Life in La Unión

The country is gripped by election fever but, rather than tell you about that, I'm going to tell you about my fun with the tax people. In Spain the tax people, Hacienda, prepare a draft return which they send to each tax payer. It's called a borrador. If you agree with the draft you sign it, send it back and either collect the tax rebate or pay the shortfall. Nowadays the process is generally an electronic one but it's still possible to deal with your tax return through your bank, your accountant or by going directly to a local tax office. Now, since I turned 55, I've been collecting a pension from Teachers' Pension. Whilst I was working I also contributed to an additional voluntary contribution scheme with the Prudential and their scheme now pays me some forty quid a month in pension. When I started to get these pensions I wrote to the UK tax people and told them my situation and asked what I should do about paying what taxes where. As I remember it t...

I went to a "pop" festival yesterday - well one day of it anyway - the SOS 4.8 Festival in Murcia. Pop in case you expected opera or classical or flamenco or jazz. I'm not really a festival animal. I don't keep up with modern music, I will not dance, I don't even sway. I noticed last night I wasn't bothering to applaud either. I usually have to drive so my drinking is limited and I haven't used any non scrip drugs for years. I am also around 30 to 40 years older than your average festival goer and, to top it all off, till 4 July I'm on my own. So why go? Maybe it's the noodles. I do like noodles and there are always vegetable noodles at festivals. The SOS Festival is not a big name do even by Spanish standards. The Prodigy, Damon Albarn and The Pet Shop Boys were the big names - basically 80s and 90s bands. With some of the bands I had no idea about their nationality - bands like The Kooks (Brits apparently) or Phoenix (French). Of the Spanis...

I'm not doing much at the moment. Preparing lessons or drinking whisky whilst smoking and reading in the nearest bar doesn't provide much raw material for blog posts. I've become a bit of a Billy No Mates . I still go to the pictures but even that is becoming faintly depressing. I saw three films this weekend. All of them were dubbed into Spanish and the only one I understood in its entirety was Philomena. I suspect that I understood it because it has a British sensibility - like me. My classical music tastes are a bit plebeian too - very Classic FM. That's probably why my favourite bit of opera is the aria Nessun Dorma from Turandot. That's the tune that Pavarotti took it to number two in the BBC top forty back in 1990 when it was used as the World Cup theme song. I like the Jussi Bjórling version best but my reason for that is also a bit prosaic. I first heard it as Ken Russell's contribution to the 1987 film Aria. Not exactly a Glyndebourne experience. ...

I don't think I'm particularly stupid. I've always been a little antisocial in a no dancing, no karaoke sort of way and that's probably getting worse along with my ever whitening hair. Nonetheless I don't think I'm unpleasant. You wouldn't know that though if you were speaking to me in Spanish. In fact you would be certain I was stupid, rude and grim faced. The people I work alongside are a pleasant bunch. The boss invited us out to eat on Thursday night to celebrate his birthday and I really - really, really - didn't want to go. When my colleagues speak ordinary speed Spanish between themselves using everyday idioms I don't know what they are saying. This annoys me. I would use another expression that includes an expression related to sexual intercourse combined with another related to directional urination but my mum reads these blogs so I won't. It upsets me that I spoil their evening by sitting there glum faced and I go home cursing mysel...

I like trains. Even the old slam door commuter trains didn't put me off. I'm just an old romantic and I think Orient Express rather than standing room only, overheated or freezing carriages, uncomfortable seats and the detritus of empty coffee cups that were the usual stuff of my UK train experiences. The other week when I caught the train from Madrid back to Cartagena we passed through Murcia station. Peering out of the window through the nightime double reflections I thought the station architecture and the bar looked interesting. I made a mental note to have a little excursion there one weekend. I bought the tickets online yesterday and made the trip today. A diesel multiple unit out and a carriage and loco set up on the way home. I travelled from and to Torre Pacheco which is an unremarkable little town just outside Cartagena. When I bought the tickets I was quite surprised how many trains there were each day between Cartagena and Murcia and I was even more surpr...

