Solid

When it comes to National Identity I'm not a believer. I don't, for instance, see anything to be proud of in having been born in a particular place and I don't think  that the people of one nation are intrinsically different to the people of another. I do believe though that we all learn from our surroundings and that, as such, there are learned, generalised, national traits.

One thing that Spaniards like to say about themselves is that they are "solidario". It's not an easy word to translate into English - it's the attitude of being supportive, caring, empathetic, sympathetic and in it together.

Whenever there is an earthquake or hurricane somewhere in the world there will be something in the Spanish news about us being solidario and sending this or that team of rescue workers, search dogs, blankets or tents. The truth is that Spain has cut its foreign aid and only spends about 0.14% of it's Gross Domestic Income (GDI) on overseas aid. As a Briton, seeing those teams, supplies and tents being loaded onto the Airbus Atlas I often think the help looks paltry and late. One of the things we British can be proud of is that the UK is one of only seven countries in the world which has reached the 0.7% of GDI overseas aid target agreed at the United Nations. The UK economy is much bigger than Spain's so in folding we're talking 19 billion British dollars as against 1.6 billion Spanish dollars.

At the moment people are dying in hordes all over the World because of coronavirus. Spain has been one of the countries hardest hit though the latest figures for the UK are equally terrible. In fact the situation in Spain is probably much worse than reported. Imagine someone breathes their last in a Spanish care home. The person died because their lungs could not take in sufficient oxygen or expel sufficient carbon dioxide. The doctor can't put Covid 19 on the death certificate as the cause of death because there has been no corona virus test. The doctor writes pulmonary insufficiency in the space on the certificate and the death is not recorded as a part of the daily toll.

Maggie and I have taken to watching more television news broadcasts, both British and Spanish, during the pandemic. On the Spanish news the format is usually the latest national coronavirus news along with the political and economic news surrounding it plus the stories about shortages, bad planning etc. That's followed by a coronavirus update from around the world. Then there's the other news, a fair bit of sporting stuff (goodness knows how when there is no sport) and then lots of little human interest, soft news, stories.

The softer news stories are multifaceted. It might be about people using their 3D printers, sewing machines and production lines to make this or that for health workers or about football clubs opening their changing rooms for lorry drivers or about the children sending thank you drawings to police officers. Then there's usually lots and lots of applauding. Applause for the people giving impromptu concerts from their balconies, applause for firefighters who haven't been home for days as they drive by their home to sing  Happy Birthday over the loudspeakers to their locked in son, the line of siren blaring Civil Protection, Guardia Civil and Police cars "applauding" the supermarket workers. Today there has been lots of Easter ritual performed from balconies to applaud and, of course, every evening at 8pm we have applause for everyone from everyone.

The British news has the same sort of stories, maybe with a bit more complaining about the wrong responses, but there seem to be far fewer, hardly any, of the uplifting, morale boosting, we're all in this together stories. Maybe I've just missed them or maybe the Spaniards are right in thinking they are more Solidario.

New words and more staying at home

One of the reasons our water heater stopped working was that water was coming down the chimney and soaking the electrics and electronics. We've had lots of torrential rain recently and, the other evening, at around half past midnight the chimney began to drip again. I shimmied up onto the roof and covered the chimney with a plastic bag. The chimney has a hat like cover but it doesn't seem able to keep out the rain when it comes down in bucket-loads. The next morning I was back on the roof to cobble together a wider brimmed hat. I described the repair as Heath Robinson to someone on Twitter. For those of you who don't know William Heath Robinson (1872 – 1944) was an English cartoonist, illustrator and artist, best known for drawings of whimsically elaborate machines to achieve simple objectives.

Heath Robinson is a part of my linguistic armoury just like crikey, whoops a daisy and wide boy. Old fashioned words. I've been away from the UK for a while now and Spain is a country where there is a tendency to call a spade a spade. Nobody here seems to wince at calling someone with one arm a manco or someone with one eye tuerto and the immigration office is called that - well it's called extranjería actually but the point is good. Being out of the UK means that words get to me long after they have become common street currency. When I first heard Brexit I thought it was a stupid term. A smokescreen of a word. Social distancing and self isolation strike me as just as ponderous. When I lived in the UK though I was happy enough to accept linguistic changes of the same style without a murmur. In fact, in general I have no problems with the newer forms of English. Most of them are simply US usage and they reflect the importance of the USA as the powerhouse of the English language. I still notice two times instead of twice, more noisy instead of noisier and forms like "I'll get a beer" and "I'm good, thanks" but they don't particularly jar. Often I think the new forms are well conceived. A Briton was complaining to me about the noun, a big ask. I quite like it myself. Descriptive, easy to use and I'm not aware of any simpler alternative. The older forms are still available anyway. They may give me coffee in a cardboard cup with a lid but nobody has ever tried to force me to drink through the little hole so far.

It's odd though because with being home so much recently I've seen quite a lot of "box sets" on "streaming platforms" and I find that I often don't understand what is being said even though they are speaking English. I still have problems understanding Spanish as well and sometimes the two languages bump into each other so that I find that I can't think of the English for the Spanish word, which I understand,  just as I often don't know the Spanish for an English word.

Listening to this afternoon's speech by our President, Pedro Sanchez, on the tele caused me almost no problems at all with understanding. He speaks slowly to sound Presidential; lots of we're a great nation, pulling together, steadfast behind the heroic health workers etc. I suppose it's the speech writers and autocue machines really rather than him. You'd think the US Government would buy one for Donald Trump so he didn't sound like an incompetent clown but they haven't so he does. Pedro told us that he will be taking the extension of the estado de alarma, (lockdown to you), to parliament for another fortnight's extension.

I heard yesterday that a newspaper survey found that 54% of Spaniards thought that Central Government was doing a poor job. Once upon a time I used to organise sporting and cultural events for young people. I grew to hate disco dance. Over the years I was attacked several times, usually verbally but sometimes physically, because irate mothers held me responsible for the the way some experts had judged the dance performance of their daughter or her team. I'm sure the Spanish Government has made lots and lots of errors in it's handling of the corona virus pandemic but I suppose it would have been the same civil servants and the same experts advising the Government whatever political hue it was. I've also noticed that there is a great similarity between the moans about the handling of the crisis whether that's aimed at Pedro's Socialists or Boris's Conservatives. I don't know but I suppose that re-arranging a country in a couple of weeks is nearly as difficult as dealing with disco dance mothers!

I'm a bit worried that the new two week extension will toughen up the rules about wearing masks in the street. We don't have a mask. Amazon offers several but delivery dates are into June by which times the cats could well have run out of food and eaten us. But, at the moment, all is well in Culebrón and, in a rather surreal way, quite pleasant.

Keep safe!, stay well! or ¡cuidaos!

Using your loaf

I thought I might write a blog. Then I realised that nothing has happened to me for days so I couldn't. Later, as I pottered at some unremarkable task or another, it came to me that I knew a story, dated from the year 1305, about a Scottish bloke watching a spider. If that was enough to pique people's interest maybe I could think of something. So, here it is.

Yesterday, as I sorted the recycling in the rain, someone papped their horn as they passed the gate. Now horn papping is currently a big event in Culebrón; worthy of investigation. I duly investigated. It was a white van and our next door neighbour was buying something from the driver. I kept my distance but I wondered what he was selling. Instead of asking in person I asked via WhatsApp. First I asked a British family who live on the other side of the main road, the one where they disinfected the streets today, if they knew anything about travelling shops. When the response hadn't come within an hour or so I sent another WhatsApp to the Spanish family next door. They told me it had been a bread van coming in from Pinoso.

