A Guiri in Galicia - part three

Sunday March the 20th

Queso de Tetilla - just like Scania wheelnuts

Freshly attired in clean chino's with no stitching issues, I was up and about early for our last full day in Cee and with no sign of anything untoward in the throat department following yesterday's foolhardy meddling with the firewater. The first plan of action was a visit to the local Sunday market, quite why we had to travel to the other side of Spain to do so when there's a perfectly good one twice a week at home was beyond me, but who was I to complain? In the end it was quite instructive and put to bed a little teaser that had been puzzling me since our arrival a day or two back, when, a finger buffet was laid on for the pair of us that included, amongst other things, Queso de Tetilla - a speciality of the region. The way it was explained to me I understood it to mean cheese of the tit or nipple in English and was unsure if I was the unwitting victim of some kind of joke. A brief glimpse at the dairy counter and my fears were immediately assuaged; this particular Galician cheese offering - in it's uncut state - closely resembles a popular part of the female anatomy - on a very cold day!! The lady stallholder even me offered a little nibble of hers.


Percebes - for me, just as pointless as pipas

With that little matter neatly tucked in, it was off  "home" again to do battle with plates full of things which normally reside on or near the sea floor. In a restaurant, menu items that require to be sucked out of a shell or opened up using nutcrackers are way down my list of priorities. Today though, in the absence of pizza or pasta, no wasn't an option, and, in no time at all I had carefully amassed an impressive collection of crustacean body parts and empty shells on my side plate. It seemed to be just like eating potato crisps or chocolate biscuits, you know you shouldn't but can't help yourself until there's none left. I even found myself offering the last item on at least two plates round the table whilst simultaneously hoping no-one would say yes so I could fill my boots. I did draw the line though at something which resembled a cross between some sort of plant and a horses todge. Percebes, is the name of the stuff and the idea is you nip the end off with two fingers and then pull the skin away to reveal a soft pink fleshy thing which is edible. Apparently. They put me in mind of something else Spanish folk rave about and can't seem to get enough of - pipas, which, to all intents and purposes is just budgie food.

Rugged, unspoilt and fantastic - La Costa de la Muerte

When you go away and have enjoyed a fabulous time in new surroundings with incredibly kind hosts, wherever you are on the last full afternoon, that sinking feeling of having to go home is never far away is it?
For the pair of us, Galicia did it's level best to take our minds off having to say goodbye and the flight home early the next morning by saving some of the best it had to offer until the very last. South and Eastern Spain takes a certain pride in the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca, but for me one of the best kept secrets is La Costa de la Muerte, the North West corner of the Spanish mainland where the Atlantic Ocean greets Southern Europe. Perhaps greets was a little charitable, head-butts would be slightly more appropriate because it certainly arrives in mighty angry fashion as sailors down the centuries have found out to their cost. Those lost seafarers may be gone but they definitely aren't forgotten, just feet from where the highest winter tides comes crashing ashore sits the chapel of remembrance at Punta de Barca, a poignant and permanent tribute to those who have perished in the surrounding seas.


Playa do Mar de Fora - so peaceful

Conscious our time was dwindling away we headed back down the coast to one of the most Westerly points in Spain, a place immortalized, until recently because the miserable sods changed it's name, in a BBC institution, The Shipping Forecast. Cape Finisterre, which clings to Spain by a thread, is a rocky peninsula barely three kilometres wide at it's narrowest point and home to the little seaside village of Fisterra. Continuing on, the road kicks up as the climb to Monte Facho, site of the rather grand Fisterra lighthouse that shares it's name with the nearby pueblo, begins in earnest. This is the final trek for some of the pilgrims who began their walk some ninety five odd kilometres away in Santiago, but it wasn't our destination. Instead of heading up we turned right and down, where the ankle high tussocks of grass eventually gave way to the picturesque Playa do Mar de Fora, a curved, sandy beach that could easily have been a secret corner on the Mediterranean. In complete contrast to the raging torrents of white water just along the coast, this secluded bay, with it's tiny waves creeping silently ashore, was the perfect end to a perfect weekend. At that very moment, sat on the sand staring out to sea watching the sun sink slowly beyond the distant horizon, life just felt right.

