Green light for AVE

The ‘Banco Europeo de Inversiones’ (BEI) are offering a grant of 500 million Euros to finance the high speed railway line, which will carry passengers from Madrid to Murcia, via Alicante, according to the Director of Operations for Spain and Portugal, Carlos Guille Perez.

After signing an agreement with the Community of Murcia to allocate 125 millon euros to improving the road network across the region, the Director revealed that BEI had also agreed the grant for the AVE line, with a term of 30 years.

He said that “The high speed and development of the communications network throughout Europe is a high priority for the BEI foundation, which has financed the majority of existing AVE lines across Spain.”

The President of the Murcian Community, Ramon Luis Valcarcel, also expressed the importance of this contract, and the faith which the Regional Government has in the future of the rail link, which will be initiated through “constant communications with the Ministry for Promotion and Development”.

Valcarcel went on to explain that in a protocol signed last year with the Minister for Promotion, Jose Blanco, “a series of high-priority activities were laid down, which would not be affected by budget cut backs, particularly the AVE and motorway which will connect Valencia with Murcia via inland areas.”

That is good and bad news. Bad because there are some in the region who feel that the money could be invested in other ways which would be more beneficial. Good because it means that Spain is still looking to the future and not sticking to the past. High speed communication networks could prove vital to the financial recovery.

Doing it in style

When pupils leave school in Bigastro, they have a ceremony at the Auditorium to remind them of the important step they are taking.

Even the pre-school children from Bigastrin get in on the act and get to wear a sash and a mortar board for the occasion.

Another four years of hope

No matter how much we complain that Frank Lampard’s goal should have stood and that might have changed the match, the truth is England were outplayed in every department. As the Telegraph puts it, “Capello’s defence were a collection of hesitant strangers, his midfield painfully less than the sum of their celebrated parts and the attack anonymous”. That just about sums it up.

Blame, recriminations and soul searching – there will be plenty of talk over the next few weeks. Then the country can settle back and remember 1966 and hope things will be better next time.

Summer is over

By all accounts, the weather here in Britain is going to change this week. The lovely summer skies and sunshine are set to give way to clouds and rain. Gardeners and hay fever sufferers will be pleased.

Meanwhile back home in Bigastro, summer is now well set in. Not a lot of chance of rain there until maybe Sunday.

No pleasing some folk

Somehow the weather is never right in Britain. It is either too cold, too wet or too hot. At the moment it is apparently too hot and too dry.

The heat has been building up through the week to reach a peak this weekend. The highest temperature before this week was 28.8C at the end of May: this weekend it may exceed 30C.

For most of this past week it’s been dry throughout Britain. The lack of rain over the last few months is affecting northwest England, where river and reservoir levels continue to decline. The region has had six months of below average rainfall — the driest start to the year since 1929. There is already talk of hosepipe bans and even standpipes in the streets.

Don’t worry though, pollen sufferers and those in need of rain may find relief in the coming week. Many places will still be warm and dry, but Tuesday looks showery, and there are signs of more persistent and useful rain spreading in from the Atlantic later.

Guess what people will be complaining about then!

From an English garden

Some of the plants in the Spanish gardens I have photographed can be found in English gardens for example roses, fuchsias and carnations. Others are too tender to be grown this far north.

However, there is plenty of choice for colour in most parts of Britain. These are a few of the plants I found in the garden of our very good friends, Hugh and Angela on the Wirral.

We went over to see them yesterday and enjoyed a fabulous BBQ. I have to tell you, when it comes to cooking on a charcoal Weber, Hugh is the master.

Phew

A great sigh of relief as Spain got through to the next stage of the World Cup and will meet Portugal rather than Brazil in the next round.

If Spain and Brazil succeed in getting through the next stages then they could meet in what would prove to be a thrilling final.

Follow the band

The Unión Musical de Bigastro will be playing at the Palau de la Música y Congresos de Valencia on the 4th of July and I should be there! I was invited by the President of the band to go along and take photographs but unfortunately I will still be in England on that day.

The program for the occasion is entitled "Bigastro Municipio Musical" (Bigastro Musical Municipality). It will trace part of the history, the traditions and the personality of a town identified for more than century by music.

