On the doorstep

Corruption isn't really news in Spain any more. I don't mean that literally. Corruption is always in the news. Its just so commonplace that it has lost its impact. I just had a look to see how many politicians are facing charges at the minute and the information is a bit confusing. One of the problems in getting a figure is that there is no specific charge called corruption. So the figure depends a bit on what you count. The other thing is that lots of the corruption involves people at the edge of politics. The husband of a princess isn't a politician but the charges around him are clearly political. And someone who used to be a vice president and went on to manage the International Monetary Fund and then one of the big banks isn't a politician any more. So let's just say that the number is on the top side of 2,000.

Most of the political corruption belongs to the PP, the conservative side. The last three party treasurers are all in trouble. There are eleven open cases in the Balearic Islands, six in Valencia, three in Madrid, three in Madrid, another three in Galicia etc. Just so nobody can accuse me of political bias I should mention that the Socialists have a big case of their own down in Andalucia. It's quite difficult to keep on top of these cases too. Spanish justice makes snails look like rapid movers. So a case will disappear from the headlines for months and then suddenly pop up again. I find it difficult to remember whether its Punica or Pokemon that's in Madrid or Galicia and cases I'm sure were done with will suddenly re-appear with fresh impetus. Lots of the cases interweave or involve court appearances by the same people and I'm always amazed how big names seem to be able to shrug off accusations with impunity. Maybe there was something in that New York Times article that suggested the Spanish press isn't very investigative because it is so in debt that exerting pressure on the media to keep quiet is dead easy.

There's plenty of private corruption too. Banks must top the list but a dodgy pyramid selling scheme based on stamps was one of the first cases I remember as we arrived here and I don't think that's finished yet. The most recent case centres on a dental franchise but there have been lots more - travel agencies and fish canners spring.

On the radio this morning I heard something about the amount of money that the tax agency reckons is hidden away but Google can't find the story because there are simply so many financial fraud stories. Dodgy practices with meat processing came up a lot in that search! I was going to use the tax story to suggest that financial practice here isn't above a bit of low-level corruption on the cash in hand, not paying VAT scale.

Then there are enchufes. An enchufe is the old "it's not what you know it's who you know". I remember when I taught a lot of adults there were lots of speaking exercises that were based on job interviews and interview experience. They didn't work very well because most of my students had got their job through the help of an uncle, a brother in-law etc.

I have heard bits of gossip here in Pinoso about political corruption but I'm not well enough informed to be able to say how true the stories are. The other day though I saw a YouTube link with someone talking in the Valencian Parliament about how the enchufe system was alive and we'll with political favours in the regional health service. As I listened to the link I heard a name I know well, someone who I greet in the street. 

It was a bit of a shock being so close to home.

Eat my dust

When I came home that May afternoon back in May 2008 a bit of the roof had fallen in. The immediate cause was a combination of heavy rain and the heavy boots of Iberdrola workmen walking on our roof. The underlying, and uninsured, cause was rotten cedar wood beams. The roof couldn't be patched and, at one point, the house was no more than four scarred and unsteady walls with the floor piled high with debris.

When we first moved in to the Culebrón house back in 2005 we had some serious work done. The sort that knocks down walls, digs trenches in the floor and leaves bundles of electrical cables sprouting flower like from the gouged walls. 

On the other side of an interior patio we have a bedroom separate from the main part of the house. Two or three years ago we had the roof on that replaced and we had a serious remodelling of the interior space done at the same time.

Paying for work and living in dust seems to have been one of the hallmarks of our time in Culebrón.

I've complained repeatedly and vigorously about the horrible Spanish winters in Alicante. It's been warmer this winter but it is still chilly. Fortunately we are currently well enough off to turn on heating whenever we want it. It's not sophisticated heating. Our power supply is so pathetic that we can't really heat with electric. Instead we use gas heaters. They use butane cylinders which are a pain to haul around and relatively expensive. The heaters can smell of gas, they produce a lot of water and Maggie is a bit scared of them. Oh, and she can't carry the bottles easily or fit them to the valves. When I am no longer able to lift and cart the bottles she could get very cold.

So Maggie decided that she wanted a pellet burner. It's a modern type of burner or stove that burns pellets which seem to be reconstituted wood fragments. I presumee the pellets are produced from trees grown specifically for the purpose. The heaters were probably designed to run central heating systems but they can be used independently too. I was against the pellet burner for a number of reasons, and I still am,  but Maggie went ahead and bought one anyway. Let's just hope that I'm proved wrong and it's a resounding success.

Maggie rang the builder we've used the last couple of times to ask if he could fit the stove before she bought it. He came to have a look and gave us some advice about the type of burner to buy. We also gave him a list of other little jobs that we wanted him to do whilst he was here. It ws a longish list but none of the jobs were particularly big. Cut a bigger space in the paving for the palm tree here, replaster that bit of wall there, reposition this bit of guttering etc.

It took the builder a while to get to us. Meanwhile we have had an 88kg pellet burner parked in our kitchen for the last fortnight. He and his brother finally started work a couple of days ago. All the jobs have got bigger. The stove needs power so the wall had to be channeled so why not have a couple of extra sockets in the kitchen at the same time? Whilst the chimney for the old burner was being removed they noticed holes in our last remaining original roof. The colour of monocapa, something a bit like pebbledash, is no longer available so the cracks in it can't be patched which means the whole wall needs skimming. And so it goes on.

The builder is a very mild mannered man and our experince with him has been very positive. Sometimes he comments directly on the shoddy or botched work he is repairing or replacing and sometime you can just see what he thinks. I saw him sadly shaking his head as he stared at the guttering that we'd asked him to sort. The gutter has never collected water because there is too much space between roof tiles and channelling so the rainwater splashes onto the floor or onto the head of anyone using the door beneath it.

I sometimes wonder if this house ownership malarkey is all it's cracked up to be. I lost money on the first house I ever owned. This one is presumably worth a lot less than when we bought it and the spending on it over the years would be enough to buy a house outright at the moment. Alternatively the money spent on repairs would have paid a €400 a month rent for twelve or thirteen years. Taking into account that we have rented an additional flat for around seven years of the time that we have been here anyway this house must be one of the worst decisions I've ever been involved in even though it's a nice enough place.

