It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon

It's not that things haven't happened. We had the festival that celebrates Spanishness last week just a couple of days after the day to celebrate Valencianess, Maggie has been home because of the opportunity afforded by the long bank holiday weekend, we saw some Flamenco in a cave where they gave us dodgy tapas and very watery sangria and I borrowed another book from Pinoso library. Maybe there was a blog entry in my visit to the library but to be honest the place in Pinoso is very much like the badly stocked, book only, libraries of my youth. As such it is unremarkable.

The mega shopping centres down in Murcia where I've been the last two Saturdays are just as unremarkable. Fast food, chain clothes stores, a nice line in pot plants and a multiplex cinema. They are like shopping centres from windswept Minnesota to down town Cancun. They even have the same music. Though the toilets at the Thader Commercial Centre in Murcia perhaps deserve a mention. Above the urinals in the gents are illuminated, life sized photos of young women staring into the space between man and porcelain - some smirk, some gasp, one has a slight, but knowing, smile.

So nothing to report except the old standby - the weather. It has been bucketing down here for what seems like months. In Culebrón it has been steady, persistent, heavy rain for days on end - enough to batter the grape harvest into the mud but not enough to sweep away children in their prams. True there have been occasional streams moulding our track into a mini version of the Grand Cañon but in general it's just been grey, damp and miserable. It hasn't been the same in other parts of Spain - the tendency has been for torrential downpours and hail storms that last for minutes but deliver vast amounts of water. Pictures of cars floating down main streets, of houses shattered by falling hailstones and of people mopping up afterwards have been commonplace on Spanish news programmes for two or three weeks now but there have been none of those pictures, reminiscent of this year's UK floods, of people sitting on rooftops surrounded by fields of water.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

I've just put the thicker duvet on the bed. Temperatures are down to a maximum of around 27ºC, minimums about 12ºC. The almonds are in, they're picking the grapes.

The picture is from our garden last week at about 7.30am




Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Bringing in the wine harvest

A quiet moment at the local co-operative bodega in Pinoso.

Just a couple of tractors emptying their loads of grapes. I think you can see the pipe that sucks the fruit out of the trailers. The tanks in the background will soon be full.

There are no young people driving the tractors.

Political ambitions

I went to drop off my bottles and containers in the recycling bins in the village last Saturday and I spotted a notice outside the village hall. It announced that anyone who wanted to stand for the position of Village Mayor should get their nomination in by today.

There were details about who could vote, who could stand etc. but nothing about the actual process. I sent an email to secretary of the Neighbourhood Association, Inma Guerero, asking her whether and how I could vote. She replied. I'm looking forward to being one of the sixty or so people entitled to vote on 28 October.

Then today there was a second email to me, just for information, to say that she'd put herself forward for Mayor. This could be a bit of a blow to Antonio who, I think, has held the position for the last 18 years.

I'm waiting for election fever to grip the village.

Trying and failing

When we first came to Spain I thought I'd join a political party, then a couple of years later when my Spanish was perfect I'd get elected as a councillor.

Something went wrong somewhere but I did set out to my first meeting of the PSOE tonight. As I approached the door I was rehearsing my introduction, always interested in politics, member of the Labour Party in the UK, Union official, leaflet experience blah, blah. When I got there the chairperson welcomed me, "We're just off to eat, the meeting's over really, just the committee tonight, we haven't got this seasons meetings planned yet, come back in a couple of weeks time".

I retired.

Ambivalence and other breeds

Spaniards are odd about animals. It's very usual to see little dogs being cuddled and nursed by young and old alike - Jack Russells, Yorkies and Chihuahuas for instance. Huskies are very popular, apparently because they have blue eyes, and those dogs that look like pigs are big amongst the tough young man set. Yet, equally it's almost accepted practice that when summer comes and the family disappear to their holiday destination the dog is put out on the street and left to fend for itself.

Our next door neighbour keeps a couple of Boxers in his back yard and he only pops up to feed them every now and again. Their world is a small enclosure until he drops by for an occasional weekend or during the couple of weeks in the summer when he's here and the dogs get to go out for a run.

Castration or sterilisation of animals is considered to be a form of unacceptable mutilation. Apparently better to abandon the puppies or kittens to an uncertain future wandering the streets or country roads. Dead dogs and cats along the roadside are a common site. Dogs chained up with the earth trodden hard in a circle around the central post are everywhere - not pets, not guard dogs - more like prisoners.

Brits, of course, have a reputation for being animal lovers and it is not unusual for some Brit who has a few dogs to find puppies abandoned where they will find them - often in the nearest rubbish skip. I know several people with at least three dogs only one of which they "chose" to keep.

Our cat Eduardo was born in a friends house when the mother dropped by for a snack and a warm place to give birth. Our second cat, Harold, was living wild near the bins by a local farmhouse when he popped by to see if there was anything on the tele and even now hasn't quite decided whether he prefers to sleep on our settee or down by the goat shed.

