Nice and warm outside

As we left Cartagena yesterday it was a pleasant, sunny day and 18ºC. Six hundred metres higher in Culebrón we were down at 15ºC but it was still sunny and pleasant. Inside the house though it was pretty arctic with the motionless cool air in the living room literally taking my breath away.

One of the photos has the cat Eduardo sitting in front of one of the gas heaters that we use to keep the rooms warm. In the living room we also set the air conditioner to heat, that plus two gas heaters and we can get the room nice and warm. The trouble is that the heat just vanishes as soon as we stop pumping the calories in. The other photo with those nice air gaps around the kitchen door perhaps indicate why!

Alicante country houses of a certain age just aren't insulated in any way.

Another trim

I mentioned last week that I go for a haircut when the hair starts menacing my ears. It's much the same with the palm tree in our garden. Not that the palm has ears, at least I don't think it has, though it is a grass apparently and lots of grasses do have ears. No, in the case of the palm tree the time for a trim has come when the fronds start to scrape the roof of the mini as I park up. And that's what happened as we came home this afternoon.

Not being a traditionalist I don't shimmy up the tree using a rope harness nor do I lop off the fronds with a billhook instead it's a pruning saw and a set of stepladders -  more Tunbridge Wells than Elche but, then again, there aren't that many palms in Kent.

Bars again

Back at the end of 2009 the Government introduced some legislation which said that bars shouldn't be cooled below 26ºC in summer or heated above 21ºC in winter. Obviously the measure was designed to save power and to help reduce the country's carbon dioxide emissions.

I remember thinking at the time that 21ºC wasn't very warm. Spanish bars can be cold and unwelcoming spots in winter with their tiled floors, tiled walls, hard, unpadded chairs and open doors.

Fortunately the bar owners have taken no notice. Only the other morning I was warming my frozen hands around a hot cup of coffee in a nice warm bar and later mentioned to Maggie how much more comfortable bars are than they were only a couple of years ago. But now some consumer group has been going around stirring things up and publicising the fact that the bars are failing to stick to the law.

Killjoys.

A day out

We really haven't done much recently partly through work, partly through sloth and partly because it is relatively unpleasant out when the sun isn't shining. Weekends in Culebrón tend towards tasks of one sort and another or maybe the exact opposite as we take the opportunity to forget about chores and work.

Yesterday though Maggie was keen that we did something other than vegetate. She suggested a trip to the seaside at Santa Pola but I baulked at travelling the 60 or so kilometres each way for no real reason. I was happy to go somewhere but with a bit more purpose. In the end we settled on going to Alicante because there were a number of exhibitions on.

We saw the photos of Alfredo Calíz at the FNAC shop in Alicante (nice use of colour but not many snaps) and later, at MUBAG (Fine Arts Museum) we saw a show that covered the Spanish Avant Garde from the 1960s to the 80s - informalism, abstraction, op art, hyper realism etc. Next it was MACA (Contemporary Art) where there was a show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an art movement that called itself Arte Normativa (the translation eludes me - Art by Rules maybe) which was a Spanish geometric abstract movement of the 1950s. Just to finish off we went to a remarkably tedious showing of Russian Sacred Art at one of the exhibition spaces run by the charitable arm of a savings bank.

Something I noticed was the staffing. The busiest space was the Savings Bank where there was one security guard at the entrance, in FNAC where the show was in the concourse outside the shop surrounded by coffee bars there was nobody obvious looking out for the exhibit at all. In both MUBAG and MACA only one large space was open for viewing but in both places, which are local authority run museums, there were two people on the welcome desk and two more museum staff keeping an eye on us as we looked around. I think there was also a uniformed security guard in each foyer, there usually is. Quite different staffing levels between the public and private sector then.

Good do though Alicante. Nice to do a bit of culture vulture stuff for a change.

Getting a hair cut

I popped into Alfredo's in Pinoso this morning to get a trim. I don't like it when the hair grows over my ears. Up to that point I don't really notice my hair except for thinking that it's very white. Alfredo does a perfectly decent job for a very reasonable 8€. The conversation usually centres on the weather and Cartagena.

As I waited an oldish chap pottered in and Alfredo called his dad to deal with his client. I watched and marvelled as with shaking hands he wielded the cutthroat and hair trimmer. A trust established over the years I suppose.

There's nothing special about a haircut in Spain. I've been to trendy haircutters here where they offer coffee and wash my hair before and after and where young women with piercings and low slung trousers quiz me carefully about the style I want before cutting my hair to look the same as it always does. I've been to lots of those nondescript places that once had pretensions to trendiness but where time and clients from the neighbourhood have taken the shine off. Mostly though I've gone to proper barbers where a middle aged man wearing a barber's smock talks about football, holidays and football. My regular barber in Ciudad Rodrigo was keen on politics. It's a while since I've been to Alfredo and it was nice to get back to normality.

Tourist offices

I usually start most phrases in Spanish with a mistake. It comes from my insecurity about speaking. This, as often as not, is the cue for any Spanish person who can manage a few broken words of English to take over the conversation.

Yesterday we went to the tourist office in Yecla to pick up a map that we knew existed showing the delights of Murcia province. I vaguely remembered that there were cave paintings close to Yecla which means within easy striking distance of Culebrón.

