22/9 - Well that was Summer...

This week has heralded the end of the summer; it’s been overcast, all week, today it’s raining and it’s due to rain tomorrow as well.

The last time that we had this much rain was in April!

Also, Liesl and I seem to have acclimatised - which is kind of worrying for the fore coming winter period as last year, our first winter, we were still used to the weather back in the UK and felt warm, something that was obvious to us at the time as though our neighbours were wandering around in coats and other warm clothing we were still in tea shirts and summer clothing.

We are already starting to feel the change in temperature, it’s now dropping to the low twenties at night and we are certainly feeling the difference - strange given that only 2 weeks ago Liesl's mum, who had arrived with Ken for a 2 week holiday, were complaining about not being able to sleep at night because of the heat; at the same time we were putting extra covers on the bed at night and stopped using the fan to cool us!

I think that this winter is going to give us a much better idea of what its going to be like living in a flat in Spain as it’s the first winter that we will actually truly feel the cold.

21/9 - Big Balls!

We went 10 pin bowling tonight with a group of friends in Elche (a town about 30 minutes drive away), had a great night - made all the better by me winning both sets, although with scores of only 111 and 134 that probably says more about my friends abilities than mine!

The trip was in aid of Dave's (Jungle Drums editor) birthday - 65th I think ;-)

Afterwards we came back to a bar for a drink, great night and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

16/9 - Scottish, But That Doesn't Make Them Bad People ;-)

Went out this evening with our friends Gerry and Tricia, they are spending much of the year over here as Gerry is on "Garden Leave", they bought their place (down the road from us) late last year.

We went out to a terrace bar just down the road and had a fantastic time - as you can see from the picture!

16/9 - Signed Up!

Found out today that Liesl had received a call from the local library, we put our names down for Spanish lessons when we first arrived in Spain about a year ago and they have just got back to us to tell us that we can be enrolled on the course starting in October - talk about manana!

Anyway, foolishly she said yes and we are now enrolled on a 12 week course - 2 days a week (Wednesday and Friday) for 2 hours a day - intermediate Spanish - God help me!!!!

Watch this space!

11/9 - Must Be Getting Old!!!

Today we went, with our gestor (Official Spanish Administrator) to Delores, to complete our will - scary stuff eh?

Finally decided who we wanted to leave all of our debts to - sorry Dave ;-)

The whole process was pretty stress free really (although it hurt the wallet a little), only took a couple of hours which is pretty good going for a Spanish process!

9/9 - English Cinema?

Bob and Jackie invited us out to the cinema this evening, the cinema in question, which showed films in English (with Spanish subtitles) every weekend, was located in Pilar de la Horadada; a town about 30 minutes south of Bob and Jackie.

The cinema was quite small (although Bob pointed out that it could seat 800 people after a quick count of the rows), and used to be "open air" with a wooden concertina roof which I don’t think works any more (shame as it was quite warm).

The cinema is opened by the local council and manned, we think, by volunteers the cost to watch a film is only 5 Euros and the whole thing seems to be run rather like a non-profit making organisation, the local Spanish council worker that organises everything is keen to point out that without people attending they would not be able to show up to date films like the one we watched last night - Oceans 13 - great film.

We are going back in 2 weeks to watch Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix.

8/9 - Still Suffering....

I have decided - I am never going to drink again!

Bob and Jackie came round this evening to take us out for a meal - to thank me for helping get their computer working, this was a really nice and unexpected gesture and something that was typically kind of them to think of.

We went down to the Patagonia Steak House and had a really nice night, I experienced what it was like to stay sober all evening - it’s good to have new experiences every now and then ;-)

7/9 - BBQ

This evening we went to Dave's house (editor of The Jungle Drums) for a BBQ, problem was that Dave was a little disorganised when it came to actually cooking anything and consequently when I decided to JFDI (Just F****g Do It) the BBQ was cold and not capable of cooking anything!

Thankfully after a quick text, one of the other guests arrived with some BQ coals and we managed to get things going. Of course this lack of sustenance meant that I had to replace any time not eating with drinking - boy that was a heavy night, but really enjoyed it!

Worst of it all was that I had to get up for work at 9am (only went to bed around 3am!), I somehow managed to do the 2 jobs I had that day and then I crawled back into bed to sleep it off for the rest of the day!

3/9 - Friends and Fiesta's

Today our friends Bob and Jackie arrived from the UK, bringing with them (as we ask most people to do) all those little things that we need to have sent over from "home" - although I have to say that Spain is feeling more and more like "home" every day.

In true Thorogood style Bob had a little job for me to do, his PC was knackered when he tried to turn it on -payback to me for him bringing our English goodies over ;-)

Although why on earth he needed to get into his emails less than 6 hours after leaving them back in the UK Heaven only knows - and I thought I was addicted to the Internet!

Anyway, it was great to catch up with them in their apartment in Torrevieja and Jackie laid on a bit of lunch as well – all very nice.

In the evening we all decided to go down to Santa Pola to watch the “Moors & Christians” parade, we had previously arranged with our other friend, Ralph to collect him and go to the parade together. The Moors & Christians is one of Spain’s biggest festivals and are held to commemorate the battles, combats and fights between Moors (or Muslims) and Christians during the period known as Reconquista (from the 8th century through the 15th century).

The streets were lined with chairs (5 deep at parts on both sides) and the lines ran the whole length of the town – and amazing number of people turned out and we couldn’t help but to comment on the fact that a similarly sized town in the UK (Wellingborough) were considering stopping their carnival because of lack of interest!


The parade was supposed to start at 8:30PM, however true to the manaña attitude of our adopted countrymen it actually started about an hour or so late; it was well worth the wait! Wave after wave of groups of men, women and children passed the spot where we had decided to stand and watch, each group an elaborate theme based on either the Moors or the Christians, as you can see from the photos. What the photos don’t do justice to is the mock battles and other moving displays that passed by us, little re-enactments of Moors invading, pillaging and finally being beaten back by the Christians, all acted out on the move past us. Following each group was their band – I lost count of the number of individual bands that we saw that evening but there must have been at least 50!

