27/1 - Wooden Houses and more RAIN!

I don’t expect any of you to offer any sympathy when I report that its STILL raining and blowing a gale, I have been guilty of telling you all how hot and sunny its been here while you have been freezing in the UK, so now is the opportunity for you to get your own back.

Its bl***dy cold here! And what’s more the wind is really strong, coming up from the coast over the steep cliffs that our apartment overlooks from the top floor, the gales were so strong last night that we didn’t get much sleep, we could hear things moving around on the roof (presumably our air conditioning units getting bashed by the gale) and the shutters that we have on each of the windows were taking a beating, being blown by the wind and having the rain rattle against them – not a good nights sleep.

We have never seen the sea as rough as it was that morning, the photo doesnt do it justice, you will have to take my word for it that the white water that you can see is indeed very very rough!

In fact this morning we found further evidence of how windy it had been last night when we went outside to drive to the wooden house builders with whom we had an appointment. A tree on our urbanisation, on the next block down (so about 15 feet from our block door) had been uprooted during the night – see the photo.

As most of you will know, we have workmen taking off the old paint around the urbanisation in preparation for its new, long awaited, coat of paint (the first in 20+ years), well the storm did some good and seemed to remove quite a lot of paint during the evening, depositing most of it, it seems, in our hallway!

We drove to the office of http://www.costahomes.com/ where we met Patrick to talk about the wooden houses that they sell. The idea is that they will place a house on any land that you buy, it all sounds quite exciting and the prices are very reasonable. We saw a number of plots of land, one was perfect, 5000 meters squared of land, nestled between fields of vines with a view of the mountains to the back, the only draw back was that it was within hearing distance of a busy dual carriageway and although your couldn’t see the traffic you could hear it – we therefore dismissed it.

The main nagging doubt that we came away with was that it sounded too good to be true, and this was confirmed when we visited another “temporary house” builder in the area (the wooden structures are build on concrete legs and are therefore regarded as ‘portable’, although I would not like to see anyone try to move one!) This builder seemed a little more open to discussing the legality of building on land that was smaller than the minimum required by law to build on (that of 10,000 meters squared), he told us that it was his responsibility to point out that if we proceeded when we would in fact be breaking the law, he also pointed out that they had never sold a house ‘legally’ and that EVERYONE builds this type of house on land smaller than that allowed by law and that the worst that could happen would be a fine from the local town hall!!!

We decided to think very carefully before going down this route, it just seemed too risky.

26/1 - Rain Rain, Go Away!

Terrible weather today, its been raining for most of the day (yes, stop laughing now please!), its been overcast and miserable pretty much all day and I am sitting here in the terrace, the rain is hitting the glass in sheets and there have been a flash or two of lightning - just like being back in the UK really!

25/2 - Out With Dorothy and Trish

Today Dorothy, remember, Liesl's ex-step-mother, returned from her travels inland with her friend Trish and kindly took Liesl and I out for a meal. We went to Fantasia, just down the road, and had a great meal with 2 bottles of wine, the total bill only came to 42 euros - not bad for 4 people really.

24/1 - Another Day of "Real Mans Work"

Ok, so NOW I understand why people go to offices – this isn’t so much fun after a night of aching muscles I never knew existed in the human body!

Learned how to mix concrete today – well to be honest I have re-learned it as my father, I am sure, has demonstrated it many times, but like I mentioned yesterday I remember clearly that there was no mouse or keyboard involved – I therefore deleted the experience from my memory.

I made 5 barrow loads of “muck” and now I think that I have broken my back! I think that I need to go back to computers as at least there I only get sore fingers!

23/1 - "Real Mans Work"

My father has always ‘ribbed’ me that I have never done a “real mans job” as I tend to “play” with computers, it’s something that has always managed to wind me up, but I guess I have usually managed to retort with something as equally insensitive so I guess we are equal.

Well today my father can eat his words as I did a “real mans job”

Ken, my father in law, asked me to help him with some minor building work that he wanted to do, basically breaking up some concrete at the front of his house and extending a water pipe to make an outside tap and then re-cementing it all in afterwards. Now I am sure that my father, the builder, would laugh at this being described as “building work” and would say something like “it’s a 2 minute job”, but never the less, it involved me expending physical effort on something that was neither a mouse nor a keyboard, therefore in my book it constitutes “building work”.

