Without news

I've just been scanning through a number of other English language blogs looking for inspiration. It's time to write a blog entry and I can't think of anything to write about.

I could do New Year of course but I must have done cava (which is not, by the way, pronounced carver - but more like kavva), red underwear and the twelve grapes about as many years as I've lived here. I've already done a bit of a Christmas piece so I can't do that again even though it's still in full swing with the shopping centres clogged with cars and the telly full of perfume adverts. It's still a week to Kings and I've done Kings so many times that regular readers must be able to imagine what a Roscón tastes like. We haven't done many non British Christmas events but, even if we had, there's not a lot of mileage in living nativity scenes, carol concerts or Christmas story telling. I didn't get caught by any jokes yesterday on "Day of the Innocents" (think of it as Spanish April 1st) nor did I make the well trodden journey to see the egg, flour, fire extinguisher and firework fight in Ibi. 

I wondered if I could do something on the Valenciano language or yet another entry on speaking, or not speaking, Spanish. The thought came to me when I remembered the bit of a language triumph I had in the KFC in Elche the other day dealing with the bastardised Spanish pronunciation of isolated English words. I didn't hesitate once in the twenty question interrogation that is now the routine for ordering the simplest thing from the Good Colonel. Then I remembered that, only a few moments before, it had been exactly the opposite in asking for tickets for Wonder Wheel (the latest and shockingly boring Woody Allen) when I had to resort to mispronouncing the old man's name - Gwuddy Al-in - because my versions of gwanda weal, wander weyl and anything else, all the way back to a well modulated English pronunciation of Wonder Wheel, just left the ticket seller looking blank. I'm still a long way from writing that handy little booklet - "How to pronounce English words like a Spaniard."

The weather is always a good mainstay - Spain has had its second borrasca, or big storm, over the last few days since the new naming regime came into being. Storms of a certain intensity, it seems, now get named alphabetically - like hurricanes. This one was Bruno, we had Ana a while ago. It killed a couple of people across Spain and the snow and coastal storms looked really impressive on the telly. Here in sunny Culebrón though the worst that happened was that I had to get out of bed at 6.25am to secure a few things because the wind was blowing pots and chairs around. Hardly the stuff of a riveting blog.

Something with the students then or something from the news, the television, the radio; a second hand tale? My bosses have a Christmas play-scheme so they've laid me off for a couple of weeks leaving me with no students to talk to. No students, no stories. At home, with it being Christmas, the British TV companies have spent lots of money and Maggie has been watching their special offerings. Nothing there then either. Without the structure of work the routine has gone out of the window so I've not been keeping up with the news as well as usual. Anyway half the journalists are taking a few days off. And in Cataluña, which has more or less monopolised the news for months, it's all very quiet because all the politicians are horse trading, some of them via Skype, after the inconclusive elections. No blog fodder.

No. Another lifetime ago, I was in Saudi Arabia one Christmas. Lots of people I worked with went back to the UK to eat turkey and snooze on the sofa and, when they got back to Wadi Al-Batin, we asked for their Christmas reports. They were like José Moscardó, the bloke in charge of the fascist defence of the Alcázar in Toledo during the Spanish Civil War. The fortress was under siege, Franco sent troops to relieve it and, when they got there the siege was lifted. Moscardó was asked for his report. He said "Nothing new in the Alcázar." I know the feeling.  Nothing new in Culebrón.

Drawing to a close

As I remember it, In England, Christmas gets off the ground just after the schools start back in September. Nothing frantic but there are unmistakable signs. Displays of trees in John Lewis, re-organisation of the display stands in Clinton's cards. It builds to a crescendo as the 25th approaches. Then a couple of family meals, too much drink, some tedious board games, the DFS 9am Boxing Day Sale and, although you may still be off work, Christmas is over.

In Spain it's different. My sister tells me that in Tenerife there was Christmas all over the place in November but, generally, in most places in Spain, you could miss any signs until December is well under way. Here in Pinoso, for instance, the Christmas lights weren't turned on till the 10th of December. Schools break up a couple of days before Christmas Eve. Families get together on the 24th and 25th echoing that yo-yoing between his and her families of Christmas day and Boxing day in the UK on alternate years. I know, by the way, that times have changed and that not all families are his and hers and that not everyone, even in Western Europe, celebrates Christmas but you'll just have to play along with me here. It is my blog after all.

But Christmas isn't over here. New Year's is also very much part of Christmas and people will be wishing you Felices Fiestas or Feliz Navidad until it becomes Feliz Año (Happy New Year). Then it, sort of, goes back to being Christmas. In fact it builds to a crescendo because, if Christmas really is about the children, then today and tomorrow are the big days.

The pages (servant pages, not pieces of paper pages) have been out all over the country collecting the letters from good boys and girls for the The Three Kings or, as we tend to say, the Three Wise Men. The Kings are the gift givers, working overnight on the 5th January, in much the same way as Father Christmas brought me that orange bulldozer. The Kings as present deliverers has a certain biblical logic given that they turned up in Bethlehem with gold, frankincense and myrrh. In about an hour, they will be parading through city streets all over Spain.

I'm racing with the post a bit. We're staying local this time and going to the cabalgata, the cavalcade, on home turf, in Pinoso. We'd wondered about going to Alcoi (the oldest parade in Spain where the Kings ride in the "wrong" order and where the King's helpers carry ladders to scale balconies to leave presents) or to Elche or Murcia, where the parades are a bit grander, but no. Local it is.

On the telly none of the reporters give the game away. The myth is maintained by hard bitten journalists who explain that the reason there are so many Kings in so many places is because of their magic powers. Children with squeaky voices are interviewed about their gift choices - I want a Nancy, I want a hatchimal - or reading out their wishes that none of the children of the world go hungry. Later tonight on the TV news there will be reports of Kings in helicopters, in boats, on elephants. The shops are still open for those last minute gifts and they will be in Madrid, Barcelona and the like till 10 this evening.

You think it's all over. Well not quite yet.