My search for new challenges, for novel experiences, is almost boundless. Obviously ordering bread via WhatsApp just had to be tried. Tapping out my order I suddenly realised that I didn't know the names of a particular sort of loaf I wanted. This is not new. I had the same problem in the Waitrose in Huntingdon about 20 years ago when I (apparently) wanted a Farmhouse Bloomer. This time though I couldn't point. It was a very long WhatsApp message to get an ordinary sort of loaf and a couple of breadsticks. The comparison with the bloomer still holds. "Please can I have a brown farmhouse bloomer?" versus "Please can I have that large brown crusty loaf with rounded ends and parallel diagonal slashes across its top?"

The British family responded in time. They didn't tell me about Javier the baker though, they told me about Augustine and his travelling grocer cum greengrocer's van. Bread on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, groceries on Tuesday and Thursday.

Like a magician I revealed all of this to Maggie. Well a van from Carrefour (a huge French owned supermarket) passed the other day she said. There seems to be just so much that I don't know about shopping in Culebrón!

And something completely different to finish. I was talking yesterday to a bloke who lives in a nearby village called Cantón. The official figure for the population of el Cantón is 103 but I'd be amazed if that many people actually live there all year around. Nonetheless my pal says that in the village, as nearly everywhere in Spain, every evening at 8pm the neighbours get out on their balconies and back patios to applaud, shout and generally make noise to show their support for the people keeping us going at the moment and particularly the health workers. I'm sure it happens in Culebrón too but we're too far away to hear or be heard.

Heart in the small talk

I'm a sucker for gestures. The bit in Casablanca, where Laszlo says "Play the Marseillaise, play it!" and Rick nods, and they do, and they out-sing the baddies always makes me tear up.

I was just watching a video of someone called Gustaf Farwell banging out Nessun Dorma from his balcony in Barcelona just like Gavinana Maurizio Marchini did in Florence. Every time I watch the TV news I see health workers applauding patients coming off ventilators, I see the people clapping to cheer on the lorry drivers, health workers and everyone else who is keeping us going. It's good and positive. I even approve of the glossy videos being put together by the banks and supermarkets so that we identify them with the white hats when the time goes back to shopping and opening accounts. Lots of gestures.

I'm not so keen on the complaining. Complaints are often justified, I enjoy a good complain myself, I complain a lot, there are plenty of daft buggers in the world and plenty of stupid processes to complain about. The problem is that picking fault with everything and everyone isn't really that useful as it's happening and unless there's something to be done about it.

I had a headteacher when I was at secondary school who was as stupid and as pompous a little man as you could ever wish to meet. He did, though, habitually defend (what was then) British Rail with what I considered was a sound argument. It's all well and good, he said, complaining when the points freeze and the trains are thrown into chaos for a couple of days every February and pointing out that in Sweden they have heated points but the truth is that the conditions are different, the situation is different and if British Rail did spend millions on installing heated points then someone would point out the waste of money.

It does seem to me that, once the game is on the best you can do is the best you can do. Obviously when it's all over you can do a bit of finger pointing and calling to account. Maybe things can be improved so that next time the mistakes are different ones. In the meantime I'm all for the gestures of solidarity. To the politicians trying to do their best, to the health workers being forced to manufacture protective clothing from bin bags, to the volunteer food deliverers, to the celebrities giving money, to the people sewing masks or using their 3D printers to produce ventilators, to the cleaner in the old people's home who has decided to stay on, to the singing and non singing police officers and to those people who can't do those things so instead they organise an online yoga session, dress up as dinosaurs on the balcony, shout Happy Birthday across the street or make uplifting YouTube videos.

But I never do have the time

Do you know that Louis XVI wrote Rien, French for nothing, in his diary, on the day the Bastille was stormed? That was 14th July 1789, one of the key days in the French Revolution and one of a series of events that would lead to Louis losing his head. If you do know you'll probably be aware that it was an entry in his hunting diary, to record the number of animals he'd caught, but it's a better story if you miss that bit out.

My diary for yesterday could say nada, Spanish for nothing, though without any reference to the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. Well not really nothing. I drank several pints of tea. In fact I'm drinking so much tea at the moment that I've stopped flushing every time because our cess pit only has a capacity of 2,000 litres and we could well fill it really quickly if this quarantine continues.

Reading too. Actually the two things go together, drinking tea, sitting close to a gas heater and reading. I nearly always have a book on the go but normally it takes me a couple of weeks to finish one, maybe longer. I'm on my second since we've been in confinement and I read about 100 pages yesterday. For me that's a lot. It looks as though my new Javier Cercas book is going to last me four days though it's possible I might knock it off today, day three. I probably have a book, a book with paper pages, waiting for me at the newsagent in Pinoso but, at the moment, five kilometres is a long, long way. Thank goodness for Kindle.

Watching the news too. That's become a key activity. The 3pm news on one channel and the 9pm new on another. The bit I enjoy best are the little uplifting stories. Normally I'm more of a radio man and "newspaper" man. I usually listen to the radio, live or as podcasts, as I do those household jobs or drive from one place to another but I only seem to be listening to the radio in the morning at the moment. It seems odd considering that I have more dead time. That could be because the heavy rain of the last few days has kept me out of the garden and weeding and listening go so well together. It's the same with reading news. I've kept up my consumption of Spanish news in written in English but reading Spanish news in Spanish has definitely tailed away.

Evenings it's Netflix, Amazon Prime and broadcast telly but a lot less than I would have expected. I have joined Maggie in watching the British News though which is something I don't usually bother to do.

Occasionally, I pull out the little book that I use to write down new Spanish words and I have a few minutes trying to unsuccessfully memorise that new vocab. Twitter and Facebook and WhatsApp are there all the time. I still haven't worked out Twitter properly, following threads can be very difficult, but I've been using it quite a lot over the past eleven or twelve days. Facebook meanwhile is full of rules and regulations and information from Town Halls and police but there are even more cute animals, clever quotes and hoaxes than usual. More hoaxes than anyone could imagine. I noticed that I was getting the same hoaxes in English yesterday as I've been getting in Spanish for days.

You will notice there are no chores, no jobs around the house, no catching up with painting. Thank goodness that hasn't changed.

And, blogging of course. Even though I've nothing to write about.

Surprisingly unsettling

I've just been into town.

There's a video doing the rounds on social media of a woman runner scuffling with a couple of police officers in Madrid. We don't see how it started but the woman is screaming blue murder and shouting for help. The comments on the sound track by the person taking the video and from the neighbours on the adjoining balconies are not supportive of the runner. A loose translation might be something along the lines of "Smart arse, you should have stayed at home - you twat".

We're fine in Culebrón. We have space, inside and out, there are only the two of us plus the clowder of cats. Since I went to the supermarket on either Monday or Tuesday I haven't been outside the front gate. The time has passed quickly though and I'm not finding time to do enough reading despite apparently having endless days in front of me.

I see on the telly, hear on the radio and read in social media that, in Spain, the place where I live, people are facing the hard times with determination and with humour. The examples of moral support, such as the applause for hard pressed medical staff or the concern for the lorry drivers who are keeping us all going but can't get a cup of coffee or anything to eat along their route, are legion. There are almost endless examples of good, decent action like shoe workers turning their machines to sewing medical masks. Not everything is positive though. There are plenty of selfish people too. Runners seem to be right up there and I've seen lots of Facebook posts from local police forces reminding people to be civically minded and to comply with spirit of the current rules. A simple example is that people are choosing to get their bread from a baker on the other side of town as the cover for a bit of a stroll. There are examples of lock ins in bars and I just saw a video (photo on this post) of the traffic jams out of Valencia city on Friday evening as people headed for their "holiday homes" content to risk taking the virus with them and happily flouting the one person per vehicle instruction. There are still some politicians crass enough to think that now is also a good time for point scoring.

