Trying and failing

When we first came to Spain I thought I'd join a political party, then a couple of years later when my Spanish was perfect I'd get elected as a councillor.

Something went wrong somewhere but I did set out to my first meeting of the PSOE tonight. As I approached the door I was rehearsing my introduction, always interested in politics, member of the Labour Party in the UK, Union official, leaflet experience blah, blah. When I got there the chairperson welcomed me, "We're just off to eat, the meeting's over really, just the committee tonight, we haven't got this seasons meetings planned yet, come back in a couple of weeks time".

I retired.

Ambivalence and other breeds

Spaniards are odd about animals. It's very usual to see little dogs being cuddled and nursed by young and old alike - Jack Russells, Yorkies and Chihuahuas for instance. Huskies are very popular, apparently because they have blue eyes, and those dogs that look like pigs are big amongst the tough young man set. Yet, equally it's almost accepted practice that when summer comes and the family disappear to their holiday destination the dog is put out on the street and left to fend for itself.

Our next door neighbour keeps a couple of Boxers in his back yard and he only pops up to feed them every now and again. Their world is a small enclosure until he drops by for an occasional weekend or during the couple of weeks in the summer when he's here and the dogs get to go out for a run.

Castration or sterilisation of animals is considered to be a form of unacceptable mutilation. Apparently better to abandon the puppies or kittens to an uncertain future wandering the streets or country roads. Dead dogs and cats along the roadside are a common site. Dogs chained up with the earth trodden hard in a circle around the central post are everywhere - not pets, not guard dogs - more like prisoners.

Brits, of course, have a reputation for being animal lovers and it is not unusual for some Brit who has a few dogs to find puppies abandoned where they will find them - often in the nearest rubbish skip. I know several people with at least three dogs only one of which they "chose" to keep.

Our cat Eduardo was born in a friends house when the mother dropped by for a snack and a warm place to give birth. Our second cat, Harold, was living wild near the bins by a local farmhouse when he popped by to see if there was anything on the tele and even now hasn't quite decided whether he prefers to sleep on our settee or down by the goat shed.

These are our cats: Eduardo is on the left, Harold on the right

RENFE

My old pal Samagita (her Buddhist name) has been staying with me for the last few days. She travelled from the UK to Alicante by train and she was full of praise for the RENFE (Spanish State Railway) website and service.

Last week I booked a couple of tickets for my employers to travel to Madrid, by train, to go to a trade show there. I phoned a central booking number, they gave me a reference for the tickets. My boss collected the tickets from our nearest train station. Again it seemed like a good system.

This morning though I got a message from them to say that the tickets had been booked for the wrong dates. Saturday out, Sunday back rather than Friday out and Saturday back. I am absolutely certain that the booking was made correctly and that when the operator read the details back to me they were correct too. But I'll obviously be in the doghouse with them for having got the bookings wrong. They had to travel in the buffet car!

Being Benny Hill

I rather envy Maggie and her new life in Ciudad Rodrigo. Amongst other things she is going to have to speak Spanish, she has no choice as there are very few Brits to speak to there. Here in Alicante there are lots of us so I speak more English than Spanish.

My struggle to speak Spanish well has been going on for three years now. I get by OK but I mutter and stumble and I still worry about "having a go".

When Spaniards pronounce Rs, particularly at the beginning of a word or when there are two Rs together they roll them mightily. I can't make the sound and my Rs are often taken as Ls. So, for instace, trying to spell the surname Martin on the phone the other day the person I was speaking to was quite sure that I was spelling Maltin and my R for Rome (R de Roma) had her asking what Loma was!

Benny Hill used to do a skit where he pretended to be Chinese and confused Ls with Rs "There's a gleat election coming up". Trouble is I don't get the laugh.

Older than The Bay City Rollers

Alan Crawford and I met before the bay City Rollers were a phenomenon.

He's the one in the pinky coloured shirt. He's in Salamanca at the moment doing a Spanish course for a couple of weeks. Because Maggie and I were in Ciudad Rodrigo, just 90kms away, it was a good opportunity to drink a beer, say hello and get footsore together.

John Moore is the one with short trousers and a beard. He was our next door but one neighbour when Maggie and I first moved to Culebrón and he still lives close by. John came out to see Maggie and me in Ciudad Rodrigo partly as a bit of a jaunt but mainly to provide me with a taxi home. Lovely gesture.

The other one is me. I think there must be something wrong with the camera angle. I'm sure my gut's not that large.

Bank Machines

Just like in the UK there are national banks and building societies as well as lots of regional ones in Spain. The "bank" accounts we have are both with smallish regional cajas, a sort of bank cum charitable financial institution.

When we were in Ciudad Rodrigo there weren't any branches of our banks so we used the bank machine of another bunch affiliated to the same network of cash machines. There are three big networks of ATMs and if you use a different network the transaction charges can be very high, up to 6€.

So we pushed our card in a hole in the wall and asked for 300€, I got the receipt but no money. There was an "incident" phone number so I rang them - "No worry" said the man on the phone, "bit of a hiccup in the network the money will go back into your account in a while". Four hours later I rang back because there was still no money. "Odd" he said "you'd better pop into the bank on Monday when it re-opens". I played hell, mumbled about them stealing my money etc., the man agreed. Bit disarming that.

On Monday the bank knew all about it "No worry" they said "it's being credited and should show up tomorrow". The money isn't back yet and I'm going to have to chase it.

