Jesus plays to the crowd

Maggie and I went to stay with our friends John and Claire Morrison at their house just outside Altea for the Palm Sunday weekend. We had a really pleasant weekend doing nothing in particular but we did pop into Altea to watch the Domingo de Ramos procession.

There are two churches in Altea, one down on the seafront and the other at the top of the hill around which the old town is built. The Palm Sunday procession set out from the church on the coast and made its way up the hill. There were some sort of "altar boys" leading the way followed by a few priests, a band, Jesus riding on a donkey, a bundle of people in costume and lots of ordianary people carrying palms and olive branches. The great and the good (shiny suits and designer frocks) brought up the rear. The band wore Arab type clothing and played a repetitive little dance number to help keep the volume up. They could hardly be heard above the crowd.

Jesus looked dead happy, he waved, he smiled to the crowd, he pouted and posed for photos.

Going to the Dentist

Dental care, extraction apart, is not a part of the Spanish social security system. Because it costs money to go to the dentist we haven't done it since we got here. That means it is something like 18 months since anyone has peered into my mouth. Today though someone wearing latex gloves and a face mask sucked spittle out of my mouth and then charged me 50€ for the pleasure.

With Maggie working down near the coast we went to a dentist that some of her pals had recommended, close to her work, in a place called Gran Alacant. Gran Alacant is basically a housing estate for foreigners. It was just like tens of dental surgeries I've been to in the UK. The magazines on the table were old and in English. The dentist wasn't ready for us at the appointed time, the receptionist, like everyone else associated with the practice, wore a white coat and was brusque without being unpleasant. There were posters of teeth and leaflets for mouthwash. A small child screamed as we waited, though Maggie assured me it was because the lad had fallen off the swings outside and had been brought in to see the doctor rather than the dentist.

Anyway, surprisingly, the dentist said my teeth, and Maggie's, were OK and to come back in 6 months.

A view over the beach

We've lived, as distinct from owned, our house in Culebrón for just a year now. Before that we lived in the seaside town of Santa Pola. One of the chaps we met there was an Armenian called Masis who had paid some smuggler $2,500 to fly him into Paris from where he made his way, illegally to Spain.

Masis had a tough time of it without papers. He could only get badly paid, cash in hand jobs with no type of benefit. He worked each and every day. One week he wasn't paid and when he dared to ask his boss for the money he was thrown from a moving car. He presumed he had been sacked.

At the time of his dismissal he was subletting a flat from a South American who rented the two bedroom flat to four completely unrelated men. When his landlord moved a couple of prostitutes in as well Masis decided it was time to up sticks. Things were not going well. Homeless and jobless he lived by doing any work he could and by selling most of his remaining stuff.

It got worse, and it's a long and complicated story, but Masis eventually found someone who might be willing to employ his son who has particular computer skills. In time the son was brought to Spain on a legitimate contract and Masis suddenly had an income again.

Masis was also able to take advantage of an amnesty by the Spanish Government on illegal immigrants and start the process of applying for proper papers.

We went to see him the other night. His situation is still far from perfect but father and son are doing OK and climbing the slippery slope to a better life. They have a two bedroom flat to themselves with a wonderful view over the Med and both of them seem to be fit and well. They treated us to some Armenian home cooking and a bucketload of vodka.

It looks as though there may yet be a happy ending.

An MG and a run in the sun

Maggie and I went out with the old car today on a picnic organised by the car club of which I'm a member - El Club del 600 y Clasicos de Orihuela y Vieja Baja (snappy little title eh?)

We met in Orihuela and a collection of about 20 to 25 cars of various pedigrees and nationalities headed off down the motorway at a steady 80kph. The SEAT 600s had trouble maintaining this speed, the two leading MGBs had trouble going quite so slowly. We were the third MGB in the queue and we tried to mitigate the speed of the leaders and gee up the followers. Our destination was the small town of Aledo whose claim to fame is an ancient arab lookout tower. When we got there we all obediently looked at the tower and then got on with the real business of any Spanish event - eating and talking.

