Village hall and pub

I'm cool with a romería and with Elena gone on to her birthday party it was up to me to save the vermouth session. Last night we had the annual village meeting to plan the summer fiesta.

I forget the reason. Actually I've got a bit of a bad head this morning because I popped into Amador's bar on my walk home and that sort of set me on the path of wrongdoing and amnaesia. I've just remebered a conversation with Eduardo outside his restaurant which was faltering, as always, but this time because of alcohol rather than more general stupidity. Anyway, whatever the reason everything got changed around a bit this year.

So on Friday instead of the vermouth session to kick off the village fiesta we're going to have a catered meal followed by the music and dancing. Cost cutting was the order of the day because the grant from the Town Hall will be 900€ again this year and lottery ticket sales haven't been very healthy either. There was talk of not having live music. The blasphemy of a "party tape" was suggested.  Eventually they decided on Raphael - for pasa dobles and cha-cha-cha. I tried a little joke with the woman sitting next to me about it not being the Raphael but she had no idea what I was talking about.

That was like me and the meeting. I was just about keeping up with the gist as the ten or twelve people there mounted simultaneous conversations but to say I understood would be being economical with the truth.

The foot race has been moved to Sunday along with the football and the chocolate. The gachamigas and the church parade have moved to the Saturday. I think we cut out the rockets to save money. I realised that the vermouth session was missing from the plans. I nearly spoke up but, in the end, my nerve failed. Kipling would have been cross. Fortunately when Inma was checking the budget to see if we could save any money anywhere she spotted the vermouth and she had the temerity to suggest scrapping it. Elena spoke up for alcohol as the perfect accompaniment to the football and the vermouth was saved.

Then there was the romería. Someone suggested a romería instead of a procesión. Suddenly everyone was voting. I was nodded at across the room - join in - vote for the romería along with everyone else said the nod; so I did. There was talk about whether it should be in plan formal or informal. Now I know what a romería is. It's a Catholic festival where there is a journey to a shrine or suchlike with or to a saint or Virgin. I asked my neighbour what the route would be but, again, she had no idea what I was talking about. So I asked Inma when she was checking that I'd understood what was going on. "Yes, that's right," she said, normally romería is a bit of a pilgrimage but we just mean that it's not like this - she crossed her hands across her body at waist height - and everyone gets to follow the saints instead. The problem is because the priest can't say mass till eight it's going to be in the dark so we'll have to choose a route that goes to lighter places. Another of those things where I know but I didn't.

And the vermouth? Well as Inma was showing me the running order I pointed out that the vermouth session was missing. "So it is," she said and it was written down on the back of the official envelope.

It's a country

I'd been surprised when the door of office number two had opened as I leaned on it. I half stumbled and half leapt into the room on the other side. Two women gawped at me. I gawped back. I stammered out a greeting. 

"Hello, I want to send this to Qatar," I said, holding out a small padded envelope, weight about 20g and similar in size to an iPhone. 

"Qatar in Cantabria?" she asked. 

I pointed to the address printed on the envelope. 

"No, Qatar the country in the Middle East - next door to Saudi Arabia."

"Is that close to Lebanon?"

"Closeish," I said. 

"Is it part of Saudi Arabia?" she asked. 

"No, it's a country."

"Ah, I see; it's an island," she said, staring at the Google entry. 

"More a peninsula," I countered

She rang someone. "It'll be 97€," she said - "same as Lebanon." Back there again. I blanched but handed her my credit card. "We've got no machine," she said. I'm sure it was Gilbert O' Sullivan on the radio. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I asked if this were indeed a business. When I was outside again I couldn't help it. One very long, very crude outpouring at high volume. I went and got the money, I went back to the office, I paid and I left the little envelope with them to lose.

It was a strange office even by Spanish standards. When I'd first arrived I was sure the building was abandoned. Blinds down, litter strewn yard, no vehicles, no opening hours, no sign of life. I don't think they get many personal callers. Hence the gawping. 

Maggie has lost a contact lens. The sort of lens she needs is not available in Qatar. Fortunately she bought her last lenses in Cartagena so I was able to go to a local optician and order up a replacement.

Today was my first opportunity to ship the lens. I got up early to go to a carrier before work.  It was so early I hadn't been able to buy an envelope to put the lens in. I suspected, rightly, that the carriers would sell packaging. The lens was in liquid in a little bottle. The receptionist woman peered at it over her headset.

