The morning dawned in an unpromising fashion but we thought we’d pop into Denia anyway to see if we could discover any details about their Three Kings celebrations on Monday. After a little difficulty parking, we fortuitously stumbled across the tourist information booth where a helpful lady told us the timing and route for the Three Kings procession.

The street market was in full swing so we amused ourselves looking at the usual array of vegetables before popping in to look at the indoor market hall. The most interesting thing about Denia’s indoor market is that many of the stalls are actually German run. This gives a clue as to the make up of the local expat community. It gets quite confusing on the ear trying to switch between overheard conversations in German, English and Spanish.

While we were inside, the weather sneakily brightened up by more than the forecast would have had us believe and we managed to find a quiet bar for a couple of cafés con leche, before heading home. Looking forward to lunch on the naya again, our journey required a swift diversion into Benissa to the Consum supermarket for some of our favourite bread, bara campesina. What should we spot whilst in there but a lonely looking packet of our new discovery, garlicky baby eels with prawns? That would do nicely for lunch and it would be bad form to leave one poor, lonely packet to languish on the shelf by itself. Lunch sorted!

Having enjoyed our lunch, a swift Skype call to our neighbours Paul and Liz back in the sunnier-than-Spain UK caused us to examine our baby eels’ packaging more closely and dice with translating some of the Spanish. It seems that we had been deceived. These tasty little morsels are fake: processed, reconstituted and reformed into something designed to resemble baby eels. Clearly, it does so quite effectively. Mortified, I hang my head in shame.

Thinking about it, this fishy deception explains a couple of things. Firstly, the price, which seems too low for the genuine article, even at Spanish seafood prices. Secondly, Carol doesn’t normally appreciate eels but she lapped these up. Now we know why. 🙂

Double drat!

Since our absolutely glorious weather on Christmas Day, it has to be said that we have not been enjoying pleasant weather in Spain. One or two days have, weather-wise, been downright dismal. It is somewhat comforting, in a frustrating kind of way, to note that the quality of the weather forecasts here seems to be every bit as inaccurate as those in England. One day, we were looking forward to some high, thin cloud in the morning, thickening a little in the afternoon. The day began with thick, glowering clouds that seemed to be stuck firmly in the valley all day.

New Year’s Day was not advertized as being anything tremendous: cloudy with showers developing. It dawned with some high, wispy cloud which proceeded to clear and bathe the valley in sunshine. It was never going to be as stunning as Christmas Day but we were happy to take advantage of it and go for a long-awaited walk. Since we had all the supplies we needed, we chose not to use the car but to do a circular walk from the house, towards Gata de Gorgos, round behind the hill to our right (as you look up the valley), and into Lliber for a New Year Beer at our favourite local bar. I quickly got too warm with two layers and we continued the route in T-shirts.

After an hour and a half and having successfully found the correct path beside the dry river bed, we arrived at Lliber to the clamour of the church bells. The bells are open to view in the church tower and I was intrigued to observe that they peel by turning in complete 360° rotations. I’ve no idea whether this is normal or not, since most church bells are hidden from view and I’m no campanologist, but I’d always thought that they simply oscillated back and forth like a pendulum. These were spinning like the clappers. 🙂

As we were sitting at the bar sipping our beers, several of the local Spanish (there are still some in this largely expat community) wandered past off to church. All greeted us with a cheery prospero año nuevo or a simple hola. Shortly, a neatly dressed couple, clearly on their way to church, also called in at the bar and began greeting people. Not knowing us from Adam, the gentleman even included us, wishing us prospero año nuevo, shaking my hand and giving Carol a caring hug. How wonderfully friendly and approachable the Spanish generally are, even in the face of what must sometimes feel like a foreign invasion.

It’s about a mile back from the square in Lliber to the house and we were ready for a late lunch. Late by English standards, that is; there’s nothing unusual about lunch at 2:00 PM in Spain. A goat’s cheese omelet went down very well with another Spanish speciality, morcilla: a slightly spicy Spanish version of black pudding.