It may well have been the Fat Duck but anyway it was a posh restaurant. A friend had been invited there. He said that the food was good but that the service was better - the waiters were at his elbow a second after he realised that he needed one. Like most things in life Spanish waiters follow a normal distribution. Some are terrible, some are superb and the vast majority do a good enough job. Customers need the waiters in Spanish bars to be more attentive than their British counterparts because the culture of table service as opposed to bar service puts the onus on them to spot you. Generally they do, generally the service is quick enough and generally the relationship between customer and server is neutral. By neutral I mean that the service is neither toadying nor overly friendly. That can be a difficult relationship to maintain. Generally that's how I remember being served by people in the UK but the last time I was in England I noticed a couple of times that servers we...

There is a proposal for a new Citizens Security Law in Spain, La Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana, which is Orwellian in its scope. Unauthorised demonstrations will be outlawed, taking videos of police officers or insulting police officers can lead to fines. Fines can be up to 600,000€ for certain offences such as unauthorised protests at a nuclear power station. Turning up for a protest wearing a mask or anything that makes it difficult for a protestor to be identifiied can lead to a fine of 30,000€. Obstructing a public official from going about their normal duties could also cost 30,000€. There is lots more. Now there are plenty of laws in Spain to deal with violence and public disorder but the problem may be that the courts are just a bit too woolly for our present government. The Vicepresident, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, had a bunch of people protesting outside her house about the current spate of evictions. She took 27 of them to court but, back in May, the judge threw the c...

Being alone is shrinking my world. Basically for four days of the week my life is ruled by work - well that and the laundry. Then I have a splendid long weekend but with nobody really to share it with I'm staying close to home. Even this weekend, a bank holiday weekend with Constitution Day on Friday and Immaculate Coception on Monday I haven't done anything special. Sofa time as my students call it. Telly time. Christmas has just about arrived in Spain. Most towns have their lights on now and the shopping centre car parks are more dangerous than ever - car park design is not a Spanish skill, add a touch of driver indiscipline and you have a sure recipe for bumps and scrapes. On the telly Christmas means seasonal ads. Perfume mainly. But there are at least two institutional adverts. One is the Freixenet sparkling wine advert which I've only seen so far by looking for it on YouTube and the other is the commercial for the big Christmas lottery draw. This year ...

More than once I have used the example of Spanish filling stations as one of the sure signs that Spanish business is badly organised. There are plenty of self service places, like the one in the photo, but usually as you pull up on the forecourt someone comes to serve you. I wonder why, with self service pumps, they pay someone to do a job that they could get me, the customer, to do for nothing? When I ask Spaniards about the reason I often get something about keeping people employed. Given that we seem happy enough to live in a capitalist system that answer just adds to my grave doubts about how Spaniards approach business. A couple of times, usually at night, we have pulled up at service stations where the lone employee is firmly locked inside the petrol station and a prepayment system is in operation. You have to hand over your money before they allow you to pump fuel into your vehicle. I went to a local petrol station today, late morning. Nobody came to serve me and the pumps...

I really like tea. Nothing special, just ordinary council house tea; milk, no sugar. We've never found it difficult to buy "British" tea since we first arrived here. In the early days it could be a bit of a fag going to the right supermarket or searching out a British food shop but nowadays Mercadona, probably the most widespread chain of supermarkets in Spain, stocks PG Tips and Tetley's so it's dead easy Long ago I stopped buying tea in Spanish bars. It usually comes luke warm and, unless you are very precise in your ordering instructions made half and half with hot milk. Anyway the coffee is excellent so why bother? Even for non tea drinking Britons tea is as much a concept as it is a drink. We are aware of the variations on tea from English Breakfast and Earl Grey through Darjeelings and Lapsang Souchong and we may even include decaff, fruit and herbal teas in the list but we all know that tea is tea and it has names like Ty-phoo, Yorkshire, Tetley...

