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.