Fiestas again

Friday evening. With this solemn act I now declare the 2011 Culebrón Fiesta open. Thus saying Inma popped a couple of ice cubes into a plastic glass ready for the vermouth. Inma is our "mayoress" and it was fiesta weekend. Blow the ceremony - on with the party. Drinking vermouth, a traditional local drink, was the kick off. The event was a bit of a damp squib because it rained. Rain in July in Spain. Mind you María Luisa kept us entertained.

Next we had the big race. Saturday morning. Five and a half kilometres of either walking or running. Two separate starts half an hour apart but the first runner home was only seconds behind the first walker. There was a little lad walking home swinging his hips, like someone from a "Carry On" film, apparently in second place but as soon as he crossed the line the judges disqualified him; they said he'd run. It was odd, hundreds of people there but hardly any of the usual suspects from the village.

Gachamigas are poor people's food. Flour, water, garlic and oil traditionally cooked in a big deep frying pan and tossed like pancakes. There was a gachamigas competition as part of the do so we expected to find a few people cooking around open fires but instead we encountered a picnic. We'd eaten at home and we hadn't taken any food or drink. We were invited to almost every table for a drink and a bite to eat. We felt like spongers. Maggie spent some time talking to and eating with people up from Alicante to visit relatives but we really sat with Enrique and Victoria's family. Good choice as Enrique's gachamigas carried off the first prize.

Missed the football competition but we were back for the evening meal. No main dish this time just lots of little snacklets - maybe not the best food we've ever had in the village but good company and a good event. Luisa made us feel particularly welcome. The Mayor and a few other politicians from Pinoso are always invited to the meal at each of the village fiestas and it was good to see new faces there after the PSOE victory back in May. Eli, who I once worked with and who is now a councillor, introduced me to Lázaro the new Mayor. I like that sort of thing.

We were too lazy to turn out for the hot chocolate and sweet bread on Sunday morning but being so devoutly religious we were back for the Sunday mass. The fiestas are for our patron saint, St. James, so I suppose the mass and procession were, technically, the main event of the weekend but my reason for turning out was that I'd been asked to take a few snaps. The photos weren't good - always a stray tractor in the background or a telegraph pole out of someone's head. It was a chilly evening. Eli, processing with the other politicians, commented on the coolness. "Well, it is July," I said. The look on her face suggested that she misinterpreted my English humour for a linguistic failing.

So that's it then. All over. The village can get back to normality. Definitely the village fiesta at which I have felt most welcome since we first arrived here. People were uniformly kind and friendly. Smashing.

Not fit for habitation

The chap from the council came, as arranged, to check that our house is fit to live in as a result of the roof repair. We have been waiting for someone to "sign off" on the repairs for quite a while now. He looked around and then told us "no."

We have a gas hob in the kitchen and there is no air vent in the room apart from the rather large gap under the door and the cooker hood. "Drill some holes through your door, pop a plate over it and come and see me again," he said.

I went to borrow a drill from our neighbour but, like a true pal, he came and did the job for us. Back to the planning office tomorrow morning then.

Our tax euros at work

We live a couple of hundred of metres off a tarmac road. It's a dirt track running to our front gate. Every time there is a torrential downpour, and they are not infrequent in sunny Culebrón, the water digs canyons into the track. Potentially suspension breaking gullies.

Today there was some rumbling down the track and there was a corporation digger regrading the track.

The lad on the corner said that they're doing it because it's fiesta time in the village this weekend and they're sprucing the place up a bit.

A small scale environmental disaster

In the olden days fields in Alicante were irrigated by flooding them with water. Tanks, depositos, were dotted all over the countryside to collect rainwater and some were filled by pumping water from wells. We have a deposito in our garden but, long before we got here, the former owners had painted the inside with that turquoise blue paint and turned it into a splash pool. Bigger than a paddling pool but much less grand than a swimming pool. Some 5575 gallons or 22.3 cubic metres of water.

