Castilla la Mancha

A pal wrote recently and said there were lots of windmills in the Cambridgeshire Fens. They're very common here too. These are on the plains of Castilla la Mancha, Don Quijote's stamping ground.

He'd have a job tilting at these.

En bici

The MG is running well at the moment but, mainly because the weather is so nice, I've been using a bike to get to and from work for the past three or four weeks.

This morning I was riding to my 8am Spanish lesson. I was going the wrong way in a one way street and I had to stop for a parked car. A coach was coming the other way. As I scooted around the parked car I crashed into the pavement, mounted it, scraped down the side of a wall and started to fall back into the road. As I smashed into the side of the coach I visualised myself falling under the wheels but somehow I survived.

There may be a lesson there about traffic rules!

A packet of fags and a last will and testament form please

Maggie needed to get the equivalent of a police record check for her job as a teacher here in Spain. You buy the form from a tobacconist.

After the Spanish Civil War the licences to run tobacconists (an estanco) were dished out by Franco's Government to those who had faithfully served the cause and would find difficulty earning a living otherwise - people whose legs had been blown off, the widows of war heros etc. As nearly everyone smoked there were tobacconists everywhere, even in the remotest village. So tobacconists provided a good network to distribute official forms through a semi governmental organisation. They still do.

A Night at the Theatre

Our village neighbours association went to Madrid over the weekend to see a musical. Keen to be a part of the gang we paid our money and went too.

Six hours on the coach got us to our hotel in the northern end of central Madrid just an hour before the show started. So with checking in and across town travel we had just enough time to throw our bags into the room, wash our hands and face and get back onto the coach. At least it was a posh hotel.

The musical, Hoy No Me Puedo Levantar (Today, I can't get up) was the story of the 80s told through the music and lyrics of a group who were dead famous here in the 80s - Mecano. The show started at 10.30pm, and lasted over four hours so we got out just before 3am! We didn't understand most of the dialogue, we didn't know the songs, the cultural references generally passed us by, the dancing looked a bit duff to me and the humour was very Spanish - slapstick and politically incorrect. My bum ached a lot too but the show was definitely a bit of an experience.

We also got a few hours in Madrid on Sunday and we were reminded of the pluses and minuses of small versus big town life. Plus points - stacks going on, lots to gawp at, exciting and interesting. Minus points - noisy, busy, smelly and expensive - I'm still reeling from the cost of a plate of whitebait, a beer and a soft drink topping out at 17€ - maybe four times what we would have paid at home.

One in the eye

A few months ago a male ginger cat sauntered on to our patio and begged food. He's been coming back on and off ever since for his breakfast and tea.

I already had a name waiting for him - Harold - pronounced 'arrold for Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday.

Harold has not been allowed in the house as male cats have a rather malodorous way of marking their territory.

Maggie said it was time to get it sorted out and she took charge. So poor old Harold was captured tonight, put into a plastic cage and taken off to the vet where he is now languishing waiting for a check up to make sure he's fit before he gets his balls chopped off. All for the long term good really. He'll soon be able to kip on our sofa and live the pampered life of a house cat, provided of course he ever forgives us for his false imprisonment and comes anywhere near the house again.

I'm just a bit worried about the poor little sod. He doesn't really know he can trust us yet and he must be a bit scared waiting at the vets and wondering what's going on.

Contract fun

Last October my boss asked me to sign a bit of paper. Neither he nor I understood it but when I signed it I became legally employed.

Because I'm thinking about getting a car loan I asked the bank what I would need. The main thing is my nomina or pay slip so I asked my boss how I could get hold of my pay slips. He said I should go and see his asesor, a sort of accountant.

At the asesor's office they gave me a bunch of pay slips, dating from now back to October and a copy of my contract. I was asked to sign copies of each one and to get my boss to sign them too as he'd not yet seen them!

