Life in Culebrón

For this post to work you're going to have to pretend that lots of generalisations are true. For instance that a man and a woman living together and caring for a few children is the historically normal family unit or that, through time, women have worked at home while men have worked elsewhere. You can't bridle either at the idea that people in the UK go to work in the morning, have a lunch break and then go home sometime in the early evening; 9 to 5. Likewise, for Spain, we're going to agree that people go to work in the morning, stop work in the early afternoon, start work again in the late afternoon and then go back to work till mid evening. Again, Pitman style, we'll call it 9 to 2 and 5 to 8.30. So, in this generalised world, Britons have a shortish lunch break during the working week which means that they eat their main meal of the day in the evening. Spaniards on the other hand, with a longer midday break, eat their major meal of the day then. This is not to sugg...

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...