Liesl’s update - 2008

January came with the usual New Year’s resolutions! – more exercise, less food, less drink – learn new Spanish words each day!– keep up to date with the Blog! Well none of that happened, but at least we can try to bring the Blog up to date now!

BlueMoon had their quarterly director’s meeting in January and Rich Foster and Sean voted for the venue to be here in Gran Alacant (I wonder why? LOL). They arrived on the Friday afternoon and we made the mistake of going out to the Mexican restaurant across the road where they always finish off the meal by challenging you to have loads of tequila slammers! Needless to say, the planned meeting for the next day could not start until about 1.30pm as everyone felt so ill! Tequila was definitely a mistake the night before the 8 hour long meeting! I have to say I felt I needed to stay out of their way the next day to let them get on with the meeting so I “had” to stay in bed all day!

Our Spanish is improving albeit slowly. We met a couple Eve and Kris (Spanish girl married to English lad) and they have invited us to a few meals which were all in Spanish! One was a typical English Sunday lunch – even with the Yorkshire pudding! Eva wanted to introduce her Spanish friends to this English delicacy! When Eva’s parents came to stay they invited us to a BBQ one evening and we chatted away in Spanish! Our Spanish seemed to become better the more wine we drank…..I spotted Eva’s Mum looking at me sympathetically and saying to Eva “ Well at least she is trying…” When her parents had enough of the pigeon Spanish, they went to bed, and Kris and Eva dragged us out to a pub. When we go out with them we never get home before 2am and we always leave them partying! These young people have too much stamina!!!

We went back to England for the first time since we moved over here. We actually drove over as I had lots of files to take back to a customer and Richard had lots of computer equipment to bring back to Spain. The whole trip took 10 days – 3 days to drive there, 3 days to drive back leaving only a short time there. We stayed with Dave 3 nights and Chris and Linda for 1 night, and managed to fit in seeing practically everyone (no mean feat!) It snowed in England on the Sunday and when we got back home to Spain we couldn’t believe that the next Sunday we spent on the beach and I even got sunburnt!

I met my step-sister Synthia for the first time when she came over with her husband Scott to stay with Mum and Ken. We had a great night out and got on really well with them. I would really like to get to know her better – she is lovely! She bought me a lovely fashionable pair of sunglasses!

My belly dancing class was asked to do a couple of dances in the San Fulgencio theatre when they were playing “The Orient Express”. By the time the show had arrived, there were only 3 dancers left in the group – I think the other ladies were avoiding the class because of the show! Richard, Ken, Mum, Brian and Linda watched as the 4 of us girls went on in our red and black belly dancing outfits and “shook” our bits to the music. Unfortunately I have more bits than the others! After the show, there was a party backstage and then we decided to go off to a cave pub nearby.

We made a weekend of it and took Mum and Ken up to Finca Bonelli’s Eagle in the mountains behind Creveillente. They had been looking forward to their trip and were not disappointed with the food or accommodation.

Whilst my work has been reducing constantly, Richard’s has been increasing. Apart from building up the customer base over here in Spain, he has also spent 10 days in England doing some consultancy. Richard is considering expanding our business by teaching me all he knows about computers ……… I think that might take many years!!!! As my work slows down, I will have the chance to figure out what I want to do next – although Rich says that being a lady of leisure is NOT an option LOL

2007 catch Up!!!

Well it’s been a while! Work is going great, it’s been getting busier and busier which is really encouraging, Liesl and I are sitting in front of the TV with printouts of what we have done in the past 3 months hoping to get the blog up to date, so here goes...

Back at the end of September, 26th in fact, we went to a variety show in Torreveija with Bob and Jackie, it was a great evening, we weren't expecting much as it was just a small performance to get the acts ready for their "main" performance in a few weeks but it was a great night, we had a meal at the event together with the show all for a very reasonable price of 25 euro’s for the two of us! Part of the show, and unbeknown to us, was a belly dancing section where a lovely young lady performed for us on stage - Liesl later found out (when we were leaving) that the girl was the daughter of her own belly dancing teacher (yep, Liesl started belly dancing lessons - hehe).

