Skating on thin ice

I'm going to tell you some things that I think Spaniards think about the British. You may notice the teensy weensy little flaw here. Actually though, when I say what Spanish people think I should change that to what several Spaniards have said to me, over the years, about Britain and the British. So my Englishness is not, really, a handicap. When I say Britain and the British, I actually mean England and the English. Occasionally the Scots get a mention, because of the supposed similarity to the Catalans and because Mel Gibson, like all Scottish men, wore a skirt. No Spaniard I've met has ever voiced their opinion about the Welsh or the Northern Irish. 

Lots of Spaniards think that we are the only country in the world that drives on the other side of the road. This belief is usually mixed with an undertone that suggests we English are a bit full of ourselves. After all, don't we use different measures for length and weight too? I know, as do you, that there are about 70 or so countries that do the same, road-wise, from biggish places like South Africa and Malaysia to small places like Belize. Faced with this reality, those Spaniards who know, point out that this is a probably a remnant of our thirst for Empire. Again, I often get a whiff of Spanish mistrust of British cockiness. They really want to remind me about Blas de Lezo.

Lots of Spaniards think that British food is terrible. The only typical English dish that most Spaniards know is Fish and Chips. You and I may think that Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding is well known, but it isn't. My comeback to any Spaniard who started on this journey used to be a list of lots of other traditional British dishes from Shepherd's Pie and Bubble and Squeak to Bangers and Mash or Steak and Kidney Pie. Later I changed tack. I would argue that, whilst pizza may be Italian in origin, it is now a world food. The list of pizzas available from a Spanish pizzeria is quite different to the list of pizzas available in a Nepalese or Neapolitan pizzeria. Following the same logic, I would point out the breadth of dishes, and restaurants, that litter the British landscape. We Britons have plundered the world's cuisine. We feed our children Mexican or Japanese without blinking. We have taken dishes from across the world and made them our own. British Chilli con Carne, Spaghetti Bolognese, Red Thai Curry, Chicken Tikka Masala and so on have very little in common with the original source dish (if there is one) but those dishes are now as British as The Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben. Anyway, what are we comparing? Half the world eats chicken and chips or steamed mussels.

Spaniards think that the UK has a terrible climate. They're probably right. I was in the UK for the first time for ages a little while ago and the greyness of the light was a bit of a shock to me. Mind you the Spanish seem to forget that Asturias and the Basque Country, in fact much of Spain, is hardly sun baked in Autumn and Winter and until the Mediterranean builders learn about cavity wall insulation, insulation in general, doors that fit and effective heating systems, the winter in the Med, inside at least, is always going to be less pleasant than winter indoors in the UK. 

Spaniards think that most British tourists are drunken louts keen to jump off balconies and be sick in the streets of Magaluf. Unfortunately, there's more than a seed of truth in that. The cultured Brit in Toledo, there to see the Velázquez, and the placidly normal family holidaying in Torremolinos, aren't so noticeable whilst the dildo wielding fat bloke in San Antonio is. Even more so now that socks with sandals and Bri-Nylon shirts have disappeared from most wardrobes.

This last one I would have forgotten about if it hadn't been for my barber. I was complaining about the skyrocketing price of electric and fuel in general. His response was that electric prices would hardly worry such a rich bunch as we old, retired Britons with our high pensions and massive accumulated wealth. It reminded me of our early years here when there were lots of stories of Spanish families being amazed that they were able to unload their inherited, white elephant, big, old, country house, miles from anywhere and without services, to Britons who ne'er raised an eyebrow at the plucked from the air, mickey take, of a price. Fortunately for us, post Brexit, it's the Belgians and the Dutch who have inherited that branding.

A new driving licence

I was wearing green flares and a pink shirt with a big collar when I took my first driving test. I was a callow youth of 16. That first licence only allowed me to drive a three wheeler (and probably ride a moped) but, when I turned 17, I passed the car driving test and got a bunch of other classes of vehicles added to my little red driving licence booklet. So I've had a licence for well over 50 years now. That original "full" driving licence included specific classes for vehicles such as invalid carriages, road rollers and trolley vehicles. Later, probably when I got one of those folding green and pink two part driving licences, the classes changed to the ones that have been stable now for years. - two wheelers in class A, cars and light vans as class B, goods vehicles class C and class D for buses and the like. British photocard licences were introduced a couple of years before the new millennium and I think the design has remained basically the same till the present day though I don't actually know because I changed my British licence for a Spanish one in 2012. If the UK licence is still the same I'm sure that plans are well in hand to change it to an English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Ireland licence, one that has nothing to do with Johnny Foreigner, a licence that will properly reflect BRITISH traditions and attitudes; something to safeguard our national heritages.

Anyway I live in Spain and I have a DGT app, the DGT is the Dirección General de Tráfico (which I bet you can both translate and get the gist of their remit just from the name), and the other day that application sent me a little message to tell me that I could now renew the light lorry/big van class on my driving licence which was due to run out in February of next year. Generally Spanish licences for motorbikes and cars last for 10 years but, after age 65, that becomes five years. For the "professional" licence classes like big vans, buses etc., licences have to be replaced every five years up to age 65 and every three years after that. The chances of me driving something like a motorhome or a three and a half tonne van in the next few years are pretty low but I decided I didn't want to lose the right and in asking how I made an appointment I ended up renewing my licence today.

Replacing or renewing a licence is simple enough, there's some form to be filled in and a fee to be paid. I think it's 24.10€ for an updated licence (new photo, address change etc.) and 20.40€ for a duplicate of a lost licence. I don't really know how it's done because I've always paid someone to do it for me. That's because there is another part to renewing a licence which is called a psychotechnical test. This involves doing some exercises on a computer type screen that always remind me of the 80s arcade game, Space Invaders, or maybe that ping pong one. The graphics are simple, to say the least, and the whole thing seems a bit steam driven. The tests are to check co-ordination and reactions. There are also a couple of questions as to whether you have any illnesses, whether you're a drunk or a druggie and if you can see and hear. Different centres take the question and answer parts more or less seriously. A clinic in Monóvar actually had me doing hearing and sight tests but the place I've been to the last couple of times seems less strict!

So I played Pong, answered the questions, had my photo taken, signed the forms and handed over 79.34€. As the renewal fee is 24.10€ that must mean that the testing and form filling cost me 55.24€. It may be that that's something plus VAT because it seems like an odd price. Mind you, the last time I put a car through an MOT type test it cost 53.69€. Worse, I've just noticed that the other place that does psicotécnico tests in Pinoso is offering them for 40€ at the moment. I wouldn't have found that out if I'd been sure how to spell psicotécnico!

I was given a temporary cover note for the licence, even though I still have the, in date, original, and told that the new licence will be sent to me by post. I've just noticed though that on the DGT application, on my phone, the dates have already been extended and I'm OK on the car licence till 2027 (well into my dotage) and for the big vans till 2025. Cool.

So this is Christmas

I haven't spent Christmas in the UK for umpteen years, so I may not be as expert on British customs as I think. Nonetheless, unless things have changed drastically, the first tentative signs of Christmas show up in the shops in September. By November the telly is full of Christmas ads full of good cheer, bonhomie and cute robins. Cities, towns and villages start to turn on lights from mid-December and even with online shopping I'm sure that shopping centres, supermarkets and places like restaurants and pubs get busier and busier through December, all building up to the big day. Finally, it's Christmas Day. You do your best to look pleased with the illuminated pullover and the novelty underwear and you console yourself by setting about the mountains of food. Boxing Day you might stay at home to and eat and drink more, or it may be that you have to visit relatives. Maybe, instead, you might thirst for action after so much slouching around and go for a bracing walk or head out to one of those unmissable Boxing Day sales. And that's Christmas really, well the Christmas for those of us who are reasonably financially secure. There's obviously the New Year's Eve stuff to come next week but that's not really Christmas, is it?

Now I've done Spanish Christmases to death in previous blogs but I did think I might be able to do a bit on the organisation and pretend it was something new. Just as I said that I may be wrong about British Christmases I have to remind you that any generalisations I make about Spanish Christmases are generalisations. 

Spaniards have their ways of organising things. That methodology may be better or worse but, usually, it's just different. Think about supermarkets. Being a Briton I might expect the Nutella to be alongside the jam but it isn't, it's with the sweets and chocolate. Think about what you consider to be morning, something that stretches till noon, whereas Spaniards consider that it runs till lunchtime, somewhere around 2pm. Consider how Spaniards often share food in the middle of the table, rather than claiming their own private portions. Consider how there are no continuity announcers on Spanish telly. Nothing but smallish details but things that might surprise someone new to Spain. 

