Always someone worse off

They were doing a bit of building work in Pinoso next to this house when it fell down. Nobody was hurt but it has been a bit of a talking point.

Doleite

It must be nearly 30 years since I last signed on the dole but I did it today. It wasn't that difficult to be honest. I had to go to Elda which is some 25kms from home. That may have been a bit tricky if I didn't have a car as I think there are two buses a day.

I started at a Social Security office just to ask what the process was, whether it was worth while, how it would affect my health care etc. The woman who dealt with me was very pleasant though she sent me to the wrong office and gave me directions that had me wandering around miles from my final target.

The normal system in "official" Spanish offices is to take a deli counter number and wait till you're called. I did that in the next office, when I finally found it. There is hardly ever an information desk so you take your chance on being in the right place. Fortunately for me the security guard was either bored or inquisitive and asked me what I was up to. He told me I had to start in another office and gave me vague directions.

In office number three I registered as unemployed and I was told my next sign on date - three months away - and then sent, along with the appropriate forms back to the security guard office. He welcomed me as a long lost friend and told me what to do, where to wait etc. The process of applying for the money, about 70% of the average of the last six months pay packet, took about five minutes. And there I was, another statistic in the huge rise in Spanish unemployment figures over the past few months.

The offices were all relatively welcoming, none of the protective screens or fixed chairs I remember from similar offices in the UK, and nobody gave me any indication that they thought I was a scrounging foreigner which I had rather expected. I just hope all goes well with the new job in Ciudad Rodrigo and I never actually get around to receiving any of the money which I know from Maggie's experience, takes a long time to come.

One living room to another

I left Ciudad Rodrigo on Wednesday morning and travelled across Spain by bus. I left behind one living room in Maggie's flat and arrived to another in Culebrón. You have to guess which photo is which location. Oh, and there was no power in most of the Culebrón house so my first evening was spent, romantically, picking my way through rubble by torchlight.

I checked with my ex boss (I picked up my dismissal papers today from the accountant) and current builder as to why there was so little progress on the house and why it was in such a mess. It turns out that his foreman had, quite reasonably, downed tools and gone to his daughter, more or less in the middle of the job, when she was admitted to hospital with a serious case of food poisoning. But to add icing to the cake our neighbour has also gone to the Town Hall to complain about the work being done on our house. He is attempting to have the work stopped.

I've been to the Town Hall too and it seems unlikely he has much of a case but it's quite likely we're in for some pretty serious disruption if he manages to cause any sort of delay.

Clunk Click

One of Maggie's pals gave us a lift into town the other day. I noticed I was the only person who wore a seat belt. After an evening's drinking the same person drove home. I have no idea why I didn't walk.

Different behaviour. Sometimes when I say to a Spaniard about putting on their seat belt they tell me that the police never patrol the road they intend to use. It's the same with alcohol. Not the consequences for themselves or others but the possibility of being caught and fined.

Even more bizarre is their attitude to cars and children. In general Spaniards fuss over children; hair ruffling is a sport. But children standing inside cars, sometimes on the front passenger seat is widespread.

Just saying hello

As well as steak and kidney pudding I approve of all sorts of British customs. Stiff upper lip suits me very well. So when people in the UK suddenly started saying "Love you" as they said goodbye on the phone and began to hug people every time they met I felt a bit discomfited.

In Spain, when men greet, they shake hands. This I approve of; friendly but with an appropriate distance. With women it's cheek kissing. Now this I don't really like but at least there is a routine to it. Right cheek to right cheek first, left cheek to left cheek second. I do it clumsily, I fail to make the appropriate kissy kissy sound but I can just about manage it. Well most times.

Yesterday, we arrived in Ciudad Rodrigo after a couple of nights away from either home - stop overs in Toledo and Salamanca - where we were greeted by Maggie's landlady. I nearly knocked both of us out when something went wrong with the right cheek kissing business.

Carefully done

Just to add to the fun of the house being gutted a water pipe leading to our property sprang a leak. The hole was on the right side of the water meter (for us) so we rang up the team from the Town Hall who came and fixed it within a couple of hours. We no longer have a neat little "house" around our meter and there was quite a bit of rubble left behind but no leak.

Just a bit of moaning

The new roof is going on OK. The neighbour may have taken pity on us and hasn't been around to complain for nearly two weeks now though we decided against going to a village "bring food to share" event on Saturday coming just in case we bumped into him.

No it's just to moan about the state of what remains of the house. The Ecuadorian workmen, who work very much to Spanish "rules" are just so destructive. We have smashed doors, smashed tiles and lots of damage to incidental items like electrical wiring, hosepipes, wheelbarrows and in fact anything that gets in the way. They never cover anything or move it to one side. It just adds to the despair of living in filthy squalor.