Each group that passed had a group of walkers (or dancers or fighters) followed usually by a float pulled by a tractor and then by a band, I am sure that I spotted the same “happy” tractor driver that I commented about on the 3 Kings Day parade, see if you think it’s the same guy - http://ourspanishadventure.blogspot.com/2007/01/61-three-kings-day.html

Each group of dancers we were told were each responsible for buying / making their own particular costume, some of them must have cost 100’s of euros each.

We watched the processions for about 2 hours before it became too late and we became too tired of standing to continue – poor Bob has a dodgy knee at the best of times and had already decided to sit down on the pavement as he found the pain of standing to be too much. It was clear that the parade was going to continue for some time yet, we made our way out onto some of the back streets to see whether we could find a little bar to have a sit down and a drink – it was now around 11:30 at night.

Liesl quickly located a bar, no surprise there then, and we went inside for a drink (Ralph was taking the photo btw) while the crouds subsided outside, after about an hour it was all over and we were able to wander along to the car and drive home – a really great experience.

28/8 - No Work!

So anyway, its been really quiet this month - normal for August so I am told, a little scary never the less; but not to be idle I decide (or rather Liesl decides for me) that it’s time to sand down the new, second hand, front door and frame so that it can be varnished - not a bad job me thinks, all day in the sun, I can handle that!

Anyway, off to the local DIY shop to buy sand paper, varnish and the like, no problem there, very reasonable (about 10 euros for the lot), excellent.

Liesl started to read the instructions - well her Spanish is much better than mine! "What is the temperature?" she says. "Well its 37 degrees at the moment" I reply.

"The directions on the tin say that the varnish should be applied when the temperature is between 12 and 25 degrees!" says Liesl.

LOL, the lowest the temperature currently drops is about 27 degrees - would you believe that I am going to have to wait for winter before I can varnish the bloody door!

25/8 - Doggy Mess

Whilst walking through our local town of Santa Pola today I witnessed the not-unusual sight of a Spaniard allowing his dog to "mess" on the pavement. I was however surprised when he self same chap proceeded to take a plastic bag out of his pocket and pick up the mess that his dog had left behind - I have never seen this before, even though there are free "poo bag" holders all around the major cities of Spain, they all seem to be full of "poo bags" because no-one ever takes them!)

You can imagine how much more shocked I was when I saw the man put down the bag, take hold of his dog's tail and hold it up so that the dog's back legs were just off the ground, put his hand into his pocket, took out a q-tip, and proceeded to clean the mut's behind!!!!

Now that is what I call attention to detail - good man. I dont think I will tell Liesl about it though for fear of being forced to carry q-tips around with me when taking Hetty out!

19/8 - Holbush Way in Spain!

Today we went to visit our friends and old neighbours Pam and Dave – they are the guys that we bought our last house from in the UK (5 Holbush Way) and, as they used to live there, they are, of course, also ex-neighbours of Dave, all we needed was for Bob and Jackie (our other neighbours from the UK) to turn up and most of the top part of Holbush Way would be empty!

Pam and Dave moved to San Miguel (about an hour’s drive away from our place) in September of 2006 and therefore have been here almost a year as well.

They took us to a lovely restaurant for Sunday lunch. The restaurant, "Market St", was in San Miguel and for a very reasonable 20 euros (fifteen quid) we each had a very filling 3 course meal with wine, not bad really, although Liesl and I are clearly getting used to living in Spain as both thought that it was expensive – mad really as it was nothing.

Afterwards we went back to Pam and Dave's to enjoy some of Pam's homemade sangria - very refreshing - nice one Pam!

18/8 - Not planned - honest!

Well, with Dave's request for us not to plan anything ringing in my ears I gratefully accepted an invitation to a BBQ from our friends Paul and Jackie - well Dave loves a good BBQ anyway!

We had a fantastic time, all jumping in the pool within 30 minutes of arriving to play "pool volley ball" - hehe, fantastic and a great laugh, however someone needs to invent a way of getting the ball back after it gets punched outside the pool every 30 seconds - business opportunity there!

As you can see from the picture (click to enlarge if you need to) Liesl seems to have found something to do with the long tube like float - not sure what, but she certainly had a smile on her face for the rest of the day - strange.

After some serious messing around in the pool we sat down to have a lovely BBQ – chicken kebabs and lots more – jum!

Then we had a little drink – well a big one actually – thanks for driving Liesl ;-)

Finally we finished the evening off by jumping back into the pool at about 10pm to cool off, first class!

16/8 - "D" Day!!

This evening Dave, a good friend and ex-neighbour arrived to visit us for a long weekend (he goes back next Wednesday), he has been working hard down in London but, thankfully, has found the time to come and visit - probably sick of the rain in the UK - hehe.

He has instructed us not to arrange anything for him as he just wants to sit by the pool and "chill", not sure whether that is because he really does want to just sit by the pool or whether he is being his usual thoughtful self and doesn’t want to put us to any trouble.

12/8 - Update

The past few weeks have been busy work wise, well probably more for Liesl than for me, but this has, in addition to the hot weather, meant that we have not been able to spend the afternoons on the beach.

A couple of weeks ago we bought an umbrella to ensure that, when we were able to go we would be in shade (without it we would certainly have fried within a couple of minutes!) Even under the shade of the umbrella the temperature still rose well into the thirties!

On the 27th July Alan (a friend from Getronics), his wife Sharon and family arrived. They had rented a villa in Bonalba, about 30 minutes drive from us, and invited us over on the Saturday for drinks and a stopover. We were really looking forward to it as we had a great time with them the last time they were out in October - they didn’t disappoint this time either, we spent most of the evening chatting, however because Alan had kept up to date with this blog (hi Alan), he unnervingly managed to finish most of my sentences off, knowing more about what we had been up to in the past 6 months almost than we did, as you can see from the pictures we ended up floating with a beer in the pool – we were to be slightly worse for wear and spent the Sunday recovering at home.

We repeated the event the following Friday (well you can never have too much of a good thing can you!)

The following week dictated more work, as usual, however whilst driving from a customer’s house one day I saw a scene that could only happen here in Spain, a goat herder leading his herd from the field, straight across the road in front of me (never mind the fact that cars are coming – they can wait), into another field.