"You can't send liquids to Qatar," said the woman. 

"Fine, I'll put it in this case without liquid," I said. 

"You can't send contact lenses to Qatar," said the woman. 

I asked "Why not?"

"No idea." 

"Could I put it in something else; disguise it?"

"Not possible, they check everything."

"What can you send to Qatar?" I asked. 

"I can't tell you," said the woman.

"Can you send clothes?" I asked.

"Only with a receipt and a customs declaration," said the bearded man sitting next to her.

I felt we had maybe failed to build the human bridge so necessary for a fulfilling business relationship. Later I bought an envelope. I took the lens out of the liquid and put it into a dry case. That's why it was the second on my list, office number two.

Still in business

Facilities in Culebrón include a post box, a social centre and a dusty basketball cum football area. Business wise we have the bodega and oil mill and rather surprisingly we still have two restaurants. For me these restaurants have the huge advantage that they are only a few hundred metres from our front door. Drinking alcohol with the meal becomes a possibility.

The Nou Culebrón opened in December 2012 and it's still open. Three separate bar restaurants have failed in the same building whilst we've been in the village so congratulations to Amador, the boss, for keeping it going.

The other restaurant Casa Eduardo was open when we arrived in the village and it still is. Eduardo's is best described as singular. The décor, the furniture and the tableware have not, to my knowledge, changed in the nine or so years we've been eating there. My chair was a bit wobbly. The man at the next table tried to find one that wasn't but gave up. The culinary offer is usually local rice or stews but not always.

I quite like going to Eduardo's. The man shows fortitude. I like the idea of supporting a local business. In his way Eduardo is always pleased to see us. He does tend to mumble a bit though and the imprecision of some of his offers along with my faltering language can cause misunderstandings. Maggie is less taken with the place than I am. She remembers the time when we played the inevitable game and she got a sausage.

It usually goes like this. Eduardo lunges; what would you like to eat? We parry; what have you got? For several years it used to get quite vague at this point. Only when you'd not ordered something did you realise that it was available. Mussels, for instance, used to be a regular on the unwritten menu but we were never offered them.  Working on the principle of ask and you shall receive Maggie asked after the availability of the local sausages. Her daring was rewarded with a single sausage served in splendid isolation on a well worn side plate.The last couple of times though the vagueness has gone.  I have been firmly guided towards the correct decision. The answers are restricted to yes or no. "Would you like a nice lamb chop?" I suspect that the kitchen is not overstocked.

Geoff and I went there today. Our meal included the inevitable fried almonds mixed with plain crisps, a basic salad and toasted bread served with sobrasada. Main course was a selection of perfectly good grilled meats with chips. For puddings we were given a choice of two, some hesitation on my part so Eduardo offered both on the same plate. I suppose there may have been very little of either left as we were given very small portions. Coffee too and the whole lot for the two of us was just 20€. Can't complain.

I'm sure Eduardo will still be there when Maggie gets back home in the summer. Something I am sure she is looking forward to

Two sheds Jackson and landscapes

I was thinking, as I drove between La Unión and Culebrón, about what I could see out of the car. I decided it was family and friends. You get what you're given. Blood's thicker than water and all that. History and culture from hand to hand and gene to gene over the generations. Alfred and the cakes, 1066, Glorious Goodwood, Cornish cream teas, feet and inches, Ant and Dec. Your friends on the other hand you get to choose. No blood ties, no original shared history. Something you manufacture between yourselves. I watched the dusty, brown grey, scrubby lunar landscape, the almond groves and the vineyards pass by. I looked at the bright blue sky and I thought how lovely it all looked. In the beginning, when I first got to Alicante and Murcia I thought it looked desolate. The sort of place that John Wayne ate beans.

Maggie and I had a great time in my old MGB car driving around the Cotswolds. I thought the Cotswolds were amazing. When we saw Calendar Girls, when it was new and first at the cinema here dubbed into Spanish, I looked at those North Yorkshire landscapes and thought how stunning it all looked

I was reading a piece that turned up on the English language feed to my mobile phone so it was either El País in English or more likely the Spanish pages of the Guardian. The author was a Brit writing from Spain. He said that some survey had shown that expats living in sunny climes were less happy than people living in the British climate. He suggested that British refugees to Spain were likely to be a bit curmudgeonly anyway because most were dissatisfied and were looking for something better. His main thesis though was that what was great as a break for a couple of weeks didn't really match up in the long term. He likened it to some chap who celebrates Christmas every day. I didn't agree with him.