I know which side I want to be on. But we had no eggs, bread, tomatoes, peppers or juice and our alcohol stocks were down to strangely coloured liqueurs and the wine in plastic bottles. The cats also seem to have remarkably healthy appetites.

Shopping aside there were a couple of other reasons for leaving the house. One of the things I've found time for over the last couple of days was to sort through my old English teaching materials looking for stuff to throw out. That had added about 20 kilos of paper to the usual recycling stash of cans, cartons and bottles sitting by the front door. Just to top it off Amazon were threatening to take my order back out of their delivery locker if I didn't pick it up by Sunday. The just about justifiable reasons for a quick trip out were building.

I chose to go out for the supermarket dead time just after 2 pm. It was a good decision. The rainswept roads were almost deserted and there was easy parking just outside the supermarket. I didn't have to queue to go in and I got my handwash and plastic gloves within seconds of entering. It was really quiet and nearly everything was in stock. I didn't like it though. It was all a little unsettling. When all this started I was one of the "well the flu kills 35,000 people every year and nobody notices" crowd  but I found myself hanging back whilst someone in front of me moved on from the area of the shelves where I wanted to be - no point in being foolhardy. It's impossible to go anywhere in Pinoso without bumping into someone you know. There were pals and acquaintances in the supermarket but the conversations were nothing more than polite or humorous exchanges of a few phrases. I have to say that I felt really uncomfortable; a mixture of concern that I was doing wrong by being there and that I was putting myself and Maggie at unnecessary risk.

I did all my jobs without any complications of any sort but I was really quite pleased when I closed the front gate and got to wash my hands.

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Talking to a couple of people on the phone back in the UK I've realised that people there are unaware of the restrictions here in Spain. This list is not exhaustive and it's not official but I think it gives the basic scope of the restrictions.

During the validity of the state of alarm, people may only circulate along the roads or spaces for public use to carry out the following activities. They must be carried out individually, unless accompanied by persons with disabilities, minors, the elderly, or for any other justified reason.

1. to buy food or other primary necessities, or to get prescription medicines from the pharmacy
2. to visit medical facilities in case of urgency
3. to go to your workplace or to carry out labour, professional or company duties
4. to return to your habitual home
5. to visit banking or insurance institution
6. to assist and care for the elderly, minors, dependants, people with disability or especially vulnerable people
7. for reasons of overwhelming force or situation of necessity
8. for any other activity of an analogous nature duly justified
9. to walk your pet (close to home and quickly)
10. to fill your vehicle up with fuel.

All retail businesses are closed the exception of those selling food, beverages, basic necessities, pharmacies, those offering medical, orthopaedic, optical or veterinary services, those selling newspapers, petrol or hygienic products, technological and telecommunications equipment, those offering telecom services, those selling animal feed products, dry cleaners, launderettes, hairdressers for health related home visits, E-commerce or commercial activities by phone or mail. Vehicle workshops may also open

All "food serving" businesses are closed: Tabernas y bodegas, Cafeterías, bares, café-bares. Chocolaterías, heladerías, salones de té, croissanteries. Restaurantes, autoservicios de restauración and similar. Bares-restaurante. Bares y restaurantes de hoteles, except when providing services for their guests. Salones de banquetes. Terrazas.

Museums, discotheques, auditoriums, sports facilities, attraction parks, leisure activity centres, processions, popular fiestas are all closed or cancelled.

Attendance at places of worship and at civil and religious ceremonies, including funerals are possible only if  there is no crowding and people can be kept at least a metre apart.

Splendid as always

So I'd bought a couple of railway tickets to go up to Valencia for the Fallas.

Covid 19 meant first the Fallas were postponed and then there was a general restriction on movement. I wasn't going to be using my tickets.

RENFE, the train people, famed for their idiosyncratic website, emailed to say they were returning money or giving credit. They said I had to wait till today, Wednesday, for them to get their systems in place.

I tried the website first. It said my tickets had been "consumed" presumably because they were dated for yesterday.

I tried the special phone number. It offered a service in all the Spanish languages and in English. Splendid as my Castilian is, I went for the easy option. Lots of blurb and then the message - all our operators are busy. Press one if you would you like to be served in Castilian. I didn't press one.

I tried ringing back. All our operators are busy. Over the next thirty minutes I tried a few times more.

Eventually the synthesised voice didn't close me down straight away and went on to offer the language options. English was busy still, but would I like Castilian? This time I pressed option one.

The voice asked me about when my ticket was dated. I answered. The voice asked me about my ticket type. I answered. "All our operators are busy," said the voice.

I think I might wait a while. There are only 65€ worth of tickets and the pal I was going with has already paid his half. The way it's going I could spend more on phone calls than the ticket money I'll get back.

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I phoned several more times with similar sorts of result. On 25 March the web page message had changed and I was able to apply for a credit online. The credit came through today, 26th March

Out to play

I like to get out and about. Anything from a film to a fiesta, a gallery to a concert, the theatre and, occasionally, even sports events. Doing things suits me. On the other hand in the last seventeen years I have had a couple of short stays in hospital - one in the UK and one here. Much to the surprise of those around me I quite enjoyed those brief medical sojourns.

So far I'm finding the same with being confined to home. I'm not longing to go for a walk or ride the bike or sit in a bar or even go to the pictures. The situation has changed and I'm being told that the best thing for me, and more particularly for everyone else, is that is that I stay at home; so stay at home it is. That said I did go out today. We needed food.

Culebrón itself is festooned with police tape to seal off the public spaces which I noticed as I passed through the village to drop off the recycling. Pinoso, our town, was quiet. Not dead quiet but quiet. I parked without any difficulty outside the bank and by the supermarket. I did have to queue to get in the supermarket but only for five minutes or so. One of the staff was on hand to ensure we maintained a "safe" distance and when someone came out someone else could go in. The free gift on entry was a squirt of alcohol based handwash. The buying looked absolutely normal to me. People were comparing prices and ingredients, nobody was shovelling products into their basket/trolley and most of the shelves were full. I couldn't get mince for the chilli nor butter for my toast and I wondered if that was because of us Britons. Spaniards do use both products but nowhere near as much as we do. By the checkouts there was parcel tape on the floor to remind shoppers to maintain a distance. The only incident of any kind was that there was one chap buying fruit or veg who wasn't using plastic gloves. Someone from the store pointed this out to him and he was less than polite in his response.

Obviously my situation is very straightforward. I don't have the virus, so far as I know, and nobody I know has it either. So far all the dead are just statistics to me. More prosaically I'm not having trouble getting to work, my kids are not at home all the time, my mortgage is paid, I haven't had to close down my business, my income is relatively secure and so on. For some people this sudden stop must be throwing up all sorts of problems and heaven knows what the long term effects will be.

But for an old, fat, English bloke this week's idea of getting out and about was dropping off the recycling, going to the cash machine and the supermarket.

Everyday life

It's really strange. Nothing much has changed and yet everything is very different.

