Not enough cash

Maggie is due to fly to Blighty tomorrow. She was concerned that the weather may be a problem but no, it's the air traffic controllers.

For the past year the controllers have been a bit disgruntled. Some of them top out a salary of around 900,000€ a year but, as their Union points out, at least half of them only earn around 200,000€ a year. The Government though thought this was a tad too much, especially in light of the proposed privitization of the airports, so they introduced new working conditions which basically set the working hours, before overtime, at 1670 hours per year.

So today, the controllers took their revenge. Lots of them didn't turn up for work and Spanish airspace has been closed down. The timing was perfect, it's a long bank holiday weekend here stretching through till Wednesday so the airports were busy. They are now full of stranded passengers.

The Interior Minister has just been on telly threatening to send in military controllers and the Union has recommended to its members that they turn up for work at 10 this evening but whether they will, whether they'll be able to clear the backlog etc., remains moot.

Poor old Maggie, she's been looking forward to this trip for ages. Fingers crossed.

Saturday update. The flight is cancelled and Maggie can't go to the UK as she planned. As I type she is checking her options for other flights. I feel so sorry for her. She was so looking forward to it.

Meanwhile the Government has declared a State of Alarm (the first time this has happened in Spain since the return to democracy in the 1970s) and is threatening the controllers with legal proceeedings which could lead to gaol terms. Military controllers have also been put into the air traffic control centres and Air Force officers have taken over control of the majority of the flight control centres. Some of the controllers have turned up for work as usual but, apparently, it's very piecemeal.

There was a little note that the controllers are meeting in a motel just outside Madrid and that other guests have been giving them a really tough time.

Glad it's all over

Like Captain Sensible, the residents of El Culebrón were glad it was all over. The biggest cheer of the afternoon came when the Annual General Meeting finally came to an end. The Association was celebrating its tenth birthday. We've been members for five of those. Like all Spanish public meetings it had bordered on chaos with personal attacks and insults thrown into the mix. At one point the chairwoman attempted to re-assert order with a spot of fingers in mouth whistling.

Nothing much was decided except to accept the annual accounts and to agree a small increase in the annual membership fee from 18€ per household per year to 20€. I must have missed the re-election of officers and acceptance of last years minutes amongst the din.

From the accounts it appears that only 21 households actually sign up to the Neighbourhood Association so the 2€ increase is hardly going to make much difference to the annual figures.

When I used to stage AGMs getting anyone there was always the difficulty. The "Vecinos" never have any problem with that because, like any Spanish event, the principal reason for being there was to feed. No problem about the menu either. The two traditional dishes for the area: a rice paella of rabbit and snails and the warming rabbit stew called gazpacho (not the cold soup from Andalucia) as usual. I chose the gazpacho but I ate the breadlike base along with the stew rather than keeping it apart to spread with honey afterwards. I've often been accused of having strange eating habits but spreading honey on stew soaked pastry has always seemed a bit perverse to me. Maggie went for the rice.

Pleasant enough do. We were the only Brits there this year amongst the 60 or so diners and a couple of Spanish acquaintances actually made sure we sat with them which was a pleasant change. Normally we end up being pushed right to the edge of things. The conversation didn't exactly flow but we held our own.

Tu vista favorita

For the past eleven weeks I've been watching a programme on Spanish telly called "Your favourite view." The format is simple; forty celebs, walked us through their favourite area of Spain, usually the area where they had grown up. To add a bit of spice the TV company hired a helicopter to overfly and film the chosen areas. Four views each week, a vote by text message and at the start of the next programme the winner of the last programme was announced. Spectacular views but basically standard stuff.

Tonight was the final. The ten chosen views were to do battle in a live show. The presenter, who has anchored the programme over the last ten weeks, had changed out of her habitual  red anorak and stripy T shirt and was dressed in a military style jacket and spike heeled fetish boots. The setting was the helicopter hangar. No audience, just the presenter.

Voting was only possible via the TV company's website. The cumulative vote was shown throughout the show so it soon became pretty obvious which views weren't in the running. Nonetheless, as the programme neared its end I went online to vote even though my favourite was in the cat in hell section.

I had to register. I had to wait for an email response. Before I got a response the system closed down. Never mind, Trujillo wsan't going to win anyway. The Cañón del Río Lobos in Soria did. That's it in the snap.

