Life in Cartagena

We keep doing flamenco. Most Spanish people are a bit surprised when we mention it. They ask, in a sort of unbelieving way, "You like flamenco?" Flamenco certainly has a strong following amongst the Spanish but I don't think it's exactly popular. It's not the most accessible music. Suddenly the audience will mouth alé and there will be a ripple of approval but I never quite know why. The words are completely unintelligible to me, well I catch occasional phrases now and then but basically nothing. I don't find myself humming any of the tunes when the concerts over and often, to tell the truth, I've been shuffling in my chair for a while before it's all over. But I keep going back for more. I told my mum I was going to some flamenco and she said that, to her, it was all just noisy stamping. Certainly people dance flamenco and I have more than one English language student who dances. But my idea of flamenco is not a dress swirling, finger clicking, ...

We've been busy this weekend. Flamenco, old pals and lots of eating. Last night we went for an Indian with a couple that we met in the UK some years ago. She's Spanish, he's from the UK. We went relatively early and got to the restaurant about 9.30. It was odd, a big pink industrial unit on a small industrial estate in not the most exciting part of the region. The pink building had an elephant motif. There were lots of cars parked outside. Inside it was humming. Nearly all the tables full. Waiters rusing here and there. The odd word of Engliish floated through the ether. Most of the diners were, like us, slightly pink from the recent sunny days and British. The Spanish member of our group took on minor celebrity status amongst the waiters which lasted the whole evening. We had to wait a few minutes for a table. We got our drinks. We read the menus. We ordered. As we crunched through the papadums people were leaving. As the waiter handed out the various rices and mai...

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 changed my bank account recently, basically the same bank but a different account. The bank offered the option to amend all my standing orders and direct debits online via the Internet site. I did that. The result was a bit curate's egg. Some bills have been taken from the new account whilst some have gone from the old account. Driving back to Cartagena tonight it struck me that maybe I should amend the payment details, that is the bank account number, on the websites of the organisations I pay the bills to as well as to the bank. The phone company is offline. I notice that the website gives my name as Christofher Jhon Thompson. The address is also wrong. My mobile phone provider is offline. My electricity supplier is offline. My credit card provider requires that I fax identity documents, proof of ownership of the bank account etc to them before they can confirm the change. The people who deal with water, rates and car tax are an honourable exception. Well done SUM...

Those men and women who forged the Empire - the Sutherland Highlanders at Balaclava or those gin and tonic drinking rubber planters in Burma (for the malaria don't you know?) - would be ashamed of us. We got in the car and came home. Over in Murcia they have a week of festivities, the Spring Festival, as soon as Easter is over. The Murcianos think that Carnival is all well and good but, what with the 40 days of Lent and then the soul wrenching that is Easter, they reckon it's all a bit depressing. So why not let your hair down as soon as you can afterwards? We hadn't been able to get over to Murcia, what with having to earn a crust and all, but today we were free to go and have a look see. We were there in time to watch a few musical bands parade through the streets giving away small toys, we got to the firework display and we wandered the city full of life, drink, music and noise. With the exception of a Mexican band who were drilled to perfection it was all a bit sl...

Parking in Spain is odd. I've said so before . Most car parks in town centres, for supermarkets, for blocks of flats and the like are underground and very  labyrinthine . Only the big new shopping centres regularly have surface or multi storey car parks. The standard construction method for Spanish buildings is to build a frame from concrete pillars and then brick in between these weight bearing columns. The columns, logically enough, extend (or is it start) in the underground space. The spacing and placement of the columns is dependant on the form of the building above and the result is an interesting maze of very hefty obstacles for the parking motorist. Lots and lots of times the access is tortuous to say the least. Scratch marks along the concrete and the armoured protection for the ticket machines show that lots of motorists don't get it right. Purpose built car parks, in the sense of places offering paid for parking, usually have gently sloping access roads to lul...