I'm sure you know that Spain is in a "State of Alarm". Basically what that means is that Central Government has taken special powers for itself for the next fortnight at least. In effect Central Government can change the usual rules. Lots of those things would have happened anyway but the response is now more coordinated. For instance where we live the Valencian Government had already decided to close nurseries, schools and universities but with the Central Government now in charge that sort of closure has been made uniform across the country. The general principles of the measures are easy to understand. Close all of the places where there are usually lots of people (day centres, schools, parks, theatres, restaurants, fiestas), tell people to stay at home, try to keep the economy ticking over, keep basic services open (food shops, chemists, petrol stations), limit travel and when travel is necessary ensure that it is a solitary affair. The more governmental "curfew" type things include putting lots of police and the less militarised parts of the army (the emergency response section) on the streets, requisitioning supplies of things like masks and hand wash and making it possible for the health authorities to draft in extra help like nearly qualified medical students and private medical staff if they need to.

I have been in equal measure amused and ashamed reading the comments of my compatriots on the Spanish Facebook page of the Citizens Advice Bureau. So much of it is patronising, bellyaching and thinly veiled anti Spanishness. Several of the entries are of the "Look how smart I am" variety. An example. "So, if you can only travel one in a car and neighbours can't visit each other does this mean that single carers will have to leave their children unattended at home when they go out for food?". There are, though, plenty of genuine questions and real problems "My sister looks after our dad's medication, she knows what he needs and why and she collects his meds every month from the chemist but she doesn't drive and I don't know enough about his medical history to do it myself. Can I give her a lift?". For this type of question I think it would be really difficult for anyone to give an answer, especially as taxis are still in business (with rules about disinfection) but I am 99% certain that if the woman were stopped in such a situation then the police or whoever would be appreciate the genuineness of the case. Then again there are lots of examples of people who were moving home today, who are camping in the remains of a packed up house, and where the removal companies have said that they are not allowed to work. No flexibility there and probably quite rightly even if it does seem hard.

The old fashioned sources of information - radio, telly and newspapers are keeping us informed about the bigger picture and they have turned Fernando Simón into the sort of media star that Ian McDonald was in the UK during the Falklands War. On the other hand the stuff coming via WhatsApp and Facebook is notable for its mix of mischief making, point scoring, genuine information and heroic or heart-warming kitten type stories vaguely related to viral infection. I can't really tell you what it's like out there because we are not going anywhere and where we are there are very few other people. If we were in a city or town we may notice that there was no traffic, we could join in the applause for the medical services or even sing the Spanish version of "I will survive" from our balconies. Out here, in Culebrón, hardly anyone passes our door and I had to stand on top of the old water deposit to see if there were traffic on the main road (that's what I did for the photo at the top next to this post). Anyway it's drizzling today and a bit miserable so it's a good day to drink tea and read books.

I had intended to walk the recycling to the bin but now I'm thinking that it might be more responsible to wait until I need to go in to town and do the recycling and shopping together. Then again I'm not that sure about going in to town. We do need some things and I have no money in my wallet but I'm sure we can manage a couple of days more before hitting the cash machine or replacing our depleted supply of potatoes, thyme and tinned tomatoes.

And good luck to my sister and brother in law who were in Spain on Saturday in their motor home and decided that they would be better off in the UK. Not far to go now but maybe you should stay at home for a while once you get there!

Panic buying

The siege is upon us. For at least a fortnight: no nursery, no school, no university, no cinema, no theatre, no fiestas, no bars, no restaurants, no bingo and no church. Maggie will be working  from home next week. Even my accountant has locked his door. We are nearly in a "State of Alarm" which means that tomorrow the Government will more control than it had this morning. The world as we know it is coming to an end. Markets are crashing, we are locked out of several countries.

Time to panic buy. Obviously. We went into Pinoso. Lots of traffic for a Friday afternoon and the supermarkets were awash with people. The Indian restaurant seemed to be bursting at the seams and I can only assume that some of my fellow Britons were getting in a last vindaloo before the quarantine (it had to be Britons as no Spaniard would consider eating at 6pm). The thought of two weeks sitting in front of the telly to watch Sálvame Banana and Supervivientes had been enough for me to think only of stockpiling. A bottle of brandy (the first since Christmas), a couple of bottles of wine for Maggie and several packets of cat food were our haul. There were people with masks. The cashiers had nitrile gloves and seemed to be drinking water in copious quantities. There were customers with trolleys full of bog roll. I can only suppose they were thinking of the effects of terrible telly too.

It's quite strange how quickly it all crumbled. This morning and for days before it has all been nonstop virus news but I was still expecting to meet my sister tomorrow given that she's on holiday nearby. We'd obviously have eaten out, because that's what one does in Spain. My sister apart it would be an odd weekend when we didn't go to the cinema. There were also a couple of possible events for the weekend including a do at our local restaurant and a charitable walk. Next week the only things on my list were the language club and a trip up to Valencia. Originally I'd been going to Valencia to see some of the (cancelled) Fallas celebration but that had transmuted into an opportunity to take in the Counter Culture exhibition at the Modern Art Institute in the city. Not anymore. The country is closing down. My email and WhatsApp are full of messages cancelling talks, concerts, events and exhibitions that I'd booked up. For one singer that's the third cancellation. She's a young woman; I'm sure she'll survive the virus but who knows if someone as frail and old as I will?

So, from now on, for a while, I'll be trying to remember not to touch my face and to wash my hands thoroughly. And, of course, every cough and every twinge is a sure sign that I'll soon be calling the freephone number to get advice on self quarantine so as not to block up the intensive care unit too early. The more I think about it the more obvious it is that I need to crack open that brandy and get in my last few episodes of a splendid Spanish soap whilst I still can.

It's not Pat's

We've had a cat hanging around our garden for a while now. At first it was nasty to our own cats so we chased it off but, of course, with time it wore us down (more me than Maggie - Maggie's tough). To begin with we gave the cat occasional bits and bats of food and then it became almost regular feeding. What our spoiled cats didn't eat we gave to the garden cat.

Next came the name. Our neighbours said they called it Jess. The cat was crossing the garden - "Ah, here comes Postman Pat's cat," I said, "Hello, Jess," said Maggie. "How did you know that?" I asked. Postman Pat? Black and white cat? I didn't know. Impoverished upbringing you know. Or maybe I'm just too old.

She's a strokeable cat. There's always the possibility that she might turn and bite or scratch but usually she purrs. We're all a bit wary though. Especially our cats.

Jess has been hobbling for the past couple of days. I went to the vet and asked how much to strap up a broken leg. Around 50€ with the X-ray said the receptionist. The cat was surprisingly easy to catch, surprisingly docile inside the cage and well behaved on the journey in to town. Pets need a name at the vet's for their database. She's called Yésica I said. The bilingual version.

The vet suspected an abscess from the start; wild cats and fighting and such. There was pus everywhere. Knockout drops, antibiotic injection, anti flea and tick treatment and my credit card lighter by 68€. I left her in our living room in a cat basket to sleep off the anaesthetic but now she's back in the garden and walking much better.

Out for the day

I went on a bit of a trip yesterday. The title of the event translates as something like From the Vinalopó to Exile. Vinalopó is the name of our mighty local river which trickles into the sea at Santa Pola and which gives its name to the area. The theme was the end of the Spanish Civil War.

We were shown things in Petrer and Elda but the bit I liked best, apart from eating, was going down the air raid shelters in Hondón. Hondón is a very small village just 9 km from Culebrón. Not the most obvious place for an air raid shelter dug 40 metres into the ground and with space for 250 people.

