Welcomed into the bosom of our adopted family

I'm not much of a dancer. I don't care for it anyway but then I hurt my hip dancing in 1973 so there was a bit of a hiatus till I tried it again. That must have been the mid 90s. I hurt myself again then though I can't really blame the dancing. I was so drunk that I was a tad unsteady and I cracked my head on the wall when I was in the urinal. I didn't notice at the time but Maggie was apparently put off dancing by the trickle of blood running down my forehead. Anyway I don't dance.

So last night at around 2am I was the only person left seated at the big long table where we'd just eaten. Several people tried to persuade me to dance. I said no, I always say no. Looking at my actions from the outside I must be a bit of a party pooper. I never dance, never sing, never get involved in the hilarious games. Stand offish. I'm better when I've been drinking but I had to drive last night so there was no liquid help to hand.

The events leading up to the non dancing were odd. Last year as we wandered the Pinoso Fiesta we saw hundreds of people having a meal in the car park next to the Town Hall. It looked like good fun. So, this year when I read somewhere that to go to the Cena de Convivencia, something like the Living Together Dinner, you had to register at the Town Hall for a seat that's just what we did. At the time we were told that we had to provide our own food. Fair enough we thought, a late night picnic.

One of the leading lights in the Culebrón village hierarchy is a young woman called Elena. She works on the local radio and, if I understood what she told me correctly, she was reading out, on air, the names of the people going to the Cena and she saw our names there. It turns out, and we didn't understand this at all when we booked up, that the dinner exists principally for the groups that participate in the floral offering which takes place earlier on the same evening.

By sheer chance Elena saw our lone names and invited us to join her and a few other people we knew. At this point we were still under the impression that it was individuals, or groups of chums, taking the meal together. So began a series of WhatsApp messages as I tried to wrest the information from Elena about our part in the jollities. Pretty early we learned that the key element the food was going to come from a local roast chicken takeaway but in lots of ways we were still completely in the dark. When and where exactly would we meet, did we need to take plates and glasses, how was the food being bought, did we need starters, puddings or drinks to accompany the meal? In an English way I wanted full chapter and verse and in a Spanish way it was all in hand because it would be "as always."

It is ages since I have felt quite so confused about what was going on. My WhatsApp messages used lots of words like confused, lost and foreigners.

On the night of course it ran like clockwork. The villagers had everything under control. We were directed to the appropriate seats to make sure we weren't left out of anything. Maggie joined in without any problem. She was grinning, chatting and dancing.

Of course I wasn't dancing, I'm so old that my tenuous grip on the Spanish slipped away as the multidirectional conversation had to be shouted above the noise of the live band providing the dance music. Not much chatting then but I did do my best to grin.

 "Now you don't feel so lost, do you?" said Elena to Maggie.

Taking their revenge

I'm sitting in a shopping centre drinking coffee. If I'm lucky I have another seven hours to kill. If I'm unlucky I will have to get Maggie to come and get me. The car is in dry dock, with the BMW dealer. It has an intermittent misfire.

I have a great service contract on the car. I paid about 320€ maybe three years ago and for that I get the usual services at no extra cost.

It looks as though the it needs new brake pads said the service receptionist. 220€ said the receptionist. Finding an intermittent fault can be a sod said the receptionist. I can't tell you how much it will be until we know the problem. My Barclaycard trembled. You'll have to pay for the diagnostic test even if we don't find anything said the receptionist. I argued. My Barclaycard quaked. It may take more than today said the receptionist. I threw myself on his mercy. I can't walk home to Culebrón from here - about 45 km - please try.

So, here I am drinking coffee in the air conditioned shopping centre fearing the worst. Expecting a whopping  bill. But I suppose I've done pretty well out of the Mini service plan for the last few years.

Time for them to take their revenge!

And they did!

I'm home now. The total cost was 565€. They've not only changed the rear pads but the rear discs as well. The engine problem was some tube which was part of the valve set up. I think that it was a backpressure sensor if that makes sense. Anyway from my translation of his description in Spanish it seems that the misalignment of this sensor allowed diesel to flow directly into the exhaust system which may have sooted up the catalytic converter so that it may need regeneration. I bet that comes dead cheap. Oh, and as a little bonus he added that the gearbox sounded noisy and maybe that needs checking. The gearbox, good grief the car's only 95,000 kms old, a bit under 60,000 miles. Nearly new. 

