Episode 4: In Praise of Plastic Flowers

By the time you read this blog episode, I may be dead. Before I start the latest instalment of a saga that I know has at least two of you gripped – although it could just be trapped wind – I’m under strict instructions from my hubby to put in the following disclaimer:  I, Mark Fell, being of reasonably sound mind and clean underwear, love my mother-in-law unconditionally and would say nothing to harm or discredit her. You see, what follows is a whimsical and pictorial journey through a time that taste forgot and while based on truth, may have been tweaked here and there, which could unintentionally portray her to be less of a deity than she really, truly is. The fact that she speaks not one word of English is on my side. The other fact that some of the family do and could translate this and tell her is not on my side. Eighty-two years old or not, she packs a mean knockout punch.

Gorgeous

If there were a Spanish award for keeping tat, my sainted ma-in-law would win it. As I write this, the kitchen has been ripped out and we’re well on the way to the new one being put in. Naturally, before we started, the one requirement we had of the old kitchen was that it should be totally empty.......but this was no mean feat. Those of you that have visited the flat will know that the kitchen was full of little idiosyncratic touches; by that, I mean that nothing has been thrown away since 1959 and if Maria has her way, nothing ever will be. Each emptied cupboard has resulted in raised voices between her and José and what could be called ‘lively discussions’ about what should stay (nothing) and what will go (everything). That’s not to say that we hate everything and want only our stuff around, but dotted around this little blog are examples of the trinkets and foo-foo’s that she loves so much and which have (so far) survived the cull.

The sweet smell of a thousand
Tesco carrier bags

Why am I writing this rubbish?

I’m going to start with plastic flowers. When I arrived on these shores in 2001, a Galician virgin, the first thing that greeted me at the flat was a plethora of flowers. My delight at the obvious expense that had been sacrificed in my honour soon turned to bemusement, when I realised there was not a single living bloom amongst them. My bemusement eventually gave way to stifled hilarity when I realised that nothing was safe from the curse of the plastic flower. I swear that if I’d sat to watch something on the TV for any considerable amount of time without moving, there would have been a doily placed on my head with a synthetic display of daffodils bursting pleasingly from my crown. You see, that’s the other thing here, if it doesn’t move, it gets something plonked on it and nothing gets put down without a crocheted or cloth doily underneath it. Even the small chest freezer has a doily on it with a lamp, a rather sinister looking doll and a photo frame on top, all of which have to be moved each time I want a Magnum, which is about 4 times a day when I’m stressed and comfort eating.

Maria's cock.; now crowing
about his freedom

Gradually, over a protracted period of time, the plastic flowers have disappeared one by one. Some have been negotiated over and some may have inadvertently found themselves in a plastic bin bag whilst dusting this surface or that unit. My memory isn’t what it used to be and if I forgot they were there and put the bags out for the rubbish, well, it’s an unfortunate side effect of years of heavy substance misuse (José seems to think that Dandelion & Burdock counts as a lethal substance).

Of course, it's not all plastic flowers. She's got a lovely little cock that also sits near to Deirdre on the bathroom shelf, which I can't bring myself to throw out. Ah, who am I kidding - it went in the bin three days ago!

Then there’s Deidre.

Deirdre, earlier today.
Unable to think 'outside the box'

Maria & my father-in-law were visiting us for Christmas around 2005 and one bleak winter’s day, we trudged along to the Lakeland sale where she bought a little squirrel in a plastic box for about a pound. The reason it was about a pound was because it was shite. It’s not a real squirrel you understand. I know that Lakeland sell some odd things, but selling real squirrels in plastic boxes would be overstepping the mark even for them. Anyway, along the way she’s been christened Deidre, although I’ve no recollection now as to why. I don’t even know if she’s a she; how does one sex an inanimate squirrel in a plastic box? Good grief.........I actually stopped typing this for a moment there to consider that question.  It’s made me wonder what I have become since leaving the NHS a couple of months ago..........Ah, who cares? I left the NHS!!!!