Most summers we've filled it up but, being basically a big bucket, it soon started to fill with leaves and dust. Maggie wanted something better and when the legislation changed to say that people should not pour gallons of water into depositos which could not be recycled we no longer had the choice.

This summer Maggie finally did something. We had someone install a pump and filter. As luck would have it one of the inlet or outlet junctions at the very bottom of the pool isn't watertight and water is dribbling out. We decided the leak wasn't significant and went ahead with the filling. Last night the deposito was finally full. This morning the water level had dropped 30cms. Inspecting the tank now there are damp patches around a lot of the base. My guess is that, as well as the leak from the new pipework the drilling, to fit the various inlets and outlets, has weakened the structure of the tank and it is no longer watertight.

Literally money down the drain.

Down the village on a warm summer's evening

20€ a year to join the Village Association. A bargain. Subsidised meals, sometimes a trip and the always enjoyable AGM where nothing gets done and nothing is resolved.

This is the best though. The meal the weekend before the Fiesta. The food is sometimes good and sometimes ordinary. Sometimes I feel to be a part of what's going on and sometimes I feel like an outsider. But whatever happens, for me, it is the quintessential image of summer in the village. Much more intimate than the Fiestas, so much more Spanish than the November meal

The neighbours are there. It's warm. The lights are strung up from the village hall. There is hubbub as everyone talks and laughs and drinks and eats and comes and goes. A little oasis of people enveloped by the dark summer evening.

Even when I don't enjoy it I appreciate it and last night I did both.

Gainfully employed

According to three people I've spoken to this week Murcia is now the seventh largest city in Spain. That's not what it says on Wikipedia or almost any other Internet source I can find (9th or 10th) but it's nice to know that Murcianos are proud enough of their city to want to bump it up the league a couple of spots.

Culebrón is 58.6kms from Murcia yet I don't really know the city that well. I've seen the Cathedral scores of times, visited a few museums etc. but I still let the Tom Tom guide me in and I pay to park. So, when I decided to book up a weeks worth of residential Spanish course Murcia seemed like a good choice. Near enough to be cheap travelling and yet still largely undiscovered, by me at least.

The plan was a school with five lessons a day of Spanish tuition and also to stay with a Spanish host family for a week. I had this vague notion of me sitting, Homer like, on the couch, bottle of beer in hand as the host family and I guffawed along with something on the telly after a hard day of internalising compound conditionals. It didn't work quite like that but it was surprisingly close.

For a start María Ángles doesn't watch much TV. She seems to get her news form the radio and the normal sound as I crossed the threshold was Classical music. The rest of it hasn't been that Homerish either - Mediterranean cuisine and hardly any alcohol at all. The best bit was that I did get to speak and trying to explain about Lingula, the brachiopod, or my views on some Spanish authors, in Spanish, has been exactly the sort of thing I wanted to try to do.

The school, Instituto Hispánico de Murcia, has been good too. It would be easy to start a list of things I would have preferred to be slightly different but the truth is I got the package as described, the teachers were pleasant and skillful and I've probably spoken about half of the Spanish I've spoken all year in their classrooms or with Mª Ángeles over the past week. The cultural programme hasn't been that good so I haven't picked up as much about Murcia as I might have hoped but I don't want to nit pick and I did drive out of town without Tom's help so I must have learned something.

Spanishness

I fancied a museum this afternoon so I checked the opening times of a couple of places on the Internet and set off to have a look. My official city map was a few hundred metres out in its placement of the first gallery on my list but I finally sweated and cursed my way there.

It was closed.

There was an opening hours notice on the right of the main doors. Opening time was 6pm, not the same as the 5pm on the Internet. It was only 6.15pm so I waited a while. Then I saw a notice on the left hand side of the door, not for the gallery, but for the archive, which said that it was closed after mid June in the afternoons. I put two and two together and headed off for another gallery which I'd come across whilst wandering lost. It wasn't on the map but it was open. It was an awful exhibition.

