Holiday over, back to work!

I cannot believe we have been back from our trip to the UK for a week already. Since getting back Spring really seems to have arrived and we have had some lovely warm days although the nights are still quite chilly outside. The house, though, does seem to be taking the warmth from the day and hanging onto it as, for the last couple of nights we have not had to turn up the heating from its daily setting of 16c.

I know to some of you 16c will seem a low temperature to have the heating set at, but as we spend most of our days outside with the door open for the dogs to come and go as they please, there is little point having the heating set higher as all we would be doing is trying to heat the rest of Spain, and believe me, the rest of Spain can pay their own heating bills.

Neil finally got the tiling on the patio area outside the utility room finished last week. This has seemed a long job since we first put the shuttering up for the concrete pad, but the weather had really not been good for working outside since Christmas. We’ve been able to snatch the odd day but nothing more, and you cannot work with concrete and tile cement if the weather is too cold. This patio area is for storage and for drying the washing. It is a good corner that gets a lot of the wind so hopefully the towels and bedding will dry much quicker than they do at the moment. The front of the house is so well sheltered from the wind, which normally blows from some northerly direction, that unless the sun is out the washing just hangs there limp and wet. The utility has been great as a drying room this winter but it has been frustrating when there has been a good drying breeze and I’ve not been able to make use of it.

Our next ‘job’ is the fence. We are not going to try anything so ridiculous as to fence in all our land, trying to fence in 7 acres would be a task similar to that of painting the Forth road bridge. So, we have decided to fence in the immediate area around the front and side of the house. This will mean we have safety from any roaming animals getting near the house or the dogs, it means at night Brandy & Brinkley are close to the house and I know where to find them, and it means I can start to plant out my vegetable patch without becoming a, ‘All you can Eat Buffet’ for the rabbits, of which we have many.

On Friday, when I was down in town I received a phone call. ‘Estás la mujer de Nil?’ Now, this has been asked of me many times since moving to this house and it always make me smile. I no longer have my own identity, I am simply the ‘wife of Neil’. ‘Sí, claro’ I responded and then waited until I managed to hear enough words I recognised from the following rapid fire conversation to work out who was ringing.

It didn’t take me long to realise it was the ‘Metal Man’. All the stuff for our fencing was ready. I was only a hundred yards away so I said I would call into the office as it is so much easier talking face to face. They wanted to deliver everything that afternoon and wanted to know if someone would be at home. Apparently, even the ‘wife of Nil’ would do. All the Spanish call Neil, Nil which I find quite amusing for a language which generally pronounces every letter – we now have a redundant ‘e’.

And so, we are now the proud owners of a pile of fence posts, rolls of chain link fencing and more brackets and bolts than I’ve ever seen outside of B&Q.

Hopefully the weather will remain warm and dry for the next few weeks while we are digging holes, concreting posts and unravelling a heck of a lot of chain link fence.

Now to sort out the photos.

The card reader on my laptop has stopped working and so I have to load them onto Neil's and dongle them across, so that is my task tonight, then I can share some photos of my trip home with you.

Out Thursday, back Monday and lots to do inbetween.

Sunday morning saw us with bags packed and a couple of hours journey to London, but first we stopped off to see another of my brothers, I have three in total– 2 older and one younger. Most people think I only have one as normally they only hear me speak about my oldest brother, Andy.

We had a good hour with Dawn & Stewart, and just as we were thinking of leaving, Mark came in so we stayed and chatted a little longer. This led to a lively discussion on whether Barcelona is in the north or south of Spain. I won’t go into details other than to say, just because something is on the Mediterranean coast, it doesn’t make it southern Spain!

By lunchtime we were back on our way and we thought we were doing very well for time when we ran into the road works around Nottingham and East Midlands airport. They went on for miles with a 50mph limit.

As we neared London we take the M25 towards Slough and I reminded Neil to be careful of the speed cameras. Here in Spain, in the rural areas where we live, it seems speed cameras haven’t really taken off. We only have 2 in the whole area that I know of and none of them are within the local area. In the UK it is hard to drive down any major road without coming across one, and the M25 is no exception.