On Sunday evening at about 9.30 I went to get some cash from the bank machine in the main part of town. La Unión is not a pretty town. The chewing gum plastered onto the flagstones looked particularly disgusting and I worried that one of the several footballs being kicked around by small groups of young lads would get me in the head. I turned left into the High Street, I was in shirt sleeves, the town was lively with people. A churros and chocolate van was doing good trade.The comparison with Huntingdon High Street crossed my mind. I often enjoyed a swift pint in the George before the weekend was over during the Huntingdon years. I was rather pleased with myself for being in La Unión.

It's not a comparison. It's a bonus. I got lucky with my family. Some of my friends I've known for over 40 years.

Strong Murciano accents, computers, the naming of parts and the solution close to home

Now I've told you about our palm tree several times. When the tree man failed to turn up last time I did the beetle slaughtering patrol myself. It was hard graft. Nonetheless, the basis for my doing the job every six weeks was there. I had the spray gear it's just that the tree is taller than me even with the spray gun wand in hand - I simply needed a longer reach. With a bit of extra kit I could avoid either having to climb a ladder with 16 litres of insecticide on my back or to coax the tree man into coming to the house.

An internet search had revealed an agricultural supplier in La Palma which seemed to have the tubes, connectors and paraphernalia I needed to gain the necessary height.  I wasn't looking forward to explaining what I needed so when I was able to sneak into the big, empty store I was well pleased. I found the section I was looking for and started to connect this to that like some fetishistic horticultural version of Meccano. I would have soon had a solution without the need to explain myself but someone noticed me and sent a sales assistant to help.

The man had a strong, strong Murciano accent. We had a communication problem. He seemed to be a bit clumsy. He snapped at least one of the connectors as he attempted to engineer a solution. Eventually he thought we had it right. I wasn't so sure mainly because his idea of a three metre extension and mine varied by about one and a half metres. I was in no position to argue and we moved to the cash desk. He couldn't get the computer to work out the bill until someone showed him how to do it.

I went to buy petrol in the same town, in La Palma. I needed a receipt. The man in the petrol station had a strong, strong Murciano accent and he couldn't get the computer to work out the bill either until someone showed him how to do it. Sherlock Holmes like I noticed the pattern.

Back in Culebrón I fastened the whole kit and caboodle together and it nearly reached, it nearly worked but it needed fine tuning. A couple of extra bits. Today I went to one of the farm shops in Pinoso. There I found a specially designed 3.2 metre telescopic spray gun extender. It wasn't cheap but it works perfectly. Excellent I thought. Elementary.

It's just rice

I was going to say that we had a famous restaurant in Pinoso then I thought about it. Obama is famous and Shakira too but I don't think that even restaurants as well known as el Celler de Can Roca are really famous. Well known maybe?

So there's a restaurant in Pinoso that's quite famous and it's famous for the local rice dish. I worked for a couple of years in a street very close to the restaurant. Time after time some big Audi or Porsche or Bentley would pull up alongside me, roll down the window and ask politely for the restaurant. My reply was word perfect I'd done it so often

This well known Pinoso restaurant is renowned amongst the locals for the unpleasantness of its owner and the outrageous price of its food. After all it's just rice. I've heard that said by Britons and Spaniards alike. I've never been. Too expensive for my wallet.

I need to take a moment here to make sure you're OK on this rice/arroz concept. Paella and rice are virtually synonymous. The big flat pan that rice is cooked in is called a paella and so the food cooked in it came to be called paella. In reality though paella/rice can vary significantly from the original Vesta recipe. In Valencia paellas seem to have a lot of seafood, chicken and veg. There's a rice, traditionally for Fridays, to comply with the once common "no meat on Friday" of good Catholics. It's made with cod and cauliflower. The rice cooked in fish stock has lots of names - in Cartagena it's called caldero. Down in Elche I think arroz con costra has loads of sausages and maybe chickpeas as well as the rice and the whole is topped off with an egg crust. Arroz negro is coloured with cuttlefish or squid ink. In Albacete they seem to like quite gooey rice, arroz meloso. And so it goes on. And on.

So around Pinoso our rice is thin, quite dry and with rabbit and snails. With my mum being here we've been to a lot of restaurants. Most of them cheap and cheerful. She wanted something better when we were in Culebrón. I took her and her pal Sheila to a restaurant called Elías in Chinorlet village very close to our house. Our welcome was very iffy and we were finally given a terrible table but once we were under way the service was excellent and the food a revelation.

