Life in Culebrón

People keep asking me if I'm bored now that I'm retired. I say no. They ask me what I do and I say I don't know. What I do know is that I'm not getting lots of the things done that I mean to get done because I don't have enough time. Probably the thing is that busy means one thing and another. When I visited the UK a few weeks ago I noticed the immediateness of everything. Buying a beer is a plish plash operation. Ask, get, pay, drink or sometimes ask, pay, get, drink. Table service, the Spanish norm, obviously slows things down anyway but even if I order at the bar before sitting it's a much more leisurely process. The format is based on trust not mistrust. Paying, getting someone to take your money, can actually be a problem at times and I often pay at the bar as I leave to speed things up a bit. I reckon it's digital stuff that makes people want to go faster. To watch Hill Street Blues in my youth I waited for the episode each week. Now people watch...

I went to see some old pals in Valencia the other day. They are Britons here in Spain for just a few days. It's Fallas time in Valencia when lots and lots of communities and neighbourhoods construct papier maché type figures (I have no idea what material they actually use) up to maybe 20 metres high (a guess) and then set fire to them. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain and yesterday it was chockablock with people in town for the fiesta. It's quite likely that a lot of the regular inhabitants of Valencia have fled to avoid the disruption that Fallas causes but lots more were dressed up in "traditional" dress. As an aside have you ever wondered why traditional clothes are fixed at some point in the past? Who decided that the quintessential traditional costume in an area was worn in 1876 or 1923? Why not 1976 or 1723? And what if we chose 2016 as the perfect year for a new version of traditional costume? What and how would you choose? Why fix a style anyway...

Pinoso doesn't have traffic lights and parking is free. In Culebrón we don't have much tarmac let alone street names. Yesterday I went for a job interview in Murcia. I hadn't been looking for a new job it's just that a job website I'm signed up to sends me offers matched against keywords. From time to time I apply for something that looks interesting. Like being a tourist guide. But jobs are in short supply in Spain at the moment and I never get any sort of response. There's no effort to applying though, just push a button and my CV wings its way to wherever. I never bother with a covering letter. I'm not expecting to get an interview so I don't put any effort into the process. There was effort in writing the original CV of course and every now and then I update it but it's low maintenance. So the surprise was that the firm came straight back to me after one of these occasional button pushes. It was for English teaching of course. The on...

We have a Tom Tom. Excellent little device for getting you to somewhere and getting you away again. It does mean though that I have even less idea about where I'm going and where I've been. The machine just tells me to do this or that and I do. One disadvantage of allowing the device to take you to a place in Spain is that lots of the streets in the old town centres look like the ones in the photos. Narrow and with difficult angles. Tom doesn't worry too much about road widths and it's possible to find yourself in a street with a nearly impossible right angled turn. Scrapes along the walls show that other people have found it tricky too. Nowadays of course roads are built with modern traffic in mind and they are perfectly navigable. I have this theory though that to compensate the designers of underground car parks have mimicked the labyrinthine design of the old Spanish town centres. Many underground car parks have huge pillars in strange places, a bizarre layou...

The toilets at Beeston YMCA used to get vandalised a lot in March. My caretaker had a theory. Winter should be over, Spring tantalises us - snowdrops, daffs and the occasional day when the sun shines but then, bang, freezing cold, driving rain - winter all over again. The youngsters didn't think it was fair, they'd been cooped up too long and they took it out on the toilets. I think that same effect is why I haven't been writing blog pieces. We're waiting for something to change. So this is a rather contrived entry. And it's too long. Our house is in Culebrón in Alicante and our rented flat is in Cartagena in Murcia. Some 110kms or 90 minutes journey time separates the two. We do the journey frequently coming back to Culebrón as often as we can mainly so the cat can have a bit of a run around and murder smaller animals. So, down our track and on to the twin carriageway road up to Pinoso hedged in by vines, almonds and solar panels. Into town, into Pinoso. At 7...

The rights and wrongs of running cars in Spain, originally registered on foreign plates, is one of the staples of the many expat Internet bulletin boards. Whatever the legal technicalities the idea is pretty simple. If you live in Spain your car should have Spanish plates, Spanish insurance and the rest whilst if, for instance, you live in the UK your motor should have UK plates, tax, insurance and safety checks. Living here means you spend more than 183 days of the year in Spain. A Swedish chum who lives in Pinoso was pulled over at a police checkpoint a couple of weeks ago. Her car, which was running on Swedish plates, was briefly impounded until she was able to register the vehicle on temporary "tourist" plates. Now she is going through the process of re-registering on Spanish plates. The police told her they were having a bit of a blitz on foreign cars and that there would be no fine (I can't remember whether she said that could have been two or three thousand euros...