Into each life some rain must fall

It's raining in Culebrón. This is unusual. It's not unusual in the North of Spain, it rains a lot there, but here in sunny Alicante, well, it's usually sunny. 

It does rain of course. A quick check on a couple of past years and we seem to get about 50 rainy days a year. But that means any rain. The number of days when it rains and rains are few and far between. It's raining now though and it has been for a couple of days. Fortunately, for the local farmers, it's not torrential and there's no hail. Hail is a remarkably common component of the infrequent but heavy storms we get. The number of dimpled cars is testament to that. Big blighters. Balls of ice cracking and smashing down on things. There's thunder and lightning too. The sky alight with lightning is pretty common but the fireworks don't always lead to a downpour. Rain, like everything else in our neck of the woods is very localised. It can be pouring down in Paredón, drizzling in Ubeda yet still dry here.

Our house is miserable when it rains as it is now. All of our external doors lead directly into rooms - there are no hallways - so we traipse the filth from the patios into the kitchen or living room. When the rain comes down in sheets, as it is wont to do at times, the streams gouge suspension breaking channels into the compacted earth of our track. The resultant mud is transported, by wheel arches, to our patio where it combines with the pine needles, leaves, palm fruit and other plant debris to produce a gooey planty mulch through which we have to paddle.

There are Spanish reactions to rain that I still find noticeable. The umbrellas come out. I don't understand how someone wearing shorts and a T shirt can magically produce an umbrella when the rain comes. I don't like umbrellas. Unmanageable brutes that force me to step off the pavement or risk anophthalmia. I'm more of a hooded raincoat person myself which Spaniards must find slightly eccentric given the number of times that I have been offered the loan of an umbrella.

There are like minded Spaniards though. The umbrella-less ones. In towns we hug the walls of the buildings where the overhang from the floors above provides some sort of protection. We walk in single file with the occasional chicken like confrontations of pedestrians headed in opposite directions. Spanish drains don't always cope with the sheer quantity of water so whoever finally gives way can expect sodden shoes and turn-ups.

One compensation though. We're not in Galicia or Asturias, the País Vasco or Huddersfield so it will soon be over. The sun will come out, the sky will be blue and things will be back to normal.

What would you like to drink?

I went last night, as I often do, to the Monday evening intercambio session at the Coliseum bar in Pinoso. The idea is simple enough, an English speaker is paired up with a Spanish speaker and the hour long session is divided in half - the conversation is in English to start, or in Spanish, and then, for the second half, it's the other way around. It's supposed to run from 8.30 to 9.30 but we're always a
little late starting and so a little late finishing. There is no cost but there is the expectation that you will buy a drink or two.

If things go well, if the conversation flows, as it often does, I really enjoy the sessions because they are an extended chat. They add to my cultural briefing on Spain. The exchanges have to go further than "hello, how are you?" and people are expecting linguistic problems so there is none of the feeling of failure if one of the speakers tries an extended discourse. Serpentine as the monologue of one of the speakers may be, however many times there are attempts to reform the phrase so it makes sense, the other person tries to hang on to the sense and to encourage the speaker.

There are some interesting characters; a bloke who doesn't eat anything that's been cooked, another, an Argentinian, with a Uruguayan background who is a rice chef at a classy local restaurant and a professional waitress who has been moving between jobs trying to find something more permanent. Last night I got a man who has sent the last dozen years teaching Spanish in Serbia, in Belgrade, with the Cervantes Institute.

But it wasn't the intercambio that I intended to write about. It was that thing that the only expectation on the attendees is that they buy a drink, or two.

Despite avoiding water I think I drink quite a lot. I drink tea in a pint pot and, when I have the time, I think nothing of drinking a couple of pints on the trot. I drink juice with breakfast, I drink pop, coffee and non alcohol beer in bars. I tend to drink quickly too. I drink wine, brandy and beer at the same sort of speed as Coca Cola which is one of the reasons that I'm trying to have a bit of an alcohol break at the moment. I don't think I'm unusual. Maggie drinks plenty of liquid too and so did my mum's friends when I visited the UK a couple of weeks ago. There aren't many Britons whose first offer to a guest entering their house isn't a drink - tea, coffee, soft or hard depending on the time of day and the circumstances. At any British event the bar is usually pretty crowded.