The External Health building in Cartagena looks disused. I first went there a couple of weeks ago. I pressed the bell but I was so sure that the building was abandoned that I had started to walk away before someone answered the door. They took details and made me an appointment for today. Today in the same building a toothless chap wearing jeans and a faded polo shirt asked me what I wanted. He didn't look like medical staff - no white coat, the unmistakable badge of anyone doing any job in the health service. He must have been the caretaker because he knew what I had to do. First the registration on a lob sided, thousand time copied form and then a short wait for the doctor. Usual advice - avoid the water, drink whisky without ice, don't eat veg. Big change to my lifestyle there then. Covering myself in DEET and taking anti typhoid and malaria tabs will be novel though. To get the tablets I need to go to another doctor for a scrip. Usual Spanish system. Why do thing...

Sorry about the title I just couldn't resist and while we're here have you ever seen the version by Kylie Minogue sung at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics? Not a dry eye in the place. The Austrlians really should have chosen that song as their official national anthem. Anyway, where was I. Ah yes, in the Centro de Interpretación de la Mina las Matildes in Beal close to La Unión. It's a couple of old pit head engine houses and the winding gear of a pit turned into a museum about the mining industry in the Sierra de Minera area. It's run by the local foundation that is trying to protect and promote the mining heritage of the area. Their blurb says that they open every second and last Saturday of the month. This time I was smart enough to check. I sent a wasap (that's how we apparently say WhatsApp where I live) to the number on their website. I asked if they were open on Saturday. The reply was just one word; a clear and succinct - "sí." Their website ...

I often despair of the Spanish ship spoiled for the ha'p'orth of tar. Nothing serious but enough to make us non competitive in a competive world and, incidentally, to drive me to distraction I bumped into it twice today. I went to find an exhibition. We've just had a new Primark open in the local shopping centre. As part of the opening hoo-hah the shop got ten local atrists to take a Primark garment and turn it into a work of art. Ignoring Bangladeshi slave workers I decided to go and have a look. The blurb on the centre's website didn't give an exact location but it's not a huge centre. When I got there I couldn't find the exhibition, There were no obvious notices. I looked in the shop but there were just people scrabbling through piles of clothes as far as I could see. Anyway I was pretty sure that Primark wouldn't give up expensive sales space to art. I wandered the centre but couldn't find anything. Eventually, overcoming my terror of talki...

My finances are a little stretched at the moment. Two months without pay over the summer and then a month with very few paid hours in September has left a delicate balance between outgoings and income. Provided my October pay gets to the bank before the 6th there won't be any problem but there's the rub. Transfer money from an account in Spain to another and your money disappears for a few days. It goes from the sending bank immediately but it can take four or five days to show up in the other account. I don't often go to a bank but, when I do it's always a pain. The queues are interminable. Every transaction seems to take an age. There are notices on the desk to say that they will only accept recibos, which so far as I know means receipts or bills, between 8.30 and 10.30 and that always makes me worry that they will send me away. I can't complain about the charges from my current bank. Basically there aren't any but, in order to maintain free banking, I h...

I've never really understood the Britons who live in Spain but very seldom actually visit the country. They stay at home listening to British radio, reading British papers and watching British TV surrounded by British food. I see no problem at all with keeping up with news from the UK or liking steak and kidney pudding - Britishness courses through our veins after all - but it often seems to be done at the expense of anything Spanish. These people do not have the vaguest idea about the history or geography of their new home, the culture passes them by and their knowledge of what's happening to the country is generally secondhand rumour. Even New Year is celebrated at GMT not local time. I've heard Britons talk about red letter days on the calendar. It's not something echoed by Spaniards but it makes sense. Public holidays must be printed in red on calendars I suppose. Its not unusual for my compatriots to be unaware of these holidays. They know about British bank...