At first I couldn’t even see him, his dogs or his goats, just what looked like a dust cloud moving towards the road, when I got closer I was stationary for long enough to take this picture.

On Wednesday 8th we decided to skive off and spend the day at a tourist attraction about an hours drive away – Guadalest. It’s a small village perched on the pinnacle of a granite mountain, and the views from it are fabulous as you can see from the pictures. Afterwards we stopped at a small roadside restaurant and had a bite to eat before heading back to Gran Alacant.

Alan had asked me to arrange a tandem paragliding jump for him and one of his sons (Ben). There is a shop local to our home that offer such jumps, which involve being strapped to a guy that has been strapped to a parachute before running towards and off the cliff edge – trusting of course that the wind will win over gravity!

Anyway, I had arranged a jump for him for 5pm on Thursday, he and his family were to come to our place first so that we could all go off to the Paragliding shop together. When they arrived Alan looked more than a little concerned about what he had let himself in for, Ben of course, drunk with the innocence of youth, had no such concerns and took great pleasure in telling Liesl and I that his dad had been like this all day.

We arrived at the shop and the owner informed us that it was far too windy to fly – the smile returned to Alan’s face!

That day was the last day that we saw them as they were off back to the UK the next day, they were kind enough to leave us with their unopened booze (about 7 bottles of wine!) and another beach umbrella as well as taking us out for a lovely meal - as always very generous.

We opened an invitation to them to come over for a long weekend anytime they like, hopefully they will take us up on it as they are great company.

On the 10th a friend of ours, from Spanish classes, Ralph came up to our place so that we could all go out for a drink to a local Spanish bar, we decided to go to El Paripe as it has a lovely sun terrace which is particularly nice to sit out in at night, we had a nice evening chatting and looking at the view.

Yesterday, after going to the market in the morning, we went over to Liesl’s mum’s house in La Marina to water her “orchard” and spent the afternoon at her house, sitting on her terrace reading. We, and particularly Hetty, really enjoy visiting and being able to sit outside the house as it has lovely big terraces around it – they are currently back in Ireland and we go over at least once a week to water their plants.

In the evening we went to a 70th birthday party that we had been invited to at a beach bar called ‘Seagulls’.

We had a lovely evening, and spent some time walking along the beach. Lovely that was until a rogue firework (of the type regularly fired off at night in Spain), was caught by the wind and flew into the covered terrace where we were sitting, it exploded in the corner where our table was!

I was at the bar (as usual) and Liesl was sitting with Jane (another partygoer) talking, Liesl said that she didn’t realise what was going on until she could feel heat on her legs, at which point she jumped up, I could see her about 10 feet away from me and after I had moved Jane out of the way, Liesl was able to run through to the space where I was, she had a mark on her leg which I cooled down with my cold pint!

Afterwards the lady bar owner decided that it would be a really good idea to put cold mayonnaise on the affected area – not something that I had ever seen in the first aid manual!

She was VERY lucky, the firework had only singed her dress and through it, had marked her leg, however she was in no pain and she was unharmed, this morning the mark on her leg is still there – more like a cooking burn than anything, but she is in no pain and we both realise that she had a lucky escape.

15/7 - Well That Was a Busy Week!

Liesl and I have had a really manic week and a bit...

On Saturday (7th July) Richard and Caz (my business partner in the UK and his girlfriend) came over to stay for a long weekend - it was really good to see them, they came over earlier in the year and we had a fantastic time then as well but the weather wasn’t so good that time, this time it was predictably great and they had a great time - well thats what they told us anyway, we hope they enjoyed it ;-)

On Sunday we went to for a walk along the harbour in Alicante and had a drink in a cafe that overhung the water, Richard and I picked out the new BlueMoon yacht, the 3rd one from the left in the picture (below), we decided that we would call it 'expenses' in honour of the 3rd director of BlueMoon, Sean ;-)

Rich and Caz went back on Tuesday evening (hehe, back to rainy old England, sorry couldn’t resist) and Liesl and I packed in a couple of long days work to try to get on top of everything we needed to do, we had a new front door fitted (well new to us anyway, its a cast off from the guy on the floor below us - Hans - who was replacing just about everything in his apartment!), its a great door, bolts everywhere and is MUCH better than the one we had on there before, it had really seen better days. We had been quoted 800€ to purchase a new door and fit it into a new frame, however with the new frame and fitting we have managed to save over 400€ (bonus as we really couldn’t have afforded to spend the 800€), the only thing that I have to do is sort out my neighbours computer as part of the deal - sounds like a fair swap to me!

On Thursday we had arranged to visit a couple (Jane and Colin) that run a bed and breakfast high up in the mountains behind Crevillente, a customer of mine, Brian, who is also a fellow contributor to the Jungle Drums magazine knows them well and asked me to visit to see if I could get their wireless Internet connection working. They had agreed to make us lunch in return for my services and both Liesl and Hetty were to come with me. The drive took around an hour in Brian's 4x4 - and believe me it was essential for the last part of the assent!

Well I was not able to fix their Internet connection as there was simply no G3 connection available where their house was, but I have not given up on the challenge, I WILL get them some kind of Internet connection - even if I have to drag a cable all the way there from our apartment!

One of the incredible things about where Jane and Colin run their bed and breakfast is that they are right opposite one of the last breeding pairs of Bonelli's Eagles in the world (apparently there are less than 700 breeding pairs left in existence!), a fact that brings 'twitchers' (that's birdwatchers, not people who suffer from Turrets Syndrome) from all over the world to stay and look at these incredible birds - I'm told that they are incredible as they totally failed to show up when we were there - typical!

Anyway, as you can see from the picture (click on it to make it larger), which do it no justice at all, it’s a breathtaking place and we will defiantly be returning.

After we were driven home we had previously arranged to visit friends John and Patricia near Torrelano (Alicante), John is a professional golf coach and was returning the next day to Ireland to continue teaching - he will be back only in October so it was important to us to meet up with them before he went back.