Excellent programme I thought but maybe Cuatro should get a bit of advice on both voting methods and building up the voting tension from those Strictly Come Dancing or X Factor people.

Nothing to do with Culebrón

The photo was in a national newspaper as a competition winner; it's by a woman called Cristina de Middel. I thought it was interesting for two reasons. The first because I thought it was a nice snap but also because I thought it summed up the Spanish attempt at using English. Close but not quite.

Consider that the translations are of one, two and three words - there are several mistakes. Dreadful as our Spanish is we always ask for menus in Castilian because if we get the "translated" version we often simply can't make sense of it.

Roaring log fires

Down in Cartagena it's still a toss up as to whether you will need a jacket to go out. A shirt or a light pullover usually does the job but up here in Culebrón it is distinctly cooler - read cold.

The house is built to keep cool, not warm, and coming inside is like entering an ice box. Normally we pump heat into the living room from a couple of calor gas heaters after we've used the heat setting on the aircon unit to get the room to a reasonable temperature. Yesterday though it was raining too so we decided to stay in and, for the first time this year, we lit the log burner. Warm hands, warm feet - luvverly.

Now there's remarkable

The Mini garage that I bought the car from offered me a cheap deal on servicing for the next three years. It looks like a good offer but the problem is that the garage is in Elche - only 45kms from home in Culebrón but a long way from the weekday home in Cartagena.

I went to talk to the BMW/Mini dealer in Cartagena - could they offer me the same package? After lots of hooing and aahing the answer was no. Par for the course.

I rang the garage in Elche, I explained that I'd like to take up their offer but that it would be a problem getting in to see them to sign the paperwork and make the payment. Was there any chance I could do it by phone or post? I didn't expect them to say yes. This is a country where things are done face to face but the woman on the phone surprised me. "Of course, I'll send you the contract by email, you send it back signed by post or email, transfer the cash to our account and I'll send you the finished paperwork by mail."

There was no particular fuss, the email turned up, I've made the payment, it looks like we have a deal.

Jijona

When I was a lad I fell over regularly and often bumped my head. I have no idea why as I hadn't discovered cheap brandy then. Anyway, my mum would rub the bump with butter. Again I have no idea why unless she was on the brandy herself but I suppose it meant that I got some sort of attention and that made me feel better.

I have no doubt that when lads fell over in the 1950s in Alicante their mums would apply olive oil. The stuff that's to hand. Using whatever is to hand happens all over the World.

In Jijona which is in the hills behind Alicante they have a lot of almond trees and hens and bees. The result is that the town is famous for a sort of nougat called turrón which is made from almonds, eggs and honey. There are two traditional types. The tooth breaking variety has whole almonds set in a brittle mass of eggs and honey whilst the soft one, that drips oil, the has the almonds reduced to a paste along with eggs and honey plus extra almond oil. Turrón and Christmas are inseperable in Spain.

It was a nice sunny day today and a Sunday afternoon drive seemed like just the ticket. We set off for Alcoy after seeing a programme on the telly last night extolling the virtues of the countryside around there. When we passed the sign for Jijona we changed our plan as neither of us had ever been there. We expected to find the town bustling with people buying in stocks of Christmas turrón but instead the place seemed to have been abandoned and it took us a long time to find an open bar never mind a turrón seller.

I suppose we'll just have to be satisfied with getting our turrón from the local supermarket like every other year.

Getting a taste

Sometime back in the summer Maggie heard about a winery and restaurant very close to the town of Yecla and, consequently, close to us. Now this is Maggie's idea of the perfect trip out. So we went to get lunch. For some reason, I now forget, it was closed. Elephant like this little excursion has been lurking in the back of Maggie's mind. Today was the day to act.

Smart sort of place. The bodega is a big, low looking, modern building surrounded by vineyards. The restaurant is upstairs. Enormous windows with a view to the hills beyond, clean modern look, lots of wood, good sized tables, crisp white linen. The sort of restaurant where they don't leave the wine or bread on the table.

