Until Death Do Us Part

So here we go, into another New Year and as I commence drafting this first ramble of 2024 I am sat in my favourite position on the balcony reflecting on the last twelve months, and looking forward to what the next few months of this new year has in store for us. Shazza is stood ironing in the living room whilst watching one of her Netflix series, she says that it helps with the boredom of conducting the task.

Since returning from our Munich trip, the weather here in this little corner of southern Spain has been quite good, nice and sunny and warm with mid-afternoon temperatures reaching 22 degrees(c) with only slight Westerly breezes, which have made it pleasant enough to go for our walks wearing short-sleeved shirts, and being able to sit outside at a cafe enjoying a coffee whilst conducting the usual pastime of people watching, it of course would have been rude not to. There is always some sort of activity to watch out on the sea, not as busy and as hectic as in the Summer just the local fishermen in their small rowing boats, checking the nets they put out earlier, close to the shoreline, their small wooden boats bobbing around whilst they skilfully haul the nets into the boats, there are still some small leisure craft that occasionally pass and small sailing yacht’s, there are of course always freighters on the horizon, slowly chugging along to destinations unknown and high in the clear blue sky are several vapour trails of the aircraft. On the beach there are the usual array of dog walkers, they are allowed to walk their animals on the beach during the Winter months, a small group of rod and line fishermen trying their luck in the calm waters and their are even a few people sunbathing, I make an assumption that they are the Winter sun tourists although to be honest they could be locals, as it is still the festive holiday season here and so the schools are still closed. It is a very calm scene that is playing out in front of us, the conversations from passers by along the promenade and the other people who are sat around us is not intrusive, it just adds to the overall ambience. It is sometimes difficult to remember that it is still Winter here, but then there are days such as this one, that serve as a reminder as to the season that we are in, for we had awoken to a rather dull morning, the sky grey and overcast, there is no warming sunshine today and we have had a little bit of drizzly rain, although that didn’t last long, but without the warming sunshine it feels chilly, not cold enough to have to put the heating on, but we both need to wear our thicker warmer fleeces. The ‘Works of Fiction’ have forecast that the sunshine will return tomorrow, it doesn’t stay grey here for very long but neither does the forecast always turn out to be correct, not that it matters for it will be a shopping day for us, so rain or shine is pretty much irrelevant as we will only be stepping in and out of a car into a supermarket then taking it home again to unpack and place it all into it’s respective storage areas.

Shazza and I have, generally speaking, celebrated the majority of our Christmas periods somewhere in the UK, although, over the last few years we have spent some of our festive periods in other Countries, on campsites or Motorhome Aires in either Portugal, Morocco and also some here in Spain, and since purchasing what had been our ‘Bolt Hole’ property we have done quite a few here, but it has been quite interesting to experience the slight variations in which Christmas is celebrated in those different countries.

Officially, Christmas kicks off on the 25th of December and carries on until the 6th of January and, it is on that day, that in the UK at least, you are meant to take your Christmas decorations down, as leaving them up any longer is supposed to be bad luck. However, many people these days do not stick to those traditions and do not leave their decorations up that long, more often than not, on January 2nd, when the bank holiday period is over, and the majority of the shops tend to re-open at their normal business hours and lots of people have to return back to work, their decorations already having been taken down and packed back into their respective storage boxes, placed back up into lofts, or down into cellars, to gather dust for another year, it is a time when living rooms and hallways start to look bleak and empty.

However, here in Spain, the Christmas celebrations do continue until the 6th January, because on that day it is the ‘Feast of the Epiphany’ or, as it is better known over here, ‘Three Kings Day’ which, religiously, and Nationally, is a celebration of the adoration of the baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men, Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar who travelled many miles overland 🎶 Whilst Shepherds washed their socks at night 🎶 🤭 to present baby Jesus with three symbolic gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh. They are said to have ridden on a horse, a camel and an elephant, although to be honest, in every picture I have ever seen, all three were riding upon camels 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, I am making an educated guess that most of you probably already knew all of the above 🤔 In many Catholic countries, whilst it is National holiday, it isn’t generally associated with gift giving, despite the association with the presentation of the Three Wise Men’s gifts. But here in Spain, on the 6th January, towns and cities celebrate and put on parades to mark the occasion. There are floats with effigies of each of the Three Wise Men, or they may even be real people dressed up as the Three Kings. Either way, these are colourful parades that make their way through the main streets of the town, with handfuls of sweets being thrown out to the crowds. These are fun, light-hearted parades, in contrast to some of the more sombre parades during Holy Week, or Semana Santa. Just like children waiting for Father Christmas, Spanish children also have to go to bed early after watching the parades, they leave their best pair of shoes, sparkling clean, outside their doors to be filled with gifts. Again, just like with Father Christmas, Spanish children write letters to the Three Wise Men before the big day, and leave out snacks and drinks for the camel, horse and elephant. Naughty children might get sweet ‘coal’ in their shoes instead of gifts but in reality, none of the ‘Little Darlings’ ever do. On January 6th, Spanish families and friends gather together and cut into a sweet treat called Roscón de Reyes, a circular cake filled with cream. If you slice into it and get a figurine of a king then you are a king for the day. If however, you get a bean, you have to pay for the cake, this particular cake is, like the traditional UK ‘Christmas Cake’, a non-negotiable tradition here in Spain during the festive season and we can tell you, from personal experience, that it is absolutely delicious 😋 We have of course attended a couple of these street celebrations over the last few year’s, well you do don’t you, it would be rude not to, but a bit like going to watch the turning on of the Christmas lights and, as we no longer have the responsibility of young children, it isn’t a ‘must do’ on our particular events calendar this year.

