Life in La Unión

I presume you know I earn a living by teaching English. I shouldn't be writing this. I should be planning next week's lessons but I'm putting it off. I don't have to start work till 5pm tomorrow and that leaves me all morning to get myself sorted out. Plenty of time. The place I work has a system. Students work with interactive teaching materials backed up by a grammar and a book of exercises. The English is basically taught using a number of key expressions or structures with the grammar and vocabulary being built up around those expressions and structures. Students work alone on the computers and books. Teachers are used to answer queries and in three sorts of classes. Firstly, there is an assessment after each unit which is done as a class. Group size is no more than four people and usually it's just one or two students. Secondly and thirdly there are group sessions. One is a converation class and the other is a structured class built around the key phr...

Maggie and I have lived in several flats in Spain. When we were in Santa Pola the block we were in at first was more or less deserted for most of the time we were there but as summer approached and people started to come back cooking smells wafted in from some of the other flats. We left before the full summer onslaught so we remember it as being a quiet place. In Ciudad Rodrigo the family next door, or at least the children of the family next door, used to have a mad half hour around 9.30 but they soon settled down. In Cartagena the next door neighbour had a hearing problem and he seemed to become fixated with a few songs that he would play over and over again. Again though it only went on for a while and, although it was noticeable, it wasn't really a problem. The other flat in Cartagena had a main road running past the front door and as the weather hotted up we had the choice between ventilation and having the telly drowned out by traffic noise. So our experience of flats ...

Driving back to Culebrón from La Unión on Thursday last week I spotted a Guardia Civil van just as we were about to enter a 100 kph zone. I'm pretty law abiding anyway but I double checked my speed and slotted in behind the van doing just under the speed limit. When the limit dropped to 80 kph so did I but not so the van which steadily disappeared into the distance. Some time ago there was a bit of a rumpus in Cartagena when drunken lads forced one of the Easter floats to retreat because of too much pushing and shoving. The next evening there was a big police presence outside the culprit bars. One of the police cars parked on a pavement causing both a traffic hazard and forcing pedestrians to walk in the roadway. I've just watched something on the telly, on la Sexta, about the police in various cities. Sorting out domestic fights, dealing with date rape drugs in a bar, chasing people breaking into cars. Typical fly on the wall type documentary. As the police drove to...

Eduardo our cat is a country creature. Born on the outskirts of Crevillente he presumably miaows in both Valenciano and Castillian. He's not been lucky though. We picked him up in July 2005 aged about three months so he's just over 8 years old now. During that time he's spent a year in a flat in Ciudad Rodrigo and four years in two different flats in Cartagena. Now he lives, with me, in the flat el Garbanzal in La Unión. Eddie doesn't like to travel. He wails and screams inside his carrying cage in the car. Usually he has a problem in controlling his bowels and bladder. Journeys in a car with Ed are unpleasant and uncomfortable for him and for the other occupants of the car. We've been fortunate. Friends and neighbours have taken pity on him and agreed to feed him at the house in Culebrón. He has the advantage of liberty and accommodation but he lacks human company. When he's in a flat his liberty is severely curtailed but he has the advantage of company...

Once upon a time I used to worry about my haircut. I would travel miles to go to someone I trusted and who did more or less as I asked. Everyone knows that haircutters are a law unto themselves. You ask for something and they do exactly what they want following the natural growth of your hair and their own particular fancy. So I needed a haircut and I'm new to La Unión. I wandered the streets looking for a hairdresser. There are still plenty of barbers in Spain but hairdressers are more common. Hairdressers are unisex but, presumably as women spend more money on trying to look nice than men, there are plenty that call themselves something like beauty centres where they do nails, remove body hair and indulge in other strange rituals. I passed a couple of those but I baulked at going in. I'm old, I'm set in my ways, I needed something just a tad more virile. There was a Moroccan barber. Well Arab speaking anyway because there was Arabic script above the door. Manly or...

I needed to get myself an Internet connection. Now Spain isn't exactly the third world. On the telly the big phone operators like ONO and Jazztel are offering fibre connections of up to 100Mb. La Union is small but it is a town, or at least a large village, not some rural hamlet, so I didn't expect any problem in getting a decent deal on a connection. I thought there may even be fibre. Using a combination of my mobile phone and borrowed internet connections I had a look around the suppliers. ONO looked good but when it came down to it they have neither fibre nor ADSL to my new building. The Jazztel website seemed determined to cause me grief - it has those pages that lose all the details if you want to change something and annoying popups with offers to get someone to phone you. They didn't have coverage either. One of my work colleagues suggested a small local operator but it was the same story for La Union. They suggested another local firm who bragged of offerin...

There are reasons, lots of logical reasons, for me to live in La Unión. I've rehearsed them all in my head dozens of times over the last few days. Basically it's financial, a nicer flat for less money still relatively close to my teaching job in Cartagena. Now that now that I'm fending for myself I just couldn't afford the sort of flat that Maggie and I shared in Cartagena. There are other reasons too though I'm not sure that I've convinced myself yet. La Unión is a town in Murcia. The town exists because of the mining. The Romans and the Carthaginians dug silver, lead, iron and zinc from the hills and valleys around Herrerías and el Garbanzal and shipped it out of the port of Portman. With ups and downs, that continued till the final shut-down of the last mine in 1991. Somehow most of the money that La Unión produced enriched nearby Cartagena rather than La Unión and although it has a couple of very impressive buildings there is nothing like the wealth of s...