It was a good do, we ate well and quite a few people made a special effort to talk to us. The weather was tremendous; perfect picnic weather. Hot and sunny. The car ran perfectly.

The scarves are nice aren't they?

Spanish web sites

Web sites in Spain are very frustrating. I like to think of myself as a very average sort of person. I've always been able to buy a suit off the peg without having to worry that the sleeves will be too long or the trousers too short. So I presume that my use of the web to find things out, buy things etc. is pretty typical. I've become used to being able to sort things out from home sitting at the keyboard.

Apparently in a survey of the top 35 Spanish firms (the local equivalent of the FTSE 100) only 25 had websites. Of those some ridiculously small number (just one I think) managed to keep it's website fully functional for 30 days on the trot. Antena 3, a TV station, was dead on the average by keeping its site up for just 8 out of the 30 day test period. That's my experience too that often the sites are simply not running. But, when they are.

You can't rely on the address being www. I read an article the other day about being able to watch legitimate movies from various websites. There were seven on the list, only two worked and only one was www. This was a typical address http://videoteca.cvc.cervantes.es As you can see they like to keep them simple.

Or, for instance, I want to transfer 175€ from the CAM bank account to the CajaMurcia. If I go into the bank and do it I will pay nothing but to do it over the internet costs 2.70€ in commission.

I want to put a classified ad in Información, one of the local newspapers. Every time I try to pay the site rejects the payment but it also wipes out the information that I've typed into the various boxes so I have to start again with my ID number, name, address etc. When I eventually give up and phone the paper to place the ad they tell me that the website hasn't worked properly for a couple of months and won't take any sort of bank card payments. Ah! except it sometimes works with BBVA cards.

My ID number is called an NIE (Foreigner's number.) Spaniards all have a DNI (ID number.) When I manage to get my hands on a DNI it will be the same number as my current NIE. Every Spanish website that asks for any personal information asks for an ID number. On the official form my NIE number is X-5693545-X but if I try to put that into most sites it cuts off the last X. This is because the websites will only accept the number in a particular format and that format doesn't like hyphens. When I cut both hyphens to give X5693545X the websites often just sit there waiting for me to add the ten characters they require so I have to add a zero to get X05693545X. Then again some like to miss out the initial letter but stick with 9 characters 05693545X. It can be very frustrating especially as they seldom give an example of the format they are using.

Not all the websites offer the option to put an NIE instead of a DNI. They ask for a passport number instead. The trouble is that the next time I go back to this site it asks me for my DNI, NIE, CIF (tax identity) or passport number plus my password. When I typed in the information the first time I wasn't aware that the site was going to do this so I kept no record of which number I finally managed to use. Consequently, I have to go through the whole lot, complete with all the hyphen and zero variations, to get back into the site. Often though, and the websites don't tell you this, you only get three chances to get the number right before it stops taking any notice. I often use all the variations only to have them all rejected unless I remember to log in anew after every third failed attempt.

Or the required fields - Christopher for forename - Thompson for first surname - I leave the box for second surname blank as I don't have a second surname. This means the website rejects my name, tells me that I've forgotten my second surname and usually wipes out any information I've typed in to that point. I have tried inserting a space as my second surname, or a hyphen but the websites generally reject that and the only foolproof way is to put John as my first surname and Thompson as my second surname. It does mean that I get addressed as Señor John but it's better than the other options.

Addresses can be fun too. The majority are built up as street name, number, descriptors for flats (first floor, left hand door) etc. So the sophisticated websites have a drop down menu for each of those elements: street, avenue, drive, passage, place etc. They often do not have one for PO box (which is what we use) nor do they have one which says none of these. Our village is so small that the house identifier is just village name plus a number. It's a bit like number 5 Cambridge. We're not allowed by many of the websites not to choose street, avenue etc. and our postcode is based on the local, more important, town. So instead of being able to put our address as number 5 Culebron we end up with something that says Culebron street number 5, Pinoso which is a very plausible adress. It just isn't ours.

