Take It Easy With A Cadbury's Creme Caramel

Simple things do have a habit of becoming complicated.

I ordered some jeans from an online shop in Poland. Dodgy or what? But in fact the English company handled the credit card transaction without problems, the Polish firm sent the jeans, the German carriers got them to Spain but the Spanish carrier couldn't find our house. I was able to check this relatively easily on a mixture of Polish, English and Spanish websites. When I say relatively easily we're probably talking an hour from start to finish.

All I need to do is to ring the Spanish delivery firm and sort out the pickup but none of the various websites involved in the order tell me which local office is handling the delivery. I took the coward's way out of writing an email to the carriers national office with the various reference codes and the like to ask which office I should contact. That saved the difficulty of a telephone conversation. With spell and grammar checking add another 20 minutes. Then there's just the phone call and the waiting in for the delivery van.

During the process of changing the roof, the already chipped bath enamel received fresh wounds in several places. As Maggie gleefully pointed out it won't be long before a stroke or whatever has one or both of us leaning on a zimmer or riding in a chair (I think she's betting on it being me rather than her.) She thought, and I agree, that changing the bath for a walk in shower was a good idea. We've also been having some problems with the flow and temperature of the water and a couple of other minor plumbing problems so we thought a plumber could sort the lot without too much difficulty. We even talked about installing solar powered hot water but blanched at the price and complexity. Anyway the plumber said he could do most of the jobs but that we'd need a builder for some of the work.

Does 2,500€ sound expensive to you for ripping out an existing bath and replacing it with a shower? It sounds more than we have whether the price is reasonable or not. So dealing with a plumber turned into dealing with a plumber and a builder and now we're going to have to find another builder to give us another quote as well as having to put off the first builder. All simple, all everyday but as well as the usual hassle there's always the language hurdle too. Smashing

Thanks to the Irish

Maggie thought it would be more entertaining in a Spanish bar than to sit at home and watch the football. I wasn't keen but the clincher was her offer to drive.

It was a scrappy game, none of the back and forth of Ghana and Uruguay, none of the precision of Germany whupping Argentina but in the end we put it away and one nil is as good as twenty nil in a knockout competition.

The bar was a bit subdued and there were as many expats as Spaniards but at half time a group of Northern Irish turned up and they made so much noise that the game seemed much more exciting.

Germany eh?

Let's ignore the 4.26 pints

We have a very sophisticated pool. Really it's an old irrigation tank painted white and blue. We fill it with water using a garden hose and hope that the water doesn't become too noxious with dead insects, rotting vegetation and the secretions from sweaty bodies over the summer.

Personally I'm not too keen on water: fine for car washing and making tea but every time I see people swigging the insipid stuff in the streets I'm reminded of my mother's admonitions about drinking from bottles. I even wonder about all those lorries full of all those plastic bottles travelling all that distance when the stuff comes gushing out of taps all over the place. The idea of immersing myself in it falls quite a long way behind plucking the small hairs from my ears and nostrils as a form of fun. Maggie though seems keen to be able to get cold and wet from head to foot every now and again.

We've poured 15.2m³ of water into the tank over the last couple of days or 3,343 gallons if you prefer. If we'd filled it with 15,200 litre bottles of Font Vella water bought from Corte Inglés that would have cost around 8,500€. Lucky then that we bought it from the local water supplier for 6.84€ - a substantial saving.

Gender violence

55 women died in Spain in 2009 at the hands of their husbands, lovers or ex lovers. 2009 was better than 2008 when 76 died. By the end of April this year 23 more women were dead through the same cause.

It was easy to find those figures because the number of deaths is a repetitive theme of Spanish news reports as are programmes about stopping the violence, support for victims etc. I tried to find the equivalent UK numbers but the emphasis in the UK is on the whole range of violence against women rather than the number of murders. I saw a couple of reports that suggest the recent figures have between 104 and 120 deaths per year.

I read on a local website that there was going to be a demonstration outside the Town Hall in Pinoso to highlight the violence against women so I thought I'd go and take part. The people who were organising it seemed a little surprised that I was there and didn't quite know what to do with me. There were only about 20 of us all told. When the time came I stood there, observed the five minutes of silence for the victims and left. No photos unless someone else took one of us.

016 is the helpline.

Digital certificates

The normal way to do something official, like change the address on your driving licence or pay your water bill here in Spain is to go and stand in a long queue, usually the wrong queue, and wait to be turned down because you lack an essential bit of paper such as your mother's birth certificate.

Things change though and Spaniards increasingly use the Internet to get official jobs done. Most government type websites require that users have some sort of digital certificate. Now, to be honest I don't really know what a digital certificate/signature is and I can't raise the enthusiasm to find out from Wikipedia. I think that it's a bit of code that websites swop with individual computers, a bit like a blind date, if the two click then splendid but, if not, no more conversations.

For lots of Spaniards this digital identity business is dead easy because their ID cards now carry a chip - bung the card in a card reader and you're in business. For we foreigners it's a bit more complicated. The usual form is that you go to some issuing body, prove that you're who you say you are and they then provide you with a system for getting the code onto your computer. When I did it the first time, a couple of years ago with the local tax collection agency they gave me a floppy disc. This week my bank just gave me a couple of passwords and a website address. Neither of the certificates worked though.

Official Spanish websites often provoke one of the various "Whoaa, careful!" warnings depending on which browser I'm using. They say something like  - this site has not returned the sort of certificate we expected, it's probably a fraud, if I were you I'd abandon the computer and go and get a cup of tea.

It only struck me this morning that probably the two things, faliure of the certificates and the security warnings, are related. I wonder if Spanish websites are built differently to everyone elses?

It's good to know that Spain is modernising her traditions. Once upon a time it was the chain smoking clerk who sent you away for having the wrong certificate now it's some jumped up little algorithm.

