I am the egg man

We once asked Eduardo if he would sell us a beer. He has a restaurant in the village. He was there, the door was open and the sun was shining but he said no explaining that he didn't run a bar but a restaurant.

That seems to have changed and Eduardo's now has cars parked outside, and presumably customers inside, most mornings. On Wednesday mornings, or at least for the past three Wednesday mornings, we've joined the throng and gone in. We've eaten a late breakfast with some Spanish people from the village and some local, though not Culebronero, Britons. I like going there. I like supporting a local business and I like doing something community.

When we were there today we bought some eggs. One of the expats keeps hens and she has found a ready market for their eggs in our neighbours and in us. A couple of weeks ago Maria was saying that she had been waiting for the man who brings the gas bottles - he hadn't shown up before breakfast time so she'd left the bottles out. He'll just charge me when he catches me in she said - he'll do the same for you she said. The cheese man came today - apparently one of the types he sells is good for deep frying to serve with jam. Next it was the bread man who comes Wednesdays and Fridays  - he'll hang the bread on your gate if you're not in - next to the recharged gas bottles presumably.

This is not earth shattering, It's not even particularly interesting. When I was a boy there were mobile shops everywhere. Moving to this century my sister has ordered all her staple food online from Tesco for years and, as far as I know, if we were about half a kilometre down the road Mercadona would do the same for us here.

The interesting thing is that we have lived here for years and we didn't know. Why didn't we know?

Form and function

I think it was John who told us there was a nice new bar in La Romana so, as we were passing, we dropped in for a coffee. He was right. Lots of right angles, tonal furniture, predominantly white, nice clean lines, modern looking, warm welcome and it was warm in the heated sense too,

The majority of Spanish bars and restaurants are very everyday. There's seldom any attempt to do what they've been doing with Irish style pubs for twenty five plus years in the UK - fishing rods, sewing machines and soap adverts or what all of those coffee shops that sell lattes, mochas and espressos do with overstuffed bookcases, creaking floorboards, chesterfield sofas or roaring log fires. They try to add a certain style. Ambience, well ambience not centred around handwritten notices for lottery tickets, crates of empty bottles and piles of detritus by the cash till, is in short supply in most, though not all, Spanish bars and restaurants. Bear in mind that I spend most of my time in Fortuna, Culebrón or Pinoso rather than Madrid or Barcelona.

On Saturday, as a birthday treat, Maggie took me to an eatery that we have never dared venture into before - partly for price and partly for the Porsches, Ferraris and  two a penny Beamers and Audis parked outside. It's in Pinoso and it has a reputation province wide, food guide wise and nationwide amongst cognoscenti for being a temple to the local rice dish made with rabbit and snails seasoned with wild herbs and cooked over burning bundles of scent giving twigs. The restaurant sees no need for a sign outside and makes do with a discreet nameplate so that diners know they have found the place.

The inside of the restaurant was nothing special. The tablecloths were cloth, the cutlery and glassware were clean and the servers were smart and civil but it looked like thousands of other eateries in Spain. I think it had tiles half way up the wall but then it had the stippled paint, it's called gotelé here but it's like painting over anaglypta in the UK. I wouldn't have been too surprised if there had been a telly on the wall showing the Simpsons. I don't think you could get a similar reputation for being quality eating in the UK without doing something about the decor. Different philosophy.

Down the road, in one of the villages, there's another restaurant with a growing reputation for rice. They have glass walls to the kitchen so you can see the paella being cooked, they have a printed menu (we weren't offered a written menu) and I think the waiters have some sort of modern uniform. The whole place looks like someone had a concept in mind when they talked to the builders and furnishers.

It was a good experience in Pinoso though. We had a good time and although the prices were high they were not frighteningly so. We saw another couple stick to beer and water, a pair of simple centre of the table starters, the rice of course and coffee and they got to pay with a single fifty euro note. Perfectly reasonable. To be honest though it wasn't the best rice I've eaten - a bit over salty and a bit greasy for my taste. The bread and ali-oli, also one of my yardsticks, was good but not exceptional and the salad was served a tad cold.

