Life in Culebrón

Interesting week this week. Out and about in Spain much more than usual. Last Saturday, the Neighbourhood Association of our village, Culebrón, organised a coach trip to a couple of towns over the Murcia/Alicante border. We went to Cehegín and Bullas. As always with the neighbours, the vecinos, it's the human bit that makes it interesting. I'm not a particularly outgoing or effusive person, but that doesn't mean that, as we waited for the coach to arrive and as people drifted into the agreed setting-off point, there wasn't an awful lot of cheek-kissing, hearty handshakes, backslapping, and a general bonhomie that always makes me grin internally. We got to Cehegín and did our bits of wandering around, looking at museums and churches and whatnot, but the real focus of any outing with Spaniards is the meal. The restaurant that the organisers, María Luisa and Inma I think, had chosen in Bullas was absolutely cracking. There was a busload of us, 50 plus people, and the meal ...

I was a bit worried about Spanish music when we first got here. I was worried that I didn't know any. I suspected that "Viva España" didn't count. After all, one grows up with music. It insidiously surrounds you. It comes at you in shops, on adverts, from the telly, and in films.  I'm bad with music. When the musicians on stage incite the crowd to clap along I'm the only one in the audience out of time. The level of my rhythmic incompetence may be demonstrated by my being barred from using the triangle in my infant school music class; I was relegated to the benches. In secondary school I was beaten when the music teacher, carrying out tests for new members of the school choir, accused me of singing so badly on purpose. I don't remember song lyrics or titles particularly well yet, despite all these failings, I still know hundreds of songs that I never tried to learn. This is perversely opposite to the handful of poems that I've struggled to memorize and...

Ten years ago I saw the Pet Shop Boys at the old SOS 4.8 Festival in Murcia. I expected them to be terrible but they were just the opposite. They really engaged with the audience. At one point Neil was talking to us. He said how much he and Chris had enjoyed sitting in the Plaza Cardenal Beluga, in front of the Cathedral in Murcia, with a drink and a snack. "It's beautiful, isn't it, that Cathedral?" The home crowd roared its approval. He's right though. Whatever you think of its purpose Murcia Cathedral is quite a building. Although the current building was started in 1394 the part you notice first, the frontage or facade, is Baroque in style. To my mind Baroque architecture means that it has lots of twiddly bits just like Baroque music is Handel, Monteverdi and Vivaldi. But, I have a duty to my loyal readership (hello Derek!) to be a bit more specific. Wikipedia tells me that Baroque Architecture is a highly decorative and theatrical style. It began in Italy in ...

If Britons, young Britons especially, still drink tea then "Shall I put the kettle on?" must remain a common question in British households. As long as I can remember, in houses where I have lived, one of the potential answers has been "Well, if you think it will suit you". Just in case you are not a native English speaker the English language uses something called phrasal verbs. To put on is one of them and it has several meanings. Two of the common meanings are to cause a device to operate and to wear. This means that "Should I put on the Television?" and "Should I put on a tie?" have the same basic structure, both make perfect sense, yet the meanings are completely different. The answer to the kettle question is a deliberate confusion of two of those meanings. It's not much of a joke though some of us find it weakly humorous. Strictly Come Dancing is a British TV show. It's a programme where personalities are paired with professional...

As I shaved I was listening to the radio, to the part they call a tertulia, that's the bit where pundits, usually journalists, talk about the latest news. They were talking about inflation and about electric prices. They had some boffin who knew all about the electric market. One little tidbit he dropped in at the end of his section was that every Spanish electric bill has a QR code which leads to a webpage maintained by some sort of Government quango, the "National Energy Commission". By using that code/website, you get a direct comparison between your last bill and the market in general.  To explain it all properly would take pages and pages. It's quite complicated stuff, so I've kept this as short as my ponderous writing style will allow. The Spanish electric market has two sorts of contracts for we household users. One is in the controlled market. The other is in the free market. The controlled price varies from hour to hour. It's an almost incomprehensibl...