The roof covering is nearly finished now, most of the tiles are in place though there is lots of cementing and plastering still to come. Today when we came home we found that they had stared to remove the old cement from the front of the house to put a different, and hopefully, better facing on the house. I was amazed what was underneath. I'd always presumed we lived in a stone shed but it looks as though the house is actually built from old bits of rubble!

There is no way that it will be complete before Maggie has to return to Ciudad Rodrigo ready to start work on 1 September.

Changing money - just say no!

I've recently been using an UK debit card to pull Euros from Spanish hole in the wall machines. The UK account is, obviously enough, in Sterling.

So I go through the process, push in the card, choose a language, what sort of transaction, how much etc. Eventually a screen message comes up that reads something like 300€ will cost you £245 in Sterling including commissions and fees. Do you wish to proceed? The obvious answer is "yes", of course I wish to proceed. If I were to say "no" the implication is that the transaction would be cancelled. Nonetheless the better answer is "no".

When you answer "no" the transaction continues anyway and the conversion between Pounds and Euros works in your favour because you buy rather than sell or is it the other way around? And we are not talking pennies here. The average rate offered on the screen is around £245 to buy 300€ but the actual cost has averaged out at around £237 when I have answered "no". That's eight quid a pop in the bank's favour.

If I didn't know that banks were honourable and upstanding institutions constantly striving to improve services for their customers I'd be ready to classify this as a bit of a dirty trick designed to confuse people exchanging money abroad.

Solar panels and vines

We were in Jumilla today. Now Jumilla is over the border into Murcia the next region along but what applies there almost certainly applies here.

Jumilla is in the middle of its fiesta to celebrate the grape harvest. On Saturday everyone will be drenched in red wine but not yet. Instead we saw a display of decorated floats.

I was expecting the usual carnival floats but these were quite different. Each trailer was being used for a display of some sort. One was about the narrow gauge railway (so ugly, slow and noisy it was named after the cicada or chicharra) others showed the processes related to the traditional main crops of the region - grapes for wine, olives for oil and wheat to give both grain and the grass used for weaving baskets, shoes etc. Most were a tribute to the "old ways" but two featured vineyards giving way to fields full of solar panels to generate electricity.

One display had a series of notices saying that the wine industry was under threat, that the only answer was to introduce new varieties (to compete with the Southern Hemisphere wines) by grafting on new strains but that the most profitable graft was to rip up the vines and plant solar panels.

Odd really, Maggie and I always think the solar panels are good, there are some going up just past our Bodega in Culebrón for instance, but it just shows there are two sides to every story.

Life goes on

The workmen didn't turn up yesterday so nothing happened roofwise. Today they were back and we now have complete cover over the whole house and the steel mesh that forms the key for the layer of cement that will go on next is also in place. They've also demolished some more internal walls. The neighbour dispute has settled down even if it hasn't gone away.

Considering all we have to do all day is sit around in the sun or go wherever we please life seems quite hard. We're camping in our own house, we're dirty most of the time, everything we own is covered in dust and a bit inaccessible so that jaunts into town or anywhere else come to that seem a bit pointless - as though we are killing time rather than doing anything positive. There are fiestas in nearly every nearby town, ther's the Expo in Zaragoza that we intended to go to but instead we're staying here and haemorrhaging cash. The idea of enjoying ourselves till 2am and then getting out of the way for the workmen at 8am doesn't hold much attraction somehow and just clearing off seems like a dereliction of duty.

It's lovely weather too we should be really enjoying ourselves, cool drinks on the terrace, a trip to the coast. But with the temperature hovering in the mid 30s (at 11am last night it was still 28 degrees and down in Murcia this afternoon the car thermometer read 41 degrees) it can be a bit enervating without easy access to shade and cool drinks.

We still have tea though so it's not all bad.

Step 7: I hate to be right

The tiles that form the platform started to go on today. There is now a weatherproof covering over about three quarters of the house. Good news eh? But now for the bad.

Following the problem with the neighbour yesterday our architect came to have a look. Basically he said that the neighbour had no room for complaint and that we should just keep going. But when the neighbour came to his house this evening it got nasty. I managed not to raise my voice or swear but I did walk away. The neighbour said he would prefer to talk to Maggie as I was unreasonable. A few minutes later Maggie walked away; she too is unreasonable. We couldn't get him to say what he wanted us to do. We left it that he was going to go to the planning authorities on Monday morning and get the work stopped.

Maggie and I were in the slough of despair. I went into town to buy cigars. Nothing like inhaling smoke to make me cough and feel better. Whilst I was there I decided that I had to try again. If the man did go to complain all I could foresee was extra expense and potentially months of trying to live in the shell of the house.

By the end of the conversation we had a truce, we shook hands, I even managed a feeble joke that he laughed at. He wants a column building to support the beam - stupid and unnecessary but doable - and, of course he wants his interior decoration sorting out.

I was quite proud of myself.