Now I have an idea for a place that looks great, has good looking young staff and serves only variations on egg and chips. What do you reckon?

Going native III

I talked to my mum on the phone today. She asked me how my birthday had gone on Wednesday. She apologised for only having sent a card and a Facebook message and for not having phoned. I didn't ring she said because I guessed you would be out for a meal.

My mum was wrong, I wasn't out to eat. After work I'd come home and set about a bottle of birthday brandy in front of the telly. As we talked I realised that it had never crossed my mind to go out for an evening meal. In fact we are booked in for a celebratory lunch on Saturday at a well known and well regarded local restaurant.

In the dim and distant past when I used to come to Spain on holiday the routine was simple enough. Something light for lunch and then a nice meal in the evening. That's the way my British upbringing told me to do it. The equivalent of the lunchtime sandwich at your desk with something cooked in the evening. Generally though that's not the Spanish case. Obviously Spaniards do celebrate big meals in the evening. Generally though the more substantial meal is at lunchtime and there is a whole industry of inexpensive lunchtime set meals to maintain that habit.

So is it, that like taking to stone garden furniture, our eating habits have also become unknowingly Spanish?

Going native II

We, no let's be honest, Maggie has just had the patio around our house extended. It looks good and it means less ground for me to keep clear of weeds.

Maggie is a bit of a comlpletist. I was impressed enough with the slabs of marble laid crazy paving style but, for Maggie, they are not enough. She sees plants in pots and garden furniture. She can taste the summer drinks. She mentioned fountains. She's already decided what sort of garden furniture. Not the sort of stuff you get from B&Q or Homebase with wooden slats and nice green brushed cotton cushions. No, Maggie knows that the beating Spanish sun of summer and the 20ºC daily tmperature changes of winter destroy the stitching on nylon chair webbing and anything made of wood. Plastic goes hard and brittle whilst metal colours are doomed to fade except for the reworking of the colour scheme by various layers of rust. Stone, concrete and ceramics are the answer.

She didn't really mention this to me until we were in a local garden centre staring at the stone tables with matching benches. Some were shaped like toadstools. Some were covered in Andalucian style painted ceramic tiles.

"I think I'm turning Spanish," she said, "I think these look nice."

When we first arrived she thought the style of furniture was too hideous to contemplate.

Goodly Sir wouldst be so kind as to render me aid?

The man on the phone asked me if he was speaking to don Christopher. I told him that he was but whatever he was selling I didn't want it. He didn't need to say anything else. Nobody uses don unless they wear headsets to talk on the phone. He assured me that he was just checking to see if I'd got a particular piece of junk mail. He didn't try to sell me anything so maybe it really was just a check on whoever does their bulk mailing.

I don't like being called don. It's supposed to be courteous. It's used with your first name rather than using the surname. It's a bit antique but I simply don't like people deferring to me and I particularly don't like it when it's a sham deference.

Usted, unlike don, isn't archaic. If, like me, you were taught French at school, then the Spanish usted is equivalent to the vous form. The polite form of you. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? rather than Je t'aime. The idea is that usted is used for people you don't know, for people who are a bit older than you or to show a bit of respect. I don't like that either. I don't like it in shops, I don't like it in bars, I don't like it in general.

Spanish people tell me I should use usted - they tell me that I should only use tú when I know people. Tugging one's forelock and doffing one's cap went out even before I was born. I see usted as very similiar. For Latin Americans I don't think there's the same distinction. I think Ecuadorian parents address their children as usted. Some Latin American countries use a different way of saying you all together.

Dealing with everyone the same is fine by me whether it's a formal, Mr Thompson, or more informal, Chris but using the equivalents of sir or esquire. No thanks.

