It's A Gas

One of the main problems about living where we live, is that there is no mains gas supply. Not just to our house, but to all the houses in this region. This means that we have to buy bottled gas. In Spain this is not at all uncommon, and there are regular supply points where lorries with gas bottles are parked, so that you can replace your bottle there.

It was a small inconvenience, that took a long time to get used to. Originally when we moved here, we had no car. We were told the time that the gas lorry should be outside the apartment building where we lived then. Small problem, we were both at work when the lorry was there, so we could not organise a swap of bottles with the lorry. This meant walking to the nearest supermarket that supplies gas, 2 km away, and carrying the gas home. I am not particularly strong, and a gas bottle when full weighs a lot. So we purchased a trolley and walked the gas back and forth to the apartment.

Now we have a car. Much easier. Throw the bottle in the back and get some gas. One of my main duties as a nurse in the homes of people is ensuring they have gas and connecting it to their cooker, their shower or whereever they need it. I have had desperate phone calls from patients at 6.00 a.m. telling me they have run out of gas and please can I come immediately. Needless to say, all my patients now have spare gas bottles in their homes, so all I have to do at that time of the day is reconnect them.

In our new home, the only thing that uses gas is the shower. It means that our cooker again is electrical, which is great, because we always used to run out of gas in the middle of cooking our food. Now we only run out of gas when I am in the shower and have just applied shampoo to my hair - leading to a lot of swearing and shouting as the icecold water pours over my head and down my back.

The good thing about gas is though, that as we can only use it when we have bought it, there is no unexpectedly high bill suddenly. We have also noticed that the government lowers the retail price of gas the moment that general gas supplies became cheaper. Whereas in England, when petrol or gas wholesale prices came down, it took ages for those savings to be passed on to the customers, here is happens almost instantaneously.

I expect that eventually we will all get mains gas, and another little bit of the 'otherness' of Spain will then disappear. Part of me will regret that but the part of me that has greasy hair because I could not rinse out the shampoo will welcome the day.

To Be Or Just Be Temporarily...

I have now lived in Spain for two years, and well remember my ignorance thinking that I could learn to speak Spanish within about a year of arriving here. This has proved to be incorrect. I had mistakenly thought that because I could already speak three foreign languages, for some reason learning the fourth would be easy. I had conveniently forgotten the fact that I learned those three languages over a period of several years, and at a time in my life when learning was a lot easier than it is now.

So I started my Spanish lessons and one of the first things I learned was that the Spanish have two verbs for 'to be'. One is 'ser' which means to be permanently, or an aspect of you that is permanent, such as 'soy enfermera' (I am a nurse) or 'soy Holandesa' (I am Dutch). The second verb is 'estar', so it would be 'estoy enferma' (I am ill) or 'estoy cansada' (I am tired).

This distinction is not one that comes easily to me, none of the other languages I have studied have two different verbs for 'to be' - and sometimes I am not sure what verb to apply - I am a nurse now, but maybe tomorrow I will stop being one and do something completely different, so should I apply ser or estar?

But, apart from the frustration of trying to remember which verb to use, there is something very charming about the idea that you can have 'to be' and 'to be temporarily', which I think is actually a good reflection of the Spanish state of mind and their tempo of living. It is as if the language includes an acknowledgement of the fact that there are lots of things (like being ill, being tired) that are only temporary and that will pass. The Spanish seem to have incorporated in their language a sort of get-out or temporary clause, that says, ok you are ill now but it will pass, it is not a permanent state of being. Quite healthy really and maybe it explains their generally happy attitude towards life.

The Burial of the Sardine

One thing you have to get used to when living in Spain is the Fiesta. The Spanish are probably the fiesta people of the world. They love their fiestas and spend a lot of time preparing for them. In Spain you buy a special calendar and there are so called 'Red Days' on the calendar - which are national Fiestas (for example the Day of the Constitution). These are compulsory and most businesses have to shut for those days. In my line of business, home care and nursing, we are allowed to carry on working, because patients need to still receive their care and have breakfast etc. The only other business that will always be open on Fiesta days (except Christmas day) are the bakers. The Spanish generally do no store bread, they buy it fresh every day, and by law bakers have to provide bread each day of the year apart from Christmas day.