Spaniards drink too of course but my impression is that they drink less. This isn't a bad or a good thing, it's not comparison of alcohol consumption, it's a comparison of volume and something I think marks a difference. I did look for empirical evidence and I found something from the European Food Safety Authority which listed the UK consumption, per person, as being 1598ml per day as against 820ml for Spaniards but it was a long and learned paper, which I couldn't be bothered to read, so there may be all sorts of provisos against those figures.

In all of the weeks that I've gone to the intercambio I have at least two drinks and sometimes three. We are, after all, sitting at a café table. My Spanish partners don't. Everybody has a drink but they usually stop after the first. Whilst I feel slightly uncomfortable occupying a table with an empty glass or cup in front of me neither the bar staff nor the locals seem at all worried that people are doing just that.

Obviously there are exceptions. Spaniards go out drinking too and they can put plenty away. A good meal is often accompanied by copious quantities of alcohol and the "botellón", a gathering of young people in a public place to socialize and drink alcohol, is very common and is considered, by some, to be a social problem.

Right, that'll do, piece written, I think I'll put the kettle on and get a cup of tea. I deserve it.

In case of emergency

It's pretty dry in Spain at the moment. Occasional stories about the state of the reservoirs turn up in the media every now and again and there are forest and scrub fires reported all the time - some of them burn out of control for days. Often the news story says that the fire was provoked by human intervention. This does not always mean that someone set the fires deliberately (though that is amazingly common) but it does include the sparks from the summer barbecue, the fag end tossed, carelessly, out of the car window and the garden waste fire getting out of control.

Lots of the fire engines in Spain are designed to deal with forest fires. The bodywork sits on great big wheels and the vehicles are intended for off road as well as on road use. We've seen both aeroplanes and helicopters dropping water on fires. There is a special unit of the military - Unidad Militar de Emergencias - whose job is to intervene in national catastrophes. The hillsides have fire breaks cut into them (although one of the common complaints in the aftermath of a fire is that the fire breaks were badly maintained because of budget cuts and did not do their job), the motorway signs remind people of the heavy penalties for dumping cigarette ends from vehicles, you need a licence to burn garden waste which lays down all sorts of restrictions and there are campaigns to recruit volunteers to staff watchtowers in vulnerable areas. In short there is an awareness of the possibility of countryside fires and measures to deal with them. Indeed, in our own garden one of the reasons we maintain lots of weed free bare earth is because a Spaniard warned us of the possibility of fire there.

We went to see the Spanish equivalent of the Tour de France today. A little before that we'd popped in to browse a Mediaeval fayre in Almansa. Wherever there is a Spanish event there are always lots of uniforms to keep it functioning. Local police, the Red Cross, sometimes Guardia Civil (the militarised police force) or the CNP - the National Police - and Civil Protection.

As we walked from the parked car to the Mediaeval fayre I noticed a Protección Civil vehicle parked up. In the back were a bundle of tools that looked like heavy duty garden rakes and other stuff which I guessed were for dealing with fire. I was a bit surprised. Protección Civil are always at any sort of event. If I've ever thought anything at all about Civil Protection I've thought of them as being a bit like unpaid Police Community Support Officers, like stewards for events, like the marshalls for car races - extra hands to help the police and public administrations keep things organised.

The three Protección Civil people, wearing their distinctive dark blue uniforms trimmed with bright orange, who were strolling through the fayre were the usual sort of volunteers. I don't actually remember them but, almost certainly, they would have been young or old, men or women, fat or thin and with or without glasses. In short they look ordinary. I would never think of them as being particularly "professional". A bit sort of Dad's Army. That may be the case but a quick look at Wikipedia suggests otherwise. It tells me that Protección Civil has a hierarchial command structure (presumably professional and paid posts) supported by lots and lots of trained volunteers. I learned that Civil Protection is written into the Spanish Constitution and that each level of Government has to contribute to civil protection plans. The personnel seem to have to take part in a fair bit of training and drills and, amongst their roles, a key one is fire fighting and rescue operations.