We went for a meal with them and had a great time, it will be a shame that we won’t see him again until October. We were still sitting, chatting, at 1am outside the restaurant, nice and warm sitting in shorts and tea-shirts. We finally staggered home well into the early hours of Friday morning, crashed into bed knowing that I had a job in the morning an hours’ drive away and I needed to be there at 9:30 - talk about burning the candle at both ends!

We both survived Friday and were so nakered by the afternoon that we decided to have a Siesta, good job as well as we received a text message from Dorothy (Liesl's ex-step mother) who was over on holiday and wanted to meet up - great, she is such a laugh.

Refreshed from our Siesta we met up with Dorothy, her husband Jim and his brother Dennis at La Paripe (a local Spanish bar) for a couple of drinks, we then went onto La Fantasia (a local Swedish restaurant) and had a lovely meal - all of which was paid for surreptitiously (as we had no idea that it was being paid for) by Jim, we had a fantastic time with them and afterwards we went onto their place in AltaMar II for a few drinkies, again staggering home in the early hours of Saturday morning!

And you wonder why I never get time to update this blog!

On Saturday Liesl had agreed to help out at a local Cancer charity event so we went down to the Carabassi bars at 12:00 when the event was due to start. At 1pm people started to arrive to setup stalls - lol, well I guess this IS Spain!

Sunday was a pretty lazy day, catching up on little bits of work and trying to catch up on lost sleep - although Liesl still has this annoying habit of being able to get up and start work well before 7am even if she got into bed at 2am seeing double and singing the "Goblin Song" 5 hours earlier (sickening!)

If you are not familiar with the "Goblin Song" then you have been missing out on some classic BlackAdder - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewR5HANQWE0

3/7 - "Mum I'm Going To Be On The Radio!"

I have just found out that Dave (editor of The Jungle Drums) is to host a "breakfast show" on a Spanish national radio station (www.rem.fm), I say breakfast show in parenthasis because it starts at 11am (which I guess is breakfast for the laid back Spaniards - lol).

Well Dave wants to call me every week, on a Friday, to chat about "whats new in the world of computers?" - nervous - OH YEA!

Anyway, it should be fun, you will be able to hear me make a dick of myself (who cares!), by downloading a recording of the show from www.thejungledrums.com, however as I am also responsible for uploading the audio file, if it goes really badly I think that I may "lose" the file!

Oh, and just incase you were wondering whether my Spanish had dramatically improved, no it hasnt, the radio station is an English "talk radio" station - phew!

1/7 - It's Party Time!

This evening we went down to Santa Pola (Seagulls Bar) right on the beach for the Jungle Drums (the magazine that I write for) party, we had a great time, met new people and had a little drink, well I didnt as I was driving, but a good time was had by all nether the less.

A John Lennon lookalike was performing, his site is http://www.lennontribute.net/ just so you can see how much he looks like him!

His act was fantastic and it was great to be outside next to the beach, sea in the background at midnight in just shorts and a tee-shirt!

23/6 - Bonfires on the Beach!

This weekend Liesl's Aunt and Uncle (June and Alan - although Liesl still calls them Uncle Alan and Auntie June - bless!) visited us for a few days whilst they were already on their month long holiday touring Spain - very nice.

They kindly took us for a meal in Santa Pola, we ate late as we wanted to co-inside it with a "Summer Salstace" festival held by the locals where they take bits of wood (palets etc) down to the beach around midnight and set fire to them, making hundereds of small bonfires along the coast, the pictures from my phone really dont do it justice, it was really a sight to see.

As its starting to ramp up to the "really warm" weather - as opposed to what has become usual 20-30 degrees every day and sunny weather, all manner of new bars and resturants have started to pop up in places that we never even knew existed! These bars seem to be temporary things that just get put up in the summer, we have certainly never seen them before and they must be trusting that the weather is fine because they would get washed away if anything drastic happened!

One of the new outside bars has popped up in the grounds of the health centre / library just down the road from our apartment, its very temporary but has about 10 tables outside and seems always to be full of punters - its really quite amazing how these places seem to lay dormant and invisible during the winter months and come to life during the summer!

15/6 - Camping in the Campo!

Yep, this weekend Liesl and I decided to try out our new tent, one that we bought for the princely sum of 99€ last weekend in Aldi (yes Dave we went into Aldi, you may need to go and have a lay down now I know!)

The tent (tienda in Spanish) preports to sleep 6-8 people, however I think that must be based on the size of Spaniards and not well fed middle aged Brits, but either way its plenty big enough for Liesl, Hetty and I to sleep in relative comfort (well as confortable as you get in a tent anyway).

Helpfully the instructions for putting together this 3d jigsaw puzzle were clearly translated from Chineese to Spanish without any helpful pictures so they went out the window straight away, in the end it only (lol, only) took us 2 hours to put up the tent - we even managed not to fall out over it so our relationship is clearly much better than it was in the UK - lol.

We picked a site about 1.5 hours inland - near Alcoy in Valencia, it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere in a country park - http://www.campingmariola.com/ingles/ser.htm the views were great.

A friend of ours, Janice, who has recently opened a travel agents here in Gran Alacant advised us to ensure that we took something warm to wear as we were going to a beautiful place that happened to be in the mountains and therefore it was much cooler there, I of course took little notice as I was sitting on my terrace, sweating in my tee-shirt and shorts in 40+ degrees sunshine. She, of course, was right, by the early hours of the morning it was really cold - I mean brass monkeys cold! Next time, if we venture into the mountains we shall be taking warmer clothing - I guess I started to regret my decision not to take warmer clothing when we were almost at the camp site and I could see the "Warning Snow" signs!!!!

The one thing that did confuse us at the camp site was that there were loads of tents / caravans that looked like they were perminant homes, some even had walls constructed around them, had we inadvertantly found ourselves in some kind of Spanish "shanty town" or were these just people going way over the top with the whole camping expierience?

31/5 – Sad Day…

This morning our friends, Chris, Linda and their fantastic kids (our God children), Joe and Ella left to return back home to the UK, they had been staying with us for the past week – arrived at 11pm on the 23rd.