So it's March 1939, right at the end of the Spanish Civil War (The result of an army rebellion in 1936 against the elected Leftist Republican Government) the Republic is in tatters. The President, Azaña, reckons the only chance is to hang on long enough for the Nazis to start the Second World War so that the French and British may stop looking the other way and come to his aid. Then Republican Barcelona falls to the Francoist troops and Azaña runs away, resigns, and never comes back.

With Azaña gone the ex Prime Minister, Negrín, takes over as President. The Republican Government has moved its headquarters to Elda which just 25kms from Culebrón. The main reason is that Elda isn't being bombed non stop though there are other reasons like decent communications and a strong manufacturing base. Meanwhile Madrid is, miraculously, still in Republican hands. It won't fall to the rebellious Francoist troops till right at the end of the war but in Madrid a Republican Army Colonel, Casado, mounts a coup. He and his pals reckon that all is lost and waiting for the French and British is a stupid plan. They want to cut a deal and save their skins. Franco doesn't talk to them. They have nothing to offer.

So it's all gone pear shaped, the elected President has run off, half your army is caught up in some Communist rebellion and it's pretty obvious that you've lost. Negrín decides the jig is up. He's in Elda. The nearest aerodrome (think of a mowed and level grassy area rather than tarmac runways) is in Hondon, or as we now seem to call it el Fondó using its Valenciano name. The big cars drive in from Elda with a famous writer and poet in one, a fiery Communist Party woman orator in another and Negrin himself in a third. They clear off in a couple of aeroplanes along with some pals. Later that night the remnants of the loyal Republican Army command meet with the left over political big wigs and the next days more planes leave taking them away - generally to Oran. Though it may not seem geographically obvious Algeria is less distance than any other safe country especially for a flimsy 1930s plane loaded to capacity.

That's where our tour ended and about three weeks after those planes left the last few Republican cities - Alicante, Cartagena and Almeria - fell.

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If you look at the comments below someone wrote to say that there were a couple of incorrect facts in this piece. One was that Negrín was never President and the other was that Azaña wasn't holding out for an Anglo French "rescue". Have a look  at the comments section if you're interested.

Mostra de la Cuina del Pinós

I don't know if modern, young Britons still eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday but I'm pretty sure that Yorkshire Pudding is alive and well on the Sceptred Isle. As I remember it pancakes and Yorkshires share the same simple mix - eggs, flour, milk. The sort of things that any self respecting house would have had in the larder at almost any time in British history.

A lot of traditional Spanish food has a similar backstory. When we lived in Salamanca pig products were big in the local cuisine, up in Asturias they use the local beans for one of the traditional dishes and all over Spain there are variations on bread crumbs fried up with tiny scraps of meat which, folk tale has it, was a food for shepherds who ended up with a lot of stale bread. Combining the ingredients readily to hand. It works for speciality foods too. Xixona makes turrón, a sort of nougat essential to celebrate Christmas, and turrón comes from combining eggs, honey and almonds all of which abound near Xixona.

Pinoso, like everywhere in Spain, is proud of its food. The star dish, without a shadow of a doubt is the local paella, only a couple of grains of rice thick and whose main ingredients, after rice, are rabbit and snails but flavoured with local, easy to find, products like garlic, thyme and parsley. Even the cooking style, over open fires fuelled with bundles of twigs from pruning the vines, adds those subtle, but essential, tastes.

Second up in local fame is, almost certainly, a rabbit stew served on and with shreds of a thick pancake, made from wheat flour, water and salt, which goes by the name of gazpacho - the same name as the completely different cold Andalucian soup. There are lots of other local foodstuffs from wine and sausage to cakes and biscuits. With an eye on promoting tourism Pinoso has an event to celebrate the local food.

The idea of this event, called the Mostra de la Cuina del Pinós, is that the town's restaurants, five this year, offer the same food on the same day - meatballs on Tuesday, stew on Thursday etc. Every day of the event they also serve the same entrees (slices of sausages and pipirrana). They are allowed to let their imaginations run wild on the four starters and on the puddings. The price has gone up over the years but it's still a very reasonable (given the quantity and the quality) 30€ per head (well except for one restaurant that has broken ranks and is charging 40€).

I'm not going to describe most of the dishes but just for any Spaniards reading the main courses are: Gachamiga, Fassegures del Pinós, Ajos Pinoseros con conejo y "picat", Gazpachos con conejo y caracoles and Arroz con conejo y caracoles. Still time, as I write to book up for a feed.

So we went on Thursday, the Ajos Pinoseros day. We thought we knew what we were getting and we expected a sort of fry up of rabbit and wild garlic. We were completely wrong. The obvious ingredients of what we ate were rabbit and chickpeas served in a shallow dish with a fair bit of gravy or broth that you spooned ali oli into. Ali oli is a thick emulsion that we Brits usually describe as garlic mayonnaise. I really enjoyed it and I thought we'd eaten but, as we downed the cutlery, we were presented with a soup in which floated croutons and pieces of boiled eggs. That was the picat and my guess is that it uses the broth from cooking the rabbit.

Now I know that describing food dishes isn't particularly interesting but why I noticed it was that it was a bit like the cocido that Maria Dolores cooked for us just a little while ago. We thought we knew what we were getting but we were wrong. Still so much to find out and so many calories doing it!

Two legs bad, two wheels good

The first time I went abroad independently was with a couple of University pals to Paris in about 1972. We went on the train. We drank filter coffee from bowls, just like Jean-Hugues Anglade, we struggled with the language, climbed thousands of steps and walked and walked and walked. I was very soon hobbling. I'm prone to blisters and foot damage in general. When I wandered around Spain in the 1980s and 1990s using public transport I would always pack all those patent foot plasters, bandages and balms designed to keep one's feet in tip top condition.

We were planning to walk the Camino de Santiago. We still are. Maggie has booked flights and a room and a couple of friends are bound for Galicia at the end of May beginning of June. To be classed as having done the pilgrimage you only have to walk the last 100 kms and that's what Maggie intends to do but I have more time. I fancy the Pamplona end of the French route much more than the Galicia end so I'll do one end and then join Maggie at the other. A chum from around here has signed up to come along, actually it's probably the other way around, I'm probably joining him as he walks regularly and does yoga and badminton and stuff that makes me tired just thinking about it as I flip the pages of my book.

So we were planning and walking became cycling. Like me, Bobby, for that's his name, has problems with his feet. To qualify as a pilgrim, we need to go 200 kms on a bike. That didn't sound like much. First things first though. If I were going to ride to Santiago I'd need a bike. The one I had in the garage came from a supermarket, weighs the fabled ton and cost me 40€. Not really suitable. It was easy to get a replacement. Lots of people think a bike is a good idea until they have to go uphill. There were lots for sale and I bought one - it's one of those half mountain half tourer jobs. I put on some panniers and saddle bags and a cuentakilometros, an odometer. I couldn't hold it off for ever though and I had, eventually, to ride it rather than just tinker with it. I bought padded underwear.

I have pals who don't like to cycle unless the route includes near perpendicular climbs. I see the Facebook pictures of other chums who ride vast distances to go to distant tearooms and take photos of wild flowers. I smoked for forty years. I am reminded of this when, on the slightest incline, I sound like, well I sound like an old bloke with wrecked lungs gasping for air in order to keep his vital organs from failing. I also notice that my legs don't work quite properly when I get off the bike (and what's with this modern form of dismounting where you have to step forward because the saddle is so high?). I also worry that the light headedness which comes over me as I stop and pant may have me blacking out again and earning another ride in an ambulance. I somehow suspect that steep gradients and immense distances are some way in the future or, more likely, in Peter Pan's homeland.

