Life in Culebrón

I write articles for a magazine called TIM . I was writing one this afternoon and I used a quote from the Bogart/Bacall film To Have and Have Not. "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow." Maybe it's just me but I think that quotes from films are a part of everyday conversation. Do you recognise these? "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," "Show me the money!", "May the Force be with you." Maybe you don't but "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." These quotes are all from foreign films. Movies made by Hollywood. They are not British films made at Ealing or Elstree. The first time I went to the United States I had great difficulty communicating, the difference between scotch and whisky was the first flashpoint but there were others. It was GBS who said, "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language" but the...

Apparently, on average, we Pinoseros - the population of Pinoso - produce 500 kilos of rubbish each year. Of that just 28 kilos is recycled. Rubbish collection isn't done on an individual basis as in the UK. Instead there are big rubbish bins placed at strategic positions in the villages, towns, cities and throughout the countryside. Individual householders have to carry their household rubbish to the bins. Collection in the towns is usually every night whilst in Culebrón collection is twice per week. There are recycling bins too. Generally it's green for glass, blue for paper and cardboard and yellow for containers. There isn't discrimination within those three categories so the empty shampoo bottles, the tetrapaks and pop cans all go in the yellow container. Green, blue, clear and brown glass all go in the green container. I'm told that people have jobs separating the different classes of waste but any time I've ever talked to Spaniards about this the majo...

Tangible World Heritage sites, on the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization list, include places like the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian Pyramids or, in the UK, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, The Ironbridge Gorge and the old maritime parts of Liverpool. Spain has lots and lots of sites with forty four all together putting it third in the world ranking behind China and Italy. But not all heritage is "bricks and mortar" - heritage also includes cultural traditions. A good British example might be pantomime although it seems, from a bit of Googling, as though the UK has not yet joined the list of countries which subscribe to the UNESCO definition of what intangible cultural heritage is. Spain has and things like the Human Towers of Catalunya, Flamenco and the Whistling Language of the island of Gomera in the Canaries are all there. The Elche Mystery play, or in the local Valencian language el Misteri d' Elx, was given the staus of  Intangible Cultural He...

I'm not much of a dancer. I don't care for it anyway but then I hurt my hip dancing in 1973 so there was a bit of a hiatus till I tried it again. That must have been the mid 90s. I hurt myself again then though I can't really blame the dancing. I was so drunk that I was a tad unsteady and I cracked my head on the wall when I was in the urinal. I didn't notice at the time but Maggie was apparently put off dancing by the trickle of blood running down my forehead. Anyway I don't dance. So last night at around 2am I was the only person left seated at the big long table where we'd just eaten. Several people tried to persuade me to dance. I said no, I always say no. Looking at my actions from the outside I must be a bit of a party pooper. I never dance, never sing, never get involved in the hilarious games. Stand offish. I'm better when I've been drinking but I had to drive last night so there was no liquid help to hand. The events leading up to the non ...

I'm sitting in a shopping centre drinking coffee. If I'm lucky I have another seven hours to kill. If I'm unlucky I will have to get Maggie to come and get me. The car is in dry dock, with the BMW dealer. It has an intermittent misfire. I have a great service contract on the car. I paid about 320€ maybe three years ago and for that I get the usual services at no extra cost. It looks as though the it needs new brake pads said the service receptionist. 220€ said the receptionist. Finding an intermittent fault can be a sod said the receptionist. I can't tell you how much it will be until we know the problem. My Barclaycard trembled. You'll have to pay for the diagnostic test even if we don't find anything said the receptionist. I argued. My Barclaycard quaked. It may take more than today said the receptionist. I threw myself on his mercy. I can't walk home to Culebrón from here - about 45 km - please try. So, here I am drinking coffee in the air condi...

I occasionally see British TV and it is full of people who don't have "Anglo" names. Presumably their families went to the UK from all around the world. They are just there - no fuss, nothing different - getting on with their jobs as reporters, soap actors, presenters and the like. It's so normal, so routine that it's completely unexceptional. Back home in Pinoso I was reading through the list of entrants and prizewinners in a competition to design a poster for some event a while ago. I was half looking for a British name. The last time I saw any information there were 42 nationalities represented in Pinoso yet, amongst the names of the entrants there was not a single one that didn't have a double barrelled Spanish surname. I may be wrong but I've never noticed anyone in the Carnival Queen competition who isn't Spanish either and whilst I have seen the odd Brit amongst the dance troupes and choirs I haven't noticed Algerians or Senegalese doing...