Muchisima gracias para todos José, Lola, Gema and Elmo.

A Guiri in Galicia - part two

Saturday March the 19th

The beautiful Corcubión estuary as viewed from Cee beach

After adding another type of animal to the collection of things I've eaten in my time, the surprises during our weekend up north just kept on coming. Never having been to the area before, I had a vague idea what to expect but to describe Galicia as pretty would be like calling Shakira reasonably attractive. It really is a green and pleasant land. With cooler summers and more rainfall than many other parts of Spain, the verdant countryside is a delightful mix of pine forests, rolling hills and charming little villages. Our base for the weekend, Cee, whilst being a small sized coastal town with a population of around eight thousand, was no less agreeable and proved the perfect place to stay. Cee is the largest of several different settlements along either bank of the ría de Corcubión, itself more of a large, tidal inlet of the Atlantic Ocean than any kind of estuary, and the principal town of Cee county, (Comarca). In such pleasant surrroundings the relaxed feel to our time away began almost immediately.

A scary drop of stuff

First port of call on Saturday was the quaint and quite tiny fishing village of Camariñas, where, following a leisurely stroll around the harbour punctuated by a late morning coffee, we retired to an absolutely fabulous harbour side restuarant. What awaited was a sumptuous two hour feast of locally caught fish, which, no doubt at all was happily swimming around without a care in the world just a few hours earlier. The only stuff fresher was still in the water! As is customary in Spain, meals are invariably followed by a complimentary liqueur and this establishment was no different. I must have eaten a wee bit too much because I failed to spot the clues on the bottle which was labelled HIJOPUTA, itself very similar to a grave insult in Spanish, and featured a bowl of flame. I was about to sample for the first time Orujo, a Galician speciality and the hottest thing I've ever drunk. Anywhere! Years ago I used to own a knackered up old Datsun, if this loopy juice had been around then I swear I could have rust-proofed the entire vehicle. Once I'd got used to it though, the third and fourth shots went down a treat and I was feeling no pain.


Short sighted stupidity caused an ecological disaster

With my vocal chords almost frazzled by the local equivalemt of hydrochloric acid, the next stop on our itinerary was one of my favourite parts of the weekend and the scene, amongst many other similar locations, of an entirely avoidable ecological disaster the region was fortunate ever to recover from. In November 2002 an ageing Greek tanker m/v Prestige which should never have been certified as safe to put to sea, was caught in a storm off the Spanish coast, and, fearing for the safety of his vessel and crew the captain requested assistance from the Spanish authorities. This was denied and he was ordered to steer away from the coast north into French territorial waters, the French too declined to offer help, instead ordering the stricken vessel south towards the coast of Portugal who sent naval frigates to prevent it approaching any nearer. The stand off continued for six days with the, by now, badly damaged tanker barely afloat 250 kilometres out to sea. Finally, it broke in half and sank, releasing millions of gallons of oil into the ocean, most of which was washed ashore over the coming days with the Galician coastline bearing the brunt of the contamination.


Spring 2003 left - Spring 2011 right

Fast forward eight and a bit years and little trace remains of the blinkered self interest and bungling of the three different nations involved. Thousands of volunteers risked their health over many months, defying the threat from carconogenic oil residues, to restore the area to it's outstanding, almost unspoilt, natural beauty. Thanks to their hard working and unselfish efforts, I was able to stand close to the waters edge, camera in hand feeling the spray in my face from mountainous waves driven ashore by the gale force Atlantic winds. Unfortunately, in my eagerness to capture that perfect shot, I slipped on the rocks and tore the arse out of my jeans; thereafter I was compelled to endure something of a pretty drafty next couple of hours. Nothing to do with that fifth tumbler of rocket fuel. Honest!

