Life in Culebrón

I'm up to three sessions a week now with the online Spanish learning - a bloke in Alicante, another in Manresa in Cataluña and a woman somewhere that's really Barcelona but isn't actually Barcelona - like Croydon isn't London. The hour long sessions are just conversation so none of us have to do any prep. The conversations go hither and thither; we've talked about squatters, the pluses and minuses of vanguard cooking, the differences between elections and political representation in the UK and Spain and other similar topics. I often trip over words and pronunciation but, generally, the conversation flows well enough and I often surprise myself with the obscure vocabulary that I seem to be able to dredge from the deep corners of my rapidly decaying brain. The tutors are uniformly complimentary but I've noticed that I keep my end of the conversations simple. I'm hoping that it will become more complicated with the amount of time that I'm now spending on...

If I'm going to blog anything this week it has to be Covid again so if you're fed up with Covid stop now.   Pinoso is a small town. Just under 8,000 inhabitants. Over the time of the Covid alert there have been 68 cases with 40 of them being reported in the 14 days to 14th September. As it's now the 16th the figures are lagging behind the reality. Today, for instance, there is news of a pupil at one of the local junior schools testing positive so that the whole class is now in quarantine. In the week beginning 10th August there were no reported cases in Pinoso, week beginning the 17th August just 2 cases, 24th 6 cases, 31st 17 cases and the 7th to 13th September 39 cases. The progression is obvious enough. The figure that seems to be being used to compare how bad things are is the number of cases per 100,000. My sums convert 68 cases in a population of 7,966 to 853 in 100,000 with that number having increased by 502 in the last fortnight. The town which borders Pinoso ...

We went to a concert by La Habitación Roja last night. When I bought the tickets, only a week or so ago, the event was scheduled for the Teatro Principal in Alicante - all green velvet and gold leaf. Theatres have, obviously, been hit hard by the Covid thing and one of the reasons I bought the tickets was to do my bit for a local institution. A few days later I got an email to tell me that the venue had been changed to the bailey of the Santa Bárbara Castle in Alicante. Safer they said. Fewer viruses in the open air. The castle in Alicante is on top of a big hill. Although it's a fair drag you can walk (or drive) to the castle on a road that starts from near the Archaeological Museum. On the seaward side you can get to the castle by using a lift that is accessed through a long tunnel. Along with the details for the change of venue the organisers said that the car parks behind the castle would be open and that the lift would be working. Yesterday, a few hours before the concert w...

I maintain an impression that our bit of rural Spain is still quite traditional; a society that repairs things. Just check the roads at the moment with the tractors out for harvest. Most of the small ones look nearly as old as the blokes driving them! Whenever I think of this make do and mend culture I think of my sunglasses. In Cambridge, in 1984, I bought my first pair of Ray Ban Aviators. At the time the company was still Bausch & Lomb and their sunglasses were a superior product. So twenty years later we're new to Culebrón and one of the pad arms came loose on the sunglasses. I went to the local optician to see if the specs could be saved. The optician soldered the piece back in place whilst I waited and charged me nothing. Last year I threw the same sunspecs on the floor and trampled on them. The nose pad came away again. I went back to the same optician. This time she sucked on her teeth, suggested I bought new and only grudgingly sent the Aviators away for repair. They...

Artemio is a heavy set bloke who works for Pinoso Town Hall. Usually he has a big cigar clamped between his teeth. I'd prefer not to commit to giving him an age. He drives a Jeep which, he says, is much better than the Land Rover he used to have but, as you can see from the snap alongside, the Land Rover is still with the team. Artemio's  voice is raspy and, until the second or third sentence, when I tune in, I find him really difficult to understand. Artemio is the bloke you call if there is a water leak out in the street, or in our case, on the track. It's a 24 hour a day service. Should you ever need it the number is 656978410. If the leak is on the domestic side of the water meter then you need a plumber but if the leak is on the other side of the meter you call Artemio. Or rather you call his number. He's in charge of the team and he's not always the person who turns up. Most people expect that when they click the switch on the wall the electric light will co...