But the question is what's to stop the bank simply saying I have the money? The receipt says I have the money. I'm relying on the bank's internal audit processes. I can't prove that I didn't have the cash, I can only rely on them agreeing that they never gave me the cash. I have a bad feeling about this.

The Parador in Ciudad Rodrigo

Paradores are a chain of state owned hotels dotted throughout Spain. Their original purpose was to promote tourism in different parts of Spain. Many of them are old converted buildings such as castles or monasteries whilst others are modern and purpose built but usually in a great location. Their restaurants serve good quality food and promote local cuisine and a nice little touch is that lots of the serving staff wear local traditional costume

Paradores can be a bit of a mixed bag: sometimes the service in the bars is awfully slow, sometimes the rooms are a bit disappointing but I've always felt that the friendliness of the staff and their courteous style nearly always outweigh any other failings.

It was Maggie's birthday on Saturday and John Moore was doing me a huge favour by driving me back to Culebrón, so I suggested that I buy them both a meal in the Parador.

John's a vegetarian and Spain is not a good country for veggies. When we enquired of the Restaurant Manager if she had any suitable food she came back with "Of course!, even vegetarians have to eat". It was good do. The food was much better than average restaurant fare, if not great, the ambience was lovely, the staff were friendly without being over familiar and it felt like an event rather than a refuelling stop. It wasn't even particularly expensive at 100€ for the three of us though we did get the coffee and brandy at a bar around the corner.

Alone again - naturally

Maggie has now started her job in Ciudad Rodrigo. We went over there last Wednesday to sort out her contract and rent her a flat. We'd done all that by Thursday evening and she moved into the flat, just by the convent of Santa Clara, on Saturday.

She started work at 9am on Monday morning and by turning up five minutes early she was there to see the headteacher arrive, on the stroke of nine, to unlock the school for the first time in two months. It didn't look as though any cleaners or caretakers had been there before him. The photo shows her walking by the school; it looks busy doesn't it?

She will be teaching English to 3, 4 and 5 year olds - a new age group for her - but she seemed happy with the first impresssion of her colleagues and the organisation of the project.

Later the same afternoon I said goodbye to Maggie and drove back to Culebrón with our friend John Moore who had come to have a look at Ciudad Rodrigo. I arrived in our empty house at 11.30pm at night to be greeted by both cats.

Maggie will have no cats to keep her company aand she will be working in a totally Spanish environment. I bet she has a whale of a time without me!

Friends call

Our friend, Claire Morrison, owns a rather splendid looking Mercedes soft top. Claire allows her husband, John, to drive the car from time to time.

As a bit of a trip they decided to use the car to travel from their home in Cambridgeshire to their holiday home in Altea just up the coast from us.

First they travelled from Huntingdon to Portsmouth then they caught the ferry to Bilbao. On the way to Altea they stopped off in Pamplona, Zaragoza, Teruel and Requena.

After a couple of weeks in Altea they packed the car and set off for Cuenca, Toledo, Madrid, Burgos and Madrid.

We saw them a couple of times during their visit but as they set out for the homeward leg of their journey their first stop was here, in Culebrón. They said they wanted to say goodbye. I did notice though that John had left a little space in the tightly packed car and he was very quick to get across to our local bodega and buy 18 bottles of wine.

Two birds, one stone - I wonder?

Beyond belief

Back in May I got myself a Certificado de Registro de Ciudadano de la Unión, the piece of paper to prove you are resident in Spain; Maggie tried to do the same thing a few days later but was thwarted at every turn. Today, finally, we got around to having another go.

The usual drill for getting paperwork at the Police Station in Elda is to turn up around 7.30am, get yourself a ticket, just like Sainsbury's deli counter, and then hang about till your number is called. Today we were late but we thought we might as well give it a go, it is August after all and everything is dead quiet. There was a huge queue. We stood there looking lost but I pushed in front of everyone to ask if it were worth waiting. As I dithered a woman at a desk said "Any foreigners waiting?", I said we were, I went and got Maggie, she handed over her paperwork and within 3 minutes we had the certificate.

Believe me this is a remarkable thing.

Frolicking in the shower

As we drove away from Jumilla last night we were amused by groups of young people using the car washes to hose each other down.

We'd been to see the festival of the grape harvest. I'd presumed that this fiesta stretched back in time to hardy Spanish peasants celebrating the start of the harvest. But none of it. As I've been searching for photos it turns out that the local bodegas set up the fiesta in 1972 as a tourist attraction and attract tourists it does.

The streets heave with young people. Older people generally cower away from the passing floats. White is a good colour to wear. It colours up a treat with red wine. Nothing wrong with wearing a traditional swirly skirt and a white blouse (better if you're a woman) or black trousers, white shirt and blue cummerbund (apparently suitable for both sexes though probably traditionally male). Both sexes can wear the alpargatas with high ankle laces (they're the correct footwear for trading grapes). Old clothes are good too, shorts, anything you can rip and cover in wine. Young men seem to be quite keen on ripping the shirts the young women wear as well as their own T shirts. The torn clothes, drenched in wine are hurled into the air. People swim in the wine. People pour wine over their heads. People on the floats pour wine on the crowd from plastic metre cubes brimming with nasty, cheap, early harvest wine.

So everyone is pushing and shoving and drinking and jumping and singing and bawling. Amazingly no vomiting or fighting though. At least we didn't see any. We did see a lot of staggering.

And afterwards they go back to their cars and pour cold water over themselves, or go to the municipally provided showers or pop down the car wash at the local garage. It doesn't matter so long as they can change their clothes and get on with the fiesta