested in any views you may have about the blog in general though.

Knee high to a grasshopper

Do you think there's a cultural element to how we sweep up?

Just after the tiniest of earthquakes, yesterday evening, we had a bit of a downpour. It didn't last long but there was sufficient rain for our guttering to leak. So today I was on gutter cleaning. The mud from the gutter had to be swilled and swept from the interior patio and, because I was now mud spattered, damp and sweaty I thought, masochistically, to clear away the rotting peaches from under the tree and then to sweep the front yard.

The usual Spanish dustpan is like the one in the photo or maybe a plastic version of it. The way most people I see around me sweep up is to brush with one hand and collect with the other. I don't seem able to do that. I've tried but it  just doesn't seem natural. I prefer to sweep the debris into a pile and then to sweep the pile into the dustpan. It's the way that I've always done it. Learned at my mother's knee.

Custom and Practice

When I first started the  blog it was simple. The idea was to celebrate, or at least note, the diffferences between what I'd always considered to be everyday and what was now ordinary in a new country. So the fact that I ordered neither quantity nor type of beer - I just asked for a beer - gave me material for an entry. Everything from a fiesta to a supermarket visit was grist to the mill.

Nowadays it's different. I don't want to repeat the same entries over and over again and I'm, perhaps, no longer the best person to notice the differences - or so I thought. Strangely though in the last twenty four hours, a couple of tiny incidents have reminded me that I've still not quite caught on.

I do lots of English language exercises that revolve around food. In one drill I have the students do a bit of imaginary food shopping to mark vocabulary like savoury, packet, jar, seafood, game, poultry, herbs etc. They have to produce a meal from their list of savoury ingredients which come in jars and so on. A second is a variation on the TV show Come Dine With Me and there's another on preparing a romantic dinner. In all of them the end product is to produce a meal of starter, main course and pudding. I've always presumed that the minor confusions around starter and main course were simply linguistic ones. Yesterday though when we popped in to a restaurant for a meal something clicked. The eatery, on the outskirts of Fortuna, only had British clients. Maggie and I chose different starters from the set meal but we had the same main. I noticed that the menu, the list of food with prices, didn't use the Spanish equivalents of starter and main. Instead there was a list of first and second courses followed by the dessert. It wasn't something new to me but I suddenly realised that my interpretation wasn't quite right. The difference is subtle. Here we have two courses of equal weight rather than a lighter starter followed by a more substantial main course. If we were going to emulate that in Spain it would be much more usual to share the starters in the centre of the table. So there is an ever so slight difference between the structure of a standard three course "English" meal and a standard three course "Spanish" meal. Just enough of a difference to discombobulate my students.

Someone who works in the school that I work at in Cieza has been suggesting that we should get together. On Thursday he seemed determined to make it this weekend. He said that he thought he was free for Saturday "por la tarde", and he'd be in touch. When he didn't phone this morning I just presumed it was off. A couple of hours ago I noticed a message from him on my phone saying that he was sorry but things had changed and he wasn't free. When he said tarde to me I automatically translated it to my English idea of afternoon. Now, even to we Brits, afternoon is reltively flexible. It may, technically, be bounded by 6pm but I think the interplay between afternoon and evening is much more subtle than that - a combination of daylight, activity and time. It's similar in Spain except that tarde covers both afternoon and what would be relatively late evening for us. My pal's mental picture of having a drink in the "tarde"and mine were poles apart. It wasn't a translation error it was a cultural error.

I know that a couple of Spanish people read this blog from time to time. It's possible that they will dispute my reading of the situation. I would point them to Restaurante and Mesón. Several Spaniards have told me that there is an obvious difference. When pressed though they don't seem to find it so easy describing those differences to me. It all becomes a bit Cockburn's - one instinctively knows. In just in the same way I remember entertaining a couple of Spaniards in the UK who were perplexed as to why this was a pub and that was a bar or why this was a restaurant and that a café. I knew, indeed it was obvious, but I was unable to enumerate those differences in any logical way.

