Life in Culebrón

Do you remember Jonathan Richman? At one time it was him and the Modern Lovers - Roadrunner was a hit I think and something like Egyptian Reggae too. I saw a piece in the paper to say he was doing a tour in Spain: in fact he is on at a place called El Garaje de la Tia Maria next Saturday in Murcia which is only about an hour away. That much I got from the paper. Today I did a quick Internet search to find the phone number for the club so I could get a couple of tickets. Plenty of listings information but no phone number. So I rang directory enquiries - no such place listed (mind you directories have still failed to give me a single number in the two years I've lived here so that was no big surprise). I tried again on the Internet. Nothing. I tried contacting Jonathan's record company for help but the email bounced back. I tried to send an email to the Murcian Tourist Offie but their website appears to be down. I think Spain still has a fair way to go on this Information Societ...

When we first came to Pinoso we put our names down on the "padron" - nearly everyone does. The padron is a sort of local authority register, it's an essential piece of paper for sorting out lots and lots of things like healthcare, vehicle registration etc. At the same time I made sure that we registerd to vote. UK citizens can vote in local but not National or European elections here. I maintain the right to both a National and European vote in the UK. I knew that the two processes of padron and voter registration were separate but the woman at the Town Hall who dealt with me didn't seem certain about the process for registering voters even though she found a form from somewhere for me to fill in. Local elections here are coming up in May so I thought it was about time to check that my right to vote was secure. If I weren't on the list then there should still be time to sort it out. When I got to the Town Hall the woman was a bit brusque. "None of you Englis...

The area where we live is famous for a white marble. The quarries work 24 hours a day all year round to cut the stuff. Articulated lorries loaded with one or two big"square" blocks trundle around the roads heading for this or that factory. This is the quarry in Alguena; as you can see it isn't pretty.

I like living in Spain and I ofen find myself defending its institutions and methods against other Britons as they moan about this or that. But I am a bit fed up with the Blood Service. I've been turned down twice by the blood people in Alicante province because they don't trust British blood. The first nurse who turned me down put it so succinctly; "Mad Cows". Nonetheless, I heard an appeal to the immigrant population in Murcia to give blood. Now Pinoso is oly 3kms from the "County" border with Murcia so I thought I may as well ask them if they wanted my blood. I sent them an email about 10 days ago. I expected the answer to be no but I also expected a reply. So far nothing. So my second email was a little less formal. It started "Are you having breakfast, or is it siesta time?" Actually I sent a snotty email to the tourist people in the local town of Petrer too. It said "I have a bit of a problem with the "What's On" calendar ...

Maggie and I went to the nearby town of Monóvar yesterday to have a look at an exhibition of photos. They were taken in the town at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries. The exhibition was in the museum and study centre dedicated to the writer Azorín who was born in Monóvar in 1873. All I knew about Azorín before I went to the museum was that he was a writer and a reviewer who used a pseudonym (his real name was José Augusto Trinidad Martínez Ruiz) and was one of the Generation of 98 which had something to do with the Spanish American war of 1898. By the time I came away from the Museum what I knew about Azorín was that he was a writer and a reviewer who used a pseudonym and was one of the Generation of 98 . It was a nice museum with some interesting furniture, lots of cameras and a fair sized library in the attic. The pictures of Monóvar and its people were cracking, we were made very welcome by the curator and it was free which made it all the better. But, not one...

The river, the Rio Mundo, starts where all the water trickling from a limestone cliff face comes together to form a stream which heads off downhill. Maggie and I went to have a look. That's Maggie on the bridge. The other photo is the waterfall that marks the beginning of the stream. I thought it looked a bit English but then it's a while since I've been in any English woodland

We drove around today and, at one point, I felt a bit sleepy. So we stopped for a few moments. Us apart there wasn't another human made sound to be heard - no cars, planes, radios or children. Just trees, birds, the breeze in the grass - that sort of thing. Spain is one of the noisiest countries in the World but it's not full; so it's dead easy to find a bit of peace and quiet. Lovely

9th October is a Fiesta in the Valencian Community. It was the day, in 1238, when King Jaime I, a Christian King, rode into Valencia having driven the Moors out. 100 years later the town council thought it would be a good idea to have a party to celebrate the centenary of the victory. Somehow this one off party became an annual event marked (as are so many things in Spain) by setting off fireworks, especially rockets. In the 18th Century, after the Spanish War of Succession, celebrating Jaime's victory was banned. As a bit of subversion the local bakers started to make sweets in the shape of the outlawed rockets. The Valencians somehow associated the rocket shaped sweets with male genitalia and, as a bit of an afterthought , they started to make other sweets from marzipan in the shape of the fruits that grow in the province (more fecundity!). A bit of free association and the day became associated with lovers. It became the tradition for men to give the little marzipan sweets, wrap...

The tractors chugging down the side of the road, their trailers loaded with grapes, are less noticeable on the roads this week than they were last. I presume the harvest is nearly done. Just across the track from us are vines that have weeds growing between them which is most unusual. I suspect that the field has been abandoned but nobody remembered to tell the vines so they got on with growing. Odd looking grapes aren't they?

Spain has lots and lots of forest fires. They are always a big summer story with TV coverage of planes and helicopters dropping tons of water on inaccessible forests whilst grimy firefighters struggle against walls of flame. Today, when we came home from town we saw plumes of smoke near our house so we went to have a look. They turned out to be bonfires, made up of post harvest tree cuttings, started by a local farmer. Whilst we were there a couple of blokes rode down the hill on motorbikes. They were from an agency called something like the "Forestry Fire Prevention Service".