Spain warts and all!!

Hello to everyone and for my friends in the UK I am so glad to see that the awful flooding seems to be abating although the disruption and work will go on for some time. I was fascinated watching how the Dutch deal with the situation and you can’t help thinking it isn’t rocket science and we just need to appoint a team of Dutch experts to advise the government!!!

Life here in Spain continues on and Chris now has a flight booked to return on Thursday 6^th March.  It is a good job I like my own company as I have spent all of the time on my own.  We got back from our trip to find that there had been some change to the satellite which provides our UK Freeview and we had only about a dozen channels, and no BBC, Channel 4 etc . Life doesn’t seem right without the BBC news!!  The people who we use were so busy it was last Saturday before we had the dish adjusted. Thankfully they arrived in time for me to watch the England v Ireland rugby game, and what a game. I was on the edge of my seat for most of the match and so pleased with the result.

At least living in a village means there are people around and a daily routine and of course everyone knows I am on my own which results in regular conversation about when Chris will be back.  I still go down to the bar most days as it has wi-fi and it saves a 22k round trip to Pliego.

On Saturday, the weather was lovely, and I walked up into the Parque Sierra Espuna. It is one of the good things about the house, it is on the edge of the park and you can walk from the house. I walked about two hours and the views were stupendous, a lovely clear bright day and some lovely little colourful birds dotting around the pine trees. 

On Sunday I put my bike on the back of Ruby and set off to Cehegin, about 35k away, I parked up beside the via verde and cycled 22k to Bullas and back. Then I got changed in the van and went into the old town as it was the monthly artisan market, there was a group of men in pink trousers, wearing bright shirts, wigs and coloured glasses singing in the square. The songs were so fast I didn’t understand much but it added to the atmosphere. I then stopped at a little tapas bar and had a glass of wine and a lovely prawn, smoked salmon and artichoke tapa. I drove back and had lunch in the bar, the rabbit and snail paella was lovely as always.

I started painting yesterday, prepared the bars and did the first coat on one window and am hoping to make some more progress today. I have to wait till about 12 to start as it takes till then for the sun to get to the back of the house and although the weather is nice it is chilly out of the sun.

Although life here is very chilled and relaxing I still get the odd occasions of frustration with the Spanish. One of my bugbears is the supermarket!! In Mula there is a branch of Mercadona, not quite on the scale of the UK hypermarket but a decent size. Yesterday two women, who were clearly shopping together, had unloaded their stuff onto the belt-not even half a trolley full-and it took about ten minutes. First was the laughing and joking with the guy on the checkout then the utter surprise that they needed money to pay for it, minutes searching for a purse, meanwhile none of the food had been packed into bags. When it was my turn he apologised, maybe my face showed my frustration, and I explained in the UK the concept of the supermarket is very different it is a place you go and the checkouts are really fast , none of this chatter!! I just shrugged and said , yeh but this is Spain.

Now on one level I have plenty of time and should just relax but it is an example of a trait that I find difficult from time to time. The Spanish have no real concept of other people around them, at times it manifests itself as a type of arrogance, sometimes as rudeness . There is not much use of please and thank you and I get odd looks when I bump into people and say excuse me!! If you watch Spanish people in bars and restaurants they bark at the staff and are very impatient!! At least they have an etiquette about queuing, unlike the French, which involves asking “quien es ultimo”, who is last and then you know who to follow and as the next person comes into the bank, pharmacy (two places that always have BIG queues) you say “soy ultima”!!

I also find it fascinating that the butcher’s shops all have chairs for the queue, but if you watch the proceedings then you are grateful for the chair. First you choose the type of meat needed for the dish you are cooking, and then work out how much you need, how you want it cut and wait while the butcher prepares it. There are no window displays, usually some large pieces of meat in the fridge in the shop and then the bulk of the meat is in the back. A much more interesting way to get your meat than at the supermarket!!