Braseros

It's not a complex idea. When I was a lad braziers were the natural complement to those little striped tents that workmen used to set up over what were then called manhole covers. In Spain they put them under round tables.

Braziers or braseros are, at their most basic, simple bowls which fit into a circular support underneath a round table. There are electric ones nowadays of course but the one we were presented with today, when we went for a birthday meal, was more like a wrought iron version of a parrot's cage. Glowing embers are put inside the bowl, the bowl is popped under the table and a heavy tablecloth draped over the table and your knees. The heat captured under the table warms the lower half of your body. A very personal sort of heater. The modern thermostaically controlled electric heaters do the same job and have the advantage over the old fashioned, real fire type. They don't either set fire to their users or poison them with carbon monoxide.

'Til the only dry land were at Blackpool

I've been to some cold places in my life. England in January isn't that warm; the Isle of Lewis and Stockholm are often colder but they are not uncomfortable places. Culebrón on the other hand is uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. Outside it's about 7ºC and it's midday. The house isn't set up for it. Wind whistles under the doors, through the windows. Marble and tiled surfaces don't help. Built for summer, not for winter. The only warm place in the house is under the shower. Outside, the sky is blue, the sun is shining. Wrapped up, with gloves it's warm enough. But inside the chill soaks through your bones. Down in La Unión I haven't yet started to close the windows at night or use a heater but here. Brrr!

Our local petrol station has no petrol, no diesel and no gas bottles. Everyone says that the owner can't pay his bills so the oil company won't deliver except for cash payments. The next nearest petrol stations are at least 10kms away. The car wash is still in business though. I used it today rather than plunge my hands into a bucket of cold water.

The local bodega on the other hand was doing a roaring trade on Sunday. I think, though I'm not sure, that the farmers who produce the grapes which make the wine, have a running account with the bodega shop. They buy things on tick against the money they are paid for the grapes they harvest. The shop sells groceries, things for around the farm, workwear etc. It's an interesting place.

In the Santa Catalina district of the town, one of the older and possibly poorer parts of Pinoso they are having a fiesta because it's her day on the 25th. I plain forgot to go to see the street bonfires on Friday evening. Yesterday I was going to go and watch the flower offering and have a look at the mediaeval market as I drove back from the cinema but I changed my mind when I noticed that the temperature was hovering around 2ºC and there was a chill wind blowing. What fun in drinking a micro brewery beer or eating a chorizo roll with hands frozen by the cold? I did pop in today though.

There's a circus in town. I half wondered about going. The camel and the strange long horned cow type beast parked outside the big top looked very mangy and very out of place. I arrived to take a few snaps just as the Sunday matinee crowd came out. There wasn't much of an audience.

I'm just back from lunch down in the village hall. It was the Neighbourhood Association AGM. We always have one of the local paellas with rabbit and snails and gazpacho, a sort of rabbit stew with a flat form of dumpling. It's always the same. The meal started late, there was applause when the metre and a half paella pan was brought into the hall from the outside kitchen where it has been cooked over wood. There was plenty of drink and the actual meeting was sparsely attended and very disorganised. For the first time ever, and despite being the only foreigner in the place, I didn't feel too lost. I laughed when I didn't understand and I voted knowing what I was voting for despite the chaos. It looks like we're off to Benidorm again in March. Everybody else was drinking the very fashionable gintonics (gin and tonic) but someone found a bottle of whisky for me. I drained it. My typing may have suffereed.

The title, by the way, is from three ha'pence a foot by Marriott Edgar. Snaps on the Picasa link at the top of the page.

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It rained and it rained for a fortni't, 

And flooded the 'ole countryside. 

It rained and it kept' on raining, 

'Til the Irwell were fifty mile wide.

The 'ouses were soon under water, 

And folks to the roof 'ad to climb. 

They said 'twas the rottenest summer 

That Bury 'ad 'ad for some time. 

