Life in Culebrón

Egg and chips is a typical Spanish dish. Egg and chips is a typical English dish too. I wouldn't be surprised if half the world has a similar claim to egg and chips. Of course there can be lots of differences between one plateful of egg and chips and another dependant on the quality of the ingredients and the preparation. I like my bacon sandwiches in white bread with lots of butter and with crispy but cooled bacon. I know people who are appalled at the idea of butter and white bread and pour ketchup or brown sauce on theirs. So preparation, ingredients and personal taste all make a difference when we're talking food. Sometimes Spanish people ask me if I eat British or Spanish food at home. I suppose the question is whether I eat paella or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding because, most of the time, the stuff I cook is probably stateless. I might think it's chilli con carne or biryani but a Mexican (or is that a Texan) and an Indian wouldn't recognise it as such. And...

I know there's a rearguard action. I know that people talk about the character of the surface noise on vinyl discs and the value of the smell of books. I know that paper book sales increased and e-book sales fell last year and that there's a new version of the Nokia 3310 but, in the long term, it just has to be digital that wins. One of the many losers to date has been traditional mail. When someone asked me to write a reference for them a couple of years ago I thought about a document in an envelope with a stamp. I could feel the smirk as they gave me the email address. Be that as it may the Post Office in Pinoso is a good place to meet fellow Britons. We seem to be heavy postal users in comparison to the locals. My guess is that there is a lot of toing and froing with grandparent/grandchild presents and Callard and Bowser butterscotch. Moreover because so many of us are of a certain age, there is still a lot of traffic in greetings cards. It's fine, we say, sending a ...

There are lots of things that I've done in my life which I regret. Some are big things, which I'm not going to tell you about, and some are small. I admit to wearing leg warmers in the 1980s. Something that causes me psychological grief every now and then is remembering my last leaving do. I rambled on and on for hours. I would be briefer given a second opportunity. My colleagues bought me gifts; amongst other things a Panama hat and a couple of sophisticated deck chairs. There was obviously an expectation that I would be sitting out in the sun. It is true that being outside is one of the pleasures of Life in Culebrón, life in this part of Spain in general. I seem to remember that those chairs also served in our unfurnished living room for a while! We've got a sofa now (though Samuel the demi kitten is making sure that we will need a new one very soon). The Panama lives on, albeit with an extra hole, other than the one for my head. The chairs went the way of all flesh y...

There's a certain tendency to euphoria sometimes. It would happen from time to time driving across the fens or maybe with the MGB in the Cotswolds. Just feeling glad to be there, to be passing through. It happens a lot here. As I drive across some Spanish landscape with, maybe, high hills, or never ending plains or, perhaps, just watching that ochre yellow dust trail as a car or van drives along some dirt track I start grinning for no particular reason. Maybe it's my age but nowadays I've got to the point where small pleasures cheer me up quite as easily as things on a grander scale. Maybe it's always been like that. Lots of the films that I've liked most across my lifetime of cinema going have been the ones that are classed as independent film. There are lots and lots of celebrations in Spain. They are everywhere if you look. I wonder if they have a more obvious impact in small towns and villages. The centre of Pinoso is more or less closed off for the eight ...

Do you think there's a cultural element to how we sweep up? Just after the tiniest of earthquakes, yesterday evening, we had a bit of a downpour. It didn't last long but there was sufficient rain for our guttering to leak. So today I was on gutter cleaning. The mud from the gutter had to be swilled and swept from the interior patio and, because I was now mud spattered, damp and sweaty I thought, masochistically, to clear away the rotting peaches from under the tree and then to sweep the front yard. The usual Spanish dustpan is like the one in the photo or maybe a plastic version of it. The way most people I see around me sweep up is to brush with one hand and collect with the other. I don't seem able to do that. I've tried but it  just doesn't seem natural. I prefer to sweep the debris into a pile and then to sweep the pile into the dustpan. It's the way that I've always done it. Learned at my mother's knee.

