And so Christmas has arrived.

The Ladies of Terreros Group was initially formed by 3 of the current ladies who started it off as a slimming club. As others joined the emphasis moved away from the slimming and more to being a social and supportive group. The initial ladies Ann, Carol & Sandra found it a good way to share information about living here and dealing with the problems that occured. As more ladies joined them, this became a huge source of support and knowledge and there are now regularly more than 20 ladies at the weekly meetings.

One of Ann's ideas was to introduce Christmas Carol's to the area in a way of keeping a little of her own english traditions to help her through a Christmas away from her family. Again, over the years this has grown into the fantastic evening that we had on Wednesday night.

It was held at a local bar, The Montesol, who were totally caught on the hop by the numbers that turned up. So our first job was to bring more tables and chairs outside. All the ladies had brought food to hand round in the interval, (yes, there would be enough songs to need an interval) there was everything from sausage rolls and sandwiches to mince pies and cakes. There were also lots of raffle prizes, some donated by the ladies and others by local businesses who were very generous in supporting us.




To get the evening under way Amelia, one of our Spanish ladies introduced a lady who had come down from Pulpi council. Pulpi is where our local town hall is and all the official bits are done for Terreros.


As the crowd were settling it was time for the ladies to assemble at the front, Santa hats in place. As is the tradition is Spain, many of us were wearing red. I have to say for poor Sandra trying to get us all settled, it would have been easier to sort a group of 5 year olds! But eventually we were all gathered, song sheets in hand.

We had rehearsed a few times but suddenly looking out at a sea of expectant faces it really felt like a couple more practice sessions would have been useful, there must have been over a hundred people looking back at us.


But, song sheets at the ready Sandra counted us in for the first carol, Once in Royal David's City.

And it sounded pretty good! In an effort to improve the atmosphere the bar owner dimmed the lights so we were singing against a back cloth of fairy lights, very pretty, just one problem

WE COULDN'T READ THE WORDS!

So, lights back on we continued through the carol's. A few of us that go to Amelia for Spanish lessons had learnt a traditional Spanish carol - Villancico. I never quite understood the relevance of the carol as it's about fishes drinking in the river but it has a really catchy tune. Click here for a link to Youtube and a really catchy version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84wS1mS0N60 It would be nice to think ours sounded like this but all the spanish in the crowd joined in and seemed to really enjoy it.

During the interval the ladies passed around all the food and sold raffle tickets and shook collection buckets amongst the crowd, all the monies raised would be donated to local charities in Pulpi.

It wasn't long before we were back at the front singing the second list of songs, I think we must have done over 20 carols in total, some of which I haven't sung since I left primary school.

We had a surprise visitor at the end when Santa dropped in for a quick visit, although I think Santa was really too busy making all the toys and sent his friend Superman as a stand in!

It was an absolutely brilliant evening and really brought Christmas to Terreros and on the night, we raised over €300 for local charities which is a great result.

And the last word goes to Santa (who we managed to snap having a quick beer)

Ho Ho Ho MERRY CHRISTMAS

And so we have Kumquat Jam!

Now, by any stretch of the imagination I am no cook. I can scramble eggs for the pups, I can put together a sandwich and I can make a dinner by opening cans, packets or defrosting - but baking? jam making?.............it's all a mystery to me.

So, what ever possessed me to decide to make Kumquat Jam?

Well, it seemed a shame to waste this home grown crop of fruit after I have nurtured it through the summer months and the recipe I downloaded from Google only required Kumquats, Sugar and a microwave, so even I should be capable of putting those 3 elements together and getting something from it.

OK, so for those of you new to a Kumquat, allow me to introduce the little fruit.

It's about an inch in size and in Spanish it's called a 'naranjita' which is quite literally 'little orange'.

So first of all we have to peel them, de-seed them and take out the centre - fiddly, time consuming but not impossible.

So, sleeves rolled up on off we go...

After about an hour (well maybe a little less) I had reduced the 2 dozen Kumquats to a small amount of fruit needed for the jam.