The rain showed no sign of abating, 

And water rose hour by hour, 

'Til the only dry land were at Blackpool, 

And that were on top of the Tower.

Picudo rojo - the pruning

I thought he wasn't going to come. He didn't send me the message he'd promised yesterday and he didn't answer my text messages. When I finally plucked up the courage to phone he said he'd be here by 12.30. I raced from La Unión to be here on time. An hour after the appointed time he still hadn't arrived and I sent another message. After lunch was the reply, around four. He arrived about half past but I must say when he did start the work was impressive.

He had something like a billhook cum machete as his only real tool. He sharpened it to start and kept stopping to sharpen it. I think he said it was called a márcola but I may be wrong. He set about the plam tree with a verve slicing off the outer layer with a mixture of brute strength and the sharpened blade.

Our ladder would only reach to a certain height so for the top of the tree he strapped himself into a harness, braced himself against the tree and continued to slice off the dead covering and lots of branches. He looked just like one of the pictures in the palm tree museum down in Elche. Very rural.

By now the light was beginning to fail and I stood amidst the shower of debris coming from the tree holding up an inspection lamp so he could see as he chopped, hacked and cut. He'd found the dreaded picudo rojo beetle hiding in the fibre and debris that accumulates amongst the stumps which are left when the branches are pruned so he did his best to clear away all the nooks and crannies where the beast shelters. He found several holes where the little blighters have burrowed into the palm but he seemed pretty sure we weren't going to lose the tree.

I handed over the 80€ happily. Now I just have to get a different bloke to come and douse it in chemicals.

Picudo Rojo

Probably the main reason that we have a house in Culebrón is because when we first came here Maggie had a job in Elche. One of Elche's claims to fame is that it has the largest palm forest in Europe. Looking for a house we could afford we moved up the Vinalopo valley and away from Elche.

The first time I saw our house in Culebrón it was the little drive, framed by trees, that impressed. Then there was the palm tree. There are other trees in the garden, there are some nice trees, but it was the palm tree that drew my attention. The outside space in Culebrón has always been its biggest plus.

All those years ago the palm trees in Elche were menaced by a little red beetle. The other day our village mayoress WhatsApped me a pamphlet to say that the Town Hall here was concerned about the spread of that same beetle and that there was a census under way of palm trees. Infected trees would have to be culled for the greater good. The thought crossed my mind that we were going to lose the tree, as well as the cat, on my watch.

The tree chap came today. He was an interesting sort of bloke. He stopped me at one point in mid sentence and after a moment of apparent silence said something like "Aahh, lesser spotted red leg."

Good news. He said that the tree is sound but that it will need a chemical treatment to protect it against the beetle. First he recommended that it was "brushed" to remove the layer of outer, now dead, organic material that gives palm trunks their typical appearance. Apparently the dead debris offers a perfect breeding ground for the beetle. The tree man will be back next week to tidy up the palm. That done we can get the trunk injected.

There was some bad news though when he pointed out something that I have been worried about for some time now. The electric supply for the three houses in our little block cross our garden from a pole on the track that runs past the house. The wires pass directly over the palm tree and as it has grown it now menaces the wires. The last time we asked about beefing up those wires, to increase the power supply, the electricity company said that the work would cost 18,000€. I have no idea what they will say if we ask them to simply reposition the wires but I know it wont be cheap and I know whose tree it is.

Reaching for the thermals

I'm back in Culebrón for the weekend. Before I left La Unión I checked the State Weather Service to see whether I would need a wooly or not. After all Culebrón is at nearly 600 metres. I was a bit undecided - daytime temperatures have been fine, sunny and clear with maximums of around 27º/28ºC most of the week. Minimums though were a little scary. It got as low as 10ºC on Wednesday and it rained. I decided against a jumper though, I have some in Culebrón anyway, and I stuck to packing T shirts. Mind you, around 7pm this evening I decided it was a bit chilly and I dug out an old cardigan and closed the doors.