As it happened I really enjoyed it, I came home after the day sore and aching – it’s the only exercise that my body has experienced in many a month (or year I hear you shout – thanks!), but it felt good to have achieved something and even better to have helped out, in at least a little way, my father in law, who incidentally is in his seventies and still much more capable than I think that I will ever be with a shovel!

21/1 – Casas En Madera (Wooden Houses)

Over the past week we have been thinking about wooden houses quite a bit. When we were at the market last Sunday a chap was advertising custom built wooden houses on private plots of land for an amazing price and we have been thinking about the possibility and doing sums all week. Today we drove out into the country around Elche looking at possible sites and trying to find some more idea’s.

We drove past, by accident, another wooden house manufacturer – http://www.casasenmadera-siglo21.com so we had a look, through the fence as it was closed, at some of their designs, we decided to give them a ring in the week and see what sort of price we would be looking at to have one built to our design – sounds exciting!
Afterwards we drove back and had a bit to eat in a local café and then walked Hetty down on the beach, it was a lovely warm day and there were quite a few on the beach.

20/1 – friends reunited!

Liesl suggested that we drive out and find Pam and Dave’s house and do a surprise visit on them (Pam and Dave are the couple that we met purely by chance at the Sunday market in San Miguel the previous week).

We used TomTom to get us to San Miguel and then stopped to have a look around the town and asked for final directions at a local pub, the people we asked were obviously English, so we asked in English whether they knew the address we were trying to find, they didn’t, but satisfied that we were clearly lost tourists with no Spanish ability at all they offered to help us speak to the “locals” and helpfully told us that we should “say donde es” to that bloke over there and point at the address. LOL, we thanked them and walked over to the waiter asking “Perdón señor, pero, donde esta aquí?”

It was naughty but felt nice to have a better grasp on the language than our fellow Brits abroad.

The waiter asked a Spanish local who proceeded to give us precise and extremely accurate, as it turned out, instructions on how to get to the address, the old boy even re-iterated them with pen and paper to help, all in Spanish and all perfectly understandable, we found Pam and Dave’s place first time, without trouble.

Their house is amazing!

Its 3 storeys high with a number of terraces, the terrace on the 1st floor has a hot tub! It has 3 bedrooms, garage and is in quite a bit of land, all new and looks lovely – then those of you that know Pam know how manic she is about cleaning – sorry Pam!

We had a great afternoon sitting on their front terrace chatting and catching up, it was a scorching hot day and Liesl and I even managed to catch the sun, perhaps its driving around all day with the hood down that did it!

In the evening we walked Hetty down to Dorothy's place and helped her with a bottle of wine that she was struggling to drink - ;-)

19/1 – Ex, Step Mother-in –laws!

Liesl’s ex step mother, and therefore my ex step mother in law (if there is such a relation); Dorothy is over from Ireland at the moment with her friend Trisha. Dorothy has a place just down the road from our apartment.

We invited them around for a meal and a few drinks and had a fantastic time, Liesl cooked a great meal of "patatas bravas" (spicy potatoes) and "pollo con limón y ajillo" (chicken with lemon and garlic), it was really nice and very Spanish - ask her for the recipe if you fancy it – a great start to the weekend!

14/1 – It’s not a small world, it’s a TINY one!

After a great night at Raffles we met up with Heather and Ken as they promised to take us to the Sunday market in the lemon groves. When we arrived at their house they asked whether we would prefer to go to the market at San Miguel – given that we had never been there before, and the fact that it sounded like a drink, we said yes!

It was a huge market, and quite different from the other markets we had been to, just as we walked in, I bumped into one of my customers, Jon from McCormick Properties, so we had a quick chat.

We walked further on in the market and looked at a few stalls; Ken was interested in getting some quotes for a piece of metal work that he wanted doing at his house. Whilst continuing to stroll through the market we bumped, literally, into Pam and Dave - they are the people that we originally bought our house in Irthlingborough from (5 Holbush Way), amazingly they had also moved to Spain around the same time as we had.

It was incredible to think that we had lost touch with this couple just after we bought their house (our last house in the UK) six years ago and the next time that we saw them was in a market in the Costa Blanca in Spain!

We exchanged contact details and have promised to meet up so that we can catch up properly.

13/1 – The Morning After (and another fiesta!)

Someone, who will remain nameless, felt a little worse for wear this morning – I, of course, skipped out of bed and went for a walk – lol

We spent most of the day lazing around in the terrace at Heather and Ken’s place in La Marina, it was a really nice warm day and Heather couldn’t believe that on one side of the terrace (in the shade) it was 20 degrees while on the other side (the sunny side) it was 36 degrees – not bad for the 2nd Saturday in January?