After getting our exits mixed up and coming off at the wrong one, we finally made it to our friend’s house. Liz and I met at college in Nottingham (quite) a few years ago, Liz will not permit me to say how many but I think Slade & Sweet were topping the charts. We had both signed on for an intensive 1 year Accountancy course after which I continued in Accountancy and Liz moved into computer studies.

We have remained friends despite living at opposite ends of the Country and no matter how long it is between us seeing each other, we chat away as of we had only seen each other yesterday. It is a very special and valued friendship to me and I love to spend time with her. We look forward to her coming to visit us in Spain someday so we can show her around our new home and town.

My brother lives a couple of hours away from Liz, so we had arranged to meet at a restaurant in Staines, sort of mid-way(ish). We met there when I was over last summer and the food was really good, although parking can be difficult.

We had travelled from Spain with our 2 big, hard suitcases. A bit excessive for 4 days but we needed the hard cases as we had a birthday present for Cadey, who was 3 a couple of weeks ago, but unfortunately timing meant we hadn’t seen her as she was at Butlins for the weekend, and Christmas presents for Andy & Suzie – no, I’m not mega-organised for this coming Christmas, these are from last Christmas when Andrew was supposed to have come to visit us and hadn’t. It was important these were safe in the cases as they were fragile.

It was brilliant to see both Andy & Suzie again and we all had a great evening which was over all too soon. As we left the restaurant we went to get a large box that Andy has been looking after for me since our Dad died.

Dad and I shared a love of Terry Pratchett books. He had a few on his bookshelf and I had a few on mine, although we had read everyone he has written. A few years ago, for Dad’s Christmas present I bought all the missing books to make up the first 20 in a set for him. In this large, heavy box were the 20 Pratchett books which I was looking forward to re-reading, sitting on my veranda on hot, sunny days over looking the mountains or on warm, balmy evenings under a canopy of stars, and sharing the jokes with my Dad once again.

Monday morning saw Neil and I at the Post Office to arrange to send the box of books to Spain. 19.6kg of books cost us £56 to send over – but as I sit typing this I know that in a couple of days they’ll be here. It’ll be like a late Christmas for me.

We had a long day of travelling and once we had said goodbye to Liz, I just wanted to be home with the dogs. I dislike the actual travelling, motorways, airports, planes. It’s just so much hassle.

Being back in England for a few days had re-enforced why we live I Spain. I love to see my family and friends, I don’t love the traffic, the grime and the hassle. I don’t love being away from Brandy & Brinkley and I don’t love being away from my home. I have told Neil if I talk about another visit to the UK this year he is to remind me of all of the above.

So, we’re back to the quieter pace of life and the continuing work that is our house. We have just laid a patio outside the utility, which has now tiled and grouted and just needs cleaning off when the grout is set and, again as I type this, I have 2 guys putting up the fly screens around the front area to the house where the hot tub is so that we can spend the summer hours outside without the company of the flies, bees and mosquitoes. I thought it would look a bit ugly, like a cage but it’s actually looking really nice and so much better than I expected. I thought it was a necessary evil to permit us to enjoy our living space but it’s turning the front area into a garden room.

I’m really quite excited about seeing it finished.

Our next task?

250 metres of wire fencing, 66 fence posts and a lot of cement.

Now that’s going to take some doing!

I feel like a boomerang!

No sooner was I on a plane to England than I was on a plane back to Spain.

It was meant to be a quick trip to see a few friends and family, and it was. We seemed to cram a lot into a short time and once we got back, we seem to have spent the same amount of time saying to each other, we never did this, we never did that…..!

What we did do was get to spend time with the people we miss the most. Out of 4 days it rained only 1 day, but that was the day Neil played golf with his 2 sons. The rain just about held off until the 16^th hole, and then the heavens opened.

At the same time, I was at a local Garden Centre with my younger brother and step-mother. My plan was to have a coffee and a natter and then see if I could find a rhubarb stock to bring back as I fancy growing some rhubarb here – I love stewed rhubarb and custard, I real taste of when I was little.

