There were two main attractions to spending Christmas and new Year in Spain.

The first, of course, was the potential for some decent weather. I must say that, for the first time, our weather expectations have been exceeded markedly. In stark contrast to the poor ol’ north of England and Scotland, our weather here since 15th December has been simply stunning. We have had quite literally just a few spots of rain but the skies have generally been clear and the temperatures have been in the low to mid twenties centigrade.

The second reason is that, whilst Christmas exists in Spain, it is much lower key. It has been so refreshing not to be constantly assaulted by those same irritating Christmas songs in every shop and the constant high-pressure reminders to spend because Satan Claus is around the corner – a corner that lasts between two and three months in the UK. It’s a good excuse for a feast with some friends but that’s about it. Christmas could actually become enjoyable again, here.

Goal achieved.

With Christmas mercifully behind us for another year, we approached New Year. This time we were being entertained by those we had ourselves entertained on Christmas Day. They live down in the valley on the opposite side of Jalón; a distance of about two miles. I jumped through a few mental hoops over driving down armed with a couple of bottles or walking down with a couple of bottles. The down is easy enough, it’s the back up our 1-in-3 hills at something past midnight after emptying said bottles that becomes daunting. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant enough evening requiring only a short-sleeved shirt and the thought of remaining sober enough to drive back was even less appealing, so walk we did.

Jalón was strangely quiet. One or two restaurants and bars were open but little was happening. I reminded myself, though, that it was only 7:00 PM and the Spanish have a reputation for not really starting their nightlife until about 10:00 PM. Things would probably kick off later.

We arrived at our friends and spent a very pleasant evening dining and drinking, then turning of the telly for a countdown and a few glimpses of fireworks. Difficult – the main countdown being an English one whereas we were an hour ahead, entering 2016 earlier. Paris had backed off fireworks due to the recent terror attack and Belgium had cancelled due to a perceived terror threat.  What a wonderful world we now live in. We saw Berlin firing off a few desultory sparklers, though, behind the Brandenburg Gate. [Maybe they couldn’t afford much given the flood of more than a million immigrants that they’ve been swamped by this year.] There was a recap of a part of Sydney’s usually spectacular display centred around their impressive harbour bridge.

We opened a door to listen for church bells peeling in Jalón, perhaps some revelry in the streets, the Spanish liking a good fiesta. Nothing, nada, nichts.

We didn’t stay up to watch what would doubtless have been an impressive London display. Our own gathering drew to a close and we were kindly offered a ride by other friends back to the bottom of our steps. We gladly accepted. During the brief journey, we saw not other sign of life whatsoever. We have spent New Year in Austria during our skiing days and the Austrians go nuts letting rockets off from their hands and throwing bangers under passing cars – those that still have tyres intact, that is, from discarded fizz bottles. In Spain, apparently absolutely nothing.

Here, New Year seemed to pass pretty much unnoticed. I was reasonably gobsmacked. Well it is just another night and an artificially created boundary.

Artificial or not, a healthy 2016 to you.

I’ve decided that Boxing Day no longer has any meaning in a modern context. It certainly has no meaning over here in Spain where it doesn’t exist. So, henceforth December 26th will be known as Recovery Day. And [sorry, English master], with six empty bottles, including two Cavas and a Port – well, the Stilton needed it – staring up at me accusatorially from the floor, I was looking forward to a considerable dose of recovery. The only fly in my recovery ointment was that we would need food for Sunday and the shops would be shut, Xmas now being dead and buried [HOORAH!] for another twelvemonth. So, a brief shopping trip was necessary. We dumped all the empty evidence in our basuras on the way and bought a couple of entrecots [sirloin steaks] – something easy for Sunday.

[Brief Spanish note, as much to myself as anyone: basura actually appears to mean waste or garbage (for the Amerispeak inclined) but our friends over here refer to the bins as basuras – maybe it’s a kind of shorthand. The full term for waste bins seems to be cubo de la basura.]

Recovery Day was billed as being cloudy here – well, near here, anyway. We treated ourselves to some prawns and sat out on our naya basking in the sunshine that the clouds were bringing. Here’s my artist’s impression of our cloudy day, involving bare feet on terracotta tiles in a very pleasant 22C (shade temperature). I’ll take any amount of cloudy days such as this; they help recovery no end.