It looked enough for me to try it so, back to the kitchen.

Now the recipe needs about 1/3 sugar to the weight of Kumquats - needless to say I had such a small amount of fruit my scales didn't even move so it was a bit of guess work but I added sugar, stirred it in and put it in the microwave for about 4 minutes to bring it to the boil. Then it was a case of remove, stir and re-microwave a minute at a time until it was the right consistency.

And once it was jam like I put it into a ramikin to cool in the fridge.

I have to say, it looked okay, but it was too hot to try it so I had to be patient.

Now, what I didn't know is that it would continue to thicken as it cooled down so half an hour later when I went back to try it - it was a solid lump. Never one to give up, I boiled the kettle and added some boiling water to the dish, allowed it to soak a few minutes and stirred - and success. I had proper Kumquat Jam. It tastes orangey but with a sourness to it, but by adding more sugar initially it could be sweetened. You can also slice the Kumquat so that you include the rind if you prefer.

So, was this a way to pass a couple of hours or a means to using up fruit for a purpose? Well, this mornings breakfast was 2 slices of toast with Kumquat Jam made from home grown fruit. Not bad for a beginner.

Now, I have been given 2 dozen lemons so I'm off to get the ingredients to have a go at Lemon Curd!

Our Cambank is gone.

Terreros is a small place and as such only has one bank with one cash point.

Correction: had one bank with one cash point. As from this weekend we no longer have a bank in Terreros. Now, I can live without the bank as I do most of my banking online and I think in the 7 months we have been here I have only gone into the bank once BUT no cash point, now that is going to cause some problems.

Apparently, the lack of customers and the 2nd break-in have led to the closure of the bank and I assume they didn't see any profit in keeping the cash point here. So we now need to be a little more organised with our cash and remember to top up when we are out in Aguilas or Puerta Rey .....

or anywhere really.

What a crop of Kumquats!

Back on the 27th August I wrote about a little Kumquat tree that the Terreros ladies had bought me for my birthday and was so proud that I had managed to keep it alive long enough for it to grow fruit and to start to ripen.



It was watered lovingly every day through the intense summer heat and then when the temperatures fell I realised that it was necessary to reduce the amount of water I was giving it as all the fruits were growing so rapidly they were splitting their skins and the fruit inside was turning mouldy.



We then had the rains of October and the strong winds meant the tree was moved to a sheltered spot to protect it - oh, how this tree has been nurtured.



However, moving it to a sheltered spot meant out of site out of mind and it hasn't had the tender loving care over the last few weeks that it deserves



UNTIL YESTERDAY .....



when I remembered it. In the past couple of weeks when it has been ignored save for a couple of hours of sunshine warmth each day and the odd downpour of rain.



Such treatment obviously suits it, the fruits have been able to grow at a pace which didn't split the skins, the sunshine has turned them a proper orange and the little tree has delivered a sizeable crop of perfect orange fruits.



Not bad for a beginner, eh? And no, we haven't tried eating one yet - maybe we should!

Change of plans!

We get the keys to our new place on January 3rd and can move in straight away, but it's not to the house on Calas del Pinar, it's to another villa where we live now.

Over the last few years my Dad had always joked with me and Neil about making sure any house we bought had a 'granny flat' so that he could come and live with us in his old age and we could look after him. Although this was always said in jest, we always made serious consideration to this possibility and both the last house in Sheffield and the one on Calas were suitable to be adapted for my Dad to move in and maintain his own space, should that be necessary.

After coming back from Dad's funeral in August, suddenly the house we were buying here didn't fit what we needed and after a few weeks of this little niggle at the back of my mind I mentioned it to Neil to discover he had been thinking the same. So we had a good discussion about where we would look to buy if we were just coming over now and suddenly the house on the Calas del Pinar development didn't meet our needs.

Having checked our contractual position and having a chat with our solicitior we made the decision a few weeks ago that we would not continue with our purchase, that we would rent for a further year and look to buy somewhere towards the end of next year.