Good wine is wasted on me. I'm of the "I like what I like" school. It's normally the same with food. But as I tucked into the traditional all i oli and tomato paste on toast I wondered if I could ever eat the normal supermarket all i oli again. I'd seen the cooks preparing it (If you don't know what all i oli is think of it as garlic mayonnaise) in the glass fronted kitchen as we waited for a table and I thought the whole rigmarole of rice cooking over wooden twigs and garlic being ground in a pestle and mortar was a bit pretentious. I have to admit though that it tasted fabulous. When the rice came it looked just as usual - not like the stuff you get in a ten Euro menú place - like the stuff from a decent mid range restaurant. It didn't taste like it though. I could actually taste the wood smoke that they go on about, the mix of tastes was just right, the rabbit and the snails (hunted not reared - yes they breed snails too!) were, well, just right too. It was a taste experience, a revelation. I now understand all the fuss about paella being the pièce de résistance of Spanish cuisine. Even my mum, who had suddenly declared that she didn't like rice after we had ordered the food but before it came, was won over.

Pinoso featured on a TV programme about the rice and other local foods in a programme called "Cooks without Stars." The man talking about Fondillon wine is Roberto from Culebrón. What a media star.

Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty

When I used to work in the furniture shop I often delivered furniture to cave houses. There are quite a few in the Pinoso area. In fact there are lots of cave houses all over Spain. It was often a bit of a struggle to get bed frames or sofas to go around corners and into the designated rooms.

I was in Rojales, Alicante last weekend where lots of the caves have been turned into craft workshops. Yesterday I was in Guadix, Granada where there are supposed to be over 2,000 caves used as homes. Indeed in the museum there, dedicated to cave dwelling, to troglodytism, there was an information board to say that in 2002 there were 5,838 caves in Granada province which were the principal home for just short of 15,000 people.

It's not a complicated idea. You find some rock that's easy to dig. Usually that's clay. You start with a vertical cut to produce the façade of the house. In the centre of that façade you cut the arched door and from that door you excavate the first room generally with a square base and a vaulted roof and then work backwards into the hillside cutting galleries and rooms. The work is done with picks and shovels. The actual distribution of the rooms depends on how much money you have to pay the people who dig the galleries and rooms but also on the general topography of the land. The expert digger has the experience to determine the best shape.

Normally the principal rooms are towards the front of the house and the less used rooms at the back. Natural light is only available to the rooms that are close to the façade so people try to have the façade south facing so as to get as much natural light as possible. The general wisdom is that caves maintain an even temperature which is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The average temperature inside depends a bit on how deep the caves are dug but generally they maintain the average air temperature of the region from summer to winter. In most of Spain that means the inside temperature hovers between 17ºC and 23ºC without any marked seasonal change. Humidity is around a very healthy 50% though damp seems to be a problem in lots of the caves I've been in.

Many of the caves are given a frontage of more typical building materials and sometimes, in the style of building a conservatory onto your house, an extension is built away from the rock face to give some extra room.

It can be quite odd sometimes, driving around Spain, to see a chimney sprouting out of the ground and to realise that someone is living below ground as people have done for thousands of years.

Catetos and country bumpkins

There's nothing going on. A pretty typical Saturday but, lost for anything to write, I hatched a cunning plan. I'd talk about nothing.

This plan came to me just after I'd collected the mail and as I washed the car, Maggie's car to be precise. We have a post box on the house but deliveries in the countryside are a bit haphazard. Safer a PO box in the town Post Office. We also have water and space to wash a car at our house in Culebrón. Today I was just being lazy. For many Spaniards though the Sunday morning car wash ritual, beloved of so much of suburban Britain, is unrealisable. Most people here, after all, live in flats, not everybody, but the majority. So getting a bucket of water to your car isn't easy. Anyway several towns have local bye-laws prohibiting street car washing. Pinnoso being a typical example. This means that there are lots of car washing bays in petrol stations all over Spain. In contrast to the UK where I remember that the tunnel wash with rotating brushes was the most common here those lance type power washers that lift off paint are the usual offer.