It's a bit the same with Christmas. It starts later in Spain than in the UK, only a bit but definitely later. Even Vigo, where they really go to town on Christmas lights, doesn't switch on till around November 20th. Pundits always say that the starting pistol sounds with the Christmas lottery on the 22nd. Christmas Eve is big, big, big for family eating (I don't mean that literally, there's no turkey equivalent for Spaniards, no default Christmas meal, but it's certainly not family that you eat, no roast brother in law). Christmas Day is another day to eat with the family. Some Spanish families do gift giving on that day but it's still, probably, a minority of families who have Santa delivering gifts on Christmas Eve for Christmas Day. Boxing Day is nothing, well unless you're an Esteban in which case it's your saint's day - like in the song where the snow lays round about, deep and crisp and even. 

New Year's Eve is another family do with eating at home, wearing red underwear, popping twelve grapes and cava drinking all centring around midnight but, in most places, it's a family rather than a public event. That's obviously untrue if you're in the Puerta del Sol, or equivalent, at midnight but, as a general rule, the New Year is seen in at home and, after the campanadas, the older folk sip and nibble on whilst the younger people go out to do a bit of partying. 

But the heart of Christmas, the bit where everyone says "it's really about the children" is still to come. As January 5th and 6th approach the shopping frenzy heightens, the Royal Pages will be out and about collecting the Christmas lists for the Three Kings ready for the gift giving overnight on the 5th. That's the evening for the cabalgatas, the cavalcades, the town centre parades with their sweet throwing kings and elves, with camels, geese, flocks of goats (all of which are to be banned soon, or they may have already been outlawed, on animal cruelty grounds). One of the staples of the journalists in the crowd is to ask the sweet child with the high pitched voice which is their favourite King - The European one, the Asian one or the African one, all with their different coloured hair and beard (and maybe a boot polish face). Somewhere some city will get into the news for having Queens as well as Kings or some sort of politically correct twist to the event. This later Christmas is good if you're old enough to still give Christmas cards because, if you forgot any Spanish chums, handing over a card anytime up to the 5th won't be seen as being late. And the final, dying gasp of Christmas, the big doughnut shaped cakes on the 6th, the Roscón de Reyes. Oh, and of course the other big Christmas lottery del Niño, to add a certain roundness to it all.

After that, just as in the UK, there only remains the sighing on the bathroom scales and the sobbing as you check your card statement.

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And, if you're a glutton for punishment here are the links to several previous Christmas blogs 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2017a

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

We were in a restaurant last week. The food was reasonable enough as was the price. At first the service was good but, despite repeated efforts to draw a waiter's attention, it took us around 25 minutes to get the after food coffee. This has happened a lot recently. Waiting table in Spain used to be a well respected profession. That seems to be less so nowadays and, in my opinion, service has worsened over the years. This made me wonder about other things that have changed since we moved here.

My guess is that some of the changes have nothing much to do with Spain, just to do with the world. After all in our first rented flat the Internet was dial up - the modem connected to the phone socket and there was a lot of squealing and singing as it connected. It didn't matter much because there were hardly any Spanish websites that functioned properly anyway. 

Ringing people in the UK used to be an expensive or relatively difficult process. I remember that nearly all of we immigrants had some sort of telephone card. You dialled this or that number and it re-routed your call somehow. I seem to recall a 6€ card being good for about 45 minutes to the UK. We used to use locutorios too, places with Internet connections and telephone booths where you could make the call, or use the Internet, and then pay at the counter as you finished.

One of the horrid things about moving to a new country, new to you but not new in the sense of newly created earth's crust or the result of some political or military upheaval, is that there is a mountain of paperwork to be done all at once. In your home country the paperwork comes in dribs and drabs or, when something new happens, like getting a flat or buying a car, you usually have a support network. When I bought my first car I didn't really know what to do but my dad did. Not so here, not at first. Buying or renting somewhere to live, getting utilities connected, getting a bank account, sorting insurance, registering with your local town hall, completing the documents you need to do things financial, sorting the documentation about your residence, maybe doing your tax return, buying a car and so on and so on comes in one, seemingly never ending, torrent. What's more you don't know your way around. By some sort of miraculous process in your homeland you know how to register with a dentist or get your mail forwarded but not so in a new country. There will be different systems, different things needed and, worse still nearly everyone here doesn't speak the same language as you. When I arrived I had enough Spanish to order a beer in a bar or a meal in a restaurant, holiday Spanish, but it's a long way from there to ringing up some bloke on a dodgy mobile phone connection to get your septic tank emptied or to arrange for the delivery of twenty tons of topsoil.

People who've been through the process recently won't agree with me but those sort of administrative things have got easier. After years of being personally paperwork stable Brexit came along and I've had to do battle with Spanish bureaucracy again. Also, because I have a smidgeon of Spanish I've helped pals with their NIEs, S1 forms, TIEs etc. and I can assure you that the process is easier than it was in 2004 when we first started. You might think getting a "cita previa" for ID documents is a bit of a pain but we used to have to get to the police station before the cock crew to get a ticket for one of the available appointments for that day. If you missed getting one of the 50 or so appointments or if it got to "closing time" then you had to go back the next day.

I well remember the rigmarole, if not the detail, when I re-registered a UK plated car. There was lots of stuff to do before getting into a queue with what I hoped was the correct documentation. I had to, for instance, get someone, from some official college of engineers, to measure and draw my car to get something similar to, what we old Brits still call, a log book. With that documentation in hand I had to go to an ITV (MOT) station to get the car checked against the paperwork. That was a separate process to the standard ITV test. I also wasted some money, and a trip to Alicante, getting some sort of tax exemption form from the British Consulate. The queue to pay import duty on my 1977 car was in Elche and the process was interesting because of the car's age. I had to get the obvious things too, like insurance. The whole process probably involved around a dozen meetings, queues or appointments till I finally got to the traffic office where there were three queues. I forget what exactly they were for but there were definitely three. Let's say that the first was to tell you that you were in the wrong queue and that you needed to joining queue two. Queue two gave you the bill that had to be paid at a cash office before you joined queue three where you hoped to hand over all the documentation and hopefully get back some sort of "you have finished" paperwork in exchange. I remember the day I was told to go back to get the final registration certificate with which I could then get my number plates made up. They told me to come back on Monday for the finished paperwork, so I did. The office was closed, it was a fiesta day, a local holiday. 

Nowadays an awful lot of the information about what you have to do is available online, there are forums where people who've done it before you will help with the details and sometimes nearly all of the process can be done from home with your phone or computer. People will tell me that it's still chaotic and difficult but most things are so much easier than they were. My last criminal record check, I needed one because I was teaching, I was able to do in the wee small hours from my computer. My last European Health Card took fewer than three minutes online. The very first time I got a criminal record check I had to get a form from a tobacconist and then take it to the Justice Ministry in Murcia. For my first health card I waited in a queue for over two hours to be told that, as I was on a temporary contract, my health card would be valid for only six months.

Sorry, this has become much more serious than I intended. Let's see if I can lighten it up. Here are some other things:

When we wanted to buy a house doing it honestly was really difficult. Finding someone who didn't want a good percentage of the purchase price in folding cash severely limited our choice of houses. The symbol of lots of illicit cash swilling around in dodgy deals was the 500€ note. It's a banknote that is no longer in circulation (at one time a huge percentage of all the 500€ notes ever printed were in Spain and used for money laundering  of one sort and another) and Maggie tells me that, nowadays, it's quite difficult to spend 200€ notes.

I'm pretty sure that broadcast terrestrial television was just four channels when we first arrived. The two from the national broadcaster RTVE, which then had adverts, Antena 3 and Tele5. Cuatro and la Sexta were introduced in the first year we lived here. There was subscription television, I think the big one was Canal+, but the big changes came with the change to digital telly. With Netflix and Prime Video, and HBO and Apple TV and Movistar+, and all the rest, so common now it's difficult to think that the choice was so limited. For us one of the big gains of digital telly was that the broadcast Spanish stuff suddenly came with a dual soundtrack. Currently the most popular soaps among Spanish viewers are Turkish. Those soaps are dubbed into Spanish but, with a couple of presses on the remote, you can get them in Turkish. One of the first series we watched when we were first here was Desperate Housewives. It was dubbed into Spanish. I will never forget how disappointed I was when I finally saw an episode in its original English because the posh one, Bree Van de Kamp, sounded American and I'd always supposed that, underneath the dubbed Spanish, she would sound like Joanna Lumley or Penelope Keith. If you wanted British TV the only real option was to buy a big satellite dish - businesses did rebroadcast British TV locally but they were apt to go bust or get closed down as illegal - and lots of the bar talk among Britons was of transponders and Astra satellites.