It's strange how things just become commonplace. The Civil Protection people are just there and it was only seeing that set of tools which made me wonder. Let's hope they don't have to use them.

No tenim por

As you may imagine the Spanish media has been full of the events in Barcelona, Cambrils, Alcanar and Ripoll for the past couple of days. First the headlines, then the confused facts and incorrect information before the more accurate picture started to emerge, the political response, the tales of heroism, the eyewitness reports, the pundits and their views. The coverage was so intense that I don't think there was even football news in the main bulletins yesterday!

We watched the news, we speculated and we went to the silent demonstration outside Pinoso Town Hall to show our "solidarity." We clapped at the end of the three minutes silence and we clapped again when the councillor read out the council's statement of support. Spaniards applaud at funerals and all sorts of events.

I was skimming through Twitter and, in amongst the messages of support, the pictures of mangled corpses and the pleas to help find missing people was the usual crop of offensive, racist tripe suggesting mass deportations, complaints about symbolic gesturing and unworkable solutions like banning the hire of vehicles or curtailing the payment of benefits to terrorists. There were a few messages though that struck home. The ones about why an attack in Europe, the USA or Australasia is so much more newsworthy than an attack in Asia or Africa.

When I decided to put something on the blog I couldn't remember the two countries mentioned in one tweet about other terrorist attacks this week. One was Nigeria so I googled terrorist attacks in Nigeria 2017 and came up with a site that listed terrorist attacks. I was taken aback. The storymaps site told me that there had been 866 attacks and 5,224 fatalities in 2017. I noticed that the list wasn't up to date because the Finnish attack wasn't there. Nonetheless, in August (in just the first 18 days of August) the site listed attacks in Burkina Faso (several attacks the greatest with 18 dead), Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria (27 dead there in one attack but several more), Turkey, Mali, Somalia, Pakistan (15 dead), United States, Yemen, Cameroon (7), Venezuela, Philippines (5), Indonesia and Myanmar as well as Spain.

Al-Qaeda have killed 317 this year, Al-Shabaab 352, Boko Haram 452, Islamic State 2,186, PKK 33, Taliban 823 and other groups 1,061.

The Wikipedia site is more up to date. Since the Barcelona "vehicular attack" are listed: stabbing in Finland, executions in Kenya, ambush in Iraq, bombing in Iraq, bombing in Burkina Faso, bombing in Turkey, stabbing in Russia and car bombing in Iraq.

The definitions of what is a terrorist incident - the numbers above include deaths in the street riots in Venezuela for instance - may be arguable but even if you were to discount large percentages the figures are still astounding yet, apparently, at least in Europe, we are way behind the terrorist deaths through the 1970s and into the 1980s. And nowhere in Europe is in the top ten for terrorist deaths: Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria have the dubious honour of topping that list. The worst year for global terrorism so far? 32,765 deaths in 2014.

No tenim por is Catalan for we are not afraid - the shout that went up after the silent demonstration in Barcelona yesterday.

They walk in the sun

I've just been to the UK, to see my mum. I was feeling a bit guilty about not having seen her for about seventeen months. She was in good form, fit and well and full of life.

In the UK I don't have any problem with talking. My words and phrasing may be a bit old fashioned but I can say what I want to whoever I want and with an appropriate emphasis. People even understand me if I throw in a bit of irony.

Nonetheless I find the UK a bit more foreign every time I'm there. I refer back to Spain all the time. I noticed hundreds of little differences - for instance I was impressed by the way that people repeatedly gave way to other people - in traffic, in queues, in doorways. People really do choose to walk on the sunny side of the street rather than to search out the shade. Food was distinctly different and I noticed that people eat all sorts of food in the street at all times of day. Forms of retailing seemed much more innovative with all manner of kiosks and small businesses offering services and products that don't exist here. It could be a long list.

