Briton in the Sun

It was the last week in November, and exactly a month until Christmas Eve. Diego and I were on our way into town for food, and unbeknown to us, the Gibraltarians were having a party. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! We had noticed the Christmas lights on the drive into town, and apparently tonight was the official switch on. I would have expected the lights to have been turned on during the first weekend in December. But I guess November makes sense, when in the western world Christmas is a 3 month long retail festival. As we got to Casemates Square we could hear carol signing, and saw a bunch of kids performing on stage. The square was packed with families, the busiest I've seen it since National Day. Christmas Lights. We got into our favourite restaurant Café Solo, but all the tables had been reserved. Or rather the tables had been reserved but there was no one sitting at them.  We sat at the bar and ordered. The waitress told us that the event had been...

As I've already pointed out, Gibraltar is not the easiest place to drive around, or park in. This is why a large section of the population use mopeds. Driving conditions in Gibraltar. Having a car in Gibraltar proved extremely useful, for grocery shopping, a quick trip into town, or going to the beach. However, in my early weeks in Gibraltar I quickly realised the difficulty of driving in the territory, so I started to look around at alternatives to the car, for some of the narrower streets, or places without parking. I decided against getting a moped, as I would be legally required to pass a test before I could drive it, and it would be an additional cost in addition to the car. I had seen a lot of people use e-scooters. While as a driver I found these a menace on the road, I thought I would give one a try, perhaps as a means of getting to places just beyond comfortable walking distance. I had just sat my car driving test, I wasn't ready for another one! In Gibraltar, you can ...

One of the disadvantages of living in a warm climate is sunburn. The only other disadvantages is insects. I've already mentioned the brush I had with ants, but the most common, and most annoying is flies. The flies are why the monkeys look so grumpy! I was already used to this to a certain extent. Scotland is not without it's share of besties, and small black flies seem to be a regular occurrence, even in doors. In Gibraltar, there just seem to be more of them, and they get everywhere. They also seem incredibly stupid and suicidal! If you leave a cup of water out, they will always fly right into it and drown themselves. Often the area around my kitchen and bathroom sink is a graveyard of dead flies, after a kamikaze attempt to get at the water splashed around it. Burns was well aware of Scottish beasties, and even wrote about them. When you are outside in Gibraltar, you need to contend with the slightly bigger flies. If you are sitting outside, you need to swat them off occasio...

Application for my Gibraltar health insurance had been a long process. I had started the application process and paid for it before I left the UK, but by late September I still did not have my health insurance card. My travel insurance, which I had taken out to cover me for traveling to Gibraltar, had run out in mid-September, and I was getting concerned about what I would do if I needed medical treatment. A long bureaucratic process. Things came to a head around that time when I hurt my leg, and I thought I might need treatment. According to the university, if us students needed medical treatment before we got our health insurance card, we could just rock up to A&E at the hospital, and tell them we were a student, to receive medical care. However, with my experience of Gibraltar bureaucracy, I was wary of doing this. My leg felt worse, not better, as the week went on, and I happened to speak to Jen, an Irish student at Europa Point. She had been at the hospital the previous week a...

The main reason for me going to Gibraltar, was to try to find opportunities to live and work in the sun permanently. Such an opportunity came one Thursday evening, with a career fair the University of Gibraltar Business School were running, after classes. However this career fair was strange. It was strange from the beginning! Work to live in Southern Europe. The University of Gibraltar sold me on their pitch, that because Gibraltar is a small place, it was easy for the university, and it's students to develop strong networks, and working relationships, with local businesses. So when I saw a career fair advertised on the Business Schools intranet, I was keen to attend. The Business School is the department in the university that run my course, which made me think that this career fair would be directly for me and my fellow students. However it was not. Reading the advert further, it turned out it was only for second year students (to speak with potential providers of summer interns...

When I first moved into Europa Suites, I thought that having a flat (apartment) on the ground floor was an advantage. It took less time to get to and from the flat, and as my Mum pointed out, it was close to the laundry facilities. However, a number of things would quickly change that perception. Europa Suites At the end of my first week, I was finally settling into my flat 0003A. I'd unpacked, and done a grocery shop. Not being a big fan of cooking, I'd stocked up on Microwave meals and tins of soup. There was only one problem. The microwave didn't work. For some reason, Europa Suites decided to go all space age with their cooking equipment. Instead of physical buttons, and dials you could turn, this microwave had a touch screen interface. However, the touch screen wasn't sensitive to pressure, but to heat. Apparently if it was a hot day (which it often is!), or humid, this affected the touch interface, preventing the interface working at all. It was also most affected...

Don't worry. This isn't a political rant about climate change. I'm not going to tell you to give up your cars, stop eating steak and eat bugs instead, and tell you the world is going to bust into flames in a few years. Maybe it will, and may be you should (celebrities seem to like eating bugs due to the number of them queuing up to take part in I'm a celebrity get me out of here!). No, the title refers to the difference in climate between Scotland and Gibraltar. And now the weather. When I've phoned home since I've been in Gibraltar, most of the stories I've heard is of rain and cold. In November, the temperature in Edinburgh has ranged from 7-13 degrees Celsius during the day, and a night time temperature of -2 to 10 degrees celsius. In other words, bloody freezing! During the same period in Gibraltar, we're talking a comfortable 17-24 degrees, with one day even jumping to a summerlike 27 degrees. I even got sunburn last week, because I wasn't expec...

Anyone visiting or living in Gibraltar can't help notice the many reference to Britain. Names such as Trafalgar Bar, or Edinburgh Estate; shops such as Marks an Spencer or Next; red telephone boxes or post boxes; and the recent visit of Princess Anne. One of the many British icons in Gibraltar. To a British person looking in, this can seem like nothing more than a novelty, particularly as Gibraltar has many Spanish traits. Spanish is spoken widely by Gibraltarians, there is a relaxed attitude to timekeeping, an outdoor lifestyle, a dislike of queuing, inefficient bureaucracy. However, I also get the feeling that being British is very important to Gibraltarians. In some ways Gibraltar feels closer culturally to it's neighbour than Britain. There have been 2 referendums on Gibraltarian sovereignty in recent history (in 1967 and 2003). In both referendums Gibraltar overwhelmingly voted to remain British, by over 98%. This sentiment can also be seen in the large number of British f...

I was looking forward to watching the final of the Rugby World Cup at a bar in Gibraltar. Lord Nelson's is known in Gibraltar for being a rugby bar, and I had watched a couple of earlier matches with Diego, including Scotland winning, and losing, spectacularly. The Lord Nelson Pub As with the semi-final, Diego and I had a bet. I was sticking with South Africa, Diego favoured New Zealand. Unfortunately I was unable to watch the game, as I was violently ill due to something I ate that disagreed with me. When I eventually returned to the land of the living, I saw a text from Diego saying South Africa had won again, by 1 point. They had done this 3 games in a row. I called the bet null and void though, since we didn't actually watch the game, which was the whole point of the bet. I was stuck in bed for the final. A couple of weeks later, with no more rugby matches to watch (since the end of the World Cup), Diego and I were lamenting this, while having dinner in Casemates Square. We...