On the 29th September Liesl's Dad and Margaret (who may or may not be engaged to him - long story) arrived for 2 weeks, it was almost a year to the day that they visited last time and it was good to see them again, we were keen to show them what we had done with our social and business lives and with the apartment.
We were both quite busy with work, so they were very understanding and took themselves off to various places during most of the days and returned in the evening carrying more "supplies", it was very kind, if not a little embarrassing, for them to spend so much buying shopping for us, they not only replaced, many times over the amount of wine that they had drunk but they also went over the top on some supplies (in fact we are still working out way through the toilet rolls they bought - blimey, they must have been worried about our cooking!

On the 3rd October we took them to the monthly dinner dance, we met up with friends Gerry and Trisha and some of their neighbours and had a great evening, as you can imagine with all the free wine on offer Gary had a great time!

On the 8th October Liesl and I declared it a holiday and we took the day off work and went with Gary and Margaret to Morraira which has always been described as a sleepy fishing village about an hour’s drive north of where we live - I don’t know so much about the "sleepy village" bit because after sucessions of tourist buses I think that the sleep had been taken out of the place, however it was still a very nice and picturesque place to visit and we had a great time.

On the 14th October, Gary and Margaret flew back to Ireland, both Liesl and I had thoroughly enjoyed their company. On the 20th October we had Paul and Jackie around for a meal, we always enjoy their company and this time they bought Shamoo (their dog) with them, like Hetty, Shamoo is much more than a pet and they both dote over her!

Work for both Liesl and I was relentless during October and although it’s encouraging to get so much work it’s also worrying that we could be falling into "old habits" and spending more and more time with the nose to the grindstone, ne need to be careful that we don’t end up losing sight of why we came to Spain.

During November, amist the renovation work that was going on around us in our little 3 bedroomed flat, another company were laying gas mains pipes around the urbanisation, it seems that piped gas had finally arrived to Gran Alacant, not that we were going to be taking advantage of it as it would work out more expensive for us (at the moment we go through 1 gas bottle every 2 months at a cost of only 12 euros - why change?)

Anyway, whilst the Spanish workers were digging through the car park to lay the pipe, they managed to cut right through the water main - yep, 30ft of water straight up into the air! Not to be outdone, the other builders decided to use the expelled water to wash their cars and proceeded to carefully reverse them under the jet of water - priceless!

Work on the renovation of the apartment has moved on at speed, both sides of our apartment have now been completed and we are finally free of scaffolding!, as you can see from the picture there is a huge difference between the work that has been completed and the work that has yet to be started, hopefully within a few short months the rest of our block will be completed and we will be totally free of the view of scaffolding.

In November my work stepped up another gear as we managed to take on quite a few "business" customers (the main stay of our customer base), word was starting to get around that we offer an IT service to match the needs of our customers at an affordable price and that we, unlike many other computer people here, actually do know what we are talking about!

December was a short month and marked the end of a full year for BlueMoon, each month of 2007 we had broken the self enforced target and each month had been stronger than the previous one, it was a great start and even in our dreams we could not have hoped to have been so fortunate to achieve what we did.

In addition to the increasing work commitments and the ever welcome social engagements we were attending, Liesl had signed us up (since October) for 4 additional hours classroom Spanish, at an intermediate level!

Each week was getting busier and busier, sometimes I wonder how we ever found the time to sleep. The Spanish was great, although finding time to do it alongside all of our other commitments was difficult, but we managed it and our Spanish has improved no end because of it.

Its tradition for many of the towns and villages in Spain to build nativity models and one of the biggest is in Torreveija, Liesl’s mum had heard great things about it and wanted to go and see it so in the evening we drove down and parked outside the square in front of the church where the model had been built, it was amazing!

