How Many Years?

Living in Culebron has made me more careful about keeping in touch with people back in the UK. Most of it is done by email with the occasional phone call.

Alan Crawford, someone I first bumped into eating digestive biscuits and drinking milk in the Buttery at Hull university in 1972 is coming out for the weekend in a couple of days.

But I got an interesting email from someone I went to school with this evening. I must have first met Bob Filby back in 1965 in the First Form at Hipperholme Grammar School in West Yorkshire. He said he hasn't seen me in the flesh for quite some time and the last time we met I had dark hair. Now he's seen the photos on the blog he knows I have white hair. As revenge I have posted the picture he sent me of himself.

Going for a paper and meeting Winston Churchill

I generally buy a newspaper each morning. I get it from a small shop called Juanjo in Pinoso which sells a whole range of household items as well as the daily press. They are really nice to me in that shop. I think it's partly because I buy a Spanish language newspaper but mostly because they're nice people.

The traditional "costume" for this part of the world is a smock. It looks a lot like a short version of the academic gown worn by university students except that it buttons up at the front. Next week there's a festival in Pinoso that celebrates local traditions, it's called Villazgo. During Villazgo people wear the smock. I thought I might get one too.

This was the sign for the owner of the shop to be even nicer than usual. He sold me a smock. He told me he'd been the Pregonero (the person who delivers the speech to open the festival) back in 2001 and he autographed a copy of the booklet he'd written at that time as his contribution to the fiesta. Then he pointed to the Pinoso coat of arms on the front cover of his booklet and said that it had been painted by a local artist back in the 1940s. This chap had sent one of his paintings, a picture of a bull, to Winston Churchill. Winny had sent a nice thank you note back to the artist and I got to read the note.

This sort of thing didn't happen when I bought a newspaper in Huntingdon!

The Exquisite Pain of a Lingering Death

When I first bought the MG back in 1998 my intention was always to use it as a daily driver. The car wasn’t going to be pampered; no long winters tucked up in a cosy garage followed by frenetic weekend activity over the summer. Right from the start it had to deal with rain, snow, mud, salt on the road, kamikaze drivers and Tesco’s car park.

It wasn’t my first choice as classic transport but, in time, I grew to really care for that car. We were just two characters occupying similar space and time. Every day the car was different, it was almost as if it had a life and a character. We often tussled with each other and I would sometimes yell at it in desperation as it failed to start or broke yet another bit. I tried hard to make the car understand that I’d look after it if it would try its best to look after me.

When I lived in the UK that was fine. My philosophy was that as bits fell off or needed replacing then I would stick them back on or replace them. The UK is full of people who know how to look after MGs and other people keen to sell bits for them. I was happy to employ the mechanics, trimmers and body repairers and ready to buy the parts.

When I moved to Spain there was never any doubt that the car was coming with me. What I hadn’t quite realised was that my life was going to change so drastically that I was not going to be able to offer an appropriate level of care to the car. The big difference is that I have no money, no, that isn’t quite true. What I don’t have in Spain is credit. I never had enough money but when I was in the UK I had a salary that was sufficiently high for any number of banks and credit cards to want to offer me money. I might wince when Alan (my regular mechanic) gave me the £500 bill for the 6000 mile service on the car but I was always able to pay it.

In Spain credit is not an option. Firstly because I don’t have a regular income but secondly because credit here is quite old fashioned. Credit cards either have to be paid off at the end of the month or there is a set payment. You don’t have the flexibility of paying off either a little or all of the debt as you choose. There are annual fees with credit cards too. Bank loans are easily available but only against set items. So you always need a price quote of some sort before a bank will agree a loan.

So, I’m still driving the car every day but it is no longer getting regular checks and care. At the moment it’s doing about 16mpg but a British mechanic said he didn’t know anything about tuning anything with carbs and the Spanish garage told me that it was impossible to sort the carbs as they were worn and had the wrong needles (the carbs are recon and only about 3000 miles old). I might have believed them but because I didn’t specifically ask for a grease up it didn’t get one when I took it in for a service and they overfilled the sump by at least two litres of oil. There may be MG experts in Spain but they’re not just around the corner from where I live anymore.

Worse than trying to care for the car mechanically though is the bodywork. The poor car is gently rotting away. There is hardly a panel without at least some corrosion and the rear wings are dreadful. There is even a hole above the passenger side arch. I’ve had two large pieces of paint and undercoat just drop off leaving bare metal to view and I don’t dare poke around under either front or rear wings for fear of finding there’s no metal left. The mud flaps have dropped off; the alloy wheels are corroded – all in all not a good situation and one I simply can’t afford to put right.