The car freshly washed I went  to buy some gas - in a bottle. We country folk don't have piped gas. Butane in 12.5kg cylinders is the norm. I bought the gas from the shop at the local co-operative bodega which has a decidedly agricultural theme. Safety footwear and parts for irrigation systems rub shoulders with tinned sardines and chocolate bars. I asked if they had any liquid for killing the picudo rojo, the beetle that wants to eat our palm tree. They did and I bought some. I got some cashew nuts too and a bottle of brandy.

I shouldn't have needed the insecticide. I know a man who has some, a man that I've hired twice already to douse the tree in some nasty chemicals that apparently mash up the neural pathway of the beetle beasties. Approximately six weeks ago he and I made a vague arrangement that I would contact him before the weekend for the "every 45 days" treatment. Do it via a message he said. It's easier for me. I loved him. Messages in Spanish are so much easier than phone calls. I sent him a message. I sent him a second. He didn't reply. I phoned. No answer. I phoned again and this time he answered. He was specific but vague - Saturday morning, I'll confirm the time on Saturday. He didn't phone to confirm. He didn't turn up. 

I know that plumbers, carpenters, gas fitters and insect slaughterers all over the world fail to turn up to the majority of their appointments. There is, though, something fatalistically Spanish about the process. The non answered messages and the vague phone call are a routine stratagem. 

On a separate tack I have been trying to find out how long in advance I need to book a trip for the oversubscribed visits to the Cota Doñana National Park. The company that runs one of the trips has a website with a "contact us" online form. I've used the form, I've had the confirmation of receipt of the message but I've had no reply. I resent the message, just in case. The third time I asked them why they bothered with a contact form if they never responded. I asked if they were public employees and consequently out for breakfast (this is a Spanish joke.) The truth is I wasn't in the least surprised. It was just a first sally. I knew that I would have to phone just as I know that there will be a vagueness about the eventual booking. We will have to trust to luck as we set out for a destination 700kms from home. 

So, back to today, I climbed up the ladder, which wasn't quite long enough, weighed down by a back pack type spray gun that weighed in at around 20kg and requires both hands to operate. I wobbled and sprayed the tree. I had to do that with 45 litres of the stuff. It took over two hours and it nearly killed me. The chemicals were running down my arms, soaking my back, dribbling into my hair. I was wearing a mask, gloves and overalls but I felt the need for a change of clothes and a shower afterwards. Ah!, country pleasures.

Anyway, as it is a typical Saturday now for the telly. I usually end up watching a programme on La Sexta in which pundits and journalists shout at each other and especially at an economist with a strange accent. It's compulsive viewing particularly with a packet of cashew nuts and half a bottle of brandy to hand. We country folk are easily amused.

Finger dribbling fat and a diet coke please

To mark International Women's Day a local group - Pinoso against gender violence - organised a showing of a film, La fuente de las mujeres, which is about a group of North African women who, fed up of having to slog up a difficult path to collect water whilst their men folk sit around drinking tea, go on a sex strike until they get the water piped to the village.

The projector was one of those things you use to do a Power Point presentation so the image was small, very dark and affected by stray light. The sound wasn't great either so, although it seemed like a decent enough film, my understanding of the details of everything, apart from the main plot, was pretty rudimentary.

It used to happen to me as I wandered home up Huntingdon High Street and it happened to me tonight. Some sort of fat lust would draw me, inexorably, towards Bunter's. I fancied a kebab or kepab as we Spaniards usually say.

I'm not often in Pinoso at 11.30 on a Friday evening so I was a bit surprised at the long queue in the kebab shop at the bottom of Constitución and I went to the one in Colón instead. Even then I was, like Lady Louise Windsor, tenth in line.

In some ways it was just what I'd expect. The décor was characterless and basic. The man slicing the meat was a tad overweight, wore a striped fat stained shirt outside his trousers and had a close cropped haircut. His assistant was one of those young men best described as a youth. Spaniards were having trouble with his Spanish just as he had trouble with mine.

I've usually had my doners in versions of pitta in the shopping centre kebab houses I've been to here. When I asked for the 5.50€ Doner menu he waved hamburger rolls at me, which I declined. I realised I didn't have the faintest idea what the bread I wanted was called - neither pita nor tortita worked but, by a process of elimination, we got to a wrap. I thought the ones in wraps were called Durums but who knows?