Enjoying the amazing run of Christmas weather in our Spanish valley is made somewhat bitter-sweet, though, as we continue to watch the devastating flooding in the north of England caused by storm after storm, first Desmond and now Eva. I’m really not convinced by the sagacity of the personalizing of such destructive forces; I suppose it helps to be able to refer to the storms as they line up one after another to wreak havoc but surely an impersonal letter would be more appropriate. You have only to look at the scenes of people being rescued as their lives are broken by a very impersonal Mother Nature. Neither does it now feel appropriate to refer to these weather events as extreme; they may hit different parts of the country each year – thankful for small mercies – but they now seem to occur somewhere every year. Rather than feeling extreme, that begins to feel normal.

In any event, my heart goes out to all those affected by storms D and E, or any other letter, come to that. I doubt we’ve seen the last of it yet – we aren’t even out of December. In theory, we’ve had only one week of winter so far, for Darwin’s sake.

Friends were due to be joining us for Christmas dinner at about 3:00 PM. We spent the morning quaffing some fizz – I pushed the celebratory boat out: 1.50€ a bottle) – whilst doing some preparations, like making a salsa for some tortilla chips. With time on our hands, we then had a midday wander down our mountainside into Jalón to see if anywhere would be open to sell us a coffee.

It was eerily quiet. It is SO pleasant to have Christmas downplayed. There were a handful of locals wandering about but hardly any of us foreigners. I suspect that most expats were either at or en route to their chosen restaurant for a lazy Christmas lunch out. Most establishments were locked up but we found what is rapidly becoming my favourite cafe open with tables out in the sun. I ordered dos cafes con leche y dos Soberanos, just to keep our merriment levels up.

Time for a word about Spanish brandies. My taste buds had notified me that all was not well with my last batch of 103 bottles (that’s the brand, not the quantity) I had taken home. It tasted different – slightly odd. I read the bottle: 30% alcohol by volume. Arghh! The market leader in Spain is Soberano and I checked a bottle in a supermarket: 30% by volume. Yikes! What’s happening? It appears that a health drive is kicking in and that the Spanish have intentionally reduced the alcohol content of their brandies – some, anyway. Now, look, I don’t drink them to get rat-arsed but I do want them to taste decent when I have a sip. The 103, formerly my preferred brand, is now verging on the unpleasant. Soberano seems to have been less affected but it just doesn’t feel right, somehow. I have found another brand, Carlos III, which s 36% by volume and therefore somewhat better but, oh dear me, this is an unwelcome turn up for the books.

We finished our coffees and brandies and set off to wander back home, which is to say that we struggled, puffed and panted up the mountainside roads, some of which must approach gradients of 1 in 4.

Once I’d got my breath back, I turned the oven on and waited an eon for it to reach the indicated temperature of 150°C to begin cooking our medio cochinillo [half suckling pig] gently.  I chose to use just the lower element within the oven – seemed right to me since I didn’t think I wanted direct heat radiating down from the top element on top of piglet. Fortunately we had the foresight to arm ourselves with a Heston Blumenthal oven thermometer which confirmed my fears; the oven had only struggled up to a meagre 125°C. I wound the dial up further and popped piglet into the oven.

Our fellow diners arrived. Gin and tonics were in order. Mercifully, the Bombay Gin I’d bought was not suffering from a sever attack of Spanish health and was still 40% by volume. I kept checking the oven. Every time I did so, I was enveloped in a cloud of steam. Will someone please tell me how an electric oven containing nothing but a dry piglet contrives to billow steam every time I opened the door? I tried moving piglet up and down in the oven, together with Heston’s oven thermometer, and got a face full of steam every time. For the final 30 minutes, I wacked the temperature up to 250°C on the dial; it actually struggled up to 200°C. Piglet browned nicely. What piglet did not do, presumably due to his sauna, was crisp up. Bloody Spanish ovens! Here he or she is – I’m not good at sexing roasted/steamed piglets. It was very tasty but we’d have preferred a nice mouthful or two of crispy, light piglet skin.

I’m batting 33% now. My first attempt at a medio cochinillo was brilliant; the last two have both failed to crisp up. I must investigate.

I hope you all enjoyed your Xmas stuffing. 😉

We looked out of our windows on the sixth morning here straight into mist. The opposite side of the valley was completely invisible. It wasn’t raining but it was socked in. A reasonable rule of thumb is that, when the valley is socked in, head for the coast where it is often clearer. There’s an old fort at Dénia, which we visit less frequently, so we decided to make that our destination.

