Care in the community

There is a district of Pinoso called Santa Catalina and today is Santa Catalina's day, Well it's today if you use the Byzantine calendar or tomorrow if you're on the Latin calendar. So Saint Catherine. The day is celebrated here by lighting bonfires in the street and having an associated "picnic". An efigy of the Saint also starts doing the rounds of people's homes.

When we first moved to Pinoso I went to have a look at the bonfires. Unlike this evening, when it was a very pleasant 13ºC, it was cold back in 2005 and I wore a big black overcoat with gloves and a scarf. Unlike tonight Maggie wasn't with me. I was alone.

A couple of years later I was working at a furniture shop and a new co-worker turned up. She recognised me as the man with the long coat and she told me a story. The people who lived in Santa Catalina didn't trust me. I looked shifty. Maybe their children weren't safe with me around. As I strolled amongst the bonfires a person from one group would keep an eye on me. After a couple of hundred metres at most they would pass the task to the next group and so on. Wherever I went I was being watched until I got in my car and drove away.

Tonight we were offered a bit of something to eat as we strolled around. Much better.

Losing my grip

Manuel looks like an ordinary bloke. He lives in a normal sort of flat in a normal looking working class district of Madrid. His local bar is a few minutes walk from his front door. Times are tough in Spain. A few days before when Antonio, the bar owner, asked Manu if he wanted his usual lottery ticket for the Christmas draw he put it off. He didn't really have the 20€ for the tenth part of a ticket. Now it's the day of the draw. In the bar everyone is celebrating. The bar's number has come up and all the locals are richer. Manuel's wife urges her husband to go to the bar, to congratulate everyone. What's done is done. No good brooding on what might have been. Manuel wraps up against the cold, goes to the bar and pushes through the happy crowd to congratulate Antonio on his luck. Manuel turns down a glass of bubbly and asks for his usual coffee. Job done and in no mood to join in the jollity Manuel asks for the bill. The surprise is that the bill is twenty one euros for the one euro coffee. Antonio kept back a twenty euro ticket for his friend - just in case.

Standing by your pals is what you do in tough times. The annual Christmas advert for the state lottery. A message about not losing hope and about sharing. To be honest I hadn't noticed the ad on the telly because advert time is tea making, toilet or email check time. It was Maggie who pointed it out to me. In turn she'd been told about the advert by her intercambio - the person she does half an hour of English in return for half an hour of Spanish with. I searched it out on YouTube to have a look.

Last year the lottery ad featured a handful of singers and was roundly pilloried and parodied. I had a conversation about it with several of my adult students and with my two intercambios of the time. This year there was a bit of the Manuel Antonio ad that I couldn't make out and I was reduced to messaging one of my Cartagena friends for help with the wording.

It's easy enough to keep up to date in a media way with what's happening here but there is a second sort of news - the stuff that people talk about down the pub or send WhatsApp messages about. Until coming back to Culebrón I'd had access to those conversations through workmates, intercambios and students. Things have changed with my new job. Technically it isn't even a job, I'm now self employed and I sell my services to the language school. That aside the real change has been in the profile of the students. Most are now children or teenagers and only one group of adults has sufficient English to maintain an ordinary conversation. Of the two people I normally work alongside one is as English as me and the other is a teenager herself. Keeping up with the informal news has become a little more difficult.

Half Marathon

Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away. I always  thought the quote was Chesterton's but apparently most people think it was Twain. In all probability it was Paul Terry, founder of Terrytoons. Whoever first said it I've always thought that it embodied a fundamental truth.

There was a Half Marathon in Pinoso today. To be honest it was a bit of a push for me to get there for the ten o clock start. Sunday morning lie in and all that. Once in town I had a bit of difficulty finding the runners. They didn't seem to be where I expected them to be and the town looked strangely empty with several of the main streets cleared of parked cars. 

There were though people, lots of people, walking along the Badén and most of them were wearing fluorescent clothing. I presumed they had some relationship to the race so I followed them for a while. Then I changed my mind and went to where I thought the start was. I was just in time to bump into hundreds of people sprinting down Paseo de la Constitución. You wouldn't think it was easy to hide 500 runners in a small town would you?

There wasn't much to it as an event. People running or walking wearing shorts and vests and all those brightly coloured sports clothes. Lots of them grasped bottles of water. I took a few snaps. I walked round. One thing that struck me about the event was the camaraderie. There were people on the side of the road cheering the runners and walkers on. "You can do it," "Nearly there," "You're doing brilliantly,"  etc., etc. There were the friends running together urging each other to go faster or just to keep going. Then there were the people who had partnered up for the bulk of the distance but who became deadly rivals as they sprinted the last few metres to the finish only to be reunited by a big grin, a pat on the back or a handshake on the other side of the inflatable finishing post. 

