‘Adios’ or ‘Hasta Luego’ ?

As the sun sets at the end of yet another day, and since publishing my last ramble, I have spent a lot of time, usually at night and after Shazza has gone to bed, sat in my favourite chair on the balcony, staring out into the night sky, in deep contemplation, as I have done so more times than I really care to think about recently, on quite a personal and heartfelt matter. That being whether these rambles are now, in all reality, getting to the end of their natural lifespan. Believe it or not, I do wrestle constantly with my conscience where I have been asking myself why anyone would now be interested in reading about our particular lives anymore 🤷‍♂️ When I started with these rambles, very nearly twelve year’s ago now, we were setting out on a big adventure, going from a safe very conventional lifestyle to one where we were heading out into the great unknown, then, I could of course understand why some people would be interested in following our adventures. Of course, for those who have been with us since the beginning of those adventures, you will know that we have experienced many twists and turns, heading in one direction only to find ourselves then going in a completely different one. However, now we have come full circle and are once again back where we started, living a more conventional lifestyle, albeit in a different part of the world from where our journey commenced but, what are we doing now that is any different from you, my reader’s 🤔 So, and whilst I have stated very many times, that I thoroughly enjoy writing about our lives, about life in our own little bubble of existence, often sharing my opinions on life in general that is going on around us, sometimes with my own more cynical outlooks on the world around us, other times with what I hope comes across as a less serious outlook, and a more humorous interpretation of it. But the honest truth is that I am now questioning whether, in reality, our lives are very much different to anyone else’s and why readers would actually be interested in knowing things like, what the weather is like in our part of Spain ? or where we went for a walk ? or stopped for lunch ? or any of the other dozens of everyday normal routines that I now constantly ramble on about which, and let’s be honest here, you must all be doing very similar things yourselves but in your own parts of the world 🤷‍♂️ It isn’t that I am no longer enjoying writing these rambles, as you probably well know by now, I would very likely win every award and gold medal going for spewing out my endless publications of verbal diarrhoea, I even get withdrawal symptoms if I haven’t published one in a week 😂 But I am left now contemplating on whether I should just stop writing them completely, or perhaps just reduce the frequency in which I publish them, or only write about places that we go to, that may be of some interest to some of you. So, I need some honest guidance from you my reader’s, has the time come to finally say a fond farewell, ‘Adios’ as opposed to ‘Hasta Luego’, or would you prefer to just continue to read about our lifestyle, albeit a little less frequently 🤷‍♂️

So, as this may well be my last ramble, I am not going to change my usual format or content, I am just going to go with my usual habit, writing as I generally do about my personal observations, and opinions, on what is going on both locally, and Internationally, in the wider world. I will of course start, without any doubt whatsoever, on telling you about our current weather situation, well it would be rude of me not to really, especially as their has been a big change in our fortunes since the last ramble. So yes, after an unusually elongated period of the wet stuff I can now very happily announce that normal service has finally been resumed 😎 We have also already observed some early ‘Tourist’ arrivals and, as usual, they are rather conspicuous by their holiday attire and pale skin tones 🤭 Although, with the return of the sunshine, and the warm temperatures, which are currently in the low to mid twenties, we too have finally managed to re-introduce the shorts and tee-shirts to our normal daily attire, and boy does that feel good 🤭 Although, to be honest with you, we are not getting overly excited just yet, as we also know that it will, for us, be a short-lived event, what with our impending visit back to the UK looming over us, so no packing away of our more winter style clothing just yet, unless the British ‘Works of Fiction’ can also manage to arrange a heat wave to coincide with our twenty-three days visit, although we will not hold our breaths. It seems that whilst the UK, and some other more Northerly parts of Europe, have been experiencing a sort of mini heatwave recently, the forecast for when we are due to arrive back in dear old Blighty is not looking good, with daily high’s only around 13 degrees(c), and the night temperatures falling to between 1-3 degrees(c) 🥶, I am shivering now, just at the thought of it 😲

Whilst we are obviously more than delighted to see the back end of all the storms that terrorised us for four very long consecutive weeks, and even though they did lower our feel-good factor mood at times, I can still turn a negative aspect into a positive one, for even those stormy events bore a silver lining because, as I type this, our Embalce (La Concepcion) is now sitting at a little over 92% of its total capacity, even though they had to continuously keep draining it over the last four weeks to prevent it from overflowing, but with the run-offs from the storm drains and rivers, continually adding to that figure over the next few days, that should edge us a little closer to the 100% mark although I doubt that they will let it get to the maximum but, as a consequence, it has recently been announced that our personal individual domestic water usage allowance has now been raised by 25 Litres to 250 Litres per day, not that between us we use anywhere near 500 Litres a day, but perhaps, now that we can, we should celebrate this increase by taking two showers a day 😂 I am of course joking as the drought periods we endured, especially over the last year, mean that we do still continue to implement our own personal water usage measures as we appreciate more than ever this essential natural resource.

