Life in Culebrón

I'm that sort of age.The heart attack, the stroke. Despite our best efforts an exploding gas bottle could leave one or both of us bleeding amongst the tattered ruins of the house. Maybe just a flood or a forest fire. Whatever the reason we might need the emergency services. Now our address is nothing more than a number and the name of the village. As it happens we're on the edge of the village. A bit difficult to find. You just ask any of the courier services who occasionally try to deliver packets to us. We inevitably end up meeting them outside the local restaurant. Back to that heart attack - time is of the essence. The paramedics going this way and that searching for the house. The house ablaze - the fire crew scanning the countryside for smoke. The local police had a simple but brilliant idea. They asked anyone who lived anywhere out of the way to register with them. They came to the house and logged the GPS position. What we didn't realise was that as a part o...

Christmas Eve and we have a turkey in the fridge - dead you understand. We have sprouts too though they are frozen because there weren't any fresh ones available in our chosen hypermarket. Not a big queue for sprouts then in Carrefour but a thronging mass around the fish counter. Fish and seafood are huge for Christmas here. Different traditions, same idea. We were watching the news on the telly over the weekend. We saw both la Sexta and Cuatro. Each of them had reporters at an airport to watch arriving friends and family being hugged and kissed. Families and Christmas. Same tradition, same idea. The el Gordo lottery came and went. We usually have one ticket which wins back its stake or turns in a small profit but this year nothing, nada, zilch; not a sausage. There were the usual scenes of rejoicing outside the lottery shops. The radio and TV interviewers found lots of people who were on the dole and who'd won 400,000€ for their 20€ stake. One chap had bought the whole t...

   Santiago Alcanda a radio 3 presenter       I have quite a long Christmas break. I fancied getting away from work and the usual alternatives of doing very little and drinking a lot of brandy. I spent hours on the Internet looking at websites in Teruel, Granada and Albacete provinces. I sent a few emails - "Are you running your horse riding/cookery courses/star gazing courses in the period between 26th and 31st December?" I got not a single reply. I'm not surprised. From my experience lots of businesses never look at their email. And whilst there are lots of honourable exceptions the disorganisation in Spanish businesses makes me laugh and cry by turns. Anyway, back in November I got a little annoyed at not being able to find anything but the most banal contemporary music on Spanish radio and I wrote to Radio 3, the state broadcaster which says it champions contemporary music, to ask what their music policy was. They have an Internet form for the purpose...

Many, many years ago I had quite a good collection of salsa, cumbia, son and other Latin American music. A colleague I gave a lift to soon grew tired of my conversation and turned on the tape player to be greeted by Celia Cruz. He wasn't impressed with the Latin sound. "Don't you have anything British?" he said as he shuffled my tapes. Finally, with a little whoop of joy, he found Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "Now there's some proper music," he said, as he pushed the cassette into the slot and began to hum along. He was an educated chap, I'm pretty sure he knew Beethoven was German but that isn't the point. He was culturally in tune with Beethoven in a way that he wasn't to with Los Van Van. Pinoso has a nice theatre, the Teatro Auditorio Emilio Martínez Sáez, named for an ex Mayor of the town. The walls of the theatre are lined with light wood panelling and the ceiling slopes gently from the back of the circle to the rear of the stage...

Quite a strange experience today. We went for a meal. The odd thing was that it was in somebody's living room. A chap and his wife, who used to run a restaurant in Pinoso until they retired, now do meals to order from their home in the countryside. A pal booked eight of us in. We ate quite a lot of very decent food for a rock bottom price sitting on green plastic patio chairs. Plenty of booze as well though some of us were driving and stuck to water. At one point I was outside the chap's house having a cigar and staring at the sun bathed scenery. In the distance was the village of Algueña overshadowed by the huge marble quarry that produces so much of Pinoso's wealth. The man told me he'd worked there for 26 years before setting up his restaurant. He remembered me as an occasional customer from the time I worked in the furniture shop. I asked him if he didn't miss the convenience of town living. He didn't. He'd been to see his grandaughters dancing bal...