I took a liking to the official whose job it was to separate the runners continuing on the half marathon from those finishing the 10 km race. "Straight on for the half marathon, last lap - turn here, turn here for the 10km finish - you're almost there." But alongside the official message, the essential information, there was a little extra for nearly all the runners - some form of personal encouragement. And he seemed to know at least half of the runners personally. "You're flying Enrique," "Looking good Carmen," "Chin up José." A good man for the job I thought.

Small Spanish towns are good at community stuff. People know each other, people say hello, people have time for others but I rather suspect that Mr Terry and I may have missed at least one of the benefits of exercise.

Heel and toe

Maggie had an appointment in Elda today and naturally enough I got to drive. Elda and Petrer are our local  big town.

Some towns are easy to navigate. Somehow you instantly grasp the basic arrangement of the town or city and getting from one place to another is easy. Petrer and Elda are not like that. They are supposed to be two towns with different town halls and each one has street maps that don't show the other so, at times, it's not easy to say whether you are in Elda or Petrer. Elda is where the dole and tax office is whilst Petrer has the long distance bus station and the shopping centres. The hospital is called Elda Hospital but I would have thought it was actually in Petrer. Who knows? Petrer is also called Petrel at times, or it could be the other way around. One of them is predominantly Castilian speaking whilst the other speaks Valencià. Despite visiting them regularly over the past nine or ten years navigation is still a bit less certain than Rosetta putting down Philae on the surface of the singing 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet

I suggested that instead of just going to the appointment we added in a tiny adventure. Tinier than tiny. Elda has a history of shoe making and so it has a shoe museum. I went there years ago when we were still house hunting. I was amused and rattled in equal measure that time when I had to ring a bell and respond to a reasonably detailed interview to gain admittance. My Spanish was even worse then and I was appalled that I couldn't just walk into a museum. The museum visit would be our midweek adventure.

The museum door was open today and we just walked in though old ghosts came back to haunt me when the chap on the desk asked if he could ask us some questions. We said yes. He asked us where we were from. We answered. We passed. I'm sure the entrance exam has got easier over the years. Maybe though other people were asked harder questions because in all the time that we were in the museum we were alone.

On the first floor there were a lot of wooden lasts and a lot of sewing machines. Despite trying to sort it out I still have no idea about the basics of making a shoe. Not the most informative museum I've ever been to.

On the second floor there were loads and loads of glass cases full of shoes, boots, sandals and anything else people put onto their feet. There were some mad designs, some interesting designs, some surprising designs (Venetians in the Middle Ages liked high high platforms) and lots and lots of them. It was pretty interesting in a dull sort of way. It was the same with the rows of portraits of important people from the shoe industry in Elda or old shoes from semi famous people signed over to the museum with love. You'd know you were famous wouldn't you when the shoe museum in Elda asked you for some of your old footwear?

Anyway its over now and I'm in the waiting room with Maggie and we've had enough of a wait for me to write the whole post.

Tap, tap, tapas

As far as I remember the first ever time we got involved in a tapas trail was in Sax which is a small town about 20 km from here. It was probably in 2005 and I remember it well because afterwards we went on to a meal in the village hall organised by the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association. Certain members of our party had had a little too much to drink and they were unable to fully participate in the village AGM afterwards leaving me as the sole speaking British representative.

Tapas trails, rutas de tapas, are a simple idea. Somebody, usually the Chamber of Trade or the local Shopkeeper's Association persuades a number of bars and restaurants in their town to sell a bite sized snack and a drink, usually either beer or wine, for a bargain set price. They persuade other sponsors to cough up a prize. Then they produce a route map cum leaflet and, within the set dates, punters skip from bar to bar eating the tapas and drinking the drink. Each time the participants have something on the trail they get a stamp on their leaflet. The punters have a good time, the bars get more trade and the towns look busier.

In Sax I think each bar gave clues to a puzzle. Solve the puzzle and win a prize. In Cartagena, where we lived the tapas trail was a big deal with about seventy places taking part and thousands and thousands of tapas served. Everyone who handed in a leaflet with at least six stamps got a free entry to one of the city museums and there was a draw for a bigger prize.