Having made this decision, we then slept on it and had another talk the following morning, had a drive down to look at the house we would have been buying and both felt we had made the right decision not to continue. The houses themselves are still very good houses, they are finished off really well and have good sized rooms for Spanish houses, and are within walking distance of all the bars, the sea front and the shops - but it wasn't what we were looking for now anymore.

What I did want though was the extra room a property with 3 bedrooms would give us. The villa we have been in since we got here has been lovely but the kitchen is too small for 2 people to work in together and we have found that frustrating and, when people come out to stay I lose my work space so, we have found a 3 bed villa on the same development (actually on the next street) and we get the keys to that on January 3rd. We will then spend a few days moving our stuff round there and getting the rest of our belongings back from storage. We're really looking forward to seeing what we have in storage as we can't remember what we have in there other than our new bed.

We won't have a pool at the new villa, again we were never intending to have a pool of our own. You only get to use them for about 12-14 weeks a year from mid-June to mid-September. Unless you have a heated pool, the rest of the year the water is too cool. However, we have got our Hot Tub being delivered the 2nd week in January and I am really excited about that. We can use that all year round and in the summer use it as a plunge pool to stay cool. This way we will know by next autumn whether a pool is a 'must have' or not when we are looking at places to live.

Several weeks after making the decision not to buy just yet, having found a new place to rent for a year and looking forward to getting all our possessions from storage we are both happy that we have made the right decision for us - and at the end of the day, that's all that matters!

Secret Santa

Today was the 'Ladies of Terreros' Christmas Dinner. There were about 30 of us and we all met at our local Bistro who had kindly arranged to do an english christmas dinner. We had Champagne on arrival and started with Prawn Cocktail, and believe me - the local prawns are fabulous. Annika, who is Belgian, had asked a number of the ladies what a traditional dinner would be and duly served up turkey and sprouts - the only thing missing were the stuffing balls! Not to worry, I have sorted that for Christmas Day - Neil, we need 40 stuffing balls please!

Dessert was a selection of chocolate treats and a few glasses of wine gifts made sure everyone had a good afternoon.

Secret Santa gifts had been bought and wrapped to the value of €10 and were all labelled up with raffle tickets and after dinner we all drew out a number to see what gift we were taking home. Only a couple of people drew their own numbers and needed to exchange and most people opened theirs at the dinner although I and a few others are being good girls and keeping them to open on Christmas Day.

At the moment our Christmas decorations are still in storage and we are not due to get them until early January so this Christmas our pressies will be under the Pointsettia, as traditional a plant in Spain as it is in the UK and providing I can keep the pups away from eating it, it will look nice with the pressies around it on Christmas morning.

Christmas has certainly started here in Terreros! And as I was all poshed up for my first Christmas dinner I thought I would take the opportunity to grab the pups and have a Christmas photo done - I think it looks really good - pity Neil was behind the camera, it would be good to have one of the 4 of us!

The run up to Christmas is getting busy.

I have my first Christmas dinner this week, the ladies group Christmas lunch is on Thursday. We've all bought our 'secret Santa' gifts and we are having a traditional christmas meal, well as traditional as you can get prepared by a Belgian in Spain - I'm really looking forward to it.

Sometime soon we will see the christmas lights turned on in the local villages and in the nearest town, Aguilas - no, the lights are not on yet - it's still too early here. We are going into Aguilas on Friday evening so we will see whether they are on then.

There will be local christmas markets over the next couple of weekends. The ladies group will be having a stall at the market in Pulpi on the 20th December when we have lots of different foods from the countries where the various lady members are from including England, Wales and Scotland along with Belgium and Holland.This is to give the locals a taste of our foods that they don't normaly have such as short bread, english sausages etc. It will be my first trip to the christmas market so I am really looking forward to seeing what it's like.

Next Wednesday there is a carol concert in the Montesol Bar and any funds raised will be donated to a local charity.

And then, on the 21st December - my brother arrives!

Christmas will be here soon.