A Guiri in Galicia - part one

Galicia - the bit just above Portugal

Friday March the 18th
For ages now I've studiously avoided using Ryanair for any of my infrequent visits to the UK, something to do with their continued blithe indifference to the paying punters that made smug CEO Michael O'Leary one of Ireland's wealthiest individuals I guess. However, my principled stance against Britain's least favourite airline collapsed like a pack of cards when faced with a straight choice between a seventy five minute shuttle on a blue and yellow aeroplane or an eleven hour car journey to the north west corner of Spain. By road, the trip between home in Elche and Cee in Galicia is just sixteen kilometres shy of being a coast to coast drive the entire width of the country from east to west. As the Iberian Peninsula goes, you probably couldn't pick a longer trip to make using four wheels, so Alicante to Santiago de Compostela via the aerial route it was then.

As a city to visit, Santiago is right up there with Spain's very best, and wisely, we chose to spend three or four hours exploring before heading off to our eventual destination a further hour or so away. Boasting ten centuries of history, Santiago is  home to ninety five thousand permanent residents, a number swelled by more than thirty thousand students, in town to study at the prestigious University, (USC). Thankfully, most of them were attending lectures as we mooched around the place, marvelling at the sights, sounds and breathtaking architecture, (both old and new), unhindered by throngs of people. Apparently, the place is rammed in the summer so clearly we chose a good time to pop by. With beautiful parks, gardens and paved squares too numerous to mention, Santiago de Compostela has the lot, and, as befits one of the most important places in the world for Christian pilgrims, the city is home to the most astonishing Cathedral.

Incredible

Set to one side of the Plaza de Obradoiro opposite the imposing Government and town hall building, (which kind of reminded me of Buckingham Palace), Santiago Cathedral is the final resting place of the Apostle Saint James whose remains lie within. This majestic edifice is also the eventual destination for various pilgrimage routes that originate all over Europe, the so called Camino de Santiago which, loosely translated into English reads, The Way of Saint James. Begun in 1075 and finally completed during the twelfth century, Santiago Cathedral was the first to be built in Galicia and is now a designated World Heritage Site. So it should be too. I'm not a religious man, (although I sometimes pray Spurs don't lose the north London derby), but Santiago Cathedral, which dominates the city skyline, is absolutely stunning. So go and see it!

After all that walking around, the pair of us and José, our genial guide and host for our weekend away, began to feel slightly peckish and not surprisingly José knew just the place. A stones throw away from Buckingham Palace and the big church, tucked away in a small back street, was the kind of tiny cafeteria-cum-restaurant you could easily walk past. We didn't, we walked in and I was about to receive the first of quite a few pleasant surprises. Five minutes after seating ourselves at the bar, a plate of pork slices in a rich sauce on a bed of deep fried potato crisps arrived so we eagerly tucked in. The next brief conversation went like this.

A really dangerous animal on a plate

"Hmm fantastic lomo" (pork), I said to José
"What lomo?" he replied
"This" I replied, waving a large slab of meat around on the end of my fork
"That's not lomo, it's Cocodrilo"
"CROCODILE" explained the girlyfriend trying hard to hide her smile.

Bloody lovely it was.


Still to come - firewater, cheese shaped like a tit, the shipping forecast and oil slicks.

Guille and Edu's excellent adventure

Bill and Ted's cack movie

Once upon a time in Hollywood, Bill and Ted had an excellent adventure in their largely unsuccessful 1989 movie which, truth be told, didn't seem to captivate that many people. This particular blog entry has very little in common with that not particularly good celluloid offering other than my fairly unsubtle reworking of the title to tenuously introduce my subject matter, which, today revolves around Spanish names and their sometimes bewildering derivations. Just to tidy up the first loose end then, Guillermo and Eduardo, in case you didn't know, are the Iberian equivalent's of William and Edward, for which the shorter British versions should be readily apparent, if not, you may well struggle as you read on!