Back to Deirdre! Deirdre has been everywhere. She started out life in the bathroom, but when we replaced it last year with a lovely shiny new one, she got moved to the second bathroom. There was a tense moment when we saw her back in the new bathroom and José threatened to implode when he discovered her, but it was just his mother’s little joke and Deirdre was soon restored to her rightful place in the second class loo. Spanish humour, huh!?!? When we came to live here in early July, she had been promoted to the top of a kitchen cupboard. Poor Deirdre! She’s got the same taste in living surroundings as Fergie does with financial advisors. She just seems to choose wrong, because as I said earlier, we’re now having the kitchen ripped out and a lovely new one put in. Will she coming back to the lovely new kitchen once it’s completed? You bet your bottom euro she won’t! It’s back to the second bathroom again for her. Perhaps it’s a homing instinct?

Flowers bloom all year round
in our flat

José has asked his mother on many occasions why she keeps Deirdre and the response is always an incredulous “well I bought her in England” (although she obviously says that in Spanish!). It seems that because he lived there and I was born there, buying Deirdre there makes her automatically wonderful. I pointed out to Maria that we also have Katie Price, Kerry Katona and Ann Widdecombe – she soon got the message.

The other argument for not throwing anything away is the “I paid good money for that” statement. The kitchen here is of average size, with a small annexed washroom (originally for handwashing clothes & hanging them indoors), which we’re turning into a nice storage area and to paraphrase Mrs. Bucket, ‘with room for a large fridge freezer’. In the old kitchen was a table, small enough to fit in there, but large enough to leave little more than about a foot on each side of it to squeeze by. Granted, the kitchen layout didn’t help, so we’re moving doors and creating a larger space, but this table was far too big for the space we had. When we told my suegra or ‘mother-in-law’ (you see, it’s not just a blog, it’s a small Spanish lesson too!) that the table was not going in the new kitchen, there was nearly a riot. I stood well back – I told you earlier that she can still pack a punch. That table was bought in 1973 with the money earned from sewing, by hand, 6 million sequins on the frocks of the participants of the Argentinian “Come Dancing” TV show and no-one, no-one was going to get rid of it. Of course we have got rid of it; when José puts his mind to it, nothing is safe, despite his mother’s pugilistic traits. He’s very single minded on this and I’m waiting for the inevitable day when I become too old for him to have around and he trades me in for something newer. I’ll tell you something though, my legs are not and never were, as sturdy as that old Argentinian table. I’ve never moved anything that small that weighed that much! Not even José! We were not allowed to throw the table out, just in case it will ever be useful again. It won’t be, but the compromise is that it’s gone to a better place........the storage space we have here on the top floor. I did think that both me and José may need oxygen after dragging it up three flights of stairs, but we were revived with a tequila beer and some crisps. I’m a cheap and easy date!

Demis Roussos: Denies
knowing my mother-in-law

The loft storage space is crammed with things that may be useful again in the future. Duvets! Handbags! Demis Roussos! Who knows, the next time I write a blog post, I may be writing from up there with only Deirdre for company and surrounded by a host of artificial chrysanthemums. Now, I wonder if it’s possible to put a filter on this page so that only people in the UK are able to read it..........?

Episode 3. Dispatches

Yesterday I went to my first Spanish funeral. I didn’t know the lady at all, having only met her once, briefly at the wedding of José’s cousin Tom some years ago, but as I’m now “fa-a-a-amily” (pronounced as if in Eastenders), it was my duty to attend; which I did. I’m still not totally sure what happened, but I’ll try and make sense of it.

Sandwiches

Here in Spain, when someone moves onto a better place (and no, I don’t mean France), they are required by law to hold the funeral within 28 hours. It’s a bit of a bugger if Great Uncle Ricardo lives in Mexico now, because unless he’s got access to that ‘beam-me-up’ thingy they have on Star Trek, he ain’t coming to the send off. In the UK of course, we put ‘em in a fridge while every single relative and hanger-on is contacted. They then starve themselves in eager anticipation of a good funeral tea at the house of the deceased after the service, whilst all the time looking round the place and wondering if they could sneak that Clarice Cliff teapot into their handbag. (‘Well, the deceased had always said they could have it when they got the calling from beyond’). After my father died, I still remember my mother’s disappointment when she knew his brother and sister-in-law would be coming to the funeral tea as it meant buying another half dozen rolls, because “she eats like she’s got a tapeworm”.

