Spanish newspapers

When I say Spanish newspapers I really mean El Pais.

Apart from the local rag, El Canfali, published every Friday and obviously written by a journalist who believes there's always a longer and worse word I can only comment on El Pais because it's the only paper I buy.

It's compact, not a broadsheet, and the headlines never dominate the front page. The rather blurred picture of the front page reproduced here is pretty typical. By UK standards it lacks photos and there are several pages of editorial comment and featured writers with no photos at all though they usually put in a political cartoon to break up close spaced text. The standard of photos is high especially on the Sports pages which take up quite a lot of space. The only sport that competes with football (i.e. with Barcelona and Real Madrid) for top billing is Formula 1. Alonso seems to be a bit of a hero.

Articles have a bold first paragraph to encapsualte the main point of the story as they do in the UK but the paragraphs are not quite so punchy and it doesn't seem to be a rule that the verbs have to be active as they nearly always are in the UK. Although my language skills are obviously a bit weak to comment on the literary style the articles seem to be generally well written. Strangely though Spanish newspapers seem to have a tendency to use words that may not be so common in everyday speech. I seem to remember that UK newspapers were good at using common everyday words whereas the Spanish equivalents is to use words that are "only" used by newspapers. Difficult again to translate but in loose translation people fail rather than die and accidents become disasters.

Quite a strange thing by UK standards is that, as a national newspaper, El Pais has a section dedicated to Valencian news. Spain is divided into Autonomies, or Regions, which in turn are generally subdivided into provinces. So we are in the Valencian region in the province of Alicante. We get the Valencian edition of the paper. I presume there's an Andalucian one, a Catalan one, a Basque one etc. This means it acts as a local paper so I can use it to check what's on the local TV or at the nearby cinemas.

The only reason I thought to comment was that one of today's articles roughly translates as "Blair's swansong" and it's about selling peerages, sleaze and Gordon. I find it quite odd how much UK news there is in the Spanish media in general. They must be interested in us as a nation.

Baños de Fortuna

About 30 kilometres from us, in the province of Murcia there is a hot spring resort called the Baños de Fortuna.

Hot, saline water bubbles out of the ground heated to 52ºC. The water is supposed to have therapeutic properties and a tourist trade built up around the hot springs at the beginning of the 20th Century.

The hot water is mixed with cold before it flows into a pool that looks just like any other outdoors swimming pool. The place is a bit down at heel now with a sort of gently fading elegance but it's still an interesting place to stop for a coffee. I suppose you could even have a dip if you were that way inclined.

Embracing nature

The ground between trees in Spain is supposed to look like earth. Apparently the idea is to avoid fires by keeping the ground clear. It is considered very bad form by the locals to let the weeds grow even if they look pretty.





The space between our trees looks like this. So I spent a fair bit of the weekend clearing back weeds and generally sorting out the more boring bits of or garden.







As you can see I have truly embraced nature.

Lirios

My mum tells me that the crocuses and daffs are out in the UK. Maggie tells me these are irises. They're by the side of our drive.

Fancy an exchange?

I mentioned a little while ago that I'd put an ad on the local radio and TV station to see if anyone wanted an "intercambio", an exchange where they get to speak English and I get the opportunity to speak Castilian.

I met with Remedios a few times but then she went and got herself a job so that put paid to our 9am meetings in the coffee bar in the local market. Those were pretty good for me as her English was pretty poor. I know from past experience that the main language becomes that of the person with the strongest second language.

Cesár rang me on the same day as Reme but it had taken till today to actually meet him and even then I had to miss most of my weekly Spanish lesson to do so. He works as a cameraman for the local TV station I advertised on. He knows what pejorative means in English and he asked me how to pronounce Rumplestiltskin. He told me that when he had asked about an exchange with a couple in Dublin they had presumed it was some sort of sex exchange and they ran away. I think we may be going to speak a lot of English together.

And then when I got home tonight, just pouring the milk in my tea, when a chap called Antonio phoned up. Maggie and I are going to meet him on Saturday afternoon.

Even if the Castilian doesn't get better it means we know more people.

How famous is our couch?

I was on the phone to an old friend in the UK tonight. She said nice things about the blog. She also mentioned how rewarding it had been for her to finally see a picture of the couches that we had moaned about not owning for so long.

So here, for all of you, who would like to see a picture of our living room - here it is. It's a dodgy photo but it's the only one with the new curtains, lampshades and rug!

Smashing up the house: Part II

I got the silicone so I could fasten the glass in. Unfortunately I stood on the piece of glass and smashed it. I sorted it in the end though.

I sorted the doors too. Two hours of filing, which seems to have damaged my hand quite badly so that I now have no grip and reduced sensation in three fingers, finally removed enough metal for the door to close. I couldn't face filing down the second door and I removed the tape. Then I had a brainwave and put the tape on the other face of the doorpost. It worked fine. What a lot of time I wasted.