Earlier Pinoso trails may have passed me by but, to the best of my knowledge, the first tapas trail here was this summer. It was tied in with the performances of a couple of classical Greek plays. We made a bit of a half hearted attempt to get involved but we hadn't checked the leflet properly and asked for one of the tapas on a Tuesday when the route only ran from Thursday to Sunday. We felt so stupid we threw the leaflets away and skulked at home till it was over.

There is another Pinoso tapas trail running at the moment. It is blessed with a name in Valencià. It started last Thursday and runs for the next three weeks with afternoon and evening sessions from Thursday to Sunday. Top prize is a weekend in a spa hotel and there are meals out to be won too. There are just fourteen bars involved but each one is producing a couple of tapas so the range isn't bad for a town with 8,000 people.

We asked a couple of sets of our British chums if they fancied doing a bit of the route with us. I think it was a new experience for both couples. It was a good evening. They got tapas in four places but, because I had to come from work I was a little later and just did three. The tapas weren't bad but they weren't inspired either. Most were a bit samey, something on a bit of bread, toast or cracker. Maybe I'm being a bit hard because I was denied the more amusing half of the experience as I had to drive home afterwards. Nonetheless it was excellent to be doing something on home turf

We were in good company too. There were lots of gangs of friends and couples with the leaflets doing just the same as us. Which bar next? We kept seeing the same people strolling from one bar to another just as we were.

Shops

We don't have a shop in Culebrón. Not a one. Pinoso has a reasonable range though. Small businesses predominate. The sort of place where the goods are kept in the back, where you have to ask for things, where screws are counted out and where they punch the extra holes into the belt. Window displays are generally utilitarian rather than artistic.

Larger Spanish towns generally have modern, corporate retailing with big out of town shopping centres and recognisable names. But in amongst the town centre chain stores with their modern window dressing, background music, careful lighting and English language slogans there will be any number of small, anachronistic businesses. Maggie summed it up neatly when I mentioned the news story I'd read. "Ah, the corset shops."

There they are. Shops that smell of leather or paper. Shops with a hotch potch of stationery yellowing at the edges and maps showing the Soviet Union. Shops with boxes of ribbons, knicker elastic, needles and buttons. Costume jewellery shops with piles of pearl necklaces and butterfly brooches. Clothes shops with flat caps, overalls, green cord trousers and polyester housecoats next to A line skirts. Ironmongers with wooden pitchforks and galvanized buckets.

I''ve often wondered how they survive. My guess was historic rents, the family living frugally over the shop and running them on long hours and pitiful wages. And that's what it is - at least the first part about rents. Apparently something called the Boyer Law froze rents on a range of shops that had leases before 1985. The freeze was for twenty years. This means that in January 2015 suddenly the rents will have no protection and the prediction is that lots of those little businesses will be unable to stay open. Rent rises of 1000% are predicted on properties in the bigger towns and cities.

It was a common complaint in the UK as I remember. All the towns look the same with the same chain shops in the same street. Maybe it will soon be the same in Spain.

Ghost stories

As I drove home this evening I scanned the countryside for bonfires. I listened for the whistles and bangs of fireworks. There weren't any of course. It may have been Bonfire Night in the UK but there is no celebration here to mark the failiure of the Gunpowder Plot.

From what I understand Guy Fawkes Night has basically died out in the UK anyway. For me, as a boy in West Yorkshire, it was a big event. We spent weeks beforehand collecting wood and sitting around telling ghost stories, eating potatoes charred on the outside and raw inside after their ordeal by makeshift camp fire. There was toffee, bonfire toffee, sticky enough to challenge even the strong young teeth I had then. The Parkin didn't come till later, in the kitchen at home.

The big night on the 5th involved setting off any fieworks we had managed to scrounge together. When they were exhausted the bonfire became the focus of our attention for a while. It's amazing how one side of your body, the part facing the fire, can crackle with heat whilst the other side is lashed by the cold November air. I remember too that when I finally got home the quality of the tungsten light in the kitchen always seemed very stark after being outside in the dark so long. Even odder though was that there was obviously some sort of temporal hiccough. The kitchen clock said it was still only half past seven when we got home yet the evening had lasted ages and ages. How could that be? The long, cold and dark, dark autumnal evenings of my youth were scented with smoke.

A pal in Peterborough sent me an email this evening to say it was 2ºC. Traditional sort of Bonfire Night temperature I thought. Here in Spain I'd commented to Maggie as I came in that it was a bit parky at just 13ºC.

