Over the weekend it was sunny

Monday was nice too.

This is a picture of Maggie with our friends John and Claire in a sun dappled restaurant near the village of Tarbena on Sunday.

But now it's pouring down

Horrid day today. It has been raining without let up since last night. But it did make me feel like a real he man driving around in my boss's Land Rover. I was covered in slart but the Landie stayed remarkably clean.

I last drove a Land Rover, on anything like a regular basis, over 25 years ago. The new ones go quicker and stop a bit better but basically they're very much the same vehicle.

Little gifts

We cat owners get used to dealing with disembowelled, beheaded and otherwise mutilated corpses left as offerings by our cuddly pets.

In the UK we were often amazed how our arthritic cat, Mary, could not only capture a pigeon but drag it back through the cat flap before tearing the beast limb from limb to leave blood and gore all over the place. Mice too were a classical favourite.

Eduardo is much more agile than Mary and he obviously has different tastes. Yesterday we were greeted by two dead lizards and a large bird's egg. This morning it was a live, but tail less, lizard sitting, stunned, beneath our kitchen table.

There are other Ladies in town

There are all sorts of copies of La Dama de Elche all over Elche town. Here are two with either me or Maggie looking silly beside them.

La Dama de Elche

The Lady of Elche is generally considered to be a 2,500 year old sculpture of a woman wearing an ornate headdress. There is a minority view that it's actually a bloke. Either way it was dug up in a field a mile or so out of Elche town in 1897 by a farmer called Manuel Campello. He flogged it, for a pittance, to a passing French art collector who put it on show in the Louvre.

During the Second World War the pro Fascist Vichy Government did a deal with the Spanish Fascist Dictator, Franco and the statue came back to Spain in 1941 when it was put on display in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

The people of Elche, the Illicitanos, have had a running battle with Madrid ever since demanding that it should be returned to the city where it was found. It did get to the city once, about 30 years ago, when it came from Madrid in a Citroen 2CV with a couple of Guardia Civil on motorbikes as escort.

Anway, the Illicitanos, have got their way and the lady is back in town for the six months up to November as part of the celebrations to mark the 2,000th anniversary of the city's founding. This time it came inside an air conditioned, almost indestructible, box carried by a lorry specially built to shrug off any sort of terrestrial impact and with a full contingent of armed guards.

She is on display in a sealed glass case, inside a small dimly lit room where groups of 15 people at a time are allowed to gaze in wonder. The groups are let in through a system of doors and waiting areas to maintain the air at a constant temperature.

We went to have a look. I wasn't expecting much. There are copies of the statue all over town but I have to say I was impressed. The Lady has presence.

In the lower photo the lady of Elche is the paler one. The blurry one is Maggie.

Gambling

I'm told that Spaniards like to gamble and that, statistically, they pour more money into bandits and lotteries than the rest of their European neighbours. I have no idea if that's actually true or not.

It is true though that lotteries are big business and sometimes big news here. The Christmas State lottery is so well known that I've heard it mentioned on the UK news. Tickets for that, and the other seasonal, extraordinary, lotteries cost a lot of money. A full ticket for the Christmas lottery last year cost 200€ which is why they're sold in tenths, so you only need to fork out 20€ for any particular number. Mind you that means you only win one tenth of any prize the ticket attracts. Normally the State runs a lottery for a couple of days each week.

The ticket above is for the charity ONCE (pronounced on-thay). It's the Spanish equivalent of the RNIB for blind and visually impaired people. ONCE hit on the idea of selling lottery tickets years ago to raise funds. They also used and paid blind people to sell the tickets so there was a double bonus. I think that ONCE is now one of the richest charities in the World and they have truckloads of money; enough to support people with a whole range of disabilities.

The tickets usually cost 1.50€ but the one above is for a weekend draw where the prizes are a bit bigger. If I'd got all five numbers plus the series code I'd have won 72,000€ for the next 25 years, 5 numbers would have netted me 25,000€, 4 numbers win 300€ and so on down to the point where if I'd just been able to match the last number I'd have got my stake back.

The draw is on one of the commercial TV channels each evening. A smiling "hostess" stands behind each one of six machines that drop a numbered ball into a chute. Teeth bared the first young woman announces "Tens of thousands, number 3". The next says "Thousands, number 4" etc until we get to the woman beside machine number six who tells us the winning series, and tells us what the prizes are - she's the chief smiler. The number is read out as thirty four thousand nine hundred and forty five rather than three four nine four five which is a bit of a test of my Spanish when I hear the number on the radio.

I've maybe bought five tickets in my life. They have all had the same numbers - losing ones.

Just in case you missed it

Barca beat Arsenal as I'm sure you know. During the match the roads were deserted and I'm certain the bars were full though we stayed at home to watch. The woman who phoned me with a promotional call about mobile phones apologised before she started her blurb for phoning whilst the footie was on. And when the final whistle blew the fireworks started to fly around Pinoso and, presumably, around every other town and village throughout the length and breadth of Spain. Football is definitely big here.

So Seville took home one European title and Barcelona the other. The "other" Barcelona team, Espanyol, won the Spanish equivalent of the F.A. Cup (or whatever it's called now) so it's been a good year for Spanish football in general and Barcelona in particular.

Summer's a comin'

The weather here in Culebrón has been a bit disappointing the last couple of weeks. It's been warm enough but the days have not been sunny and blue as often as we might have wished. It was definitely better last year. Nonetheless, the last couple have days have been all we could hope for.

I drained our "pool" on Sunday and cleaned out the debris left behind and today I slapped on a coat of nice new pool paint. The pool is really a "balsa", an irrigation tank designed to collect rain water to use on the plants during the summer but with a bit of imagination it's a small pool. Getting it ready is definitely a sign of the summer to come.

The plants are all doing well; round about we have lots of wild flowers colouring the roadside verges all shades of purple, yellow, red and white. I particularly like the poppies. In the garden our trees, figs, cherry, apricot, almond, peach, apple and nispero are all showing signs of the crops to come and the mulberry is causing us grief by dropping slippery, slidy seed pods all over the drive.

On fame

Maggie and I keep trying to learn Spanish and one of the methods we use is an intercambio. It means exchange and the idea is that we meet with a Spaniard or Spaniards who want to improve their English and are happy to help us improve our Spanish. We natter a bit in each language.

Anyway, we met with a young couple yesterday. He, César, works as a technician and cameraman for the local town television station and she, Esther, works as a presenter for a different local radio station, Radio Aspe.

We joked about her being famous as she does the morning 8-9 slot which is, presumably, an important time slot. It's not such a big leap is it. She sits in front of a microphone and says things, talks to people, introduces music etc. and pushes buttons on a computer screen to make the technical stuff happen and she's not very famous at all.

I suppose Terry Wogan does more or less the same thing and he's dead famous, or at least he used to be when I lived in the UK. I suppose all the famous journalists, TV presenters, actors etc. start small and get noticed or not in time.

About as exciting as it gets

I forgot to renew my library book yesterday so I popped in today to return the book ready to pay the overdue fine for one day. "No, it's not overdue said the librarian, I saw you hadn't renewed it so I did it for you." How's that for service?

High Noon, Culebrón

Our village isn't exactly a hotbed of activity. This is the main street at about 2.30pm. True it's a Bank Holiday Monday but it looks like this at rush hour too. We were on our way to get lunch from Eduardo's Restaurant; they're the buildings on the right.