Life in La Unión

They really couldn't make it any easier. Name and address, delivery address, old passport number and not much else. That's done on-line, then you pay - just short of £103. Next you print out the form which tells you the documents you need to enclose, a couple of passport photos and away in the post. Spaniards carry ID cards so even the smallest town has a photographer to take the appropriate photos. There are photo booths too but I thought a photographer would know the rules. The photos of me were pink and silver haired but then that's me. I thought there was a lot of shoulder and chest though and not enough face. True enough when I tried them against the template on the passport application form my face was too small. Also the photographer had guillotined the photos with a serrated edge which gave them a nice 1960s feel something I suspected that HM Passport Office may not find quite so charming. So I drove to a photo booth in Cartagena. The blurb on the outside said...

It was Father's Day on Wednesday and I didn't get farther than the local bar. I have the day off on Friday and I decided it was time to shrug off this lethargy; to do something. It wasn't a huge thing but I went to Cartagena and did a tour of the local exhibitions. At the Archaeological Museum they had some good and well seen photos on the theme of women in flamenco; at the Palacio Molina they had photos, some of which I thought were excellent and some very ordinary, by a group of professional photographers who once belonged to a now extinct local photo group; at the Byzantine walls museum some paintings by a chap called Miguel Ángel Quiñonero which I thought were laughable and at the MURAM there were some paintings gathered together under the title Spanish painting 1875-1935 some of which I really liked even if it was only for the completely over the top gilded frames. They let me down at the Old Town Hall where the exhibition was being mysteriously re-organised in mid...