One peculiarity, although to the Spanish it's perfectly normal, is the use of two hyphenated surnames so as to include the family names of both mother and father for official use, bank statemements and letters, for example. Etiquette dictates the order in which the two appear, and, until a 2010 law change, the father was always the first in the string; nowadays the parents of new born infants can decide for themselves the priority and if no agreement is forthcoming the law falls back on that tried and tested method of alphabetical order. This is quite important because, whilst officialdom makes use of the entire, sometimes lengthy, name, in general use, schools perhaps and with friends amongst other informal situations, the combination of four and possibly five names is usually condensed down to two, the first Christian name and Father's surname.  Once in a while the more formal things in life can be slightly problematic; on almost all Spanish credit cards the name often has more characters than the number, this can be great fun when appending a passenger name to a flight booking for example. In her full name my amazing, (Spanish), girlfriend has an exotic combination of five different words, easily sufficient to make the highfalutin English, (double-barrelled), aristocracy green with envy.

In this respect surnames are much easier to analyse than forenames because by their nature surnames, in whatever configuration, are governed by the law and have considerably less room for manoeuvre than others. This is where the fun starts and leads me neatly on to the whole reason for these words, a theme I alluded to in the first paragraph; short versions of popular Spanish names, and, where two occur together, the limitless possibilities to make some sort of hybrid. I'll kick off with a short test, you ready? then we'll begin - where do these names come from?

Chema, Marisa, Ximo, Paco, Kiko, Manu, Lola, Paqui, Conchi, Asun, Chon.

Postman Patrick

I guess the English notions of Tony for Anthony, Andy for Andrew, Mick for Michael, Sue for Susan, Pat for Patricia and Mo for Maureen might well baffle most Spanish folk but at least, perhaps with the exception of Mo, for the examples I chose the short version seems to have more than a passing resemblance to the actual name. In Spain though nothing is really as simple as Pete, and most nicknames or short versions tend to make you think more. I've actually lost count of the times I've been in conversation with one of my native mates and had one of those "ah, I get it" moments where the penny, or should I say, centimo, drops with a resounding clang as this simple Englishman finally figures out the full version of the name of the person with whom I've been friends for ages.

Anyway, back to my little quiz, how did you get on ? Actually, I thought one or two were a little bit evil, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because it emphasises the difficulty I sometimes have. Anyway, here are the rather cunning answers.

Chema/Jose Maria (that's male believe it or not),  Marisa/Maria Luisa,  Ximo/Joaquin,  Paco/Francisco,  

Kiko/Franciso (again),  Manu/Manuel,  Lola/Dolores,  Paqui/Francisca (the female version),
 
Conchi/Concepcion,  Asun/Asuncion,  Chon/Asuncion

I haven't got the foggiest idea where Chema and Ximo come from so please don't ask!

Party time

fi•es•ta
1.
Any festival or festive celebration.
2

4. Popular small family car

(In Spain and Latin America) a festive celebration of a religious holiday.
3.
The opportunity for a small Spanish town or village to go mental for a week or so,  usually          accompanied by lots of alcohol, odd costumes and ridiculous quantities of fireworks.

Well, there you have it, my online dictionary’s description of the Spanish fiesta. Okay, I made up the last bit because the worldwide interweb didn’t go into anywhere near enough detail and I think it should have done, and now, I’ll to attempt to put even more meat on the bones. Despite being hotter than Kylie Minogue without much on, August in my world is also the month where Spain, a nation seemingly stuck in a swinging sixties style time warp, begins in earnest to kick the arse out of the word party. Imagine an Olympic Games opening ceremony, any one of them will do, and then put it on the streets of a small town. That’s fiesta week!

Bad combo - beer + fireworks

Quite often the organisers will con you into believing there is a religious significance to all the mayhem, so called Fiestas Patronales, where the life and times of a Saint or Virgin, the patron of the town or village, are commemorated. For example San Fermin in the northern city of Pamplona, where, first thing in the morning twelve pretty cheesed off bulls are herded from their pen on the edge of town through cobbled streets to the Plaza de Toros, about a kilometre away, accompanied by loads of unfit and drunk people, some of whom will finish up maimed for life. Closer to my home, in June Alicante spends over a week hosting events dedicated to San Juan, which is just an excuse for a load of arsonists to strut their stuff. Wherever they take place and for however long, I reckon these local fiestas could just as well be a giant homage to San Miguel because gallons of the stuff gets necked!!