Living in the countryside, as we do, there have always been underpowered small white vans on the road in front of my car. The white vans remain, and they still never exceed 80 km/h, but the bright blue overalls and workwear that their drivers sported habitually now seems to be a thing of the past.

On the road there are far fewer Guardia bike patrols than there used to be. They were dead common. Nowadays you only really see Guardia motorbikes at events like cycle or motorcycle races. Also nobody flashes any more to warn you that there is a speed trap around the corner. A Spanish pal tells me because the fines for warning of a speed trap are big and people won't risk it.

Whilst we're on driving, seatbelts were considered something very mamby pamby. There was a time when you didn't need to wear them in towns, just on the open road. Guardia and other police never wore seat belts. They argued that they would slow them up if they needed to jump out of their cars in a hurry!

In Pinoso, the number of street parking spaces has been drastically reduced because of the terraces, the outside spaces, of the bars. When we were first here terraces were not that common. The foreign demand for outside drinking and dining gave some push to the terraces but the real change came with the anti smoking legislation of 2011 when people could no longer, legitimately, smoke inside most bars and restaurants. The decline in smoking in Spain has been marked over the years. In my time I've been served at a railway station and in the Traffic Office by someone smoking and I think, though it could be my imagination, that I've been with a Spanish doctor who was smoking.

My Gran used to say that smoking stunted your growth. That, and not the poor nutrition during much of the Franco era, could be the reason that I used to tower above everyone in a crowd when we first got here. Nowadays Spanish young people are much taller, much better fed, and they are much better at blocking my view.

Drinking and driving was incredibly common in Spain. Police officers getting a brandy before they got back in their patrol cars or lorry and coach drivers mixing booze with their coffee are not just apocryphal; they were real and common. Spaniards still tend to not really consider beer to be alcohol but my impression is that drink driving has fallen off. The limits have always been stricter here than in the UK but I think that the sanctions are less severe. I could be wrong and I'm too lazy to Google the truth. Oh, and lots of drivers here are stoned too. The numbers are always difficult to compare because drugs tests are normally given to people who the police suspect of being drugged up whilst alcohol tests are given randomly. Nonetheless headlines like "Más conductores drogados que bebidos en las carreteras de Sevilla" are pretty common (More drivers in Seville drugged up than boozed up)

Gender violence, men being violent to women, is taken seriously in Spain. When women are killed by their partner or ex partner it's always a TV news story. In Francoist times, long long ago, women were controlled by men in ways that would now be attributed to Islamist groups. It took a long time for that legacy to change and that the change is obvious in the street is nothing but good. The same with same sex couples and all the rights and equality stuff where Spain has been right out at the front - for instance gay marriage has been with us in Spain since 2005. It took the UK, well most of it, till 2014 to catch up.

And for now, last but not least, timekeeping. In the early 21st century if someone arrived within an hour of the appointed time for a proper appointment that was considered punctual. I have to say that, at the same sort of time, in the UK, British Gas would give appointment slots "in the morning",  that being between 07:30 and 15:00, and still not come but there is no doubt that time keeping was worse in Spain. Nowadays most people turn up when they say they will, give or take a bit. Another proof is that it is no longer safe to turn up 20 minutes late for the theatre because performances often get under way within five to ten minutes of the given time. On that, just remember that if a Spanish plumber, septic tank emptier, fuel oil supplier or builder says that they will be with you in the morning that means till 2pm and "por la tarde" means as late as 8 or 9pm. That hasn't changed!

Not an uppercut, just a jab

I went to get a flu jab today. Not the trickiest of procedures. The first time I did it here I was in a hospital for something else and there was a bloke giving away free vaccine in the hospital entrance so I stopped and got one. Last year, in the dark days of one of the several waves of Covid, the health centre was in silence and I was severely disinfected and made to follow arrows on the floor which pointed to the young woman with the sharp needle. I've got the jab another couple of times as well and the process has been swift and painless (in both senses).

I'd booked up my jab using the health service's mobile phone app. Ten past ten. I rolled up at nine minutes past and asked someone on reception where to go. She waved to the seats where lots of people were waiting. I waited and I waited. I had a bit of a chat with Enrique and a much longer one with Dorothy. It began to get stupid. I went over and collared someone wearing white pyjamas. "No idea," she said, "I'll ask". Thirty seconds later she came back and said "Go around the back".  Presumably using a separate entrance is a vestige of trying to keep people from mixing too much. So I did. There was nothing obvious but there were people milling around looking medical. I asked again. Dorothy had now joined me and, unlike me, she had walked through the building, unchecked. I felt like a fathead for following a procedure that nobody knew or cared about. Eventually we both got our vaccinations.

Now I'm a big defender of things Spanish. When Britons say, disdainfully, "Well, it's Spain, what do you expect?", with the clear implication that the UK is vastly superior, I often find myself pointing out that all bureaucratic procedures have their strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise it wouldn't have taken the UK tax people 18 months to give back the money they had wrongly charged me and it wouldn't have taken eight months for my UK bank to acknowledge that the language spoken in Spain is Spanish, making official documentation in English relatively hard to come by. On the other hand there are times in Spain when hair tearing and temper tantrums seem absolutely appropriate. I don't generally go into banks or post offices much but when I do, when there is no other option, I know that the counter service will be frustrating beyond belief. I have tried to see the funny side of the clerks going for breakfast as I get to the front of the queue or the look of complete horror as bank staff stare at the information on the computer screen as though it was something completely new to them, and written in Malay, but I can't.

Obviously some things take time. I cannot suggest a way that a butcher's shop or a deli counter could speed up the process and still offer the same service. On the other hand sometimes it's so blatantly obvious where the failing is that the solution is just as obvious. Information signs, information signs with correct and up to date information, would be a good start in nearly every case. Mind you I suppose lots of us might, like the HSBC bank, want all that information in English.

We'll have to call her something!

Lots of Spaniards find my name difficult to pronounce and so they tend to Hispanicize it. I'm Crees-toff-air. I know that Ruth gets Root and I know at least one person who generally uses his name in the Spanish form, Ricardo rather than Richard. He says it's easier than repeatedly correcting the mispronunciation. 

Sometimes, of course, there is pure racism in the mispronunciation of a name, as in the case of Trump supporters and Kamala Harris or the renaming of someone because their name is "unpronounceable". Suggesting that a name is unsayable is a not too subtle form of belittling people by belittling the culture they come from. Last year's Twitter storm over the University teacher who suggested to Phuc Bui Diem Nguyen that she anglicised her name, because it sounded like an insult in English, comes to mind.

Anyway, although the politics of names might be an interesting post let's get back to where I started. 

I was doing one of my online italki sessions this morning, with Miriam, and we got to talking about pets having human type names. From there we drifted to names in general. We talked about how several names have a sort of internationalism behind them. Juan may be the Spanish equivalent of John, just as Vanya and Sion and Johann and Giovanni are in other countries, but there are lots of Spanish names that don't have that same correspondence with British names. For example I'm sure that most British people, living in Spain, know at least one Jesús but I don't think there's an Anglo equivalent. In much the same way Nacho, from Ignacio, might turn up in a PG Wodehouse book as Ignatius (and in the Cate Blanchett book of baby names) but it's not, exactly what you'd call a common name. 

Then, of course, we got onto how names have fashions. Teachers see this all the time. A class of five year olds might have several repeat names like Ryan and Brandon or Tiffany and Megan. We all know names that had brief popularity and now give us the approximate age of the particular person. Remember that spate of short "Victorian" names; the Emmas and Janes, Joshuas and Nathans? This didn't use to be the case in Spain because neither the Roman Catholic Church nor the Register Office were keen for someone to start calling their children Aleph, Apple, Blanket, Speck Wildhorse or Tu (all names used by "stars" for their offspring). There has always been plenty of choice for Spanish parents anyway because any old saint's name would do (and there are a lot of saints). Most Spaniards didn't want to call their children Alipio, Bonifacio, Nélia or Wulstana though so names like José, Carmen, Antonio, Manuel, María and Josefa became the norm. Those and the myriad of similar names that we bump into all the time.