Usually its refreshing to have the apartment back to ourselves after guests leave, that’s not to say that we don’t enjoy the company, we love it, its just that its nice to get back into our ‘routine’ – I’m sure you know what I mean. However this time it was different, as soon as Liesl and I got back into the apartment, it seemed unusually quiet, not in a good way, it was quite upsetting to say “goodbye” to them knowing that we would probably not see them all again for at least 12 months, I hope they realise how much we miss them and how important they are to us both.

Whilst they were here they did a great deal, we managed to take some time off from work to be with them, but they also made themselves busy whilst we had to work.

On Sunday we went with them to Pola Parc, a kiddies fun fair in Santa Pola, 99% of the rides were aimed at exactly Joe and Ella’s age group (7 and 8 respectively) and they loved it, even though it was the LAST thing that they said they wanted to do - kids eh? Linda, quite wisely, said that she didn’t feel like going on any of the rides with the kids which left Chris and I (suckers!) with the unenviable task of accompanying Joe and Ella on as many fast, bumpy, painful and just down right dangerous rides you could every have dreamt of.

One in particular sticks in my mind, it was a line of wooden hobby horses that followed each other around a metal track – Chris and I took one look and thought “that looks fine, nice steady slow ride”, so we mounted our steeds, Ella and I on the front horse and Joe and Chris on the horse behind us. The ride started and everything was fine for the first few seconds, ok the wooden horses were not the most comfortable of things but I could handle a circuit of this I thought.

Then it happened!

What had escaped both my and Chris’s notice was that the horses actually trotted around the circuit – so for every meter we advanced we had to endure one “bump”! After far too many bumps 2 excited kids and 2 crippled adults got off the ride, I am certain that our voices are still at least one octave higher now than before we got on the ride – NEVER AGAIN!

The park was a great way to spend the evening, we arrived at about 6pm and left just after 9pm, the kids had a great time – which is what it’s all about!

We also spent some time on the beach with them, both Joe and Ella went snorkelling and saw loads of fish, Linda also had a chance to indulge in her favourite pastime (clothes shopping) in Santa Pola.

All in all it was a fantastic week; my only regret is not being able to spend more time with them – on their last full day I had to work for most of the day!

18/5 - Marmite Sandwiches!!!!

This evening Liesl and I went out for a walk, a usual nightly occurrence, whilst walking we talked about what we would have to eat when we got back, another regular topic of conversation, attested to by our "racing snake figures".

I mentioned that I would really like some Marmite sandwiches - now this is a much more unusual comment that those of you that know we well might think. Back in the UK my staple diet consisted of at least 6 slices of white bread Marmite sandwiches - it would be a rare day that passed without this feast, I was so addicted to Marmite that I brought 4 extremely large pots of Marmite out with me to Spain and such was my infamy for the stuff that anyone that knows me well always asks whether they should bring Marmite out with them for me.

Well let me tell you......

I have hardly touched the stuff since I have been here - not even eaten one of the large tubs I brought out (which incidentally I would demolish in a month back in the UK!)

Anyway, I think that it was Marmite, or my over eating of the stuff, that caused the terrible acid reflux that I suffered back in the UK, I have not needed to take my tablets over here and I feel 100% better - amazing eh?

Anyway back to the story, I fancied some Marmite sandwiches, so Liesl agreed and we walked back past the local, very expensive, English supermarket, we bought the following.....

• Brown Sliced English Bread (you just don’t get the stuff over here)
• Cheese and Onion Crisps (Liesl's favourite)
• Twix (for me - couldn’t resist!)
• Packet of Lemon Curd Tarts (Tarts, my favourite - hehe)

Total cost was around 5.50€ - a rip off really as the Spanish equivalent would cost us probably under half that, but then we were going to have a decedent night – lol, sad eh?
Anyway, let me tell you it was fantastic, Marmite sandwiches and lemon curt tarts have just never tasted so good!

16/7 - Lad's Night Out!!!

This evening I was invited to a boys night out! Dave (editor, The Jungle Drums), Mark (photographer, designer and all round decent bloke) and Kevin (Our Man In Santa Pola, contributor to The Jungle Drums).

Anyway, we met up in a local pub and then went for a curry, great night.

13/5 - Orchards and BBQ's

This afternoon we went over to Liesl's mums to water the 'orchard', Heather, I have added pictures to prove that Liesl has been carrying out her daughterly duties!

I, on the other hand, carried out the very masculine task of breaking up a palet for Ken (one he hadnt had the chance to do while he was in Spain - and in a fit of too much testostorone I managed to tear a huge gaping hole in my wrist, although Liesl reliably informs me that its just a scratch and that I will survive!

Ken, pictures also attached as evidence (the wood, not my wound!

Whilst there we aired the house and made sure that the patio chairs still worked - by sitting on them for an hour on the terrace, its important to make sure these things work - hehe.

After all the hard work we felt fully justified in playing around in Paul and Jackie's pool just before the BBQ, while the dogs watched on - the tempreture of the water was 28 degrees celcius - and the water isn't heated!

We had a fantastic BBQ with them, I even found some time to fix his PC.

11/5 - It's Beach Time!!

This week Liesl and I have tried to spend at least an hour on the beach every day (not been possible every day - sometimes work runs on just far too long!)

Today was an exceptional day, the sun was really warm, not a cloud in the sky and the sea was warm, we decided to go snorkelling, in water only 5ft deep we saw 1000's of fish, darting in and out of the coral reefs, it was amazing and really quite special.

The sea, and the pool on our complex, are now warm enough to swim in at 25+ degrees, so we are going to try to take on some more, much needed exercise and swim as many days as we can.

On the downside, its just too warm now for Hetty to go out for a walk in the daytime, we have to either walk her before 8am or after 9pm when the heat has gone out of the air and its dropped below 25 degrees (in the shade!) It doesn’t seem to be bothering Hetty too much anyway, she seems to be enjoying being allowed to sleep all day!

On Sunday we have been invited to a BBQ at Paul and Jackie’s in La Marina, they have a great pool so we are looking forward to that, we will also pop into Liesl's mum's place, she has returned to Ireland now, so that we can water the orchard (1 lemon tree and 1 orange tree) for her.