A nation of writers

I once worked with someone who was keen on illicit drugs. He came from Huddersfield but we were working near Newcastle and he was having trouble finding a local supplier. He picked up what we used to call a sexually transmitted disease and ended up at the local GUM clinic. He told me later that finding a supplier in the clinic was the work of minutes and he wondered why he'd never thought of it before.

If you want to find Britons in Spain the Post Office would be fertile territory. In the Pinoso office at least we usually outnumber Spaniards. I've been told, by a Spaniard, that this is because, until recently at least, there had not been a big tradition of reading and writing in Spain so the Post Office never became important to ordinary people. I have to say that I thought the analysis lacked academic rigour.

Today I was reading the local news over a lunchtime coffee. There was a piece to say that Pinoso had twenty one restaurants featured on a website called gastroranking.es which is a website that compiles the results from a range of other websites of the TripAdvisor type.

I had a look and I was quite surprised to find that the top rated places in Pinoso included places I would not have instantly thought of. The outright winner is very popular with both Spaniards and Britons but the rest of the top performers included places that I certainly don't care for. Risking the possibility of being ostracised by my own all I can think is that maybe the Post Office literacy comment is more accurate than I suspected. Maybe there really is very little tradition of writing by the home population and that extends to restaurant reviews.

From books to fiestas

I read something, in an electronic newspaper, yesterday that said that our President, Mariano Rajoy, isn't a big reader. It went on to say that the only complete newspaper he has left on his desk, alongside the daily news roundup written by his staff, is a sports newspaper called Marca. I'm not sure whether it's true or not but he doesn't strike me as any sort of intellectual or even a deep thinker so it may well be true.

It would certainly be in line with the last survey of the Sociological Investigation Centre - Centro de investigaciones sociológicas - which reports that 34% of Spaniards have not read a book in the last twelve months, that 10% read only one book in the last year and that just 7% read more than a book a month. Maybe this explains why many children are unsure of the name of the capital city of Spain.

Talking of books my pal Carlos, writing under the pen name of Carlos Dosel, has just self published a book on Amazon - police story with a Nazi war criminal slaughtering Jews saved from Hungary by a Spanish diplomat. And, as that's a plug for Carlos, I should mention Miguel who writes a blog about The Six Kingdoms and has had a print book published La llamada de los Nurkan. So, even if Spaniards don't read much I happen to have bumped into at least two who write.

There certainly wouldn't have been much reading going on in the village this weekend. It was the weekend of our local fiesta dedicated to Saint James with Saint Joseph tagging along. There is a religious element to the fiesta because the local priest leads a mass from the village chapel before the Saints, in effigy, are paraded around the streets of the village. Jaime is carried by the men and José by the women.  Otherwise it's all very non religious but very community. Someone I see regularly at the Wednesday morning session at Eduardo's commented on the number of people who were only ever seen in the village at fiesta time.

We had the meal on Friday evening. Catered event with metal cutlery, crockery and waiters followed by a duo with an electronic keyboard and songs from the seventies and eighties. I hear they, unlike us, went on till five in the morning. The next morning there was an organised water pistol fight and a session with drinking chocolate and toña (a sort of sweetened breadcake). A bit later, at lunchtime, there was a gacahamiga competition. Gachamiga is a food made from nothing - garlic, flour, water, oil and salt cooked into a sort of thick pancake. The procession was that evening followed by some buffet food and wine. Into Sunday the village was heaving with people taking part in the 5km or so walking and running race. There were over three hundred participants the event being rounded off with food of course. Into the afternoon there was some sort of children's entertainer - you know the sort of thing, bouncy castle and organiser with a floppy hat, baggy trousers and balloon sausage dogs. There was a bit of five a side footie going on at the same time. We got called over because there was a surprise and unscheduled vermouth session and I suppose they knew we would be attracted by the offer of alcohol. We were.

