Life in Culebrón

One disadvantage of living in a foreign country is that, often, the country you choose to live in doesn't speak a language you understand. It's one of the reasons why migrants, fleeing some terror regime, don't stop when they get to the first safe place. They keep going heading for somewhere that speaks a language they do. Most of we rich foreigners who move here want to be good immigrants. We try to learn a bit of Spanish before we arrive. We try to learn more as we live here but, in this area, and in others, we find that a lot of the information is in a different sort of Spanish. In Pinoso, which is in the Valencian Community, it's called Valencian. Although nobody speaks Valencian directly to we foreigners we see and hear it everywhere The current Spanish constitution says: 1) Castilian is the official language of the State. Every Spaniard has the duty to know it and the right to use it (Castilian is the language that is known worldwide as Spanish) 2) The other Spani...

The modern world is leaving me behind. I've said before about paying for things with my phone. I keep meaning to but, well, I don't really see the point. It looks as though using an app to pay may be slower than taking a plastic card out of my wallet and waving it at the payment terminal. I know I'm not keeping up though. My outlook is wrong. Lots of things that are, apparently, essential, from gaming to only tucking in half of my t-shirt seem a bit pointless to me. It smacks of my dad complaining about my musical tastes. Tom Eliot put it so well in his poem Little Gidding "let me disclose the gifts reserved for age".  It's not that I feel that dinosaur like. I know about Google lens. This morning the arty Spanish podcast I was listening to (on my noise cancelling bluetooth headphones may I add) talked about the 40th anniversary of Bob Marley's death (who I proudly admit to seeing, in concert, in London in 1976). The music that accompanied the piece was a...

I thought I might write a blog. Then I realised that nothing has happened to me for days so I couldn't. Later, as I pottered at some unremarkable task or another, it came to me that I knew a story, dated from the year 1305, about a Scottish bloke watching a spider. If that was enough to pique people's interest maybe I could think of something. So, here it is. Yesterday, as I sorted the recycling in the rain, someone papped their horn as they passed the gate. Now horn papping is currently a big event in Culebrón; worthy of investigation. I duly investigated. It was a white van and our next door neighbour was buying something from the driver. I kept my distance but I wondered what he was selling. Instead of asking in person I asked via WhatsApp. First I asked a British family who live on the other side of the main road, the one where they disinfected the streets today, if they knew anything about travelling shops. When the response hadn't come within an hour or so I sent ...

I'm a sucker for gestures. The bit in Casablanca, where Laszlo says "Play the Marseillaise, play it!" and Rick nods, and they do, and they out-sing the baddies always makes me tear up. I was just watching a video of someone called Gustaf Farwell banging out Nessun Dorma from his balcony in Barcelona just like Gavinana Maurizio Marchini did in Florence. Every time I watch the TV news I see health workers applauding patients coming off ventilators, I see the people clapping to cheer on the lorry drivers, health workers and everyone else who is keeping us going. It's good and positive. I even approve of the glossy videos being put together by the banks and supermarkets so that we identify them with the white hats when the time goes back to shopping and opening accounts. Lots of gestures. I'm not so keen on the complaining. Complaints are often justified, I enjoy a good complain myself, I complain a lot, there are plenty of daft buggers in the world and plenty o...

Do you know that Louis XVI wrote Rien, French for nothing, in his diary, on the day the Bastille was stormed? That was 14th July 1789, one of the key days in the French Revolution and one of a series of events that would lead to Louis losing his head. If you do know you'll probably be aware that it was an entry in his hunting diary, to record the number of animals he'd caught, but it's a better story if you miss that bit out. My diary for yesterday could say nada, Spanish for nothing, though without any reference to the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. Well not really nothing. I drank several pints of tea. In fact I'm drinking so much tea at the moment that I've stopped flushing every time because our cess pit only has a capacity of 2,000 litres and we could well fill it really quickly if this quarantine continues. Reading too. Actually the two things go together, drinking tea, sitting close to a gas heater and reading. I nearly always have a book on t...

I've just been into town. There's a video doing the rounds on social media of a woman runner scuffling with a couple of police officers in Madrid. We don't see how it started but the woman is screaming blue murder and shouting for help. The comments on the sound track by the person taking the video and from the neighbours on the adjoining balconies are not supportive of the runner. A loose translation might be something along the lines of "Smart arse, you should have stayed at home - you twat". We're fine in Culebrón. We have space, inside and out, there are only the two of us plus the clowder of cats. Since I went to the supermarket on either Monday or Tuesday I haven't been outside the front gate. The time has passed quickly though and I'm not finding time to do enough reading despite apparently having endless days in front of me. I see on the telly, hear on the radio and read in social media that, in Spain, the place where I live, people are...