One of the problems with things starting late is that one never knows how late. Last night, well earlier today too, we went to see the final of probably the most famous flamenco competition in Spain, Cante de las Minas, in La Unión near Cartagena in Murcia. The competition has an overall winner and lots of other prizes based around the elements of singing, dancing, guitar and, new to us, other instruments. We've been to semi finals before and to concerts of established stars during the festival but this was the first time that we'd done the final. So, a 10.00 p.m. start and we reckoned on about three hours for the event. We abandoned food in a bar because the service had been so terrible it left us with insufficient time to finish up and get into the hall for ten. We knew the start would be delayed, the usual for theatre and music is about twenty minutes, but you can't be sure. Some things do start on time. It's not common but they do. Twenty minutes would have be...

We have a splendid little town in Pinoso. I mean splendid. The other day we had David Bisbal here, one of the biggest pop stars in Spain. A bit like getting Ed Sheeran to play Marlborough in Wiltshire. There was a float in the carnival procession complaining about the concert. About 5,000 people paid the ticket price of a bit less than 30€ per head and the event made a profit. The complaint was that the prices were too high, that the audience was outsiders and that the profit went to the Town Hall. I presume if the prices had been lower and the Town Hall had made a loss there would have been complaints about that too. Sometimes though I do wonder about the way that the Town Hall spends money. The current administration has done a lot to prettify the town. There are arguments both ways. The first is - what a waste of money when we need more (fill in the space s appropriate). The second is - lovely, how nice our town looks. I've tended to the second camp. Pinoso is not endowed with...

My brother went to see a bullfight in Alicante. He seemed quite surprised that it was bloody - I wondered what he'd expected. Personally I am totally opposed to bullfights. Arguments about art and heritage cut no ice with me. I'm a bit ambivalent about some things that some people consider to be animal rights issues though - animals in zoos being a good example. It's a bit the same with bull related events here in Spain. There are lots. Some are plain barbaric, they are simply the abuse of animals by humans reduced to their most savage but others aren't, in my opinion, quite so bad. There are some bull events that worry me no more than people keeping their dogs inside all the time or the donkey rides at the seaside. I'm sure you've seen Sanfermines on the telly where all those people run in front of half a dozen bulls in what's called an encierro, and which I think we call bull running. I don't care about it one way or the other. I'm not interest...

I don't normally do news. I more usually blog about what I had for breakfast but, when we were down in Alicante for the tail end of the weekend, there was a big line of taxis that went past the hotel travelling at a snail's pace and hooting their horns. They were striking in sympathy with the Barcelona and Madrid taxi drivers. And, in those two cities we have seen pictures of roads blocked by taxis, of improvised camps on key thoroughfares and attacks on the cars the taxi drivers consider to be unfair competition. There has been an intermittent battle between taxis, the sort of taxis that have to get themselves registered with the local authorities and comply with all sorts of regulations, and any other sort of private hire for years now. Around here, ages ago, people, particularly expats, saw that there was a market for making a few euros by using their car to take somebody that they didn't know down to the airport in Alicante/Elche. The taxi drivers noticed that some ...

Twenty years ago, more, I was walking out of Covent Garden, probably via Floral Street, maybe King Street. It was love at first sight. In the window of Emporio Armani; a charcoal grey suit. I walked away twice but I was drawn back. The chap in the shop wasn't like the man in the Aquascutum shop a few years before who had explained to me that if I were just looking that's what the window displays were for. Mr Armani's man was welcoming and persuasive. My credit card groaned but bore the strain. I wore suits a lot then and I always felt great in the Armani. Like a dinner jacket it had a magical back straightening effect. In fact, once upon a time, I had suits and shirts and shoes and trousers for almost any occasion from a barbecue to a wedding. Maybe a new tie for a funeral or new shoes for a naming ceremony but the basic kit was there. It's not the same now. I have jeans and T shirts and hardly anything else. I never iron. I do have several pairs of chinos and quite...