I bought a roscón this afternoon. After all the Three Kings will be delivering Christmas presents all over Spain tonight and it seemed churlish not to join in by chomping my way through one of these large, doughnut shaped cakes that are part of the traditional fare for the celebration. The Three Kings were on the news - arriving by boat in Cartagena, Barcelona and Alicante, by helicopter in Ceuta, on the AVE train in Albacete, cruising in stretch limos and riding elephants and camels in Cantabria. I was at work till eight and the parade of the Kings through Cartagena began at six but, on the off chance, I joined the throng of last minute Christmas shoppers and the people milling around simply because that's what you do before and after the parade. It was hard walking, fighting the prams and strolling, chatting, snack eating pedestrians but down near the port it was obvious that the crowd was still awaiting the arrival of their Majesties the Magician Kings. I watched the parad...

S'funny. We've lived in Cartagena over a year now but still there are parts of the city completely hidden to us. Over the summer, in Murcia, we saw a photo exhibition that featured some snaps from a barrio called Algameca Chica in Cartagena, a district that isn't on the maps. We asked in the tourist info office where it was. "Run along the back of the naval dockyards and just before the military checkpoint take the dirt road - and there it is." New territory to us. Maggie seemed to think we may be robbed at any moment. I was re-assured that the tourist people hadn't warned us off. In fact the only things that anyone said to us as we wandered around, me with an expensive looking camera in hand, were "Hello" or "Nice day" or some such. Strange place, houses built out of old planks and second hand looking building materials next to a little inlet on the coast. There seemed, from a hand written notice, to be some sort of internal organisa...

Last night we went to the Mandarache shopping centre where they have been advertising turns on Thursday and Friday evenings for the past couple of weeks. Nice to see the place a bit livelier than usual. There were tables all over the square where a slightly confused waiter provided us with cheap brandy in tumblerfuls and weak but expensive mojitos. The act was a woman comedian. She did one of those things that comedians do, she talked about commonplace things and events but pointed out their ridiculous aspects. I understood maybe 20% of the gags. I was pleased with myself; 20% isn't bad as a language score given the circumstances but what pleased me more was that I recognised the situations she was ridiculing, the adverts on the telly and the people she described. Spanish culture slowly but surely seeping in through the pores.

I think it's a personal best. On saturday I did eight museums in a day. Considering that phrase I've realised it contains at least two untruths or, as we Yorkshire folk call them, lies. In the first place they weren't all museums. A guided visit around the Cathedral in Orihuela or a tour around the Modernist Old Town Hall in Cartagena isn't exactly a museum visit. And the last visit, to the Underwater Archaelogy Museum in Cartagena started at around 1.30am on Sunday morning. In spirit though it's true enough. I have been known to complain about Spanish Museums or rather the Spanish attitude to imparting imformation in displays of one sort and another. The guides, the guide books and the information boards seem to delight in using terminology that means nothing to the layperson whilst missing out the key facts or giving any life to what you're seeing. So we'd get "designed in 1962 and built of a titanium and aluminium shell by British Aircraft Corpo...

If you live in the UK I hope you had a good election night. Staying up and shouting at the television every five years or so was something I used to enjoy. I was there, in spirit at least, as my proxy went along to the Commemoration Hall to make sure that I exercised my franchise. The Spanish media covers foreign elections quite extensively. The old Colonial links with South and Central America mean that the polls in Colombia or Argentina get a lot of media attention and, being good Europeans, elections in Germany, France, Poland etc. are also big stories. I've never seen anything as extensive though as the coverage of the UK elections. For weeks there has been in depth reporting of what Brown, Cameron and Clegg have been up to. Nick's wife being Spanish added to the fun of it all. I generally read a newspaper called El Pais, a bit left of centre and with well written and non sensationalist articles. A bit Guardian like. Two or three pages of articles has not been unusual...

I found one of my English/Spanish exchange chums through something called the Bolsa de Idiomas. I've explained before that it's part of the youth service on offer in Cartagena. These are also the people who arranged the book club sessions. In May, given it's name it couldn't really be at any other time, there are a series of events aimed at showcasing the talents of young people. It's called Much More May (the alliteration works in English as well as Spanish.) As a small part of the event on the 15th Museums and other cultural attractions in the City are going to open for free from 9 in the evening till 1 in the morning. The youth service people are looking for volunteers to work in the museums for the evening and to "adopt" one of the exhibits or pieces from the various museums so that they are on hand to give visitors detailed and specific information about the "life and miracles" of each piece. If I'm not too old I quite fancy volu...