Ironmonger

I had to go to the ironmongers today to get some hooks and some rawlplugs. As usual the shop was crowded and, as usual I was a bit worried about what I had to buy. After all, in the UK, you pop off to one of those giant superstores and search amongst the racks for what you want.

Actually you could always tell what you wanted, especially if it were Sunday and the toilet cistern was leaking, because the shelf that held the vital part would have just one section that was empty - the bit where that essential part you needed should have been. But I digress.

So in the UK knowing the name of some arcane piece of plumbing kit isn't a problem. In Spain though an ironmongers is still an ironmongers. They have a whole wealth of ironmongery treasures often for tiny amounts of money. You have to ask for nearly everything you want by name or, more often for we Brits, with a bit of mime and maybe a pen and paper. In our local shop called Demetrio's (Heaven knows why as the owner is called Olegario not Demetrio) there are lots of exciting and interesting things hung up on racks. He does make a point though of ensuring that nothing I can't ask for in Spanish is out on the racks. Not for me the soft option.

I called them rawlplugs, when I started this note, and I would ask for them in that way if I needed to ask someone for them (as distinct from taking them from the shelves) in the UK but I presume that's just a particular brand for those wall plugs that screws and hooks go in to. I don't even know what to look up in the Spanish dictionary to find a translation and rawlplugs are pretty straightforward to mime. What about when you want the netting they use to make flyscreens or a pole for a wardrobe with slot in fastenings!

I was just on my way out to buy the plugs, hooks etc. when Clive turned up where I work - "See you later Clive, I'm off to get some hooks" says I "Ah, interesting word hook in Spanish - alcayata for the L shaped ones, hembrilla abierta for hook type hooks and hembrilla cerrada for the round ones that aren't really hooks" says Clive (he's like that). I'd been going to use the word I know for a hook - gancho.

Olegario understood the words and when I said I wanted the plastic thing that the hooks gripped on to he gave me some. Actually he gave me two because I'd bought two hooks - not a packet, just the two hooks and the two plugs I needed.

Spanish ironmongers are a joy. Next time you're here pop in to one and get something interesting to take back.

And a rawlplug in Spanish, by the way, should you ever need to buy a couple, is taquete

Making out like bandits

A couple of friends who live in the UK have a place down on the coast. They were here for a few days and we went to meet them in Guardamar. We had a very pleasant evening at some Chinese place where they cooked the food you chose. Allan and Brenda also brought us a food parcel from the UK - marmite, stilton, tea, a pork pie, shortbread and a tea loaf. What a haul, what a kind thought.

It's amazing how kind people are. When a couple of other friends, Alan and Hilary, came they brought Ardbeg whisky, shortbread and a vase. Having a house in Spain is a bit like having a wedding. You get gifts just for doing it.

Smashing up the house

Not a good day on the D.I.Y. front. I decided to do a couple of simple jobs around the place. I thought I'd grease up my car and drain off the excess oil put in at the last service. The oil draining went reasonably well except for the puddles of oil on the drive. The greasing went less well. I couldn't find the grease points so I ended up covered in filthy grease but none went in the right place. I ran out of light. I'll have to try again later. What a bodge up.

I also stuck some insulation strips onto the exterior door frames. That worked well, they stopped the draughts remarkably well. The problem is that the doors won't lock properly. I can do it OK but Maggie doesn't seem to have the strength. I've spent ages trying to file out the striker plates but to no avail. What a bodge up.

Inside the house we have a door with wrought ironwork on one side of a glass panel. The painters didn't bother to take the glass out to paint the back of the ironwork when we moved in so I thought I'd do it now. Remarkably I got the glass out without smashing it but I can't get all the encrusted paint off the glass and I also realised that I had no silicone to seal the glass back in. So that we now have a very draughty living room until I get the silicone and I'm worried that if I try harder to get the paint from the glass I'll smash it. What a bodge up.

A High Wind in Culebrón

On Sunday, back from our trip to IKEA (100,000 people visited the new store in Murcia during the first five days), we set about our weekend cleaning and fettling tasks at home.

Though the day was bright and sunny there was a stiff breeze from quite early in the morning. By 3 .00pm in the afternoon the gusts were apparently reaching 120kph. Bits and bats were flying all over the place and our pool cover (the pool is actually an old irrigation tank) made from some black polythene sheeting did an Orville and Wilbur and made several short, aerial hops. I cut a lot of the plastic loose from one of our fences to stop it being blown over. One of the three guy wires that keep out TV aerial upright snapped at about 5.00pm and I had to go onto the roof to retrieve the flailing wire and tie it back onto something solid. The little "tin hat" on our chimney creaked, groaned and banged and the noises it made echoed down into the living room. All through the night I lay there, listening to the various bangs and clatters, waiting for the TV aerial to fall over and take the roof with it. But it didn't.

Monday was bright and sunny with a gentle breeze.