In the evening we went, with Heather and Ken, to the grand opening of Raffles Piano Bar and Lounge – sounds very grand but it’s a really nice piano bar that has opened up across the road to our apartment, the owners, Pam and Dave are great people and have made us feel very welcomed, it was good to see them get their venture off the ground and nice to experience their opening night with them.

For part of the evening Dave had arranged for a professional singer friend of his (name escapes me) to come over from the UK to perform on the opening night, he did a number of songs and even walked amongst the customers, on one particular song, inviting them to join in. Yep you guessed it, on this song he thrust the microphone in front of me and I decided to give it a go – hehe, I did a fantastic job (if I say so myself) which was only marred, in my opinion, by Liesl saying that she couldn’t hear anything I was singing and perhaps the artist had turned off the microphone to save my embarrassment (or the audiences ears from bleeding!)

12/1 – Night Out!

Went out this evening with Gina and David - www.onthemovesl.com – David was the guy that moved us from the UK over to here. Heather (Liesl’s mum) and Ken were good enough to offer to look after Hetty for the evening and let us ‘crash’ over at their house as they happen to live in the same town as Gina and David.

As you can expect we had a totally alcohol free night ;-)

We went to a local bar “the palms” and sat in the outside area (which was closed in with plastic gazebo type walls), we had the patio heater on and it was perfectly warm – nice and toasty (sure it was the heater and not the alcohol anyway!)

We then went on to another bar and finished the night in the early hours of the morning when we staggered back to Heather and Ken’s, hopefully not disturbing them too much as we “crept” in – I’m sure that we sounded, and looked, like a herd or marauding elephants!

6/1 – Three Kings Day!

Historically the Spanish have not celebrated the 25th of December as their main holiday, although, of course, they recognise it as a special day (any excuse for another holiday!). The main festival day for them is the day when the 3 kings (wise men to you and me) visited the baby Jesus on the 6th January. However because of the popularity of the ‘westernised’ Father Christmas the children now tend to get presents on both the 25th December and on the 6th January (I’m sure that they don’t complain too much about that!)

On the evening of the 5th January, celebrations and parades are held in all of the towns where three processions are lead through the town, each one followed by one of the three kings.

We had decided that we would visit the celebrations in Alicante as it’s the largest town within reasonable driving distance from our home, our reasoning was that the celebrations would be the best although we did feel a little guilty that we would not be visiting our closest smaller town, Santa Pola – but hey, we could do that another year!

We were forced to reconsider our plans when, at the bank earlier in the day, we asked the cashier for some information about the fiesta and she agreed that Alicante was indeed the largest and most lavish celebration, however she warned that we should go very early (at about 2pm for an 8pm start!) and that we should consider taking the bus in as there would simply be no parking available within a reasonable walk to the town centre – this all sounded a bit too much like hard work to us! We just wanted to see some floats and catch some of the sweets that we had heard would be liberally thrown around – sad eh?

We re-planned and decided that it would be much nicer if we supported the local community and visited the celebrations at Santa Pola – how fickle are we?

It was fantastic!

Firstly it was a very mild night, a thick jumper or tea shirt and light coat were all that were needed to keep warm – in fact Liesl had dressed in warm clothing on the advice of her mum (which was based on her cold experience last year, so it was sound advice), she had a fleece on top of her clothes and a heavy coat on top of that, she did decide however, after I protested, to leave the gloves at home. Poor girl was roasting, she had to take the coat off on the way home for fear of passing out from heat exhaustion!

We arrived at about 7:15 but didn’t know when the procession would start, or from what direction it would come, we did know that it would go towards the castle, so we started there. There were hundreds of people lining the streets, many more in the castle square where there was music and lights and general merriment. A number of things amazed us as we wandered around, firstly the PA and sound system comprised of several thousand pounds worth of technical equipment, cabling, computers, laser lights, huge speaker sets etc, all left out in the open, no one specifically watching over them (that we could see) – we said that it was amazing that none of the equipment was protected from the elements (I guess it just doesn’t rain that often here) and also none of it was protected from would be thieves – I guess the crowd would not take kindly to someone stealing from the largest and most religious festival of the year!

We were also amazed by the amount of work that had clearly gone into the preparation – we didn’t know whether the same decorations, costumes and models were wheeled out every year, but we suspected that they were made each year. One that particularly caught Liesl’s eye was a miniature model town, presumably Bethlehem in the year 0. It was housed in a small glass walled cabin and even had lighting to mimic a full day, when the sun went down, the fire lights at the side of each of the houses lit up – someone, had put a great deal of effort into it.