Cakes and talk

I went to a meeting of the junta directiva, or mangement committee, of the village neighbourhood association this afternoon. I was worried beforehand that I would stutter and stumble so much that I would make a complete fool of myself. In the end I thought I did alright. I wasn't exactly Lincoln at Gettysburg but I managed to respond to what was going on around me and, even, to initiate topics and ideas in a reasonably coherent way. It's amazing how the right and better verb, adjective or noun repeatedly came to mind fractions of second after I loosed my second rate and simplistic phrase into the room.

Some of the committee members had met with the town mayor and a councillor earlier this week. They were reporting back to the couple of us who hadn't been there and looking for a decision. I'm not quite sure how much of what I heard is confidential and how much is public domain but, as it's not very interesting to anyone outside the village, I won't go into detail anyway.

So what did I learn? Well that at least 60% of Spaniards like snowballs, the cakes. It took a while for anyone, except me, to risk one but eventually three more were eaten with very favourable comments all round. Who knows what the approval rating would have been if the other two members hadn't exercised restraint?- maybe for Lent, maybe for health or maybe to avoid the calories. I was able to use the cakes to make a point. I suggested that the people around here tend to stick with the things they know; the tried and tested. Different things are, largely, ignored. Just as an aside you see that I took food. So did everyone else. No Spanish event goes without food and I knew.

In dodgy Spanish I tried to push the idea that the neighbourhood association should be trying to find solutions to those things that cause problems to people in the village. I mentioned transport for older people or those who don't drive and I was instantly told that buses couldn't break even which gave me the perfect in to talk about dial a ride, car sharing and community transport schemes. I mentioned the village's pathetic power supply and how that might be something for a bit of community action and I talked about the multi role shops in Teruel. It was like the old days - talking vaguely about community development.

Of course I didn't really say much. I did a lot more listening and even more nodding. I found out a fair bit about the village that I didn't know and about the slightly less than democratic process that provides the town hall with a village spokesperson.

In the time that we've lived in Culebrón I've been impressed with the effort that several individuals have put in to make the village a better place. It will be interesting to see if the larger committee manages to do anything differently

Hello bed, hello room

There's one of those professional looking videos that does the rounds on Facebook that I rather like. In it a succession of people walk into a bar and greet nobody in particular. Then someone comes in and sits down at the table without saying a word. There are meaningful looks between the waiters and the bar becomes a little less lively. The bar owner goes over to the customer and asks "Is it that we slept together?" The client immediately grasps what is being said and restores calm and good humour to the bar by saying hello to everyone and no-one in particular.

It's absolutely true. Spaniards say hello to the room. Waiting in a bank or post office you get to greet lots of strangers. Maggie and I were in a hospital waiting room yesterday morning and everyone who came in said hello or good morning as they looked for a space to wait and most people said goodbye too as they came out of the consulting rooms and headed off somewhere else.

I know this is the custom. My trepidation over speaking Spanish does not stretch to problems with saying hello - though there is a little linguistic catch. There is not the usual match between a couple of paired words in the morning greeting - it's not buenas días it's buenos días. Spaniards do the opposite of Britons by shortening, for instance, "good evening" to "good" rather than following the English language habit of cutting "good evening" to "evening". The easy thing about this is that I can avoid this potential arror by simply saying "buenas" and, even better, that easy to say word will work at any time of the day.

There's something though that stops me greeting the room. I have no idea why but it doesn't seem to be just me. I was thinking about it this morning and I'm sure that most Britons who live here, Britons who are well aware of the practice, don't generally follow it either though I'm sure there are exceptions.

Consultation with smiley face clap clap

I think I mentioned that I was "voted" onto the committee of the Neighbourhood Association last November. Nothing serious, no work involved, just an ordinary member. Turn up from time to time.

A little while ago a news item on the town hall website explained that local politicians wanted to talk to the pedanias, the outlying villages. A bit of PR mixed with a, presumably, real wish to serve the local community. A few days or weeks later the WhatsApp group for our local committee burst into life. A councillor wanted to speak to us, as the closest thing to representatives for Culebrón, given that our "mayoress" resigned recently. It was Wednesday and the meeting had to be that weekend.

The WhatsApp messages flew thick and fast. There were little spats. One of the committee members is a friend and colleague of the councillor and that made her position a little awkward at times. She was acting as the intermediary between all the messages and the town hall. Misunderstandings, apologies, jokes. A couple of people made their views pretty clear. I didn't say much. WhatsApp tends not to be the most gramatically correct medium. There are often strange abbreviations and phonetic jokes as well as puns. It's also semi permanent and quite definite so when I did join in the glaring linguistic mistakes in my Spanish were there in black on green for all the world to see. I always wonder why the errors only become obvious after pressing the send button. I did make it clear though that, in my opinion, it wasn't really on for a councillor to dictate meeting dates to us. Nobody took much notice. A meeting date was planned at a time when I couldn't go, because of work, which was a great relief. Spanish meetings often have a certain boisterous quality.

Tonight I sent a message around the group asking if we should suggest things for the agenda as the meeting is next Tuesday. As an aside I wrote that, for futures meetings, I hoped that the councillors would remember to give more notice, offer a range of days and times, give us a reasonable period to respond and contact the group members directly.

There were plenty of responses this time. Some people agreed and some didn't but it made me think back a bit. Once upon a time I was a professional meeting attender. Under circumstances I have been known to be a little obstreperous. At times I waxed lyrical, at times I was forceful. Often nobody agreed with me and, much more often, I was simply tolerated and then ignored. I suspect that if I ever do get to one of these Pinoso councillor and Culebrón meetings I will be at the very outer edge of the gathering hanging on to the gist of the conversation by the thinnest of threads.

Pine processionary caterpillars

Our visitors often ask us about snakes. We set their minds at rest. A few ask about scorpions and dangerous spiders. We reassure them about those too but nobody has ever asked us the much more pertinent question as to whether we have problems with caterpillars.