I tell my students about ordering and paying for beer at the bar but I was surprised when the bar staff wanted the money before pulling the pint in Wetherspoon's so I'll have to change that a little. I tell my students that for we British a coffee is a coffee but I'm wrong - lattes, cappuccinos and americanos have taken the place of the distinction between coffee and black coffee and I wasn't there to notice. I found it strange, though I know the system, that the bus fare varies width distance. I was constantly perturbed as I rode on the buses that they seemed determined to drive into the face of oncoming traffic. It would take a while to relearn the driving on the other side of the road thing. Even the cars were slightly different; I spotted lots and lots of Jaguars and I doubled the number of Bentleys I'd seen in my life in just five days. I had to check the unfamiliar banknotes and coins before paying and not being able to see the tobacco in supermarkets was most odd. 

So I was quite at home in England but always a bit off balance at the same time. To be honest it's probably the same here though maybe the other way around. I'm in a bar as I type this. I was going to have a coffee but, as I waited to be served, I heard the waitress say the coffee machine was broken. When I ordered I checked about the machine and ordered a non alcoholic beer instead. She came back, "You may think I'm joking," she said, "but we don't have any zero alcohol either." I understood what she was saying without any trouble - though I probably didn't hear every word - and changing my order for a third time was no problem. It's not that I was lost, it's not that I was phased or confused but I wasn't exactly at ease with the situation either. So the talking can be a bit tricky but the way of doing things and the things I see around me are just commonplace.

As I got off the aeroplane in Spain I felt glad to be home but, as I will never be fluent, fluent, maybe I will never be at home.

Crackling

I love the heat of Alicante in the summer. The unremitting, unrelenting nature of it. At times, it's too hot but that's often the best bit. There seems to be no escape and, just then, there's a slight gust of breeze or you walk into the shadow of a building - even more perfect.

A few years ago we went to see the Misteri d'Elx. This is a religious play, performed in the Basilica in Elche by an all male cast in Ancient Valenciano. It's one of UNESCO's intangible World heritage things. I think it's possibly the most boring thing I've ever seen - though I would urge you to go and see it. There's still time to book up for this year! 11th, 12th and 13th August with tickets on the Sabadell instanticket website.

I was reminded of the Mystery yesterday evening as we saw a trio of live bands. The crowd was bopping up and down as crowds are supposed to do for contemporary music. Lots of the young women were waving fans, I don't mean they were fans waving I mean they had fans for fanning themselves and they were waving them. When we saw the Misteri it was hot in the church, hot like the boiler room of the Titanic, infernally hot. We were on a balcony, dripping with sweat and looking down on the action. The players clothes were dappled with rivulets of sweat. The audience was a sea of beating fans. The fans were really impressive. A still audience in constant movement. The Facebook screens on mobile phones were less impressive though they confirmed my "bored to tears" theory.

Fans are not an oddity or a rarity in Spain. They're not touristy Geisha or Louis XVI coy. They're a working tool. Spanish women, and some Spanish men, fan themselves almost incessantly. I dislike it, intensely, when the person alongside starts to fan themselves and me in the process. People complain about second hand smoke, why shouldn't I complain about second hand breeze?

I don't really care for aircon either. In buildings it's not so bad and if people weren't so determined to make it fridge cool inside I probably wouldn't complain at all. Cold is nice at first. Walking from the sunlit street into an air conditioned shop can be very pleasant experience. But why are people determined to reproduce winter like temperatures? Rooms so cold that the warmth just drains from your body. Horrid. And, in a car, that horrible claustrophobic feeling that aircon produces as the torrent of cold air fights the heat streaming in through the hectares of glass. Open the windows I say with the added bonus that you'll be able to hear the cicadas sing even as you pass at 120 km/h.