Back at our chat Miriam told me that nowadays the restraints on names have generally been lifted and, in the new liberal climate, Basque names have become trendy in Spain. I just had a look at some of those web pages that suggest names for your new-born and it's true that there are pages and pages of Basque suggestions some of which I've bumped into - Aitor, Leire, Eloi, Nerea, Ainhoa and Ferran for example. There are lots of other "nationalist" names too, be they Catalan, like Carme or Enric, Galician like Uxía, Noa and Antía, or Valenciano like Bertomeu and Tonica. There are unisex names too but in suggesting names like René, Paz and Yeray as being usable for boys or girls we're straying into the Vivian, Beverly, Carol and Ainsley territory where, whatever the experts say, there is a different perception of the gender of those names at street level. 

Now, finally, I get to where this post has been going all along. What are the hip Spanish names of the moment? Well on pure statistics for girls it's Lucía, Sofía, Martina, María, Julia, Paula, Valeria, Emma, Daniela, and Carla whilst for the for boys it's Hugo, Mateo, Martín, Lucas, Leo, Daniel, Alejandro, Manuel, Pablo and Álvaro.

Just to round it off the most common names in the population in general are María Carmen, María, Carmen, Ana María, Josefa, María Pilar and Isabel on one side and Antonio, Manuel, José, Francisco, David, Juan and Javier on the other. Family name wise Garcia, González, Lopez and Sanchez head the list so if you know a María Carmen García or an Antonio Gonzalez you are not alone.

Top Hat, White Tie and Tails

In the 1970s I wore cheesecloth shirts and loons. I don't now. Looking back I shouldn't have then. In the film Beau Brummel, the one with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor, Beau caused a bit of a sensation when he appeared at court wearing full-length trousers rather than knee breeches and stockings. Watching the Pinoso Half Marathon it struck me that the competitors were wearing clothes that would have been outlandish at best, and scandalous at worst, not so long ago. Fashions change as they always have. If not I'd be dressed like Francis Drake or Somerset Maughan and Inditex and Primark would be customerless.

Despite this constant change lots and lots of events in Spain feature something that we tend to call traditional dress. I was reminded of this when we went to see the start of a romería in Yecla the other day. There was no traditional costume there but it was something traditional, the repetitive, apparently unchanging ritual of rural, and not so rural, Spain.

One of my favourite events in Pinoso is the flower offering at the end of the town's fiestas. More than once, in the crowd, watching the procession pass, some local standing next to me has explained why the invitees from Yecla or Alicante are easy to spot because they wear this and that which aren't a bit like the things worn by the people from Pinoso. To me the fiesta clothing of Monóvar, Pinoso or Algueña is very similar but apparently not so. The Monovarians or Algueñans have this sort of skirt and that sort of shirt whereas we have that sort of skirt and this sort of shirt. 

Go to Valencia for the springtime Fallas festival and watch hundreds and thousands of women wearing a bodice or corset which matches the material of the skirt accompanied by a shawl worn across the shoulders and knotted at the waist - a costume inspired in the clothes that people actually wore in the street, presumably rich people, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Oh, and expect to hear the tune Valencia more than once!

I wanted to add a few lines about the outfits worn for the midsummer San Juan festival in Alicante. I was looking for something short and snappy, like the description that Google gave me for the Falleras (The women in the Valencia Fallas). Instead I found that there were pages and pages of rules about how people should turn out. For instance for women, the mantilla, the head covering, has to be starched and with seven folds to raise the mantilla above the head whilst the hair has to be worn in a sort of bun with the hair well back from the face and with orange blossom in the hair on the left side. I presume that there is some sort of policing of these rules to stop some wild spirit from wearing a carnation in their loose hair. In fact, thinking of it, I've actually seen people being barred from the Easter processions in Cartagena when their gloves didn't have the correct type of buttons.

I wonder if this is going to remain frozen in time or if the women in the flower offerings in the 23rd Century (if we get there) will be wearing shorts and string tops and the men some sort of baggy sports clothing with a funny haircut as a reminder of the traditional costume of the 21st Century?

Drinking chocolate

In time honoured fashion I used to start every English teaching session with questions. You know the sort of thing. What have you done this weekend?, What did you have for breakfast? As an answer to the second question I was surprised how many youngsters told me that, if they had anything and most didn't, they had milk. Then I realised that, when they said milk, they meant chocolate flavoured milk. Nesquik for instance.

A Spanish tradition is chocolate with churros. We Brits usually describe churros as being like doughnuts except that they are made with a different dough and have a different taste but it's close enough. It's a typical breakfast in lots of Spain, a popular treat and it's a particular favourite on Sunday mornings. It's also one of those things that young people do at five or six in the morning after a night on the town. The churros are nearly always served with a thick, sugary, chocolate drink.

We have an Industrial Estate in Pinoso. It's like thousands of Industrial Estates all over Spain and probably the world. Metal box buildings, fork lifts playing dodgems, articulated lorries manoeuvring and workers having a crafty fag by the loading bays. A few months ago, next to the dispossessed Ford Agent, a delicatessen type shop opened up. It has a good selection of local and not so local wine, nuts,  overpriced cans of gourmet seafood, pink salt, honey from lavender fed bees and.. - you get the idea. I didn't think it had a chance of surviving mainly because of its strange location but it's still there a year or so later and we've become irregular but repeat customers.

The deli has a remaindered and rummage section and in it was a bar of chocolate that caught my eye. I thought the wrapper was impressive. The wrapper is the photo for this post. It shows one of the big wooden carvings of the Virgin Mary. Nearly every city, town and village in Spain has a Virgin in its armoury of statues to be paraded through the street for one celebration or another and nearly all of the Marys are dressed in an impressively embroidered cape often valued at thousands of euros. This one is the Virgin of the Forsaken. The statues always make me think Exodus 20:4-5, you know the one, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

The chocolate we bought, with the Virgin wrapper, is to make the drink to go with the churros. The instructions say to melt 80g of chocolate in 250 ml of milk. As you might imagine that produces quite a thick drink.

So, if you talk to a Spaniard about drinking chocolate they are thinking about something with the consistency of custard or tomato ketchup whilst if you talk to a Briton about drinking chocolate we are thinking about the bedtime "cocoa", maybe that breakfast Nesquik or the stuff you've decided to buy from the vending machine at the swimming baths because you're not going to drink that disgusting swill they call tea again.

Just saying.

Guided visits in general and cemeteries in particular

Lots of the local town halls near Culebrón offer guided walks and visits. The most straightforward are things like a visit to a castle or a Bronze Age settlement where, often, the description is a routine list of dates and facts. There are, however, other visits which are much more innovative. To be honest I couldn't remember all of them if I tried but things like "theatricalised" visits are reasonably common; pointed Maid Marian hats and velvet doublet and hose in Sax Castle to explain the building's history or frock coats and Beryl Patmore uniforms at a Victorian house in Bullas through to people dressed in Civil War Republican overalls explaining the anti aircraft gun emplacement in Petrer. We've done horror stories in the Casa Modernista in Novelda and wandered around Yecla with live music to complement the buildings we were shown. For that one think musicians, using 15th Century instruments and a song relating to plague victims with the backdrop of an arch knocked through the old town walls to allow the plague carts access to the new, extended, cemetery. Sometimes the tours you have high hopes for can be a bit ordinary, cave paintings spring to mind, whereas others that sound a bit dull, like a visit to the town archives, turn out to be pretty good.

You're almost certainly aware that on November 1st, All Saint's Day, it's very common for Spaniards to go to cemeteries to clean up the family niches, pantheons and tombs. Don't confuse this with the much more elaborate symbols, rituals and celebrations that go on in Mexico on the Day of the Dead. In Spain it really is scrubbing brushes, cleaning products, rubber gloves and new flowers, plastic or real, to spruce up the tomb. It's also a good excuse to catch up with neighbours and acquaintances you haven't seen for a while before going for lunch. El Día de Todos los Santos is one of the reasons why there are a lot of cemetery visits at this time of year and that's why, a couple of weekends ago, I did a guided tour around the cemetery in Jumilla. It was probably the fourth or fifth cemetery visit I've done in Spain, one of them, in Novelda, at night and with an Art Nouveau theme. My first Spanish cemetery visit was here in Pinoso.

The Pinoso archivist has a very fertile mind and often comes up with, what I consider to be, corking ideas. I remembered the Pinoso visit as I wandered around Jumilla the other week. In Pinoso the tour began in Valenciano. Luckily, for me, someone I knew spoke up for me and pointed out that I'd only have a chance of understanding if the tour were in Castellano, Castilian Spanish. The guide obliged.

