Someone had the good grace to invite me to the planning meeting for the village fiesta in July. I didn't feel much like going along as we'd just had the quotes for the roof and I was toying with the idea of downing a bottle of Scotch or two, but it seemed churlish not to try and do my bit.
There were about 20 people there and maybe five or six babies and children. Usual sort of meeting with more conversations than people, lapses into the local Valenciano language at machine gun speed for individual group discussions and lots of exchanges along the line of "Well Pepe's lad could do the tables - Silvia charged us too much last year" which obviously left me completely nonplussed as I don't know many names. I kept up for a while, I even wondered about making a suggestion or two but I was too scared to speak, and then of course I started to lose the thread - my thoughts drifted back to the whisky.
Recent experiences with attempting to participate in community meetings have all been pretty disastrous. I'm wondering if I shouldn't join the Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding brigade - stick with my own.
An old, wrinkly, temporarily skinny, red nosed, white haired Briton rambles on, at length, about things Spanish
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Sunday, May 25, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Surveys and pigs

There has been a series recently asking which personalities would be good for advertising what sort of product. The survey usually starts with 20 pictures of celebs and I have to say which ones I know. They give me a second chance by naming the celebs. I wouldn't be good at this even in the UK but here I am hopeless. In the survey that came today I knew two people - Carlos Saura and Jane Fonda. Anyway I did the survey, got the points and I had a look to see what my points would now get me. Plenty of DVDs, bits for computers etc but there is a section called "Solidarity" that I hadn't noticed before.
I know what I´m after now - not the goat; I'm going to get those three piglets.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Priceless
Sunday, May 18, 2008
You are now entering Alicante

Fortunately the fiesta season is well under way - we could have got involved in a couple of romerias (a sort of short distance pilgrimage) or any number of local patron saint festivals but we chose to go and have a look at the Moors and Christians procession in Petrer instead. It was alright. Moors and Christians are definitely a local thing.
Feeding has to be relatively traditional too, well at least once during the visit of any guest. So we avoided the chop and chips establishments which represent my normal eating out price level and went to the restaurant in Encebras where they do all three of the very traditional local dishes. We stuck to the rice, cooked in a paella, served with rabbit and snails. In fact we did really well on traditional stuff, tomate y ali oli, embutido seco, the rice, perusas and a little glass of mistela. The waitress was very keen to stress that although the wine bottle label said it was from Yecla this was a simple geographical accident and the wine belonged, emotionally, to Pinoso. I think Mr Cs favourite was the fried cheese with tomato jam which has no particular link with the area so far as I know! Awfully pricy though. We winced when the bill came.
And to round of the day in a nice Spanish way, as we drove home from the theatre at around 1am, we were pulled over by the Guardia for a licence check. I must have taken too long finding it, or maybe I was over familiar with the little lad who was wearing the Guardia uniform, because they also checked the car documentation at the last minute. I think that's about the fifth or sixth time I've ben pulled over and I still find it slightly nerving.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Grey days
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Oh dear!

It turns out that one of the beams has fallen apart either rotted or eaten by beasties. Lots of the others may be in a similar state. We were lucky with this fall in that the damage was in a bathroom, the false ceiling held and only small pieces hit the floor. It could just have well have come through and smashed up something expensive or fallen on me.
We are now looking at an enormous bill and massive disruption. I feel a little sick.
Monday, May 05, 2008
The thing you pour tea from, with a bent nose; you know!!
I swear I'm getting like that. This morning I parked in a street I don't usually park in. The "No Parking" signs said Mes Par, Mes Impar. After some time, and parking on both sides of the road, I decided that May, being the 5th month was Impar so I parked. Only when I got the ticket did I realise that the sign was a prohibition. My logic was completely wrong about what the signs were telling me about where I could and couldn't park.
The only bright spot in this dismal situation is that the ticket was issued by my pal on the local police force. He didn't know I had a new car. He is going to see if he can "fix" the ticket.
The only bright spot in this dismal situation is that the ticket was issued by my pal on the local police force. He didn't know I had a new car. He is going to see if he can "fix" the ticket.
And then there's football

The Cibeles fountain area, traditional spot for celebrating Reals achievements, was being prepared. The team should be home in an hour.
I drove into Yecla, a town in Murcia nearly 350kms from Madrid but just 30kms from Culebrón. Usually, around midnight it's a quiet town but not tonight. Cars with people hanging out of them, flags, horns and hundreds, and I really do mean hundreds, of people of all ages, shapes and sizes gathered in the town's park to celebrate the Madrid victory
Thursday, May 01, 2008
On the road

The speed limit in the tunnel is 80kph. I had a Guardia patrol car behind so I stuck to 77, 78. The Guardia got bored and went past at about 90kph followed by lots of other cars. Leading by example.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
But we survived
I knew we were going to be OK when there was no flood of woodland creatures down the hillside. Either the fire burned itself out or those brave firefighters did their stuff.
When the next door neighbour rang me to confirm that all was well I was watching an old film where a Spanish speaking Morgan Freeman is the US President and Robert Duvall is the commander of a spacecraft sent to intercept a giant meteorite heading for Earth. People died in the film. We were luckier in Culebrón.
When the next door neighbour rang me to confirm that all was well I was watching an old film where a Spanish speaking Morgan Freeman is the US President and Robert Duvall is the commander of a spacecraft sent to intercept a giant meteorite heading for Earth. People died in the film. We were luckier in Culebrón.
Monday, April 28, 2008
On fire!

There are hundreds of such fires every year in Spain. The island of la Gomera in the Canaries has a big one at the moment for instance. The photo is there, not here.
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