Lancing the cat's boils

Every now and again I write an email to someone. This is like writing a letter in the olden days. Personal communication. Facebook messages, the private ones are as postcards to the email letters.

As those emails and messages go back and forth the fact that I live in Spain is vaguely recognised but largely ignored by most of my chums. A couple of my correspondents, however, never fail to slip in a comment which makes it very clear that they think my decision to abandon the UK was barmy. Ten years on I wouldn't have thought that was much of a talking point.

I called the blog Life in Culebrón. I write the entries partly because I live in Culebrón, in Spain, but moreso because the Internet gave me a method to write in public without effort. I've written a diary every day of my life since I was fourteen. Blogging isn't that different except that nobody gets to read my diaries till I'm dead and even then only if they can read my terrible handwriting.

Because I write the blogs I have to think of a hook. Finding something to write can be difficult because most things I do are so commonplace. Maggie often ridicules the way I stretch and twist the most trivial of incidents into a post. Take the other day. It was a Bank Holiday on the 6th and we went looking for lunch. We hadn't booked of course. We tried Amador's place down in Mañar first - the restaurant was full but as he recognises us and we reckon we know him he turned us away in a flurry of handshakes and kisses. They turned us down at Paco Gandia and Pere i Pepa too but we finally got fed, very well, at el Timón.

Now the point of the story could be eating times, booking things up, the end of the Christmas holidays, the different emphasis of the holidays here, an essay on the fame of the rabbit and snail rice at Paco's, the quality or value of the local food or it could just be to preen because I know the name of at least one Spanish person.

In fact I want to use it to emphasise how ordinary life is for us. Alright I feel a bit uncomfortable with Spanish still and at times it's something much, much stronger than that. Asking about table reservations had me looking vaguely bemused and moving from foot to foot as waiters and waitresses rushed past us with crockery. I'm like that though, I'd be exactly the same in the UK except for needing to speak Spanish. Nonetheless the routine of restaurants, the ordering, the food and how things are presented is all dead ordinary to us. Absolutely normal. More ordinary to me than doing the same thing a couple of weeks ago in the UK. It wasn't a problem in the UK either but it had more novelty value there because I do it less frequently. Just as Tesco's or Boot's is more exotic to me now than Eroski or Mercadona.

So there are seveal reasons why I complain as I blog. One is because everyone complains. I complained when I lived in the UK and I complain now. I've complained wherever I've lived and I will probably complain till the day I die. Another is that I have the right to complain - I can complain about politicians because they spend my taxes and because I voted, I can complain about services because I think they are not working as they should. Yet another reason is that I have the tools, I can type something here and a few people read it. And, of course, I am a miserable sod and complaining suits me. Oh, and there always exists the vaguest possibility that whatever it is I'm bleating on about actually needs exposing, complaining about or changing.

So, if I complain, compare the UK to Spain or just blether on think of it as no more than "O" level essay writing with maybe a little observation of the world about me thrown in. Nothing more. And I promise not to read anything deeply dissident into you complaining about the price of petrol, flip flops being referred to as thongs or trains being late.

Here is the weather for 2014

It's just four kilometres from Pinoso to Culebrón but despite that the weather can be significantly different. Not significant in the sense of Vladivostok to Kingston but a couple of degrees, rainy or dry, windy or breezy.

La Agencia Estatal de Meteorología (AEMET) is the equivalent of the Met Office - it supplies meteorological services to the state and to the armed forces. I presume Pinoso has a little weather station somewhere because the town features in the list of official daily weather reports. There's no AEMET presence in Culebrón so readings from Pinoso will have to do. I notice in the blurb for these figures that a chap, Agapito Gonzálvez is credited with the data. He may just have compiled the information or maybe he's a local meteorological version of Patrick Moore; an amateur with standing. Anyway.