Nonetheless I'm trying. Only 12 kms the first day but today, fourth time out I did just short of 30 kilometres which sounds reasonable enough until you turn it into a bit short of 19 miles and then you add in that the difference between the lowest and highest point on the route was only 80 metres. Worse still I only averaged about 17 km/h. Approximately the same speed as a pig can go when it gets a move on.

Running on fumes

Coming home from Torrevieja on Saturday night the fuel warning light came on on the car. Seventy kilometres of fuel left. Fair enough, we were near the coast, which is pretty built up, and we were on a motorway where there were service stations before our turn off.

Even though the sign on the road said the services were open from 0 hrs. to 24 hrs it was obvious, as we pulled onto the forecourt, that the garage was closed. The pump had a bank card payment facility but it wasn't working. Error message - software failure.

Whilst I dithered about what to do next a man, who had been shouting into his mobile phone in a rather disconcerting way, came over and asked if he could use my phone. His accent was a bit working bloke and it took us a while to tune in to his accent and forthright style. Basically, his car was old and it had lost all its lights. He was unable to continue his journey back to Albacete, about 170kms away, with his wife and kids on board. He'd been trying to phone his insurance company to get either a mechanic or a tow truck but his phone was refusing to work with the 902 number. 902 numbers are those non geographic numbers used by companies and organisations so you don't know where you're phoning - like the 0345 numbers in the UK. They are sometimes not included in call packages. On mobile phones especially they can end up adding a lot to your bill, or eating up your pay as you go credit, as you listen to tiddly pom music, get told about busy operators and how important your call is.

I suspected some sort of ruse from Mr Albacete so, rather than handing over my phone and him running off with it or surreptitiously phoning a sex line in Rwanda, I let him use the hands free inside the car. In the end it turned out to be an absolutely genuine call from a man having a much worse evening than us. As we drove away, he asked that God be kind to us for our generosity.

The Almighty didn't seem to be on hand to help with the fuel problem though. Petrol stations in Spain tend to close at 10pm. There used to be ones with night windows, there may still be, but I suspect that nowadays the tendency is to have a card reader instead. It's been a while since I last needed to refuel at night. We're old you know. We stay at home with cocoa.

We were closeish to Elche and I know that city well enough to know the location of quite a few petrol stations. Big petrol stations. The one in the supermarket said 24 hrs. on the sign. The card reader said it couldn't read my card. The second was closed, the third was behind a system of labyrinthine one way roads that had us going round in circles for ten to fifteen minutes before I gave up. We drove to an industrial estate with more petrol stations. The dashboard display now said we were good for only another 15 kms. I presume the system tends to pessimism but it was, nonetheless, a little worrying. Another big and busy Repsol station was closed as we passed but there were lights on at one of the cheap garages on a service road. And the pump was happy to accept my credit card.

The usual system with credit card pumps, when you want a full tank, is to tap in a higher figure than the value of fuel you expect to need. When you're done the credit card and pump talk to each other and refund the difference. My receipt says something like 70€ credit, 48,33€ served. Just what I'd expect. At the moment though my credit card account shows that I paid 118,33€ for the fuel. I'm sure the refund will come but somehow it seemed like the perfect end to a simple and routine journey home.

Crossing in style

At the kerb, halt! Eyes right, Eyes left, Eyes right again. If the road is clear, Quick march! - that was my generation; military. Then there was a squirrel, Tufty Fluffytail, and later the Green Cross Code Man. Or it may have been the other way around. I forget.

In Pinoso they have just painted some symbols on the zebra crossings. Apparently these symbols are there primarily to help people with autism but they reckon they may be of help to people with learning difficulties and also to we older, vaguely aware, people.

My experience is that Spanish drivers habitually stop for pedestrians on crossings - there's no cat and mouse to it, no gamespersonship. If you are waiting at a crossing or approaching one then cars will stop. It even works in big cities. Spanish people have sometimes told me that I'm wrong but one's experiences are one's experiences.

I mentioned the new symbols to my pal Jesús as we nattered over a coffee the other day. They've got it wrong he joked. The symbols say Stop, Look, Car stopped, Cross. That's not right. Why should the pedestrian have to stop or look? The instructions should just say Cross! It's up to the cars to stop.

I sniggered but I have to say that, when driving, the number of people who do not slacken their pace as they walk from pavement to zebra can be quite alarming. My personal favourites are the ones pushing prams before them as they stare at their mobile phone.

Good result

Seventy days ago someone from the health service rang me to tell me that my routine poo stick test showed traces of blood. I saw the doctor a couple of days after that and, in the same week, I got some blood tests. Do you remember when dentist's used to give lollipops to children after fillings? Well in Pinoso Health centre they gave me a big box. "Oohh, laxatives, just what I've always wanted".

The appointment for the colonoscopy was today at Elda Hospital. I was worried about what it might show but I wasn't at all worried about the process. This is the third time that doctors have thought I might have cancer and my concern was that, statistically, the odds must be shortening. So, the 54 hours of fasting and the Ajax like scouring effect of the laxatives passed off normally enough given the abnormal situation.

Three young woman were in charge of setting up the patients ready for a colonoscopy. They told me to strip below the waist, to leave my socks on (so far just like a 70's porn film) and to come out wearing the towel. "NO, NO, not THAT towel!!!! There was a much larger towel hanging over the screen than the one I'd found on the chair.

Once I was on the bed I with the towel arranged sarong like to give easy access I got all the usual sort of control questions - allergies, medical history, favourite musical as well as a bit of a third degree about my fasting and toilet habits. I was having a conversation about the band James with one of the women, who had done a work stint in Leeds, whilst one of the others poked and prodded me in an attempt to find veins for the cannula. She tried both arms, five attempts all together. It's an old problem, deep veins. At one point, as I clenched and unclenched my fist to pump up the veins, one of the women told me to relax, she obviously didn't think I relaxed enough - NO, RELAX. I replied that it was a bit difficult to relax knowing they were going to shove a tube up my arse. All three laughed as though I were the first person to ever make that comment. More likely, they were laughing at my Spanish. Now we're going to put you to sleep. Think about something nice.

The next time I knew anything one of the young women was saying hello and suggested that I should rub my stomach hard to get a bit of farting going. I asked what time it was, Maggie was waiting outside as I wasn't supposed to drive, and it had only been about forty minutes from start to finish.

I asked about results as they shooed me into the corridor. "The doctor will be with you shortly," they said. And, true enough a young woman doctor came and handed me a note for my GP. "Obviously we can't be absolutely certain until we've done the biopsy but all we found was a very small polyp which we've snipped off. You're in the clear".

Trying to get an ID card

In Spain you have to carry ID at all times. For Spanish nationals they have an identity card, the DNI and for foreigners there is a TIE, the Foreigner's Identity Card. EU citizens, within an EU country like Spain, are neither Nationals nor foreigners. This means that EU citizens have to carry the form of ID in use in their country. Now we Brits are a little odd in that we don't have an ID card so Brits are supposed to carry their passport with them at all times in case the "Competent Authority" needs to see it.

As well as the need to carry identification EU citizens, living in Spain, have to register. When the scheme was first introduced the registration certificate was a bit of green A4 paper but later it became smaller and more card like, something like the old UK paper driving licence.

