Border hopping

I find borders and border towns strange places. Between Portugal and Spain any physical barriers have gone but it's a diffrent time and a different language. Between Spain and Morocco there seemed to be a World of difference just like passing from the US to Mexico.

Not content with one border in one day we travelled back from Ceuta to the mainland and then drove to La Linea where we parked the car and walked across the frontier to the UK.

I suppose Gibraltar is keen to prove its Britishness. There seemed to be more pillar boxes on Main Street than in the whole of Huntingdon. Red phone boxes were still in use, fish and chips are on sale every ten yards (none of that funny metres stuff by Gad) whilst the Bobbies wear pointed hats and not a trace of that Bat Utility Belt/Flack Jacket type stuff. Aah, the good old days!

It was a pleasant interlude though. I thought Maggie might weep for joy as she raced around M&S grasping clothes that she knew would fit. We were able to marvel at the funny bank notes we got from a hole in the wall machine using a UK card, we bought burritos in a boozer where they sold bitter, I got a pack of Hamlet cigars and we bought some of those Celebration chocolates as a gift for someone back in Alicante. Oh, and we had absolutely no language difficulties anywhere we went - everyone we met spoke English.

But Gib's not much like the UK really. It's hot for one thing, the cars are left hand drive and petrol and fags were definitely cheap. I suspect there are quite a lot of much more profound differences for those who stay for longer than a couple of hours. I did ask what time it was, by the way, just in case it was different to Spain - it wasn't.

A glimpse of another place

The taxi driver wasn't keen to slow down, let alone stop. The district was called El Principe, The Prince, "Muy peligroso, very dangerous," he said. It looked dodgy. Long lines of Moroccans crossing over the border into Ceuta and Spain and milling around the buildings that made up the sorry looking industrial estate on the Spanish side. There were lots of blokes camping out on the flat rooves of the factories. It looked as though they lived there at least for the moment. Who knows why. Apparently they cross the border to sell things "clothes and shampoo," said the driver.

We had asked to be taken to the fence that separates Spain from Morocco. The rich from the poor. It's a high, double line of barbed wire topped fencing with open moats around it. From time to time groups of would be immigrants storm the fence with scaling ladders built of twigs.The Guardia Civil and Moroccan Army beat them back - "defending" the southern border of Europe. Sometimes people die in the attempt.

There was a Guardia Civil post and a no entry sign as we got to the fence. The taxi driver asked if he could turn around in the restricted zone explaining he had English tourists on board. I jumped out and took a couple of photos. The Guardia told me no photos and I said okey dokey and we were away again.

I don't really understand why people have to storm the fence if they can get through the frontier legally - couldn't they get by the fence without too much hassle and then set about the difficult task of getting onto the mainland? I suppose, though, that lots of people who get to that fence won't be Moroccans but will be Africans who have walked across lots of borders ill,egally, heading hopefully for the euro zone. It didn't look like a hopeful place.

Golden Days

There wasn't much choice of accommodation in Ceuta. One of the options was the Parador but they are usually quite expensive. Then we noticed their Días Dorados offer - a 30% discount for older people.

And I qualified. My first ever old age related benefit.

Murphy, stronger than gravity

I'm sitting in the Parador in Ceuta. I have views over the Strait of Gibraltar. We are about 650kms from home. We have been waiting for Telefonica to install a phone line since late June and the engineer rang about ten minutes ago to say he was on his way. I didn't tell him we weren't there. I rang our neighbour to see if he could let the engineer in. He wasn't keen, I could tell, but sterling chap that he is he said he would. Who knows we may have a phone line by the time we get back to Europe.

South of Granada

This young chap had hair like Weird Al Yankovic, baggy shorts and big trainers. His mate was playing music from a computer and we were buying mango tequilas and mojitos. It's like that in Tarifa, the last landfall in Europe. Views over to Africa.