By the time we had finished coffee the heavens had opened over us and there was no way I was getting drenched for a bit of rhubarb root that may get taken off me at customs, if they spotted it cling-film wrapped to my hairdryer.

And there’s another thing. I had taken my hairdryer in my case with me never thinking that it’s one I bought since we moved to Spain, so if course when I came to use it, it had the wrong plug on the end and we don’t have any adaptors for Spain to UK items, only the other way around! Something for the shopping list.

We landed at East Midlands airport at 11.30pm Thursday evening, and after spending half an hour dragging our cases around the car park looking for our hire car, clicking the remote on the keys to see if we could see any lights flashing that would give us a clue as to where the car was, we finally found it in a completely different car park to that which we had been told to go to.

We had decided, even though we were landing late, we would drive up to Sheffield that night rather than staying in a hotel near the airport and driving up the following morning through rush-hour traffic. As we are not used to traffic here in Spain, the more I could avoid major traffic problems in the UK, the better. It turned out to be a wise decision as with a mile of leaving the airport we were into major road works for mile after mile, where they are widening the motorway all around Nottingham.

We arrived at the hotel about 1.30am and rather than the overwhelming feeling being that we were tired, it was that we were hungry and so at 2am we were sat eating chicken salad sandwiches and drinking coffee. Needless to say we were the only ones in the restaurant!

Friday was a good day and we saw several friends but I did realise I had ‘dropped a clanger’ with the hire car. We had booked it for Neil to do the driving as I rarely drive when I am with Neil. However, I had forgotten that while Neil was playing golf on the Saturday I was driving through to see my younger brother several miles away. The paperwork says ‘Please obtain Hertz approval for additional drivers’ and so we rang them up. Nope, can’t be done over the phone, we have to go in – both of us. Fortunately, I had taken all my paperwork as well as Neil’s but this now meant driving into the centre of Sheffield in Friday night rush hour. Oooops.

We found the Hertz office straight away and it only took 5 minutes to have everything updated to allow me to drive on the Saturday so as we were already in the city centre we decided to go and browse around Staples. I don’t know why but I love looking and normally buying stationery and associated bits. Clothes shopping does not do it for me, but stationery, electronics and stuff for the house & gardens, I just love.

We have designed cards with our address and phone numbers on one side and a little map of directions on the other and we wanted some business size card blanks to print them out on so, that was one purchase. We also bought a greetings card package & program for me to play about with and some ink cartridges as they were half the price I pay in Spain.

Note: Business cards a disappointment, they will not allow printing on both sides – one side is brilliant, the other is all smudged and blurred. Something else for the shopping list!

Saturday was another day of visiting which ended with us celebrating with friends whose birthdays happened to fall on the Saturday and Sunday. It was pure coincidence we were there for their birthdays, but it meant we could all go out for dinner together and have a great night.

Sunday was another day of travelling so I think it should be another day of blogging.

And the bags are packed.......

Tomorrow, Neil & I are flying back the UK for a very quick visit. We have Friday & Saturday in Sheffield to see some family and friends and then on Sunday drive down south to see my other brother and a very close friend before flying back from Luton on Monday.

It's still going to be too long to be away from the dogs although Lucy and her dog, Sophie, are coming through to stay at the house and look after them.

We have waited a long time for this winter to finish and just as the weather has taken a massive turn for the better we are leaving the country. Hopefully when we return, spring will be well and truly here and summer with arrive very soon.

It's almost a year since my last trip back to the UK and I am always surprised how more distanced from the feeling of belonging there each trip brings. Considering that I lived there for almost 50 years, it certainly doesn't feel like home anymore.

Spain is definitely my home now.

Police Spot Road Check!

There are not many speed cameras in Spain, unlike in the UK, but there is a much higher number of police checks where they flag you down and check your documents and that your car is ok. So far, having been in Spain almost 2 years I have avoided being stopped when I have been driving. We have been stopped once when Neil was driving for a breath test, that was within a week or 2 of moving here and a couple of weeks ago I was in my neighbour’s car with them when were stopped for a paperwork check but today was the first time I have been in my car, on my own and stopped.