Life in the country

There are a lot more insects. Flying insects, crawling insects, insects that aren't insects, just beasties. Beasties that sing and jump and fly and bite. They particularly enjoy biting Maggie so that she comes out in lumps.

We're back in Culebrón; we packed most of the flat into the back of Maggie's Mitsubishi yesterday afternoon but, thanks to the generosity of our landlords, we were able to leave the larger items like the telly, tables and chairs in the flat ready for when we go back in September.

Maggie was badly affected by it all. She started singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" apparently inspired by the line from the song - "I'm coming home, I've done my time." She seemed very glad that term was finally over.

As always it's cooler here than on the coast because we're some 600 metres above sea level or just a bit short of 2,000 feet in old money. Nothing noticeable, temperature wise, during the day - we left 33ºC behind and arrived to about 29ºC -  sunny and warm in both places. In the evening though the difference was quite marked, down at 16ºC here whereas it hasn't dropped below 20ºC in Cartagena for weeks. I considered a pullover.

Nice to be back though.

Summertime

Summer will arrive in Spain at 1.28 this afternoon. I always find the precision of the reports amusing in a country where things don't often run to time. The prediction is for a hot, dry summer.

I saw the sun go down on Sunday evening, it dipped below the hills at about 9.50pm. This morning, unfortunately, I was there to see it rise again and that was at 6.10am so, about, seven hours and twenty minutes of darkness at the time of the year when the days are as long as they get.

A glimpse of an everyday past

Petrer, situated beside Mount Cid and alongside the Puça rivulet had been, until well into the 20th Century, a town with a distinctly rural character dedicated, principally, to agriculture. The streets were of compacted earth and the houses still had cat flaps and stables. The success of the wine harvest , or not, was at the grace of "The Virgin of the Remedy." In the squares and plazas were public fountains where the women filled their water jugs. The markets were held in Dalt Square and in the Altico district were the workshops of the families who earned their living from ceramics and where the shoe makers worked on their porches. Everything had it's season in that town and here, in this museum, we have the tools, instruments, objects and images to stir memories of those times.

Yesterday I got a text message on my phone, in the local Valenciano language from Petrer Town Hall to publicise a theatrical walk through the history of Petrer, at least that's what I think it said. It sounded OK so we went along. We were there by 11.10am for the advertised 11am start, well early by normal Spanish standards. But not a sign, not a sniff. Quiet as a quiet place.

As it happened there was a small  museum in the nice little square where the walk was supposed to gather so we went in there. The piece at the start of this entry is a translated version of one of their signs. I thought it was an excellent spot, very modest really but well laid out, well labelled and well worth half an hour of my time

Speaking googledygook

Have you ever tried to talk someone through a computer problem down the phone? Always, without fail, there is some difference between your machine and theirs. You're on Explorer 8 they're on 6, you're on Vista, they're on XP; not huge differences but just enough to cause the novice computer user some extra difficulty.

The language is difficult too, phrases like click on, push the orangey coloured button, go to the little icon in the top left hand corner just above the navigation bar etc. make perfect sense as they leave your mouth but totally confuse the recipient.

I've just had one of those conversations; forty minutes of one of those conversations, with a Sapnish friend who is trying to use a blog I set up for her. On top of the differences in machines and the description of things there was the rather larger language void between English and Spanish. I was hunting for word after word  - to push a button isn't the same as to push a door and in the confusion of a difficult description and a difficult process I got more and more angry with my language failings.

Never mind - we bought a bottle of mixed Margarita yesterday which I have been spicing up with some tequila that was languishing in our drinks cabinet. Solace at the bottom of a cocktail glass.

Some corner of a foreign field

There were hats and hooters and little flags all with the St. George cross. A big screen telly, lots of appropriate decoration and even a temporary bar in the TV room. El Cortijo, one of the local British run places, made a really good job of turning the England v USA game into an event. Pity the team couldn't do the same.

There's an interesting discussion on one of the expat computer forums about who people will be rooting for. The majority seem to be for England first with Spain as a backup position.

Just sign on the line

Every so often in Culebrón a robot voice phones us offering better and cheaper telephone services. Yesterday evening, in a fit of something, I pressed the button for more information and found myself talking to a woman with a very thick South American accent.

The sales spiel was all about faster Internet, free National calls, a couple of other useful/useless services and lower prices for the whole lot. As we pay too much and only have a 3Mgb connection I was interested but also cautious. We had a hell of a job getting connected last year because the only company willing or able to put in the line was the old state monopoly company. I think that, by law, they have to pick up on providing the lines that don't make commercial sense. A bit like the Post Office delivering to some remote Highland cottage for the same price as it does to central London. In order to make it worth their while we'd agreed to stay with them for at least 18 months.

When it looked like I was going to buy I was passed to a man but when it got to the bit where he asked me for my bank details I said no, not till you've emailed me the conditions. He explained why it was essential that he had access to my money as soon as possible. I explained why it was essential that he was denied access to my money till I was absolutely certain. He asked again, I said no again. There were two or more rounds of essentially the same conversation. I believe the technique, learned in all those Assertiveness courses all those years ago is called the broken record technique, same reply over and over.

The written offer wasn't really much more than a large print sales pitch but there were certain clues to the pitfalls. In fact even one of the headline offers had been massaged down a bit, instead of offering faster Internet we now had exactly the same speed as we have at the moment. It turned out too that we would have to pay a penalty fee to our present telephone company for breaking the contract, that there would be an undefined period when we might only have dial up Internet access and that we would have to deal with all the paperwork with the old phone company ourselves.

I suggested to Adriane, we'd been on first name terms for a while now, that he should phone back when our original contract expired. You may have heard him slamming the phone down about half seven yesterday afternoon.