Diversity

I occasionally see British TV and it is full of people who don't have "Anglo" names. Presumably their families went to the UK from all around the world. They are just there - no fuss, nothing different - getting on with their jobs as reporters, soap actors, presenters and the like. It's so normal, so routine that it's completely unexceptional.

Back home in Pinoso I was reading through the list of entrants and prizewinners in a competition to design a poster for some event a while ago. I was half looking for a British name. The last time I saw any information there were 42 nationalities represented in Pinoso yet, amongst the names of the entrants there was not a single one that didn't have a double barrelled Spanish surname. I may be wrong but I've never noticed anyone in the Carnival Queen competition who isn't Spanish either and whilst I have seen the odd Brit amongst the dance troupes and choirs I haven't noticed Algerians or Senegalese doing anything similar.

I didn't bother to Google my figures and the numbers will have dropped recently but there were something like six million foreign born residents in Spain from a population of some forty seven million. We EU Europeans have a right to live here but lots of nationalities like Ecuadorian, Moroccans, Ukrainians and Chinese have to become nationalised if they wish to remain in Spain. So there are lots of people here with their family roots in other countries who are now full blown Spanish nationals. Lots of them must be well into second or maybe third generation by now.

I don't watch much Spanish TV, the home-grown product that is as distinct from US imports so I am not a reliable source. However, I can only think of two regular TV faces who aren't Spanish. One of them is Michael Robinson the ex Liverpool and QPR footballer who is a football commentator and pundit and, until very recently, there was a young Korean woman called Usun Yoon on a satirical current affairs programme called el Intermedio. There are almost certainly others but I don't know them. Obviously there are all shapes and sizes of people on TV all the time because Spain buys programming from all around the world and because there are celebs and sports stars doing what they do as well as turning up in the adverts. Nonetheless the nationally produced stuff seems remarkably monolithic.

I was at a music festival over the weekend and I was talking about this phenomenon to Maggie. I realised that there were very few black people, Latin Americans etc. among the crowd or even among the musicians.

Maybe it just needs a few more years.

Time

Knowing what time to go to something can be quite tricky. We've been celebrating in the village the last couple of weeks and by arriving about twenty minutes late for the Neighbourhood Association meal for instance we were something like an hour early. This isn't always the case. On sure fire way to make sure that you are late is to presume that the event will start late. It almost certainly will but you can't presume and if you do expect a punctual start. Lots of things do run to time, or at least more or less, but time has an elasticity in Spain that is sometimes surprising to we Brits. I'm still amazed for instance that TV programmes can start both late or early.

Away from punctuality there is a time for things. Like the way that lunchtime starts at around 2pm or evening meals around 9 or 9.30pm. When I'm working this timetable which involves most businesses closing in the mid afternoon and then re-opening for an "evening" stint suits me fine. That's because I run to the same schedule but during the summer break it's dead easy to get up a bit late, set off a bit late and find that the boat ride or museum or whatever is just about to close for lunch as you arrive. Lots of businesses by the way have summer opening hours which means opening earlier than usual but then closing for the day at lunchtime whereas they would normally re-open after a two or three hour break for another three or four hour slot.

During the summer most outdoor events start late simply because it's a bit cooler as well as giving people time to finish their evening meal. We went to a British organised event the other evening that started at 7.30pm. and it felt very early. On the other hand it was a good thing too because we were able to go on to a Spanish organised event at 11pm without having to leave early or worry about a time clash. Meeting people at midnight or later isn't unusual by any means and during the summer Pinoso is much more lively at 2am than it is at 7pm - which, by the way, would be seven in the afternoon and  not seven in the evening to the Spanish way of thinking. Evening, like afternoon is loosely governed by eating times.

We're going to see the Melendi concert, in the picture, just because it's happening in Pinoso. Notice the start time. The tickets are more precise though and say 23.59 just to avoid any doubt about which evening it is!