I like to get out and about. Anything from a film to a fiesta, a gallery to a concert, the theatre and, occasionally, even sports events. Doing things suits me. On the other hand in the last seventeen years I have had a couple of short stays in hospital - one in the UK and one here. Much to the surprise of those around me I quite enjoyed those brief medical sojourns. So far I'm finding the same with being confined to home. I'm not longing to go for a walk or ride the bike or sit in a bar or even go to the pictures. The situation has changed and I'm being told that the best thing for me, and more particularly for everyone else, is that is that I stay at home; so stay at home it is. That said I did go out today. We needed food. Culebrón itself is festooned with police tape to seal off the public spaces which I noticed as I passed through the village to drop off the recycling. Pinoso, our town, was quiet. Not dead quiet but quiet. I parked without any difficulty outside ...

It's really strange. Nothing much has changed and yet everything is very different. I'm sure you know that Spain is in a "State of Alarm". Basically what that means is that Central Government has taken special powers for itself for the next fortnight at least. In effect Central Government can change the usual rules. Lots of those things would have happened anyway but the response is now more coordinated. For instance where we live the Valencian Government had already decided to close nurseries, schools and universities but with the Central Government now in charge that sort of closure has been made uniform across the country. The general principles of the measures are easy to understand. Close all of the places where there are usually lots of people (day centres, schools, parks, theatres, restaurants, fiestas), tell people to stay at home, try to keep the economy ticking over, keep basic services open (food shops, chemists, petrol stations), limit travel and when ...

It was just after ten and I was putting away my paperwork at the end of the class when a WhatsApp message pinged on my phone. It said that Maggie was helping a couple of friends out with a bit of a medical emergency. One of them was having trouble breathing and, at the local health centre, they needed someone who understood Spanish. Maggie stepped into the breach. Later it was decided to transfer the ill person to the nearby hospital in Elda for tests and what not. We ended up going too and so, around midnight, we found ourselves hanging around in the Urgencias, the Accident and Emergency of the local hospital. Nobody was watching the telly high on the wall, someone was throwing up on the pavement outside, the drinks and snack machines were doing a slow but constant trade. The main activity though was waiting; staring at mobile phones or talking in small groups. Nobody looked rich, nobody looked well dressed, one woman was even in her dressing gown and nightie - when things happen ...

A pal had to go to accident and emergency yesterday. He was having trouble breathing and he suspected he had something lodged in his windpipe. He asked me to go as a translator. Perhaps his difficulty in breathing had clouded his judgement! He was seen by a doctor inside about 15 minutes of arrival. He was taken to a cubicle with a bed after that first consultation. There were a couple of routine tests, blood samples, blood pressure, temperature and whatever it is they do when they put electrodes on your chest, hands and legs to get one of those wiggly line graphs. A few minutes later and he got a chest X-ray and then he was shifted onto an observation ward. Somebody came to do the blood pressure and temperature stuff again. This time they were a bit worried about the oxygen levels in his blood so they fastened him up to oxygen administered through one of those clip in the nostril jobs. Then it all slowed to a crawl. The patient wasn't. He thought they were taking age...

As I remember it the, "it's my arm doctor" quote was some sort of running joke. It had to be delivered with a broad Scots accent. Something to do do with the housekeeper, Janet, from Dr Finlay's Casebook. If you have any idea what I'm talking about then you'll be old. In turn that probably means you see the doctor more frequently than you would like. Our Saturday morning coffee group is a right little hot bed of knee replacements, cataracts, stomach protectors, heart bypasses, pain relief and epileptic fits. Actually, until I fell over frothing at the mouth, having bitten off large chunks of my tongue, I felt a bit out of the conversation. Obviously I go to the doctor's from time to time but the visits have been thankfully few and far between. Yesterday I helped a pal with his visit to the doctor. The idea was that, as I speak a few more words of Spanish than he does, I could act as a sort of translator. It wasn't that difficult. A couple of ques...