Back to yesterday, or to be more precise the day before when we heard about the old lady’s passing. I casually mentioned to José that I didn’t know where my black tie was and he laughed. A lot! Apparently, no-one wears ties to funerals, only the immediate relatives. We were to be smart, casual and in sombre colours, but still allowing the topping-up of the tan line around my neck.

My mother-in-law has been
washing up regularly since 1944

Getting up at 5.45am yesterday, we drove the 90+ miles to the village where the deceased lived, going straight to her house to gather there. Outside, the men stood in homage to testosterone, which was there in abundance. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so out of place in my life. We said our hello’s, offered our sympathies and I was introduced to a few family members I’d not met before. I wondered where the womenfolk were and presumed they were inside buttering baps. Before you all shout at me, this is still a VERY patriarchal society, so I’m only saying what I see day after day. I have to say it suits me though, I’ve not washed a pot since I got here, leaving that particular chore to my 82 year old mother-in-law who is happy to do it. Of course, I will help her in time, but she’s got another good 10 – 15 years of work left in her yet!

So, we went to look for the ladies of the parish to say our hellos. Inside the house, a young guy gestured that they were upstairs, so up we went. I can tell you now, my flabber had never been so gasted as much as it had at that moment. Curtains were closed, the heat was stifling, an enormous crucifix came into view as we climbed the steps and suddenly there they were, all gathered around the coffin. Someone was silently weeping and it was all a little surreal. I noticed that the coffin had a sun roof and the old lady could look up at the stars, which I thought was a nice touch, although greeted by that miserable bunch of crying faces, she wisely had her eyes closed.

It’s now confession time. It’s a well known fact that comedy and tragedy are not that far apart on the grand scale of things. I’ve never wanted to laugh at a funeral before, unless of course someone said something intentionally funny in the service, but as we stood upstairs in respectful silence, I wanted to laugh. Don’t get me wrong, the situation wasn’t actually funny and to be invited in to pay respects is a powerful and moving experience, but I just wasn’t prepared for it. The situation hit me like one of my mother-in-law’s punches (more on that in another post) and that well of really inappropriate nervous laughter that we all have started to bubble up from way down inside. José could have let me know what to expect, but it slipped his mind apparently. Funny that. He just loves toying with me. I’m his plaything!

We soon shoved off as I couldn’t stand it anymore and went back outside where the paddling pool of testosterone had become something of a tsunami in the intervening period. Moving to a little nook by the chicken run, I was able to smile broadly and share my thoughts with José on what I’d seen without attracting funny looks or someone slapping me. From this vantage point, we watched as more and more and more people arrived. Of course, in a Catholic country such as Spain, everyone is related to everyone, because in the olden days, no-one knew what actually caused pregnancy. There were uncles, great aunts and cousins to greet, some of whom José didn’t know at all. There were also neighbours from the village, or The Village People as I liked to think of them, but that was a mistake. That set me off again and I had to stuff a fist in my mouth to stop the visions. I could see them in my mind’s eye doing YMCA around the old dear as she lay upstairs.

Altogether now...........Y            M            C            A!

Sitting there on the wall by the chicken run, we thought we were safe. Our relative comfort was shattered some small time later when a rather short, fat little man walked by us, went behind the feed shed and proceeded to pee. There was a perfectly good toilet in the house, but well, this is the countryside after all. We didn’t look, but the sound of that man’s urine hitting the ground will stay with me for some considerable time. Dementia has never seemed so appealing.

Black widow

As for the clothing, we needn’t have worried. Traditionally, in the villages widowed ladies wear nothing but black for the rest of their natural days, so a funeral gives them an excuse to blend in perfectly. There was one lady there in black whose tights had been stitched so many times, they made her legs look like Frankenstein’s monster. I know there’s not a lot of money around, but you’d think that she could keep a good pair of tights back for such occasions as funerals and weddings. Apart from the black widows, there were jeans in abundance, with around half of the congregation in them. I did think it was inappropriate for the priest though. (Kidding!!) Many were in other colours and it seemed that white was the couleur du jour as it was 29 degrees in the beating sun (read that and weep UK.......you only had 17 degrees yesterday!) One lady even came in silver dancing shoes and I imagined her having to rush off to some illicit pasodoble class afterwards.