Also, in celebration of the centenary of the birth Miguel Hernandez, the band will interpret "Elegía a un Poeta"composed by the the bigastrense musician D. Francisco Grau Vegara "Estampas de Iberia"

Five coaches will be travelling to Valencia taking over 300 people in support and as I said, I should be one of them!

I hope that the band enjoy a wonderful concert and that the audience show their appreciation. Sadly, the photographs they bring back, will not be mine.

Retail therapy

Taking time out from sorting out Pam’s father’s house to enjoy a little retail therapy in Chester. Pam, Laura and Molly scoured the "girlie" shops whilst I took time out to grab more photos of one of my favourite cities.

Work ‘till you drop

It seems that we are now living longer and therefore placing an increasing burden on the pension pot.

The proposal is therefore to increase the age for retirement in Britain every five years to curb the £55 billion-a-year state pension bill.

The new measures would mean that in just 25 years time the pension age will have risen to 70, affecting all workers now aged 40 (or under).

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, also announced plans to force workers to enrol in occupational pensions, to phase out the default retirement age, which allows employers to sack older workers, and to raise the current retirement age from 65 to 66 as early as 2016.

Raising the state pension age will hit the less well-off far more than the rich. Statistically, a sixty-five-year-old men in Kensington and Chelsea could expect to live a further 23 years while those in Glasgow would only last 14 years after retirement.

There are many occupations where it is just not feasible to continue working until you are 70; for example you would not want a 70 year old to come to your house to put out a fire. Added to which, the longer people stay in work, the fewer opportunities there will be for young people.

This is a real mess; a problem that successive governments knew was coming but chose to ignore.

Be warned

It is an old trick. Lady in a parked car waiting for her husband. Man approaches with a map and asks for directions. There are different twists on the story but the result is the same – the lady looses her handbag. It happened to our neighbours in Los Montesinos and now I read about a similar incident in the car park at San Jaime hospital near Torrevieja.

This time the lady was suspicious and kept her handbag over her shoulder. That meant the thief had to knock her over to steal the bag. So she suffered injury as well as loss.

It is a sad state of affairs but if someone asks you for help with directions, you have no choice but to refuse because you could become the next victim.

Lighting up the sky in Torre

There might be an economic crisis still looming in Spain but that did not stop Torrevieja from celebrating the night of San Juan in style.

Heralding in summer with bonfires and fireworks is traditional in our part of Spain. Let’s face it, it doesn’t take much of an excuse for Spaniards to set off fireworks.

This year, the town council had organised a Piromusical extravaganza – music and fireworks together. It took a ton of powder and 80,000 watts of sound to fill the night with colour and sound for 15 minutes.

I bet is was spectacular, I just wish we could have been there. After less than a week, I am starting to get homesick!

Get the towels on the seats ready

As the Spanish paper Información says, “Alemania-Inglaterra, duelo de alto voltaje en octavos”.

For the benefit of my Spanish readers, the title of this post refers to the fact that, on holiday, the Germans always get down to the pool before breakfast and claim their sunbeds with towels.

Having squeezed through the qualifying round, the lads now face their old rivals Germany on Sunday. Although England played with a lot more purpose yesterday, they will have to lift their game further to get through the next rounds especially if they get to meet the likes of Argentina.

Still, you can keep the flags on the cars a little longer in the hope that they bring more good luck to the team.

The good news for Spain is that David Villa will not face disciplinary action for slapping Emilio Izaguirre in the face during their 2-0 win over Honduras after Fifa decided there were no grounds to proceed. Just as well because Spain really need to do something in their last match to be sure of getting through.

The price is right

	What would you expect to pay for a large, three bedroom detached house? Integral garage, gas central heating, two reception rooms, large bathroom, double glazed UPVC windows in good condition.
	Large UPVC conservatory reached through French windows, well maintained gardens front and rear.
	Best of all it has beautiful views over farmland at the rear giving it an open and private aspect. This is a location that you would rarely find on the Wirral and so would be most sought after.

I can’t tell you the price it will eventually sell for but I can tell you that three different estate agents think it is worth between £160,000 and £210,000. That is quite a range, they can’t all be right. If I was in the market for a family house in this area, this would be high up on my list.

