Life in Culebrón

Chinese buffets are an example. The first time you go to one it's all a bit confusing. The second time, less so, and by the third time you actually get what you want and in the order you want it. I've heard that crows learn quickly but I think we humans are faster. I've been helping a friend in his meetings with the medical staff at the hospital. If you've read this blog before you will know that I mumble and groan about my Spanish speaking ability all the time. I do speak Spanish though. I gurgle and trip over words, my Yorkshire accent becomes more pronounced and I abandon any clever constructions I may think I know, especially during the first few words, but I usually muddle through. Hospitals are much less easy to understand than Chinese buffets but, crow like, I suspect we'll soon pick it up. Spanish hospitals speak Spanish which adds a layer of difficulty for non Spanish speakers. Not only do you not know which door to wait outside or knock on but it...

I think it would be true to say that the majority of Britons who settle in Spain intend to learn Spanish. The general view seems to be that, after a year or so, we should be getting by followed by a general and constant improvement until we are fluent after maybe four or five years. A longish term project but with immediate gains. That's a vast generalisation. Some people never have any intention of learning Spanish. Others, particularly those who maintain regular and constant relationships with Spaniards through living, working or studying together, may expect to, and actually do, learn the language much faster. There are as many opinions on learning Spanish amongst Britons living here as there are Britons. I often think that a chap who runs a famous English language learning organisation here in Spain has it right. He was talking about English but the idea holds good for Spanish. He maintains that most people learning English get to whatever level they want or need and then f...

My draft tax declaration became available online the other day. Because I was self employed for a while in the 2015 tax year I'm going to need an accountant to sort it out but I'm putting off ringing him till my UK tax documentation turns up. Curiosity got the better of me though and I thought I would have a look at the online version to see what the tax office's initial assessment was. Rebate or more to pay? On the first page, more or less in the first line, I noticed that my name was wrong. Although the effect on the printed form looks fine, which is presumably why I've missed it for the past ten years as have various tax offices and accountants, in fact the surnames and first names are mixed up. So they have my name as Jo and my surname as Christopher Thompson. The Jo is because, when I first registered at the Social Security, their database only had room for a forename fourteen characters long so the Christopher John had to be pruned. Heaven knows what Pablo Die...

The British Embassy has a Facebook page called Brits Living in Spain . Lots of their posts are pretty good. Today there was one about applying for a European health card online and true enough there was a simple online form on the Ministry of Employment and Social Security's website for workers and pensioners. I filled it in and sent it off. An email came back to say my address didn't match anything on their database. My address is easy. House number, Culebrón and postcode. Postcodes in Spain identify a town or village. Culebrón is 03658 but the post office told us never to use that as mail would be wrongly sent to the sorting office in Salinas. Better to use 03650 they said. Some organisations have address checking software that matches the village name to the correct postcode and make arbitrary changes. Maybe the Ministry of Employment and Social Security is one of those organisations. So the mistake could be in the postcode. Lots of Spanish internet databases require...

There's nothing going on. A pretty typical Saturday but, lost for anything to write, I hatched a cunning plan. I'd talk about nothing. This plan came to me just after I'd collected the mail and as I washed the car, Maggie's car to be precise. We have a post box on the house but deliveries in the countryside are a bit haphazard. Safer a PO box in the town Post Office. We also have water and space to wash a car at our house in Culebrón. Today I was just being lazy. For many Spaniards though the Sunday morning car wash ritual, beloved of so much of suburban Britain, is unrealisable. Most people here, after all, live in flats, not everybody, but the majority. So getting a bucket of water to your car isn't easy. Anyway several towns have local bye-laws prohibiting street car washing. Pinnoso being a typical example. This means that there are lots of car washing bays in petrol stations all over Spain. In contrast to the UK where I remember that the tunnel wash with...

Recently I have had a bit of a spate of sending Mr Angry letters - well emails - to various organisations in Spain. Generally they have been specific complaints. Problems with the operation of a bank website or some problem with bill payments for instance I think Barclays, for their Spanish Barclaycard, have an almost foolproof system. I sent an email to ask a general question about the functioning of their redesigned website. They sent me a guffy response telling me that they were unable to respond to an open email for reasons of security and that I should phone customer services. By return I composed a long and snotty email telling them what I thought about their customer service via email. I got exactly the same response as to my initial message. Hmm, I thought. I sent another email wishing them a pleasant day. They told me that they were unable to respond to an open email for reasons of security and that I should phone customer services. That's a great trick. Give the imp...

This is another in my series of moans about Spanish websites. We booked a couple of days away with the Castilla la Mancha tourist website. I booked and paid online without any difficulty. I got a confirmation of the purchase by email. The next working day a courier turned up with the voucher and a really well presented booklet. I was well impressed; the website had worked, the organisation seemed efficient. The package contained a voucher which can be exchanged for a series "weekend" breaks. I could either ring or send a request by email. So, for the usual reason of avoiding a phone conversation, I sent an email. The next evening I got one of those "This is an automatically generated message, delivery of your message has been delayed, you do not need to do anything, we will try to resend the messsage." I checked the email address and I even replied to the email that they had sent me as a foolproof way of getting the address right. I've just had another ...