¡Prospero año nuevo!

The Spanish have an intriguing habit of wearing red underwear for luck on New Year’s Eve. Carol proudly donned hers but mine are all a little more soberly coloured. There’s an alternative way of encouraging luck on New Year’s Eve and that is to eat one grape at each chime of the bell at midnight. I’d stand a little more chance of following that superstition.

Since the weather was, once again, decidedly uninspiring, we started heading for Denia just for something to do. Maybe we’d be able to find some details of the twelfth night Three Kings celebrations a the tourist information, if we could find it. However, we got distracted by a new shopping complex called La Marina and never actually made it to Denia.

La Marina has more shoe shops than you could shake a big toe at. It also seemed to be particularly geared towards ex-pats; there was one entirely British staffed and stocked book shop. For once, though, it was not just Carol who wanted to nose around in a shopping centre. Spain has a chain of Russian supermarkets called Eroski that I have been wanting to investigate for some time and there was a shiny new example at La Marina. It turned out to be much more like a French hypermarket than a Spanish supermarket, which are seemingly more limited. I didn’t see any particularly Russian items, such as caviar, but it was very well stocked with a mouthwatering array of food items as well as other non-food stuff. It also had plenty of space between the aisles and was a decidedly “pleasant shopping experience”.

Eroski may be Russian but it was clearly targeted at the Spanish. There, in all their glory, was a dazzling array of bright red underwear, including briefs for men. It had to be done – we bought me a pair. Where better to buy red underwear than from a Russian supermarket?

There was one more purchase that was just begging to be made. Carol had spotted some packets of baby eels including some with garlic oil and a few prawns. We just had to try some for lunch so into the Russian shopping basket they went, along with some rustic bread.

After the checkouts, I wandered into the restrooms and changed into my new red knickers as soon as possible to maximize the amount of luck I might get for 2009. Unfortunately, either Spanish or Russian large didn’t appear to be quite as large as an English large. No matter, I could stop strangling myself after midnight when their job should be done.

Deciding that Denia could wait for another day, we returned to the ranch for our latest culinary experiment. A swift reheat for a minute and the tiny baby eels were ready. Even Carol, skeptical at first, pronounced them delicious. These, I most certainly would seek out again.

I think I’ll pass on the red underwear next time, though. 😉

The Spanish tourist board should shortly be agreeing to a refund to fend off charges of “unmerchantable quality”, “not fit for purpose” or “not as advertized”. Assuming that you have seen previous pictures of the view down the Jalon valley from our borrowed house, take a look at this picture for comparison. Apparently, even the locals can’t believe this run of weather. Mind you, I heard similar stories of Spanish disbelief over their summer weather which was also pants. Basically, the weather in Europe this year has been completely screwed up.

On a brighter note, we did host a dinner party with Chris and Yvonne, our very first house-sitting customers and proud owners of Scamp, el perrito. The only decent pastime today was planning a menu, shopping for ingredients and preparing food. A swift trawl of the Internet netted us an authentic-sounding zarzuela recipe so, in a fit of bravado or stupidity , never having cooked one before, we settled on that. Zarzuela is a sort of Spanish bouillabaisse, a fish and seafood stew. Mercadona’s fish counter supplied a fine array of zarzuela ingredients: hake, black bream, prawns, langoustines, mussels, cockles and squid. A starter of baked asparagus wrapped in Serrano ham and individual pear tarts dressed with a pink peppercorn glaze for pud completed off the menu.

A bright evening to round off an otherwise dull day.

While England appears to be basking in winter sunshine, the normal northern European rain seems to have migrated down to Spain. The glorious sun we had on Christmas Day is now most decidedly at an end; the clouds are on the deck in the Jalon Valley and it is raining. There was nothing for it but to stay inside, light the log burner and watch day-long reruns of various incarnations of Agatha Christie’s sleuths solving their cases yet again on ITV3. Well, we may have sipped a wine or two along the way – I really can’t remember.

