Life in Culebrón

I'm back in Culebrón for the weekend. Before I left La Unión I checked the State Weather Service to see whether I would need a wooly or not. After all Culebrón is at nearly 600 metres. I was a bit undecided - daytime temperatures have been fine, sunny and clear with maximums of around 27º/28ºC most of the week. Minimums though were a little scary. It got as low as 10ºC on Wednesday and it rained. I decided against a jumper though, I have some in Culebrón anyway, and I stuck to packing T shirts. Mind you, around 7pm this evening I decided it was a bit chilly and I dug out an old cardigan and closed the doors. It's on the cards. The clocks go back this weekend. It'll be dark around 7pm and we can look forward to a gradual worsening until the depths of December when it will be dark by 6pm. As I was driving to work the other morning I realised that trees were shedding their leaves and as I sat outside a bar the other morning around 9am I wished I'd chosen a long sleev...

Usually coming home to Culebrón for the weekend is something to look forward to. Not this time. No, coming back to Culebrón today was a horrid journey for a horrid purpose. I was bringing Eddie the cat home to bury him. On Monday evening he left the flat in La Unión to enjoy a bit of freedom outdoors. He'd done the same thing several evenings on the trot usually whilst I had an after work cup of tea and a sit down. I went to bring him in, maybe an hour and a half later, at around one in the morning. I found him lying on the ground, unmarked, but quite obviously dead. Most likely it was a car, which seems incredible given the quietness of the streets, but dead he was. Eduardo had been with us since July 2005 when he was tiny. He could be funny, he was always clever and at times he could be a right pain in the backside. Now he's buried besides the nispero tree in the garden in Culebrón. My life will be substantially poorer without him.

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I'm sometimes a little scathing about our attitude to Spain and our failure to integrate. We British are a pretty big immigrant group in Spain but unlike the other groups who generally have to use Spanish to survive we don't. English is so all pervasive that we can get by. It's possible to keep well away from the mainstream of Spanish life by reading a British newspaper, watching British TV and living a British life surrounded by Spain. We're also generally pretty rich. I don't mean that everyone lives the life of Reilly but, unlike the majority of Ecuadorians or Moroccans, many of us have sufficient money to live a reasonably comfortable life without having to work. Plenty of us do work and plenty of us are strapped for cash at times but generally, and generalisations are generally untrue, our wealth keeps us out of the labour market and so away from the integration that comes with working life. Where there are largish British populations other Britons set up...

Unless I suddenly flee the country or unless I have a violent argument with my new landlady I expect to become a resident of La Unión next week. Yesterday I handed over the fee to the estate agent for introducing me to my new flat and next Tuesday I will meet my new landlady and hand over a month's rent and the breakage deposit. When the agent told me that the landlady wanted to see my wage slips I said that I would like to see her wage slips too and asked that he pass on that message to her. It's obvious enough why she wants to see my wage slips. I'm a risk for her. She lets me into her house and, like all tenants, once I'm in I'm difficult to get out. She doesn't know if I'm the sort of person who will pay my bills or not. She doesn't know if I will smash up her furniture or play loud reggae music at 3am to amuse the neighbours. Wage slips don't actually prove anything of course. Richer people than me like reggae and don't pay bills. Past...

I keep a diary. I have ever since I was 14. At the bottom of each page I note the weather for the day. In most of July and August it has been a pretty monotonous entry. It reads - sunny and warm - high 35ºC low 19ºC - well more or less, sometimes a bit warmer sometimes a bit cooler. I don't write sunny and hot till it gets over 40ºC and it hasn't done that in Culebrón all summer. These last few days though all that has changed - cloudy, overcast and at times torrential rain. Maximum around 28/29ºC. The reason of course is that August is nearly over and there is a remarkable concurrence between the calendar and the weather here in Spain that I simply don't remember experiencing when I lived in the UK. Summer is over in other ways too. Maggie is off to Qatar tomorrow so I will be left all alone in Spain for at least the year of her initial contract. I was due to start work again on Monday but there has been a bit of a cock up with my holiday pay so I'm not going to ...

I write articles for a magazine called TIM . I was writing one this afternoon and I used a quote from the Bogart/Bacall film To Have and Have Not. "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." Maybe it's just me but I think that quotes from films are a part of everyday conversation. Do you recognise these? "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," "Show me the money!", "May the Force be with you." Maybe you don't but "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." These quotes are all from foreign films. Movies made by Hollywood. They are not British films made at Ealing or Elstree. The first time I went to the United States I had great difficulty communicating, the difference between scotch and whisky was the first flashpoint but there were others. It was GBS who said, "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language" but the...

Apparently, on average, we Pinoseros - the population of Pinoso - produce 500 kilos of rubbish each year. Of that just 28 kilos is recycled. Rubbish collection isn't done on an individual basis as in the UK. Instead there are big rubbish bins placed at strategic positions in the villages, towns, cities and throughout the countryside. Individual householders have to carry their household rubbish to the bins. Collection in the towns is usually every night whilst in Culebrón collection is twice per week. There are recycling bins too. Generally it's green for glass, blue for paper and cardboard and yellow for containers. There isn't discrimination within those three categories so the empty shampoo bottles, the tetrapaks and pop cans all go in the yellow container. Green, blue, clear and brown glass all go in the green container. I'm told that people have jobs separating the different classes of waste but any time I've ever talked to Spaniards about this the majo...

Tangible World Heritage sites, on the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization list, include places like the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian Pyramids or, in the UK, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, The Ironbridge Gorge and the old maritime parts of Liverpool. Spain has lots and lots of sites with forty four all together putting it third in the world ranking behind China and Italy. But not all heritage is "bricks and mortar" - heritage also includes cultural traditions. A good British example might be pantomime although it seems, from a bit of Googling, as though the UK has not yet joined the list of countries which subscribe to the UNESCO definition of what intangible cultural heritage is. Spain has and things like the Human Towers of Catalunya, Flamenco and the Whistling Language of the island of Gomera in the Canaries are all there. The Elche Mystery play, or in the local Valencian language el Misteri d' Elx, was given the staus of  Intangible Cultural He...

I'm not much of a dancer. I don't care for it anyway but then I hurt my hip dancing in 1973 so there was a bit of a hiatus till I tried it again. That must have been the mid 90s. I hurt myself again then though I can't really blame the dancing. I was so drunk that I was a tad unsteady and I cracked my head on the wall when I was in the urinal. I didn't notice at the time but Maggie was apparently put off dancing by the trickle of blood running down my forehead. Anyway I don't dance. So last night at around 2am I was the only person left seated at the big long table where we'd just eaten. Several people tried to persuade me to dance. I said no, I always say no. Looking at my actions from the outside I must be a bit of a party pooper. I never dance, never sing, never get involved in the hilarious games. Stand offish. I'm better when I've been drinking but I had to drive last night so there was no liquid help to hand. The events leading up to the non ...