Eventually the priest came to the house, looking for all the world like he might be the next one in need of the services of the funeral directors. Prayers were said and grandma was brought down to the waiting hearse. A man walked in front with the crucifix and the family and friends walked behind to the church. Thankfully it was only about half a kilometre away, otherwise there would have been people dropping like flies into the roadside ditches by the cornfields, given the temperature of the day. When we got there, the mad dash for the seats in church didn’t respect family or age, with many family members & infirm elderly being left outside. No-one seemed fazed by this – it is apparently quite normal. All in all there were just over 200 people there. With the church only holding about 100 maximum, the rest of us were outside. Did we stand in reverent silence, listening to the service through the loudspeakers? Did we bogroll! There was talking, laughing, smoking and spitting going on – and that was just the women! Actually I don’t know why Spanish men spit so much; perhaps it’s in their genes? Can’t say that’s something about José I’m looking forward to in old age. I’ve told him, if he starts spitting on my parquet flooring, he can damn well get on his creaking knee joints and clean it up.

Plenty of room up top

Eventually the service came to an end and the coffin was carried outside by her grandchildren for the interment. In Spain in the villages, no-one is buried as there’s no room left. Instead, they have these walls of coffins outside the church where people are slid in. The front slab then slides over, hiding the coffin from view and has on it what we in the UK would have written on the headstone. A sort of high-rise graveyard, although not run by the council, which is a good job because the damn lifts wouldn’t work half the time. We solemnly gathered round to say final goodbyes and in my case, a quiet ‘sorry I didn’t know you better’. Interestingly, grief threatened to overwhelm me. I didn’t really know the lovely lady so wondered why I felt as I did. It struck me then and there that the emotion was for my little sister. She recently had a very serious accident which was near fatal. The first few days were touch and go and I realised that what I was experiencing was the tail-end of emotion from that chapter in my life. We could so easily have been at her funeral recently. Thankfully we weren’t and I have no intention of that happening until we’re in our old age, but the realisation of how thin the thread is that attaches us to life, engulfed me for that moment.

Final prayers were said, people stood – this time in respectful silence – before gradually saying their goodbyes to friends and family members and then dispersing. I went to join the family members I knew and once more hugged my condolences into them, not being able to express myself so well in Spanish just yet. With my arms around gorgeous cousin Pili, some man started stuffing black plastic bags in the space around the coffin. I wondered if this was a further Spanish ritual – your last bags of rubbish go in there with you as the binmen will no longer collect once you’ve passed on? Pili asked what was going on as neither she nor José knew. It turns out that it’s a powder that aids decomposition and in another bag, the remains of her long pre-deceased husband that had been taken out of the space the old lady now resided in to make room for her. Honestly, shoved into a small space with two old bags jammed in beside me...........it sounds like a trip into town on the number 23 bus.

In loving memory of Doña Julia Sanlés Luaces

With massive appreciation to Cousin Tom, who had power of veto over the content on this entry and from whom the blog title comes. Thanks my Spinach friend!

Episode 2: How to cope with Spanish bureaucracy - Part 1

Welcome back! If you managed to work your way through the first blog and thought you would try your luck with another one, then well done you. These stories are not for the faint of heart or sore of pile, but if you’re all ready for another one and are sitting comfortably on your rubber ring, then I’ll begin.

I need to make it crystal clear from the start that I have long realised Spain was not a country to make things easy for itself. This is a country where they still have people come to pump your petrol at the filling stations – which is nice when it’s lashing down with rain – and where the only answer to “how easy is it to do that?” is a rather frank, “no es” (it isn’t).

