Life in Culebrón

Lumi, Elena and José Antionio were most amused. We were in the Culebrón village hall and I'd just asked if the collective name for people from Culebrón were Culebronista. They put me right, I'd be a Culebronero. The Spaniards told me that the -ista ending was usually for supporters of something. I thought Culebronistas sounded good but I was probably thinking about the Nicaraguan Sandinistas from the time when Dani Ortega was still a bit of a hero and not the raving despot that he is nowadays. You're going to have to stick with me now for a bit of Spanish grammar. I'll try to keep it brief. Spanish has two genders for its words so Lumi, being female, would be a Culebonera and Jose Antonio, being male, would be a Culebronero. In the language sense sex and gender don't always match. Of the many Spanish slang words for penis at least four I know are, grammatically, feminine - picha, polla, chorra and verga - while a couple of the many slang words for a vagina are coño ...

When I was young I was confused about many things. One of them was the Martini adverts. There were beautiful people Martini drinkers in floaty fabrics with red or white coloured drinks and sunny backdrops. Then there were Hollywood Martini drinkers at posh parties in elegant frocks and dinner jackets with conical cocktail glasses and swizzle sticks. It took me years to work out that Martinis and Martini were different things.  Anyway, Martini, the stuff with the bright young things, like Cinzano is just a branded vermouth and, as so often, we Britons think of something Italian when we think of Mediterranean staples. Vermouth is, basically a wine with various herbs, spices, barks and plant extracts added to give it a particular taste. Wikipedia tells me the name originates from the German word wermut which means wormwood and wormwood is used in nearly all vermouth to give it that particular flavour. So, years ago, in a Spanish evening class, the teacher told us that most bars in Spa...

Eating is a bit of a thing in Spain. Not a bit of a thing like it is in South Sudan, not in the sense of needing to eat to avoid dying, but eating for pleasure. It's also a never exhausted topic of conversation. Lunch is the main meal of the day in Spain and cheap set meals, a few euros on each side of 10€, are available all over the place. I know that most Britons living here don't agree with me but I can't remember the last time I had a memorable set menu in that price range. They're fine, some are better than others, most are perfectly pleasant but few, none actually, come to mind as showing much flair. For a bit of cooked sea bass or steak the set menus are incredible value. The ones I enjoy most though are the restaurants that have set meals costing something like 25 to 35€. Its enough money for the restaurants to be creative but, when the bill comes, I don't wonder about the sanity of just having spent a new mobile phone's worth of cash on something that w...

I've lived in houses with gardens before - but small gardens, a bit of earth to turn, a patch of grass to mow. Nothing much to speak of. Gardens that were more useful as places to park the bike or to hang the washing than to grow gladioli or fennel. Nowadays we have a biggish garden, plenty of space to build a pool for instance. There may even be enough space for a tennis court. Or not. I don't really know how big a tennis court is. The last time I played tennis was a while ago, when those yellow balls were a bit of a novelty, when one of my closest pals was called Spud and when I used a bike as my form of transport.  The style of garden is bare earth, to help prevent scrub fires, with quite a lot of fruit trees and a few bushes and plants. I don't know what most of them are called but I do know that we have olive, quince, peach, apple, pomegranate, fig, loquat, almond and cherry trees as well as various grape vines and a healthy looking passion fruit that has spread all al...

I've been trying to learn Spanish for ages, long before we got here 17 years ago. In fact I started my first Spanish class in 1983. I'm talking about evening classes, maybe an hour or two per week for a ten week term. It takes a long time to clock up the hours especially when you consider that you're usually in a class with maybe a dozen other people. The important thing about the classes was the routine, the commitment. Doing a class meant homework exercises, grinding through verb tables and learning lists of vocabulary. However many times someone tries to sell you a course that they promise will teach you Spanish (or any other language) in a few hours just consider this. Imagine you want to learn a poem or a literary quote in your native language. You'll know the words and you'll know the pronunciation, all you have to do is remember the words in the correct order. How long do you reckon it might take? It used to take me ages to learn those "O" level Sha...