I was on my way to my Spanish class this morning when I saw them at the junction of the country road with the motorway. Very often they are on the slip road coming off the motorway but because a lot of the locals use the minor roads, mainly to avoid police checks every now and again they place themselves on the local roads.

I saw them well in advance and so it was no surprise when they flagged me down. There were 2 Guardia and as one was talking to me the other was giving the car a little look over. I was in Brian as Neil had gone to golf in the big car, and I was fairly comfortable that everything was in order but as this was the first time I had been stopped I was aware there may be something I wasn’t aware of.

Firstly he asked me for my ID and I gave him my drivers licence. Then he asked for the documents for the car and I handed him the little folder where everything is kept, insurance, registration documentation, receipt for road tax (you do not display a tax disc on your screen here, as in the UK however, there is a sticker on the screen confirming when the next MOT is due), the receipt for when I purchased it was in there – lots of bits of paper for him to look at.

He took his time looking through it all, occasionally going behind the car to speak to the other officer and as he checked each document he passed it back to me. At one point he made a comment about how much paperwork there is connected to a car in Spain, but I just replied that there was plenty of paperwork in the UK as well. After he’d gone through everything he simply told me that everything was perfect and that I could continue on my way.

I was surprised I had not felt at all anxious but I was feeling very calm. It was good to know that everything is alright with the documents, I know I will not have to worry about being stopped in the future.

Strangely enough I have often felt nervous about being stopped when I was out driving on my own, but when it finally happened I didn’t feel nervous at all.

When things break.

We have been very fortunate that the majority of things we have bought while in Spain have not gone wrong but occasionally, it is necessary to return things or exchange things and this can be quite an effort.

We did have to take the cement mixer back to have a new motor fitted after only 3 months, which was a fairly easy transaction although it did mean 2 trips to Almeria which was 4 hours travelling in total.

At the beginning of the year, when we finally had a telephone line connected via the satellite, we decided we would treat ourselves to a new phone for the house. We had been using one we brought from the UK and the display didn't work properly and sometimes it was difficult to see who you were actually dialling.

We thought we'd get a really good one with an answer machine and a second cordless handset so that we could have one in the study and another in the lounge, 2 rooms at opposite ends of the house which would hopefully mean we would hear it ring no matter where we were. Also, the cordless one can be taken outside where we hope to spend a lot of our summer hours, if summer ever decides to start this year!

Within a month of buying the phone the cordless unit became faulty. At first we though it was a problem with the rechargeable batteries but after a few days it became obvious it was a little bit more than that. We were outside the 21 days return to store policy so I e-mailed the company to start the process of getting it changed.

This is where living in the middle of no-where becomes a bit of a problem. After a few conversations I finally got them to understand it was not just the batteries that needed changing, we had already tried a second set and had the same problem. They would send a courrier with a replacement cordless phone. I told them they would need to contact me in advance so that I could arrange to meet them and I waited for the call.

In Spain nothing happens immediately, so I waited...... generously, for 2 weeks.

Nothing.

I sent a quick e-mail to see what was happening only to find......

I had to start the whole process again.

To be fair, this time it has all happened much quicker and less than a week after giving them all the details again, I had a call from the courrier to say he had a parcel for me. I rang him back to arrange collection and this afternoon I have collected a complete new phone system, not just a replacement for the faulty bit. Maybe they thought this was easier than to find they had changed one bit and we still had a problem.

Once again, I am so pleased I chose to take time to learn the language to a level where I can sort things like this out by phone. I cannot imagine how people manage that cannot speak a bit of Spanish.

All I need to do now is try and remember how to program the phone numbers in and set the answer machine - after all, the manual is in Spanish - I'm getting very good at translation exercises.

Where did the rest of the world go?

We normally have wonderful views all the way down the valley across layer after layer of hills, covered with Mountain Oaks, Almond Trees and Pine Forests.