Apart from the Red Days there are local fiestas, depending on which Saint covers your village or town. Also there is Semana Santa (starts Thursday before Easter and finishes Monday after) when the banks are shut and some supermarkets open for limited hours to let people restock on necessities. All other shops tend to be shut. Christmas is of course also celebrated here, but not nearly as important here as Easter.

Of course the Spanish also have Carnaval, which is for the three days leading up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent (40 days leading up to Easter). Depending on where you live, Carnaval can be a large affair (Benidorm, Alicante) or small (our village and surrounding villages). People dress up and party. Carnaval is a very very old tradition and there are records of Carnaval being celebrated in the Middle Ages. Then is appears it had something to do with using up all the old stock of flour, milk, butter etc. before Lent started (same applies in UK when they have Shrove Tuesday and use up their provisions for making pancakes).

One of the nice points of Carnaval comes at the very end, with the Burial of the Sardine. In Alicante this takes place at the beach - with the ritual burial of carnaval masks in the sand. In some other places a woman is chosen to be the Lady of the Sardine and the sardine is marched in ritual procession through the streets of the town. The sardine is then set on fire and the ashes are buried. This is supposed to mark the end of Carnaval. The Spanish painter Goya painted a beautiful painting of revellers which is known as The Burial of the Sardine.

I find the ritual of the burial of the sardine very interesting. Although it is meant to be part of Carnaval, and an essentially Christian ceremony marking the end of festivities and the beginning of the sombre period of Lent, I think it may go back much further than Christianity and be a ritual that actually was a bit like the ritual drawing of animals in order to capture them or the ritual slaughter of a young animal in order to placate the gods and provide a good lambing season or whatever the animal was that was slaughtered. Could this not be a ritual by fishermen to increase their catch? I have not found any evidence of this yet, but am looking through old documents now and will let you know if and when I find something. Whatever the truth, it is a very interesting ritual and well worth a trip to Spain.

The Joy Of Not Telefonica

Well, last week we finally decided we could not take the appalling service from Telefonica any longer, and we have spent our hard-earned money on getting a Wipzona installation. It cost us €300,00 to get the installation set up, and will then cost €40,00 each month for the connection, but after the dreadful time we have had with Telefonica that seems to be a small investment for our mental health.

I rang Wipzona and spoke to a man who had the most interesting English accent, in fact he turned out to be Norwegian. Since our village is largely inhabited by Norwegians I took this as a promising sign, since they generally do not put up with bad service. He said they would try and get the line installed before Easter, but if they could not manage it they would come on the Tuesday after Easter.

Imagine my delight when in fact they came on the Tuesday before Easter. In Spain, Semana Santa, or Holy Week starts on the Thursday before Easter and carries on until the Monday after Easter Sunday, and nothing much gets done during the period.

Predictably it was absolutely bucketing down with rain when the man arrived. Luckily we had decided not to have the installation on the roof but on the side wall of the balcony, which meant we could stand there with two umbrellas, keeping him and ourselves dry. The actual installation did not take much time and we are now the proud owners of a dish like structure on the side of the house that has transformed our lives.

Before, every time it rained, there was a storm, we had clouds, in fact whenever there was 'weather', we had no connection. We have had a dreadful period of rain and storms over the last 3 days again, but the connection keeps on going. No, it is not very fast, but it works and it keeps on working. No longer do we have to sweat to see if we can get a programme downloaded before the connection goes away again. I can surf secure in the knowledge that I do not have to wait for two hours again before I can get in.

Sometimes, it is just better to spend a bit of money upfront and to have good service, than to do things on the cheap and have no service at all.

Keep it up Wipzona, I will be recommending you to all my friends !