Around fifteen years ago, when Maggie and I finally set up home together, we bought a Christmas tree from Woolworths in Huntingdon. We still use the same tree. The lights, the sets of lights that burst into life yet again tonight, came the year after. The first set were very sensitive and gave up the ghost after their debut. I was adamant about us buying a plastic tree. I wanted something that we would remember each year, something that would grow older and more threadbare along with us. I have fond memories of the tree I grew up with, the tree my dad and I decorated to celebrate the arrival of my new baby brother. I wanted something similar for us. Whisky, like Nat King Cole, is a part of the ritual of decorating the Huntingdon tree. For years it was a decent malt but times are hard and it was Dewars tonight. Unfortunately driving and scotch don't mix which meant that the tree decorating, the official recognition of Christmas, had to wait until we'd been to see The Pinos...

My mum reads these blogs so I'm going to be in trouble. If you tell Spanish people, presumably those who aren't from Albacete, that you are going there they trot out a little phrase of advice "Albacete, caga y vete" Albacete: shit and leave. There, I've done it now. No pocket money for weeks. Better not to recount the story of my first ever visit to Albacete on a perishing December night as it involves a porn cinema. I could end up grounded for years. Maggie is not here so I'm alone. She's not a big fan of Albacete anyway. Personally I like it. On a sizzling August afternoon with the heat haze rippling off the plain I think it's about as Spanish as Spanish can get. Today it was a bit dull and then a bit wet. The town isn't large. It's small or at least it feels small though apparently it has 170,000 people. We, I was with my pal Geoff, found ourselves wandering in circles because we had no map. I would have liked a map. Indeed we followed t...

We've just been to the opening of a new bar - or, more likely, a bar restaurant - in Culebrón. It's the same bar we went in when we were looking around the village before buying our house. That bar folded. We had a meal there when it re-opened, briefly, as a Uruguayan Steak House. That closed too but, with new people, it re-opened as Casa Pepe for a while. I seem to remember we managed three visits before they pulled down the shutters. Now I know I'm quite forgetful but I'm surprised what I've already forgotten about the new bar. I've forgotten its name for instance, or when it will be open or what it will be serving. Actually, come to think of it despite having a house in the village I don't remember being invited to the inaugral event. I do remember that Eduardo (the owner of another restaurant in Culebrón) mentioned that his sister intended to let out the bar/restaurant again and I recall that people at the Neighbourhood Association meal ment...

Ingrid told me a story. She holds with the majority view that telephone sales people should be made to run around dripping wet wearing only a towel to see how they like it. One day though a chap phoned trying to sell a combined electric and gas supply package and Ingrid positively welcomed the call. She was enthusiastic. She would be delighted to take advantage of the offer. By Ingrid's account the man handled the unexpected situation well. He remembered his training and kept on extolling the virtues as he completed the draft contract. It all fell apart at the address stage though. Ingrid lived in an old half timbered cottage with green wellies in the porch and a big red Aga in the kitchen. "Aah, I'm afraid we can't offer piped gas to your location," said the salesman, "your  house is too rural." "I know," said Ingrid, "why didn't you?" Then she put the phone down. There's no piped gas in Culebrón either. Piped gas in Spa...

It was the Annual General Meeting of the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association today. As is now usual we were greeted effusively by lots of people. As usual we had the meal beforehand. As usual we had a choice of rice and gazpacho. As usual Maggie and I sat with Mari Luisa, Daniel, Marisa, Carol and David. As usual there was a gap next to us at table. With the tables put away, the paella pan scrubbed clean and the prawn heads picked up off the floor it was time for the Annual General Meeting. The AGM is always a bit disorganised. At least by UK standards it's a bit disorganised. When I say a bit disorganised read absolute chaos. Sometimes there is an agenda but today there wasn't - no minutes either. Of the four key members of the committee - Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer and Secretary - only the Chair and the Secretary were on hand. With little else to lean on the meeting hinged around the accounts. The slightly inebriated Secretary started by eulogising the Village Mayor...

I like listening to the radio. Getting your news from the radio obviously has it's disadvantages (no pictures) but radio does have the huge plus of portability and not being attention seeking. The Internet and television are nowhere near as compatible with driving, shaving or showering as is the radio. Generally radio here is reasonably good. There are stacks of local stations full of local news and stories. Nationally the news coverage is fine with a range of political views spread amongst the various broadcasters though politicians don't get anything like the cross examination that they are subjected to in the US or UK. News aside speech radio doesn't have anything like the breadth of, for instance, BBC Radio 4 (drama, arts, comedy, documentary reports etc)  but with my "Proud to be British" hat on I suspect that very few radio stations in the world do. Sports coverage is enormously important and takes up hours of air time. Sport is synonomous with football ...