Life in Cartagena

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...

Despite her tender years Maggie has seniority. She took up residence in Spain on 21 August 2004. I was with her then but I had to return to the UK and didn't finally arrive in Spain, along with Mary the cat and the MGB, for good, until 7 October 2004. We bought the house in Culebrón on 10 January 2005. My diary for that day says, as we turned the key in the lock for the first time: "I didn't feel elated, I didn't feel doubtful. I didn't think we'd made a dreadful mistake. I didn't think we'd got a bargain. I'm not sure what we've got and I'm not sure how it will all pan out when the dust has settled." Yesterday we signed the contract on our new rented flat in Cartagena, that's the fifth flat we've rented here since we started our Spanish adventure back in 2004. This time we're slap bang in the centre of town, within yards of Puertas de Murcia one of the streets with the big chain clothes stores on it. We expect it to b...

The rental agreement on our flat in Santa Cilia de Jaca in Cartagena ran out at midnight on June 30th. I finished work at 10pm so we had two hours to pack the gear away in the car and head off to Culebrón. We did well, the stuff was ready to go and we were away by 10.56 and back home by 12.26am - the usual 90 minute run and that despite the added advantage of the motorway speed limit reverting to 120kph at midnight from the experimental, fuel saving, 110kph. I suppose I also became unemployed as midnight struck. My temporary work contract expired and my new one doesn't begin till September 1st. So, for the next two months, all the fun over at Life in Culebrón.

Julian told me that he had been busy on Thursday getting their house out on the coast ready for summer. He says that each year the family - mum, dad and two young children - abandon the town and head for a small house they own out at Los Nietos beside the Mar Menor where they will live until the children go back to full days at school in mid September. The San Juan celebrations are the trigger for them to start making preparations proper for the move because it is also the time, more or less, when children finish school for the summer. Some of my students had similar stories. As we drove away from Cartagena today Maggie pointed out a family loading up the trailer on the back of their motor with lots of beach gear. Maybe they are off to La Manga . Lots of Cartaganeros seem to go there or to the resorts on the Mar Menor and nearby Med. I've just been watching the nine-o-clock news. First heat wave of the summer, 40ºC all over Spain, here's some advice from a doctor. And som...

We're giving up our current flat in Cartagena on the last day of this month and we've just found a new flat for the next academic year. This is our new barrio We went to ask at an estate agent on Friday afternoon, saw four flats and tootled off to think about it. On Saturday we went back into town, strolled around looking at "To Rent" signs and eventually returned to the same estate agent and signed on the dotted for the first flat we'd seen. The standard system here is that you pay three times the monthly rent when you take on a flat through an agent. The agent gets a third as a "finders fee," the landlord gets two thirds - made up of a month's rent and a returnable deposit. The finders fee is always a bit of a wrench, giving away money for nothing, but that's the way it is unless you can find a private deal. So, from September, we'll be right in the heart of the town - about 100 metres from the High Street with an underground garag...

It's San Juan, the shortest night of the year. A night for setting fire to things, blowing up things, We were set to go out to Cala Cortina, to an organised event with fireworks and Flamenco but we never got further than the streets around our house. Children, unsupervised, setting off bangers. Groups of older people sitting around, drinking it in. Ambulance sirens wailing. Family groups with dad setting the example. Fireworks bumping into buildings, bouncing off cars, exploding around our feet. More sirens wailing.

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...