The other day I rang someone who I've been friends with for nearly 50 years. We talked about trees, we talked about fish dying in the Mar Menor and we talked about when organic veg aren't really organic veg. We also talked about language learning. It was that conversation which prompted me to write this two part blog. My pal, who has been learning German for years, recommended a YouTube series called Easy - Easy German in her case and Easy Spanish in mine. I watched the video and thought crikey, if that's easy my Spanish is worse than I thought. Here's the link if you're interested.   The particular episode talked about things not to do in Spain. Here's the list. 1 Never turn up on time - the example they use in the video is a party. Spaniards do turn up on time for lots of things but the basic notion is good. 2 Never go to the shops between 2 and 5 in the afternoon. Again lots of town centre shops and supermarkets open in the afternoon but the basic premise is ...

Just after lunch a convoy of three tractors passed our front gate. They had the folding umbrella type contraptions on the back that are used to collect almonds. The tractor reverses up to the tree, grabs the tree trunk using some hydraulic thingummy and then fans out the expanse of plastic tarpaulin type material to surround the tree. With the tree grabbed and the material in place the tree is given a good shaking and the almonds fall into the fan of material and roll tractorwards to a collecting chamber. When the collector is full the nuts are usually transferred to a trailer or a lorry and taken off for processing. It just so happens that there is quite a large nut processing factory (I originally wrote processing plant but I thought that may lead to confusion) in Pinoso. On the smaller plots, you'll often see a family group going at an almond or olive tree with sticks with a big sheet or net spread out under the tree to catch the falling fruit.  The tractor driver I talked to to...

Back in April I suspected that I needed a small surgical operation so I made a doctor's appointment. It was a telephone appointment and my doctor said she needed to see me to make a diagnosis. So we met. She agreed with my self diagnosis and she referred me to a surgeon. That's how the family doctors work here in Spain. They basically act as gatekeepers, dealing only with common ailments, passing patients on for anything at all out of the ordinary. So they don't remove warts themselves, they confirm that you have a wart and send you on to someone somewhere who will remove the wart. Often the second doctor, the specialist doctor, confirms the diagnosis of the first doctor and then sets the wheels in process for whatever the next step is. You say my throat hurts, the GP sends you to the ear, nose and throat department where an ear nose and throat doctor tells you that you have polyps (if you have). You are then given another appointment somewhere where someone will cut them o...

Since Christmas we've been trying to lose weight by following some ancient meal plan from the long defunct Closer magazine, a plan that is, almost certainly, now scientifically discredited. We have both lost a fair bit of weight though. Lunch still usually comes from those diet sheet recipes but we're nowhere near as strict and disciplined as we were during the first couple of months. Nowadays we go out for meals whenever we want and I drink beer in bars and if they put crisps on the table I'll wolf them down. If anyone can explain to me how it takes a week of carefully controlled eating to lose a few hundred grammes and just a single chocolate biscuit to regain a kilo I'd be pleased to know. Today's diet meal recipe was new. I'd not tried it because it involves aubergine and courgette. I don't really care for either. The recipe also called for a splash of chilli and tomato sauce. There was none in the cupboard and I knew it was hopeless to go and see if it ...

We are going to have a cut down version of the Pinoso Fiestas next week. Less than usual but much better than nothing. Well done Pinoso! The various conditions to keep the concert type events safe means that the audience for any events has to be controlled and that involves tickets. Most of the events are free so the tickets are called invitations but, nonetheless, you need to have one in your hand to get to see or hear the event. We've had to get the same sort of thing for months, and nearly years, now at lots of venues but mostly the bookings have been possible online. That wasn't the case for Pinoso.  As well as the fiesta events next week there was a concert by a local choir yesterday and the town band have a concert today. I got the band tickets by going to their office one afternoon. A bit of a trek but easy enough. I went to ask at the Cultural Centre about the choir concerts at the beginning of the month and I was told I was too early. I tried, unsuccessfully, on two se...