Eventually I had to tear myself away from Hercule Poirot and leap into the kitchen for a long-awaited culinary experiment. It was time to do something with our artichoke leaves. First, a correction. I managed to make an anagram out the Spanish name and reported them as being corda in a previous posting. They are actually called cardo. Armed with their correct name, we have now managed to find them in a Spanish-English dictionary: cardo = thistle, most appetizing.

We had performed a test preparation in the morning to see what was what. Carol thought the leaf fronds (as opposed to the leaf ribs) looked OK so I tasted a piece. It was absolutely disgusting; incredibly bitter. We should have realized, really, since the Mercadona supermarket in Benissa has started selling cardo – just the leaf ribs and not the fronds. We tried a few sections of a leaf rib boiled in salted water for a while. It turned out to have a mild artichoke flavour so we decided to brave it and use it in the evening meal.

So, after Peter Ustinov’s incarnation of Hercule Poirot, I interrupted David Suchet’s rendition to butcher a rabbit, cut the cardo into five centimetre lengths and casserole them together with the ubiquitous chopped onion, some chicken stock and a little rosemary. Just about as Hercule was wrapping up “Death in the Clouds”, we were concluding our case of the casseroled rabbit and thistles. The rabbit was very good. The thistles were an interesting experiment which had to be tried; they were OK but I’m not sure I’d put too much effort into buying them again.

As for the BBC’s latest attempt at John Buchan’s “39 steps” starring Rupert Penry-Jones, I’m left wondering why they bothered at all. To my mind, this screenplay transformed the original good story into a drab shadow of its original self. Like many women, Carol is very fond of Mr. Penry-Jones and even his suave and sexy good looks failed to keep her awake. If this is why young Rupert got written out of Spooks, then I think he should have stayed put, assuming it was his choice.

Technorati Tags: rabbit,artichokes,cardo,39 steps,Rupert Penry-Jones

We had quite a set of instructions for house-dog-and-cat-sitting here in Spain this time around. Clearly, top of the list were the two dogs and three cats whose wellbeing would be our main concern. However, Geoff also has two clocks. Both have 8-day mechanisms and would need winding once a week.

One of the clocks is a weight and pendulum grandfather clock; this is the scary one. It is a splendid looking piece of kit, even to one such as myself who doesn’t greatly care for such things, especially when they chime every 15 minutes throughout the night. Artistic though they may be, I’ve never particularly liked chiming clocks, maybe because they make a noise (What was that? The clock was chiming and I missed it.) but, more probably because I can’t escape the feeling that they are incessantly chiming away one’s life (BONG! – there goes another 15 minutes). As well as the normal clock dial with hours, minutes and seconds, this clock has a 29½ day (or so it says) moon phase dial. It has three separate weights, each with its own winding mechanism. Being unversed in such things, I paid little attention as to why there might be three separate weights and winding mechanisms.

Geoff’s instructions: “Wind both clocks every Sunday but don’t over wind them or they may stop and can be a bear to get going again.”

“OK, Geoff – no problem.” (Famous last words.)

I wound the clocks on the Sunday prior to my Friday return visit to England. It seemed that I had been so concerned about over-winding the grandfather clock that I hadn’t wound it sufficiently. It stopped at 10:00 (ish) on Saturday and poor Carol was landed with a stalled grandfather clock.

“Never mind, just wind it, give the pendulum a gentle nudge and see what happens”, quoth yours truly.

“It’s going again but it isn’t chiming any more”, reported Carol after a little while.

Being unversed in the ways of grandparent clocks, we left it at that. At least the clock was running. Geoff would apply the kiss of life to the chimes when he returned from holiday.

Upon my return to Spain, I was intrigued to see that only the centre one of the three weights was descending and that the outer two weights were remaining doggedly high and dry. Curious! There must be multiple mechanisms, the centre one powering the clock while the outer ones control the chimes. My supposition is that one of those outer weights powers the hour chimes while the other controls the quarters chimes but that’s a complete guess.