Fire, water, and government know nothing of mercy

There has been a big forest fire in Yeste in Albacete. It consumed about 3,300 hectares, equivalent to a tenth of the area of the Isle of Wight. The fire was started, almost certainly on purpose, last Thursday and it was only brought under control yesterday. Firefighters had to battle the blaze along a perimeter of over 32 kilometres. Yeste is about 150 kilometres from Pinoso and we reckoned that the white powder that dusted our cars over the weekend came from there.

Often, when it rains in Pinoso the cars, and the outside furniture, end up covered in thick red dust. The story, and I have no reason to doubt it, is that the dust comes from the Sahara. The nearest bit of the Sahara is in Morocco or Algeria about 1,200 kilometres to the South of us.

When I went in to town this morning I thought I should, perhaps, remove  a few layers of Algeria or Morocco from the car. Thirty other drivers obviously had a similar idea about their vehicles. There were long queues for the car wash.

Easily amused

I've talked about Spanish supermarkets before. Just as a quick recap. We have four decent sized supermarkets in Pinoso and I use them all. My choice is usually based on geography, wherever the car is parked. Sometimes on product - only two of the four for instance carry English Council House tea.

Whilst I'm not at work I've started to use Día more frequently than I used to. This is because it's on our side of town and the car parking is good. Now I'm going to fall into all sorts of problems with stereotyping here so please forgive me. Día is exactly the opposite of the UK's Waitrose or Spain's Corte Inglés supermarket operations in both its products and its customer profile. Día sells some quality products but it is typified by cheap and, sometimes, low quality in the sense of industrially processed food. Día does not, generally, attract well heeled clients in search of premium product. Now you can already see the stress lines in my argument because the one in Pinoso has plenty of British clients and, again generalising, we're not a hard up community. It's a touch of that Lidl/Aldi mentality - there are bargains to be had for the careful shopper and the other stuff can be bought elsewhere.

I'm beginning to really like Día. All of the supermarkets in Pinoso have their adherents and all of them will tell you how friendly the staff are. Personally I think the people in Consum and at Día are pleasant whilst the Más y Más and HiperBer people are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. But the women on the till in Día seem to go out of their way to say hello to people. The food varies in quality. With a bit of care you can save a fair amount of money and get perfectly reasonable product. It's not the easiest supermarket to shop in though. The aisles seem to block up easily, I still find the layout illogical and there seems to be a mentality amongst Día shoppers to take up the maximum space, to talk at maximum volume and to choose product at the minimum pace. Waiting for a family group to choose a flavour of yoghurt, a family group that is blocking access to the packet of butter that I can't quite get to, can be very frustrating. The shelf stacking staff can be nearly as bad - they seem quite oblivious to my attempts to slide between their palette cart loaded with pop to get to the diet Fanta as they chat about football. The till area is another weak spot. One of them seems to be used as the makeshift office. It is always piled high with paperwork and it is never open. There seems to be an unwillingness to open a second till until the queue has snaked well past the fresh fruit stand and is passing the pickled gherkins.

So far then not a glowing report. But the place is just bursting with life. There are always incidents. Often the incidents involve my compatriots. Confusions with language, confusions about the price, about the queuing structure, about the money off coupons. There are also the strange conversations I have with Spaniards - usually as they let me go before them because I only have a packet of peanuts and a bottle of brandy - conversations about my food habits.

Today, for instance, I did something very Spanish. I put my stuff on the cash desk belt and, whilst the man in front's stuff was going through the scanner, I rushed off to pick up the bread that I'd forgotten. When I came back the man in front of me still hadn't had all of his things go through the checkout but a couple of Britons were grumbling about bloody Spaniards leaving their stuff and then going off. They were standing over my things and they had already usurped the Spanish bloke behind me. After a little chat about who owned what they went to the other till. As they left I asked the Spanish bloke why he hadn't said anything - "It's what I expect," he said.