I used to use SMS messaging from the computer quite a bit. Telefonica, the phone company, offer the facility to send SMS messages, via the computer, charged to our fixed line phone. It works OK except that the box for the phone number will only takes nine numbers (a Spanish mobile phone number) which means it is impossible to send an international SMS message via this route.

And if I want to recharge my mobile phone via the internet I can, of course. But first I have to go to a Telefonica shop and sign a contract before they will give me a password to use on the website.

I can pay my Council Tax and water rates on the Internet but, again, I have to go to the office first to get a digital ID certificate and Iberdrola (the power company) took three weeks to send me the email with my password to access their "virtual office".

For anyone used to the majority of UK and US based websites Spanish websites are a real frustration.

Not for any particular reason

I just thought this was an interesting poster site. The one on the left is an advert for Easter week and the one on the right says "Shield (or coat of arms) Festival - the Invasion". I presume that it's some sort of battle re-enactment.

Putting out the rubbish

All over Spain there are containers, like the rectangular green one (far right) in the photo, for rubbish. If they're in a town then you're supposed to take the stuff from your house to the street bins between 9 and 11 in the evening. The bin lorries come around every evening from around midnight and take the lot away. The collections in rural areas are less frequent. Our container, for instance, which is about 40 metres from or front door, is emptied on just Monday and Friday.

This picture, taken in a street in Cieza in Murcia, also shows a couple of recycling bins. Usually it's light green for glass, blue for paper and card and yellow for containers such as tins, cans, tetrapaks and the like. Even in the countryside there are quite a lot of the recycling bins and they seem to get emptied pretty regularly.

What a varied and interesting life we lead

"I fancy going to Cartagena, what do you think?" "Good idea", said Maggie, "unless there's something better locally."

It was my fault, I took too long borrowing the drill and buying a phone card up in Pinoso. "Let's go to the Mediaeval Fayre in Novelda now it's so late", said Maggie. We went with Trish and John our next door but one neighbours.

There were jugglers and acrobats and bands and stalls at the fayre.

Every day another advance

Incredible. We now have power in the garage. I borrowed a drill and some 45cm long drill bits from Charlie. I drilled a hole through the kitchen wall, behind the cooker hood, through into the garage. More accurately I drilled a 45cm hole and then borrowed a 60cm bit from John to actually get through to the other side. Pushed a bit of cable through, connected it to the input for the cooker hood at one end and 2.95€ worth of plug socket at the other end. Bingo! power outside the house ready for summer music and fairy lights. No bodge up this time.

And then we had it fitted

After a few phone calls to Carrefour to sort out whether we could have the aircon fitted or not suddenly it all happened. Someone phoned me yesterday morning and made an appointment to fit the thing at 4.30. Two Argentinian lads turned up at 5.10 in a beaten up old van (see earlier post about white vans) and spent the next two and a half h0urs lashing the units to the wall. They said that our pre instaltion was all wrong (though they didn't suck on their teeth) but they got it up anyway. They took their 190€ fitting fee and cleared off. True it's a bit skewiff but it sems to work. Now to find out which of the competing stories is true. The owners of Firstline aircon units say they're fine, people who own more expensive units say that that Carrefour own brand stuff is unreliable.

We finally bought an air conditioner

When we were getting ready to move into our new house we had three big items on the shopping list. A sofa to sit on, satellite TV so Maggie could watch East Enders and air conditioning so we could sip our G&Ts in comfort. Somehow the simplicity of that original list escaped us and we found other things to buy before we finally got around to that sofa. However, this last weekend we went ahead and bought item number two on the list - a cheap air conditioner from Carrefour.

We weren't sure; an unknown brand from a supermarket not famed for the longevity of it's electrical products. The aircon unit itself is underpowered and it's not an inverter type we'd intended to buy but it was pretty cheap and we had decided that as we hardly needed aircon last year cheap would do. We still have to get it fitted and the man at Carrefour seemed to be a bit cagey about that suggesting that their tame fitters don't like coming this far out into the country. More to come on aircon I'm sure.