Life in Culebrón

My mum says that the adverts on the telly, the ones where dogs are tied to lamp posts on roundabouts and left to die and suchlike really upset her. I don't see those sorts of adverts on the main commercial channels here. They may be on but, if they are, they keep them away from prime time. I do see the ads from time to time on the lesser watched channels - the ones that show endless reruns of CSI and Elementary, Mexican soaps or that one which follows a giant road train as it trundles across Australia. I suspect that the TV chains aren't that keen on replacing the glossy bodies of lucrative perfume adverts with others that shows real people in distress or it could be a simple price thing. Either way the charity ads turn up on the channels with less audience. I have a lot of time for the doctors of Médicos Sin Fronteras going head to head with the Ebola in the Congo, for Open Arms plucking people from toy boats adrift in the Mediterranean and for the Red Cross turni...

Weeds are my speciality. Other people may major in roses or gladioli or even alpine perennials but I do weeds. Our garden consists principally of fruit trees, ivy and weeds. In good Mediterranean fashion we have a lot of bare earth but keeping it bare is a year round job. Rather than imagining that I am exterminating Martians as I hoe, (which I don't think has any relation to the word pair of hoeing and twerking), I amuse myself by listening to things on some wonderful, noise reducing, earphones that I bought from Amazon a couple of Black Fridays ago. My listening fare varies but I often download Documentos, a documentary programme, from the radio. I like the Selector too, a weekly bilingual update on New British Music. There are also a couple of language learning podcasts that I generally listen to each week. I sometimes listen as I cook too but gardening is favourite. Today I was listening to Notes in Spanish. I've mentioned Ben and Marina's podcast before. I usually ...

Everyone knows that Brits in Spain wear socks with sandals, go bright red in the sun and swill beer. One of those conversational topics, designed generally to use comparatives in English, with students is about countries. We always agree that one difference is on the Tube. In London everyone keeps to themselves, reading or simply looking grim faced. In Madrid on the other hand the babble between passengers is drowned out only by the occasional impromptu musical jam session. I was in Madrid the last couple of days and I'm sad to report that everyone on the metro is now glued to their mobile phones. For business suits and skaters alike their thumbs are dancing across screens catching or killing things. Earphones are everywhere to block out the surrounding world. Mobile phones, the great leveller. Madrid looked very green too. Trees all over the place and that's without going anywhere near the Retiro. Busy of course but then, if you lived in Culebrón, most places would seem bu...

Maggie needed a new mobile phone. She lost her old number as a product of the house move back to Culebrón from Cartagena. We cobbled together a solution but when her HTC phone, which she has never taken to, started to have software problems she decided it was time to get a shiny new phone and  a brand new number. The range of offers was bewildering. Contract or pay as you go. Real or virtual networks. Household names like Vodafone and Orange or newcomers like Pepephone? Eventually the choice was made about which phone and which set up. There was a last minute scramble when the device they used in the Yoigo shop to scan identity documents wouldn't take a British passport. The passport was much thicker than the Spanish ID cards the scanner had been designed to cope with. Maggie's Spanish ID was no good as it didn't have a photo. They managed in the end though. The thing that surprised me was the number. Spanish mobile numbers are nine figures long and begin with 6 whi...