Life in Culebrón

I bought a brush cutter the other week. One of those petrol-driven machines for hacking down long grass. I got it from the ironmongers next to Delia’s Chinese Bazaar in Pinoso, and, while I was there, I plucked up the courage to ask about a very homemade-looking pine wood object that I had noticed on a previous visit. “It’s for splitting olives,” I was told. I know very little about the family who own and run the shop. There was an older man, a woman and a younger man, all of uncertain age, although two of them may have been a couple, as well as a very young girl. I guessed at three generations, but who knows? It was the younger man who unpacked the brush cutter and put fuel in it, just to check that everything worked. He gave me a demonstration of how to start it. I suspect I wouldn’t have received quite the same level of attention at the Leroy Merlin DIY megastore. I’m also fairly sure they wouldn’t have had a machine for splitting olives. I suppose things have changed everywhere in ...

Let's presume you're in Spain and you want a t-shirt or a bikini or a pair of trainers or a new phone. Even with the upheavals in retailing there are still real physical shops where you can go. Most of them will have the majority of their stock on show for you to browse. Occasionally you might have to talk to someone, to get your size in shoes for instance, but most people can do most of their shopping in, Bershka or Carrefour or MediaMarkt and a whole lot more, without speaking. You might need to make some sort of grunting sounds at the till but that's all. It was not always so. Not that long ago shopping in Spain required a conversation. There was a counter and behind it there was someone to ask for whatever you wanted. They showed you things that you may or may not want and may or may not like - it could all become quite complicated. Also shops were pretty specialised. When we first needed electric bulbs for our new house I went to an electrical shop but it turned out I ...