News and the ability to travel

This morning we were in Pinoso and we bumped into our pals Paul and Dee as we bought rice crackers. We talked of fused spurs, model making lathes and beauty products. The inconsequential chatter between friends.

Paul and Dee live in Culebrón and, last weekend, they were surprised to find a workgang outside their house planting trees. The local TV was there. A regular little party. Paul and Dee tried to get in touch with us so we could join in the fun.

Tonight, at the village hall, with the neighbours, I'm hanging around, feeling lost, inspecting the toes of my trainers as I wait for the meeting to start. There are four or five women behind the coffee bar and they're talking about los pinos, the pines - pines and trees are synonomous here; if it's a tree it's a pine.

The matter was raised in the full meeting. Apparently nobody had said anything about planting trees before. It just happened. The farmer who can no longer get his tractor past the pines to work his land is a little peeved. The meeting formulated optional action plans.

It made me think. A stray comment in the superrmarket and, just for once, I was in the loop. Now I can go back to Paul and Dee and add something to their story.

No wonder the Archers, an everyday story of country folk, has run for so long!

Barking at the moon

I've done it before. I don't quite know why. Inma, the "Mayor" of our little village sends me an email - "There's a meeting tomorrow in the Village Hall to talk about the summer fiesta, it would be good to have you there." Like a fathead I go. Maggie has more sense.

I knew what it would be like. Twenty or so people. Plastic chairs. The sound echoing off the tiles and bare walls of the village hall. The side conversations, when things get heated, usually in Valenciano and always shrill and loud. Me, wanting to say something, having something to say but not tonight. Tonight, I had to be content with formulating the ideas in my mind, unsure of how to express, in Spanish, what I wanted to say.

They managed without me though.

The problem is money. The village fiesta, an event in honour of our Patron Saint has always been sponsored by the local Town Hall. Last year the Town Hall, strapped for cash could only find 2,500€ to support the village Neighbourhood Assocaition. This year it's down to 900€ and that amount is still a budget figure rather than cash in the bank. The town's quarry, the largest in Europe in terms of the tons of stone dug out, just isn't providing the revenue it has for ever so many years. Pinoso is grinding to a halt. A Town Council, used only to spending, doesn't know what to do.

Back at the village hall we decided to ask each house in the village to support the fiesta to the tune of just 10€. Add that to the 500€ plus in the accounts and the vermouth evening, the gachamigas cooking, the football games, the band for Saturday evening, the childrens games, the chocolate party and the church parade (including flowers and live music) should be safe. Reducing the brochure to an A4 sheet was the work of seconds. Not so the evening meal. We went back and forth, we talked about the large families being excluded by the price. We talked about cheaper menus, about cutting out the booze, the coffee, the pudding - but good sense won out. We're going to have a proper sit down meal with all the trimmings - waiters and everything.

Looks as though there won't be any poor people at the meal then.

International Day Against Noise

I didn't hear about this till it was too late. April 28th was the International Day Against Noise

The organisers of the day were very upset about the noise levels in Spain. They say that Spain is the second noisiest country in the World, after Japan.

I've heard that statistic before, in fact I've quoted it to Spaniards when we've been laughing about the noise levels in some Spanish bar or other. I wonder though how and where you measure noise levels? Is the noise level in a country, say Spain, made up of averaging out the noise levels in the centre of Madrid and atop Mulhacen or do only places with at least so much noise count?

It is absolutely true that Spanish people know how to make plenty of noise. Keeping quiet does not come easily or naturally to them. Their mopeds can be heard for miles. Their discussions about the qualities of this or that recipe carry through the walls of most flats. On the other hand I have often parked up somewhere to take a photo or to simply stare into the haze of a summer's day and been struck by the almost absolute silence of Spain - humming insects or the noises of the countryside toasting maybe but no human activity save my own.

Maybe those International Noise people should get out of town more often.