It's on the cards. The clocks go back this weekend. It'll be dark around 7pm and we can look forward to a gradual worsening until the depths of December when it will be dark by 6pm.

As I was driving to work the other morning I realised that trees were shedding their leaves and as I sat outside a bar the other morning around 9am I wished I'd chosen a long sleeved shirt to start the day. It brightened up of course and got warm as the day progressed but there is no doubt that summer is beginning to fade.

Who knows, maybe it'll rain before long. I haven't seen any yet in my two months in La Unión but the garden here shows signs of that Wednesday rain.

Home to stay

Usually coming home to Culebrón for the weekend is something to look forward to. Not this time. No, coming back to Culebrón today was a horrid journey for a horrid purpose.

I was bringing Eddie the cat home to bury him.

On Monday evening he left the flat in La Unión to enjoy a bit of freedom outdoors. He'd done the same thing several evenings on the trot usually whilst I had an after work cup of tea and a sit down. I went to bring him in, maybe an hour and a half later, at around one in the morning. I found him lying on the ground, unmarked, but quite obviously dead. Most likely it was a car, which seems incredible given the quietness of the streets, but dead he was.

Eduardo had been with us since July 2005 when he was tiny. He could be funny, he was always clever and at times he could be a right pain in the backside. Now he's buried besides the nispero tree in the garden in Culebrón.

My life will be substantially poorer without him.

Blogging in La Unión

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Doing business

I'm sometimes a little scathing about our attitude to Spain and our failure to integrate. We British are a pretty big immigrant group in Spain but unlike the other groups who generally have to use Spanish to survive we don't. English is so all pervasive that we can get by. It's possible to keep well away from the mainstream of Spanish life by reading a British newspaper, watching British TV and living a British life surrounded by Spain. We're also generally pretty rich. I don't mean that everyone lives the life of Reilly but, unlike the majority of Ecuadorians or Moroccans, many of us have sufficient money to live a reasonably comfortable life without having to work. Plenty of us do work and plenty of us are strapped for cash at times but generally, and generalisations are generally untrue, our wealth keeps us out of the labour market and so away from the integration that comes with working life.

Where there are largish British populations other Britons set up businesses to cater to their needs. Pinoso has a surprisingly large British population for such a small and unremarkable town. Amongst our ranks are builders, plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, electricians, gardeners, saddlers, dentists, hearing aid specialists, IT consultants, beauty therapists, translators, teachers, estate agents, men with vans, hairdressers, masseurs, artists, cleaners, ironers, party organisers, web designers, magazine publishers, writers, musicians, catteries, kennels, charity shops, bars and cafés.The list is pretty long. If there's a potential market one of us will have a go at exploiting it. Obviously a big plus factor is the language. So much easier to deal with someone you can communicate with easily.

But it can't be easy. I haven't seen the population breakdown recently. The stats can be a bit misleading anyway. Pinoso shares a border with other local authorities in Alicante and Murcia and each has their own British poulation but, geographically, some of the villages which fall into other jurisdictions, have Pinoso as their natural focus. So if Pinoso has around 400 to 500 Britons on the council register there may be a few hundred more within striking distance. It's still not a lot of people to sell your product to and in order to keep your head above water you need to be shrewd. Lots of businesses just don't make it.

On Friday night I went to see a play put on by a local, British, Amateur Dramatics group. It was held at a big restaurant cum bar complex in one of the outlying villages of Pinoso. As I was sitting there it struck me what a well organised and innovative business it was and although it is aimed principally at Britons the place seems to attract a good number of the home population too.

So, for once, instead of being nasty about our failure to integrate I wanted to highlight the inventiveness, tenacity and bravery of my compatriots.

Decisions, decisions

Unless I suddenly flee the country or unless I have a violent argument with my new landlady I expect to become a resident of La Unión next week.

Yesterday I handed over the fee to the estate agent for introducing me to my new flat and next Tuesday I will meet my new landlady and hand over a month's rent and the breakage deposit.