Squatters who refused to leave

A great many years ago Spain was conquered by a bunch of hooligans in sandals who snuck over the water from North Africa and made themselves at home here. For eight centuries. Eventually, enough was quite enough and the vanquished locals rose up, sending the wispy bearded rag-heads back from whence they came. La Reconquista or re-conquest is now celebrated the length and breadth of Spain and is better known as the Moors and Christians fiestas. Most towns and villages combine the two different types of fiesta and the resultant week normally descends into an orgy of music, fancy dress and drunken debauchery.

Home for me is Elche, which gives it big licks during it’s fiestas in August from the 7th to the 15th with two highlights sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb. On the night of the 13th, the residents of the city, and by proxy much of the surrounding countryside, enjoy The Nit de L'Alba the most spectacular firework show you’ll ever see, in honour of the city’s patroness. Spectacular really is understating things a tad, for a full forty minutes Elche resembles a war zone, in 2009 some old folk in Benidorm thought the Costa Blanca was being invaded. Then, as if by magic, on the stroke of midnight the city falls silent and plunges into an eerie darkness as the Virgen de la Asunción, illuminated by a pyrotechnic halo, rises from the dome of the massive Basilica Santa Maria. A pretty unmissable event.

As well as all the traditional carnage, Elche’s fiestas are really built around the moving and deeply religious Misteri d'Elx  play. Performed in two parts on consecutive days, the 14th and 15th, act one, La Vesprà plots Mary passing away surrounded by the apostles. La Festa follows during which the burial, assumption and coronation of the virgin are depicted. These two days are the most important in the entire year and enjoy greater prominence in the city calendar than even Holy Week, (Semana Santa). In recognition of the stature of the event, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, (UNESCO), declared the Misteri one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Sure, quite a gobful but no higher accolade is bestowed for cultural expression. Apparently. 

No match for the towel-heads

For ex-pats fortunate enough to live by the coast, the Moors and Christians festivities start to get even more fun. And, if where they live also has a castle, then jackpot, it’s a racing certainty the town hall can put on the kind of opening ceremony to make even Beijing look a bit dull by comparison. In Santa Pola, the nicest place I’ve ever lived, the fiesta’s start on the 31st of August and run for nine days. They also tick all the right boxes. For a couple of hours of one morning the towns Levante beach is transformed into a kind of medieval D-Day but with a few less yanks. The idea is some of those naughty North Africans, complete with sharp knives stuck in their belts, try and sneak ashore only to be fended off by the local Home Guard who open fire in noisy and smoky style with trabucos, a kind of long barrelled replica rifle, a bit like a blunderbuss. Round two of the skirmishing inevitably takes place in and around the castle, where, this time Dads Army aren’t quite as lucky.

1977 and all that

It matters not where you live, during fiesta season the Spanish take very, very seriously their annual opportunity to err, not behave very seriously at all. The UK has nothing quite like the Spanish fiestas, sure, way back in 1977 there were a few street parties for Queenies Silver Jubilee and before that VE Day, but there really isn’t a fat lot to get excited about is there? You can bet your bottom dollar that within days of a fiesta, any fiesta, ending, the YouTube servers will be groaning under the weight of a mountain of new footage of pomp, pageant, pirates and quite a few pillocks. Visualise a week long combination of a typical British New Years Eve, (without all the arrests) and Bonfire Night and you’re getting there.

Sinead O’Conner once sang, “Nothing compares to you” She could easily have been referring to Spain.

We've had the builders in. Briefly.