Short of a major cash injection the car is going to fall apart. It’s horrid to watch my old car turning from cared for classic to old banger. Even worse I can imagine a time when it won’t be an option to keep it on the road. It’s quite easy to foresee a time when our last ride together will be to the local scrap yard. Not quite what I had in mind when I handed over the cash for the car all those years ago.

Spam

When I lived in the UK I ate a lot of Spam. I thought it was tasty and it didn't take long to open the can and cut out a chunk to eat with a knife. Easy too to add sauces to the hollow left after the first chunk had been removed to give an infinite range of tastes. There doesn't seem to be a lot of Spam available in Spain. Fortunately the local Consum supermarket was doing a promotion on Mortadela. I'd never heard of it but it turns out to be like a spicy, garlic version of Spam without the large lumps of fat. It is yummy. It may be better than Spam.

Dwarves and Giants Running with Fire

It looked like today was going to be very ordinary. I thought I might tell you something about Edu the cat and his poorly leg. There was even an appealing photo of him snuggling amongst the bedclothes. Fortunately for you and for me the day got more exciting.

We thought we'd pop into town and have a look at the Dwarves and Giants Festival (I think it's Nanos i Gegants in the local Valencian language) postponed from last week because of the snow. The four groups from Elche, Alicante, Villena and Pinoso dressed up as dwarves, and giants to dance whilst their support bands played strange musical instruments. We watched.
This is me looking bemused, outside the Town Hall whilst a couple of Giants strut their stuff.


And as day gave way to night the dancing gave way to another festival called Corre de Foc (I think) - literally running with fire. People wearing red boiler suits and balaclava type masks with pointed ears, so they look like devils, process through the town whirling fireworks above their heads attached to their tridents. Pretty impressive stuff. We braved the sparks. Enough to send us into Majovic's Bar for a stiff one when it was all over.

Nothing to report

Nothing much has happened to me since we got the cat's balls chopped off. Popping into the bodega for another gas bottle, buying some cat food and changing my library book are hardly worthy of note. It has, however, been a lovely sunny day today. It doesn't look like it was so good in the town of Versoix in Switzerland.

It's a cat's lfe

The one on the left is Edu, first language Castilian. The one on the right is Mary - an English speaker like us. They don't get on very well but tomorrow, at 1.30pm, the small orange chap is going to the vet and when he comes back he may not be such a problem for Mary. Castration without the high pitched singing.

It's very cold

There is something about moving to Spain. The cliche is sunny Spain. Now we knew before we got here that it gets cold in Spain in winter. We'd shivered in places as far apart as Caravaca and Bilbao. In fact when we first talked to some Spanish friends about living here we told them that we fancied somewhere near Burgos. "Colder than Siberia" they said.

So now we live in Alicante Province. That's the one full of Britons - here for the sun. But at the moment it isn't warm, it isn't even comfortable. It's absolutely perishing and it's making all us expats feel really miserable. Cold in front of the TV (actually we can just about keep the marble floored, uninsulated, curtain and carpetless living room warm), cold in bed even wearing socks and a sweatshirt, cold in the bathroom (and often wreatehed in steam) and certainly cold in my workplace. The one place it isn't quite as cold is outside particularly during the middle of the day. Even here, in Pinoso, some 600 metres above sea level and with traces of snow still visible on the hillsides it's a reasonable 5 or 6 degrees.

I think I might start wintering in Sweden where they know how to keep warm!

All's well

This morning the water was nearly running. We have cold but not hot. It was an interesting experience shaving and washing in cold (freezing) water but I drew the line at showering.

Oh Water Where Art Thou!

The snow has now frozen and with it so have our pipes. Not that surprising really as it is possible to see our main inlet pipe on the surface of our garden. We are unable to wash, the toilet cisterns are empty and we will have to go out and buy bottled water so we can drink tea. After all, it's a crisis and, in a crisis, we British drink tea.

Good Grief! It's snowing

Culebron is about 60kms from the Costa Blanca coast. Famed as the region with the nicest summers (a bit cooler than scorching Andalucia) and the mildest winters.

Well, this morning, as I opened the door to feed the cats I was greeted with snowflakes on my face and the sight of our palm tree covered in about 5cms of snow. The young cat, Eduardo, was scared at first but is now engrossed in sliding and rolling in the strange white stuff.