The other day a group of Britons had bought loads and loads of stuff. They'd brought lots of old carrier bags to load it into too and they hung each newly filled bag on the back of a pushchair that contained a toddler. There was a flurry of argument about who was going to pay. As everyone, including the pram pusher, proffered biggish banknotes and deluged the grinning checkout woman in a flood of English, the pram overbalanced and toddler and supermarket produce spilled everywhere. All the people, maybe six or seven of them, scrabbled for rolling oranges, cans of pop and bawling children as fifty euro notes drifted back and forth in the gentle breeze from the sliding door.

Another bottle of brandy and some onions. A Scottish pal let me queue jump. The woman in front of me was a Culebrón resident. Strange conversation in English to my left, in Spanish to my right and in Spanish again across the little perspex shield of the checkout.

I'm sure there's an advertising slogan in there somewhere for Día.

Wispy light and more

The first time I ever caught the sense of a conversation going on around me in Spanish was on a bus in Granada. I'd always thought that Spanish conversations were probably about Goethe or something equally profound but that one was, in fact, about whether peas should or should not be an ingredient of some stew. Food is a topic of conversation close to the hearts of many Spaniards.

One of the things that crops up in those food conversations is the Mediterranean diet. If you were to ask me what the Mediterranean diet I'd have to say that I'm not quite sure. I know that it includes more fish than meat, cereals, pulses, nuts, vegetables, fruit, wine and lots of olive oil but I'm a bit hazy on the details. We live pretty close to the Mediterranean. In fact yesterday we were in Santa Pola and if we'd chosen to we could have gone for a paddle, so I should know what the diet is but I don't. One of the confusing things about it is that lots of what seem to be traditional Spanish foods look remarkably unhealthy. Surely things like chorizo, the white bread sticks, the deep fried pescaitos, the peanuts dripping in oil, the cheese, the croquetas and all the rest can't really be part of a healthy diet?

Back in Santa Pola I asked if they had any sangre, blood, to go along with the beer. I'm not sure what sangre contains exactly apart from blood and onions but it looks like liver and it tastes yummy (though Maggie disagrees). It's not so available away from the coast which is why I was taking my opportunity. There wasn't any so I asked for Russian salad instead. Ensaladilla rusa is a staple in lots of Alicante and beyond - a sort of potato, egg, tuna, carrot and pea salad held together with mayonnaise. Tasty certainly but healthy?

Actually, I know exactly what I think of when the Mediterranean diet is mentioned and it has nothing to do with the food. The Mediterranean diet is a bronzed Anthony Quinn peeling and eating fruit directly from his pocket knife, it's him eating, and laughing with his friends as he drinks copious quantities of wine around a sun dappled outdoor table against the azure blue background of the sparkling sea.

I read an article in el País yesterday which seemed to reach a similar conclusion only they made no mention of Quinn nor Jean Reno in the Big Blue who would be my other point of reference.

El País told me that back in 1953 an epidemiologist called Leland G. Allbaugh published a paper about the, then, normal diet on Crete. Cretans ate a very basic diet yet they were healthier than Americans. A medical doctor, Dr. Ancel Keys, saw the research and spent years trying to work out why. He did research in seven countries and, to oversimplify, came up with the  conclusion that saturated fat in diets was a major conditioner of heart disease along with cholesterol and high blood pressure. Whilst he was involved in the early years of the survey Keys and his wife published a book called Eat Well and Stay Well. Later, in 1975, they published a second book called How to Eat Well and Stay Well: The Mediterranean Way. It was, apparently, that book which led to the term Mediterranean diet coming into everyday use. But the “Mediterranean Way” was more than particular foods and cuisines or eating patterns. It involved aspects of lifestyle and the economy, such as walking to and from work in physically active occupations like farming, crafts, fishing and herding, taking the major meal at midday, having an afternoon break from work. In short the food was only a part of the traditional Mediterranean  lifestyle.