Just like the ex wife's haircut

 We've got a bit of an archaeological dig going on at our apartment building at the moment, you know, the kind that never seems to be finished. Unfortunately, it's in the entrance hall of our apartment building, which is undergoing something of a transformation; from a perfectly serviceable reception area with lighting and post-boxes into a derelict building site with rubble, bags of cement piled up and bare live wires everywhere. The drilling, banging and dust creation began in the middle of January, carried on at a relentless pace for three days and then abruptly stopped. I'm assuming, maybe wrongly, the workmen must have knackered themselves that first week because they just haven't come back. What they've left behind is an absolutely hideous mess with no end to the chaos seemingly in sight. At the outset, their remit was to remove and replace ageing wall and floor tiles, lighten up the space, install a new intercom system and hang a new security door out to the street. Only half of one of those things has actually happened so far, but the fifteen or twenty new tiles on the wall aren't half a lovely colour and I'm sure the ceiling will look nice once the awful looking holes in the plaster contain spotlights.

You're supposed to put  letters in here mate

In the meantime, we and our neighbours, one of whom is quite elderly, have to navigate something akin to  the shop floor of  a branch of Travis Perkins to get to our front door. Even if we make it safely home, we may well resmble ghostly spectres and require an immediate shower, such is the quantity of dust we accumulate on the way up. As I once said to the ex wife when passing comment on her new hairdo, "it'll be nice when it's finished" What I am quite excited about is the possibilities of our postman acutally inserting our mail into the promised shiny new buzones, (postboxes - pronounced boo-thon-es), up until recently he just sort of lobbed people's letters in the vague direction of the stairs and left the residents to get on with a bit of a treasure hunt for their bills. Talking of archaeology, had Robeto the builder and his feckless chums used toothbrushes and spoons instead of hammers and a Black and Decker, the job might be nearly finished by now. Closer to home though - in actual fact inside my home - the story of apparently started and abandoned building projects looms very large, as well our once immaculate bathroom can now testify.

The ugly scar

The problem, not for one moment of our own making, started last weekend with a knock on the door from Jose, owner of the apartment beneath ours, who, it seemed was suffering from an ingress of water, from quite where nobody really knew. The local plumbers did though and very soon narrowed the problem down to a leaking pipe - inconveniently situated behind a wall in our salón de baño. Upon this diagnosis I immediately, and not without good reason, sensed trouble. Trouble duly came next morning, when, once the insurance company had given the green light, Pepe the Spanish plumber and his oppo set about the offending wall with gusto and two sledgehammers. Two hours, a pile of rubble and a massive great hole later, they'd located and replaced the offending leaky pipe, made a token effort to clean up after themselves and gone. That was last Monday and they've not been back. Discreet enquiries revealed it's now up to a new set of, err, "tradesmen" to make good the massive great gash the plumber left behind which stretches from half way up the wall to the ceiling and gets wider at the top. It looks like the kind of fissure in the rock potholers in Derbyshire might enjoy exploring. The thing is when I visit the bog with my newspaper or a good read, I don't want to have to do so with a helmet and safety lamp. More to the point it's most disconcerting to have the feeling something has just crawled out of the earth and is sneaking up behind me while I take part in one of lifes simple pleasures. 

It's not all gloom and doom though, on Friday my new and long awaited telephone finally arrived.


UPDATE FRIDAY MARCH AT ABOUT 2330
At long last progress and an impressive finished product to boot. After something of a frustrating two or three days because the newly cut security door keys wouldn't work properly without pulling or pushing the door itself, the entrance hall to our building has now been finished and looks mighty tidy. These days we now have spotlights in the ceiling, slinky floor and wall tiles and a brand new intercom system from the street to each individual apartment, which, presently doesn't work!! On the upside, the athletics theme continues uninterrupted. Previously, during the building process I used to have hurdle various builders requisites to get home, now the task is altogether simpler; the street door has a heavy spring mechanism, which, affords a competitive bloke me about thirteen seconds to sprint up the four longish flights off stairs before it clangs shut behind me. Great for keeping fit, but now, unfortunately, every flight of stairs I encounter has to be tackled at the double whatever I am wearing or carrying. Ho hum!!