During last year 214 litres of water fell on every square metre or for those of you raised on inches of rainfall a bit under 9 inches all year. The highest temperature recorded was 37ºC  the same as body temperature or 98.6ºF on the 26th August. The lowest temperature was -5ºC just a few days ago on New Year's Eve. The windiest day was the 2nd March when there were gusts of seventy three kilometres per hour (about 45mph.) The wettest day, almost certainly the one on which you came to see friends who live in the area, was the 28th November with 25 litres per square metre. In fact there were forty six rainy days, five stormy days, seventeen with no visible sun and only one hundred and ninety five without a cloud in the sky.

Valencià hasn't used boxed question marks since 1993

Going to the bank on Spain is a pain in the backside. The queues go on for ever. There aren't enough tellers whilst there are far too many bank workers shifting paper around on their desks and waiting to sell some dubious financial product. Lots are at breakfast too.

For a number of reasons, so tedious that even I would hesitate to record them, I've had to go to the bank at the beginning of each month for the past several months. Despite being in the largest bank in Spain there isn't a branch in Pinoso. I have the choice of being charged 6€ to process the payment locally or driving to nearby Monóvar, if 15 kms is near.

Queues in Spain are usually orderly but amorphous. Often the routine is that as you get to the people hanging around to be served you ask who was last there. You take your turn after them. The next person joining the queue after you asks the same question and your place in line is now secure. This system has multiple issues for non Spanish speakers.

The phrase to use is ¿Quien es el último? It's a phrase within my linguistic grasp though I'm usually lazy and simply ask ¿El último? These phrases have a semantic drawback in that Spanish has gender. The word último is masculine so there is a possible charge of sexism. To avoid this people sometimes choose to say ¿Quien es el último o la última? which adds in the feminine possibility even though she always seems to come second. It set me thinking about how difficult it must be to write a phrasebook and how such a simple question, and ones like it, have manifold forms (as they do in English.) I was nearly at the teller and ready to be quizzed about my identity even though I was paying money into my own account when a young woman came in to the bank. "L'últim?"- she asked. It's the same same question but in the local Valencià language.

Ah well, for those of you old enough to remember. Bouncy, bouncy. Drop your panties, Sir William, I cannot wait till lunchtime. My hovercraft is full of eels.

Bread cartel

When I couldn't get a beer in Tarragona many years ago I decided to learn Spanish. I did a few years of those one or two hour a week Spanish classes at the local Adult Education Centre. I also took a lot of holidays in Spain. As a consequence I started to notice things about Spain in newspapers and magazines. Spain speaks Spanish and so do Nicaragua, Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica - twenty countries in all as I remember if we don't include the USA. It was all the same to me - they were all interesting, all linked in some way. Spain was first but I bought cumbia, son and salsa music (on cassette), I read books by Garcia Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende and Elena Poniatowska. I drank piscos, canelazos and malbecs. I hunted out Dos Equis beer. I crossed the Atlantic a few times heading for Mexico or Cuba and I still have a hankering to visit Argentina and Chile as a hangover from that interest in the 1980s.

But if I thought that there was a link between Spain and lots of America I don't think it's a view shared by most Spaniards. The only conversations I have had with Spanish people about Latin Americans have usually centred on their strange use of the Spanish language rather than the quality of their beer, food, football or music. The Latin American food section in the international part of Carrefour has no more stock than the British section. There aren't many TV imports from Latin America nor are there lots of celebrity Latin Americans here in Spain - at least so far as I know.

Spain of course has strong trading links with Latin America and there are daily news stories from that part of the world. I've had Argentinian, Venezuelan, Mexican, Peruvian, Puerto Rican and Ecuadorian students in my English classes because they work for Spanish firms here. There are lots of people who look South American out and about in the towns and cities. Surprisingly though there isn't much obvious South American influence in High Street businesses. I'm not saying there is none. At one time there were lots of locutorios - cheap phone, Internet and money order places - which were South American owned though they seem to be disappearing. Otherwise there is a smattering of South American businesses. Every now and again you will see a Venezuelan or a Peruvian craft shop, an Ecuadorian bar or a Mexican restaurant but they are far less noticeable than the range of Chinese ventures for instance. Perhaps it is a sign of the socio economic situation of the majority of the South and Central Americans. They tend to be workers rather than entrepeneurs. Murcia, for instance, has, I understand, the largest Ecuadorian population outside Ecuador but the only Ecuadorian business I know of is a bar that sells intersting food in Jumilla and another bar that failed in Cartagena.