If you don't know about the organisation of Spanish cemeteries, and you're interested then have a look at this TIM article that I did years ago. The basic idea is that if you're not rich enough to have either a family tomb or a vault like pantheon, and you're being buried rather than cremated, the most usual Spanish system are nichos or niches in English. Nichos are a sort of enclosed shelving system with the commemorative stone covering the opening where the coffins can be slid in. Lots of these niches are long term rentals, maybe 75 to 99 years. The rental can be renewed but it often isn't because the family has moved on. Eventually the tenants, with unpaid rents, are evicted. Their bones and other remains are transferred to what is basically a mass grave, an ossuary. 

So, back at the tour, we were told about why the cemetery is where it is, the legislation that moved the potential health hazard away from the town centre, we were shown some of the earliest graves, we were shown how the configuration of the cemetery had changed, we had some of the funerary symbolism, especially on the more upmarket tombs, explained to us and somebody with records of the interment of their family stretching way back shared that information with us. All of this in Castilian. Then, suddenly, the description changed to Valenciano. Now although my spoken Valenciano consists of just one phrase, molt bé or very good/well, I can usually follow the thread of a presentation, up to a point, because of its similarity to Castilian. The speaker told us how the remains removed from the older graves were moved to the ossuary. The basic idea is that a trench running down one of the cemetery avenues is backfilled with the transferred remains and then paved over. The empty part has a less permanent cover and one part, the part currently in use, is left open but for a very obvious temporary cover which can be moved to one side to give access to the trench. That very straightforward process was the only part of the visit which was done in Valenciano.  I never have quite worked out why!

Hot water

One of my first ever brushes with Spanish rules and regulations was when I decided that we needed a second butane bottle for the heater in the flat we were renting in Santa Pola. What now seems eminently sensible - that before you can start using bottled gas in your home somebody needs to check that the installation is safe - seemed very Orwellian back then. A future with a boot stamping on a human face - forever. All I wanted was to buy a gas bottle and they wanted to see ID, they wanted me to prove where I lived, they wanted me to sign a contract and they wanted a technician to visit to make sure it was all safe. Having lived here a long time now and having seen the news stories of blocks of flats destroyed with dodgy gas installations and having heard how insurance companies love to avoid paying out if you can't show proof of a current five year check or even if the rubber pipes are past their sell by date, then I am very happy to do as I should. Anyway, there was a bit of a loophole in the system, whilst Repsol, the orange bottle suppliers, wouldn't give me a contract without seeing the installation, the Cepsa people, who provide silver bottles, made me show ID and the like but gave me the bottle simply by signing the contract. It's such a long time ago that I forget the detail of why and how they justified the difference.

Living in the countryside has lots of advantages, less coming and going, less noise and a bit of outside space. It also has disadvantages. The main one is that it's a fair distance to the shops and suchlike but it has less obvious drawbacks like relatively slow Internet and a miserable electric supply of just 3.45kw. We realised, right from the start, that if we didn't want circuit breakers popping all the time then we should use non electrical appliances when good, non electrical alternatives were available. A gas hob for instance and a gas water heater. We also have butane heaters peppered through the house.

I've never doubted that the gas water heater was a good call. Well sort of. Gas heaters have a huge advantage that they just go on and on producing hot water. They are not like an electric immersion with a certain capacity. How many times have you had to wait for the water to heat after your mum, dad, sister, brother or a person from a non nuclear or non heterosexual family, one that doesn't perpetuate outdated stereotypes, has used up all the hot water with their environmentally unfriendly long showers? Not a problem with a gas heater - so long as there's gas and water it will produce endless hot water. 

Originally our gas water heater provided the water to our bathrooms and kitchen though sometime last year we got an under sink electric water heater for the kitchen because the wait for the hot water to arrive there, at the end of a long run, just got silly. The truth is that we have had a lot of trouble with the gas heaters. We've had two heaters now and, as I type, I can hear the plumber cursing as he drills through the 60cm thick wall to fit the inlet/exhaust pipe for number three! Just like the regular checking of the installation you have to use a registered fitter, at least legally, to fit any fixed gas appliance like water heaters or cookers. 

One of the reasons the heaters fail is all the limescale around here. The water is really hard and furs up the heater elements of electric water heaters and blocks the tubes in gas models. Over the years our first gas heater became less and less efficient. We'd get a plumber in, they'd clean everything out and we'd get back to a slightly less efficient normal. Eventually the services were making no difference and a luke warm shower on a miserable January morning is not a good way to start the day. So we bought heater number two. It was fine at first but then it started to have the same problems as the model it had replaced. We went through the same routine of getting it cleaned and fettled. We also had a problem with the electronic gadgetry which is supposed to deal with the ignition and temperature control. Local plumbers can't get the parts for the water heaters, so it has to be the official service people for spares. Given that the majority of brands have their service centres in and around Alicante they charge a big call-out fee and only venture into the rural wilds once each week. 

Last Sunday afternoon the water heater stopped firing up. It may be that it's just silted up but I suspect it's the electronics again and perming the reduced performance with the big call-out fee we went for heater number three. Sime brand this time, Italian I understand rather than the French Leclerc or the German Junkers that we've had before. We shall see.

Sandwiches

Ruth, Dave, Maggie and I had a conversation about sandwiches the other day. Ruth wondered what you had to do to get sliced tomato in a bar ordered sandwich. It's true that, if you ask for a ham or cheese sandwich with tomato in a Spanish bar, you'll get the bread moistened with tomato pulp. So, if you want slices, you have to be determined and specify that you want sliced tomato. This will be considered a little eccentric by the server.

I'm a simple sort of bloke and when I think sandwich I think of something like meat or cheese between two bits of bread. I know that for some Britons the word sandwich is more specific - sandwiches, for them, are made with slices of bread and they use other words like roll or baguette to describe different but similar, items. Most Spaniards would tend to agree. Just to be clear here I want to emphasise that there are a lot of Spaniards and I've not spoken to all of them so my generalisations may or may not be 100% true for every Spaniard. The majority of Spaniards I've ever talked to about sandwiches (and as you may appreciate it's a common conversational topic) think that a sandwich is made with sliced white bread, possibly only really suitable for children. There is also a tendency to think of sandwiches as using toasted or grilled bread. Consequently a ham and cheese sandwich, often called a mixto or biquini, is likely to involve melted cheese and warm ham a bit like the British toastie. In this case too the ham will almost certainly be the stuff we Brits call boiled ham and that Spaniards call York ham. Normally, if you ask for ham in Spain, without being specific, you'll get the cured, serrano, ham. Just whilst we're on sandwiches, a warning to vegetarians, the sandwich vegetal has tuna as well as salad in it.

So, in general, the two pieces of bread with something between them in Spain is the bocadillo, a little mouthful. Most use an elongated, torpedo shaped bread roll minus the fins and propeller. Some Spaniards use the word bocata instead of bocadillo. Spanish bocadillos don't come in many flavours and the bread usually comes dry without butter, marge or oil - it is very seldom other than white. There's none of the sandwich shop culture of the UK with lots of ingredients and lots of different types of bread on display so that you can construct your own sandwich. Generally in Spain you get what's on offer. The offer varies from place to place: in Pinoso a longaniza sandwich (sausage) is very common just as a fried squid sandwich is absolutely typical of Madrid but the "national" varieties are surprisingly limited - ham is ubiquitous, both the cured and the cooked sorts, cheese too, tuna, tortilla (the thick Spanish egg and potato omelette), lomo (pork loin), anchovy and bacon are all nearly universal and there will always be something more local like the longaniza and squid mentioned above or things like a local pâté, cold cuts like salchicha (think Italian salami) or morcilla (black pudding).

Mixed bocadillos aren't particularly common in a normal bar. I once asked for a cheese and onion one in Malaga. It was years ago but the bloke refused to do it. I asked for one years later in Águilas and the bloke there said that he'd make me one but he didn't understand how anyone could want such a thing. A couple of old friends once took us to a bar in Valencia that did sandwiches because they thought it was extraordinary. It was the sort of place that put grated carrot, beetroot or maize in with the meat or fish and it was really trendy at the time. There is a very common franchise in most of the shopping centres that does mixed sandwiches but the idea doesn't seem to have spread very much. Just to prove that there's an exception to every generalisation ages and ages ago, long enough ago for me to be travelling with squaddies getting drunk as they celebrated their release after compulsory military service (which was scrapped in 2001), at Murcia railways station, the now ex soldier I was with asked for magra (stewed pork cooked in a tomato sauce) in a sandwich. The barman suggested that the young man was deranged but served him anyway. The point is that variations are possible but not usual.

One last point. If you make your sandwich at home and want to fit in as you unwrap it for your mid morning break, be one of the crowd picnicking on the train or feel right at home as you take your roll out of of your cool box on the beach you should wrap your bocadillo in tin foil. Everyone else does.