Last week of course it was Halloween. I saw lots of signs of that. Children dressed up parading around the streets, bars covered with cobwebs. It's an event that has passed me by over the years. It hardly existed in my childhood and as I have neither children nor grandchildren I haven't learned how it's done. My knowledge of Halloween comes largely from dodgy horror movies.

I did ask my students what they did on Halloween but as most of them are very young and their English is pretty basic the level of information I got back was scanty. Several were dressed up as mummies, zombies, vampires and witches. The interesting thing was that when I asked what they had done, expecting some sort of description of tricking and treating, the almost universal answer was that they had eaten. Pizza was popular, seafood moreso. Lots told me of prawns and clams.

This is excellent news. No Spanish festivity of any kind is complete without food. Lots of the British people I know complain that Halloween is a US import though I understand that the original celebration began in Ireland and went to the US via those long queues at Ellis Island. It may be a US export but in Spain it seems to have been subverted into yet another opportunity to feast.

Services

When I put the clocks back later tonight I'm going to retune the telly. The way the frequencies are divided up between mobile phone services and TV networks is being changed so it's either a laborious retune (splendid design Samsung people!) or lose channels. TV is one of the few things we generally get as well here as anywhere in Spain.

My phone provider sent me one of those super offers the other day. For just two euros more per month I could have 40 new TV channels, increase the ADSL speed to a maximum of 100 Mb and get double the number of download gigs on my mobile phone. I tried to sign up. None of the advantages were available here in Culebrón - no 4G, no fibre, not even the TV channels. That's what you get for living in the countryside. ADSL at 3 Mb maximum and a dodgy mobile signal.

When I worked at the furniture shop my boss had a go at house selling. I used to take the pictures and write the blurb for the sales sheets. Lots of people who lived up some unmade track would tell me that they'd spent so many thousands on bringing in mains water or having the placed hooked up to the power grid. When you live in the middle of nowhere you suddenly realise that these things are good. The trouble is that for buyers, these services are as basic as walls and a roof and add no value whatsoever to the sales price of a house.

We have running water. Not the hardly purified agricultural water that some country houses get by on but proper clean water. They are running a gas pipeline pretty close to our house. It will take piped gas from Monóvar to Pinoso and on to Algüeña. There will be no little spur to our village so we will have to continue lugging gas bottles around. We suspect that one of the diggers or lorries damaged our water pipes. We had a couple of days of intermittent water and pressure so low that the gas water heater wouldn't fire up. Cold dribbly showers are horrid even in the relative warmth of this October.

They put drains in the village a few years ago. The nearest access point was about 300 metres from our house. They told us we could connect up to it if we wished but we'd have to dig our own trench and put in our own pipework. We decided to stick with our septic tank even though it sometimes smells a bit. That didn't stop them charging us 45€ per year for drainage costs though.

The electric supply is a bit ancient too. We get a lot of power cuts, generally only a couple of minutes but not always. We only have 2.2 Kw of supply. The Spanish word for electric isn't electric - it's light. That's because that's what power was for most houses at first. A dim 25w bulb to rival the candles and oil lamps of earlier generations. Our Twenty First Century 2.5 Kw electric kettle would blow the circuit breakers on our 1970s power supply every time we fancied a cuppa if it were not for a bit of skullduggery on our part. Long before the palm tree was menacing the supply we talked with our neighbour about bringing in more power. The price was around 18,000€ so we all quietly forgot about it.

Life in the country is lovely - great views. But sometimes as the internet grinds slowly, the water dribbles, the lights dim and the gas heater sputters to a halt waiting for a new bottle I forget all about those views and long for a nearby bar and tarmac underfoot.

El Tenorio

Wikipedia tells me that Don Juan Tenorio,written by José Zorrilla in 1844, is the more romantic of the two principal Spanish-language plays about the legend of Don Juan. The other is the 1630 El Burlador de Sevilla probably written by Tirso de Molina. So now you know.

It's a Spanish theatre tradition to perform El Tenorio on All Saints Day as part of the Bank Holiday "celebrations". In turn this has made it one of the most lucrative of Spanish plays. It's a pity poor old  Zorilla sold the rights soon after he wrote it. He thought it was just another pot boiler.

I fear that a play written in the mid 19th Century, based on an older 17th Century work, is going to be a bit of a push for my Spanish. But blow it. Something traditional that we still haven't done being performed in Jumilla just 35k from home with the most expensive tickets priced at just 10€. Why the hell not? It must be worth a punt. We can always sneak away at the intermission if needs be. Maggie was remarkably easy to persuade.