We were on our way to Africa, to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the northermost coast. When Spanish people mention Gibraltar just whisper Ceuta (or Melilla) and they'll change the topic of conversation. The Moroccans aren't too keen on the Spanish presence on their soil - it's just like the Spaniards with the Brits on Gibraltar.

Tarifa was heaving with people but the noticeable ones were the young ones, the beach bums, all tans and conversations about hot sticks. Every corner had someone playing a wok (honest) or trying to sell harem pants. And the place smells of cannabis and incense. It was remarkably expensive too. Those two drinks cost 14€ but the young man did give us a cocktail glass of sweeties. Very nice.

Downbeat

The pregon has done his stuff, he opened the 10 days of fiestas in Pinoso on Saturday evening by cutting the ribbon and turning on the lights just after he'd finished his turgid little speech.

Talking of crisis, financial crisis, is old hat in Spain. Every radio show I've heard this weekend has said something like "We don't want to talk about the crisis on this show but...." Not having money, huge unemployment, people losing their homes, deflation, apalling economic figures, banks pulling up the drawbridges - that's crisis - and it is everywhere here.

For Pinoso, with income from the marble quarries slashed, the local Town hall has no idea how to balance its books. Increasing income through increased local taxes is on the cards but cutting services, making people redundant and axing posts is something the local councillors have never had to do before and they don't want to do it now. Presumably the people they would have to sack would all be family members anyway! - so I suppose most of them are a bit worried about getting it in the neck from Aunt Inmaculada or Cousin Paco if they end up sacking young Manuel.

So, no bull fight this year. Too expensive. The lights in the street are less gaudy and there are fewer of them. The programme features no big name acts and even the programme itself, the paper version, is slimmer and less lavish. There are fewer stalls too. Presumably some of them have gone to the wall since last year.

My guess is that traditional fiestas in Spain were having a hard time before the crisis. Where we live would have been very isolated not very long ago. When the time came for Fiestas it would be the opportunity to buy new pots and pans for the house, to try some tasty tid bits of food, to drink too much, to have a laugh on the stalls, to eat out, to buy and show off new clothes, to dance, to sing, to run with bulls - to take a bit of time for yourself and for your family to do all those fun things that were denied to you most of the year - things miles away from your everyday existence. But it's not like that now is it? Carrefour and Mercadona have pots and pans and more exotic food than ever came to town with the fair. It's easy to drive to any number of shopping centres or hypermarkets in your car and it's easy to do all of the other things too. How can a ghost train set out in a dusty car park compete with the multi million Euro equivalent just 60 minutes away in Terra Mitica Theme park?

Car Booting again

We seem to be soaking up the Britishness of inland Alicante at the moment. Maggie is keen; We've eaten curries and had several drinks in English run places and I'm sure that Maggie would have had me at the auction or the quiz if I hadn't screwed my face and made those funny little gasping noises.

Anyway I've mentioned the car boot sales before. I was snooty about them in the beginning but as I saw the way that all sorts of nationalities took to the idea I realised that they were a real cultural export and not just a way to shift dodgy goods.

The local car boot sale used to be about five minutes away from our house. The sale was run as a partnership between my old boss and a chap who runs a successful local English language magazine. That partnership hit some difficulties so the magazine publisher found himself another site and made sure that it was squeaky clean in relation to local byelaws and suchlike before he opened it up again.

The sale is running on a trial basis at the moment, just once a month, so this was our first chance to go and have a nose around. There were probably as many stalls as at the old place but, because the site has a different, layout it didn't feel so busy. The goods were different too, real car boot stuff, the things from lofts, garages and jumble drawers rather than stuff bought in for the occasion.

Moors and Christians

There are so many Moors and Christians parades in the province that we rather take them for granted. But, with having a houseguest last week we roused ourselves from in front of the telly and went to watch the entry of the Moors in the town of Novelda.