Rivers, water and the like

Spain has the highest number of reservoirs per inhabitant in the world. At least that's what it says on Wikipedia. I am always wary of these superlatives. I remember hearing in the UK that NHS Blood and Transplant was the best service in the world and I wondered what their criteria were for that statement. My mum is also the best mum in the world. I bet you, mistakenly, thought yours was.

My unchecked and unverified perception is that it is generally pretty sunny in Spain in summer. It is especially sunny along the Mediterranean coast. I hear it even stops raining in Galicia and the rest of Northern Spain in summer. You might think that a hot dry country like Spain would have water supply problems.

Whilst we have lived here there were, a few years ago, some restrictions on the agricultural use of water. It wasn't a big thing though - we were on the verge of trouble rather than in trouble. The last big problems that I can find reference to were down in Andalucia in the mid 1990s. Given that it is sunny and hot that seems to suggest pretty good organisation of water to me. Maybe that reservoir number information was right. Apparently Franco liked building dams. One of his nicknames was Paco the frog which came from his liking for water. Back in 2001 the Aznar Government came up with a plan that was going to move water from the River Ebro, in the North, through a series of pipes and canals down to the drier, southern, parts of Spain. The Catalans and the Aragonese were not keen on this plan. In 2004 the new Zapatero government shelved the Aznar plans and decided to build desalination plants instead. The Valencians and Murcians were not keen on this plan. The graffiti about the "trasvase," the transfer plan, is still clear on many walls all over this area. The plan also had provision for building another 120 reservoirs.

One of the news items during the periods when it doesn't rain as hard or as often as it should is a bulletin on the state of the "Basin Agencies." These Confederaciones Hidrográficas are generally based on river basins and I think there are fourteen or fifteen in total. The reserves are usually expressed as a percentage of capacity  so, for instance, today in the internal Basque Country the level is 95.24% of capacity and for the Ebro it's 85.84%. Healthy figures. The one that matters to us, the Segura basin,  is at 70%. Last year at the same time the Segura's reservoirs were at 49% and the 10 year average is just 32% so one good wet Spring and we have water to burn. Back in the Spring I heard some chap on the radio being asked about the state of the Segura river. He was almost gleeful about the rain. "I had to open sluices on some reservoirs today," he cackled. "Water enough for three years," he boasted.

The Segura goes through Murcia. It looks like a river there by the Whale sculpture and, when I think about it, where it flows into the Med. at Guardamar it still looks quite river like. Certainly it looks more like a river than the mighty Vinalopó, our most local river and the one which gives geographical names to this region. For most of the the Vinalopó is nothing more than a dirty trickle of water.

Despite being aware of the Segura as a name and even having visited several places along its banks I had never really noticed it as a river until yesterday. That's because yesterday I couldn't fail to notice it. I paddled down it in an inflatable boat for 13kms, watched ducks float by at an impressive velocity and, as I stood in it, I felt the swirl of small pebbles bombarding my legs as they were carried along by the current.

None so blind as those who will not see.

Preparing to die

We had a will written in the UK years and years ago. A really tall, avuncular chap did it for us. His office was like something from Dickens with big ticking clocks, overstuffed chairs, a leather trimmed desk and legal documents tied with ribbons. Leeds Day in St Ives.

Spanish inheritance law is quite keen on blood. Distant relatives outrank unmarried partners by miles. For years, several years, we have been going to get a Spanish will.

Last week we finally got to a solicitor, un abogado. The chap who talked to us wore jeans and a T shirt and looked significantly younger than some of the clothes I was wearing. There were no ticking clocks. "We're more your juvenle delinquent and petty thief office," said the boy lawyer. "One of our colleagues down in Alicante can come up and help you write a will but why don't you try the noatary? If your will isn't tricky they can do the job faster and cheaper than us."

Notary sounds really old fashioned to me. Like scriveners. Something to do with Guilds and quill pens. Notaries are busy people in Spain though. Their services are used all the time. The notary's office in Pinoso never seems to have sufficient waiting space and people lean against the walls clutching sheaves of paper.

We waded through the waiting throng and spoke above the insistent telephone to get ourselves an appointment. We didn't need the notary apparently. It was the notary's secretary for us. She started by asking for various ID documents. The rest was very strange. I think she described to us, though we may have given her some clues, more or less exactly what we had written down in our notes. We apparently want just about the most basic and straightforward will imaginable.

