Familiarity Can Breed Contempt

It is funny when you sometimes look back on your life at just how much not only life changes, but how your personal ambitions and goals in life sometimes change too. I remember thinking, probably when I was around my late thirties or very early forties, that my own personal success in life, when I finally reached retirement age, would primarily be measured by how much money I had managed to save in the bank in which to comfortably enjoy those retirement year’s, with the goal of being able to retire mortgage and completely debt free, owning my own house, bungalow or cottage outright, located somewhere where I actually ‘wanted’ to live, not just where I could only afford to live, with of course the metaphoric roses around the door, the nice conservatory and sun drenched patio, for lazing away the warm sunny days looking upon the perfectly mowed and manicured green and weed free lawn, with perhaps a small greenhouse and potting shed tucked away at the bottom of the garden, full of ripening red tomatoes. Naturally there would be the nice brightly polished car on the driveway, for taking us out on day trips, or to a country pub for Sunday lunches or to use to go and visit the children and grandchildren and perhaps even great grandchildren. That was how I was brought up, believing that this end goal was the ‘only’ purpose for working the best part of fifty years of my life.

Now you may be thinking ‘What’s wrong with that ?’, that actually sounds pretty much perfect, and yes, I cannot deny that it does, and I would probably have been perfectly happy if that was how my life had ended up. But life often has the habit of kicking you in the ‘crown jewels’, putting numerous obstacles in your way in an attempt to prevent you from attaining that retirement bliss. I certainly could never have imagined that only one year after celebrating my Silver Wedding Anniversary, that I would quite suddenly find myself divorced, there were no obvious warning signs that my then wife would have an affair with a man ten years my junior, I mean I was still only 47 years old at the time, but there I was, suddenly faced with looking after two daughter’s, a 12 year old, and an 18 year old who had only just left home to commence her University life, but who still needed both emotional and financial support, I was fortunate enough to be able to keep the marital home, but had to get into more debt to pay my ex-wife her half share of it’s value, half of the contents of the Bank balance and half of our meagre savings, my life, my ambitions, my dreams and my long term financial plan had suddenly just crumbled before my very eyes. I was never one to believe in ‘Fate’ or ‘Serendipity’, however, three years later, and then over the next twenty-years, I was to come to believe that both those things did actually exist, and that ‘things do sometimes happen for a reason’ and to discover what real happiness looked and felt like.

During the period, living full time in the Motorhome, Shazza and I both had big plans to travel, although on a very limited, but doable, budget, initially we would travel throughout Europe, but then wider afield, perhaps shipping the van to the USA or Canada and perhaps even to Australia and New Zealand, travelling until such time as we had either done it all, got fed up, or until we were forced to stop due to other reasons. Now circumstances, some of which were totally beyond ‘our’ own control, and other’s through decisions we ourselves were to make, or through family medical issues, prevented those initial much wider travel dreams from coming to fruition, but we had by then both developed ‘Itchy Feet’ syndrome and so the ‘Wanderlust’ remained. Although we had a rough direction of travel, I was more than happy for Shazza to come up with the destinations where we would stop, wether overnight, or for a few days or sometimes even longer, she was always very eager to plan a sort of loose itinerary for the places that we would visit and would spend hours looking at maps and researching guide books for the areas that we were in. But yet again fate was to intervene, although at the time we didn’t know just how big an impact that particular piece of fate, purchasing a ‘Lock and Leave’ property in Spain, was to have on our future lives. Anyway, I have already documented that part of our our lives in my numerous previously published blogs.

However, back to the here and now. It would be fair to say that the processes and procedures of obtaining our Retirement Visas (NLV) to come and live here in Spain on a more permanent basis, was a little more protracted than we had envisaged, although in truth, part of that additional time was the process and procedures for importing our car from the UK, but basically our ‘Itchy Feet’ for some wider travels had to be put on hold, although we have still managed, in our first ten months of living here, to conduct some shorter more localised trips, which you will already be familiar with from the associated rambles I published about them, but I was now beginning to look forward to being able to start to think about planning, and fulfilling, some of our ‘Bucket List’ travels. I have said many times previously in these rambles at just how lucky we feel to have, through ‘Fate’, managed to find ourselves living in a perfect property, in this perfect coastal location in Southern Spain, with everything we need within an easy walking distance, or only a very short drive away, a swimming pool, several beaches, chiringuito’s, shops etc. all quite literally on our doorstep, and it is a location which is very similar to many of the holiday destinations that, in our past conventional lives, we had payed a lot of money to fly out to for a short two-week holiday.

What I had not anticipated was that Shazza would become so content with our location and lifestyle here, that she would not feel the need, or desire, to want to be or go anywhere else, even for a holiday, she feels that living here is just like being on one permanent holiday. Now I fully understand how she feels, to a degree, as I too thoroughly enjoy where we now live, but for me, well what is that saying about ‘Familiarity Can Breed Contempt’, routines can bring ‘boredom’ for me, and so, whilst I do really enjoy this lifestyle and location, I do however still get ‘Itchy Feet Syndrome’, so I still want to travel to see new places, both here in Spain and also much wider afield, not necessarily typically tourist towns, cities or attractions, as I much prefer landscapes and nature, but there will certainly come a time when, for whatever the reason, wether it be age, health, mobility or even just financial constraints, we will not be able to do the sort of travelling that we are still currently able to do 🤷‍♂️ I am also very conscious that I am nearly nine years older than my beloved, and whilst I am still currently very healthy and relatively fit, that age difference ‘may’ start to become more apparent as our future years together progress, a topic that we have discussed between ourselves quite openly several times. However, currently being equally as fit and healthy as Shazza and very much motivated and excited for new travel adventures doesn’t currently help my argument in respect of my potential future geriatric state or for my desire to do things sooner, rather than later 🤔

So, as mentioned in my last ramble, It appeared that I would now have to take over the initiative for getting us ‘both’ out of our ‘Comfort Zones’, planning either day trips locally, like the last one I wrote about, just being within a couple of hour’s drive, but very enjoyable, but also for some wider more extended duration travel trips, to take at some point in the future. Now, wether it be because she is concerned that such trips will be to locations that are completely of my choosing, or because she fears that it may re-ignite the more organised side of my OCD, which she believed she now had under some sort of control, but anyway, whatever the reason, thankfully, and to my complete and utter surprise, the old Shazza suddenly re-ignited.