I’m going to dedicate Part 1 to banks. If you’re reading this as a UK citizen, you may remember opening a bank account. You walked into any one of the High Street banks, gave them more money than any bank should be allowed to manage, which is anything over a fiver these days and they opened an account for you. You may also have had Amazon vouchers, an iTunes card or

some other incentive like a weekend in Margate with the CEO’s still single forty six year old daughter. That was it. Apart from some rather dodgy photographs of you on a donkey with a stick full of candy floss and a sex-starved spinster hurtling across the sand after you in broken espadrilles, all went well; you had a fully functioning bank account. Not here! Oh no. Here, you open an account and it’s a total inconvenience for all concerned from the moment you sign.

At this stage in the proceedings, I would like to mention that most of the bank staff we have had dealings with in the past 2 months have been wonderful, lovely people. The inconvenience caused is as much to them as it is to us. Disclaimer over.........please don’t sue me!

First of all, over here, there is no such thing as free banking. In the UK, banks give you a free account and as long as you operate it with a positive balance, it will cost you nothing at all. Nada! Of course, they know that no-one operates their account totally in credit every minute of every day and they get their money from you that way. If you do keep it totally in credit, there’s always the bank’s favourite customers to keep the profits flying high - poor people. These poor saps pay direct debits with no money in the account and the banks make more than enough profit to make up for the anally retentive among us who are always, rather smugly in credit and never put a foot wrong. Here in Spain, all customers are treated to charges, day after day after bloody day! For instance, when we bought our car, the car showroom didn’t have a Visa Machine. 

We had to physically drive to the bank (hola telephone banking?!?!) and create a transfer to the car dealer’s account, which came with a compulsory commission payment of 25 euro’s. Is it my fault that the car dealer doesn’t have a Visa machine and can’t be arsed to go out and sort one? So why should I pay for his laziness? Then there are the hidden charges. Car parking. Each time we go to the bank, there’s at least a 1 euro charge for parking. You may ask why we don’t use another branch. I’ve asked the same question. I’ll tell you why.............in Spain, when you open a new account, they immediately presume you’re an international criminal, intent on laundering money for a covert pensioner smuggling operation in Costa Rica. Consequently, they put a block on your account for two months, meaning that you can’t do any dealings in any other branch, without that branch phoning your ‘home’ branch to confirm you are who you say you are. They say that this is because they want to see how you’re running your account, although I suspect that there are two women in a back room looking at screens all day and plotting. (“What do you think Concepcion? Should we let them bank at any branch?-----“No, he came in last week and didn’t even comment on my new brooch, so sod him”) Consequently, when you as a new customer go to another branch, there’s a 45 minute delay while they phone your ‘home’ branch to make that confirmation, even though you show them your ID card and donate a little blood for them to test so that you can prove you are who you are. Consequently it’s easier to go to your ‘home’ branch and pay the hidden charge of car parking, as well as the coffee and muffin required after each bank encounter, as most of them result on my blood pressure rising. It’s not a cheap do by any stretch.

Secondly, as I’ve already alluded to, Nanny is watching you and making sure that your banking experience isn’t easy. As well as having to go to the ‘home’ branch, the bank slapped a very low limit on the amount of money we can spend on our cash card. The only problem is, they omitted to tell us this. We’re in the

 process of having our kitchen gutted and refitted, so are spending money like Imelda Marcos in Stead & Simpsons. After only £250 last week, we were refused payment of £359 for a brand new fridge freezer (bargain!) but we didn’t know why. I eventually paid with my American Express card, having waved it around in a dramatic fashion first so that people could see that we weren’t really poor and it was all a terrible misunderstanding. When we asked the bank – well I say we........you must always read José when it comes to ‘we’ asking people over here, because my Spanish is limited to asking for beers and telling people they are tossers! – they sounded surprised. Why wouldn’t they limit the amount of money we could spend? What sort of spendthrifts are we? They did increase the amount, but not over the phone. Oh no. We had to go to the bank and speak with someone in person. More hidden muffin charges! Once there, they did as we asked, but oft repeated the mantra of “you must reduce it as soon as you no longer need it” like a parrot on amphetamines.