Coffee break

One of the worst films I've ever seen in Spanish, and I've seen some shockers, is called Balada triste de trompeta by the director Álex de la Iglesia. There is one good scene in it though. The protagonists have just finished their meal. The waiter asks if anyone wants coffee and every one of the fifteen or so people around the table specifies a different type of coffee.

This is not the Starbucks/Costa/Nero thing. No big coffees served in everything from bucket sized mugs to drinking through a hole in a plastic topped, hand scorching, paper cup. No expensive buns either. No this is just common or garden coffee in a common or garden bar or restaurant.

It's one of those things I'd stop noticing but we were on holiday in Andalucia last week and I, we, noticed this very specific ordering because of the accent - the Andalucians have a way of swallowing letters - and because, as good holidaymakers, we were gawping around us.

From time to time people still ask about instant coffee, more  accurately what most do is stress that they don't want their decaff from a sachet but from the coffee machine. I suspect this is because when decaff first came on the market it was generally available in bars as one dose sachets of instant Nescafé.

Most Spanish bar coffee comes out of one of those hissing machines that pass boiling water through the grounds. If I have to name them I tend to say Gaggia or espresso machines. It's interesting that both forms are Italian. I suppose, as in so many things, the Italians marketed much better, much earlier, than the Spanish or the French and, hence, the generic name is the Italian one. So the English speaking world asks for caffè latte, caffè espresso or cappuccino even when the names are given an English language twist as in "Can I have a skinny latte, please?"

Spanish coffee has three basic types: solo for the thimbleful of thick coffee, cortado for a short coffee with a touch of milk and con leche for the milkier coffees. Some of the Italian names are also used in Spain. Americano, for instance, is what you'd usually ask for if you wanted espresso/solo watered down with hot water. The more traditional Spanish name is solo largo, a long solo. Occasionally, some waiter will feign ignorance of things Italian.

Some bars offer a couple of varieties of beans, maybe torrefacto, which is a coffee bean roasted with sugar, but in most ordinary bars you get what you're given. The plethora of possibilities come, mainly, from the amounts of coffee, water and milk. Most of the varieties don't have a specific name but there are lots of possibilities with the simplest probably being the proportion of coffee grounds to water. Some people complicate that a tad by specifying water temperature and, when the weather is warmer, it's very common for people to pour their coffee over ice. Next you might start adding milk: milk can be hot or cold, it can have varying amounts of fat or be lactose free and some people ask for a sort of milk that isn't really milk - the stuff made from soya or sawdust. People even specify the vessel; lots of people seem to prefer coffee in glasses rather than cups and the details of the glass design can become very specific. The only other variable I can think of is the sugar. White sugar in little sachets on the saucer is the default but asking for saccharin is common enough. I think I've only ever heard foreigners ask for brown sugar.

So, back in Andalucia, made special by that letter consuming accent. "Ponme un nubla'o, descafeina'o de maquina, con leche sin lactosa y en vaso, porfa" (Can I have a cloudy, decaff with lactose free milk in a glass please). Splendid.

Demonyms and Gentilicios or Brummies and Gaditanos

Lumi, Elena and José Antionio were most amused. We were in the Culebrón village hall and I'd just asked if the collective name for people from Culebrón were Culebronista. They put me right, I'd be a Culebronero. The Spaniards told me that the -ista ending was usually for supporters of something. I thought Culebronistas sounded good but I was probably thinking about the Nicaraguan Sandinistas from the time when Dani Ortega was still a bit of a hero and not the raving despot that he is nowadays.

You're going to have to stick with me now for a bit of Spanish grammar. I'll try to keep it brief. Spanish has two genders for its words so Lumi, being female, would be a Culebonera and Jose Antonio, being male, would be a Culebronero. In the language sense sex and gender don't always match. Of the many Spanish slang words for penis at least four I know are, grammatically, feminine - picha, polla, chorra and verga - while a couple of the many slang words for a vagina are coño and chocho both of which, surprise surprise, are grammatically masculine. 

So, imagine that we have both females and males with a group identity. Brothers and sisters might be a good example; hermanos and hermanas. The grammar rules say that a group made up of any number of sisters, as long as there is at least brother, should be described as brothers, hermanos. Or, for another example, back in the village hall there is a neighbourhood meeting; just one man but several women. The grammar rules say that we should forget the women and concentrate on the man. The collective group should be referred to as Culebroneros. Nowadays, for obvious reasons, anyone who is reasonably aware wants to include both sexes in the generalised description - like the way that the one time firemen are now firefighters. Imagine the Shakespearean Julius Caesar transported to 21st century Culebrón. Provided he wasn't a card carrying member of VOX he'd be asking that Culebroneros and Culebroneras lend him their ears. In fact, if he were a progressive Spanish politician he may have wanted to get the attention of those who identify with neither of those genders - Culebroneras (women), Culebroneros (men) and Culebroneres (unassigned) lend me etc. 

I can't pretend that this is a particularly stylish linguistic flourish, repeating the male and female forms all the times is tedious. Nonetheless it's a battle that's being fought in Spanish. There is only one possible outcome and it's not a victory for anyone clinging to arguments about rules of grammar. In written forms the @ symbol is often used because it looks like a combined o and a - Culebroner@s

This thing of using a name for the natives or inhabitants of a particular place is dead common worldwide. Scousers, Glaswegians, Brummies and Geordies do it. For Britons there are a range of generic terminations; think endings like  -er and -ian. So we get Londoner, East Ender, Mancunian, Bedfordian and Invernessian. I didn't realise there were some strange British examples Haligonian for Halifax and Cantabrigian for Cambridge, though I've worked in both places and I'd never heard either till Wikiwhatever told me they existed. In the UK some of these demonyms (technical term for the names) are used a lot more than others. Liverpudlian, Mancunian and Aberdonian are, to my mind, in common use whilst Exonian (Exeter) and Silhillian (Solihull) were another Wikisurprise to me. 

It's similar in Spain. For our situation we can start with the region: Valenciano/a, go on to the province, Alicantino/a and then the municipality, Pinosero/a. Just over the border into Murcia it's Murciano/a. Lots of the names are like those, the root is obvious enough, Madrileño/a for Madrid, Barcelonés/esa for Barcelona, Toledano/a for Toledo. Some others are a bit trickier, Gallego/a for Galicia, Oscense for Huesca or Jiennense for Jaen but at least they share some of the same letters. Others you either know or you don't - Gaditano/a from Cadiz, Abulenses from Ávila and Conquense from Cuenca. Cities can be even odder, from Elche for instance we have Ilicitano/a, in Badajoz they're Pacenses and in Ciudad Rodrigo they are Mirobrigenses. 

Once you realise that these terms exist you'd be surprised how regularly they are used in everyday conversation particularly by sports commentators. As I said in English these descriptors are apparently called demonyms and in Spain they are gentilicio. If you're ever curious just ask Google for the gentilicio of a town and you'll usually find that a name pops up even for places as small as Culebrón (not that it really does but I'm not going to spoil a goodish ending with the truth).

Not shaken, not stirred

When I was young I was confused about many things. One of them was the Martini adverts. There were beautiful people Martini drinkers in floaty fabrics with red or white coloured drinks and sunny backdrops. Then there were Hollywood Martini drinkers at posh parties in elegant frocks and dinner jackets with conical cocktail glasses and swizzle sticks. It took me years to work out that Martinis and Martini were different things. 

Anyway, Martini, the stuff with the bright young things, like Cinzano is just a branded vermouth and, as so often, we Britons think of something Italian when we think of Mediterranean staples. Vermouth is, basically a wine with various herbs, spices, barks and plant extracts added to give it a particular taste. Wikipedia tells me the name originates from the German word wermut which means wormwood and wormwood is used in nearly all vermouth to give it that particular flavour.

So, years ago, in a Spanish evening class, the teacher told us that most bars in Spain did their own vermouth. My guess is that slapping in a few herbs and roots and bits of bark into rough wine is a way to hide its true taste. Nowadays, when the bars and restaurants want to offload the same sort of plonk they simply put it in the fridge. So, all those years ago, I'm in a raggedy bar in Granada with lots of rickety chairs on the dusty forecourt cum car park. I remember this factlet about homemade vermouth from the evening class. I ask if they serve vermut. They do. The barkeeper produces a well used, cork stoppered, white wine bottle from underneath the bar and pours me a generous measure. I forget what it tasted like. 