The processions started at around 8:00 with a band leading the first kings group through the streets, there were about 3 groups of ‘dancers’ in front of the king, the first group were children aged about 3-5 dressed as mice doing a little dance, we talked about how this group could have included Ella, the daughter of good friends of ours from the UK, Chris and Linda, we really could picture here in that group dancing away and waving to her family as she passed them!

Next followed a group of slightly older children with a more choreographed dance, but again in equally matching and clearly hand made dress, we wondered who could have been responsible for the costumes – they were all pretty much identical, so we suspected that instructions had not gone back to the parents of those involved as that would have, we guessed, resulted in different costumes – we also couldn’t believe that the state provided them, we finally decided that it must have been down to the schools – we must find out from someone.

The final group that passed us before the first king was of older children again, probably from 9 – 14 years, their choreography was clearly more practiced, but the costumes again were all matching, down to the red shoes that they each wore.

Then we were passed by the first king, to me the guy looked pretty much like Santa Claus, but I am reliably informed he looked nothing like him – check it out for yourself and make up your own mind in the pictures. He was on a trailer along with about 4 helpers; they were all pulled by a tractor and what looked like a very surprised farmer! Its strange that neither the farmer or the tractor were dressed up at all – lol, perhaps they didn’t know what they had been asked to go and pull through the streets until they arrived!

The king and his helpers threw 1000’s of wrapped, boiled sweets into the crowd as they passed, children scrambled to grab them as they dropped to the floor, most already had carrier bags quarter full with sweets, some even ran along side helping themselves to more as the king moved slowly forwards. We managed to catch and pick up a good couple of handfuls worth and we found a good use for the pockets of the heavy coat that Liesl had brought with her – well it wasn’t needed to keep her warm!

We also gave some sweets to 2 little girls that were standing next to us, their father seemed to own the restaurant that we were standing in front of, they couldn’t have been older than 3 years old and carefully and suspiciously accepted the sweets from us – perhaps they were wondering why on earth these strange foreigners would want to give away such a precious commodity.

Well that was the first procession through, the next two processions pretty much followed the same format as the first, smaller children, then slightly older ones and then the teenagers followed by the sweet wielding king and his helpers. We gathered more sweets, gave most away to our 2 new friends and Liesl even managed to practice some of her Spanish out on them, saying “ven aqui” (come here) and “más caramelo” (more sweets), well it seemed to do the trick – either that or the kids though “I have no idea what these people are on about but perhaps if I smile and walk towards them they might hand over some of their sweets again” – they were right!

After the processions there were 2 open backed lorries full of presents, they were being mobbed by the parents (sad eh?) and some of the children got a look in – we decided that as neither Liesl or I had previously played rugby that we would let the other adults, and whichever children didn’t get squashed, get the goodies (plastic dolls etc.)

Finally everyone congregated in the square to listen to what the 3 kings had to say – we have no idea what they said – lol – but they looked very impressive!

Afterwards we wondered back to the car and decided that we wanted to pop into a Spanish bar while the crowds cleared, Liesl spotted one and we went in, it WAS a Spanish bar, but it was playing Iron Maiden and had model (well I hope they were model) skulls on the shelf behind the bar – nice.

I nervously asked whether they had red wine, “¿tiene vino tinto?”, fully expecting, at the best, a laugh and an answer of “no” and at worst a punch in the mouth, however they were actually all very friendly and the bar man brought over 2 glasses of nice red wine and a small saucer of various nuts for us to eat, its was a nice diversion from having to push through the crowds to get to the car.

We finished our wine, found the car and made our way home – a good night was had by all.

2/1 - Started Work!

Had my first BlueMoon Solutions (Spain) job today, for a guy that emailed me after reading my email in Jungle Drums, he was having problems with a USB hard drive that he had bought to backup his laptop, fixed the problem for him anyway, and earned an hours work - not bad for my first day I thought!

31/12 - Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Last night we saw in the New Year at a street party with our friends Gerry (the one in the skirt!) and Trisha, their family and about 50 other neighbours!

There was food, there was chat and there was just a little alcohol – of course Liesl and I felt that we had to oblige by taking the odd drink!

At midnight we overlooked a spectacular fireworks display, the whole evening was a great success and for it to be warm enough to be outside partying at midnight on the last day of the year made it all the more special.