Our notarial representative said that she'd give us a bell when she had a first draft ready. I have high hopes that all we'll have to do is correct some of the spellings of the names and we will finally be rid of at least one of those recurring summer jobs.

The story of a summer day

It's definitely summer now. I suppose summer is a special time of year around the world but here, on the Mediterranean coast, it seems to have a distinct significance. The expectations for summer are somehow much greater than they were, for instance, in the UK.

And mention of the UK gives me the perfect cue.

We were in the UK last week. I've spent less than a couple of weeks there in the last nine years so, as things change, at times I found myself feeling less like a local and more like a tourist. Interesting place I thought. Full of life, lots of bright ideas all around. Very dynamic. It was also all a bit frenetic. Full and in a hurry. Traffic was incredible, cars everywhere and the poor old TomTom was going mad with beep beeps for radars. I was deeply impressed with being able to wave my credit card at the terminal on the bar and pay for a pint of bitter without codes, PINS or ID. I was a little less impressed with paying three quid for a bottle of water.  It was nice speaking English though sometimes people didn't understand me or I didn't understand them. Even when that happened though I knew that what I was saying was correct and the problem lay elsewhere. I liked the casual - treated as equal - style of the people in bars, hotels and shops though it was sometimes a bit oppressive - as though by being pleasant they had a right to ask personal questions or comment on things that were nothing to do with them. Much less bowler hat and firm handshake than the England I left though well done to that man at passport control who wished me good afternoon as a greeting and a pleasant day as farewell.

So being in England delayed doing what all proper Spaniards do for the summer which is retire to the country or retire to the coast for the months of July and August. Obviously they don't really. They have to go to the office, go to the supermarket, get their cars serviced and fill in time sheets. Not on the telly though. There everyone drinks beer (in moderation) and leans their good looking semi naked body against the good looking semi naked body of a person of the opposite sex as they grin happily surrounded by friends and family engaged in a never ending barbecue or communal meal. The setting is usually on a beach, in a back garden or at a swimming pool. People with mobile phones behave similarly. Yogurt eaters too. Those with indigestion are able to get back to the fun with the help of appropriate medication.

Our summer sees us back in Culebrón. Wage slave work is forgotten for a couple of months though in my case so is a pay packet. The chittering birds and Eddie the squawking cat ensure that there are no long lie ins but who needs to stay in bed when there is no timetable to keep? The sun shines. It really does. It shines every day and when it doesn't there is something very wrong, The colour turns ochre and yellow. There are more village and town fiestas, performances and events than you can shake a stick at. We do all those jobs that we have avoided all year. In the last couple of days I have finally bought that fire extinguisher for the kitchen, given the palm tree a short back and sides practiced a pagan form of topiary on our ivy hedge, done a nonseasonal pruning of the fruit laden fig, peach and almond trees and worn shorts and sandals. I bet George V never wore shorts. I avoided them for years. This summer though I've decided I'm going to look like every other man in Spain and abandon the long trousers. I've drawn the line at flip flops. Even those fun loving Princes surely don't wear flip flops in public? We'll have to visit people as well, maybe buy some new furniture. We have other, serious, jobs to do too. This year we are determined to finally get a Spanish will after trying halfheartedly for the last three or four summers. Yep, lots of important jobs. I hope I can wear long trousers when we go to see the solicitor. I'm not sure shorts are appropriate when negotiating the price of a Welsh dresser either.

But first, as just reward for all that pruning and lopping, digging and dragging, I think a glass or two of local vino is called for.

Exponential

Maggie needed a new mobile phone. She lost her old number as a product of the house move back to Culebrón from Cartagena. We cobbled together a solution but when her HTC phone, which she has never taken to, started to have software problems she decided it was time to get a shiny new phone and  a brand new number.

The range of offers was bewildering. Contract or pay as you go. Real or virtual networks. Household names like Vodafone and Orange or newcomers like Pepephone? Eventually the choice was made about which phone and which set up.