Thirty something years later I'm in Granada again and I remember that bar. On my first visit it was the sort of place with toothless, domino playing old men smoking Ducados. By the second decade of the 21st Century the bar had been trendied up so that it looked even more traditionally Spanish. I was surprised there was no guitar player and no horse parked outside. The bar was full of tourists who had read about the place in their Lonely Planet guides. The vermouth bottle had a nice label.

Vermouth didn't really cross my path again till we settled in Culebrón. One of our first tasks was to investigate the local bodegas, the places that produce and sell wine. Most of them had a vermouth and all of them tasted slightly different. Obviously it was our cultural duty to investigate the differences and we did so with due diligence. When the novelty wore off, and the morning after consequences became unacceptable, Maggie went back to unsullied wine and I divided my time between tea and beer. 

Vermouth resurfaced again, for us, some years ago when our local Culebrón village fiesta advertised a vermouth session as the opening event for the weekend. Roberto, from the village bodega, brought a few litres of vermouth to the social centre and we all set around drinking it. Vermouth can be taken with or without soda water, sifón, but definitely with ice, orange slices and green olives. A little later, when the Socialists won the town elections, in 2011, they changed the character of the town fiestas to be more participative (take that as personal opinion rather than demonstrable fact). Among other things they introduced a vermouth session in the municipal gardens just before lunch. I presumed it was a well established Spanish tradition and I applied myself, once more, to this cultural activity with British rigour.

Vermouth hour, la hora del vermut, really is a Spanish social tradition; a time for friends and family (and presumably enemies and complete strangers) to have a bit of a preprandial drink. It's quite odd, as I was drafting this post there was an author on the radio talking about his book and about the book fair that is on in Madrid at the moment. When the interviewer asked the writer when he was signing he said he was working la hora del vermut.

The idea of having an aperitif before eating is hardly uniquely Spanish, lots of countries do it, but, in most countries it's an evening rather than an afternoon tradition. Apparently there are two principal theories as to why Spain is different. The first has it that before the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Spaniards did as most of the rest of Europe and had an aperitif before the evening meal but, after the war, people were often so hard up that they needed two jobs to get by. This prompted a change in working patterns with people combining a morning shift with an afternoon/evening shift. The late evening finish relegated the evening meal to being more akin to a snack than a full blown meal and the main meal of the day shifted to the time between the finish of the morning job and the start of the afternoon/evening job. This change not only affected the hora del vermut but also radically arranged the Spanish working day. The second, and much more widely accepted theory, is that the hora del vermut was originally something that rich people did in the slot between finishing mass on Sunday and eating lunch. As the Spanish economy grew, and a middle class began to develop, one of the first luxuries that this new class could afford, one of the few habits of the rich that they could easily copy, was to have a bit of a tipple before Sunday lunch. And it's easy to see that developing into a daily routine.

Whilst the original drink for the preprandial was vermouth tastes began to change and people tended to other drinks to "open their appetite" maybe a beer, maybe a wine. As the habits changed the name didn't. Just as people in the UK may have coffee at teatime or tea at coffee break the name, hora del vermut, stuck to describe this pre-lunch drink. At the end of the last century vermut was relegated to a very secondary place in Spanish drinking habits but recently there has been a bit of a resurgence and there are now lots of craft vermouths and even specialist vermouth bars. Some of these vermuterias offer drinks that bear only a passing resemblance to traditional vermouth - things like cider or gin laced with those "botanic" ingredients.

We're still waiting for our first vermuteria in Pinoso but in the meantime I think it's beholden to all of us to embrace the traditions of our new home and do what we can to promote this age old custom!

Starry eyed

Eating is a bit of a thing in Spain. Not a bit of a thing like it is in South Sudan, not in the sense of needing to eat to avoid dying, but eating for pleasure. It's also a never exhausted topic of conversation. Lunch is the main meal of the day in Spain and cheap set meals, a few euros on each side of 10€, are available all over the place. I know that most Britons living here don't agree with me but I can't remember the last time I had a memorable set menu in that price range. They're fine, some are better than others, most are perfectly pleasant but few, none actually, come to mind as showing much flair. For a bit of cooked sea bass or steak the set menus are incredible value. The ones I enjoy most though are the restaurants that have set meals costing something like 25 to 35€. Its enough money for the restaurants to be creative but, when the bill comes, I don't wonder about the sanity of just having spent a new mobile phone's worth of cash on something that will be flowing down the drains a few hours later. This said one of the things that we've done a few times now, on Maggie's birthday, is to go in search of a restaurant with Michelin stars. 

It started years ago when a chef called Kiko Moya came to Pinoso as the "Godfather" of the annual celebration of traditional food in and of Pinoso called Mostra de la Cuina del Pinós. The chef was from a nearby town called Concentaina. His little speech at the opening ceremony for that food festival made me think that a posh meal in his Michelin starred restaurant and an overnight stay in a hotel would be a nice gift for Maggie's birthday.

Two stories stick out from that meal. The first is that the only thing either of us remember as being particularly nice was a savoury version of a normally sweet local Christmas treat called turrón. The second is that they served us a dish at one point which featured the mould that grows on corn cobs. For those of you old enough to remember it was amusing, in a Pseuds Corner sort of way. We wondered why mould had never caught on, unlike egg and chips for instance. Overall though it was a pleasant enough experience and the basic plot seemed sound - an overpriced meal each year as a bit o a birthday treat.

The second year we went to a place in Almansa. No overnight stay this time just the restaurant which meant evening. Usually, and for no obvious reason, evening meals are less enjoyable than lunchtime meals in Spain - a bit more formal, less lively, less Spanish. It was a bad experience. I usually compare it to the time that you're invited to an acquaintances house for dinner. They serve things that you don't like at all but which you can, just about, eat without vomiting. With grim British style determination you wade through each course. In this particular restaurant the tasting menu had at least eight courses. The one that took most effort was a tuna heart stuffed with something that made it look like an eyeball though I suspect eyeballs taste nicer than whatever it was we were given to eat. I was only just about able to control my gag response.

The restaurant we went to in Cuenca the next year was totally forgettable. It wasn't a bad experience; nice enough as I remember with good service and decent food but I cannot remember anything of the detail. What I do remember as being really disappointing were the digs. Cuenca is too far from home to pop over for an evening meal and get back home. So, I booked us in to the Parador hotel there. The Parador hotel chain has some impressive buildings and impressive locations. They often convert places like castles, monasteries and convents into hotels. The hotel in Cuenca is a converted convent set atop a river gorge. That's it in the photo with this post. It looks great outside and the communal spaces inside - the restaurant, the lounges, the bar - are all impressive as well. The room though was quite small, it crossed my mind that it may have been the size of the original nun's cell, and the décor and fittings were very ordinary. The hotel was also full of a wedding and loud wedding guests dominated the character of the hotel for we non wedding guests. And it was not cheap.

We went to a great restaurant with a Michelin star in La Nucia, el Xato. This time it wasn't Maggie's birthday but it was the birthday of one of our long-time friends so we went as two couples. It was splendid. Great service from really pleasant servers, good price, verging on cheap for a restaurant with Michelin stars, excellent food and with a little gastronomic journey from the Valencian shoreline to the interior of the region explained in food and drink. 

Last year I hunted around for another starred restaurant but the places that were on my possible list were prohibitively expensive. Going to eat Mexican in Madrid for instance with the train, hotel and meal was way beyond my wallet. The set meal, with accompanying matched wines, was a bit short of 200€ per cover. I reckon that with the train fare and the overnight stay In Madrid it would have been around 800€ and I just couldn't justify, or afford, that. We stayed locally instead and had a remarkably ordinary paella at a restaurant which should have done much, much better.

This year though there were lots of new restaurants with Michelin stars in the area and with reasonably (given the criteria) priced set meals. One in Calpe, a couple in Murcia and one in San Juan. All a bit fish based though and Maggie isn't big on fish. Eventually I settled on one in Ondara, near Denia, a short couple of hours from home. Maggie knew nothing about it till the last moment and she didn't know that I'd invited a couple of pals along too. The idea was that she would have company as she worked her way through the wine accompanying each course whilst I, nominated driver that I am, remained steadfastly boring and sober. Nice place, excellent service and the prices were fine except for the unnecessary graspingness of overcharging for things like water, beer and coffee. It was a strange failing because something I've noticed in most of the other posh restaurants we've been to is that they don't overcharge for the ordinary things. If a coffee costs 1.50€ in the local bar the posh restaurants usually limit themselves to doubling the price. Not so in Ondara. 

To be honest I've already forgotten what we ate; for me it's the experience that's the pleasure rather than the food. If I wanted to eat something I really liked I'd cook up a bacon sandwich and make a nice cup of tea but then I wouldn't have stories about eating mould, the feeling of dread as I forced myself to eat some supposed delicacy or the unpleasantness of handing over the credit card and contemplating the tip.