Meat, if that's the right word for the stuff they put in kebabs, comes in either chicken or beef flavours - no lamb. I asked for beef but he gave me a mixture anyway which was what everyone else had asked for. It wasn't shaved into nice long slices, more torn into shreds. So the meat was spread on the circular wrap, the usual brown tinged lettuce and sad looking cucumber was loaded on. Sauce? Yes please, white and red sauces from those plastic bottles that make a sucking sound before they glug and spit - Chilli sauce? Yes please. That was squirted on with a flourish from at least a metre away then the whole thing was rolled very tight and wrapped in silver paper which proved remarkably effective at stopping all the filling from falling out as I ate. The chips got the same sauce treatment and, because I'm being careful about my weight, I asked for sugar free Coke.

The other diners were wearing coats because the door was open and it was only 3ºC outside, the lighting was fluorescent tubes. The table wasn't exactly clean, the plastic chair was very hard, the various coloured sauces oozed onto the polystyrene dishes through my fingers whilst the telly appeared to be speaking Turkish.

An authentic kebab experience.

Crowding round the telly

I still watch TV more or less as I did in the 1960s. Not that I stare avidly at Zip Nolan or Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt but I do generally, watch broadcast television at the time that it is broadcast. Every now and then I will use the streaming feeds from a TV company for the missed episode and I have even been known to steal television programmes from one of the torrent sites. I don't really understand torrents though and I am usually mightily disappointed when after downloading something for hours or days the picture keeps macroblocking.

I begged a cup off coffee of some pals yesterday. They told me that Sky, or whoever it is that uses whichever satellites to send out whatever British satellite TV signals, has just shifted everything around again. They do this from time to time presumably for technical reasons, possibly to add quality or functionality, and maybe to deny the signal to we expats. It certainly sends ripples through the Brit population who have parabolic dishes the size of the the Parkes Radio Telescope in their back gardens. We've got one.

My usual fare is broadcast digital terrestrial Spanish TV. We have slightly more channels in Culebrón than down in Murcia but in both places I think it's around 40 TV channels plus a bunch of radio stations. I have, occasionally considered one of the TV packages offered by the various Internet providers but, in the end, the price always puts me off.

Although I'm still vaguely trying to improve my Spanish I long ago abandoned watching English language programmes in Spanish as the dubbing is risible. The actors, who are often quite famous here, use less emotion than the speaking clock and children are interpreted by adults making a squeaking sound reminiscent of piglets. The digital TV signal usually allows me to change the language to the original language, when that isn't Spanish, so I don't have to put up with the hideous dubbing.

Anyway, after my conversation about the changes to the availability of British TV I switched on the Sky box to see what channels were still working. All the ones I was looking for were still there. It was the first time I'd watched British TV for ages. Our Sky box is an ancient thing, just a decoder. Neither it nor the telly have a hard disc so there is none of the potential to record programmes or to stop a TV programme whilst you make a cup of tea. Even in the brief period I watched there were adverts for TV series on demand and lots of interactive services. I don't know much about the varieties of technological wizardry available to modern TV viewers but it did make me wonder about the sophistication of Spanish viewing habits as against British ones.

I occasionally discuss TV with my students. Most of them don't really watch TV, they watch TV programmes on their computers. Very few seem to hook up the computer to the bigger TV screen and nobody has ever described watching TV via boxes which integrate broadcast TV, Internet catch up services or direct Internet TV though I believe those sort of things are common in the UK. They must be available here but, maybe, Spaniards have a better plan for their spare time spurred on by all those open air cafés and the milder climate.

Espadas Family "The Musical"

I reckon I was the only person in the audience who wasn't a mother, father, sister brother, uncle or other relative of someone on stage. There were fat girls, thin girls and the occasional boy. There were parents on stage and youngsters with learning and physical difficulties.They danced and sang. They were wired up to headset mics and they did acrobatics too. There was a father in the row in front of me who could hardly contain his enthusiasm every time his daughter appeared on stage. Waving, clapping - close to orgasm.

The poster said The Musical by the Family Espadas. In aid of a not for profit setup that works with youngsters with disabilities. I had no idea what to expect but there was nothing much on at the flicks and the house is freezing so why not something at the local theatre?

It's not the sort of thing I go for really but I had a whale of a time. I laughed and clapped a lot and I even understood a few of the jokes.

My favourite bit of Spanishness was when the elder daughter of the family, the one who wanted to go to Ibiza and live in a commune, was spoken to directly by God. You're looking for peace and love? - then get thee to a nunnery. Next scene up dancing nuns with a fetching line in popsox.

The West End is only a bit of rehearsal time away.