Life in Cartagena

I've just spent the weekend in the UK. I went to see my sister and mother. I had a splendid time. I don't go to the UK very often. I was last there in February 2011. In the past nine years I've maybe spent around ten days there so it's quite a strange place to me nowadays. These are a few of the things I noticed. Nearly everyone speaks English. This may not be surprising to you but it seemed a bit strange to me. In Ely I heard someone speak and my instant reaction was "ah, Brits, just like me." I turned to have a look. I can say anything I need to in Spanish but in English I can say what I want. It was a marked difference. Mind you I did find myself marvelling at the language of the DJs on Radio 1. I hired a car. I tried to get into it on the wrong side several times - ah, other door for the steering wheel. I fished around with my right hand for the gear lever. Driving on the other side of the road wasn't a big problem but the traffic was. It goes ...

My sister was in Reykjavik a few years ago. She tells me that a traditional Icelandic delicacy is rotten shark meat cured by burying it in a hole for a couple of months. We didn't quite follow in her footsteps but we went to Iceland yesterday. There was no rotten shark, no thermal pools, no Northern Lights and no glaciers. Instead there were lots of Britons and all those British foods we crave like balti mix, chilli con carne, chow mein and goulash. Iceland, the shop, is another little island of Britishness in the midst of Spain. Apparently there are ten stores in Spain run as a franchise by Overseas supermarkets. Three of them are near to us here in Cartagena but the closest is the store at San Javier. Walking in there is like walking into the Iceland in Huntingdon. English is the language and even the products that are readily available in Spain come as their UK equivalents - Diet Coke not Coca Cola Light, Walkers crisps not Lays  - even the meat is imported. It's my bi...

I like pork pies. I prefer the ones with less crust, more jelly and more meat. Branston's good too and that sweet chilli dip and Stilton though I don't think I've tasted Stilton for over four years now. I could go on, Maggie says I do. The nub though is that I manage perfectly well without Bombay mix and even Llagavulin. When they do come my way I enjoy them even more. If I were somewhere else the list might include Napolitanas, queso Manchego and chopitos. Back in 1984 I got a new job and found myself going to meetings and visiting youth clubs. The habitual meeting time was 7.30. The 7pm Radio 4 News; Brighton Bombings and Tommy Cooper's last gag, on the car radio as I drove across the fens or into Cambridge. Then Dum-ti-dum-ti-dum-ti-dum dum-ti diddily dum - an everyday story of country folk - the Archers. I still listen. I download the podcasts and usually listen over breakfast. Last Friday Phil Archer, the man who was at the heart of the story for so many years,...

Maggie is at work. The cat has stayed in Culebrón to take advantage of the outdoors life, the flat is clean. I've made an appointment at the doctor's and done the shopping and it's not time to cook yet so I thought I'd do a bit of reading. I'm reading a book called Todo eso que tanto nos gusta - something like All that we like so by a bloke called Pedro Zarraluki. It's good, I'm enjoying it. It being a bit chilly in the unheated flat I've taken to popping over the road to the, much warmer, bar Fran and downing a couple of coffees as I plough through the pages. I need to get on with it as it's a library book due back next week. It's a relatively easy read so I can do without the dictionary which might make the process a bit unmanageable. The first time I went in asking for a café americano caused the bar owner some consternation - a diluted espresso I explained, the second time he greeted me with the word americano and, today he just smiled ...

For many years in the UK I worked in the Youth Service. It's odd how different the Youth Service here looks on the surface to the one I knew. In Cartagena, amongst other things, it acts as a "dating agency" for people who speak one language but want to learn another. By arranging appropriate pairings people get to hear and talk the other language with a native speaker. Remarkably the Youth Service not only talks to me, as an old person, it also talks to the Library Service. Between them they have arranged a number of multilingual book clubs. You read a book in your target language and then turn up in a bar (how Spanish) to discuss it. The libraries provide the books. I met the other people who are trying to learn Spanish and like reading yesterday when I was given my book Sabor a Chocolate (Chocolate flavoured) by José Carlos Carmona. There were Belgians and Germans and Austrians and most of them could have been my grandchildren. It's a great book though. Dead ...

As my regular readers know (thank you both, I hope you got your Christmas cards) it grieves me how poor my Spanish is after five years here. No matter how hard I try to learn vocabulary, decline verbs and jot down useful phrases I still fall apart when I have to speak Spanish. I have a couple of language exchanges, intercambios, each week. The idea is that we meet and we speak a bit of English and a bit of Spanish. One meeting is with a Spanish chap who takes his language learning very seriously, as an academic challenge. The other is with an Ecuadorian woman who has more practical reasons for wanting to learn English. Both of them do what every Spanish speaker does when I get going on this topic. They say my Spanish is good (but they have no answer as to why people screw up their faces in incomprehension when I try to buy a packet of fags) or that a few mistakes are all part of the fun. I say the same to them about their English - all jolly civilised. I can't agree though whe...

There are a lot of Britons in Spain especially along the Mediterranean coast and on the islands. There are plenty too in the big cities like Barcelona and Madrid but they tend to be a different sort of Briton - hired for their particualr expertise, filling some time after or before college etc. whilst the resident Britons along the Med tend to be people like me, early retirees or in some way well enough off to get by with or without a regular income. It's an enormous generalisation and I can think of tens of exceptions even amongst the people I know. But stick with me, for the sake of this blog entry. Now because we are not famed as linguists we tend to get by with mispronounced words, lots of gesturing and broad smiles. It works alright but, as you can imagine, in a town like Pinoso where Britons may be 10% of the population we no longer have novelty value, we're not free spending tourists and so it's more than likely that from time to time some Spaniard having a bad day...

Closing in on 30 years ago now I went to a Spanish class in Peterborough with a teacher called John Richardson. On the first night he asked us why we wanted to learn Spanish. I said that I wanted to be able to buy a beer. He lied to me and said that would be easy. I still have trouble getting a beer. Other people in the group said that they wanted to learn the language because they had just bought a house in Torrevieja and wanted to be able to talk to their neighbours. I distinctly remember John saying that it seemed that half of Peterborough had a house in Torrevieja. So there have been Britons in Torrevieja for over 30 years and it shows. We went there to buy specs. We went to Specsavers because I had heard that they were cheap. From the initial phone call to the final fitting everything was transacted in English and the only Spaniard I encountered (to my knowledge) in the whole process was the optician. Specsavers is in a shopping centre and the principal language throughout the...

It's been warm here over the last couple of days. It was 29ºC and sunny in both Murcia and in Benidorm yesterday. Mind you up North they have snow and winds and down in the Canaries there was a huge downpour. There's a programme on the telly that runs for a couple of hours in what we'd call the afternoon and you'd call the early evening - España Directo. It has reports, nearly all live, about a man in Zamora who's grown a giant melon or about the family in Motril who are being terrorised by their flamenco singing neighbours. Yesterday they had a camera crew in Benidorm to compare and contrast the weather there to the storms in Cantabria, and as the anchor woman spoke to the reporter a group of people came into view wearing shorts and vests. Most people were wearing light clothing but not quite so summery. "Look, look, people in shorts and short sleeves," said the anchor, "talk to them!" The reporter ignored the group but the camera swung arou...