One of the English exercises I use asks students to finish the sentence "If Meucci hadn't invented the phone....." It's about third conditionals I think. The idea is that the students come up with phrases such as - if Bill Gates hadn't invented Windows we wouldn't have needed four fingers to unlock an unresponsive computer. If that's not a third conditional do forgive me. Grammar isn't my strong point. Nobody, except his mum, knows who Meucci is but if I ask who invented the submarine then anyone who lives in Cartagena knows the answer. It was Isaac Peral and he was born in the city. In fact he didn't really invent the submarine but he did design the first one that had all the basic ingredients of the conventional submarines we know today. His submarine was launched in 1888. It did well in its sea tests and he was asked to build a bigger and more powerful version. Unfortunately for him some internal disputes in the Spanish Navy meant that the p...

Mucha gente me ha preguntado sobre mi estado de animo ya que estoy de Rodriguez. ¿Estás bien viviendo solo? dicen. Sí, estoy bien e, inesperadamente, ¡estoy consiguiendo alimentarme sin ninguna ayuda! Por supuesto la vida de un soltero tiene sus desventajas pero tiene ventajas también; más espacio en la cama, dominio total del mando y sin la necesidad de desplazarme de habitación en habitación apagando las luces. Llenar el tiempo es fácil -  de hecho no me queda suficiente tiempo para hacer lo que quiero hacer. Siempre he sido un escritor de listas – las cosas por hacer -  y esta lista está tan llena como siempre. Los quehaceres de la casa, un libro para leer, tele para ver y la batalla continua de dominar el español - una batalla que a Maggie le encantó recordarme, en una de nuestras conversaciones por Skype - que nunca ganaré. El curro es una rutina obvia. Día tras día tengo que repetir los mismos consejos repetidas veces. A cada uno; pues la mayoría de mis alumnos, come...

Lots of people have asked me if I'm OK living alone. I'm fine and surprisingly I'm having no problem feeding myself. Being alone has lots of disadvantages but there are advantages too. More space in the bed, complete control of the telly remote and no need to go around the house turning off uselessly burning lights. I'm having no problem at all filling my time, in fact I am short of time. I've always been a list writer and my current lists are full; household things to do, books to read, work to prepare alongside the ongoing and time consuming task of trying to crack Spanish even though, as Maggie unkindly reminded me in one of our Skype conversations, I never will. Work is an obvious routine. As well as trying to correct the same errors in all of my students over and over again - "Can you please repeat that?" rather than "Can you repeat?" or the constant battle with some sounds; shhhhe not sea, shhhhow not sew - there is the simple time rout...

As long as I can remember I've liked the radio. As a youngster I was perturbed when some programme we listened to on the radio most weeks had finished when we got home late. The idea of programmed programmes was way beyond my comprehension. Lots of programmes, from the Clitheroe Kid to the Today Programme are a part of my history. I like radio because it does not demand your attention in the same way as television. You can do the ironing to either but you can't drive or shower or clean the cooker to the TV. I also find television egocentric - about personallity - whereas radio is much more about the content. I never did take to that zoo radio style where the presenters loved the sound of their own voice much more than the music. Informative too. So much information on the radio. Spanish radio is pretty good. I'm at a bit of a disadvantage in that, at times, sections of it waft past my ears without me understanding a word especially when it's just normal people tal...

I'd just been to the flicks. Gravity, good film I thought. The cinema is in a shopping centre and the car park was mayhem - people and cars everywhere. The centre was ablaze with light. The Seventh Circle of hell but with writhing vehicles rather than contorted bodies. A Spanish chum riding in my car a while ago told me that it is a mortal sin, or at least 300€ worth of fine, not to signal whilst moving between lanes on motorways. I sniggered. Spaniards are not big on turn indicators. I picked my way through cars going in each and every direction. Going against the direction arrows in a car park is normal behaviour, moving without lights too, not signalling is as common as acne on teenage faces. I was about to move through a gap when I noticed that a supposedly parked car was rolling slowly forward. I waited and watched as the car bumped gently into a wall. The driver had been too absorbed in his wasap (that's WhatsApp to you and me) to notice till he felt the jolt. I lau...