Life in Cartagena

In the 1970s, as Sixth Formers, we were obliged to take it in turns read the daily lesson in school assembly from the Bible. "This morning's lesson is taken from the Gospel according to St John Chapter 15 verse 14." When it was my turn I bribed someone to swap weeks with me. I took the half term week. By paying, and I was willing to pay a lot, I would only have to stand on stage and do that chapter and verse stuff three times instead of five. I hate - and I can't stress enough how strong that word is - performing. Dancing in public fills me with dread. Again, mark the word: dread. Almost any humiliation is better than dancing, or performing in any other way. I spent sleepless nights for weeks beforehand worrying about "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." Somebody trying to force me to dance "because I'll love it when I get started" has no idea to just how close they are to violence. I know that ...

In 1965 I was 21 and, for my birthday, my parents bought me an Omega Seamaster watch. It cost the enormous sum of £68 and it finally gave up the ghost in 2003. Luckily for me my 50th birthday was just around the corner and Maggie splashed out £500 to buy me a Tag Heuer which has been on my wrist, more or less without break, ever since. I needed a new battery for the Tag just after we got here. We had to travel from Culebrón down to Alicante to get it. Not a lot of fancy jewellers in Culebrón. 120kms and a couple of hours travel on top of the time to replace the battery. Today, as I was teaching, there was an exercise where the students had 10 seconds to complete a task. I glanced at my watch and the second hand was jerking rather than running smoothly. On my way home I popped into el Corte Inglés to get the battery changed. It took fewer than 10 minutes. It's peaceful in Culebrón, the garden is smashing, the furniture is ours - all in all a great place to live. But cities...