Life in Culebrón

I have a hunch that a Spanish general election is in the offing. It’s not because of the number of corruption cases hovering around the governing Socialist Party. It’s not because Junts per Catalunya has recently announced that the government hasn’t kept its promises and they can no longer be expected to support its initiatives. It’s not even because anyone has muttered about a motion of no confidence — nothing like that. No, my suspicion comes from something much slighter: Pedro Sánchez popped into the Radio 3 programme Generación Ya last week. Radio 3, for the uninitiated, is the culture station of Spain’s state broadcaster, RTVE, Radio Televisión España, one of the radio stations that together form RNE, Radio Nacional de España. It’s nothing like the BBC’s Radio 3; the Spanish equivalent for classical music would be Radio Clásica. Radio 3’s natural habitat is contemporary music — rock, pop, indie, electronic, dance, and plenty that slips between the descriptive cracks. An eclectic...

One of the reasons our water heater stopped working was that water was coming down the chimney and soaking the electrics and electronics. We've had lots of torrential rain recently and, the other evening, at around half past midnight the chimney began to drip again. I shimmied up onto the roof and covered the chimney with a plastic bag. The chimney has a hat like cover but it doesn't seem able to keep out the rain when it comes down in bucket-loads. The next morning I was back on the roof to cobble together a wider brimmed hat. I described the repair as Heath Robinson to someone on Twitter. For those of you who don't know William Heath Robinson (1872 – 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives. Heath Robinson is a part of my linguistic armoury just like crikey, whoops a daisy and wide boy. Old fashioned words. I've been away from the UK for a while now and Spain...