5/5 - Dad & Val Arrive

For this past week, my father and his friend Val have been staying with us, they arrived last Sunday (29th April) and were delayed by more than an hour (not something that would have helped a nervous flyer I guess!)

As they arrived late on Sunday we didn’t get to do anything other than get back to the apartment, have a chat and a "wee drink" and go to bed, the following day the weather was glorious and Liesl had already got up very early to do some work, while she was finishing off what she had to do, Dad, Val and I went orange picking (at the same place as Liesl and I had visited before), in about 20 minutes the 3 of us had picked a massive amount of oranges, I have been juicing them all week and I would say that we have about 3kg of oranges left after making 10.5 litres of fresh juice and after a weeks worth of 4 people eating them!

In the afternoon we went over to La Marina to visit Liesl's mum and Ken as they would be flying back to Ireland early on Wednesday morning, we spent some time with them sitting on their terrace chatting and enjoying the sun.

Tuesday was a bank holiday; however Liesl worked for most of the morning as she was quite busy, in the afternoon we all went for a walk on the board walk in La Mata. My work is very quiet at the moment, I do hope that it picks up over the next week or so as its a little scary when the phones don’t ring!

On Wednesday and Thursday Liesl and I had arranged for Dad and Val to go on some of the free blanket trips that are locally arranged, its a full coach trip out for the day, all free of charge, the only requirement is that you visit the factory where blankets are made and listen to a presentation for an hour about the blankets. On Wednesday they went to the trip that spends time in Benidorm. Val loves Benedorm and has been several times before, she took pleasure in showing dad the old town - don’t think that they saw any Sticky Vicky shows - well if they did then they kept it quiet ;-)

On Thursday they went to Guardalest which is a picturesque mountain village, they said that they did enjoy it but as it hailed for some of the day, it was spoilt a little - they would like to return on a good sunny day as they said the views were breathtaking.

Last night we went out for a meal to Cocoas, dad very kindly paid and afterwards we came back to the apartment and our friends Gerry and Trisha, who are over from Scotland at the moment came round for more than a few sherbets’ - great night.

Today we are planning to go to the Saturday market in Santa pola (woohoo) and probably have a walk in the sun as its looking like another hot hot day - not a cloud in the sky! Tomorrow I expect we will go to the Sunday market in the lemon groves and we have been invited to a BBQ in La Marina, I shall also have to arrange for the "transfer of the pensioners" - lol, dad and Val are spending next week with Val's son, Shaun who lives near Quesada (about 20 km away from us).

As way of a minor footnote, its been two weeks since I part exchanged the Barchetta for a Citroen Picasso, it was a very sad day, not made any easier by liesl's comment when we test drove the Picasso - "its not as quick as the Barchetta is it?" The Picasso is a MUCH more practice car, its large enough for our shopping and the seats go down so collecting large items is not a problem, its a diesel and does about 1000km to a full tank, where the Barchetta struggled to get 300km to the same size tank, it has cruise control and satnav although the latter is not working at the moment as the CD is for Belguim! I still pine for the Barchetta, as does Liesl, but we didn’t come here to have everything that we want, we came here to have a less stressful and more relaxed way of life and I guess a convertible, hand built Italian sports car doesn’t fit with that ideal however much I would like it to.

14/4 - Is The Sun Here To Stay????

Well today we had a fantastic sunny day, and to be fair the weather has really picked up this week - even at night the tempreture has not dropped below about 20 degrees, so its nice and pleasent to go out even late at night and walk in shorts and a tee shirt (no Dave its not the alcohol that is keeping me warm, although I admit it may be helping - hehe).

This last week has been pretty busy for both Liesl and I work-wise, which is good, on Friday we went down to the Spanish bar to have our weekly Spanish evening, this week was particularly good and Isobel (the owner) has now started to regularly bring out plates of tapas for us to try, she was on good form that evening and we had a really nice night - Liesl's Spanish is just getting better and better (I am typing this whilst listening to her have her Spanish lesson over the Internet with Claudio and she is miles better than me, I really should pull my finger out and start to study!).

On Saturday we spent the evening with our friends Paul and Jackie, they came to our place for a meal and a few drinks, a great night was had by all.

On Sunday afternoon we walked along the Los Arinales prominade with Liesl's Mum, Ken and his brother (Adrian) and his wife (Margaret), we have spent some time with them over the past couple of weeks while they have been visiting Ken and Heather (they are over here looking for a place to buy), really nice people. Hetty was particularly happy that Adrian was here as he was test driving his scooter, so she decided that she was old enough to qualify for a ride (see if you can spot her in the picture!)

After the walk we all went for a meal at La Fantasia (a new resturant about 2 minutes walk from our apartment - good meal.

14/4 - Gran Alacant or Beirut?

Building work is carrying on at a pace on our urbanisation, over the past couple of weeks we have had scaffolding erected around our block - right up to the apartment and there is a gang of around 10 men that start work at 8am and finish at 8pm who spend most of the day making as much noise as possible (I'm told that this is all part of their job, but I am certain that they are doing it with the sole intent of pissing me off!)

I guess it had to happen at some point, we desperately need the blocks to be renovated and we are paying a great deal of money to make it happen so it was inevitable that they would get around to us at some point - I am just glad that they have started and, hopefully, our bit will be completed soon and we can get back to some sort of normality - I mean its affecting us in so many different ways, not just the noise, we are not able to dry clothes as we used to hang them over the balcony, now there are several men on scaffolding and lots of dust so that’s out of the question - we are having to try to dry them indoors (no central heating remember) or take them over the Heather and Ken's place at the weekend and hang them up in their garden.

As you can see from the pics (and they were taken after the workmen had cleaned up for the day!). It’s not the best view we have ever seen from our balcony!

The weather here is still changable, its been said that the Spanish have never seen this length of rainy weather before - typical eh? Anyway, its all set to change, according to the forecast, on Monday the sun comes back and the tempretures shoot up, we are not due to get any more rain until around December!

10/4 - Medieval Fair

Out local town – Santa Pola – had a Medieval Fair on over the Easter holiday (Santa Semana in Spanish!) so we decided to take a look.