Gardening leave

I've lived in houses with gardens before - but small gardens, a bit of earth to turn, a patch of grass to mow. Nothing much to speak of. Gardens that were more useful as places to park the bike or to hang the washing than to grow gladioli or fennel. Nowadays we have a biggish garden, plenty of space to build a pool for instance. There may even be enough space for a tennis court. Or not. I don't really know how big a tennis court is. The last time I played tennis was a while ago, when those yellow balls were a bit of a novelty, when one of my closest pals was called Spud and when I used a bike as my form of transport. 

The style of garden is bare earth, to help prevent scrub fires, with quite a lot of fruit trees and a few bushes and plants. I don't know what most of them are called but I do know that we have olive, quince, peach, apple, pomegranate, fig, loquat, almond and cherry trees as well as various grape vines and a healthy looking passion fruit that has spread all along the fence. Some of the trees are so weedy that it's a bit unfair to suggest they produce fruit (I think there was just one cherry this year) but we have other stuff too. We have lots of ivy, we have a yucca that is taller than me, we have aloe vera type cactus and we have a bunch of trees like cypresses, mulberries and pine. We also have a splendid palm tree. I'm not much of a botanist though, my grasp of plant species has just four main divisions: weeds, flowers, bushes and trees. Maggie occasionally says something to me about pruning the oleanders or dividing the irises but if she were to fail to point out the plant in question I wouldn't be sure where to start.

My part in tending the garden is really the part that involves brute force or grim determination. Most of the time it's a controlled sort of physicality turned against the weeds whose tenacity and rate of growth leave me in awe. At this time of year I also water most of the non autochthonous stuff to keep it from withering in the summer sun. There's a lot of raking too; raking up leaves and raking up the fallen fruit. My other regular job is pruning. When I first pruned I was very careful. I would gingerly trim the thin branches using secateurs but nowadays I chop and cut with an Errol Flynn swashbuckling bravado and ne'er a care. The trees take no notice and simply grow back again. Well, most of them do.

This year lots of the plants look very unwell. The fig trees are covered in nasty little beasts, the grapevine on the wall has produced no fruit at all, the peach trees have some sort of leaf curl, only one of the three pomegranates has any fruit, the little apple tree is hanging on against the odds and the quince tree, which was splendid last year and produced lots of fruit, has a single scrawny example. Even our rose bush is looking a little sad and brown. It also seems that I've spent much more time watering, raking and cutting than I usually do over the summer. Apart from the palm tree which I have to spray every six weeks I don't usually spray; it doesn't seem like a good thing to do, bad for the bees and other small creatures that have a perfect right to their short existence. The fig tree blight was horrible though so chemical warfare seemed appropriate. Anyway my story about spraying six loads wearing overalls, gloves, mask and woolly hat from a 20 kilo, when full, backpack in the 40ºC+ midday sun, is, I think, quite amusing.

I got up early on Tuesday morning to do the watering partly because it's more efficient, water wise, before the sun gets to work, but also to fit in my various morning jobs. I was thinking as I did it how much I'd prefer not to, about how much older I'm getting and how physically punishing gardening can be at times. As Basil Brush once remarked a mix of three parts sand to one part of cement, spread liberally all over the garden, is an effective weed killer.

Spanish language stuff part 2: Learning Spanish

I've been trying to learn Spanish for ages, long before we got here 17 years ago. In fact I started my first Spanish class in 1983. I'm talking about evening classes, maybe an hour or two per week for a ten week term. It takes a long time to clock up the hours especially when you consider that you're usually in a class with maybe a dozen other people. The important thing about the classes was the routine, the commitment. Doing a class meant homework exercises, grinding through verb tables and learning lists of vocabulary. However many times someone tries to sell you a course that they promise will teach you Spanish (or any other language) in a few hours just consider this. Imagine you want to learn a poem or a literary quote in your native language. You'll know the words and you'll know the pronunciation, all you have to do is remember the words in the correct order. How long do you reckon it might take? It used to take me ages to learn those "O" level Shakespearean quotes. If it really were true that you could speak Spanish with just 1000 words, and you took just five minutes to memorise each word, you'd still need 83 hours of parrot fashion learning before you got to the variations and the combinations. What it comes down to is that language learning is, principally, a huge memory task and there is no way around that.

How much you try to remember is a matter of personal choice and willingness. Richard Vaughan, quite a famous teacher of English here in Spain, always stresses that learning common words pays dividends over learning less common ones. The example I've heard him use more than once is between the verbs to sleep and to be. To sleep isn't exactly an obscure verb but in comparison to the verb to be it is. The trouble with that theory is that certain words are common under certain circumstances. You hardly ever know when the circumstances will arise when you will need more words. The verb to fry and the nouns egg and chip aren't particularly common words (In the Richard Vaughan sense) but in a greasy spoon, when you want fried egg and chips, they are. 

Use and repetition is important too. Once upon a time I used Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. I was never good with them but I knew the basics. I haven't used them for years now and I wouldn't have the faintest idea where to begin with designing a simple database. You may think that living in Spain I would use the language all the time, and I do, but most of my conversations are very simple transactions. In the supermarket, in the bar, where a couple of stock phrases will suffice. I often greet people in the street and exchange a few words about their family or the weather but it's very seldom that the conversation strays to the movement of refugees or US Foreign Policy or even a bit of gossip about some event in the area. In this sort of case Richard Vaughan's common phrases and words theory works well. It's like the Spanish waiter or waitress on the coast. They speak to their British customers in English but most of those waiters and waitresses don't really speak English, they speak the menu. 

All this said my Spanish isn't too bad nowadays. I can nearly always get what I want though there may be a lot of fumbling and stumbling along the way. I can read a newspaper, listen to the radio, watch the TV and even read the car handbook. With the online conversation I can even practise real conversations. But my Spanish is still far from good. If I'm watching a film at the cinema I can lose the thread completely. Understanding the lyrics of songs is usually beyond me unless I see them written down and even in something as commonplace as watching the TV news my understanding lets me down from time to time. While I can overhear, and understand, something said in English through all sorts of extraneous sounds and in all sorts of unfavourable circumstances I need a following wind to not lose the thread in Spanish. 

After all this time and all the effort it is frustrating beyond belief.

Spanish language stuff part 1: Things not to do

The other day I rang someone who I've been friends with for nearly 50 years. We talked about trees, we talked about fish dying in the Mar Menor and we talked about when organic veg aren't really organic veg. We also talked about language learning. It was that conversation which prompted me to write this two part blog. My pal, who has been learning German for years, recommended a YouTube series called Easy - Easy German in her case and Easy Spanish in mine. I watched the video and thought crikey, if that's easy my Spanish is worse than I thought. Here's the link if you're interested. 

The particular episode talked about things not to do in Spain. Here's the list.

1 Never turn up on time - the example they use in the video is a party. Spaniards do turn up on time for lots of things but the basic notion is good.

2 Never go to the shops between 2 and 5 in the afternoon. Again lots of town centre shops and supermarkets open in the afternoon but the basic premise is good

3 Don't start the "two kisses" (the cheek to cheek lip smacking greeting) from the wrong side. You need to start by moving your head to the left to brush right cheeks; otherwise expect a head butt or a full on the mouth kiss.

4 Don't try to eat in a restaurant outside the "traditional" times. That's probably between say 2 and 4 for lunch and after 8.30 (even that's a bit early) until some unspecified later time for dinner. You can get tapas, sandwiches etc. outside these times but these are the hours when the kitchen will be open. Actually I changed the times a bit because I think they used Catalan times (see point 8).

5 Never clear off as soon as you've finished eating with someone. If you're really in a hurry you can start apologising that you have to go as you drink the after meal coffee. Normally though the after meal chatting is an essential part of the meal

6 Don't read anything into the way you are greeted in a shop or bar. If you are called guapo or guapa for instance (handsome or beautiful) it's simply the same as someone in Liverpool calling you luv or someone in Nottingham thinking you're a duck.

7 Never pronounce an English word as though it were an English word. Every English language word has to be hispanised. This is absolutely true but the rules are incredibly complex about how the word should be tortured.

8 Don't generalise about Spain by which they mean that people from Andalucia have different ways to the people of Cataluña or Galicia. Whilst it's true I often wonder how we'd ever say anything if we weren't able to generalise.

Finally, point 9, don't shoot me. If you don't agree go to the video and make your comments there. I'm just repeating (more or less) what the young women in the video said.