That's only half the job though,  because Wookey Hole in our bathroom is still wide open and making an alarming noise

And then Spain went and spoilt it all.

Just a couple of short weeks ago there I was, in this very blog, eulogizing Spain as a place to live, when, all of a sudden Spain went and let me down very badly indeed. Clearly, I spoke too soon as my neck of the European woods began to believe it's own positive publicity and came over mighty complacent. Since my stubby index finger last pressed the space-bar, quite a bit has happened, and not all of it good.

Nice yacht - shite firm

I'll start with Telefonica - something I bitterly regret ever doing when I first arrived here in 2006 - who, frankly, deserve every word of bad press anybody has ever printed about them. Besides not being particularly cheap, their customer service department appears to consist of one man who hides his telephone in a drawer so he can't hear it ringing. This giant and hopelessly inefficient multi-national has twice replaced my wireless router in a forlorn attempt to provide me with an internet service that, if only for an  hour a day at three am, might perform fractionally better than a 1993 dial-up connection. This morning, ten days after this woeful organisation promised to upgrade my line speed, for which I foolishly/generously - you decide, agreed to pay an additional five euros a month, it took forty six seconds for my laptop to toggle between the BBC sport and news pages. Think about that for a moment, almost a whole minute for an aggravating green progress bar to complete it's short journey from the left to right hand sides of my screen. I'm seriously thinking about investing in a Telex machine.


El Corte eBay

 Not to be outdone, another famous Spanish name recently shamed themselves by almost completely failing to remember which one of the two of us, them or me, was actually the client. Before Christmas, El Corte Inglés, possibly the second most expensive department store in the world after Harrods, were given my watch to replace the leather strap. The watch itself is a reasonably expensive one, made by an Australian company better known for their good quality street and surf clothing, and, as such I was keen to replace the worn out strap with an original. I'll give 'em three weeks I thought and then pop by to collect it; after four further visits and countless telephone calls they called today to say it was ready. Thankfully I was sitting down when I picked the phone up. All excited, I went back this afternoon only to find the cheeky bastards had replaced the battery too and added another tenner to my bill. Now, I appreciate it was some time ago that they first had it, but I'm convinced it wasn't so long back the bleedin' battery would have conked out between times. Not only that, the lazy sods couldn't even be arsed to reset the time and date for me, which, when I collected it read August 2002.

I really want one of these

Obviously, any kind of whinge wouldn't really be complete would it without a bit of a dig at a mobile phone company, who, wherever you live in the world, just don't get Customer Service do they? I'm still waiting for my new smartphone, which is bound to be almost obsolete by the time Vodafone España eventually deliver it. I've known for ages that I'm not really much of a gadget freak in the way some blokes are, but, and it's an important but, when I order something, anything, I've really set my heart on I have to have it NOW!!  To make matters worse for yours truly, the girlyfriend ordered her new mobile at about the same time and it's been here four days. I think it's mighty impressive too because every quarter of an hour I get summoned to her side to "look at this" which I dutifully do whilst trying not to betray even the tiniest hint of jealousy. You'll need to trust me here when I say there's not much more frustrating than flicking through a Nokia user guide which runs to reams and reams of paper without being able to carry out their very detailed instructions on an acutal handset. When I've finished this I'm going to nip downstairs to the Orange shop next door to pick up their February brochure, just so I can remind myself what my new toy looks like.

Handy little flags

My personal award for utterly crap Customer Service has to go though to El Corte Inglés, obviously you'd expect Vodaphone and Telefonica to be completely and utterly shit and they rarely disappoint, but the sense of dismay I felt with Spain's flagship retail outlet was palpable. Putting their daft prices aside, the staff are usually kind and patient and some of them even have a little Union Jack badge to indicate they speak English, which is helpful sometimes. Thinking about it, I really shouldn't have been so facetious to the teenage shop assistant on my second to last visit when I sarcastically enquired whether I might spot my watch on eBay. Sorry señorita.