Once bitten, twice shy. Today is Saturday and, conscious of having under-wound dear old grandfather previously, I decided to wind him earlier than scheduled lest he expire prematurely again. It was about 10:20 AM as I wound the centre mechanism, the only one that had been running. I wound it a little further than I had previously since I had obviously been winding it a day or two short. With the winding key still in the mechanism, I was startled to hear the clock suddenly launch into its 10 o’clock chimes.

“Yippee, it’s working again!”

When the time had advanced to 10:30, the clock chimed 10:15. At 10:45, dear ol’ grandpa chimed 10:30. 🙁

“Ah, well, it’s nearly working again. We’ll still leave it for Geoff to sort out when he returns.”

Saturday being market day in Benissa, we left grandpa to chime away tardily to himself and went to hit the market. There, we invested €5 in a bonito tuna and all of 80¢ in some corda,  the artichoke leaves that have been driving us wild with curiosity. (Watch this space for how they turn out.)

We returned just before 1:00 PM. Good ol’ grandpa chimed 1:00 PM.

“Yikes! It’s back on track.”

Sure enough, at 1:15 grandpa chimed 1:15. It seems that chiming the hour begins the quarters sequence. I had lucked out by winding the clock at 10:20 and, since it had stopped around about 10:00 the hours chime had been synchronized; only the quarters were out. Chiming the next hour seems to have sorted the quarters out.

Welcome back grandpa! 🙂

(No, you’re not going mad – I did forget to post this entry and posted it out of sequence, dated for the day that was intended.) 😉

Following an absolutely stunning Christmas Day, our Boxing Day was pretty low key. The weather remained dry, though unscintillating, so we chose to work off a few calories by walking through the vineyards on the valley floor all the way to Jalón (a.k.a. Xaló, in the Valenciana language) and back. Jalón was closed and very quiet but that was to be expected, being siesta time.

Since there was little else of note, I thought I’d take the opportunity to publish a few pictures of typically Spanish Christmas items, starting with what appears to be a favourite type of window decoration depicting an unusually perfect baby, just as one might expect to find in a manger alongside the donkeys following the very recent Immaculate Conception. The banners vary a little in that the wording used may change but the religious message remains clear.

In addition to the usual plethora of Santa-climbing-up-ropes to deliver presents, the Spanish are also fond of their three-kings-climbing-up-ropes. These must either be regal cat-burglars intent on pinching the presents just delivered by Santa or they are also attempting to deliver presents, as, according to one international best-seller, they did to the baby Jesus 2008 years ago. It all seems indicative of some confusion as to just who delivers the seasonal presents here in Spain. The Spanish do have a Three Kings celebration on the evening of January 5th (twelfth night) which we hope to see, preferably in Denia where it is supposed to be staged very well. The spoiled Spanish brats [bah, humbug!] get additional presents for this twelfth night festival. Perhaps, then, Santa is delivering the Christmas presents whereas the Three Kings are delivering the twelfth night presents. Who knows?

Christmas in Spain also comes with some traditional Spanish sweet treats. These seem to consist largely of some almond elaborations covered in chocolate. At least some of them are called mantecados and, being attractively and individually wrapped, they look quite appealing and impressive. I’m glad I’ve tried them but I wouldn’t rush out to try them again. They are a poor substitute for a box of Thornton’s chocolates, in my opinion. Of course, almost anything beats Quality Street, with the exception of Cadbury’s Roses 🙂

Technorati Tags: Spain,Christmas,mantecados,Three Kings,travel

Christmas Day and time to apply our own little traditions in Spain. I had managed to create some time during my hasty return trip to England for some Christmas shopping. Carol and I had already exchanged a main present each, well before Christmas, but at least now we would be able to have our Christmas stockings in bed with our early morning tea.