We were sat on the balcony, it was Wednesday afternoon, just a week after returning from our recent day trip to the ‘Faro de Trafalgar’, when she suddenly blurts out without any kind of pre-warning, “How do you fancy going to Granada ?”, now this has always been a location on our travel ‘To Do List’, “That sounds good, when do you want to go ?” I respond, “On Monday, and we can stay until the Thursday as the Hotel prices are reduced doing the week” she says very excitedly, she had obviously already planned this and looked at the hotels in advance of her sudden announcement to me, as is her more usual modus operandi As soon as I had agreed she was straight on to the on-line accommodation booking site and job done, Yes ! That’s the Shazza I know and love, welcome back, I thought to myself. The rest of that afternoon we both spent looking at ‘Google’ maps, on our own respective iPads, checking out the hotel and its proximity to some of the other places that we had both identified that we wanted to visit in and around the city. Unfortunately, there are parts of the ‘Alhambra’ that require the purchase of tickets to get into, but these are booked up months in advance, however, we discovered that you can still possibly visit various other areas of the extensive grounds without the need to purchase tickets and, with the added bonus of our selected, and now pre-booked hotel, being only a few minutes walk away, so it would be one of the first places that we would visit 👍 Shazza also then got on to one of her ‘You Tube’ foodie channels and has loosely planned a ‘Tapas Route’ in and around the city, listing some of the recommended establishments, and she also identified the area of the city most associated to the origins of the ‘Flamenco’ culture, with some of the renovated traditional cave houses providing hourly shows. So mi amigos, you now you know in advance of what my next ramble after this will be all about 😉

The following morning we just conducted our normal daily routine, a leisurely morning for me on the balcony with my coffee, Shazza in bed with her’s, as usual, but unusually that morning, we were both washed and dressed and out on our daily walk slightly earlier than normal. It has to be said that it was a beautiful morning once again, but with the added bonus that the recent strong winds had subsided, so it was now more of just a very gentle breeze. Whilst in our local town, and after partaking of the now obligatory ‘Cafe con Leche y Tostado’ at our usual Spanish cafe on the seafront promenade, I went to get my haircut, an event that takes place every six weeks or so, I cannot wait to go bald, that will save a few sheckles 😂 Shazza went to the ‘Fruiterias’ to get a few bits for our salad dinner later that evening, our timings were impeccable as just as I had paid for my haircut, Shazza arrived at the door having finished her mini-shop. We never have a plan for how long our walks will take, we can be out for just a couple of hours, other times it can be sometimes four or five, it depends a lot on the weather and our mood. On this particular morning we were both quite excited with the thought of our upcoming adventure to Granada, and that was the subject that monopolised our conversation, so we stopped for another coffee in the town at another one of our now favourite Spanish Cafe’s, a couple of streets back from the seafront promenade, before heading back towards the Marina. Sometimes, if we are just enjoying being out, we will stop at the Marina and have a lunchtime drink and Tapas and, on other occasions we just walk straight through to the village, where we usually park the car, and then we return home. On this particular day neither of us was ready to return home, we were enjoying the sunshine too much, but we were not hungry, so we just stopped and whilst Shazza enjoyed a small cold beer I sat and enjoyed a rather pleasant ‘copa de vino tinto’ (glass of red wine), we practiced our Spanish together by conducting short general conversations with each other, we were both quite pleased with how we have progressed, but we also enjoyed listening in to other people’s conversations at the tables around us, which was easy to do on this occasion as the majority of the customer’s in this particular Marina Cafe were also British, so between that and the usual spot of conducting our ‘Fashion Police’ duties on what people who were passing by were wearing, with just some general people and boat watching thrown in for good measure, which of course would have been so rude not to 🤭 so we easily passed another hour of our not so busy day before returning home. On another day we would have conducted very similar activities, but perhaps in the nearby town of Estepona, just by way of a change of scenery.

So I guess that looking back on our lives, our ambitions, our dreams, there was an acceptance by the both of us, that it is now no longer a case of us continually searching for something, although neither of us really knowing at the time what that something really was, but now we have both found a certain contentment in discovering that, what we once thought that we ‘wanted’, has actually turned into an appreciation of realising what we both already now ‘have’. There is actually no need to rush around from place to place, or even country to country, as contrary to my sometimes unnecessary age anxieties, we do still have plenty of time to conduct many of our travel adventures, or is that just her excuse for keeping me on a healthy plant based diet 🤔 In reality, the truth of the matter is that Shazza prefers her travel adventures to be conducted on a more spontaneous basis, whilst me and my OCD buddy just sometimes need a little more time to formulate a plan 😉 It reminds me of the Nursery Rhyme….. Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean, so between the both of them, they licked the platter clean…….

Until the next ramble……….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos (La Vida Es Buena)