I declare

I've just done my tax return. It didn't take me long. The tax people, usually referred to as Hacienda, send me a document through the post that says what they think I owe them or what they think they owe me. If I agree all I have to do is go to their webpage and confirm the details and that's it done for another year.

If I hadn't agreed then I could have changed the details online and confirmed those. I presume that, after a change, some tax clerk or maybe a computer programme, checks the changes and, if they seem reasonable, the confirmed but altered details are given the OK and processed.

The first year I had to do this I went to a local accountant who charged me a few euros, 30€ as I remember, to complete the original form and get me into the tax system. Once I existed on the Hacienda database they began to log any salary and tax payments made by my employers or by the state unemployment people so that they could calculate whether I had over or under paid at the end of the tax year. The tax year is the calendar year.

It doesn't have to be done online. Accountants can deal with the paperwork as can the local tax offices and I think that banks can too. It's obviously more difficult for someone with a business or with multiple income streams but for someone with finances as simple as mine it's dead easy.

Maggie got notification that her draft was available online via a text message to her mobile phone which included the reference number to give her access to the online draft.

Best of all they reckoned they owed me a few euros.

Yes, yes, yes, yes - No

The story of the replacement of the roof of our house is a long and soporific one.

When we finally had the note from the architect last year to say the work was completed to his satisfaction we took it to the Town Hall. The paperwork was stamped. "Is that it, is it all done?" I asked. The Councillor who stamped the paperwork said it was all done. Our architect had said it was all done.

But I didn't trust either of them.

On the original notification of planning permission there was a clause to say that we needed a certificate of "First Habitation." Normally that's the certificate you apply for when you build a new house to show it's safe and to code and suchlike so you can get water and electric connected. We've lived in the house for five years so, obviously, it wasn't the first habitation of the house.

"Right," said the chief chappie in the planning office, "you need a certificate of first habitation, well that's what we call it - it isn't like a certificate of first habitation - after all you have water and electric and stuff - but that's what we call it. You need to bring me a bunch of papers, here's a list, once you've done that I'll pop out to see it and then we'll issue the certificate."

Being Easter the office is closed so we've asked someone to sort it out on our behalf.

Reading this is better than bedtime Horlicks.

Neighbours

My mum has told a joke, on and off, for the past forty years. It concerns a little girl who has been given a watch and a bottle of scent for her birthday. For days the girl pesters friends and strangers alike to look at her watch and smell her perfume. Her parents finally forbid her to mention the gifts. When the Vicar calls for tea she can contain herself no longer "If you hear a little tick and you smell a little smell it'll be me."

That was it.

The goats announce themselves with farting. Honest; you hear the hooves like the rustling of leaves in the breeze and then farts - loud, rasping, incessant farting. These goats are our neighbours, they live just down the road. If you hear a little rustle and hear a little farting it'll be the goats.

For anyone who's interested the breed is Murciana Granadina.

Shelter from the storm

We've been in Spain a while now and we've seen lots of Easter processions. The routine varies from town to town and procession to procession but the basic formula is the same. Individual squads dressed in pointed Klu Klux Klan hats and heavy, floor sweeping robes, escort carved, blood stained Christs and religious banners through the streets to solemn music based on slow, repetive drum beats. It can be impressive stuff but as it happens every night of Holy Week with extra processions to move this or that statue from one spot to another it soon drags as a spectator sport.

My procession count this year has been low so I went, for the first time, to see the midnight procession that marks the start of Good Friday here in Pinoso.

The town was pitch black. The street lights were off. The house shutters were down. The only light came from rogue phone boxes and bank machines. No cars were moving. People walking to the procession trod quietly with none of the normal chatter. Nobody was smoking. I took up my place in a side street and only after a moment did I realise that the procession was already moving past me. The drummer and his muffled, one beat every five seconds, was already gone. The black pointed hoods and black robes rolled silently by.