Another couple of personal tales. If you're looking for stories of Spain skip this one. Thrashing around on a supermarket floor must attract quite a reasonable sized crowd - something for any balloon sculpting street artists among you to bear in mind. At least two people have told me they were personally responsible for picking me up and several more seem to have been interested onlookers. Even the local police chief asked me today how I was getting on. Lots of people know about the incident and they seem to know it was me. In fact, at times, I've felt like a bit of a minor celebrity. It's a celebrity I would rather have avoided but, every cloud, as they say. There is medical advice that I shouldn't drive. So now I can feel virtuous cycling from Culebrón to Pinoso. It's not very far, it's more or less level and yet the effort makes me breathe like an steam train. Nonetheless, as I take my first unsteady steps on reaching my destination I feel righteous. E...

It must have been the price of the cat food in the Día supermarket that triggered it. I was there picking up a few essentials before going out for lunch. My eyes went funny, as though each one was switching on and off at random, and the next thing I know is that I didn't know much.  I didn't know where I was. I was confused. It took the ambulanceman to explain that I had passed out and they were about to take me to Elda hospital and only later did I remember the detail of the strange visual effects. I wonder how much disruption I caused in Día and whether I'll ever be able to shop there again? Maggie turned up at the ambulance not long after. She wasn't with me in the supermarket so my guess is that the emergency number strip on the lock screen of my mobile phone did its job. The police found it and were able to contact her. My second guess is that the description given of my sack of potatoes impersonation in the supermarket to the 112 emergency dispatcher meant tha...

I know that the NHS, the British healthcare system, is a politically hot topic nowadays and I suspect there have been several changes to it since I left but, for someone who lived in the UK till 2004, the Spanish healthcare system and the British ones are basically similar. The main difference is that you have to have paid into the Social Security system, or be the dependant of someone who has, if you are to get anything out of the Spanish system. Emergencies are always treated - though I'm not sure whether there might be a corresponding bill afterwards if you haven't contributed. Pensioners from any EU country are covered by the system here but the payment actually comes from the home country. Dentistry is not included in the Social Security cover and there is a system of charging for prescriptions with various discounts which take account of your age, any disabilities and income but, in general, get sick and paramedics, nurses, doctors and an impressive array of medical...

I got up early this morning to check the result and, rather as I'd feared, the UK had voted to leave the Union. I wasn't in the least surprised but I was shocked. To me, on a day to day basis, at the moment it means very little. My only real concern is about the exchange rate. I get a pension paid in sterling. As the pound loses ground against the euro I get fewer euros to spend for the same number of pounds. Of course, when the two years and three months are up, then I suppose I'll have to relearn Fahrenheit and furlongs but at least I will be able to recover my blue passport, rest assured that a cucumber is a vegetable and eat curved bananas till the cows come home. The concerns of  expats of my age are mainly around health care and pensions. Reciprocal arrangements within the EU mean that pensioners get free medical care in Spain and there is no problem with the UK state pension being paid here with all its rights intact. In all likelihood something reasonable...

People tell me they are never swayed by advertising. Not me; I see an ad for something that looks useful and I'm there. That spray to stop the water stains on the glass shower screen, for instance, is great. I saw an advert for some stuff to stop fungus growing on your toe nails. I hadn't realised that I had fungussy feet till I saw the advert. Gross. I just thought it was, well something else. So adverts are informative too. My feet and hands tingle a lot, it's not exactly painful but it's not nice either. The last time I asked a doctor about it he or she (I forget which) told me it wasn't anything that showed up on tests, none of those normal but nasty things like diabetes. Their expert advice was that I put it down to getting older, grin and bear it. Last night on the telly I saw an advert where some people were grimacing as they twiddled their feet or shook their hands. The advert described circulation problems being eased by their medication. It looked like...

A warning: This blog will contain lots of rude and crude words. Do not continue if you are easily offended. I've not been to the doctor very often whilst I've been in Spain. I did have to go though - years ago - because I had a problem with my waterworks, a certain pain when I urinated. As I walked into the doctor's office I apologised for not knowing the doctor words for certain actions and parts. Consider that I were talking to you about my bathroom habits. The verbs would be shit and piss, I'm sorry. They would not be defecate, micturate and urinate; I would not talk of motions, stools, faeces, movements or waterworks and I find the half way words like pee and pooh (does it have an h?) much more embarrassing than the Anglo Saxon words. At the doctor's though it's all bowels and penis. Maggie has been pruning trees in our garden, she started with the almonds. She learned how to do it from a range of  YouTube videos. She preferred the one where the demons...