But every now and then the weather closes in rapidly and we watch the distant hills vanish one after one.

Every now and then, we lose all the hills and the world just seems to end 10m from our front door.

Weird feeling!

Could this be another bad harvest year?

One of the first things we were told when we moved to take over an almond farm was that last year's crop was poor. They were only paying €0.50 per kilo compared to the previous year of €1.50/kg. There was hope that this year would be better.

The blossom is still in the trees although looking a little past it's best after a couple of frosty nights and a snowfall, but already there is talk that this year almond crop will be a poor one, at least in this area. The almond trees are easy to grow because they don't need irrigation, they take the moisture from the ground, and for that they rely on the winter snows and rainfall. However, we are told that a lot of rain on the blossom is bad.

The nut sets at the base of the flower and if there is too much rain the base of the flower gets too damp and goes mouldy before the nut sets. This is the concern for this year's crop.

We were never going to make a fortune from our crop but if predictions are correct we won't even earn enough to pay to have the fields ploughed, something that is necessary to break up the soil and allow the rain and snow falls of next winter to get into the ground and feed the trees rather than it running straight off into the Rambla, to run away as pretty, but useless, babbling brooks.

Having checked a few of our trees I cannot see that we have a problem with mouldy, rotting flower bases, but only time will tell.

The realities of farming and the direct impact of the weather have never felt so relevant. We may not rely on the income from the almonds to eat, as some farmers do, but we still don't want to see a poor crop.

Our new gadget.

Bad weather in Spain has consequences not normally experienced in the UK. It doesn't have to be extreme weather - just a heavy downpour, high winds or even heavy cloud which is low enough to cover us. As well as the direct effect of the weather, a lot of rain or a howling gal, the main indirect effect is thay we can lose our TV signal, and the bad weather doesn't even have to be over us, it can be anywhere between us and the UK, and we don't regain the signal until the weather passes. The other indirect effect is loss of power. This happens more often with heavy rain or snow and normally there will be a series of very short power cuts but can often last several hours.



It was always our intention to buy a generator as a back up power supply and with this in mind Neil and the electrician had installed a socket in the utility room where we could simply plug the generator in to run the lights and sockets in the house if we had a power cut for any length of time. This would make sure that we didn't have to worry about the freezers defrosting (we have 2, one in the kitchen and a second in the utility for when we are snowed in), so that we have heating through the winter and also lights for night time power cuts and of course, power to the sockets also means we continue to have the phone, internet and TV.



Neil had calculated that we needed a 3kw genny and we started to look around for one just last week. There is the usual concerns about where to buy them. We could get them cheaper from the UK than in Spain but that raises issues over the warranty, should anything go wrong. We can buy them from the internet in Spain but again, should anything go wrong it is more difficult to get it sorted dealing with companies over the phone. I know this from personal experience as I am still trying to get the phone we bought replaced because the slave handset doesn't work. This has been going on for 6 weeks and we still haven't got the replacement.



We then managed to find one in a local hardware store that fitted the bill and the budget, so after a couple of days thinking about it, last Thursday we finally decided to bite the bullet and buy it. The owner of the store asked us to call back the following day so that he had time to test that it worked ok and we finally went back on Saturday to collect it.



One of the things I still find amazing here is that they never seem to want to take your money. Having called at the store he told us we needed to drive to the other side of the Poligono to his warehouse where he had been testing it. I expected we would have to pay before we collected it - but no, they wouldn't take my money until after we had checked that it worked ok. After loading it into the back of the car we drove back to the shop so we could pay for it but it did make me wonder whether such a system would work in the UK without having to leave proof of your name, address, phone number and car details.

Anyway, genny paid for we called at the petrol station for a can of petrol and brought it home. Neil sorted it out with a cable and plug and started it up and it chugged away nicely. As our electric supply is from the little casita on the hill, about 400m over muddy, hilly terrain, we decided we would try plugging it into the house on Sunday morning so that if it tripped the fuse we could walk up to the casita to reset it in daylight.