There was a last minute scramble when the device they used in the Yoigo shop to scan identity documents wouldn't take a British passport. The passport was much thicker than the Spanish ID cards the scanner had been designed to cope with. Maggie's Spanish ID was no good as it didn't have a photo. They managed in the end though.

The thing that surprised me was the number. Spanish mobile numbers are nine figures long and begin with 6 whilst Spanish landlines are also nine numbers long and begin with a 9. Well, that's the general wisdom.

The mobile number assigned to Maggie begins with a 7. A new series. In Cartagena our landline number began with an 8. Spaniards often thought I was having a language problem when I gave them the number. "No, fixed lines begin with a 9," they said. One chap went so far as have me phone his mobile to confirm the number. He was very apologetic.

I seem to remember that the number of combinations in a series of numbers is worked out by simple multiplication. So for a nine number sequence it would be 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 times 9 or 387,420,489 variations. The initial 6 cuts this down to 43,046,721 choices. That's a lot of numbers. On the other hand there are around 47 million people in Spain and everyone  from the eldest granny to the smallest child has a mobile so, when I think about it, I'm surprised the 6 numbers lasted so long!

The rest is silence

It's quiet in Culebrón. The wildlife makes a noise it's true but the chirping of the birds hardly constitutes noise pollution. On the other hand it's not quiet in the centre of Cartagena where we lived until just two days ago.

Oddly though I've noticed the noise here in Culebrón much more than I did in Cartagena. In town the passing crowds produce a constant background hum. Occasionally there are shouts and bangs but, generally the noise level is pretty consistent and almost unnoticeable.

Culebrón doesn't really have background noise. Culebrón is still and quiet. We haven't got our summer cicadas yet. I was outside the other night enjoying the warm evening air possibly with a brandy and a cigar to hand. Peaceful. Then a car passed, making a right racket, then another. Next the dog at the farm down the way went guau, guua, guau (Spanish dog you understand). An insistent and unpleasant bark. Our neighbours dog answered.

Time to get back inside and watch the telly I thought.

Oops! Ha, ha!

I seem to have started to say uuf! when something goes wrong. This is a difficult word to spell. It's not the same as pah! or oops! It's more like a phew!

Spanish cockerels go kiri kiri kiri. Obviously no Spaniard has ever heard a cockerel. If they had they would know that cockerels go cock a doodle doo. It's the same with the strange half words, half grunts that we, and they, use to express surprise, to explain away a small mishap to be sarcastic and the like.

PG Wodehouse knew that we Brits made specific noises under specific conditions. I remember the books emphasising HAH!! when the hapless hero was caught out by the stern and  haughty aunt long before his final salvation thanks to Lord Emsworth, the Port and Lemon or Jeeves. It is only in the last few days that I've caught on to the fact that Spaniards emit different non word sounds to us.

This explains why one of my colleagues often seems to dismiss most of my humorous comments as mere tomfoolery with a half mouthed, half nasally blown khah!

Up to now I'd thought it was because she thought I was a fathead.

Lavatorial humour

Sorry to be indelicate but imagine we are in the toilet. No, not we, you or I, separately, apart,  in different but similar toilets. The sit down toilet, not the stand up one.

This toilet is in Spain and on the wall there is a notice which says "Do not throw the paper in the toilet" - well it says it in Spanish but the translation is good. Now paper, papel, is a bit of a multi purpose word. For instance the car parking tickets are often papeles and you can use it for receipts and other things made from paper. The very first time I saw it I thought ah, they mean paper towels and the like but no, alongside the stool was a wastebasket full of soiled toilet paper.

Now Spain is a country blessed with an interminable supply of flies. Unsurprisingly they are attracted by this copious quantity of food. The original concept of  the waste basket isn't particularly pleasant but add in a cloud of flies and it becomes decidedly nasty.

For years I presumed that this was because of dodgy plumbing especially as there are fewer and fewer of the notices nowadays. A few sheets in the pan and the resulting flood could be even more disgusting  than the piles of soiled paper. However, the other day, I was in a high tech building, the sort where the lights are controlled by motion sensors as you walk past yet there was the notice. Surely modern Spanish plumbing can deal with modern toilet paper designed to more or less dissolve in water?

All I can think is that the notice was there because that's how we do it. Not me I hasten to add.