In fact, the weather wasn’t much clearer at Dénia but we were 700 feet lower so the mist was now above us. It’s off season and parking was a doddle. Abandoning our rental car in a suitable spot, we set off in search of the entrance to the fort. On our approach, we came across a tunnel under the fort where, apparently, people used to take shelter from bombing during the Spanish civil war. [As Franco, I feel a little uncomfortable mentioning the Spanish civil war but what can you do?] Even to an artistic numbskull such as myself, the lighting and metal structures in the tunnel looked very appealing and Francine managed to capture it, even sin tripod. Brava!

A little more wandering along some narrow streets up the hillside got us to the fort’s entrance where we stumped up our 3€ each entrance. Look, let’s face it, it’s a pile of old stones. Actually, the stones appear to vary widely in age starting from about 1208 and stretching up to siglo [century] XVIII, according to the label on some walls. I am not the world’s greatest admirer of old stones but it was quite pleasant, though the views across the rooftops of Dénia could’ve been a tad more inspiring, I thought. More interesting to me was seeing a seagull plucking what was clearly a freshly butchered dove for its lunch. Peace on earth, I guess. I couldn’t see any discarded olive branch but a little olive oil would’ve made it slip down more readily, I think.

The main shopping street in Dénia provided a little entertainment as we wandered back towards our abandoned car. In much the same way as I can take or leave piles of old stones, I can take or leave children. Here, however, were some well behaved youngsters being shepherded in some sort of folk dance thingy in a street strewn with autumnal leaves. If this is as high-key as Christmas gets in Spain , I’ll be happy.

Now to the title. Soon after leaving the car, we had seen a restaurant displaying a chalk board outside declaring “Hay Erizos”. Hmmm, must be something noteworthy, we mused; something a little special. Whipping out my phone with its handy-dandy translation app, I discovered that the restaurant seemed to be declaring, “there are hedgehogs”. Well, hold me back! After all, I’ve heard of hedgehogs baked in clay, the clay plucking the spines off when you open it up. [No, I couldn’t do it, they are far too cute and far too endangered.] It seems a bit like a very dirty salt crust technique. Wait. A little further down the entry there was an alternative possibility. Given their full title this sign may have been referring to erizos de mar, in which case the restaurant was saying, “there are sea urchins”. That made more sense, Dénia being a fishing port, ‘n’ all. Like Dénia’s fish, I was hooked. We had missed out on sampling percebes [goose barnacles] which we discovered on a fishmonger’s counter in the stunning market at Valencia, just because we had no good way to keep them fresh on the way back home. Not wanting to miss out on another interesting gastronomic first, though we had no clue about how to tackle the beasts, we went in for a quick half dozen hoping we could bluff it. Fortunately, the way they were presented, opened and accompanied by small spoons, gave us a clue. They were slightly sweet in a fishy kind of way and delicious – definitely worth repeating should the opportunity arise.

Now, if I could just find some more percebes.

Once we’d finally made it through immigration at Alicante, I checked in for our rental car (no queue whatsoever – good) and we made our way to level 3 of the car park, where the rental agencies have their bases. Our car was siupposedly a Skoda Fabia, black and it was in space #462, we were told. No it wasn’t; #462 had a Lancia Ypsilon sitting in it. Yes, as unlikely as it may sound, Lancia is still in business and making cars, or what passes for a car to an Italian, apparently. Scary stuff! In a former life, when I worked at Rank Xerox for a spell during the 70’s, Lancias were one of their favoured management company cars, just because of the specification – you got more toys in the Lancia than the similar Ford. The toys didn’t last long though, the Lancias fell apart in 2-3 years. I don’t remember the model name but they were the ultimate rust buckets. Even 1960s Vauxhalls outlasted a 1970s Lancia and that’s saying something. Lancia’s reputation became so bad, quite justifiably, that they were forced to stop trading in the UK. Here was a frightening reminder.

There being no sign of any reasonably constructed black Skoda nearby, I returned to the desk. The helpful Centauro man came out to try and find the right car.  The advantages of a remote locking device: wander up and down a line or two of cars punching the zapper and wait for a car to beep, unlock and blink its hazard flashers. “Ah, that’s the one – space #442”. A quick visual check and we were off.

Off for a short time, anyway. Whilst still in the car park, we spotted a little blue warning light in the shape of a thermometer on the dashboard. Our exit route took us round back past the office so I stopped and called in. The little blue warning light supposedly said simply that the engine was cold and would extinguish when the engine warmed up. I’ve just started a car that’s been sitting overnight and the engine is cold? No shit! There’s a surprise. Now look Skoda, a.k.a. VW, never mind cheating on vehicle emissions, get the design right. Warning lights are intended to warn of exceptional conditions, things that are out of spec and require attention. A cold engine when you first start up does not constitute an exceptional condition. What is the point of “warning” me about it? We continued. Sure enough, after a couple of minutes the light went out. Pointless.