We were in Elda today. I'd gone to sign on for dance classes (it's a long story and I couldn't so you will never know) and as we strolled the streets we noticed a sign that said Colombian bakery. So we went in for a loaf. Inside it was like Greggs, well with a bit more character. Caracol Internacional was on the TV with a story from Venezuela. We decided to get a coffee and the chap behind the bar talked us into eating some sort of chicken and egg pasty and a beef and rice and potato pasty and a cheese and soft dough ball thing. "Hot sauce?" he asked, "Yes, please," I replied. That seemed to surprise him. Spanish people aren't generally keen on spicy so maybe it was an unusual answer. I was tempted by the spongy sweet looking cakey thing but I decided investigation was turning into gluttony so we paid up and left.

It made me think though that we Brits maybe got a better deal from our old Empire than the Spaniards got from theirs.

Tales of turrón

Turrón is made from almonds, honey, egg whites and sugar. It's an Alicante speciality which is now produced all over Spain. Turrón, has no specific English equivalent, though for shorthand I often describe it as nougat. It's not much like the pink and white chewy nougat I knew as a youngster though. Turrón is associated with the town of Jijona which is about 70 km up the road from us. I wrote about it ages ago in a blog.

So we were going back to the UK for Christmas. I'd made a pact with my family about not exchanging gifts. We did, nonetheless, take a few Spanish Christmas goodies - mantecados, polvorones and of course turrón. I'd forgotten that I hadn't made the same pact with Maggie's family who showered me with expensive gifts whilst I had neither socks nor bubble bath in trade - it was terribly embarrassing.

The make of turrón that Maggie bought was called Pico which is a good quality if everyday brand - she bought the hard stuff and the soft one. It's maybe a bit less than half the price of the best brands which can cost as much as 9€ for a 300g bar. It was traditional enough though for me to notice something that I've missed in ten years of wolfing it down. I realised they had different names. The crunchy stuff was called Turrón de Alicante and the sort that oozes almond oil was Turrón de Jijona. Nowadays there are tens of flavours of "turrón" most of which have nothing to do with the original concept. So we have chocolate flavour, milk flavour, crema catalana flavour, strawberry flavour etcetera - the list is nearly endless. It was seeing the two traditional types side by side in matcing packets that made me realise the simple difference.

For some now forgotten reason turrón came up in the conversation with our builders. They sang the praises of a turrón produced by a local factory which processes nuts. It's obvious enough when you think about it. They work with almonds, there is lots of local honey and chickens live everywhere so the raw materials were to hand.

Intrigued I bought some when I went to pick up a gas cylinder (excellent isn't it? - nuts and butane in the same shop) and I notice that it has the quality mark to say that it's made to the standards of some regulatory body. That was news to me too and it explains why some of the most famous brands are made in places like Santander and Gijón which are miles from Alicante.

The trouble is I can't eat it. I gained two and a half kilos in the four days in the UK. It's time for penance - the hair shirt and flagellation of portion control. Mind you Christmas is far from over in Spain and just a little each day couldn't do much harm could it?

A spaceman went visiting

I think it started with the chappie on passport control at Stansted. The notices around him requested that we please do this or that. No use of the imperative. No demands. He said hello. I greeted him back. The rest of the exchange was equally pleasant. Maggie and I were in England for a few days over Christmas and the welcome at the border was a change from my last couple of experiences and a good start to our trip.