Thirdly, they have these people in Spain called a Notary Public. Basically, they are people who sit in an office wearing a suit, surrounded by lots of people on computers looking busy. All this person does is read the document we’ve taken, then read it out loud to us like teacher reading a book in kindergarten, in order to prove that we understand it (it was in Spanish. I didn’t get anything other than my name!) and then asks us to sign it. Then he calls the bank and confirms we’ve signed it. Ten minutes that took and 6 of those I was in the waiting room playing Mah-Jong on my iPhone. That also cost us 12 euro’s. Money for old rope! I want that job. I too can read documents out loud and watch as people sign them. At 12 euro’s every 10 minutes, based on an 8 hour day, that would be 576 euro’s before tax, or 125k based on an average full year. I may even do one or two in my lunch break if I needed a swimming pool built or we decided to buy Oreo’s instead of Digestives for the office tea fund. 

The one consolation in all of this, even the bank people have the good grace to look embarrassed at how antiquated their system is in places, although I suspect it may be some years before they come rushing out of the dark ages and into the 20^th Century. Don’t ask for anything more at this moment in time, or you will be charged for it!

My very first blog......or how me and José bought mobile phones

Bienvenido a mi blog. Mi nombre es Mark y vivo en Galicia, España..........or in other words, welcome to my blog. My name is Mark and I live in Galicia, Spain. La Coruña to be exact. I really don’t believe that the first couple of sentences required translation, containing as they do just fairly basic Spanish, but as I only speak fairly basic Spanish at the moment, I felt an urgent desire to show off the small but perfectly formed grasp I have of the tongue of my newly adopted home country.


I had intended to write an almost daily blog when we first moved here at the

Spinach: Nothing to do with this blog

beginning of July. There were so many things going on that it seemed a shame not to share them with friends, colleagues, ex-lovers and any random vegan who decided to click on the link in the hope of finding a recipe for spinach casserole. The problem with this is in the previous sentence.......so much happened when we first arrived that I have barely had the time to think about anything, let along commit my thoughts to electronic print.

We all know that the first edition of any blog can be as boring as watching “Gardeners World” but one has to set up one’s premise. Like Cheryl Cole, there really is no point to this, but nevertheless, I do intend to write on occasions and share my thoughts on living in this strange land with you lovely people, out there in the dark. Good grief, I came over all Gloria Swanson there for a moment!

I guess I need to start with the title. You’ll notice that there’s not a single recipe for spinach on here, on account of the fact that it’s one of those vegetables that makes me heave, unless it’s in a Marks & Spencer spinach and broccoli quiche. The lovely José has a cousin here who speaks great English and together, we take the piss out of the worst of our own cultures. I speak in cod Spanish to him, hence the phrase, “I am spinach”, where he says to me that he is “Speakin de eeeeengleessh””. In fact, to get the Spanish accent completely correct, one needs to say (in a heavily accented stylee), “I yan e-spinach” (the e is pronounced as ‘eh’ rather than ‘eee’, but quite frankly, that would have looked ridiculous at the top of the page, so “I Am Spinach” was born.

Now, I need to hook you in, so I’m going to use this first blog to highlight the fun we had when buying our mobile phones. Settle back with some mint imperials and read on – it’s not for the faint hearted.........

Having arrived in Spain on Wednesday 6^th July, we set out on the 7^th to buy a couple of mobile phones for use here in Spain, not wanting to attract high charges for using our UK ones out here. How easy would this be? We would walk into a mobile phone shop and they would be all over us for the custom, bearing in mind the cut-throat market in mobiles these days. Wrong!! Each phone shop we went to – and we went to a lot – told us something different. It was either:

• a.      going to cost us around €200 each, or
• b.      they couldn’t sell us anything more than a cheap phone like a pre-World War 2 Nokia (we wanted iPhones) as we hadn’t been resident here prior to 6^th July, or
• c.       it would be at least 3 months before we could have a mobile phone as we needed to have lived here for that period of time.

