Today!

Today has been a long day.

Today we got an address for our post.

Today we got a key for our post box.

Today we tried to sign on the padron but they cannot find our house on the plans so we have to go back tomorrow to try again.

Today we went to get the rest of our kitchen - but they still didn't have it all in stock.

Today we went for our first McDonald's since moving to Spain.

Today we ended up in a bar for a drink with friends.

Today we achieved not a lot.

But.....

Today was a good day.

Ok, now seriously!

Because we will live in the middle of the countryside we decided it would be better to have a postbox at the Post Office so we drove to Velez Rubio to start our quest for the day. Sort out the post and register on the Padron (like signing on to the electoral register).

Velez is a beautiful town, has a massive church and lovely streets so we parked up and I stopped a woman who was cleaning her shop windows and asked for directions to the Post Office. The walk took us through the main square infront of the church, where the Town Hall is and so we knew where we needed to come back to when we started our Padron Quest.

The Post Office was quiet which made it so much simpler and within 10 minutes we had our key to our postbox and more importantly - a postal address!

First stage of our quest was achieved, onto part 2.

Registering on the Padron is important in Spain for a number of reasons. The local council obtains funding based on the numbers registered and you need your certificate for a variety of transactions, including buying a car - which is a story for another day.

The woman in the Town Hall took us through to her office and we sat down, armed with a folder full of paperwork. I put my handbag down on the floor at the side of me - and immediately she told me to pick it up, it is bad luck to put money on the floor! Ooops! Not a superstition I have heard of, need to Google it later.

I told her we had recently got the keys to our house and wanted to register on the Padron and handed her over the documents which detailed the location of the house and she tapped away on her computer, waited a moment and then shook her head - no property!

She asked us to follow her down the corridor deeper into the council offices and stopped at a range of large drawers from which she started to pull old, nay, ancient, fragile, sellotaped-together, frayed-at-the-edges plans of the area - looking for the one where our house should be shown.

Another lady joined us and after much searching we found the right plan, and after more searching seemed to identify our house.

Smiles on faces, we trotted back to the first office and she duly tapped away at the computer, waited ..... and shook her head. Whatever was on the plan wasn't in the computer.

By now a queue of several people had appeared and she asked if we would mind waiting while she made a few phone calls and dealt with some of the waiting people - we said not.

Several phone calls followed in which her priority question was 'Where is Juan?' No-one seemed to know.

As she dealt with the last couple in the queue she made another phone call, this time it started with, 'I have a problem with an English family, we can't find their house .....' and after a few minutes conversation suddenly passed the phone to me. Doh!

Without any idea who I would be talking to I took the phone, only to find someone on the other end who spoke English. She worked for the Tourist Office and explained that the first lady wanted to apologise for taking so long, to explain that they couldn't find the property on the computer and could we get a copy of a water bill and take it in tomorrow when Juan (the elusive) would be in. Juan reads the water meters and may be able to find the property based on that.

And did we have any neighbours who may be on the Padron,if we knew their name they may be able to find our property.

Thanking her, I said we could get a copy bill and return early tomorrow - and we left.

We called at our neighbours to ask if they had signed on the Padron, as they were having trouble finding our house. She said they had, but they had been unable to find their property too and eventually, the council officials just made something up, which wasn't right but got them their certificates.

I have a copy, but whether it will help is debatable.

We'll find out tomorrow when we meet Juan!

Spanish Plumber bucks the norm.....

.....and turns up when he said he would.

I spoke with the plumber, Juan, on Friday and explained we had some work we needed him to do and could he meet us at the property on Tuesday morning? All done in my best, rehearsed Spanish you understand. Well, after a bit of 'tuning in' to his voice I managed to understand that he knew where we were and would see us during the morning.

Now, knowing the electrician was a day late, and knowing we wouldn't be at the house today I decided I would text Juan yesterday morning on our way to the house to tell him we would be there between 9.30 and 2.30, but of course I needed to text in Spanish - Neil's phone, although a Spanish phone, is set to English and so predictive text created a complete load of garbage. Eventually I worked out how to re-set the phone and message sent, all we could do was wait and see.

But, much to our amazement he turned up about 11ish. We had drawn a diagram of all the pipework that needed connecting up and then I had to explain that we have a heating system coming from the UK. His face was a picture - 'por qué? he asked, obviously confused why we would be getting the system from the UK when they have them in Spain.

I rapidly tried to think of something that would not offend that I knew enough Spanish words to explain. I told him Neil had been a heating engineer in the UK and preferred to work with products he was familair with and that I preferred the look of english radiators (trust me, Spanish ones are not attractive) and he gave a wry smile and we moved on. Then we got on to thermostatic radiator valves, hard enough to say in English, let alone Spanish - but there was a lot of nodding and pointing and he was writing things down.

And so it went on for about half an hour and we think we have an agreement for the work he will do, what Neil will do AND the work they will do together! Now that will be a fun day!

Today has been a rest day. Neil has played golf and I have been taking gifts to my Spanish teachers to thank them for doing so well with me over the last year. It is thanks to Michelle and Amelia that I am managing to understand phone calls that tell me our chosen lights have come into stock, that the plumber is turning up and when we get the boxes home they actually contain the kitchen cabinets we want.

And I can't help but feel a little bit pleased with myself!

Kitchens, cake & goats!

