Forgetting myself

I got the car serviced today. I went to the BMW dealer up in Salamanca. There was a little board in the service reception area, like the ones they have in hotels and conference centres, that had my name on it to welcome me to my 10am appointment. I suppose it's the little touches like that which make 3.7 litres of oil worth 115€.

Anyway I'd taken the camera. Who knows, car for service, maybe something for the blog? There wasn't, well there is now because this is it, but let's forget that for a moment. I thought as I strolled around the industrial area waiting for the car to be ready how it looked just like the industrial estates in the UK. Must be the same all over Europe I thought.

Over the Easter break we bumped into a Briton who was doing some work for our friends John and Claire. Somewhere in the converstion this chap said that he went to the UK very infrequently nowadays as he found he had very little in common with people living there. I supposed that he meant that UK news stories were not his and that his general everyday experiences didn't offer much common ground for conversations with Britons in the UK. I didn't actually believe him but I did discern a kernel of truth in what he said because I often feel the same thing myself. My culture is an English one but my recent experiences are wholly Spanish.

So, back to the industrial estate; as I drove away I realised that the one in Salamanca didn't look at all like the one in Huntingdon, or Cambridge or even the one at the bottom of the Ainleys in Elland. It does look like one in Crevillente and the ones in Elche and Alicante though.