Life in Culebrón

This is the third in the series about the boring things I do each week, or at least regularly, with my attempt to write in a Spanish angle. We, well the house, has a cesspit. Nothing sophisticated, just a brick-lined hole in the ground. If we were to try and sell the house we'd have to do something about that. Legislation has changed in the years we've lived here. Now we'd either have to put in a decent septic tank or, more likely, dig a big trench to connect our house to the village drain that stops 200 metres from our front door. All the run-off from the washbasins, sink, showers and toilets goes into that cesspit, the black hole, and microorganisms do the rest.  Lots of the toilets in Spanish bars, museums and the like have signs asking you to throw soiled toilet paper into a wastebasket. But, good Lord, we're British - we couldn't do that. What about the stench, what about the flies? No, we whizz the paper down the toilet and flush. On one occasion, that caused ...

Despite knowing that there are a bunch of men knocking things down and building things up outside our living room window it's amazing how many times we've gone to open the door to a building that no longer exists to get the vacuum cleaner! We're a bit unsettled and, probably because of that, things seem to be coming in clumps. The demolition denied us hot water and laundry facilities but, thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, we can now shower and launder. We also had a problem with Maggie's car and it's off the road. There again, someone stepped up and loaned us a motor for a bit. In amongst the general upheaval the heating in our house packed up. It turned out to be a blocked chimney starving the burner of air which is what Maggie had suggested it might be right from the get go! Once the fitter had the burner working again we needed to get a chimney sweep. The bloke who came didn't sound like Dick Van Dyke nor did he have any small boys to s...