Once we surfaced, I saw that Christmas Day had treated us to utterly stunning wall to wall clear blue skies. Normally, next on the Christmas agenda would be coffee laced with rum. However, I had failed to find a suitably small bottle of rum to buy so I decided to try it with some Spanish brandy, in this case, 103. The Nestlé ground coffee over here rejoices in the name of “Bonka”. Where they got that from, I really can’t imagine but I can certainly see advertising slogan potential: “enjoy a Bonka first thing in the morning” – and why not, indeed? As it turned out the brandy didn’t seem to help any – quite the opposite, in fact – so our second Bonka really was “pure Colombian”.

Invigorated by two Christmas morning Bonkas, a wander through the sun-drenched vineyards into Lliber beckoned. Who knows, maybe there’d be an equally sun-drenched bar open for a tipple or two. Sure enough, the bar in the square of Lliber was open and doing a reasonable trade. The outside contingent all seemed to be Brits so we dragged a table and chairs into the sun and sat under their pink peppercorn tree chatting with another couple (residents) while sipping a vino tinto. A café con leche each accompanied by a goodly slug of Soberano, another Spanish brandy with which they seemed to be very generous, set us up for the walk back and lunch. The bill for two red wines, two coffees and two brandies came to under €7 so I tipped generously for Christmas.

Lunch on the terrace overlooking the fabulous view of the Jalon valley consisted of langostinos y pulpo (prawns and octopus) with some lemony garlic mayonnaise and crusty bread. You may see from the photograph that Bailey, the black cat, was very restrained and ignored our fishy feast completely. Weird!

I was reticent to start cooking our main event too early simply because I didn’t want to leave the sunny terrace. Eventually, though, the temperature began to drop and the time was right to tackle Christmas dinner. Suckling pig seems to be very popular as Christmas fare in Spain. The supermarkets all seem to carry them at this time and the English couple we had been talking to in Lliber were going on to a restaurant serving suckling pig later. Carol knew I had always wanted to try one and had very thoughtfully invested €25 in a half suckling pig that looked just right for a two-person feast.

We’d been told suckling pigs could be very greasy and, not wishing to make too much of a mess of Geoff’s gas BBQ, I elected to cook it in the oven. Having no previous experience of cooking Piglet and friends, I gave him nearly two hours at moderate heat and then banged the heat up for a final 30 minutes to crisp his skin while I made a vegetable pilaf of onions, carrot, flat beans and our favourite artichokes, to accompany him. Piglet looked very good with his all-over suntan. Clearly, the olive oil had not been factor 30.

Piglet made a delicious Christmas dinner and his bronzed crackling was a revelation, very thin and very light. This is crackling that does not break one’s teeth. I may need some Branston pickle to go with the left-overs.

Another 5:00 AM alarm and the welcome help of my neighbour, Paul, got me to Luton airport in plenty of time for my 7:45 AM flight back to Alicante, Spain. Even though in the final boarding group, I got a window seat in row one so had a little more leg room.

Unfortunately, I seemed to be in the screaming section: row two, mercifully across the aisle, housed a young family with the most horrendous screaming child which my iPod was having terrible trouble blocking out. I came very close to offering to open the plane’s door and sling the offending infant into the jet engine intake. “Mayday, mayday – baby strike!”. So much more useful than a bird strike, in my opinion.

It was also the stinking rose section. Someone, I suspect the gentleman directly behind me, had clearly had lashings of garlic on his cornflakes. I opened my air vent which helped a little but I would be quite grateful when the Boeing flying cigar tube touched down at Alicante, its doors were opened and lashings of fresh air wafted in.

I was treated to the sight of a glory, a kind of circular reverse rainbow, surrounding the plane’s shadow on the surface of the clouds as we descended on our final approach into Alicante. After a very smooth 2 hours and 35 minutes, the wheels hit the runway and the welcome fresh air followed shortly thereafter.

Carol was en route to pick me up and was expecting me to arrive at terminal one, as usual. Me too. We came into Terminal two instead but this time I unusually had my mobile so we employed modern communication methods to find each other.