Besides perfume and cars there are multiple adverts on Spanish telly for food. Particularly for fast food or franchised food chains - Foster's Hollywood, KFC, Domino's - or for quick to eat food - Casa Tarradellas pizzas, Yatekomo noodles. Now I'm not a discerning diner. I was a big fan of Spam, I like crabsticks and I still buy el Pozo meat products despite seeing the stomach turning documentary on TV. But I have to say that the adverts are putting me off a bit. The food is all so shiny and bathed in red or yellow sauce of dubious parentage. Eating with hands squidged over with sauce appears to be a positive thing. I have a Spanish pal who is very set in his ways. From what I can tell he eats a lot of very traditional Pinoso food. If it's not local then, whether it's at home in a restaurant, he sticks to the tried and tested - grilled meat, stews, rice dishes and the like. I usually meet this friend around 12.30 so, a long hour later, I'm saying goodbye because...

I went to the UK, well England, a few weeks ago. I like England well enough but I don't visit that often. I probably go a little more often than once a year but I usually only stay three or four days. My visit in February was my first since May of last year. Both of my last two visits have been prompted by my mum being less well than usual. It's funny going back. I'm English, I'll always be English and my English is still pretty good - a bit old fashioned maybe but good. My language skills and my cultural knowledge make me feel comfortable in England. I usually know how things are organised, how to behave but if things have changed, or start to go a bit awry, I can ask, I can talk to people, find out what's going. Nonetheless I had, at one point, to hold out a handful of coins and ask the person on the other side of the counter to take the appropriate money. I am, of course, aware that simply using physical money makes me a bit odd but, in the heat of the moment, I ...

This is a piece about days out on the train. As usual I got distracted. If you're not interested in the Spanish railway system skip the next four paragraphs I was told, ages ago, that, where there are twin tracks, Spanish trains "drive" on the left. That is they use the left hand set of rails in relation to the direction they're travelling. The reason, so said my informant, was that the first railways in Spain were built by British engineers and without giving it a second thought the Britons built the system that way around. It turns out that I was lied to. It's partly true in that the first line on the peninsula did use a British Engineer but his line, from Barcelona to Mataró, opened in 1848, ran trains on the right.  As the railways boomed the first big Spanish railway company - MZA - Compañía de los Ferrocarriles de Madrid a Zaragoza y Alicante - bought the Barcelona to Mataró line. They bought the direction of travel too. MZAs big competitor in the pioneering...

I didn't understand much of what she said. Well, maybe half. This drives me bonkers. Nearly 20 years, and I still have trouble understanding a tour guide. Maggie said that it was because of her Murciano accent and the residual noise all around us, maybe, but if the guide had been speaking English, I would have understood everything. Well, more than half anyway. We were doing a coach tour of the floración, the flowering, the blossom on the fruit trees in Cieza. Like lots of places with almonds, cherries, peaches, etc., Cieza makes a bit of a thing about it. They have a big programme from country breakfasts and bike rides to photographic exhibitions, music competitions and visits to lots of local places of interest all tied in to the blossom. I have to be honest and say I usually forget until it's too late. For some reason, Cieza, which is only 45 minutes from Culebrón, isn't one of those places I think of as a likely destination. What I should do, as soon as I see some sort ...

I like to do things, to go places, to get out to Spain. To concerts, to parades, to fairs and fiestas, to restaurants and landmarks, to open days, exhibitions and guided walks. There always seems to be lots going on all over the place. I've never been quite able to decide whether this is because there are a lot of things on offer or because I've got into the habit of hunting them out. It may be a combination of both. It may also be because of where we happen to be based. Pinoso is surrounded by other towns and, as everywhere does things, the cumulative effect is impressive. When we first got here there were a whole load of new cultural experiences to tap into. A lot of the information came from posters. It was both comical and frustrating that the posters often failed to give basic information - when or where - for instance. That's because the posters were a gentle reminder to a local audience. As the event hadn't changed in years, everyone who mattered, the locals, kne...