2 sim cards, earlier today

By the end of the day, we were totally fed up and slightly homicidal. We went to Orange, who at the time, gave us the best deals. They put two iPhones aside for us and told us we had to go and buy some prepaid cards from elsewhere, then they could let us have the phones for around €100 each. In the UK, for €100 each, we could have had two iPhones apiece, free calls for a decade and receive oral sex from the shop manager, but this was the best offer we’d had, so we decided to go with it, although we didn’t sign anything at the time. We set off to buy the prepaid cards, but got waylaid into Movistar and the lovely Loli. Why we went to another shop was beyond me, but we did and she tempted us with an offer we couldn’t refuse. Two iPhones, black for me and white for José, for €59 each, which included insurance for a year or so. All we had to do was pop across to the supermarket and buy two prepaid cards 

and take them back to her. She would use these to pretend that we had been with another company and this would allow to get the ‘swap’ price. One quick shopping expedition and €30 later, we were back and hastily completing forms. We were told that the swap would take about 5 days and that we would have the phones next week. So far so good.

At dinner that night, the phone rang. It was Loli. She had done the credit check on José and he’d got a debt of around €106 from........wait for it.........14 years ago!!! This begs the questions, why didn’t they ask for it at the time and why is it still on the system? I thought they wrote debts off after so long? Apparently not! Apparently, Movistar holds grudges and will wait long enough until you go back to them and then they delight in shooting you down with the news that they’ve found you again and that you still owe them money. There was no getting out of paying debts from the past with Movistar. Oh no! José knew nothing of the debt and thinks it came from a time when he naively passed on his mobile to the person he was in business with at the time and he thinks she didn’t pay the final bill. Anyway, the upshot of this was that he had to pay the balance before we could have our shiny new phones. He had to call Movistar and confirm the amount, then arrange to pay it.

He called them straight after Loli’s phone call and they told him he had no debt on the system and that everything was fine. He asked them if they were sure. Oh yes, they were sure. He was debt free. Marvellous! Loli made the mistake and our phones were now in reach again. He called her to tell her of her oversight but Loli told him that she thought she was right. Rather gleefully, José told her he wasn’t a debt-ridden chav (el chavo??) and could she please start parcelling our phones up for collection as soon as possible. Loli agreed to call Movistar back to check once more, which she did. Twenty minutes later we received another call. Yes, he did have a debt. Sorry! Could he please arrange to call them to find out for how much and arrange to pay. In debt again, José called them back. Do you see the pattern beginning to emerge here??? He told them who he was and that he thought he had a debt. The nice South American lady on the phone told him that he had no debt and that his account was clear. He explained to her that Loli had double-checked, but that he certainly did have a debt. The nice South American lady re-checked. No, there was no debt. He could hang up the phone with a clear conscience.

Frustrated, he called Loli back. She called them once more, called us back and gave José the amount of debt he had and told him to go to the post office to pay it – there’s no such thing as being able to pay online for things like that here.....more of that particular exciting phenomena in another episode!

Are you bored yet? There’s more...........No-one said this blog was going to be easy now, did they?..............The next day we went to the post office to pay the bill. When we got to the counter, the man asked for the mobile number that it was to be paid against, but José didn’t have it. 

We went outside to call Movistar and another nice South American woman told him he had no debt. He explained the whole situation once again, this time slightly more frantically, only to be told he would be transferred to another department. We waited about 10 minutes for the other department to answer, only to then be cut off. He tried again and a further nice South American lady also told him he had no debt. She didn’t transfer him to another department, but told him that she couldn’t do anything and that he should be happy he had no debt. Why was he trying to actually find a debt when he didn’t have one? What sort of weirdo was he?? Then she hung up. 

He called Loli, but she wasn’t working and her workmate couldn’t do anything about it. Here in Spain, if it’s not your issue, then you don’t touch it with a bargepole. No-one really bothers looking for someone else. They just thank some deity or other that it’s not their issue and pass el bucko.

Three days into my new life and I was wondering why I’d done it.

We went back on the Monday, as there was nothing Loli could do over the weekend. On Monday morning, she gave us the number of the phone with the debt and we poddled off to the post office to pay it. This time we were successful. Once paid, we had to take the proof back to Loli so that she could show Movistar there was no longer any debt. Finally, 5 days later, the phones were ours, a whole nine days after we’d initially gone in for them. I don’t even like mobile phones. I like to be uncontactable, but know that with the business we’re going to set up, I’m going to need to be on the end of a reliable phone. 

Oh, and José still can’t walk past Orange Mobile, in case the iPhones are still under the desk and the girl comes out to chastise him for not buying them.