Coming home was just brilliant - that feeling of being in Spain when Spain is almost a parody of itself. It's not really hot but it's very definitely summer. Probably in the low 30s. Nice and warm, hot enough to make anyone sweat, hot enough to make it dusty, hot enough for those sudden gusts of wind to be very welcome and nearly hot enough for a spaghetti western snake to slither by. I finished teaching the last of my courses this morning. No more work for a few weeks. I'd celebrated with a beer and a chat in the market square. The streets were lunchtime deserted as I went for bread. The cicadas sang. My sandals kicked up little swirls of dust as I walked. In the car, on the way home, I had the windows open and the new Florence on quite loud. Loud enough for the bloke working on putting up the dodgems in the market car park to look up as I passed. I waved and wondered why he was working at such an odd time. Coming around the Yecla-Jumilla roundabout they're redoing...

Irene (pronounced something like eeh rainy not eye reen) runs a little charitable setup called Gatets sense llar del Pinó s. Google translates the Valencian to English as Homosexual kittens of the Pinós but I think that may be a Google glitch! Translated to Spanish it says Gatitos sin hogar de Pinoso which is something like Homeless Pinoso Kitties. Maggie looks at Irene's Facebook page quite often. She'll say "Oh, look at this poor old cat, with three legs and a duff eye that has been abandoned" and I'll respond with something along the lines of "Well, we've got plenty of space, what's another cat to us?" Maggie thinks of the feeding, the damage to the house, the things being pulled off the shelves and the vet's bills and common sense saves the day. But, a couple of weeks ago there was a picture of a few weeks old Siamese like kitten with watery eyes on the Facebook page. Usual comment from Maggie, usual reply from me. I'd reckoned wi...

Each of the little villages associated with the small town of Pinoso, the pedanías, have a weekend fiesta sometime over the summer. It's the turn of Culebrón this weekend. It's happening now. So far we haven't been to anything that's been put on at this year's fiesta and I suspect that we won't be going over for the rest of the event tomorrow. To be honest the programme isn't that important, it's more the idea that the village is as full as it ever gets, that people are around and that they do things together with a lot of laughing as a part of the recipe. In the past the event had a sort of curtain raiser in a meal organised by the Neighbourhood Association the weekend before but that hasn't happened twice in a row now, possibly because of differences of opinion between a couple of key village personalities. As I haven't rejoined the Association this year I wouldn't be able to attend even if it had happened! People who have a "wee...

My mum was unhappy about the heat in St Ives, in Huntingdonshire, unbearable she said. Somebody here in Pinoso was complaining to me about how hot it was too but, because I keep a little record in my diary, I thought I was aware that, so far, both June and July have been a little cooler than usual. So I did a bit of checking. I was a bit surprised how difficult it was to find full sets of data for past years  and I could only really get fullish sets for 2013, 2014 and most of 2015. All of these results are from the same weather station so any microclimatic differences are evened out. And it seems to be true. Both June and July this year (so far) have had lower maximum temperatures than in the previous quoted years. Mind you the difference isn't really that much and the nightime temperatures are much as usual. In 2013 in Pinoso the highest June temperature was 35ºC, for 2014 it was 32.5ºC, for 2015 it was 37ºC and for 2018 it was 31.5ºC In 2013 in Pinoso the highest July temp...

I'm sure that you remember that Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland had a bit of a problem with Oliver Cromwell. Charles was executed on a cold day in January 1649 and a Republic declared. Cromwell headed up the Republic as Lord Protector and, on his death in 1658, the title passed to his son, Richard. The army overthrew Richard in 1659 and invited Charles I's son to be King. It was all made official with Charles II's crowning in 1661. His first parliament ordered that Cromwell's body, and those of another couple of people responsible for the death of the old King, be dug up and hung. The heads were then stuck on a 6 metre long poles near Westminster Hall. Cromwell's head kicked around until 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge When the Hapsburg, Carlos II of Spain, died in 1700 he left no heir. The Bourbon family took over and they have kept Spain in monarchs ever since despite a couple of hiccoughs along the way. For ins...