These are our cats: Eduardo is on the left, Harold on the right

RENFE

My old pal Samagita (her Buddhist name) has been staying with me for the last few days. She travelled from the UK to Alicante by train and she was full of praise for the RENFE (Spanish State Railway) website and service.

Last week I booked a couple of tickets for my employers to travel to Madrid, by train, to go to a trade show there. I phoned a central booking number, they gave me a reference for the tickets. My boss collected the tickets from our nearest train station. Again it seemed like a good system.

This morning though I got a message from them to say that the tickets had been booked for the wrong dates. Saturday out, Sunday back rather than Friday out and Saturday back. I am absolutely certain that the booking was made correctly and that when the operator read the details back to me they were correct too. But I'll obviously be in the doghouse with them for having got the bookings wrong. They had to travel in the buffet car!

Being Benny Hill

I rather envy Maggie and her new life in Ciudad Rodrigo. Amongst other things she is going to have to speak Spanish, she has no choice as there are very few Brits to speak to there. Here in Alicante there are lots of us so I speak more English than Spanish.

My struggle to speak Spanish well has been going on for three years now. I get by OK but I mutter and stumble and I still worry about "having a go".

When Spaniards pronounce Rs, particularly at the beginning of a word or when there are two Rs together they roll them mightily. I can't make the sound and my Rs are often taken as Ls. So, for instace, trying to spell the surname Martin on the phone the other day the person I was speaking to was quite sure that I was spelling Maltin and my R for Rome (R de Roma) had her asking what Loma was!

Benny Hill used to do a skit where he pretended to be Chinese and confused Ls with Rs "There's a gleat election coming up". Trouble is I don't get the laugh.

Older than The Bay City Rollers

Alan Crawford and I met before the bay City Rollers were a phenomenon.

He's the one in the pinky coloured shirt. He's in Salamanca at the moment doing a Spanish course for a couple of weeks. Because Maggie and I were in Ciudad Rodrigo, just 90kms away, it was a good opportunity to drink a beer, say hello and get footsore together.

John Moore is the one with short trousers and a beard. He was our next door but one neighbour when Maggie and I first moved to Culebrón and he still lives close by. John came out to see Maggie and me in Ciudad Rodrigo partly as a bit of a jaunt but mainly to provide me with a taxi home. Lovely gesture.

The other one is me. I think there must be something wrong with the camera angle. I'm sure my gut's not that large.

Bank Machines

Just like in the UK there are national banks and building societies as well as lots of regional ones in Spain. The "bank" accounts we have are both with smallish regional cajas, a sort of bank cum charitable financial institution.

When we were in Ciudad Rodrigo there weren't any branches of our banks so we used the bank machine of another bunch affiliated to the same network of cash machines. There are three big networks of ATMs and if you use a different network the transaction charges can be very high, up to 6€.

So we pushed our card in a hole in the wall and asked for 300€, I got the receipt but no money. There was an "incident" phone number so I rang them - "No worry" said the man on the phone, "bit of a hiccup in the network the money will go back into your account in a while". Four hours later I rang back because there was still no money. "Odd" he said "you'd better pop into the bank on Monday when it re-opens". I played hell, mumbled about them stealing my money etc., the man agreed. Bit disarming that.

On Monday the bank knew all about it "No worry" they said "it's being credited and should show up tomorrow". The money isn't back yet and I'm going to have to chase it.

But the question is what's to stop the bank simply saying I have the money? The receipt says I have the money. I'm relying on the bank's internal audit processes. I can't prove that I didn't have the cash, I can only rely on them agreeing that they never gave me the cash. I have a bad feeling about this.

The Parador in Ciudad Rodrigo

Paradores are a chain of state owned hotels dotted throughout Spain. Their original purpose was to promote tourism in different parts of Spain. Many of them are old converted buildings such as castles or monasteries whilst others are modern and purpose built but usually in a great location. Their restaurants serve good quality food and promote local cuisine and a nice little touch is that lots of the serving staff wear local traditional costume

Paradores can be a bit of a mixed bag: sometimes the service in the bars is awfully slow, sometimes the rooms are a bit disappointing but I've always felt that the friendliness of the staff and their courteous style nearly always outweigh any other failings.

It was Maggie's birthday on Saturday and John Moore was doing me a huge favour by driving me back to Culebrón, so I suggested that I buy them both a meal in the Parador.

John's a vegetarian and Spain is not a good country for veggies. When we enquired of the Restaurant Manager if she had any suitable food she came back with "Of course!, even vegetarians have to eat". It was good do. The food was much better than average restaurant fare, if not great, the ambience was lovely, the staff were friendly without being over familiar and it felt like an event rather than a refuelling stop. It wasn't even particularly expensive at 100€ for the three of us though we did get the coffee and brandy at a bar around the corner.