The stall holders had clearly gone to a lot of trouble to make their stalls look medieval, they even took to dressing up in old attire, Liesl and I couldn’t figure out whether they travelled around Spain holding these type of markets all the time (and therefore styled their stalls that way) or whether they had gone to special effort for this time of year, as you know Spain is a very religious country and it wouldn’t surprise us if they had these ‘special’ stalls stacked away just for this one weekend of the year!

Either way they were very impressive.

In typical Spanish style they made sure that the children were well catered for, with free amusements in the park area, they could learn to use a bow and arrows, play medieval games or just use the swings etc that had been setup to look Medieval.

Whilst wandering around the market we spotted a woman dressed up in a witches outfit, we watched her for a while until, to our astonishment, she was nothing to do with the market, her outfit was simply what she had decided to wear on that day!

6/4 - So Much For Global Warming!

The weather has not been that great here over the past few weeks, however we woke up this morning to torrential rain, worse than anything I had previously seen, as you can see from the first picture, the water was streaming down the window and bouncing off of the scaffolding outside (remember we are being renovated at the moment, so most of our days are spent having to listen to pneumatic drills outside the apartment!).

The strange thing was that by mid-day the storm had cleared and it ended up being a gorgeous day!
Very strange weather for this time of year!

5/4 - Catch Up!

Blimey, it’s been a manic few weeks, work has been very very busy and the social life has been pretty busy too as you will see from this post. We have just been too busy even to post on the blog to keep you up to date!

24/3 - A Saturday and the date of the first urbanisation meeting that we can actually attend. Every 6 months or so the "community" in which we are members, basically our estate, all get together to shout at each other in very loud Spanish. The idea is sound, everyone gets in a room and discusses their issues and the community as a whole (well those that are there anyway) vote to approve or deny various things. The meeting is chaired by the committee that we have all voted in. In reality the English and non-Spanish speaking are told to sit on one place (so that the translator can try to translate to them), the Spanish sit in another area and generally the meeting goes something like this....

1. Agenda point 1 is raised by the committee.

2. Someone (or everyone) in the Spanish area shout every loudly about something, they get up and wave their arms around and shout some more.

3. Some type of agreement is reached, generally with some more shouting and waving of hands.

4. The translator tells the non-Spanish speakers what has happened and what agreement has been made (lol, so much for having a 'voice'!)

Anyway, this day is when the manic part of our past few weeks started, my business partner, Richard and his girlfriend, Caz were visiting us on the same day so we knew things were going to be tight on time but we thought that we would have enough time to go to the meeting and then rush to the airport to collect them. This was all fine until the night before the meeting I received a call from a customer asking me to visit them on Saturday morning - not being in a position to turn away work I agreed, so then Liesl had to find her own way to the meeting, I had to go to the customer and we hoped still to be able to meet Richard & Caz at the airport.

Well the Saturday didn’t start well for me, it took me 45 minutes to find my customer's address, I asked about 10 people, greeting them all with a happy "Buenos Dias" followed by a request in Spanish for them to help me find the address, all of them replied with "wot, sorry m8, I'm not Spanish", finally I decided to ring my client (after being 15 minutes late at this point) only to find out that I had no credit left on my mobile - nightmare!

I found a shop and bought 15€ of credit and because I was out of mobile area the credit wouldn’t go on the phone, I therefore had to drive about 2 miles to get the credit to work, when i looked at the phone I noticed that I had a missed call from my client asking where I was! I was now 30 minutes late!

I finally managed to speak to my customer and he gave me directions to his place (totally different area to where I was asking for directions!) and I finally arrived 45 minutes late, he was very pleasant about it - people are so laid back here.

As I had started late at his house I was late finishing and had to drive like a maniac back to where Liesl was at the community meeting, I was hoping to be able to collect her and go straight to the airport, but in typical Spanish style, the meeting had only just got past point number 1 on the agenda!

I had to therefore go off to the airport on my own, leaving Liesl with what looked like blood seeping from her ears - poor thing, she said that at one point she was sure that a fist fight was going to start!

I collected Rich & Caz and got back to pick Liesl up, the meeting was far from over and I believe that she had voted about 6 times already (the first vote being to decide whether a member of the audience would be allowed to record the proceedings or not!), anyway, she had had enough (poor thing) so we decided to leave them to it.

That weekend we had a great time with Rich & Caz eating and drinking far too much, they seemed to enjoy themselves and they returned to the UK on the Tuesday evening.

Both Liesl and I were very busy with work on Wednesday and Thursday and didn’t go out in the evenings, on Friday we had a friend over for drinks - Janice, she is an estate agent and fluent Spanish speaker, she has really helped me out when I had issues with Telefonica.

On Saturday I had promised to help Ken lay some gravel around his house, but again, circumstances conspired against us and a customer rang with an urgent problem that meant I had to go into Alicante late on Friday to collect a new printer and then go into Guardarmar on Saturday morning to set it up for them, making me about 1.5 hours late for Ken - I felt bad not being able to get to him on time because he had already started on his own but I have to take the work when I can get it.

On Saturday afternoon we went to look at a house we had previously visited with a view to buying it, the place is lovely, however its over our budget and we would really have to stretch to get it - don’t know what we will do yet. In the evening we went out to a pub with Ken and Heather, there was a live band playing, it was a nice night out.

On the Sunday we met up with friends Bob and Jackie who are currently over from the UK, they have a place about 40 minutes drive from us, we spent the afternoon with them and in the evening we took them to our Spanish evening and had a great time.

And that pretty much brings us up to date, last night (4th April) we went to Henta Hista Alegre (a restaurant in Santa Pola that hosts a charity dinner dance on the first Wednesday of every month), there were about 150 people there, we had a 5 course meal with as much wine as you can drink, all for 12€ each - and they still manage to make a tidy profit to give to their cancer charity - we were there with Ken, Heather, Jackie and Paul (our friends from La Marina), Brian and Lynn (neighbours and friends of Ken and Heather).

22/3 - Out For Meal With Peter

This evening we met up with Peter (an old work collegue from Getronics) and his wife Val, we had a lovely meal at Picasso's in La Marina.

