Life in Culebrón

Everyone knows that Germans don't have a sense of humour. Everyone knows that people from the United States are fat, that Jamaicans have dreads and smoke ganja all the time or that we English are very formal and reserved. And everyone knows that those generalisations are all totally untrue. Jada Pinkett Smith is American, Usain Bolt is Jamaican and all those people vomiting on the payments in Magaluf are British. Bear that idea in mind as you read. Here are some things that Spaniards do or don't do. The converse is that somebody else typically does do, or doesn't do, these things. Spanish men don't wear shorts once summer is over and until the summer weather comes back. A warm day in February doesn't count. Spaniards don't put butter on the bread - not on sandwiches and not on the plate to go with the bread roll at table. It is true that, in some parts of Spain, Spaniards put butter on toast, with jam. Spaniards do not drink warm drinks - tea, coffee type drinks...

The wettest April since Noah took to boating according to some news reports. We had Easter tide guests. We were confined to barracks. The Easter parades were cancelled. Sight seeing was off. We presumed the shopping centres would be closed for the bank holidays. We Brits here in Pinoso seem to call bank holidays, Red Letter Days. I presume that's because the holiday dates are printed in red on paper calendars. I'm going to call them bank holidays because that's what I've always called public holidays. National Holidays are the same all over Spain. Most people will not work on those days but that doesn't, necessarily, mean that they will work fewer days in the working year. The Spanish logic is that bank holidays are not actually holidays, they are days when you don't work. So only the extra non working days need to be included in the holiday calendar. If, for instance, a National Holiday falls on a Sunday, like Christmas Day 2016, it will not be shown as a b...

Sleep's a funny thing for we older people. Put me in front of the telly or set me to reading in the garden and I'll soon be snorting away and dribbling onto my shirt. On the other hand staying asleep in bed is a problem. If it's not the bladder or my aching back then I just get bored. So today was quite odd because, when I first looked at my watch it was nearly 10am. That's the day gone I thought. Getting up late on Sunday isn't a venal sin or anything but it does have a big disadvantage in Spain. It basically knocks out any daytime events. Most people know that the Spanish tend to eat late - lunch from around two but maybe as late as four and dinner from maybe nine till around ten thirty. Summer times can be later. I remember reading a Blasco Ibañez (1867-1928) book where the family were preparing a grand lunch for friends and they were planning to eat at twelve thirty. I wondered at the time if the more modern, later, meal times were to do with changes in th...

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 the...