With a bit of time to decipher the legal language of the contract I worked out my pay, social security and tax rates and I think I got an idea of how the contract system works. If I'm right there are standard contracts for different sorts of work called models. They relate to types of work so office based work might be type 400 for part time junior, 401 for full time junior etc. whilst contracts for mine workers might be 600, 601 etc. Each type of contract records basic detail - the length of the contract if it's part time, name, address, social security number etc with some variations from model to model. The contract then ties in to a certain "convenio" or agreement. I think that there are standard agreements for most jobs but that if, for instance, I worked for Ford my Union would negotiate better conditions for me than the basic convenio for the job. In either case my contract model such and such would get most of its detail about sick pay, dismissal, holiday etc from the convenio.

So I went back to the asesor to ask to see the convenio that related to my contract and also to ask about my tax situation. I've been paying pay as you earn type tax but, because I only worked three months of the year I don't think I will actually have any tax to pay so I may be due a refund. It was a difficult conversation as the person who normally deals with our firm wasn't there and I was grappling with the concept of the contractual process as well as the Spanish. The woman who checked it out didn't understand why there were pay slips for June when my contract expired in May (!) and my question about seeing the convenio threw her all together. Yes she supposed there was a convenio but she had no idea where she could find a copy of it. She asked me to come back when our usual person was there and she put my various questions on a "Post it" to pass on to our person. I am pretty sure I will need to start again with our person as she will never have seen the "Post it".

Very Spanish. A very official looking process with very smart forms but the people who you expect to understand them don't really know much more than you despite handling these things all the time. There will, eventually, be a resolution but it will just take a few more visits.

ADSL

We have been offline, except for a very slow dial up connection for a couple of weeks now. When Ya.com let us down we ordered a connection from Telefonica (equivalent to BT in the UK). I rang them tonight to find out what was happening as we hadn't heard anything.

Nothing's happening said the man: I have no orders showing on my screen. Delivery is now promised for 20 June.

Victory

Bowing to public pressure (or so I am told) the winners of the election of 27 May joined with the runners up to form the majority group. The Mayor will be from the winning Partido Popular and the "Deputy Mayor" will be the front runner from the second placed Union Central Liberal. The coalition will have 9 of the 13 seats on the council.

So the stories about the briefcases full of money were untrue which is rather good to know. Maybe it's a sign of the (less corrupt) times.

Personal service

I was buying a book in the newsagents when my next door neighbour came in to buy some brown paper. She wanted to wrap some clothes for posting to the UK that her son had left behind on his recent visit. I helped my neighbour with the Spanish to buy the paper and tape and I explained why she wanted it to the people behind the counter.

They asked her if she would like them to wrap the clothes up for her.

Spaniards are still like that. Nice I thought.

Caga y vete

Albacete is one of the provinces that make up the Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha - Don Quijote country.

It's only 150kms from where we live now and Maggie may be interested in a job there so we went to have a cup of coffee.

Now Albacete is not an exciting place. The Blue Guide has it pretty much right when it says "A dull provincial capital in the centre of a flat, uninteresting, but fertile plain." I've been there three times and not been able to find anything much to do. The first and most memorable time a pal and I were there around Christmastime. A cold wind was whistling across that fertile plain and we spent the evening in a porn cinema as just about the only available refuge (an excuse that I've stuck to over the years).

Yesterday the sun was shining, we enjoyed a drink in a very pleasant bar with a literary theme, the set meal in the restaurant was passable, the tourist office person was pleasant enough and the shops and general ambience was nice. It was good too that as English speakers we seemed to have novelty value.

Oh and the porn cinema is now an arts cinema.

Stolen Moments

We have lost our Internet connection so it's been a bit difficult to Blog anything recently.

However, just to finish off the election stuff.

Basically we had a draw. There are 13 seats on the council. The PP got 5, UCL 4, PSOE 2, PSD 1 and BLOC 1. A right wing coalition of PP and PSD is quite possible as is a centre left coalition of UCL and PSOE. Six seats each. So Juan Carlos of the BLOC with just 400 votes holds the balance of power. If the coalitions go ahead and he chooses to join one or the other then a three party set up would gain power. Juan Carlos may even get to be Mayor for two of the four years that make up the term of office.

My local informant told me that briefcases of money were being offered and that he thought the PP would win. The PP apparently has more money than Ramon of the UCL.