Off to the second gallery on my Internet list. The location was as marked on the map. I could see the security guard talking to someone as I approached the big glass doors. I went inside. "The Museum's closed in the afternoons," said the guard.

I went to the pictures instead and saw a Cameron Diaz film.

Starting and finishing

Many years ago, as tourists in Havana, we were shown the Cuban "kilometre zero" - the point from which all distances to and from Havana are measured. I remember being treated as an idiot when I asked how you would know where the other end of the line would be. Maggie added her scorn to that of the guide.

True enough you can measure to a point form any other point but where do you measure from? The roadsigns say, for instance, 70 miles to London but to where in London? - Westminster Abbey maybe - and if so the door or the altar - or it could be Buckingham Palace or, perhaps, The House of Commons. Apparently, in London, it's to the statue of King Charles I on the South side of Trafalgar Square.

In Madrid it's very obvious. Tourists queue to have their pictures taken standing on or near the Km0 point in the Puerta del Sol. And, yesterday, in Murcia I was shown the point to which all distances to and from Murcia are measured.

So, Cuban tourist guide, I can work out how far it is from London, Murcia or Madrid to Havana but can you tell me how far it is to Culebrón from Havana if you're so smart?

I'm shocked

I think it was in 2008 when the roof of our house collapsed. It was an expensive faff getting it fixed but, eventually, it was all done. The architect signed off the work and the planning office stamped it. But there was one last step to go.

We asked a pal to keep pestering the planning office to do that last final inspection but around 15 months later still no result. Being back in Culebrón for the summer and able to go to the office when it's open I popped in yesterday and talked to them.

I'll be down at 10.30 said the man. It's closing in on noon now. I am surprised.

Desestimado

I quite approve of taxes. We all pay in, we all get more out. I know it's not a popular view.

Our local taxes in Spain are based on services, at least some of them are, so much for water, so much for rubbish collection etc. So the system isn't for the general good it's a specific charge. Back in December we got a bill for drainage but we don't have drainage so I appealed the charge. I didn't get a reply so, being away from work and having time we drove the 25kms to the tax collection office to ask what was happening about the appeal. Whilst we were there I also wanted to get a digital certificate to allow me to access the Virtual Offices of several quasi governmental organisations.

No chance with the certificate said the woman, no Internet today. Go to the Town Hall to get one. And the drains, we still haven't got a reply? She dug around in her computer, ah, yes, appeal denied. I was a bit cross not because of the charge so much but because of the woman's blasé attitude in an office where the customer service is usually good. I think I was caustic, the Spanish certainly seemed to flow, if not my body language made the message clear anyway.

We went to the Town Hall. The digital certificate woman was friendly, informative and efficient, ten minutes from start to finish. Now I wonder if it will work?

Así es

Someone recommended a book to me but, as it had been written at the turn of the 19th Century, and as it wasn't one book but a whole series I decided that the library was the best option.

My library card had expired so I expected to have to re-enrol. I took a new photo and all the documentation I thought may be necessary, sheaves of the stuff. Well, actually, I forgot the library card on the kitchen table at home!

"You may think your card has expired but it's not quite true we just keep renewing them," said the librarian. I asked if I could borrow a book as I didn't have the card - "No problem" she said. We dug out the book I wanted. The binding and typeface were very 19th Century. The librarian was sure she had a more modern version but the only one she found was a reference book - not for loan. "Don't worry" she said "We can jump that little rule." She wrote the return date on a Post It, in pencil, and stuck it over the reference only sticker. The return date is during the town's fiestas so I asked about returning the book. "Don't worry," she said, "a few days over won't hurt:"

Large library book under my arm I went to the local driving school to ask them to exchange my UK driving licence for a Spanish one. It's about time. The process was fast, efficient and reasonably expensive (75€.) "How long do you think it will take?" I asked "Well, it's summer, don't expect too much to happen before September," said the man.

And the sun's shining, and I'm on holiday - what more could one soul ask for?