Afterwards we went to a very Spanish bar close to the resturant, in there they were playing very loud, very Spanish guitar music, all in all, a great evening and it was fantastic catching up with Peter, he had just signed for his villa near Murcia, its finally built and I think that they are both looking forward very much to spending some time there chilling!

16/3 - A Weekend Away

This evening we were invited to visit our friends Pam and Dave (the ones that we bumped into at the market), they have a fantastic villa in San Miguel. We were late leaving home to drive to their house (about 50 minutes away) because I had to wait for a delivery from Dell, deliveries here are a nightmare, in the UK its bad enough as you generally get a time slot of morning or afternoon, but with the extended working day here (because of the mid day siesta), the time slot is any time from 8am to 9pm! Finally the package arrived at 6:10pm and we left to visit our friends. About half way there I got it in my head that I had left the door unlocked, so we had to turn around and drive back only to find that, of course, I HAD locked up properly!

We finally arrived at the pub our friends were waiting for us in about 1.5 hours late – they had already started drinking, only to be sociable you understand ;-)

We had a meal with them in the pub and a couple of vino tintos, and then retired at about 10:30 to their place – only to open another bottle of wine so that we had something to drink in the spa! Yes they have a spa located on their first floor terrace – posh eh?

I went to be at about midnight, leaving Liesl up having what she described as a ‘girly chat’ with Pam until 3am! Heaven knows what a ‘girly chat’ is but I daren’t ask!

The next morning we went back down to the same pub for a ‘full English’ breakfast, although I suspected that Liesl had an “itsy bitsy” hangover – lol. Although the breakfast was not exactly Spanish, it was really nice and set us up for the day.

During breakfast we met up with Bill & Avril, who are neighbours of Pam and Dave and after breakfast we all went off to the boardwalk at La Mata. It was a beautiful day and it was lovely walking along the wooden promenade for what seemed like miles, at one point we left the main boardwalk to walk slightly away from the coast into a wooded area that had hidden water features – check out the pics!

We stopped for drinks at the end of the boardwalk and from the café could actually see the building in which our friends Bob and Jackie own – they should be out in a week or so, it will be great to catch up with them! After our drinks we returned along the boardwalk until we came across a tapas bar – well it would have been rude not to stop wouldn’t it? So we all had tapas and some more drinks!

Finally we got back to the cars and drove home, a fantastic weekend which we would love to do again – hint, hint Pam!

10/3 – BBQ in March???

Paul and Jackie invited us to their villa for a BBQ (first of the season), it was a glorious day, really nice and sunny and it stayed warm right into the evening.

Paul cooked, as you can see, and made a chicken paella!

It was great – yes I did eat it!

We had a great evening and I hope we are invited back again soon!

8/3 – Windy Or What!

Well last night was more than just a “little bit windy!”

We had a tree on the urbanisation snapped in half and some of the street signs have actually been bent at their metal base – all because of the high winds – have a look at the pictures!

Many people have lost ridge tiles and more from their houses and there is debris everywhere.

7/3 – Dinner Dance

This evening we went to a dinner dance with Ken and Heather at a local Spanish restaurant, a group from La Marina organise it regularly and it’s a great night out, very cheap at only 20 € (that’s for the 2 of us), and that includes a 3 course meal, all the wine you can drink and a dance – not bad really!

As you can see everyone had a great time.

Liesl drove home and the weather was terrible, it was as windy a night as I have ever known it.

2/3 - Friends, Food, Wine and Pools!

This evening our friends from La Marina, Paul and Jackie came around for a meal, Liesl cooked her ‘famous’ Spanish chicken and I made baked Alaska for desert, it was a great night and had been a very warm day so although we didn’t have to resort to turning on the air conditioning, it was warm enough to have the ceiling fans on for most of the night – not bad for March!

We had a look at the lunar eclipse, but although the sky was perfectly clear, to be honest I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about – pretty under whelmed with the event really – perhaps the amount of wine that I had drunk was having an effect on my ability to see properly.
Towards the end of the evening Paul offered an invite to his house on Sunday, if the weather was again good, to have a dip in the pool, I accepted, the girls thought we were both mad.

Needless to say Sunday was another scorcher and when we had walked Hetty (this time on La Marina beach for a change), we drove over to Paul and Jackie’s villa and Paul and I jumped into the pool, it was fantastic; I wouldn’t say that it was warm by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly acceptable, again, not bad for March!

This evening, Sunday, we are going to go down to the Sunset Bar to attempt to speak some more in Spanish, my friend Xavi, pronounced Shabi, is going to come down and chat as well – he writes the web site for our urbanisation http://www.carabassi.net/granalacant

1/3 - Playing Truant

Last night we were booked to attend a ‘murder mystery’ night at the InterClub, however as we were walking out of the door Liesl said “you know what I really fancy an Indian” so, taking this to mean a meal and not the guy that lives in the next block, we drove down to Safron’s Indian Resturant – http://www.saffron.biz – we had a great meal.

The owner and the waiter spotted us looking at this months Jungle Drums article and we ended up in conversation about it, they had both said that they had read it and had found it very interesting - its really good to hear that people enjoy it and find it useful!

After the meal we decided to pop into Raffles Bar - http://www.raffles-alicante.com – after we had dropped the car back home, for a quick glass of vino tinto.

We had a chat with the owners, also Pam and Dave (not to be confused with the friends we had around for a meal last Friday) and they introduced us to Anne and John who have recently opened a bodega (sort of Spanish off licence, but their main trade is selling wine straight from the barrel which is very common in Spain), its only a short walk (or stagger) away, so we stopped and had another drink and chatted to them.

Then Liesl’s Irish accent was picked up by a fellow countryman and that resulted in more glasses of wine and conversation, then finally we bumped into, at the bar, a couple that we had met last November in Cocoas Bar whilst they were out on holiday – they had recently taken possession of their new villa, it was great to catch up with them, they were over again for the week to complete some paperwork, so as you can guess that lead to more drinks and conversation!

By the end of the evening we were well and truly ‘oiled’ so we staggered home to bed – great night out!