After an uneventful journey back to Lliber, I got a very ebullient welcome from the two pooches. The cats were a little cooler, as befits their detached demeanor.

We are once again waiting patiently waiting for Santa in Spain following our sad hiatus and wish everybody Feliz Navidad or, as they say in the local Valenciana language, Bon Nadal.

By the end of today I needed to be ready for my crack of dawn departure to Luton airport tomorrow. Actually, my departure will be about an hour before dawn. Never mind; the sooner I depart on my easyJet flight to Alicante the sooner I can be reunited with Carol for a Christmas that I had pretty much written off. I didn’t want any last-minute preparations hanging, like the sword of Damocles, over my head in its sleepy stupor tomorrow morning. So, I’ve got a list. The list is disturbingly long and I’m not certain today is long enough.

I actually made a start on my list last night, both by locking windows and doors I could do without today and by doing some laundry so I could at least pack clean clothes for Christmas. In the same way that Carol does not usually drive the barbecue, I do not usually drive the washing machine; fire is very masculine, water is clearly feminine. However, Carol’s Skyped instructions sounded simple enough:

1. put coloured clothes in the machine and close the door;
2. put purple coloured goop in draw tray #2;
3. turn knob clockwise to 30° (degrees temperature, not degrees of rotation, he clarified).

After taking mother home following another of the flying chef’s dinners (Tuna with JC’s Thai Salad), I did so. Most encouraging: "1:02" appeared on the timing dial. Promising stuff!

I drove mother home and then returned expecting a well advanced load of washing that I would soon be able to put in the tumble dryer. This must be a very quiet washing machine, I mused, as I peered in through the utility room door. "1:02" still glowed at me from the timing panel. Surely that should be counting down? That’s when I spotted a crucial-looking button with "Start" printed beneath it. Oops!

Once finished and before retiring for the night, I put the laundry in the tumble dryer and turned the dial to 40 minutes (as further instructed by Carol); This time I was ready for a lack of action ‘cos I know the dryer is on a timer to run on cheaper overnight electricity. (That’s a laugh, it’s like saying a sapphire is cheaper than a diamond.)

Just to get some early-rising practice, I got up and made tea at 6:00 AM. Peeking around the laundry-room door I was met by another disturbingly silent machine with its timing dial still set at 40 minutes. Now, I know this one makes a noise ‘cos it’s got two knobbly rubber balls in it that are supposed to fluff up the laundry and they bounce around like a computer programmer mainlining too much Java. That’s probably why the timer is set to the very last portion of "over night". I found an override switch and the colourful rubber balls began to bounce around like a computer programmer mainlining too much Java. Much better – I’ll be packing clean clothes yet.

Down to Waitrose for the dawn patrol run (opens at 8:30 AM) where we usually drive straight into the car park which is mostly empty. Naturally, Christmas Mania was in full swing, the car park was already full and cars were queuing back to the main street, presumably assisting the Belisha beacons and zebra crossings in their task of gridlocking the traffic. Christmas and Easter both have a similar effect: they make people go mad shopping. I really don’t get it. We shop every other week of the year. At Christmas, people don’t need any more stuff, they just need different stuff. Why the extra queues? [Aside: It seems we don’t need beansprouts at Christmas. Searching in vain for them yesterday, I was told by a pleasant young man in Tesco that they had stopped selling beansprouts, just for this week, and that Morrisons had done the same so he thought I wouldn’t find any. Clearly, he hadn’t heard of Waitrose, which came to the rescue. Thank Darwin for decent shops.]

The clothes did dry and I got all packed ready.

Rounded off a generally busy day with a visit to my mother, a trip to Heathrow to deliver my mother-in-law into the safe hands of British Airways fro her Christmas and New Year trip to Australia and New Zealand, drove back, garaged our car chez ma mère and walked the 2 miles back home for a long awaited dinner.

Phew! España mañana!