Life in Cartagena

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've just walked back from the pictures. This is not an exciting event in itself. In fact this isn't an exciting post. It's here because I'm feeling a bit guilty. I've just realised that I didn't make a single Life in Cartagena entry all through December. How can it be that there's more to write about in sleepy Culebrón than in the city? So back to the pictures. We tend to go to a multiplex run by a local cinema chain in the Mandarache Shopping Centre. The truth is that but for the cinema the centre would almost certainly have closed by now. It's a shopping centre that has never worked properly. The majority of the shop units are empty, even the Burger King closed down, but for months now there has been structural work going on and a big gaudy sign outside to say "  Economato -  Opening Soon." I just presumed that Economato was the name of some ultracheap supermarket chain but apparently not. In the past economatos were stores that sold t...

I'm not exactly tall. About 1.80 in my stockinged feet. It's tall enough to be an advantage here though. Spaniards, at least older Spaniards, tend to be on the short side. In a crowd, to watch a parade, I'm lofty enough to have the advantage. Young Spaniards are taller but, fortunately, they have more interesting things to do than to go to parades. My theory is that Francoist policies were so successful that older Spaniards went hungry in their youth. Last year, or maybe the year before - time passes in a blur nowadays - we went to IKEA and bought a new duvet cover and pillow cases. The pillow cases were too small for our English pillows and the cover too roomy for our English duvet. Money well spent. I've been researching an article for the TIM magazine on Amancio Ortega, the founder of Zara and Inditex. The third richest man in the world. Zara was in my mind. Equally it's been colder recently - maybe 13ºC overnight. Maggie is a bit fidgety in bed, she hogs...

On a weekday morning in Cartagena it's usually the sound of the street sweeping machine. On a Sunday morning it's a man playing a violin. Back in Culebrón it's more likely to be dogs barking or the cars swishing past on the main road. Always something that seeps into my consciousness as sleep fades away. The cicadas are just for summer and for much later in the day . Saturday, out for a stroll; as we left the house we commented on the never ending tide of humanity passing the top of our street, just metres from our front door. The difficulty of navigating around people. There's no doubt about the sound either. It's a sort of low volume hum that comes from all the people talking as they walk. Sometimes the monotone is broken by a child's cry or a some rough metallic sound as waiter's shift tables around but that hum is something characteristic.

I was wandering around the Mercadona supermarket hunting for salad dressing. I tried the fruit and vegetable coolers - that's where the dressings lurk in Consum and el Corte Inglés - I looked amongst the mayonnaises, barbecue sauces and ketchups before trying the olives and jars of pickled carrots section and, finally, when it wasn't with the olive oils and vinegars I gave up. It's possible they don't have salad dressing in the French Dressing, Thousand Islands mould. After all Spaniards generally dress their salads with oil, vinegar and salt and don't feel the need to add strawberry or mustard flavours. Mercadona is now the biggest retail outlet in Spain but one of the secrets of its success is to sell its own brand and to keep the choice fairly limited. If Mr Mercadona, Juan Roig, doesn't think they'll shift enough salad dressing off the shelves they won't sell it.  I've lived here a while now. I've been to supermarkets hundreds of ...

I don't want forelock tugging. Brisk is OK, brusque even. What I actually like is a greeting, an appropriate interchange, payment and the farewell. So the woman who sold me the sandals and joked about Brits wearing socks, the man in el Corte Inglés who explained why one set of earphones outperformed another, the person in Mercadona who asks me if I want a bag and the woman in the bar who says hello as she makes me the same sort of coffee as always all get my approval. But the cashier in Consum who talked to a co-worker whilst she scanned the items and then tapped the till display for the total, the cashier in Más y Más and the woman in the Chinese cheapo shop who both spent their time on their mobiles chatting to pals before deigning to spit out the price and the woman this morning in the newsagent who felt that it was acceptable to chat to her pal about some lad's measles for three or four minutes whilst I stood there waiting to buy a paper do not. No, what happens there...