We'd left the village to go and have a very unsatisfactory meal in Aspe where we'd met one of Maggie's pals from Qatar. The after effects of that meal meant that we didn't go to the cena de sobaquillo and, in a way, that was there because we'd suggested it. What we actually suggested was a bring food to share meal but one of the neighbours shouted that down. She said that we foreigners always turned up with an inconsequential and inedible cake whilst the locals took proper food. A cena de sobaquillo is a sort of communal picnic. We'd stocked up with stuff to take but, in the end, we stayed home.

Good fiesta this time though. I tend to be a bit surly and uncommunicative when faced with people. I can hide either behind the camera or the alcohol but Maggie seems to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. Her teaching sessions, and simply being here all the time, means that she knows far more people and she is neither surly nor uncommunicative. She was running from person to person chatting away so I ended up talking to people almost by default.

In the wind

In most Spanish bars the gents is a normal household type toilet. The sort we men leave the seat up on. In some places, like cinemas, shopping centres or motorway service stations there will be stalls and, usually, a row of urinals too.

Personally I prefer urinals. Less chance of unintended spillage. My experience though is that Spanish men don't. They choose to use the stalls and a lot of them neglect to lock the door. This can cause a degree of embarrassment from time to time. ¡Uuff; perdón! 

I wonder why the preference?

Going native III

I talked to my mum on the phone today. She asked me how my birthday had gone on Wednesday. She apologised for only having sent a card and a Facebook message and for not having phoned. I didn't ring she said because I guessed you would be out for a meal.

My mum was wrong, I wasn't out to eat. After work I'd come home and set about a bottle of birthday brandy in front of the telly. As we talked I realised that it had never crossed my mind to go out for an evening meal. In fact we are booked in for a celebratory lunch on Saturday at a well known and well regarded local restaurant.

In the dim and distant past when I used to come to Spain on holiday the routine was simple enough. Something light for lunch and then a nice meal in the evening. That's the way my British upbringing told me to do it. The equivalent of the lunchtime sandwich at your desk with something cooked in the evening. Generally though that's not the Spanish case. Obviously Spaniards do celebrate big meals in the evening. Generally though the more substantial meal is at lunchtime and there is a whole industry of inexpensive lunchtime set meals to maintain that habit.

So is it, that like taking to stone garden furniture, our eating habits have also become unknowingly Spanish?

Goodly Sir wouldst be so kind as to render me aid?

The man on the phone asked me if he was speaking to don Christopher. I told him that he was but whatever he was selling I didn't want it. He didn't need to say anything else. Nobody uses don unless they wear headsets to talk on the phone. He assured me that he was just checking to see if I'd got a particular piece of junk mail. He didn't try to sell me anything so maybe it really was just a check on whoever does their bulk mailing.

I don't like being called don. It's supposed to be courteous. It's used with your first name rather than using the surname. It's a bit antique but I simply don't like people deferring to me and I particularly don't like it when it's a sham deference.

Usted, unlike don, isn't archaic. If, like me, you were taught French at school, then the Spanish usted is equivalent to the vous form. The polite form of you. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? rather than Je t'aime. The idea is that usted is used for people you don't know, for people who are a bit older than you or to show a bit of respect. I don't like that either. I don't like it in shops, I don't like it in bars, I don't like it in general.

Spanish people tell me I should use usted - they tell me that I should only use tú when I know people. Tugging one's forelock and doffing one's cap went out even before I was born. I see usted as very similiar. For Latin Americans I don't think there's the same distinction. I think Ecuadorian parents address their children as usted. Some Latin American countries use a different way of saying you all together.

Dealing with everyone the same is fine by me whether it's a formal, Mr Thompson, or more informal, Chris but using the equivalents of sir or esquire. No thanks.

Crowding round the telly

I still watch TV more or less as I did in the 1960s. Not that I stare avidly at Zip Nolan or Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt but I do generally, watch broadcast television at the time that it is broadcast. Every now and then I will use the streaming feeds from a TV company for the missed episode and I have even been known to steal television programmes from one of the torrent sites. I don't really understand torrents though and I am usually mightily disappointed when after downloading something for hours or days the picture keeps macroblocking.