So just the tickets to buy. There didn't seem to be any online ticket sales but there was a box office number. I tried ringing a couple of times without success. Then I checked a few Google searches and found that the box office only opens for a couple of hours on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. Fiddlesticks!; I work all the time that the box office is open. Bit of a problem then. Anyway the website said that any tickets reserved by phone have to be picked up and paid for at least a couple of days beforehand or they will be resold - more of a problem. Reading between the lines I guess I can't buy tickets over the phone with a plastic card.

I've found an email address and I've written. Provided they read their email, and I suspect a theatre will, I'm sure they will find a solution.

Interestingly, well it's interesting to me, on the way home tonight I bought a couple of tickets for a play In Pinoso this weekend, The only way to get them also seemed to be to go to the box office in very restricted opening hours. The difference is that I could. For Don Juan I can't.

Nothing like making it easy though.

PS The next morning, before 8.30, the theatre had responded and said they'd keep a couple of tickets.

Chara to Gandía

I never really took to La Unión the small town I lived in last year. One small plus though was that a local firm, operating under the Zafiro Tours franchise, organised day trips by coach.

The model was simple. An early morning start, a guide or guides to show us around before lunch then maybe a bit more visiting in the afternoon before the inevitable dribbling and snoring on the trip back to La Unión. The all in price was usually in the 30 to 40€ bracket.

The first time I did it I thought it would be a bit of a hoot going on a coach trip with a load of older Spaniards. I imagined myself chatting away whilst we gawped at this or that before troughing down on the local delicacy. It never quite matched my expectations. I was always a bit of an outsider but it wasn't because people were unwelcoming. More my fault than theirs.

The trips though were good. Interesting destinations and good guides. So I kept going. Obviously as I no longer live in La Unión the trips aren't much use to me now. However, it just so happened that today's trip to Gandía came pretty close to our house - well it passed through Alicante at least. With a bit of negotiation I persuaded Maggie to give it a go and I talked the coach people into picking us up en route.

The day was fine. The morning guide was pretty good but when a woman in our group broke her thigh bone in a fall one of our two guides had to go with her to the hospital. That left the remaining guide to cope with a group of around fifty people. That caused problems. People who were too far back to hear started to get bored and then to chat which made it difficult for other people.

Lunch wasn't great. We went to a big hotel in the part of Gandía on the coast. To call the food average would be generous. Maggie's broccoli was liquid enough to flow. The buffet style service also meant that we were able to choose a table on our own as were all the other affiliations of familiy and friends. So no new Spanish pals for the day.

The afternoon guide took us to see the Borja or Borgia Palace. If you're old, like me, you'll remember the series on the telly. All sex and poisoning.  The Borja's made their home in Gandía and they gave the world two popes and one saint in that time. Nonetheless our guide decided not to focus on the family and their doings. Her delivery was of the style "And on the left is a wall hanging made from silk and wool by the renowed Valencian artisan José de la Spiga Granja. It was produced in 1589 and depicts the exaltation of Saint Thomas." Reducing the extraordinary to the ordinary.

So it wasn't a huge success. I somehow suspect that even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to persuade Maggie to go on another one.

Lord Grantham and me

I've been living in Spain for ten years and five days now. We've owned the house in Culebrón for all but three months of that time. Despite that we've lived in Santa Pola, Ciudad Rodrigo, Cartagena and La Unión. We've rented six different flats all because of where we have found work. So it's nice to be finally living at home and paying just one electric bill, one phone bill and not having to move here and there for weekends or bank holidays.

Culebrón, or more accurately Pinoso is, nonetheless, the most British of all the places I've lived in Spain. Now don't get me wrong Spain is just outside the door. The mountain view is Spanish, the crops in the field are Spanish, the traffic is Spanish, the opening times are Spanish but Britishness crowds in here in a way that it hasn't in any of those other places. I say Pinoso by the way because that's where we go to buy bread and beer. In Culebrón we live right on the edge of the village and we only really venture into the village centre for events and to dump stuff in the recycling bins.

The English language is everywhere now. Lots of people can manage to communicate in a form of English. I was, for instance, rather amused when we had lunch with one of Maggie's pals in Cartagena. Her Spanish is good, basically because her family is Spanish, but despite her speaking Spanish to the waiter he always replied in English. Everyone wants to practise their English and most Brits speak Spanish so badly that we're glad of the help. But I'm not talking about language here I'm talking about Britishness.

