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.
Monday, 20 August 2007
Sunday, 12 August 2007
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.
The following week dictated more work, as usual, however whilst driving from a custom
er’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 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.
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.
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 ove
r 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.
r 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 custom
er’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.
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.
Sunday, 15 July 2007
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 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 we
nt 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 a
nd 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!
Rich and Caz we
nt 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 a
nd 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
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
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!
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!
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!
Saturday, 30 June 2007
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.
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!
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!
Friday, 22 June 2007
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 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?
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