Of course, Sunday morning dawned and we completely forgot to test the genny into the house supply...........

until 3.30pm..............

when the power went off and didn't come back on!

There was nothing to lose. We turned off the main fuse and all the individual fuses to the lights, sockets, cooker, hot tub and went and plugged in genny. Then we fired her up and turned on the fuse to the lights. In excited anticipation we turned on the hall light switch.........

and there was light.

We turned on the fuse to the sockets and all the lights on the computer servers lit up. We had power. Now we just had one problem, how would we know when the mains power was back on?

The only way is to turn the genny off every half hour and see. We don't overlook any other houses, we cannot see the town and there are no street lights in view so there is no way of knowing when the power is back on other than to try it.

Looks like we need a contraption to tell us when we have power again, but at least future powercuts will be less stressful, if a little noisier.

Spring Blossoms.

When we first decided to buy a house on an Almond farm we were told how beautiful it is in Spring when all the blossom is out. How the hills look like they are dotted with candyfloss. How people travel miles to come and drive through the area to admire the blossom.


We arrived at the end of the season when the nuts were being harvested and the blossom was long gone.


But it is back and it is so pretty.




The blossom ranges from white to a deep pink. In some fields the trees blossom all the same colour, in other fields the colours are varied. The blossoms are resiliant. In the UK there is Cherry Blossom, it looks very similar and very beautiful but the first wind takes all the blossoms from the trees and carpets the floor with pink petals. Here, we had hurricane strength winds at the weekend and the blossom is still on the trees.



These are a few of our trees across the Rambla. There's lots of blossom, maybe that means there'll be lots of Almonds when it's time to harvest.


I do hope so.

The snows have gone, here comes the rain.

The land had dried out nicely after all the snows and driving along the dirt tracks isn't a problem anymore, although the chance of keeping your car clean for longer than 2 seconds is remote.

Yesterday was a friend's 50th birthday and he had arranged a birthday luncheon at Casa Joya, which is accessed down a dirt track which takes about 10 mins to drive, so is some distance. My only concerns about going to Casa Joya is the condition of the track as there are some steep sections to it. Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny morning, if a bit cool, and since we hadn't had any rain for several days the track was going to be in good shape to drive.

The birthday lunch was a Greek menu and there were about 20 of us there to enjoy an absolutely fabulous meal. There was just so much food, so may different dishes to enjoy - it was really, really good. Just after we arrived it had started to rain and it continued the whole time we were there, but I hadn't realised just how heavy a downpour it was.

4 hours later we all began to leave and the amount of water that had fallen became very apparent. I had said I would drive home so Neil could have a drink, as I often do and so I ran across the carpark to the car. This was when I realised my first error - I had open-toe high-heeled shoes on. The carpark was now an inch thick with mud and by the time I got to the car my shoes were also an inch thick with mud, as were my toes!

As we set off there is a fairly steep climb out of the carpark. As I tried to get the car up and round the corner I felt the back end start to slip. Neil was coaching me how best to handle the car in the mud but I had only gone about 200 metres when it was obvious I was not going to be able to drive us out of the Rambla, I was too hesitant. When we bought the car we lived in Terreros by the coast. We had the chance of buying a 4x4 version of the car but we couldn't see any need so had bought the 2x4. We weren't to know that 2 years later we would be living in the mountains, using dirt tracks and Rambla tracks as roads and having to deal with snow, ice and everything else this winter has thrown at us. Oh, do wish we'd paid the extra for the 4x4. Still, we didn't so we have to make do.

Making do yesterday entailed stopping the car on a flat spot and swapping over so Neil could drive us back to the tarmac road. To say it was a bit hair-raising is an understatement. How all the cars managed to get out of the Rambla and onto the road is a mystery to me, I thought someone would get stuck.

Open-toed high heels is definitely NOT the correct footwear for the conditions but Neil very kindly cleaned them up for me when we got home. The meal was fabulous, the company was great fun but next time I'm there and it starts to rain, I think I could be leaving before dessert!