Life in Culebrón

The last time we had a Partido Popular (conservative) Mayor in Pinoso, some 14 years ago now, on the hustings, at a public meeting in a bar called the Hub, he lied to me directly in the question and answer session. He promised that the mains drains, about to be laid in El Culebrón, would extend as far as our house. As I said, he lied; we still have a cesspit, a black hole, though we've been paying the drainage charges to Pinoso Town Hall these fourteen years. I'm told that simple cesspits are no longer legal and, should we ever sell the house, we would need to install a septic tank system or — and this seems much better — dig that trench and put in the pipework to connect us to that tantalisingly close main drain. From time to time we order up a lorry to come and suck the gunge (nearly slipped up there) out of the bottom of the pit. Last time, the lorry driver suggested I should start pumping out the liquid part myself, to save money, and to add a bit of texture to the soil of ...

In most Spanish bars the gents is a normal household type toilet. The sort we men leave the seat up on. In some places, like cinemas, shopping centres or motorway service stations there will be stalls and, usually, a row of urinals too. Personally I prefer urinals. Less chance of unintended spillage. My experience though is that Spanish men don't. They choose to use the stalls and a lot of them neglect to lock the door. This can cause a degree of embarrassment from time to time. ¡Uuff; perdón!  I wonder why the preference?

Sorry to be indelicate but imagine we are in the toilet. No, not we, you or I, separately, apart,  in different but similar toilets. The sit down toilet, not the stand up one. This toilet is in Spain and on the wall there is a notice which says "Do not throw the paper in the toilet" - well it says it in Spanish but the translation is good. Now paper, papel, is a bit of a multi purpose word. For instance the car parking tickets are often papeles and you can use it for receipts and other things made from paper. The very first time I saw it I thought ah, they mean paper towels and the like but no, alongside the stool was a wastebasket full of soiled toilet paper. Now Spain is a country blessed with an interminable supply of flies. Unsurprisingly they are attracted by this copious quantity of food. The original concept of  the waste basket isn't particularly pleasant but add in a cloud of flies and it becomes decidedly nasty. For years I presumed that this wa...