I had my camera but I was rather relieved when the autofocus, autoflash settings couldn't come to grips with the totally dark streets and black clothes. It seemed wrong to take snaps somehow. Amongst the silent watchers a young man talked too loud, on purpose, maybe to impress a girl. His friends left him high and dry. A mobile phone spurted to life but was silenced mid tone whilst a big, bloody Jesus on a cross lit with subtle blue light, swayed past on the backs of black hooded bearers.

Behind the cross came the silent crowd; hundreds of people of all ages, nearly everyone with a candle, Lots of spectators stepped off the pavement to join the procession. I began to feel uncomfortable for watching. Fifteen or maybe twenty minutes and it was all over.

As I walked back to my car I saw a bloke lighting up, a family walking in my direction were giggling and chatting. The night was crackling back to life in tiny little ways.

Please, I'm thirsty

We've just been out for a drink in Arrondias. Now you'd think getting a drink would be easy peazy for old hands like us but not a bit of it.

All over Asturias they drink cider. It's like scrumpy, a bit cloudy and 6% alcohol. It's not like Woodpecker or Strongbow because it doesn't have bubbles. Obviously that won't do. Cider should have a bit of a head.

In the first bar I asked for a beer, Maggie was on the wine. Over in the corner a couple of blokes were using the WiFi Internet and drinking cider. The cider comes in 70cl bottles like wine and on top of the bottle there was a sort of contraption a bit like a soda siphon that made a whirring sound and dispensed the frothed up cider. The web surfers only ever used the machine to dispense a couple of mouthfuls into their glasses at any time.

Bar number two. We ordered cider. The barmaid poured out a decent mouthful into the bottom of a glass by lifting the bottle above her head whilst she held the glass somewhere below her knees. The spillage, if there was any, was minimal. That was how we drank the bottle. When the glaases were empty she'd come back and pour a drop more into each of our glasses. Sometimes we had to wait a while till she wasn't too busy to help us quench our considerable thirst.

Bar number three. I was on the beer and Maggie on the wine.

Double egg, beans and chips please

We're not in Culebrón at the moment. We're in Asturias and it is raining quite a lot. Asturias is on the North coast of Spain just a bit across and down from Cornwall. We came to have a look at the village of Lastres because a TV programme we like, Doctor Mateo, based on the British TV series Doc Martin is filmed there. Lastres was a bit grotty and the few restaurants that there were were remarkably pricy. Instead we had lunch in Colunga just a few kilometres along the coast.

We had Fabada Asturiana which is a bean stew with black pudding, spicy blood sausage and a fatty bacon like substance. We should have drunk cider along with it but I stuck to water as I was driving.

Everywhere in Spain boasts some sort of traditional food and whenever tourists turn up in the region they ask for the local speciality. So, in Valencia you'd order a paella, in Extremadura it would be migas (breadcrumbs and fatty pork), in Galicia you have no choice but to eat either octopus or pimientos de Padrón (small salted fried peppers) and so it goes on all around Spain. Now this is fine if you pop out for lunch to Segovia one day and want suckling pig but if you are wandering around a province it can become wearing to be offered the same food in every restaurant you go into day in day out.

Luckily we've only got another day to go here so we can eat the other speciality - chorizo in cider and then we're off to Soria, or at least we think we're off to Soria where, as I remember, it's another sort of bread and sausage based dish served with fried eggs.

Dead in their beds

We moved into this house on 1 April 2005. Today I put up our very first smoke alarm. It was an advert on British TV the other night that made me think to get one. I'd have got more but they don't seem to be readily available in the shops

Smoke alarms and carbon monoxide monitors aren't exactly conspicuous fittings but I'm not sure that I've ever seen one in a private house here. Certainly there are none of those publicity campaigns to persuade people to buy and maintain them. It's a strange difference.

Perhaps Spanish houses don't burn or maybe because the majority of the windows in the majority of Spanish houses are barred people prefer to die in their beds silently slain by smoke, rather than to die scorched and screaming pinned flat against unyielding iron bars.

Maggie's take

I just told Maggie the story about the King and the hearing aid shop. She wondered if the shop assistant would take the call from her mother and leave the King waiting just like they do every other customer.