I got my new Brexit inspired ID card a while ago. I'm sure you read the blog entry! A chum asked me if I'd help him get one too. Actually I can't help him much in that they won't let two people go in to the foreigner's offices together for some sort of anti Covid procedure. Filling in those forms and standing in queues is all a bit of a pain in the bum so I wasn't exactly overjoyed by the idea but I said yes anyway. That's what friends are for and other cliches.  Then another pal told me that, yesterday in Murcia, when applying for their new card they'd bumped into an official who said that they needed not one but two appointments. One to apply for the card and one for the taking of fingerprints. I'm pretty sure that's not the procedure but, faced with someone who won't let you pass it doesn't really matter how right you are and how wrong they are. The somebody told me they stood their ground and actually got the card. Another example o...

Spain, the nation, has all the safeguards on personal freedoms and rights that you would expect for a modern European democracy. The problem is that it also has lots of "authorities" too. These authorities impose various rules and regulations. Most are sensible enough. Some are stupid. If it's a stupid rule most people just grin and bear it but, from time to time, someone is unhappy enough to go to court. Despite the judges being, generally, old, rich, white men the decision usually comes out on the side of modern rights, freedoms and values in general. Basically stupid rules and procedures get struck down but it can all take a while. Covid though is testing some of those rights to the limit as authority after authority comes up with some sort of bright spark wheeze. We seem to be getting Covid sick again, lots of us. People are dying too but not in the same numbers as earlier this year. As the numbers go up the rules get added to. A local bar had it's live music ca...

I was determined that I was not going to get sucked into more cleaning or gardening or household tasks today. I was going to do a bit of reading and then pop in to town and have a chat with Jesús - not that one, just an ordinary bloke with a moustache.  I had the bright spark idea that I'd dust the cobwebs off the bike and cycle in. When I went in the garage to get the bike there was a lake of water on the floor. Water was dripping down the Dexion shelving that we have there to store things. The main victims of the leak were boxes and boxes of old photos and photo albums. Soggy boxes are difficult to move. Getting a plumber wasn't as smooth a process as I may have hoped but I did get it fixed relatively quickly and the moist victims are sunbathing still. I should have known. Six or seven hours later and I set about returning the refugee objects to their natural home only to find that there is still a pinprick leak spraying water all over another set of cardboard boxes. I am r...

If you need to go to a bank in Spain think about it taking a good part of your morning. You may be lucky. Correct desk. Person not at breakfast. No wait. No complications. I'm sure it will happen one day but even when it's been a relatively problem free run it has seldom taken me less than twenty to thirty minutes. It doesn't matter where it is, as soon as there's a physical or virtual queue it's going to take time. Obviously the Post Office falls into this category. Yesterday I had a package to post. I went to the Post Office. Because the number of people who can be inside the office is limited the queue was in the street. I stayed for a while but after 20 minutes nobody had gone in and nobody had come out. My mask was getting tacky; I gave up. I popped back twice more in the next two hours. The queue was going nowhere. The main man in our post office isn't the sort of person to get flustered. He doesn't hurry. I thought I may be able to sidestep the que...

My Spanish old age pension is paid by the Seguridad Social. The idea is that I get a proportion of my state pension from the UK and a portion from Spain based on my work history in each country. Yesterday the SS sent me a text message to say that there was a message waiting for me on my account page on their website. The message was quite bald. "Your retirement benefit has been cancelled. You can find more information in gestiones" - I don't know how to translate gestiones for you - maybe something like management or processes. In gestiones it said "No steps have been found". I think it may be an error or it may be an unfortunate use of the Spanish verb cancelar. It means cancelled but it means cancelled in both directions and finance language is a bit strange. It seems to be that the accounting viewpoint always reflects the situation of the payer. I'm hoping that when the SS tells me that they have cancelled my benefit they mean that they have cancelled t...