Life in La Unión

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...