In 2011, the European Food Safety Authority published a position document arguing that it could not establish whether the Mediterranean diet was healthy or not because it was unable to find a clear definition of what the diet was. The Authority also noted that the inclusion of quite a lot of wine in all of the versions made it technically unhealthy. The Mediterranean diet though does feature as an intangible cultural heritage on UNESCO's list - just like Flamenco or the Fallas celebrations. The definition is not about the food it's about agriculture and tradition, about sharing food and about cultural identity. The full definition is at the bottom of the page

The newspaper article writer argued that the Mediterranean diet was actually more of a process of four decades of hype than an actual dietary regime. Like I said, Anthony Quinn, the suntan, the cicadas singing, the shared bottle of wine. The laughter. Now that was all around us as we ate the ensaladilla rusa in Santa Pola yesterday.

___________________________________________________________________

UNESCO definition: The Mediterranean diet involves a set of skills, knowledge, rituals, symbols and traditions concerning crops, harvesting, fishing, animal husbandry, conservation, processing, cooking, and particularly the sharing and consumption of food. Eating together is the foundation of the cultural identity and continuity of communities throughout the Mediterranean basin. It is a moment of social exchange and communication, an affirmation and renewal of family, group or community identity. The Mediterranean diet emphasizes values of hospitality, neighbourliness, intercultural dialogue and creativity, and a way of life guided by respect for diversity. It plays a vital role in cultural spaces, festivals and celebrations, bringing together people of all ages, conditions and social classes. It includes the craftsmanship and production of traditional receptacles for the transport, preservation and consumption of food, including ceramic plates and glasses. Women play an important role in transmitting knowledge of the Mediterranean diet: they safeguard its techniques, respect seasonal rhythms and festive events, and transmit the values of the element to new generations. Markets also play a key role as spaces for cultivating and transmitting the Mediterranean diet during the daily practice of exchange, agreement and mutual respect.

I only have plastic

When I lived in the UK I had a lot of credit cards. I made a hobby of moving non existent money between one account and another to try to keep the interest payments down. When I left the UK I cancelled the majority of my plastic but I hung on to a couple for one reason or another. Nowadays I hardly ever use my British plastic but, every time the banks try to take them away, I obstinately hang on to them "just in case".

Every now and again one of the British card issuers sells or buys my account and changes something or other. Barclaycard recently did just that when they terminated an agreement with AMEX. As an incentive to use the new card they offered me a bracelet so that I could make small, contactless payments by simply waving my forearm at the credit card machine. Something to speed up buying the morning latte. Why not I thought? Well, because I live in Spain! I suspect I will never use it.

I was a Barclaycard customer in Spain too. Barclaycard sold their operation to Banco Popular who renamed the card WiZink. The name sounds OK in Spanish, if a bit corny, but rubbish in English. It took ages for the websites and the cards to change after the purchase and WiZink got around to the rebranding just as Banco Popular went belly up. It was bought by Santander for 1€. Strange really; years ago Santander absorbed the bank where I had my Spanish current account.

I use my credit card a fair bit in Spain but I use it in quite an old fashioned way. I use it for decent sized purchases - at a clothes shop, for the big shops in the supermarket, for diesel, for the posh restaurant and for anything online. Even if there were sandwich shops in Spain, and Spaniards cannot understand why we like to mix so many ingredients between two slices of bread, so there aren't, I wouldn't think to buy a sandwich and a coke with plastic. In Spain I use money. I go to a bank machine and take money out of my current account. I then use those notes (and the coins that they spawn) to buy beer, duct tape and similarly useful articles.

I know that Denmark is now more or less cashless. When we were in Hungary a little while ago we were always asked if we wanted to pay with cash or card even when we'd just had a couple of beers. The last time I visited the UK one of the things that struck me was how the tiniest of purchases were made with plastic. I have seen Spaniards pay small amounts on plastic but my impression is that it's not generalised. So I wondered if it's just me that's old fashioned, if it's another of those rural/urban things, if I should catch up and start paying for coffee with virtual money or if there is a real difference between Spain and some other European countries.

The answer seems to be that it's the way that the banks operate that's different, plus a bit of inertia.