Just whilst I am on the subject of Christmas, have you noticed that the Christmas TV Adverts seem to start earlier and earlier each year, the first one we saw last year appeared on our TV screen in September 😲 although personally, we do not consider it to be Christmas until we have seen the traditional ‘Coca-Cola’ truck advert 🎶 Christmas is coming, Christmas is coming 🎶 then we know that it really is the real thing 😂

So, ‘Out With The Old And In With The New’, and I am hoping that Shazza doesn’t take that literally, otherwise I could start this New Year as a homeless person 😁 So after conducting my period of reflection on our previous year’s events, it was interesting to look back on what had been a very exciting, nervous and often frustrating year. This time last year when we were just commencing, what would turn out to be, our very last ninety-day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ visit to our ‘Bolt Hole’ in Spain, a period that would see us decide to commence the administrative processes and procedures for obtaining our ‘Non-Lucrative Visa’s’ for obtaining our residency here in Spain. However, at that point we had certainly not foreseen that we would also decide to sell our much loved Motorhome, the ‘Little Fokker’, and bring to and end over 25 years of owning what had been five different Motorhomes, and the last 10 year’s of our full-timing lifestyle 😢 So yes, there is still a tinge of sadness and even now, there are still times when we look at different places all around Europe and say to ourselves, “If we still had the Motorhome”, but we have no actual regrets, it was a decision made out of practicality and as we have certainly discovered over the last 15 years or so, things happen for a reason, although often, at the time, you may not realise what that reason was.

As we enter 2024, we know that we already have a few coals in the fire so to speak, dates in our diary, including one that has literally only just unexpectedly been entered on to our calendar, that being an unscheduled visit by some of Shazza’s relatives, in six weeks time. Their visit will be followed, just two weeks later, by the deconstruction of our current twenty-year old kitchen, and the installation of a brand new one. In between those two events we will be finalising all of our travel arrangements for our trip to Austria in August, for the large family gathering. We will be flying in and out of Munich again and then travelling by train from their into the Austrian Alps, we have already pre-booked our overnight hotel accommodations in Munich for both the inward and outward journeys of that trip. We will pre-book our flights, hopefully by the end of January, and then, once we have confirmed those flight timings, we will once again advance pre-book our car parking at Malaga airport. Towards the end of February, we will also pre-book our return rail travel to Austria, we cannot do that before as the Summer schedules are not released until then. The hotel accommodation in Austria has already been pre-booked by my daughter, as she is organising the actual event.

Shortly after that we will have to make a start on the administrative processes and procedures to renew our Spanish residency visa’s, but at least this time they will be valid for a further two year’s and it is nowhere near as laborious, or time consuming, as the initial procedures, the bulk of the administrative procedures actually being done on our behalf by our very efficient and reliable Spanish Solicitor’s.

At some point, after the new kitchen has been installed, we will be looking at doing a complete re-decoration of the apartment, something that Shazza and I will do ourselves and, at some point in the near future, although we have not decided exactly when, we will be having our main bedroom en-suite completely replaced and a more modern one installed, potentially by the firm doing our new kitchen installation, subject of course to how good a job they make of it 🤔 This is now our permanent home not just an occasional ‘Bolt Hole’, so whilst everything in it is currently fully serviceable, it is a twenty year old property with mainly original fixtures and fittings, so it does need some updating which will then last us, hopefully, for at least another twenty-years, or better still, ‘Until Death Do Us Part’ 🤭 We also have some other minor, but time consuming, DIY tasks to do and you all know how enthusiastic I am about DIY, most people think that the three letter abbreviation stands for ‘Do It Yourself’, however in my case it actually usually means ‘Destroy It Yourself’ so, personally speaking, I would prefer to use the alternative term of PSETDI (Pay Someone Else To Do It). Shazza ‘suggests’ that now that ‘we’ have all the tools, including Power Drills, Sanders, Dremmel Tool Gadgets etc. that I should at least attempt all of these jobs myself, she rejected outright my more time and cost economical suggestion of just letting the professional tradesperson have the use of my equipment, perhaps for a small discount on the bill, thereby getting the job(s) done correctly the first time around 🤷‍♂️

So you can probably appreciate now why I have always said that Shazza and I make such a good team, what with my ‘perceived’ OCD, which enables meticulous preparation and planning, I am also pretty good with personal finances, both budgeting and the forward financial planning aspects, if not quite as meticulous with DIY. Shazza on the other hand has a much better competency with technology, for both research purposes and any on-line booking side of things. This teamwork had always worked well for us when we were full-timing in our van and so it is an already tried and tested model.