Caterpillars are not usually perceived as a threat but processionary ( the English word is actually processional but everyone uses the Spanish word adapted to sound English) caterpillars can cause problems to humans who tangle with them. Dogs, which tend to sniff and paw things they come across can get into big trouble. Cats don't usually have problems with the caterpillars because they are supremely indifferent to any life form that doesn't feed them.

The pine processionary moth usually flies around May to July and only lives for a day or so. On that day the moths have to get busy. They have to mate and the successful females then lay around three hundred tiny eggs usually in the foliage of  pine trees though some firs and cedars are also targets. Just so I don't have to keep repeating tree types we'll pretend they only live in pines. The eggs take about a month to hatch.

Once hatched, the tiny caterpillars start to eat the pine leaves. Over time they pass through five growth stages which are technically referred to as instars. The caterpillars strip the leaves or needles from the trees but usually the foliage grows back. At each instar the beasts moult a skin and increase in size. At the third moult these gregarious little caterpillars build a nest which looks a lot like spun white candyfloss in the branches of the pine trees. At the fifth and last instar, which is usually sometime between February and April, the caterpillars come out of the tree and search for a place to pupate. This year, with the much warmer winter, they are already on the move and there are more of them because fewer have been killed by cold and frost.

When they leave the tree they do so in a long line. A neighbour, who came to warn me that the caterpillars were on the move told me that she'd seen or heard of a line that was five metres long. There are lots of Internet photos of caterpillars which have been easily persuaded to form circles which just go round and round and round. In this processionary stage each caterpillar follows a scent produced in the stomach of the caterpillar in front. None of the websites I read explained what drives the caterpillar at the head of the line! To digress slightly I heard a news story recently which explained that the way the caterpillars maintain a constant speed can be taught to drivers as a way of stopping the formation of traffic jams.

Eventually, when the caterpillars find a good place to dig a burrow underground where they can pupate, the line will disperse. While the beasts are on the move they can be a danger to humans and other animals. It's the hairs on the caterpillars that cause the problems. If the caterpillar feels under threat they can eject both a tiny cloud of toxins and little toxin loaded hairs which are harpoon like and stick to flesh really well.

In humans this toxin usually leads to unpleasant and very painful rashes and eye irritation which can last for several weeks. Dogs sniff the caterpillars, maybe they bat them around with their paw. The frightened caterpillar releases hairs which stick to the dogs nose or tongue. The dog licks at its paw. In turn the dog's tongue will become irritated, sometimes so much so, that they have to be amputated to prevent sepsis and necrosis - infection and gangrene. Some dogs have such a severe reaction to the poisons that they die through kidney failure.

I know that most people around here go hunting for the nests on or near their land, cut them down and burn them. This advice was repeated on several websites but there were lots of warnings that this could go terribly wrong as tossing a nest onto a roaring fire can be an effective way to spread the little hairs around in the smoke and rising air. A couple of websites suggested drenching the nests with water first as even the loose hairs are loaded with the toxin.

There do seem to be lots of methods for dealing with the caterpillars at almost every stage but I suspect that many of them are not particularly effective. One I read about several times was to break the nests particularly in cold spells so that the caterpillars die of cold without the protection of the warming cocoon. Several of those websites suggested that for the out of reach nests a good blast of light shotgun pellets would do the job!

There are pheromone traps to attract the males - the lads go looking for a bit of hanky panky but end up trapped. The girls have to do without. Result no eggs. Then there are several "traditional" insecticides which have to be applied in the autumn. The treatment that seems to be most in line with current thinking and, apparently works well, involves using bacteria. There are a couple of effective processes. One interrupts the life cycle of the caterpillar whilst the other poisons their food.  Oh, I nearly forgot, there's another method that seems eminently sensible. That's to put a physical barrier in the way, the main basic design seems to be like a cone or envelope which the caterpillars walk into but then can't escape from (though I'm not sure why). Another one was simply to put a walled moat around the base of the affected trees using flexible plastic in which the caterpillars drown.

Blue tits and other tits apparently love to eat the caterpillars so a longer term solution my be to attract birds to breed nearby.

The information about who to turn to for help was very contradictory. It seems that some town halls will send people to remove the nests. There were also lots of adverts for commercial firms very happy to remove the nests and caterpillars for you - at a price. I saw it suggested several times that Seprona, the environmental arm of the Guardia Civil, has a statutory responsibility to destroy the nests but there was nothing on the Sepona website that I could find to confirm that. If you want to give it a try the Seprona number is 062.

Otherwise the best advice may be to stay away from pine trees for a while!

Knobs and knockers

I didn't use to notice English much. Maybe it came as a bit of a surprise when the radio alarm burst into life and I hadn't the faintest idea what Brian Redhead or John Humphrys was saying to me for the fleeting seconds of semi consciousness before I woke up. Then that was a long time ago. The fact that there were still clock radio alarms proves it.

I'm very aware of language now. For one thing I live in a place where speaking easily isn't, like breathing, just second nature - it's something that has to be striven for. On top of that, my students, well the ones who don't shout all the time, ask me questions about English. They seem to want rules. They want rules of grammar. I'm not a big believer in grammar. A set of rules invented after the fact to make sense of something that is essentially random in my opinion. I don't know a grammar rule without exceptions and, in many cases, the exceptions are much more common, in everyday speech, than the regular stuff. If language weren't illogical then Arabic speakers, French speakers, Chinese speakers and English speakers would obviously have chosen the universally correct word rather than using بيض, œuf, 雞蛋 and egg to describe the same thing.

Students aren't happy when I tell them that, for quite a lot of things, the answer as to why we use this formula or that expression is because we do and there is no rule they can learn to remember it and no better explanation to be found.

Lots of the people I have worked for have told me that I should always speak English when teaching. Generally, I try to but, to be honest, when it is a direct swap and I know the Spanish I just give the translation. How long would it take to describe an egg? How many other words would you need to describe along the way? And I don't think that saying huevo is the Spanish for the English word egg is going to spoil anything. After all, when all the the roundish reproductive bodies produced by the female of many animals consisting of an ovum and its envelope of albumen, jelly, membranes, egg case, or shell, according to species translation is over the typical Spanish speaking student is going to remember, or forget, huevo.

I always think that things, in the sense of nouns, have a direct translation. Logically things like car, boat, bone must have direct translations. Some things, the less solid things, may have cultural differences built into the language so that we need to add a bit of interpretation to find an equivalent or useable word. Take an idea like nice, agreeable, pleasant and you will guess that the English variations lead to other variations with differenet nuances in Spanish.

I've run into a couple of odd cases recently though. Spaniards don't seem to have a single translation for door handle. That's a standard house sized door with a standard household handle sort of door handle. Hook came to my attention again recently too. You'd think that a hook, in the sense of a reduced size version of a Captain Hook like hook bought from an ironmongers, as an option to a screw or a nail, would be easy enough but, in a class with just six students, there was no one word that was acceptable to all of them.

Funny old world isn't it?

The annual census figures

If you live in Spain you are supposed to register with the local town hall. Lots of people don't for one reason or another. For instance when we worked away, but still owned the house here in Culebrón, we couldn't register with two town halls at the same time. People who don't have their papers in order don't usually register (though they can) just in case it causes them problems. For EU Europeans it's reasonably easy to avoid registration so many simply don't bother.

Based on this registration, Pinoso, our home town, the one that "owns" Culebrón, had 7,654 residents at 31st December 2015. That's a tad down from the 7,912 on the same register at the end of 2014. The town hall website says that those 156 men and 102 women fewer are "mainly" foreigners. In the December 2015 figures 6,609 are Spanish and 1,045 are foreigners.

The 1,405 foreigners are made up of citizens from 43 countries. We Brits are way out in front with 489 of us. Morrocans next with 112, Ukranians 69, Ecuadorians 63, Dutch 32 and Bulgarians 30. That leaves 250 people for the remaining 37 countries.

If you are ever in Pinoso you may get the impression that there are more Britons than the figures suggest. The town halls only register their own of course. Only a few hundred metres down the road from our house is the border with Monóvar. Pinoso is in Alicante province but just 3kms away is the border with Murcia and the towns of Abanilla, Yecla and Jumilla all have frontiers with Pinoso. People living in those municipalities don't get counted in the Pinoso figures but for many of them Pinoso offers the nearest supermarket, bar or restaurant.

Double standards

It's not been as cold this winter in Culebrón as it usually is. Outside, as so often, it's lovely. Blue skies and reasonable temperatures - usually a pullover versus jacket sort of choice. Hardly ever a raincoat. Inside it can be perishing but not so much, so far, this winter. Because it wasn't so cold in the bathroom I use and because I don't teach on Fridays I was dawdling a bit over the toothbrushing, hair combing, wrinkle examining ritual this morning and so I heard more of the tertulia, the round table discussion, on the morning radio news, than I often do.

Spanish politics is a bit in limbo at the moment whilst the four big and biggish parties circle around each other suggesting this and that deal to form a Government after last month's indecisive General Election. So Rajoy is still President but until things are sorted out most things are on hold. Up in Cataluña there was a similar impasse for several months about forming a new regional government until the old President stepped aside in favour of a chap called Carles Puigdemont. I'm sure that you know that there is a movement in Cataluña to become independent of the rest of Spain. Rajoy has often being criticised for not being willing enough to talk to the Catalans.

Anyway apparently some Catalan radio station made a hoax call to the acting President Mariano Rajoy. They got through too and somebody pretending to be the Catalan Premier had a chat with Mariano. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable conversation to me. A comfortable conversation. Rajoy said he was happy to talk, that his diary was pretty clear at the moment given the situation, he reminded "Carles" that they had met during the opening of a new rail line etc. When the call was revealed to be a hoax he was still pleasant enough asking about the radio station and the programme. He seemed far from concerned about it. I approved. I'm not a big Rajoy fan but he came across well in my opinion.

Interesting enough little story but pretty run of the mill. I onced phoned Willie Whitelaw as Home Secretary and got through so it didn't seem that odd to me. When I said to Willie that I was surprised to be able to talk to him directly he was very forthright in his reply. "Why do you think I have a phone on my desk if it isn't to talk to people?" he asked. But the pundit on the radio was going on about how the staff close to Rajoy should have screened the call, what a terrible lapse it was, how heads should roll and why people should be resigning.

I was indignant. This country has been and probably is riddled with corruption. Low level corruption is everywhere and it's often not seen for what it is. I suggested on a Guardia Civil website that they should maybe not use be using official vehicles for collecting food for charity and they simply couldn't understand why I thought there was any problem. Lots of top politicians, big names, have sidestepped accusations that seemed well founded to me without problems. But, for some reason a professional natterer thinks that somebody should resign for a harmless prank that actually made Rajoy seem just a little bit more human.

Pinoso against gender violence

The first Friday of every month the Pinoso Platform against Gender Violence "el Pinós contra la violencia de gènere" stages a silent protest on the steps of the Pinoso Town Hall. It's a low key event with a few tens of people turning up. There's a banner to stand behind and usually someone reads a poem or says a few words.

Someone told us tonight that it's been going on for nearly five years. I have to admit that I've only stood there on about six occasions.

More often than not there is a film shown afterwards with an appropriate theme.

Gender violence - attacks on women by their partners and ex-partners - is a recurring theme on Spanish current affairs programmes and news reports. Spain is not proud of its record on women's deaths. No death goes unreported. The 016 report and helpline is well publicised.

I had a look to see how the numbers compared between Spain, 47 million population. and the UK, population 64 million population.

In Spain from 2009 to present the worst year saw 73 women killed. The "normal" figure is in the mid fifties. Reports of "gender violence" are generally in the 120,00 to 130,000 range. 2015 was a "good" year with around 62,000 reports. 2016 has started badly - three women killed so far.

It was much, much more difficult to find similar statistics for the UK. I did get some reasonably consistent figures for UK deaths. 126 in 2012, 143 in 2013 and 150 in 2014. I didn't find any stats on official UK complaints/reports though there was lots of  horrible information based on surveys and estimates. The only figure I found was one that said there were 887,000 police interventions in 2013/14 in cases of domestic violence which I presume means reports of men attacking women.

On being privileged

Sometimes it's surprising the things you don't know even close to home. A while ago we were watching the telly and there was a featurette about Murcia. The cameras visited the Ricote Valley which is some 65kms from Culebrón. One of the villages in the valley is Blanca. It's a small place of around 6,500 inhabitants. We didn't know, but we learned then, that it had an art gallery, the Pedro Cano Foundation. "We must go and have a look one day," I said to Maggie. Today was the day.

As we walked through the door the woman on the desk greeted us in English "We must look very English," I said, in Spanish. "No, but you're the person who phoned yesterday, aren't you?" Now that was true but my instant reaction was then that either they get so few visitors that they remember every phone call or we must look very, very English just like I'd said.

The gallery was really good. A nice light airy building. Interesting and well executed paintings with different themes well explained on each of three floors. On the third floor, the fourth exhibition space, there was a temporary exhibition of some perfectly nice water colours. Not as good, in my opinion, as the permanent stuff but interesting.

Somewhere as we went around I asked Maggie if she knew whether Pedro Cano were still alive. She said she hoped so as the woman on the desk had said he was coming to do a guided tour at midday. My Spanish is so good that I'd heard the bit about the guided tour but not understood who was doing it. To be honest I was for running away before he showed up. He might say something in Spanish, I would splutter and the whole of our Island race would be found wanting and stupid again.

Too late though. As we got to the front desk that guards the door he was there. We recognised him from a video. He held out a hand. He asked us simple things. He asked us if we painted. Other people arrived to divert the conversation. He turned out to be a lovely, lovely man. He radiated pleasantness. He was passionate about his work and about the foundation. He gave us a completely different perspective on the paintings. I often enjoy exhibitions but I haven't had as much fun in an art gallery since the late 70s when I was a member of Leeds City Art Gallery and bumped into Richard Long and Joseph Beuys under similar circumstances.

Underwear, grapes and bubbly

I missed out on the red underwear last night. I forgot all about it. Blue and grey I think. And when I was looking for some background on the underwear I came across another New Year's tradition that I didn't know about. It makes sense though and ties in with a famous Christmas TV ad. And, of course, the grapes, the grapes.

Anne Igartiburu and Ramón García were last nights presenters as the camera focused on the clock tower of the 18th-century Real Casa de Correos in Madrid's Puerta del Sol. Numbers in the square were limited for the first time ever. Just 25,000 people. The ball in the tower slides down, the clock begins with the quarter chimes - not yet, not yet — a pause then the twelve chimes. On each chime we have to pop a grape into our mouth. One for each month of the year. The grapes have pips. The grapes, well nearly all of them, come from near us from the valley of the Vinalopó. Eat them all before the bell tolls fade away and you will have good luck for the year.

The story goes that the tradition of the grapes is a marketing ploy invented by the wily grape growers of Alicante after they had a bumper harvest about a century ago. There are other stories that tie the tradition to rich people from Madrid copying a French fad. Whatever the origins the lucky grapes - las uvas de la suerte - are now as symbolic of New Year as Auld Lang Syne is to Britons.

The typical grapes are white Aledo grapes which are harvested in late November and December. They are protected by Denominación de Origen or D.O. status which means that there are specific rules about how the grapes can be grown and harvested. When buds first form in June and July they are wrapped in paper bags and kept covered as they ripen. Originally this was done to keep off a plague of moths but nowadays the growers say it maintains the flavour and concentrates the aroma of the grapes as well as slowing down their maturation.

We had proper grapes this year because we were in a restaurant and they supplied them but sometimes, when we've not been sure where we are going to end up at midnight we have taken the precaution of buying a small can of ready peeled, de-pipped grapes so that we are ready when the time comes.

We should have been wearing red underwear too and to do it right the underwear should have been given by someone else. I've heard it said that this is a general good luck charm and that the tradition started because red was such a vibrant life affirming colour. Nowadays it's often associated with good luck in love. I'd have thought that might have had more to do with underwear being removed.

Grapes for general luck, underwear for luck in love and gold for luck in things financial. After eating the grapes, Spaniards, and Britons in Spanish company, generally drink cava, the sparkling wine most of which is produced in Catalunya. Apparently we should drop something gold into the glass of bubbly, drink the entire glassful in one go and retrieve the gold to assure our financial success in the coming year. The Freixenet Cava telly ad always features lots of gold

We didn't get a cotillón in the restaurant. A cotillón is a a fun bag with party poppers, paper hats and suchlike. I only mention it here because I was amused by the name for the thing that has a curled tube of paper that flicks out and screeches when you blow into the mouthpiece. I don't know if we have a consistent name for them in English as my Googling produced party horn, screamer, tweeter, squeaker and noise-maker but in peninsular Spanish they are called matasuegras - mother in law killers. Ho, Ho.

Happy New Year.

Life in Berlin

We've just got back from a few days in Berlin. Like Passepartout I left the gas fire on all the time we were away!

Comparing Culebrón to Berlin would be a little unfair. One is the capital city of of one of the most powerful nations of the last two centuries with a population of three and a half million and the other has a postbox. I wouldn't presume to compare two countries either. I have around a hundred hours recent experience of Germany, glimpsed through the distorting mirror of a capital city, against eleven years in Spain. So these are no more than personal impressions of limited interactions in a strange language at an odd time of year.

People in Germany don't like serving other people. We've had some very abrupt service indeed and, with two notable exceptions, very little helpful, friendly or even indifferent service. Indifference would be how I would pigeon hole Spanish service. The waiter, the person in the shop, the doctor says hello, asks what you want and gives you it. Not effusive, gushing, subservient, friendly or hostile. A transaction. In Berlin the reaction seems to be slightly antagonistic bordering on confrontational. As though we are a nuisance asking for things on the menu or wanting to spend money. I suppose I must be misinterpreting the body language or something. This is quite at odds with the general treatment we have received - mostly people have been very pleasant and helpful. One Syrian family connected to Google maps to help us out, a young man gave up his seat to Maggie on the bus and everybody seems able and willing to speak to us in English

.

Berlin feels much more modern than Spain. Now this is a difficult comparison. We live in a rural Spanish backwater but Murcia and Alicante are biggish places and it's not as though we've never been to Madrid or Barcelona. Just your average coffee shop or shopping centre or cinema seems a bit more with it there. I can't really justify the feeling. The ticketing system on the trams in Murcia is very similar to the system on the tram in Berlin, the cars are similar, half the shops have the same name but, nonetheless, that's my impression.

One of the big things we tourists do, other than get footsore, is to eat and drink. This place is like the UK. "foreign" food is everywhere. There are the inevitable burger chains of course and all the other US foodie stuff like fried chicken, doughnut and ice cream places. After the Americans, almost as inevitably, come the Italians with pasta and pizza. Not much of a difference so far then but there is Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese and Indian on every corner. If I'd recorded them I would remember more but I have seen French, Turkish (not just kebabs), Lebanese, Mexican, Greek, Korean, Arabic, British (well a chip shop) and stacks more. Very little German food in the sense of German cuisine except currywurst and schnitzel which I think is German, though it may be Austrian. So it's much more like the UK with food from everywhere. In Spain it's still very much Spanish cuisine as the principal offer. It's like the UK too in that the food has been plentiful but very, very ordinary. Best by far as a meal was the Vietnamese though the home grown pastries, sandwiches and sweets have been good.

Far too many times in Spain, following someone on foot down the street or in the car, they will hurl rubbish to the floor. I have seen exasperated parents snatch packaging from children's hands and toss it on the floor. I suspect that such behaviour would be unconscionable here. The place may be a bit grey but it certainly isn't dirty. People throw rubbish into rubbish bins and clear tables in places without waiter service. Oh, and for the record it isn't cold either. I saw Bridge of Spies a few weeks ago where Berlin looked very cold so I brought layers of coats, gloves, scarves and hats. It's been a bit chilly but nothing worthy of remark and I keep thinking that maybe Spaniards were wearing more wintery clothes in Alicante than the Germans are in Berlin.

I know we're poor. We're pretty poor even in Madrid with our provincial wages. We are paupers in Paris and we're poor in the UK too though there we're a bit more clued up there about the potential bargains to be had. We're relatively poor in Berlin as well. Four or five Euros for a beer and another three or four for the sandwich isn't exactly bank breaking but the same deal in Murcia would cost me half the amount. My money is disappearing at an alarming rate. About twice as expensive seems to be the norm on transport, food drink, entry fees. All things we tourists do. There is a definite difference too in prices in the tourist haunts as against more ordinary bits of town.

I was going to say that it seems pretty multicultural too but I think the World is now. If there are 42 rationalities in Pinoso how many more in any big town particularly the capital city of an economic superpower? So it is but that's not really remarkable.

Bit disappointing on the car side. I've only seen six Porsches in three days and one was a seventies classic. One Lambo, one Bentley, one of those fast Mercedes (is it an SLR?) and one Maserati. Hardly capital city stuff in the Chief I Spy mould. Lots of nice modern buildings, lots of rebuilt older stuff too. Nothing of note about the Berlin fashion sense. Maggie pointed out though that there were very few fat people, in comparison to the UK or Spain, which seems at odds with the potato eating and beer drinking reputation. The steadfast way in which people stay on the kerb at traffic light controlled crossings until the green figure shows fits in with my idea of German discipline though.

At Alicante airport as we waited in the afternoon sun for the car park bus and I listened in on peple around me talking in a language I can just about understand I felt very pleased to be home.

Feeling left out

As I abluted this morning - is it a verb? - I listened to the radio as usual. The, apparently intentional, forest fires in Asturias apart the only news was about the General Election which is taking place today

I don't get to vote of course. Perhaps I should throw some tea into the harbour or something.

So, as I sat looking at the computer screen pondering on the outcome - PP (Consrvatives) to win I suspect with PSOE (Labour) coming a distant second in some places but generally being ousted by Ciudadanos (Liberalish sort of tinge) and Podemos (talk the talk leftist bunch) a disappointing fourth and with a couple of other national parties being annihilated - I wondered who I would be voting for if I were able to vote.

The voting system in Spain is a list of candidates for each party. So, if we were talking something similar in the UK the list would be headed by Cameron with  Osborne second then May, Hammond, Grove, Fallon etc. and for Labour Corbyn, McDonell, Eagle etc. All the names by the way are from UK websites - apart from the top two names I don't know what these people look like.

It wouldn't actually be one list as the constituencies are based on the regional divisions or autonomous communities and the various provinces that make up those communities. To push the comparison there would be a list for London and there would be lists for Regions like the West Midlands or Yorkshire and Humber. The provinces would be similar to divisions such as Herefordshire and Shropshire. So Cameron might be at the top of the London list and Osborne at the top of the Shropshire list with no chance whatsoever of not being elected.

So I thought I'd have a look at the lists for the region of Valencia and the province of Alicante to see if I recognised any of the politicians. There's been a bit of murmuring because Podemos have a black woman at the head of their list in Alicante and she will almost certainly be the first black deputy in the Congress. I had heard nothing about the other candidates. Indeed it actually took me ages to find the lists. There were plenty of press reports mentioning the people heading up the lists but actually finding the full lists with the twelve candidates and three reserves for Alicante took some doing. It just shows how different the named MP system in the UK or the named representatives in the US are to the party system operated here where personalities are much less important.

I thought I recognised three names but, in fact, I was wrong about two of them. The current Foreign Minister heads up the PP list for Alicante and him I recognised. I thought Toni Roma was a defector from UPyD which is a party that, I think, will disappear at these elections but I was mistaking him for Toni Cantó or maybe for the chicken place in Benidorm. I was really surprised to see the name Ana Botella too. The one I know is the ex Mayor of Madrid and the wife of the ex President of Spain José Maria Aznar. Surely she was a member of the PP - why was she on the socialist list? The answer of course is because it's a different Ana Botella.

There are also elections for the Senate today but nobody cares about those except the potential senators and their families.

My prediction, by the way, is that there will  not be a clear cut result and the face of the next Government will depend on the horse trading that goes on over the next few weeks.

Sunday night addition: The votes are nearly all in. It's a PP win with the PSOE second Podemos third and Ciudadanos fourth. Wrong order from me then but the prediction about horse trading as right as right can be. The pundits are drawing little pictures on the telly to show a left right draw. Now the fun begins.

Stamping the Christmas cards

I went to the Post Office to buy some stamps for my Christmas cards but there was a big queue. Now it can take fifteen minutes for Enrique, the guy on the Post Office counter, to shift two people so five or six people and I thought maybe I should carry food. Alternatively I could go to a tobacconist and buy the stamps there. I chose the second option.

In Spain there is a price for normal mail and a different price for what must be classed as abnormal mail. I mentioned this to the woman selling me the stamps in the tobacconist. She thought it was so much nonsense and limited herself to selling me stamps at 42c for national delivery and 90c for stuff to the rest of Europe. The other side of the world cost just 10c more.

I wrote my cards but before I stuck on the stamps I checked what constituted normal and abnormal mail. The price differential was substantial and most of my cards were definitely abnormal. Being an honest sort of bloke I thought the best bet was to explain myself to Enrique and use my tobacconist stamps plus extras from the Post Office to make up the difference. All I had to do was to find a time when the Post Office was empty.

Being old and stupid I forgot to take the stamps with me when I went in to the Post Office very early one morning so I ended up buying all the stamps there.

Maggie was writing her cards after I'd done mine. I offered her my unused stamps. She wrote her cards and started sticking stamps. She asked me about a stamp for sending a card within Spain. It was then I realised that she had put the national stamps on all the internationally addressed cards.

She hadn't recognised the Christmas tree design in the photo above as a sheet of six stamps. "I thought it was more useless Christmas information you'd brought home," she said. I laughed like a drain.

Change

I had a bit of a problem with an email group the other day. I'd never seen one before and it took me a few minutes to work it out. The person who'd set up the email also put together a group on WhatsApp before mistakenly deleting themself from the group. I bacame the group administrator by random asignation. Again it took me a few minutes to work out what was going on and reinstate him. Crikey I thought. I'm getting old. Losing touch with the technology.

We have a general Election on 20 December. I was listening to some pundit, presumably from a party that hadn't done well out of a newspaper poll, saying that polls were no longer a fair reflection of the voting population. His argument was that, because the pollsters telephoned people randomly on fixed phones, the sample was self selecting as only old people have fixed phones now. I bristled. That's not true I thought defensively. It's true that even I access the Internet more often from a tablet or my phone than I do from my laptop. Still though the serious work is done on the bigger screen with a proper keyboard and through an ADSL connection that trickles in through the telephone socket in the living room. It's going to be a long time before 4G, or any fast, reliable mobile network, is available in Culebrón or anywhere else outside the bigger population areas if the experience of the older 3G network is anything to go on.

Over the years that we've been in Spain we've nearly always had a contract with Telefónica or it's more recent incarnation - Movistar - the old state monopoly provider. However, because we've moved around quite a bit and often had second residences we've tried all sorts of other providers and used various methods of getting Internet access. All of the providers have pluses and minuses but, in Culebrón, Movistar was, at one time, our only option and until recently it has also been, clearly, the best option. We've had problems from time to time but generally the service has been fine. There is a problem now though; the highest Internet speed they can provide is 3MB. It just isn't enough. A local firm currently offers a heart quickening 8MB and it's a few euros a month cheaper too.

A couple of days ago, after prevaricating for ages I finally signed up. The new provider warned me to expect lots of calls from Movistar trying to persuade me to stay. Actually I had a sneaking hope that Movistar would pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat and find those extra 5MB from somewhere. In that case I would have happily stayed with them. Instead their first salvo today was a text message warning me that I could be penalised for breaking contractual arrangements. They stressed that I would have to return any equipment that belongs to them. I laughed at the thought of returning their six year old non functioning router and the 11 year old fixed handset.

Cowardly as I am, I have never responded well to being pushed around. Cajoling, wheedling and wearing down work a treat - but threatening no.

My guess is that there will be fun to come as we change over. Pity there won't be any rabbits.

No typical

When I went to the pictures yesterday, and today come to that, the shopping centre in Petrer, where the multiplex is, was heaving. This is unusual. There aren't many shops in the shopping centre and I've always presumed that it's one of those that got it wrong. But not today, or yesterday.

I like this particular cinema because the staff are friendly and because it's not busy. Unlike all the other cinemas, which only show Hollywood, Spanish or worldwide hits, this cinema shows anything they can get hold of. One of the reasons being that in a few of the screens they still had film projectors so they were still showing film or, as a half way measure, they showed Blu Ray stuff. It's not exactly arts cinema, and all of it is dubbed, but I've seen some really offbeat stuff. They have just digitalized the last few screens so I suppose that will change.

The reason for this heavingosity in the car park, the hordes of shoppers in the centre and the queues in the cinema was Black Friday. Until last year I had never even heard of Black Friday.

On Halloween we were in Jumilla to go to the theatre. As we hit the pre theatre tapas there were hundreds of children dressed as witches, spidermen and vampires being shepherded from doorbell to doorbell shouting truco o trato a semi translation of trick or treat. Halloween is definitely gaining ground.

Over a week ago we were doing a big supermarket shop. The in store tannoy system was urging us to put in our order for our festive meat. The Christmas lottery advert is on the telly, there are adverts with snow, the Chinese shops have Christmas trees, the turrón table is out at the local fruit and nut co-op. The Christmas campaigns have started. Until very recently nothing Christmassy happened till December 1st at the earliest.

I haven't seen anything three wheeled or pulled by a donkey or mule for a while. They use contactless technology for the credit card at the petrol station and lots of things that I have complained about having to do in person during the life of this blog can now be done on the Internet. Spain has become much more like everywhere else really quickly recently.

Practical chemistry

I think it's Le Chatelier's Principle though I hesitate to look it up - what if it isn't? I've been using the same reasoning, remembered from a chemistry class in the mid nineteen sixties, to limit the amount of housework I've done over the last forty years or so.

So far as I remember the ideas is that if you have a system in equilibrium and you do something to upset that equilibrium then the system does its damnedest to re-establish the balance. The implications are clear. Dust the mantelpiece and you are taking on the Universe. Mop and you are fighting the titanic forces of creation. Heaven knows what moves against you when you do a bit of vaccing. Whatever it is, in no time at all, the dust will be back and the floor full of bits.

Anyway. I don't like cleaning. It's work and I'm not keen on work. It's pointless. Clean the car and either it rains or there is a giant dust storm. Hoover and mop the floor and that same rain and dust cloud undo all your work.

There's no denying though, that for the short time it takes nature to marshal her counter attack it's nice to see the bathroom porcelain shine. To be able to see out of the windows. To not crunch as you walk across the kitchen floor.

I don't like cleaning for a another reason. It generates dirt. Normally I just try to scare a room into being clean by shaking a damp cloth at it but even then dirt has a nasty habit of showing itself. You know the sort of thing. As you put on the laundry you notice the washing machine door seal is full of slime from months of detergent sludge. As you search for the bleach under the sink you see the mould growing underneath those never used cleaning products at the back.

Anyway, what has this to do with living in Spain as distinct from cleaning in Chingford? Not much if the truth be told but I have to write something from time to time. It's turned cool here in the last few days. As I changed the bed today I dug the electric blanket out of storage and put it into place. More to the point the leaves that have fallen from the fig and mulberry trees have been dancing around in the shrill autumn breeze. We have banks of the things outside the front door and filling up the interior patio. I pick them up and dump them but there are always more.

So I cleaned surfaces, I dusted, I brought down cobwebs, I polished, I hoovered and I mopped. And then Le Chatelier kicked in and a quick gust of wind distributed mounds of leaf fragments from the front to the back door and a patina of pale yellow dust on all the horizontal surfaces.

Zas is as nothing against the forces of Nature.

A time for everything

My hair was getting a bit long, a bit difficult to brush through. I don't work Fridays and I wondered if Alfredo the barber had a spare slot. He told me I could come in at 9.20 in the evening if I wanted. I presumed he was extending his working day for me as shops generally close at 8.30 or maybe 9pm. As I was sitting in the chair I suggested he was working a little late. Normal sort of day he said.

From time to time Maggie still meets up with the people she first worked with when we arrived in Spain. One of her ex teaching colleagues has recently decided to return to the UK. In fact he's been there for a while but he is in Spain at the moment with a van to collect his stuff. We agreed to meet for lunch in Gran Alacant one of those developments on the coast where Spaniards are outnumbered by Northern Europeans. We chose an Indian restaurant with an English name, a set meal written in English and staff who looked as though their grandparents came from South Asia but that they were from Neasden or Stalybridge. We sat down to eat at around 1pm. It's not very usual to eat before 2pm in Spain. In fact lots of restaurants don't start serving till 2pm. This one did.

Well I suppose time is relative.

Day to day

Last century I passed a fair bit of time in schools. Firstly I had to study in them. My secondary school, between 1965 and 1972, was quite a violent place as I remember. Bullying from other pupils and downright violence from the staff. Later, between 1996 and 2004, I had an office in another school though I couldn't say I really took much notice of my surroundings. I was working in what was called Community Education - adult education, youth work and community development - and it just so happened that our office was there close to the classrooms and other facilities that we used for some of the programme. The only time I remember venturing into a classroom during school hours was to have a word with someone who organised the Duke of Edinburgh's Award for us. She was a teacher at the school and I went to hunt her out in her room. Noisy as I remember it, and much less formal than when I went to school but everyone seemed to be working with purpose.

I'm working in a school again now and this time I'm actually with the youngsters for at least some of the time. I have nine lessons a week with nine different groups. They are full classes with around thirty pupils in some, a few more in one and a few less in others. I think one of them is a special needs type group though, to be honest, I'm not sure. They do pretty well with the English and they seem keen which is all I need to have a good time.

The school is interesting. It's a very loud place. It's very informal. I'm at one with the dress code in jeans and t shirt and I may be a bit over finicky in having a shave before going to work. At times when the pupils are on the move, in fact every time, it seems a bit chaotic but I've never seen any violence or any bullying other than the sort of fleeting and unthinking attacks that young people unleash on each other without pre meditation and without malevolence. I'm sure it's there but I haven't seen it. I have, on the other hand, noticed lots of acts of kindness and friendship between the students which surprises me.

The youngsters don't show me any respect but they don't show the opposite either. Tens of them greet me every day as I wander the school and some even try to pass the time of day with me.

The noise level in the classrooms is pretty high and the real teachers who hold my hand in the lessons occasionally make someone change seats or leave the room. I presume this means the youngsters must be misbehaving in some way but I never notice. I do notice the ones who don't participate at all though. There are several who just stare at their shoes or draw elaborate pictures in biro. There seems to be no expectation that they join in at any level.

The academy, the afternoon sessions are a completely different kettle of fish. These are paid for private lessons. Most of the youngsters are there because their parents believe that English will be good for them. This may well be true but English is less appealing than the park, their friends or Sponge Bob on the telly. I sympathise. They go to school all day, they have homework to do and then they are expected to do more studying. So it's a bit of an uphill struggle and some of the little dears sorely stretch my patience. The adults and older teenagers in the academy are perfectly nice.

One thing I have probably noticed about the Spanish Education is the apparent use of books. In the school my role is to model real English so I am expected to talk and listen. I am not expected to work to any particular scheme or pattern but I get the idea that most courses start at page 1, exercise 1, go on to exercise 2, exercise 3 etc. The youngsters are certainly keen, conditioned maybe, to fill in the gaps in the exercises. In fact it seems much more important to fill in the gaps than understand the language that goes into the spaces. This involves a lot of pencil sharpening, rubbing out and the modern versions of tipp-ex. I was told yesterday that I will be given a timetable for working through the various books - you know the sort of thing. By the end of January you will have completed Unit 4. Apparently parents don't like to see the books that they have paid for not getting filled up with writing, rubber detritus and tipp-ex. Progress can be measured by the number of pages completed.

I'm sure that such an innovative methodology will turn out legions of capable English speakers.