I begged a cup off coffee of some pals yesterday. They told me that Sky, or whoever it is that uses whichever satellites to send out whatever British satellite TV signals, has just shifted everything around again. They do this from time to time presumably for technical reasons, possibly to add quality or functionality, and maybe to deny the signal to we expats. It certainly sends ripples through the Brit population who have parabolic dishes the size of the the Parkes Radio Telescope in their back gardens. We've got one.

My usual fare is broadcast digital terrestrial Spanish TV. We have slightly more channels in Culebrón than down in Murcia but in both places I think it's around 40 TV channels plus a bunch of radio stations. I have, occasionally considered one of the TV packages offered by the various Internet providers but, in the end, the price always puts me off.

Although I'm still vaguely trying to improve my Spanish I long ago abandoned watching English language programmes in Spanish as the dubbing is risible. The actors, who are often quite famous here, use less emotion than the speaking clock and children are interpreted by adults making a squeaking sound reminiscent of piglets. The digital TV signal usually allows me to change the language to the original language, when that isn't Spanish, so I don't have to put up with the hideous dubbing.

Anyway, after my conversation about the changes to the availability of British TV I switched on the Sky box to see what channels were still working. All the ones I was looking for were still there. It was the first time I'd watched British TV for ages. Our Sky box is an ancient thing, just a decoder. Neither it nor the telly have a hard disc so there is none of the potential to record programmes or to stop a TV programme whilst you make a cup of tea. Even in the brief period I watched there were adverts for TV series on demand and lots of interactive services. I don't know much about the varieties of technological wizardry available to modern TV viewers but it did make me wonder about the sophistication of Spanish viewing habits as against British ones.

I occasionally discuss TV with my students. Most of them don't really watch TV, they watch TV programmes on their computers. Very few seem to hook up the computer to the bigger TV screen and nobody has ever described watching TV via boxes which integrate broadcast TV, Internet catch up services or direct Internet TV though I believe those sort of things are common in the UK. They must be available here but, maybe, Spaniards have a better plan for their spare time spurred on by all those open air cafés and the milder climate.

Braseros

It's not a complex idea. When I was a lad braziers were the natural complement to those little striped tents that workmen used to set up over what were then called manhole covers. In Spain they put them under round tables.

Braziers or braseros are, at their most basic, simple bowls which fit into a circular support underneath a round table. There are electric ones nowadays of course but the one we were presented with today, when we went for a birthday meal, was more like a wrought iron version of a parrot's cage. Glowing embers are put inside the bowl, the bowl is popped under the table and a heavy tablecloth draped over the table and your knees. The heat captured under the table warms the lower half of your body. A very personal sort of heater. The modern thermostaically controlled electric heaters do the same job and have the advantage over the old fashioned, real fire type. They don't either set fire to their users or poison them with carbon monoxide.

Lavatorial humour

Sorry to be indelicate but imagine we are in the toilet. No, not we, you or I, separately, apart,  in different but similar toilets. The sit down toilet, not the stand up one.

This toilet is in Spain and on the wall there is a notice which says "Do not throw the paper in the toilet" - well it says it in Spanish but the translation is good. Now paper, papel, is a bit of a multi purpose word. For instance the car parking tickets are often papeles and you can use it for receipts and other things made from paper. The very first time I saw it I thought ah, they mean paper towels and the like but no, alongside the stool was a wastebasket full of soiled toilet paper.

Now Spain is a country blessed with an interminable supply of flies. Unsurprisingly they are attracted by this copious quantity of food. The original concept of  the waste basket isn't particularly pleasant but add in a cloud of flies and it becomes decidedly nasty.

For years I presumed that this was because of dodgy plumbing especially as there are fewer and fewer of the notices nowadays. A few sheets in the pan and the resulting flood could be even more disgusting  than the piles of soiled paper. However, the other day, I was in a high tech building, the sort where the lights are controlled by motion sensors as you walk past yet there was the notice. Surely modern Spanish plumbing can deal with modern toilet paper designed to more or less dissolve in water?

All I can think is that the notice was there because that's how we do it. Not me I hasten to add.