Coping with a heat wave

Fred the weatherman on ITV said it was going to be very hot in this area over the next few days. He meant that temperatures could reach 24.

I have news for you Fred, 24 is a mild spring temperature for us. When it gets really hot, then you need advice of how to cope and that is what Bigastro provides.

Drink lots of water and liquids without alcohol. Tempting as it might be, to go for a pint or two of beer, that is not a great idea.

Eat lots of fruit and vegetables. High summer is not the time for stews and casseroles.

Wear light clothing both in weight and colour. Black absorbs heat, white reflects it.

Don’t forget sun protection cream.

Avoid intense physical work when the temperatures are high and of course watch out for children and the elderly.

Valencia publishes a comprehensive guide here which is in English.

Long to reign over us

The present Queen of Egland has been on the throne since 1952. However, her predecessors did not fare as well. These are just cheap pieces of coronation memorabilia from their reigns that we have found at Pam’s father’s house.

	Edward VIII  only reigned from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December the same year. He’d caused a constitutional crisis by proposing marriage to the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. After his abdication, he was took the title Duke of Windsor
	George V  reigned from 6 May 1910  until his death in 1936 a mere 26 years. George was the first British monarch of the House of Windsor, which he created from the British branch of the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Dingle me dongle

Since I am at the moment in a house with no broadband connection and my netbook doesn’t have a dial up modem, I am using a Vodafone USB dongle to connect to the Internet.

For anyone without a phone line or in an area where ADSL is not available, a mobile phone dongle is a relatively simple way to get on to the net.

Since I only want to use this dongle on occasions, mine is a pay as you go version.  However, I upload pictures to my Flickr album which eats up bandwidth, so my dongle needs regular topping up.

Now the easiest way to top up is to use your debit of credit card but of course mine are all registered to our address in Spain. No problem, I bought a top up voucher – from Asda but that didn’t work. Why, because silly me, I got a £20 voucher and that won’t do. It seems that Vodafone dongles will only accept £15 vouchers. Nowhere in the instructions does it tell you that and the lady in the shop didn’t know either. It took a phone call to Vodafone call centre to find that out.

How good is the dongle? If you can only find a GPRS connection it is painfully slow. So slow that web pages will time out before they download - even mail servers will close their connection. Get onto a 3G connection or better still 3G+ and it is a different story. It doesn’t come near to my 10Mb connection in Spain but it is good enough.

The problem is that the 3G signal is poor here. Once the dongle has connected, it does hold on pretty well so it is useable.

A great week in store

It looks like you can expect some good weather this week. Lots of sun, temperatures up to 30 in the daytime and rising to 18 at night.

Mind you, the weather here in England isn’t bad at the moment. We had a lovely sunny day yesterday and today looks to be the same. The difference is that we know it won’t last here whilst it should at home in Bigastro.

Not all bad

  The recent rains may have caused problems for some but at least they have put water back into the Segura river. The river is currently fuller than it has been for 25 years at this time of year.

This influx of water is beneficial to the environment; it cleans the salt and other pollutants from the land and thus improves crop yields, it is beneficial to fish stocks and adds to the reserves of water in the area.

The dams of the Segura are now at 68% capacity which means there is enough water for two years. Agriculturalists will be pleased and we will benefit from good produce at a competitive price.

It isn’t getting any better

If we were disappointed with England’s showing against the USA then last night they surpassed themselves

Last night’s was a performance as poor as England have shown under Fabio Capello’s leadership, a stumbling, error-strewn catalogue of misplaced passes and inept tactical thinking. Indeed, it was so poor that it prompted a first for this World Cup.

As the referee blew the final whistle you could hear the collective booing of disappointed England fans.  After the incessant honking of the vuvuzelas, it was almost reassuring to hear a sound that did not emanate from the end of a plastic cone.

Statistically, England could still go through to the next round but what would be the point. If they can’t play any better than they did last night, then they don’t deserve to be in the final stages of the competition.

I think it is time for people in England  to take all those silly St George crosses of their cars. England football is no longer something to be proud of.