Life in Cartagena

When I lived in Peterborough I never enjoyed catching the train to Edinburgh. Great destination as Edinburgh is it always seemed a real shame to be in York, Durham, Newcastle etc. yet just pass them by. It was the same today. It's All Saints Day, the day to go and visit family graves, spruce them up a bit and have a nice meal afterwards. It's a public holiday. We were off work and Maggie had come across information about a village called Letur in the province of Albacete in Castilla la Mancha which looked worth a visit. I like Castilla la Mancha. I particularly like the plains around Albacete on an August afternoon with the heat haze shimmering away into the distance. The last couple of times we've been there exploring though we've found that it's not just the big flat background so typical of those pictures of  Don Quixote and Sancho on their respective mounts. It has hills, valleys, lakes and beautiful green landscapes. In the last ten days or so Cartagena ...

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...