Knowing what time to go to something can be quite tricky. We've been celebrating in the village the last couple of weeks and by arriving about twenty minutes late for the Neighbourhood Association meal for instance we were something like an hour early. This isn't always the case. On sure fire way to make sure that you are late is to presume that the event will start late. It almost certainly will but you can't presume and if you do expect a punctual start. Lots of things do run to time, or at least more or less, but time has an elasticity in Spain that is sometimes surprising to we Brits. I'm still amazed for instance that TV programmes can start both late or early. Away from punctuality there is a time for things. Like the way that lunchtime starts at around 2pm or evening meals around 9 or 9.30pm. When I'm working this timetable which involves most businesses closing in the mid afternoon and then re-opening for an "evening" stint suits me fine. Tha...

Spain has the highest number of reservoirs per inhabitant in the world. At least that's what it says on Wikipedia. I am always wary of these superlatives. I remember hearing in the UK that NHS Blood and Transplant was the best service in the world and I wondered what their criteria were for that statement. My mum is also the best mum in the world. I bet you, mistakenly, thought yours was. My unchecked and unverified perception is that it is generally pretty sunny in Spain in summer. It is especially sunny along the Mediterranean coast. I hear it even stops raining in Galicia and the rest of Northern Spain in summer. You might think that a hot dry country like Spain would have water supply problems. Whilst we have lived here there were, a few years ago, some restrictions on the agricultural use of water. It wasn't a big thing though - we were on the verge of trouble rather than in trouble. The last big problems that I can find reference to were down in Andalucia in the mid...

We had a will written in the UK years and years ago. A really tall, avuncular chap did it for us. His office was like something from Dickens with big ticking clocks, overstuffed chairs, a leather trimmed desk and legal documents tied with ribbons. Leeds Day in St Ives. Spanish inheritance law is quite keen on blood. Distant relatives outrank unmarried partners by miles. For years, several years, we have been going to get a Spanish will. Last week we finally got to a solicitor, un abogado. The chap who talked to us wore jeans and a T shirt and looked significantly younger than some of the clothes I was wearing. There were no ticking clocks. "We're more your juvenle delinquent and petty thief office," said the boy lawyer. "One of our colleagues down in Alicante can come up and help you write a will but why don't you try the noatary? If your will isn't tricky they can do the job faster and cheaper than us." Notary sounds really old fashioned to me. L...

It's definitely summer now. I suppose summer is a special time of year around the world but here, on the Mediterranean coast, it seems to have a distinct significance. The expectations for summer are somehow much greater than they were, for instance, in the UK. And mention of the UK gives me the perfect cue. We were in the UK last week. I've spent less than a couple of weeks there in the last nine years so, as things change, at times I found myself feeling less like a local and more like a tourist. Interesting place I thought. Full of life, lots of bright ideas all around. Very dynamic. It was also all a bit frenetic. Full and in a hurry. Traffic was incredible, cars everywhere and the poor old TomTom was going mad with beep beeps for radars. I was deeply impressed with being able to wave my credit card at the terminal on the bar and pay for a pint of bitter without codes, PINS or ID. I was a little less impressed with paying three quid for a bottle of water.  It was nice...

Maggie needed a new mobile phone. She lost her old number as a product of the house move back to Culebrón from Cartagena. We cobbled together a solution but when her HTC phone, which she has never taken to, started to have software problems she decided it was time to get a shiny new phone and  a brand new number. The range of offers was bewildering. Contract or pay as you go. Real or virtual networks. Household names like Vodafone and Orange or newcomers like Pepephone? Eventually the choice was made about which phone and which set up. There was a last minute scramble when the device they used in the Yoigo shop to scan identity documents wouldn't take a British passport. The passport was much thicker than the Spanish ID cards the scanner had been designed to cope with. Maggie's Spanish ID was no good as it didn't have a photo. They managed in the end though. The thing that surprised me was the number. Spanish mobile numbers are nine figures long and begin with 6 whi...