I don't go to the UK that often and when I do I find myself noticing it much more than I did when I lived there. For instance, when we were staying with Maggie's family in Bedford I went for a stroll around the area they live. Lots of well established family homes, normal, average sort of homes built anytime between maybe the 1930s and the present. I took snaps; I found them intriguing. I'm sure the people who saw me wondered what I was doing and why. One chap even asked me. He'd been in his home since 1955 when it was a new build. 

In England people were generally very nice to me. A lot of my conversation with strangers has been in commercial premises. I thought I noticed a very direct approach. It struck me as an egalitarian approach; an exchange between equals  Sometimes in a queue or at a bar I also appreciated the very clear instructions or requests that preceded those exchanges. Some of it may well have been scripted by the HR department but I have no complaints about their work. Good English and a good approach I thought.

I really do notice the language. I often turn as I hear someone speaking English. I listen for new phrases, new idioms. I felt to do OK in the few conversations I had. I'm always slightly concerned when I go back that I'll sound like some Dickensian character speaking an archaic form of English mired in the past. There were a few minor blips but I thought everything was fine.

It was cold. It didn't look cold from behind the double or triple glazing in the kitchen with the central heating doing its stuff. The robins, magpies, tits, finches, spuggies and other birds that I recognised on the bird feeders which festooned the gardens of both houses we stayed in looked warm enough. In fact wearing a couple of layers of coats, gloves, a scarf and thick socks it didn't even feel cold outdoors for the first ten minutes but then the heat would seep through those socks and out of my feet. After twenty minutes my ears had crisped up and my runny nose was red. I could feel the blood vessels in my cheeks bursting. England is decidedly cooler than Spain.

It's a different colour too. At least where we've been in Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire it's a sort of muddy brown with green splodges and a leaden grey sky. To be fair though on Christmas Day and part of Christmas Eve it was cold, crisp and clear till it got dark - dark at four for pity's sake!. That lack of light was so depressing. There was a mournful sound that seemed to go with the flat even lighting. I'd never really thought of it before but it's a sound instantly associated with so many British winters. It's the call that crows make from the sharp edged, leafless winter trees.

The last time I was in the UK for Christmas was about ten years ago. If my memory serves there are now fewer Christmas trees in windows than there were then. The lights on houses were lovely though with the LEDs sparkling away outside countless houses. Light fighting back against the darkness as it were - very poetic. Spain would be better with more private lights in my opinion.

We got vegan food in one of the three houses we visited. Vegan is hardly traditional fare but, even then, surrounded by Christmas crackers and Santa shaped salt shakers the meal ws not only tasty but it felt traditional enough. Food in the other two houses followed well trodden paths - mulled wine, turkey, sprouts, mince pies Christmas cake or Marks and Sparks nibbles. Brilliant - comfortable, time honoured food. Nonetheless I noticed the variations in the food cupboard as I searched for Branston to put on my wholemeal breakfast toast. Decaff tea seemed so common as to be normal. If the food wasn't reduced fat or reduced sugar then it was enriched in fibre. The idea of a healthier lifestyle seemed to be everywhere and it extended to the different coloured recycling bins parked outside the houses and to the solar panels on rooftops. We have all those things in Spain too but they are all, in my petrified English terms, a bit "Good Life" or brogues and good thick cardigans with cod liver oil at breakfast rather than the norm.

I started this piece before leaving the UK but the phrasing was so bad (I blame having to type on the tiny Android keyboards) that it had to have a serious rewrite. I'm home now trying to keep comfortably warm inside the house in Culebrón. It was great to be with family and their families. We ate, talked and drank to excess. They gave us sumptuous gifts and we replied with bath salts and woolly gloves but it was lovely to relive one of those Christmases which eventually slows to a crawl as everyone dozes in front of the totally ignored telly in an alcoholic haze or turkey coma. Of course it wasn't even real gogglebox as it came from Netflix but the continuity was there.

I have to be honest though. Great place to visit but I'm glad to be home.