Novelda has around 25,000 inhabitants and with that number they mounted a parade that lasted over three hours. The events celebrate the defeat of the Moors, the Muslim invader, by the home grown Christiams but it always seems to us that the Moorish groups have more members and better costumes. Each year the comparsas, that's the names for each group, prepare for the festival from one event to the next. Each comparsa has several sub groups that wear the same or a similar costume; these subgroups traditionally walk shoulder to shoulder through the streets. The costumes are incredibly detailed and must cost a fortune to produce - in fact there must be a whole industry built on pointed shoes, scimitars and bejewelled turbans. Moorish men used to black up but that is no longer politically correct and the cigars that they used to smoke seem to have gone too. Nonetheless the beards, fake or grown for the occasion, and the pot bellies remain. Women used to be an embellishment, usually dancing girls, but nowadays they often walk shoulder to shoulder with the men dressed in similar costumes or they form separate lines carrying weaponary of one sort or another.

Each comparsa hires a band for the parades. The bands come from all over the province. The noteworthy feature is the percussion section with huge "kettle drums" mounted on trollies and the music has a similar quality whatever the tune.

As well as the bands and the lines there are any number of variations. Horses canter and gallop in the spaces between lines often rearing up or doing that strange stepping walk, fire eaters do their thing and there are lots of dance troupes. In Novelda we had a group of maybe thirty people going by with hawks on their hands with the hawks flying to lures from time to time. There are several floats too, Often just with tiered seating for the "Carnival Queens" and their courtiers but with an infinite variety from gigantic mechanical beasts through to fantastic constructions and mobile platforms for living statues and other performances.

It was hard work just watching them go by for so long, tough on the feet and legs and with the temperature at midnight still at 36ºC. We thought our vantage point in the doorway of a bar had important strategic advantages! If it was hard work watching imagine what it must have been like for the men and women walking in heavy costumes, dancing the whole route orfilling their mouths with kerosene to blow fire time after time after time.

Big John

The weather in Culebrón remains warm. It's been up and down a bit, temperature wise, but at the moment we're a tad over 37ºC. When I've done the gardening the temperature doesn't seem to be too much of a hindrance so long as there is a cooling drink to hand. The sweat that dribbles into my eye sockets and then splashes onto the inside of my sunglasses to dry into salty smears makes precision work more difficult but there is always the compensation of feeling a bit like Big John Wayne wiping his forehead way out West.

We've just taken our house guest, John Leigh, to Novelda, a nearby town, where there is a very nice Art Nouveau house. When we arrived parking was dead easy because the town's fiesta is under way so all the shops and businesses were shut. Luckily the house was open. A bit of a bonus was that there was a bike race going on around the streets.

I've been on a bike once or twice in my life; they seem like hard work. The route is always uphill and every time there's a gale force headwind. Those cyclists must have been feeling the heat but, worse than that, for them no John Wayne compensation - I mean can you imagine the Duke in Lycra?

Telefonica - episode 84

"But you don't have a proper address," "What?" "You don't have a proper address so we've cancelled your order!"

That was the drift of a conversation with the phone company when I checked again today why we are still without either phone or Internet. So I made another order.

Five minutes ago the local phone engineer rang my mobile - "About this phone to install in Calle Garcia," "We're not in Calle Garcia, we're in Culebrón, number 5, near the goats" "Then you can't have what you've ordered, you can't have 6Mgb in Culebrón, you can only have 1Mgb" "Fine, that'll do." A voice cut into the conversation, presumably from Telefonica Central, "OK, we can modify the order."OK, bye." And the line went dead.

Is there a Telefonica van headed our way, will we still get the special offer price.

Stamped and approved

I had my meeting at the Town Hall Technical Office this morning to finalise the paperwork for the roof repair. It turned out my appointment was with the Councillor responsible for housing which may explain the delay in getting to see him. Anyway we met and he got the paperwork stamped as completed.

"All done?" I asked, "All done" he said. Somehow I doubt it - too easy, too quick. But what joy if it is, if we're done and dusted. Just Telefonica now!