We all commented that it just wouldn’t happen in the UK, first of all the whole thing was open to the elements (I guess they don’t really worry about rain here, we haven’t seen any for months!) and then, amazingly, even though the whole thing is left outside for the best part of a month, its not vandalised or molested in any way – that’s not to say that that sort of thing doesn’t happen here, it just that there seems to be a respect for this sort of thing that has been lost in the UK.

The photos just don’t do justice to the scale of the thing, the whole model must have easily been 30ft long by 15ft wide and must have taken months to build!

December was just a blur of social events and work, at one point we had 7 evenings out in 8 days! We went to the BritClub (very ex-pat but nice never the less) Christmas dinner, the usual affair of a 4/5 course meal with wine and entertainment for 25 euros for the two of us!

The entertainment was a table magician, a very good one who visited each table and performed a few tricks during the meal, afterwards we were entertained firstly by a barbershop singing group (very good) and we all joined in on the carols – we both had a great time.

Afterwards the magician came back and asked for an assistant from the audience – yep you guessed it – Liesl was like a dog out of a trap!

On the 14th December Liesl and I were invited to Wii with our friends Denise and Bruce - sounds dangerous but we said yes never the less!) For those of you that don’t know the Nintendo Wii is a games console that took the UK by storm this Christmas, in fact I understand that they were as rare as rocking horse shit.

The concept of this games machine is that you interact with the games not in the conventional way with a mouse or a joystick, no with the wii you hold a controller that wirelessly sends its directional information to the console, and you therefore "play" the game my moving your hands and body around - sounds weird but its sooo much fun!

One of the games that we played was 10 pin bowling, where you actually perform the arm movements as if you were holding a bowling ball, but you are in fact holding a plastic controller, once you release the "ball", you see it fly onto the screen and then, hopefully, crash into the pins knocking them all down. Or in my case just knocking a few down!

It was a great night and there can be not much that you can do that is funnier than watching your friends make total asses of themselves playing golf, 10 pin bowling, baseball and boxing by standing in front of a TV and jiggling around! The week working up to Christmas was just manic with work and it culminated in the receipt of 3 computers (which we had been waiting for the whole week) arriving at 8:30pm on Friday evening!

I worked until midnight on Friday to get them all ready so that they could be delivered and setup in time for Christmas - nightmare!

Christmas Day - today we kept to ex-pat tradition and went with Ken (Liesl's step father) to the beach in La Marina armed with bucks fizz and sausage rolls, the beach was packed with 100's of people who chatted and shared their food and wine with others, it was a really warm day - easily warm enough to get a tan, Liesl even went paddling in the sea!

Someone even did a flypast on their helicopter, flying low over the sea about 20 meters from the beach!

Afterwards we went back to our place where we had prepared the full Christmas dinner thing, we all ate far too much, drank in excess and flaked out in front of the TV for the rest of the day - just how Christmas should be done!

The day after boxing day, my aunt Jen and her partner, Andy arrived for a few days, it was really fantastic to see them.

They were great company from the off and because we had both decided to take the Christmas week off work we had the time to spend with them. We visited La Mata to walk along the boardwalk with them; we went into Alicante to show them the shopping areas and also the "old town" which we prefer.

We walked along the harbour and really enjoyed their company. On the Friday evening we stayed in and cooked, afterwards I produced some old photogra

phs that my grandfather had given me in an album; many of them were of my mum, Jen and their other sister, Elaine as kids. I can’t tell you how poignant it was to go through the photos on that evening, the evening that actually worked out to be the 30th anniversary of my mum's death. It was not at all morbid or upsetting but we all had a good cry!

The following day we took them to a friends house to go orange picking, in less than 30 minutes we had picked enough oranges to see us fine in juice for several weeks!

Their departure marked the end of our visitors for 2007; we had entertained 13 weeks’ worth of visitors in just over 12 months!

Finally, I just wanted to share with you the view that I saw whilst driving to one of my customers one morning last week, it certainly beats pushing my way though the traffic to get to Milton Keynes!

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!