In the last few days I've been on an apprentice crash course. From watching to see where the water's coming out, to putting kitchen units together and helping lift them onto the wall to helping pull the wiring through for wall lights - it's been a rapid learning curve.

Plumbing jobs means a lot of standing around and making coffee, kitchen fitting is fun because it grows quickly but the cupboards weigh a ton and today was my favourite - the electrical stuff.

We were pulling cables through for the lights and plug points under the wall cabinets, and they weren't going through as they should. At least I know the wall cupboards are going to stay on the wall, at one point I had my entire body weight pulling on the cables which run over the cupboards. There must have been a twist in the trunking and in the end we had to lift the cupboards off the wall and start again. We got them all done in the end but a job we thought would take us about an hour took nearly all day - hey ho.

This afternoon we had a visit from our next door neighbours, who live on the next hill. We had called over to introduce ourselves a couple of days ago and told them they were welcome to call on us if they saw the car there and today they drove across to us (it's way too far to walk) with 4 cans of chilled beer and some homemade fruit cake - and it was incredibly welcome - we hadn't eaten since breakfast.

Janet & Graham were taking 5 minutes from building the kennels as it was too hot to work this afternoon, (what a comment to make in the middle of October!) and we all stood outside the front of our house surveying our land and trying to work out where our 2 properties meet. We got talking about our trees and in particular, the almond trees. Jose had harvested most of them before we got the keys but there are still some that need doing, in particular the large one just next to the house but this led to our first lesson in farming.

Apparently, there are 2 different shaped almonds - rounded fatter ones and long pointy slim ones, the latter being the better nut and worth more - and our big tree is mainly pointy ones, I won't go into the fact you can get both types from the same tree if they have grafted branches on. Graham reckons there's about 2 kilos of almonds on there - and all we have to do is knock the branches with a broom handle and they'll fall off. Then gather them, peel the husks off them and leave them to dry for a few days - and all this would yield us the grand sum of €1 - as this year is a poor year for almonds and they are earning about 50cents per kilo - hold me back, I'll be out there tomorrow.

They also told us that, if we wanted we could give the husks from the almonds to Bernardo, who lives on another hill, as the husks make good food for his goats. Oh, and while we're on the subject of goats, Maria will walk her goats across our land (unless we have an objection to her doing so) most days.

Oh, how different country life is!

As we are moving out, someone else is moving in.....

I've got used to the insects out here, I can deal with most things - but spiders still cause my heart to race. This morning as I opened the door for the dogs, I noticed a huge web had been spun through the night and in the centre was the creator. In the early morning light the web looked perfect and as much as I didn't want to get too near, I felt compelled to do just that so I could get a good picture. The fascination of nature overriding the fear within. I don't know why I am so afraid of spiders, I've never been hurt by one, but the irrational fear is always difficult to understand - by its very nature.

So, I got my big camera with the good zoom lens so I could take photos without getting too close and clicked away.

Of course, I have no idea what species of spider this is and so I Googled to see if there are many poisonous spiders in Spain. Imagine my horror to find that there are over 1700 species of spider in Spain. Only 3 are nasties,including the Black Widow (gulp) which is commonest in Andalucia (yep, that's us) and they are a problem in the greenhouse estates of Almería (double gulp - that's us too)

So, now the ultimate question - do I Google 'Black Widow Spider' to see whether that's what we have in the garden - and risk never being able to walk out there again - or do I live in blissful ignorance and risk being bitten?

Oh boy, what a dilema!

A Day Off!

After several days of work at the house, we have given ourselves a day off.

So, what momentous event did we organise for our day off?

We went to the house!

We have friends who were keen to visit the house, to see where we were moving to and so we decided today would be a good day to drive through, take time to enjoy the views, the peace & quiet and the sun. Time to appreciate why we have bought the house. Lucy has approved her room and Sophie will be coming to stay next month so it was lovely to see her and the boys happily wandering around the trees down into the valley. Dog walking is going to be such fun there, and so much easier with 3 dogs than walking them here, where they need to be on their leads for part of the walk.

Last night after we had finished work, we called on our neighbours across the valley. They have lived there just over a year and have a lot of information about the area that will be useful to us. They are an English couple with 4 dogs, who will be opwning a kennels once they have finished all the building work.

Tomorrow, is a public holiday here, but we'll be back at work!

Flat pack cupboards.

Most of our friends in Spain live in modern villas and apartments which really are meant as holiday homes, and therefore have small rooms, smaller kitchens and no storage.

We are lucky that our house was built by a Spaniard to live in so the rooms are a good size and we have a kitchen that I think was possibly meant to be a kitchen/diner.

The plus side to this is that we will have plenty of room to work together in the kitchen, the down side is that it means we have a lot of kitchen units to fit, and unlike the bathroom unit - these really are flat packs.

So, we have been working our way through the base units, the drawers and the wall units that we had. Unfortunately, the store didn't have enough base units when we went, they didn't have any of the doors but we still managed to come back with a car full of boxes.

So, 2 days later - all the units, that we have, are built, (this is Brandy showing me where he'd like the dog biscuits to be kept)

. . . . . . and some are on the wall.

It's just a pity we now have to wait 2 weeks before the rest that we need will be in stock.

Still, there's plenty of other jobs to be getting on with.

And hey presto!

It's the simple things in life that make all the difference.

Like opening a tap and having running water:

This is momentous, not only because we have water on tap...........

But because it means we also have a flushing loo.

Now that's progress!