The menu was full of the Spanish equivalents of all those compotes, drizzles and terrines - lots of things that sounded dead interesting. We couldn't decide. So we took the easy way out and went for the "menú degustación." Basically these menus are an opportunity to taste a range of things from the restaurant's range but in reduced portions. I think it was four starters, two mains and a couple of puddings, two bottles of wine plus water, bread and coffee. At 35€ not exactly cheap but rather nice with all that over the left shoulder service and what not. Some things weren't detailed on the menu, "Were those flowers that we just ate?" "No sir, they were artichokes frozen so that they could be cut into wafer thin slices and then deep fried." Crikey.

It's only the second time that we've tried one of these tasting menus and both times the restaurants have been real winners. So, the next time you're in our neck of the woods I'd suggest you give them a go.

Nighttime stealth

Being old, getting a good night's sleep is a bit of a problem. We recently bought a new, expensive matress, one of those memory foam jobs or as they are call them here viscoelasticas. It was like a solid lump of earth with absolutely no give in it. A recipe for aches and pains. It seemed to be worse for Maggie than me but neither of us was happy.

Working has one big advantage over not working. I get paid. With this new found wealth I decided to buy another matress but Maggie had already made it clear that she wasn't happy with simply wasting the money we'd paid on the new viscoelastica. She was for toughing it out.

Cowardice and stealth seemed to be the order of the day. So I arranged with my old boss to buy another matress, a mix of springs and memory foam, at cost price. Delivery became a little complicated but I found someone with a van and I spirited the new matress into the house whilst Maggie was out. The new matress to our bed, the old but new matress to the guest bedroom and the now redundant guest matress to the garage - carefully stored should it need to be brought out of retirement.

Maggie didn't notice the change as she went to bed. This morning she complained of aching bones.

I suspect that the conclusion to this story will not be to my credit.

On the doorstep but new to me

There's a programme on the telly here called Cuéntame como pasó which has followed the story of a family through the Franco years and into the dawn of the new democracy. Two of the actors from the show have been eating their way around Spain on another TV programme. This week they were in Alicante our home province.

In Elda the screen brothers went to an, apparently, famous restaurant called La Sirena. I'd never heard of it but we checked it out today. There it was only a handful of metres from the bus station that Maggie and I used several times on our trips to and from Ciudad Rodrigo. It looks promising - crisp and modern, definitely worth a try.

The lads also popped into a chocolate shop called Torreblanca which (according to lots of web reviews) is the best chocolate shop in Spain. The bloke who owns it made the cake for the last big Royal Wedding. I'd never heard of it even though it's just 25 minutes from our front door. We bought a few cakey chocolatey things there this afternoon which I can still taste as I type this entry. I thought they were good without being exceptional. Maybe some of the 3€ a throw was because they came in a nice gold box with an interesting typeface!

Then there's the ice cream. Helado de Mantecado for which Santa Pola is, again apparently, famous. Now Maggie and I lived in Santa Pola for six or seven months. We never tried this ice cream. One of our pals has lived in the town for nearly eight years. I texted him today - "Where do you get this ice cream?" I asked - "New one on me," he said, "I'll investigate."

In the process of my Internet searches for information about restaurants, chocolates and ice cream I came across a review of a restaurant in the next village down the road, Chinorlet. We went to the Chinorlet Fiesta in August and we saw in the New Year in the village yet we didn't know this restaurant existed.

Do you reckon it's a product of being in a foreign land, is it hype or do we just go around with our ears and eyes closed?

A sort of Foxtrot

The Post Office sent me a text message to say that there was something I needed to sign for waiting in our PO Box. Usually this is good news, often something ordered from Amazon. But we weren't expecting anything and a letter or packet that needs to be signed for can be bad too - a traffic fine, a tax demand.

Over the counter it looked official, bad, but then I realised that it was for a friend who had used our PO box number as a temporary measure when he was between homes. I was relieved.

As far as I know when non residents, and our friend still maintains his UK residence, sell a house a percentage of the selling fee is held back to cover the tax payable on the sale by the notary who handles the transaction. The Land Registry people eventually arrive at the official figure and then either ask for more cash or pay back the difference. We guessed that was what the paperwork was about as well as formalising the land registry entry in the new names. It may have been something completely different though because without a dictionary to deal with the technical and archaic language used in official documents we couldn't be sure.

What I thought was interesting and so Spanish was that the couple involved "completed" on the house nearly four years ago. All that time to process the sale. Even more Spanish was that the couple had 10 days to appeal the ruling.

Slow, slow, quick quick, slow.