Spanish banks now charge for pulling money out of cashpoints that aren't theirs. There are also fewer cashpoints because of the closure and merger of so many offices within the troubled banking sector. As a result, for the first time last year more money was spent on credit and debit cards than in cash. So there is a real increase in the use of plastic.

On the other hand only 16% of all transactions in Spain are made on plastic as against figures of around 50% in Portugal or France. One reason for that may be that only 40% of all Spanish businesses accept plastic. And in turn it seems likely that this low percentage of acceptance is because, historically, Spanish banks charged high commissions to retailers on plastic card transactions. In fact the Government introduced legislation in 2014 that limited the commission that the banks could charge the businesses for each transaction. That included very low percentages on micro purchases. Despite this there are still lots of businesses with the signs up to say that you can't pay amounts of less than so many euros with plastic. The suggestion, in many of the articles that I read, was that Spanish traders don't pay a lot of notice to the blurb sent to them by plastic card companies. As a consequence many businesses are still under the impression that commission charges on plastic transactions are very high and it will be a while before the message gets home.

I should add that when the banks were faced with the loss of income on the commissions charged to traders they responded by charging customers more to hold the cards. I don't pay anything for the maintenance of my UK cards but I pay 36€ a year for my Spanish bank debit card. There's also an annual charge for my credit card but I never pay that as the charge is refunded so long as I spend more than so much per year. Interestingly though the Spanish cards charge a lot less for "foreign" transactions than the British cards.

So it's not something amongst we yokels nor is it simply my misperception. Spaniards really do use plastic less than a lot of other Europeans.

With no added preservatives

I went to have a quick look at the tanganilla competition in Culebrón this morning as part of the weekend long fiesta. Tanganilla, I think, also goes by the name of caliche, hito, bolinche and chito and there seem to be variations of it all over Spain.

Tanganilla isn't a difficult game to organise. A line in the dirt, a 10cm high (or thereabouts) wooden rod and some 7cm across (or thereabouts) metal discs plus some players - maybe a referee. The rod is set up about 20 metres from the line - I understand that one of the variations, and there are lots, says that the distance is 22 strides. Isn't that the length of a cricket pitch? The basic idea is to knock over the rod but from watching there seemed to be other rules about how close the thrown discs were to the fallen rod. Amongst the many regional variations a common one seems to involve placing a coin on top of the rod and then measuring the distance of the discs from the coin once it has been knocked off the rod. Dead easy and complicated at the same time - like pétanque or crown green bowling. I thought that the game was one of the innovations of last year's fiesta but a reader of the blog put me right - apparently it was a feature of fiestas in the past. The reader reckons it disappeared in 2008 or 2009. Obviously as my gut expands my memory shrinks because I don't remember having seen the game in the village before. If innovation isn't correct then revival is and I thought it was a good thing. A traditional game, no cost a bit of fun plus an easy opportunity to drink beer.

The other day in my English class, where I nearly always start off with any sort of Q&A session, to get everybody warmed up, I asked about fast food. Do you prefer burgers, pizza or kebabs? What's your favourite fast food? blah, blah. It's not the first time I've asked similar questions. When someone answers hamburgers I then ask whether they prefer McDonald's, Burger King, Fosters Hollywood, TGB and so on. Then I ask what they order?, what side order?, what drink?, diet or standard? But it didn't go that way with my Pinoso students. They liked burgers OK but they liked the ones from the local butchers or the ones that their Gran makes. It's the first time that I've asked the series of questions outside of a reasonably big town. The Pinoseros were re-assuringly dismissive of the floppy, semi warm burgers that the chains have a tendency to serve up. It was particularly re-assuring because Maggie and I have been shocked recently to see the queues of traffic waiting in the Drive Thru lane at the McDonald's in Petrer as we leave the cinema. Spaniards tend to like and enjoy food and it seems strange that they would queue for burgers.

I suppose the difference is that Petrer, or the side by side towns of Elda and Petrer, have a population of about 90,000 - somewhat larger than the fewer than 8,000 of Pinoso. Tanganilla and home made burgers - symbols of a rural idyll?