A couple of weeks ago the UK left the European Union. Consequently the registration document became a bit of an anachronism for UK citizens. Nonetheless with the transition period, the limbo time, we're neither fish nor fowl. Quite what's going to happen is a bit moot. As everyone else in Spain carries ID then Britons are obviously going to have to do the same in time. There are a lot of us though, nearly 366,000, so if we all popped out to get our new ID between now and the end of the transition period it may all get a bit congested. Currently the idea is that the process for exchanging the green certificate for something more like the Spanish or Foreigners card, will be quick, cheap and easy.

Getting an appointment to go to one of the offices where ID cards and the like are handed out has become a bit of a problem. Most of the time it doesn't matter much to we (relatively) wealthy Brits, it's usually no more than a minor inconvenience. Not always though. It can sometimes make life very difficult even for we haves. For the have nots who need to rent a flat or find a job it can be disastrous.

The few weeks I spent in the Cub Scouts taught me to be prepared. I applied for an appointment back in November to get myself a new identity card appointment after the Brexit date. Clearly stating that I was British and I wanted the Foreigner's Identity Card, the TIE, I got an appointment. I'm not isolated though; I read the press, I have been keeping up to date with the Brexit information from the British and Spanish Governments as well as checking the Citizens Advice Bureau Spain stuff. I knew that the process wasn't going to be generally available on the date of my interview.

I came very close to cancelling the appointment. In the end I asked the Citizen's Advice people what they thought, expecting the answer to be that there wasn't a chance. What they actually said was along the lines of - you've got nothing to lose by having a bash, have a go and tell us how you get on.

I went, yesterday. The appointment was in Benidorm. The policeman on the front of house information desk was acting as gatekeeper asking all sorts of questions before allowing anyone to stay. I thought that was quite positive. He was turning away well over 75% of the people for being in the wrong office, not having an appointment or not having the basic documentation.

I got seen half an hour after my appointment time. I told another police officer what I was there for. He looked at the paperwork and said no. He reckoned it would be September before they started to process we Britons. It took him about 2 minutes to turn me away. I wasn't surprised, I wasn't shocked or angry. It was just a bit of a waste of time.

Hang on, let's say he's right and they get cracking on September 1. The end of the transition period is 31 December 2020. That's 121 days (we'll pretend there are no holidays or Sundays) so if there are 365,967 Britons resident in Spain my arithmetic says they will need to process 3,024 people a day.

Olive, the Other Reindeer?

When you buy a beer at a bar in Spain they usually give you something to go with it - olives are favourite. In fact olives are everywhere in Spain. They come in salads, they grow in the fields beside the road, they get milled over the road in Culebrón village and we always cook with olive oil as well as using it for dressing on salad.

I needed olives and beef for the recipe. We only had black olives in the cupboard so I added green olives to my shopping list.

When I got to the shelf with the olives I found black olives, olives stuffed with anchovies, olives stuffed with jalapeño pepper, olives stuffed with red pepper and even a variety made to look like a monster sperm by shoving a small gherkin into the hole where the stone had been drilled out. There were also the manzanilla ones.

Now manzanilla is an interesting word. If you're in Sanlucar de Barrameda it's the local dry sherry. I prefer it to the similar fino sherry produced in nearby Jerez de la Frontera though both are rather splendid. Manzanilla is also camomile or camomile tea; once, in Vigo, in a bar, we asked if they had manzanilla. We were delighted when they said yes and mightily disappointed when the anticipated crisp cool dry white wine appeared and was some sort of nerve tonic tea.

Alongside the other olives were lots of Manzanilla olives. I'd always presumed they were sherry soused. I sniggered to myself as I searched the shelves. Imagine that, a country loaded with olives and no olive flavoured olives to be bought. I asked a passing shop worker and she pointed to the Manzanilla ones. "But aren't they flavoured with wine?," I asked. "No, manzanilla is a variety of olive," she replied.

I felt stupid. Something so simple and something that has taken me fifteen years to discover

Routine

Despite knowing that there are a bunch of men knocking things down and building things up outside our living room window it's amazing how many times we've gone to open the door to a building that no longer exists to get the vacuum cleaner! We're a bit unsettled and, probably because of that, things seem to be coming in clumps.

The demolition denied us hot water and laundry facilities but, thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, we can now shower and launder. We also had a problem with Maggie's car and it's off the road. There again, someone stepped up and loaned us a motor for a bit.

In amongst the general upheaval the heating in our house packed up. It turned out to be a blocked chimney starving the burner of air which is what Maggie had suggested it might be right from the get go! Once the fitter had the burner working again we needed to get a chimney sweep. The bloke who came didn't sound like Dick Van Dyke nor did he have any small boys to send up the chimney. He did have big vacuum cleaners and brushes that were turned by an electric drill. He also had very sooty hands so I presume I can expect nothing but good luck after shaking one of them. He was English. I thought it was an intelligent choice of self employment in an area where there are still lots of open fires, wood burners and pellet stoves.

A couple of hours before the sweep we had a tanker truck come to suck out the liquids and solids from our cesspit. The builders had complained that they were paddling in fetid pools as they dug foundations. The tanker driver made me feel very inadequate. "Your cesspit is tiny, made from concrete," he said, "only two thousand litres." It sounded like a personal failing. He also suggested that instead of calling him so often we should get a small pump and pump out the nutrient rich liquid ourselves to spread around the garden. That way we'd have to call him only when the tank was more slurry than liquid. We will take it under advisement.

A bit later, the same afternoon, the carpenter who is making a glass panelled sliding door for us popped around to pick up some bits and bats. Apparently the door is nearly ready and, when it is, the building work will move inside.

This morning the builders arrived surprisingly early. I needed to get dressed in double quick time to move the cars from the drive as they get in their way. As I was doing that a big cement mixer truck appeared and threaded its way up the very narrow track alongside our house.

I like to believe that I'm still quite active but the truth is that I will be pleased when I can go back to getting up, having a shower, eating breakfast and doing a bit of reading before a routine day kicks off. We old people, at least this old person, like stability and routine.

Eating to learn

One of the questions that Spaniards ask me, from time to time, is "Have you ever tried.......?" The dots represent some typical, local food. It's a question that makes me feel unloved. They obviously suspect that I sit at home listening to the BBC wearing my Union Flag socks and eating Chicken Tikka Masala.

It might, I suppose, be a reasonable question at times. Imagine we have a Spaniard who has lived in Notting Hill for fifteen years. I say, "Have you ever tried Parkin?" or "Have you ever tried bubble 'n' squeak?" They are not common foods. On the other hand were my question to be, "Have you ever tried roast beef and Yorkshire pudding?" the question verges on the insulting. I do understand where a Spaniard might get the BBC and socks idea though. The Spanish TV News has been full of Brexit the last couple of days and the cameras went in search of the British immigrant response. They went to places like San Fulgencio where they filmed immigrant Britons reading the Daily Mail as they tucked into a Full English at outside tables in the sun.

I don't eat in Spanish homes very often but the last twice that I have the food has been spectacular. It was Arroz al Horno, oven baked rice, in the first and Cocido in the second. Arroz al Horno translates easily but Cocido doesn't; the verb simply means cooked and the noun is a stew. Neither convey the complexity of Cocido.

