Practical chemistry

I think it's Le Chatelier's Principle though I hesitate to look it up - what if it isn't? I've been using the same reasoning, remembered from a chemistry class in the mid nineteen sixties, to limit the amount of housework I've done over the last forty years or so.

So far as I remember the ideas is that if you have a system in equilibrium and you do something to upset that equilibrium then the system does its damnedest to re-establish the balance. The implications are clear. Dust the mantelpiece and you are taking on the Universe. Mop and you are fighting the titanic forces of creation. Heaven knows what moves against you when you do a bit of vaccing. Whatever it is, in no time at all, the dust will be back and the floor full of bits.

Anyway. I don't like cleaning. It's work and I'm not keen on work. It's pointless. Clean the car and either it rains or there is a giant dust storm. Hoover and mop the floor and that same rain and dust cloud undo all your work.

There's no denying though, that for the short time it takes nature to marshal her counter attack it's nice to see the bathroom porcelain shine. To be able to see out of the windows. To not crunch as you walk across the kitchen floor.

I don't like cleaning for a another reason. It generates dirt. Normally I just try to scare a room into being clean by shaking a damp cloth at it but even then dirt has a nasty habit of showing itself. You know the sort of thing. As you put on the laundry you notice the washing machine door seal is full of slime from months of detergent sludge. As you search for the bleach under the sink you see the mould growing underneath those never used cleaning products at the back.

Anyway, what has this to do with living in Spain as distinct from cleaning in Chingford? Not much if the truth be told but I have to write something from time to time. It's turned cool here in the last few days. As I changed the bed today I dug the electric blanket out of storage and put it into place. More to the point the leaves that have fallen from the fig and mulberry trees have been dancing around in the shrill autumn breeze. We have banks of the things outside the front door and filling up the interior patio. I pick them up and dump them but there are always more.

So I cleaned surfaces, I dusted, I brought down cobwebs, I polished, I hoovered and I mopped. And then Le Chatelier kicked in and a quick gust of wind distributed mounds of leaf fragments from the front to the back door and a patina of pale yellow dust on all the horizontal surfaces.

Zas is as nothing against the forces of Nature.

Lancing the cat's boils

Every now and again I write an email to someone. This is like writing a letter in the olden days. Personal communication. Facebook messages, the private ones are as postcards to the email letters.

As those emails and messages go back and forth the fact that I live in Spain is vaguely recognised but largely ignored by most of my chums. A couple of my correspondents, however, never fail to slip in a comment which makes it very clear that they think my decision to abandon the UK was barmy. Ten years on I wouldn't have thought that was much of a talking point.

I called the blog Life in Culebrón. I write the entries partly because I live in Culebrón, in Spain, but moreso because the Internet gave me a method to write in public without effort. I've written a diary every day of my life since I was fourteen. Blogging isn't that different except that nobody gets to read my diaries till I'm dead and even then only if they can read my terrible handwriting.

Because I write the blogs I have to think of a hook. Finding something to write can be difficult because most things I do are so commonplace. Maggie often ridicules the way I stretch and twist the most trivial of incidents into a post. Take the other day. It was a Bank Holiday on the 6th and we went looking for lunch. We hadn't booked of course. We tried Amador's place down in Mañar first - the restaurant was full but as he recognises us and we reckon we know him he turned us away in a flurry of handshakes and kisses. They turned us down at Paco Gandia and Pere i Pepa too but we finally got fed, very well, at el Timón.

Now the point of the story could be eating times, booking things up, the end of the Christmas holidays, the different emphasis of the holidays here, an essay on the fame of the rabbit and snail rice at Paco's, the quality or value of the local food or it could just be to preen because I know the name of at least one Spanish person.

In fact I want to use it to emphasise how ordinary life is for us. Alright I feel a bit uncomfortable with Spanish still and at times it's something much, much stronger than that. Asking about table reservations had me looking vaguely bemused and moving from foot to foot as waiters and waitresses rushed past us with crockery. I'm like that though, I'd be exactly the same in the UK except for needing to speak Spanish. Nonetheless the routine of restaurants, the ordering, the food and how things are presented is all dead ordinary to us. Absolutely normal. More ordinary to me than doing the same thing a couple of weeks ago in the UK. It wasn't a problem in the UK either but it had more novelty value there because I do it less frequently. Just as Tesco's or Boot's is more exotic to me now than Eroski or Mercadona.

So there are seveal reasons why I complain as I blog. One is because everyone complains. I complained when I lived in the UK and I complain now. I've complained wherever I've lived and I will probably complain till the day I die. Another is that I have the right to complain - I can complain about politicians because they spend my taxes and because I voted, I can complain about services because I think they are not working as they should. Yet another reason is that I have the tools, I can type something here and a few people read it. And, of course, I am a miserable sod and complaining suits me. Oh, and there always exists the vaguest possibility that whatever it is I'm bleating on about actually needs exposing, complaining about or changing.

So, if I complain, compare the UK to Spain or just blether on think of it as no more than "O" level essay writing with maybe a little observation of the world about me thrown in. Nothing more. And I promise not to read anything deeply dissident into you complaining about the price of petrol, flip flops being referred to as thongs or trains being late.