We got to Casa Libélule after an hour and lunch and let ourselves in. There were no warning lights showing but then I flip the power off when we leave. There perhaps should have been a warning light because Casa had an exceptional conditional: the outside wall, normally a plain, bright minimalistic white, showed signs of mould – a sort of mottled blotchiness. A small scale forest of furriness was visible on the back rest of one of our dining chairs. The top of our dining table showed tell-tale signs of mould, too. Worse; upon looking closer, not that it was difficult to see, the table top had developed a curve which in turn meant that the legs were toeing in a little. Very Queen Anne. I’m sure the silly wide angle lens in my crappy phone camera is exaggerating the effect but this picture will give the basic idea. Bother! All the other similarly constructed pieces of furniture look fine, BTW.

We got some fungicidal stuff from the local hardware store and I washed the walls down with that. They look a plain, minimalistic bright white again. Other than wiping it down – we don’t want to add further moisture to already warped wood – there’s little to be done to the table, just wait and see. I suppose it may shape-shift again as the atmospheric conditions surrounding it change but personally I doubt it. We’re not sure why we should’ve experienced this problem this time around, except that we dried some clothing upstairs shortly before leaving on our last visit. Maybe this loaded the atmosphere in the house with moisture which then condensed out as it got cold. We won’t try that again.

I won’t serve too much gravy with Christmas dinner, either – it’ll end up in your lap. 😀

Our easyJet Airbus 319 blasted off from Luton aerodrome pretty much on schedule at 07:30 this morning, bound for Alicante. Our 2½-hour flight was blissfully uneventful and we touched down on Spanish terra firma [firma is Spanish for signature, BTW – completely irrelevant but I thought you’d like to know] at about 11:00 AM.

We’d have been taxiing towards the terminal at about the same time as astronaut Tim Peake and his colleagues were successfully blasting off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in their Soyuz rocket, bound for a rendez-vous with the International Space Station. I spotted that Tim Peake was described as “our first official astronaut”, which left me wondering what on earth an unofficial astronaut might have been. Curious. Also, what on earth seems like a completely inappropriate phrase where astronauts are concerned since they are decidedly off earth. So, rephrasing, what off earth is an unofficial astronaut? Anyway, happily the space flight went smoothly and the Soyuz approached the ISS after about 6 hours.

After the six hours, it is reported that going smoothly was put on hold as the Soyuz’s automated docking system failed. I don’t do science fiction but here was a chance to use one of my very favourite phrases from that genre. I seem to remember it being used during Luke Skywalker’s attack on the Death Star when, clearly, computer systems couldn’t be trusted and the force had to be with him: “switching to manual”. So, eyes closed, bombs away, a perfect parabola straight down the miniscule vent and, boom! – up went the Death Star. An appropriate memory given the latest box office bonanza. Nice one, Luke! It’s a phase that’s probably been used countless times in Star Trek, too. Clearly, the writers of such tosh are familiar with some of the computer programmers I’ve known. Would you put a life and death situation in their hands hoping that they’d found all their bugs? No, nor would I. So, the Soyuz’s docking system had failed and commander Yuri Malenchenko switched to manual to successfully dock it with the ISS. [Well, I did mention Star Trek so a split infinitive is expected.] Well done Yuri!

Six hours earlier, back on earth, we’d encountered Alicante’s latest immigration “advance” for the second time. Fortunately, this time our easyJet flight appeared to be the only one recently arrived but nonetheless, there was still a lengthy queue wedged up against the accursed automatic passport scanning machines. The length of the queue would not have been distressing had it been moving. It wasn’t. A warm body stood at the side manually checking those without electronic passports and families with children. All these people entered Spain quickly and easily and were soon disappearing from sight to continue their onward journeys. The rest of us weren’t that lucky. Frustration levels within the queue were increasing as our movement didn’t. Automated passport machines are a complete disaster.

Evidently the lone immigration official, his nominated charges already well on their way, also apparently became frustrated with the failure of the computer-based system to process the arriving tourists. “Switching to manual!”  He began manually checking some of the electronic passports. Good decision. We made our way over to him as quickly as we could.

I bet Tim Peake didn’t have a passport delay getting into the ISS.