I've had Cocido in restaurants only a couple of times in all the years that I've been here. On the plate it usually looks like a sort of half stew; lots of thin gravy with a selection of chickpeas, vegetables and potatoes that have been cooked until they are very soft alongside some cheap cuts of meat cooked for ages to make them tender. I thought that was what the real thing looked like and that I knew two factual things about Cocido. As it turns out both were wrong. The first was that it's a dish linked with Madrid. Our hosts were very firm that it is typical of Valencia too.  The second was that the home-made version produced two courses from one pot cooking. I had it in my head that the chickpeas, meat and other veg, were cooked inside a muslin bag, so that their flavours seeped into the water producing a broth which was then used to produce a noodle soup, whilst the meat and veg were served as the second course.

It's not that I was far off in my idea but it's a bit like making tea in a microwave. It might work but it's just not right. In fact, traditionally, the chickpeas go inside the muslin bag but not the meat. The veg, things like cabbage, potatoes, turnips and carrots are cooked apart. The broth is used to make the soup (photo at left) but some is kept back to serve with the meat. Then again I also suspect that originally Cocido was a dish designed to use up left overs and that there are as many versions of Cocido as there are people who make it. Google certainly presented me with a wide variety of recipes. The one we had yesterday had the pelotas -the meat balls I talked about when I went to the Cuadrillas in Patiño - and black pudding sausages and turkey legs as well as knee joints and ham-bone. To be fair it's not an attractive looking dish but it tasted great. The cook said that the whole lot had taken hours to prepare. Her effort was my gain both culturally and weight wise.

A couple of days after eating the Arroz al Horno I had a go at making one at home. I thought my effort was OK and Maggie didn't complain as she ate it all up. I don't think I'll be having a go at the Cocido though. Far too complicated.

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The photos are just from somewhere on the Internet.

Banking on it

My bank sent me a letter, well there was a message on the website, to say that I should ensure that they held the correct details on me. Apparently this was going to help them combat money laundering. I can see that. Anyway the documentation said I was a teacher and, as I have an official looking certificate to say that I am in receipt of a Spanish State Pension, I thought it would be easy to do.

Going into a Spanish bank requires time. A lot of time and the patience of a halo wearer. I very seldom have to go to a branch but, yesterday, I did. There was the usual confusion about which desk to use - not a linguistic confusion. In this case, four desks, three of which seemed willing to deal with people and one of which seemed to be doing something on his computer which may have been high finance or he could have been playing Fornite Battle Royale. I behaved like a good Spaniard, I staked my place in the general queue for the cash desk, just in case it was there, then I asked the spare man where to queue. "Any of the desks there," he said, pointing vaguely. "No, not that line, either of those two,"  he said, "Oh, no, sorry, just with the woman". I bantered with the other customers about how useful it would be to have a desk that said Information or maybe a sign that said this desk for blahdy blah and that for whatchamacallit.

I got to the front of the queue. "Easy peasy," said the woman, "Do you have any proof that you're a pensioner?" I produced the certificate and she beamed. No problem for her about it being a British pension. No problem because I had no proof. Those Chechen money launderers should get one. She started to tap tap tap on her computer. The tapping got harder. "¡No va!," she said. It doesn't go, it's not working. She complained about computers and I sympathised. She tried time after time. I looked over my shoulder and wondered about the queuing time for the people furthest from the desk. "Do you have any errands to do?," she asked. "I can ring you when it comes back on".

So I did the supermarket shop and I drank two cups of coffee and read a chapter of Viaje al corazón de España, Journey to the heart of Spain. Well over an hour, closer to 90 minutes. I went back to the bank. "No", she said, "I told you I'd ring." She phoned about ten minutes later. For some reason the database didn't want to just change teacher to pensioner it also wanted my ID number, my phone number, my inside leg measurement and my preference in chocolate biscuits. The address proved tricky. Despite copying out the address that was on the letter they'd sent, the address they held for me, the computer repeatedly said no. I noticed the mistake this morning, some twenty hours after it would have been useful. The woman knows how to spell and wrote Caserío but the database didn't and wanted Caserio. Do you see the difference? It happens a lot. Spanish programs use accents -á,é,í, ó,ú, ü and ñ - but US and UK type programs don't. She got round it by basically inventing an address. Then I signed two or three documents and, after only a little over two and a half hours my documentation was up to date and my money laundering days were over.

There was going to be something much more important and much more terrifying later in the day but I'm not going to share that on the blog!

Put another log on the fire mother

I'm a bit of a softy weatherwise. We get  a lot of extreme weather here  and I don't like it. Well, I don't like most of the extremes. When the sun's beating down in June, July and August that's an extreme I can be doing with. I don't like it though when the wind blows hard. I expect the garden chairs, or something else not firmly anchored, to smash into my parked car. I can visualise the pine trees outside the house toppling over and taking down the roof of the house. I don't like it when it hails. Again I worry about the motor. Cars with hundreds of little craters, in the skyward facing bodywork, are commonplace around here. I don't like it when it rains hard. I am quite sure the drain in the back patio will block and that water will flood into our living room and even if that doesn't happen it's a certainty that the water will gouge deep channels into the track outside our house. I don't like it when the temperature drops either and our water pipes freeze.

As I typed this thunder was booming out. The rain had been coming down in sheets. We've had sleet and snow and there has been a biting cold wind. I can see snow on the hills opposite our house. In fact we've been lucky. Yecla and Villena, which are within 40 kms of here, have had heavy snow; Villena was even isolated for a while. Down on the coast the waves have been going over the top of beach side houses. The TV news has been much more about Borrasca Gloria than it has about Trump losing his few remaining marbles or politicians suggesting direct rule from Madrid of Murcia to stem the homophobia of the far right party Vox.

We've been doing our bit to bring about the next mass global extinction by pouring heat into our house to keep warm the past few days. As we have almost no insulation of any sort, anywhere, the heat just flies out of the doors, windows and roof. I've been looking for figure, that I'm sure I saw a couple of years ago, that said something like 80% or 90% of all new builds in Alicante province had the poorest levels of insulation using that Energy Performance Certificate rating. In the hunt I found that Spain ranks as No. 7 in the most energy efficient countries in the World (Germany No. 1, UK No. 5) which would seem to go against my half remembered fact. There is a difference though. When Spaniards ask me what I least like about Spain I always say the horrid winters. For most of the year we have blue skies and sun outside but in winter, when the midday outside temperature is 12º C, it can be T shirt weather in the garden and mitten weather in the ice box that is our living room. It's dead normal to see people sitting in offices around here wearing coats as they work. Now in the colder parts of Spain, like Burgos and Pamplona, houses and buildings in general are set up to deal with the bad winter weather but in Alicante and Murcia people stubbornly cling to the belief that we only have a couple of cold months. The table below shows the figures for our nearest weather station for 2019. 

I'll leave you to decide but I don't think that 3ºC is very warm, it's when the ice warning pings on my car. There were only 6 months last year when it didn't get that cold overnight on at least one day in the month. On average there were just four months when the mean temperature was 20ºC or more. Bear in mind that the World Health Organisation's standard for comfortable warmth is 18 °C for normal, healthy adults who are appropriately dressed and for the sick, disabled, very old or very young, a minimum of 20°C. Again, just to stress, that there is a lot of difference between the air temperature, the accepted norm, and how you might feel sitting out in full sunshine with the same temperature.

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Low	-4,2	-0,7	1,0	3,2	6,9	8,9	15,3	15,3	11,9	6,6	1,4	0,5
High	19,2	24,3	25,1	25,0	31,0	35,0	37,1	39,4	32,8	30,2	23,5	22,4
Med	8,8	9,9	11,4	11,6	16,7	21,2	25,4	25,3	20,0	16,6	11,8	10,4

The photo is of Villena yesterday.