Walk up the street by the Post Office in Pinoso and the chances are you will hear more English being spoken than Spanish or Valencià. The paper shop has a good range of British magazines, sells The Daily Mail and has some sort of selection of birthday cards to satisfy a particularly British craving. The only bar in the street is British run and I think the second hand furniture shop too. One of the two Estate Agents is British though I think they work with a Spanish colleague. The queue in the Post Office is often predominantly British and the chap behind the counter now speaks the English he needs for his job pretty well. The local supermarkets make concessions to Brits - Tetley tea recently appeared in Consum, though they seemed to have stopped stocking Stilton, whilst Más y Más has sold British tea for years and they occasionally even have Branston. The Algerian fruit shop sells Yorkshire Tea.

The other evening Maggie had been with me to Fortuna so we decided to have an evening meal in Pinoso on the way home. We asked in the restaurant if it were too early to eat as it was only 9pm. Good grief said the waitess. We sell dinner to you Brits from 7.30. There were, of course, no Spaniards eating so early. Last weekend we did our bit in supporting a friend who does the props for a local am dram group. Two short English language plays to a British audience. In the bar adjoining the theatre there is British TV and you order and pay at the bar just as you would in the Dog and Duck. On Saturday morning I usually join some friends to have a coffee. The waiter is most amusing and speaks a doggerel English that perfectly matches the doggerel Spanish of our group. Britishness everywhere.

In Ciudad Rodrigo there were no other Brits and whilst there were stacks of us in Santa Pola, Cartagena and La Union we were outnumbered by Spaniards and Spanishness. We just didn't have the critical mass that we Brits have in Pinoso. The home population of Pinoso has no problem with us as a group but our numbers and our economic power have influenced the way the town works. There is a notice in a bread shop apologising that the owner doesn't speak English. The barber, whose first language is the local Valencià to the point that he sometimes forgets Castillian words knows the meaning of the phrase "Just a trim, please." The bilingual children of longer term Brits have a valuable skill to sell.

Now this is fine. I'm British, I'm happy to be British. We're not a bad lot and we can be as proud of some of the things we've done as we can be ashamed of others. I'm in a good place. I can take my choice. Sometimes I fancy a curry or roast beef and they are easy to get where there are lots of us, other times I can do something quite Spanish. It's the same in the house. Whether I choose to get my news from the BBC or the RTVE website is up to me. Whether I listen to Spanish music or international music likewise.

Now Maggie is one of those people who were brought up on telly. She can easily answer questions about who was the host of 3-2-1 or what Jim Bowen's catch phrase was. Me, I like the telly OK too but I basically I use it for entertainment - films, drama and maybe some comedy. I soon get bored of the drama and it's seldom that I can be bothered to watch the second series. TV documentaries usually take far too long to get to the point and I much prefer radio. I probably prefer radio news too. Quiz shows and talent contests bore me or annoy me in equal measure. Maggie on the other hand likes lots of those programmes and she seems to particularly like those based on individuals - the cooking competitions, the talent shows, ballroom dancing, tracing ancestors. She can watch TV for hours and hours.

We have access to both Spanish and British telly. Maggie watches "her programmes, " the British ones as they are broadcast. If there's nothing definite that she wants to watch she usually skips through the Spanish programmes first and then, when or if she can't find anything she likes the look of, she switches to the British offer. Spanish TV is of very variable quality. The drama programmes generally have low production values and the variety and most of the comedy shows are risible. The home made product also has the decided disadvantage that it's in Spanish. We have to work to watch it, we miss key phrases, we don't get the references to celebrities or topical concerns. Imported product, usually American series, have the original English language soundtrack avaialble. I like to watch the occasional programme in Spanish in a vain attempt to hear a bit of Spanish and to keep up with the place I've chosen to live. I always put the subtitles on stuff on Spanish telly - with the English language stuff I get the best of both worlds - I understand the dialogue easily but I still get to read the Spanish version and with the Spanish stuff it means I may actually understand. We do usually see at least some of the Spanish news programmes and Maggie often watches a lunctime show in Spanish too.

But here's the rub, Nowadays not only am I living in a British community outside the house but inside it too. In all those rented flats our only offer was Spanish TV. I saw the same programmes as my Spanish students, I saw the same adverts and there was a point of contact but now that's gone and, even worse, there is almost nowhere in our house where I can escape from the sound of the howling mob on the X Factor, Lord Grantham complaining about Sufragettes or the pundits talking about the Best 100 Food Adverts Of All Time.

No blame here. We should just have bought a bigger house.