So you may be wondering about our ‘other’ travel plans 🤔 I have always said in these rambles, since taking the decision to take permanent residency here in Spain, that whilst our Motorhome adventures may have come to an end, that does not mean that our travel adventures will also come to an end, we will just have to do them in a different way. This is where we have agreed to permit ourselves to remain a little more impulsive and spontaneous, which for someone who ‘supposedly’ suffers with OCD, according to Dr Shazza, you may think will be a big ask, but to be honest, we have always managed quite well when we were living and travelling full-time in our Motorhomes, especially when having to deal with some of the unanticipated obstacles that the ‘Dark Forces’ would occasionally put in our way.

In reality, for ‘some’ people, OCD is actually a real and quite debilitating behavioural condition, in a potentially similar ‘Spectrum’ as those that suffer with Autism, although more usually without suffering the severe personal communication difficulties. But there are obvious similarities, people with expert medically ‘confirmed’ OCD, do also obsess about things, they have to do the most routine of tasks in the same way, all the time, everytime, and can spend many hours, or even days, thinking about doing these things and how they are going to do them, so it too can be quite a debilitating behavioural condition, especially when it comes to employment. Now I generally tend to laugh when Shazza says to me, and other’s, that I suffer with OCD, when actually what she really means is that she gets irritated with me because I am a consummate planner, especially if she wants an immediate decision on something, but I want to think about the in’s and out’s of it first. I tell her that her irritation is a ‘Woman Thing’, she just says that I suffer with ‘OCD’ and all she wants is a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ answer, but in truth, generally the answer she wants is preferably the former 😂

So with our further afield more Long Haul ‘Bucket List’ trips, they will certainly entail a much higher degree of planning and organising, so whilst I can say ‘Yes’ quite quickly, the actual ‘doing’ of them may take just a little bit longer 🤭 We want to visit Iceland, but it is just a little too active with ‘Fissures’ there at the moment, 🎣 🤔, No not those sort of Fisher’s. We also want to do a visit to Japan, but that trip too is looking a little shaky at the moment. Sometimes our trips do not happen immediately as it may just be down to being the wrong climatic conditions, so there are lots of other things, not just my planning delays, that are beyond our control and which may get in the way of conducting some of the trips on our ‘Bucket Lists’, we each have our own, so that could also prove interesting, do we toss a coin to decide which trips we do ? Do we do one trip off one list, then do another off the other list ? Somehow I cannot see it as being as simple as that, perhaps there is a reason why Shazza suggested that we recently went and purchased new separate travel bags 😲

However, we also want to do a lot more road trips within Spain, as well as further afield within Europe, and they will probably be the unplanned spur of the moment decisions, whether they be day trips, weekend breaks or extended trips and, when I say ‘Spur of the moment’, in truth they may still entail a day or two to just stop and think about the in’s and the out’s 🤭 Perhaps Shazza will also suggest that we purchase separate cars 😂 Other considerations for such trips will be the transportation methods, do we, for convenience, use our own car ? Do we take Buses, Trains or Flights, or a combination of all of them ? Of course, all of this has to be co-ordinated with other things that have to be done within our everyday normal routine life and commitments, and even things that may happen that are unanticipated, we both have elderly parents still living in the UK, so will we need to make a sudden unscheduled dash back to the UK ? Apart from Funerals, one of which may be forthcoming sooner rather than later, but thankfully there are no Weddings, Births or Christenings on the horizon.

So I suppose some of you may now be sympathising with Shazza, and have a better understanding of why, when we have our morning conference discussions and she presents her question to me of ‘What do you want to do today ?”, that she has in fact already decided exactly what it is that we are going to be doing, and why any answer that I may provide, bears absolutely no relevance to the actual outcome of her question 😂

So, unlike our Motorhome travel days, when we were continually on the move and I could write my rambles on a regular weekly basis, often even more frequently than that, but now, living this more ‘Conventional’ lifestyle, we will not be making such routine trips, or at least not in the short term, so these rambles may also now become less frequent, although most of you know me by now and if I can find something to ramble on about, I will, much like this one 😉

So as we approach the final week of the festive period here in Spain, once those Three Kings have paraded through the streets, our daily and weekly lives will become very much more routine again, unless that is of course that you, or the ‘dark forces’, know otherwise……… 😲

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena