Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Divine retribution

I've said before that we have something resembling a medium sized radio telescope in our back garden so we can watch "Castaway Dancing Celebrity Chef" beamed directly from the country with the best TV in the World. We also have a TDT, digital set top box so we can be horrified by Spanish TV and it's diet of Mexican soaps and cheesy game shows.

The TDT box packed up the other day, just like the first one we bought about a year ago. We'd learned from our mistake though and we'd bought the second box from a local shop just in case it needed to be returned.

The man in the shop told me to come back when the bloke from the suppliers had been, any time after 10.30. The bloke didn't show up yesterday or today so the man from the elecrical shop phoned to see where he was. "Oh, its Santa Faz (a public holiday named for a saint) in Alicante so he's taking a long weekend" said the Alicante based supplier.

It's probably something to do with the skirts on Rebelde Way being a bit too short I reckon.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Foul weather

Maggie has just had a well desererved break from school with the Easter holidays. Unfortunately for her the weather has been horrid with day after day of very wet rain which has stopped her doing anything very exciting.

As a bit of a last ditch attempt to have good time she booked us in for a weekend break at a hotel up the coast in Gandia but, as you can see from the picture taken from our 11th floor room, the weather gave no quarter. She'd guessed it might not and booked us in to a place that fed us three times a day and made a big deal out of it's Turkish bath, spa and biothermic shower but, between meals and after we'd had our pores opened we had no choice but to avoid the cold and wet in bar after bar after bar.

Alcoi gets ready


Alcoi has one of the larger Moors and Christians Festivals in the area. It is set around the day of the town's Patron Saint, one Sant Jordi, better known to we Brits as Saint George.

When we passed through today preparations were well in hand even down to a local hat shop being able to supply turbans for each and every one of the Moorish bands.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Easter Sunday in Jumilla

The Easter week weather has been horrid all over Spain. We've had winds and rain all week, yesterday it was hailing on our house in Culebrón. This rather knocked our plans on the head to go somewhere for the long weekend. We did talk about Ceuta or Ibiza but we ended up, at least for today, close to home, in Jumilla.

The Easter processions in Jumilla are supposed to be good so we drove the 40km or so to have a look. The parade was the usual sort of format. Several groups, identified by their robes, parade a heavy and ornate float from one place to another supported by a solemn sounding band. I was surprised that the groups were still wearing the hoods as I seem to remember being told, that as Easter Sunday is a celebration, the capuchas come off.

Nonetheless, it was definitely less solemn than the stuff we'd seen in Pinoso earlier in the week. There was much more chatting between participants and crowd and the handing out of sweets reached epic proportions. Even Maggie and I came home with a good bagful.

The chaps in the photo are just in mid lift of their paso or float and if you look at the photo of the spectators you will see that the children each has a bag, ready to accept their donations of sweets!

Sunday, April 01, 2007

Grown men in skirts and tights

Acclaimed by crowds of palm waving citizens a contingent of Roman soldiers, with costumes modelled on the Hollywood epic "The Robe", escorted an odd looking Jesus around Pinoso today.

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Palm Sunday

Once, when I went to Sunday School, they gave me a little cross folded from a palm frond. The Spaniards do Palm Sunday on a slightly bigger sale. We saw a couple of stalls like this today and they seemed to be doing a brisk trade getting ready for tomorrow.

The Sanctuary of Santa María Magdalena

Alicante province is a bit short on architectural excitement. There are no Salamancas, Trujillos or Cuencas around here but when we have pals over from the UK we often take the to the fabulous modernist house in Novelda and then go on to this church on the hilltop. A bit like a poor persons Gaudí

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Gardening

We have a few fruit trees in our garden. The Spanish system is to ensure that the ground betwen fruit trees, vines etc. is clear of weeds and back to bare earth to avoid the spread of fire. Each year Maggie and I clear the weeds that have grown in the garden over the winter. This year we've had a mild winter and a bumper crop of weeds. Quite where to start is a little daunting


This is Maggie looking daunted

Busy doing nothing

Still nothing to write about. Over the weekend we joined a band of Brits at some garden centre in Caudete to hear a a talk by the authors of a couple of books about gardening in Spain. We ate in the cafeteria of a huge ironmongers. We went to see Forest Whitaker with a Spanish accent take over Uganda and today, with the times slightly awry because of the clocks change, we saw a few classic cars in Culebrón before going on to a mini fair in Pinoso organised by the friends of the wine. Maggie likes to be friendly towards wine.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Time to Blog something

It's a while since I posted anything so I thought I ought to; just to prove I'm still alive. The problem is what to Blog?

It could have been our jaunt last weekend to Calasparra (but buying a beer and a few tapas doesn't provide a lot of material) nor did the onward journey to Caravaca de la Cruz, where they have a remnant of the "One True Cross" kept within an ornate box that looks a bit like the "French Resistance" cross of Lorraine.

It could have been the Tour of Alicante bike race that flashed by our door yesterday (except that we only saw it from 200 yards away).

But generally what we do is to go to work, come home and slump in front of the TV so I thought I should maybe do that.

The TV output here is both similar and dissimilar to that in the UK. There are far fewer soap operas and "Wuthering Heights" type dramas and their game shows are as crass as they come. Slipping on banana skins is the height of humour. Game shows usually have women in short skirts or men with rippling muscles. There are still lots of variety shows where paunchy men introduce second rate dance troupes. The news is good but then again there is as much time dedicated to sport (i.e. footie) as there is to the rest of the news. Films tend to be older than in the UK. Investigative journalism doesn't seem to have much of a profile. There are chat shows but they are very different, much more fawning that Jonathon Ross or Parkinson even and one of the ones I've seen a couple of times has a host who wears a cravat and talks to his guests across a desk. There are lots of gossipy programmes and lots of Jerry Springer (fat people humiliating themselves) shows.

One of the difficulties for us is the timing of programmes. peak viewing in Spain is at about 10pm when people have got home from work and had something to eat. Most films start at 10 but, with the adverts they will go on till 1am. and, annoyingly, they will run twenty minutes of ads with just five minutes of the film left to go.

The state broadcaster is RTVE, like the BBC they provide radio and TV broadcasts. Like the BBC their first channel is more populist than their second channel. Unlike the BBC there is no licence fee but there are adverts and the adverts can last as long as 15 minutes, maybe a little more. TVE2 is very much like BBC2 used to be- worthy discussion programmes, hip music shows and minority interest stuff. RTVE is not the most popular channel. Telecinco, Channel 5 is. They have more cheap comedy shows, and increasingly US import shows like Grey’s Anatomy (though RTVE has both Lost and Desperate Housewives). Antena 3 has Who Wants to be a Millionaire. In fact there are lots of syndicated shows - Big Brother is on 5, Celebrity Come Dancing is on 1 etc. The odd thing is that all of these shows are home grown product or they're dubbed. I couldn't take to the West Wing (on 2) with Spanish accents because I knew what they should sound like whereas I was actually disappointed with the real voice of Bree van der Kamp on Desperate Housewives, I preferred the Spanish voice I'd heard first.

For first run films and big sporting events the equivalent of Sky, with buying power to match, is Canal+ available on subscription cable or satellite - I've never seen it except in bars. However, we have about 20 channels on TDT, terrestrial digital - a couple of sports channels, two or three 24 hour news channels, a couple of MTV like stations, five or six local channels as well as all the big three broadcasters plus a couple of upstart nationwide broadcasters like Cuatro (4) and La Sexta (6) - between them I suppose 4 and 6 are a bit Channel 4ish with the late night satirical shows, reruns of Sex in the City etc. Also each of the big broadcasters has some minor stations on digital a couple of which run kids programmes and non-stop Mexican soap operas. Digital often means that it is possible to listen to the original soundtrack, usually, but not always, English and if I put the subtitles on I can have English with Spanish subtitles, which I kid myself, has some educational value.

Being Brits of course we could, if we were bad people, buy a big satellite dish, run it on a free to air card and watch lots of British TV as well without paying any subscription or licence fees. As though we would!