When the agent told me that the landlady wanted to see my wage slips I said that I would like to see her wage slips too and asked that he pass on that message to her. It's obvious enough why she wants to see my wage slips. I'm a risk for her. She lets me into her house and, like all tenants, once I'm in I'm difficult to get out. She doesn't know if I'm the sort of person who will pay my bills or not. She doesn't know if I will smash up her furniture or play loud reggae music at 3am to amuse the neighbours. Wage slips don't actually prove anything of course. Richer people than me like reggae and don't pay bills. Past employment isn't proof of future employment.

I am tempted to be bolshie about it. It's an intrusion into my privacy that I don't like at all. Spaniards don't see it that way at all of course. They are used to handing over identity cards to all and sundry so what does it matter if someone asks your age or how much you earn?

Anyway, provided I don't end up having an argument with my new landlady I will be a resident of La Unión from next Tuesday and I had to decide whether that merited a new blog title or not. The logic was irrefutable. Life in La Unión is now on the tabs at the top of the page or on this link

Summer over

I keep a diary. I have ever since I was 14. At the bottom of each page I note the weather for the day. In most of July and August it has been a pretty monotonous entry. It reads - sunny and warm - high 35ºC low 19ºC - well more or less, sometimes a bit warmer sometimes a bit cooler. I don't write sunny and hot till it gets over 40ºC and it hasn't done that in Culebrón all summer.

These last few days though all that has changed - cloudy, overcast and at times torrential rain. Maximum around 28/29ºC. The reason of course is that August is nearly over and there is a remarkable concurrence between the calendar and the weather here in Spain that I simply don't remember experiencing when I lived in the UK.

Summer is over in other ways too. Maggie is off to Qatar tomorrow so I will be left all alone in Spain for at least the year of her initial contract. I was due to start work again on Monday but there has been a bit of a cock up with my holiday pay so I'm not going to start back till the 11th now. This is actually quite good as I have been doing a half hearted bit of flat hunting in Cartagena and I have run into the problem that everyone is still on holiday. On Monday, being September, that will all change. I will be able to telephone people and get a reply. People will be back at work and there will be items on the radio and television about the inevitable depression that people suffer as they settle back into the work routine.

It's been a pretty standard summer. A good summer. We havent't been very far but we've done plenty most of it recorded in the snaps on Picasa and Facebook rather than as entries here.

That special relationship

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 truth is much of my cultural heritage comes from the United States. From American authors, photographers, music, TV and places. Show me that tower and we're in Seattle, the red coloured bridge is in San Francisco but the black one is in New York. I know who Babe Ruth was and the NYCs and even the New England Patriots. I hum along to US songs and I watch their TV. I even know some US politicians. I am certain that the main reason is that we share a common language, whatever Shaw thought, and even that language is greatly influenced by the US. When I was a boy they were wagons, they are still lorries to me but I understand and use trucks just as I used movies above.

America - I always find it remarkable  that a country was so certain of itself to choose to use the adjective American to call its citizens - is just a part of my life.

It's not quite the same for Spaniards. When they listen to Bogart doing "Of all the gin joints in all the world" the voice is José Guardiola and it was Constantino Romero who took the voice for Rutger Hauer in the death scene from Bladerunner: "I've... seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion." It's not the same, it's not as strong. The influence of the States just isn't as strong for Spaniards as it is for me and presumably for other Britons.

So I understand that Spaniards don't know about British things like Sheperd's Pie or making tea properly but I'm consistently surprised that Americn authors or TV shows don't figure much in their lives either. I just presumed that the United States was everywhere by giving us all baseball caps, Google and McDonalds but maybe I misunderstood that language was maybe just as powerful in blocking those things.

The first time that Churchill stressed the special realtionship was in the "Iron Curtain Speech" in Fulton Missouri in 1946. "I come to the crux of what I have travelled here to say. Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English-speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States."

So you see even Winnie agrees with me about the language.