I fluffed my lines but the Information person picked up what we were after and produced said map. Then she started to explain about the place we wanted to see, we asked a question, she expanded the detail, she produced another map - and so it went until we had a fistful of leaflets and maps and all the information we needed. She never once doubted that we understood what she was saying or talked to us as though we were imbeciles

Maggie commented, as we walked away, on the quality of the tourist people in Murcia. We remembered how well we'd been treated at the office in Jumilla when we asked about the bodega tours. No condescending attitude, quality information and, on that occasion, she even rang and booked a tour for us. In Cartagena they are busier and perhaps a little more brusque but their information is always good and nearly always includes the stuff you need - the where, when and how type information.

We saw the cave paintings and we're thinking of going back to Yecla today to see all those things that we've missed before. Good result all round.

Diddled

I've said before that I rather suspect that our planet will shrug off humankind has it has so many other "supreme" species in it's history. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to try to recycle carrier bags, walk when I don't need the car and make all those other little cynical gestures that I'm told will "save the planet" for "future generations."

You can still buy ordinary incandescent bulbs in Spain but generally we use low consumption stuff wherever the situation allows. The other day the bulb in one of the ceiling fittings started to flicker and the spares we had on hand were the wrong wattage. So, when I was back in Cartagena  I walked up to one the big supermarkets and got a replacement and a couple of spares. Three bulbs, 24€. I notice on the (excessive) packing that it says the bulb will last eight years. Hang on though, the ceiling this bulb was attached to wasn't there till Easter 2009 because we'd only just got a new roof. In fact, the bulb has lasted maybe 20 months instead of the 96 promised. Never mind, not much to be done; can you imagine trying to get a replacement bulb under guarantee after a couple of years?

I paid for one of the made from unbleached cotton re-usable carrier bags to carry the bulbs and my other purchases home and fretted a little.

Blow it, time for a little payback. I caught the bus home.

A New Era

We haven't ventured out at all today but the next time we do it will all be different. From 2nd Jnauary the new anti tobacco law will be in place in Spain.

About five years ago a no smoking law was passed in Spain which made it illegal to smoke at work but gave public spaces, like bars, the option of being either smoking or non smoking within certain limits to do with the size of the space. It was all a bit of a mish mash and, basically, it meant that the vast majority of bars and restaurants remained smoky. Lots that tried to go no smoking saw their trade collapse and quickly went back to ashtrays on the bar and fag ends on the floor.

The new law is much more straightforward and says that nearly all enclosed public spaces will have to be smoke free. The terraces of bars continue to be smoker's havens but even there the definition of when a space is enclosed is quite strict and some of the more weatherproof terraces will be non smoking.

I know it's happened all over the World but Spain and smoky bars just seem to go together. It will be interesting to see whether there is any sort of revolt. We've certainly been in lots of bars that have no smoking signs all over the place but where the clientele have taken no notice at all. Years ago when Corte Inglés first went non smoking they had to use signs which said something like "No lighted cigarettes, pipes or cigars in this store" because so many smokers were arguing that they weren't smoking just carrying a fag or that the sign showed a cigarette and not a pipe etc.

Twelve lucky grapes

Tonight when the clock (Reloj de la Gobernación) on the old Post Office (Casa de Correos) in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid starts chiming midnight  people all over Spain will start popping grapes into their mouth trying to eat at the rythm of the boings.

If you manage to eat all twelve grapes in the alloted time then the idea is that you will have a prosperous year.

The tradition appears to have started at the very end of the Nineteenth Century in Madrid but it was popularised all over Spain in 1909 by grape growers from Murcia and Alicante who had a glut of grapes and found a clever way to shift them.

The sorry looking white examples in the photo will provide the twenty four grapes for Maggie and me. They have been sitting on the one vine that we have in our garden which grows reasonably well. I think it may be because its roots are very close to our cess pit! We covered the bunches with paper bags back in October to try and keep the grapes relatively fit quite a while after they are ready for picking. I have no idea why we get black and white grapes from the same vine but we do.

¡Feliz Año!

Breathe in

We have a Tom Tom. Excellent little device for getting you to somewhere and getting you away again. It does mean though that I have even less idea about where I'm going and where I've been. The machine just tells me to do this or that and I do.

One disadvantage of allowing the device to take you to a place in Spain is that lots of the streets in the old town centres look like the ones in the photos. Narrow and with difficult angles. Tom doesn't worry too much about road widths and it's possible to find yourself in a street with a nearly impossible right angled turn. Scrapes along the walls show that other people have found it tricky too.

Nowadays of course roads are built with modern traffic in mind and they are perfectly navigable. I have this theory though that to compensate the designers of underground car parks have mimicked the labyrinthine design of the old Spanish town centres. Many underground car parks have huge pillars in strange places, a bizarre layout and lots of protruding obstacles out of sight below the waistline of any car.

You just know you'll be in California soon

Over the past couple of days we've passed the Giralda a couple of times, we've seen the Torre de Oro, the Maestranza bull ring, we've drunk sherry, eaten salmorejo and today we were in the Mezquita and on the Roman Bridge. For those of you who have as much trouble with geography as I do that means we've been in Sevilla and Cordoba; we're in Andalucia.

Andalucia is the part of Spain that provides all the tourist clichés - the swirly frocks, bullfighting, sherry, flamenco, prancing horses and castanets.

We were strolling the old streets of Cordoba, we weren't the only foreigners. In fact the visitors may well have outnumbered the home crowd. We passed a bar (something I try to avoid) and sounds of flamenco floated out into the street. For once we weren't put off by the little knot of people huddled around the door. We pushed through, leaned against the bar and listened as some old chaps passed the guitar between them and took turns strumming and wailing flamenco. Several of the crowd joined in. It was like being in Dingle without the Guinness or the fiddles!