The local news media headlines above did go a little bit overboard and actually print mis-leading information. There are seven Embalces that provide water to the Malaga Province, and some of them are still below 50%, so not every area within the Province will have three years worth of water supplies, typical media hype though huh 🤷‍♂️

So now, with the end of this elongated rainy period, came a task that we knew had to be completed, a task that neither of us relished, the cleaning of all of the apartment windows 😲 The last thing that we wanted to do, now that the rain had stopped and that glorious sunshine was out, and the temperatures were hot, was to clean forty-two, different sized, panes of glass, although that number includes both the inner and outer panes, so in reality it was actually a total of twenty-one windows, and of course not forgetting the six external roller security shutters to do which, with being silver-grey in colour, the brown sand that gets blown in on the rain and sticks to them like glue, making them look even worse than the rain stained windows, we cannot have that, whatever will the neighbour’s and passers by think 😲 But we knew that none of these would clean themselves and, at least it would be one of those tasks that, once completed, would not need doing again for another three months or so, longer if the rain now stays away 🙏 Now I come to think about it, it seems strange that in the UK there are window cleaners who will come around, and, for a charge of course, will clean your external windows for you, not a service that I have actually ever seen over here in Spain, apart from on tall Commercial premises that is. Perhaps with all this modern technology someone will invent a drone that is capable of doing the job on the external windows, it would certainly decrease the number of injuries that are sustained from falling off ladders and, let’s face it, drones do seem to be used for everything else these days, so why not put them to good practical use instead of using them just as weapons of destruction, or perhaps even for spying on your neighbours sunbathing nude in the garden 🤭 So, somewhat reluctantly, we both got stuck in and, once we had finished, there was no way that we had any energy, let alone any inclination, to go out for our daily walk, but to be honest the task itself took us around four hours to complete so that was more than enough exercise for one day, working our ageing muscles and joints which, under normal circumstances, would not have been exercised on those routine more leisurely walks, although the big advantage to doing the walks is that we both do generally give ourselves a small reward 🍷or a 🍺 and sometimes even lunch 😋 But a sandwich and a drink (non-alcoholic) on our balcony was still quite a nice reward at the end of it, especially as now we could actually see out of our windows again and with the added bonus, by doing them ourselves and not paying for refreshments, we had saved a few shekels in the process 🤗

So now that I have got that weather subject out of the way, and since the publication of my last ramble, there have been a few other things going on too, so ‘Where Do I Start’ 🤷‍♂️ Normally, I would just tap away merrily on the keyboard, dispensing paragraphs full of the usual verbal diarrhoea, and without giving any of it a second thought, as it usually just spills from my memory storage cells, into my finger tips then on to the keyboard with no effort whatsoever, as you my readers will of course be able to bear witness to 🤭 But now I seem to be having some minor difficulties in recalling what some of those things were 🤔

We have been experiencing a slow, but an advancement nonetheless, in the daylight hour’s over the last few weeks, but we were very much happier when we awoke on Sunday 30th March for, the night before, we had gone around changing all our watches, clocks and on all the timers on the kitchen electrical appliances, for this would be the day that Summertime officially commenced, albeit in truth, our’s had ‘unofficially’ commenced a week earlier when the sun, blue sky and sparkling blue and green Mediterranean sea, and of course the much warmer temperatures, had returned to our shores. We now had daylight until 9pm, and the prospect of that daylight extending even longer over the coming days and weeks. This of course means that I am now able to spend more time in the evenings, and night’s, sat on the balcony, for up until now, when the sun had dropped in the sky, so too had the temperatures, so it had been too cold after 7pm. The other good thing was that we could now get out of our habitual evening activity of watching the TV, instead we can now eat dinner on the warm balcony and, once we have cleared away, we continue to sit there, Shazza reading her book, or watching some of her favourite ‘You Tube’ foodie channels, whilst I sit and watch my own favourite travel ‘vlogs’, a combination of Motorhomers and Sail, or Motor, Yacht travellers. When we have been together for the majority of each day, where we chat about everything and anything under the sun, in the evenings, although we are still sat together for the most part, we tend to sit quietly doing our own thing, until of course Shazza decides that it is her bedtime and she needs her beauty sleep, I of course do not go to bed quite as early as she does, well quite obviously, and it should go without saying really, that I do not require as much beauty sleep 😂

However, even this twice annual event in the calendar (March & October) still attracts media coverage, other than just the usual reminder to change our clocks. There would it seems still be some argument here in Spain, as well as in some other countries within Europe, as to whether these changes need to continue to be made at all 🤷‍♂️ It has always seemed a little strange to me that we are only a little over three hours drive away from the Portuguese border, yet they are one hour behind us on ‘Western European Time’ in line with Ireland and the UK, whilst being a little over ten hours away, is the French border, who are on the same time as us, ‘Central European Time’. It came as an even bigger surprise to me though, to discover that here in Europe there is also an ‘Eastern European Time’, so three time zones 🤷‍♂️ I have to be perfectly honest with you, I never actually realised that there were three, until now that is 😲 Evidence, if evidence were required, to prove that no matter what age you are, you never actually stop learning new things 🤗

In these rambles I often state that we get fed up of reading all of the ‘doom and gloom’ that there is in the world, but even so, we do still continue to scan the National and International Media headlines each morning, it is one of those habits that are instilled into our morning routines, although we do not read the stories that accompany every headline. However, it is probably a good job that we do still do this, otherwise we may miss vital pieces of information that ‘could’ effect us personally, which we otherwise would not be aware of 😲

I was a little surprised, I mean I knew that some Scandinavian Countries had ‘allegedly’ issued personal survival booklets to their citizens and, even more recently, President Macron of France had ‘allegedly’ done the same thing, but the rest of Europe 🤔 My goodness, had the Spanish Government missed us off their ‘mailing list’ and was this deliberate because we are classed as Immigrants in the country (Expats) and not true Spanish Citizens 😲 But a more sinister thought entered my head, ‘Where we closer to War than any of the European Governments were actually telling us 😲’. Well for once I was grateful to the European media for providing me with this essential alert, but it was obvious that we now could not trust the Spanish Government to look after us, we needed to take care of ourselves, so we have taken it upon ourselves to conduct our own reconnaissance, to be ready for the invasion by any forces of evil.

We acknowledge that our stretch of coastline covers an expansive area, miles and miles of beaches, one’s that the drug runners regularly take advantage of to evade the clutches of the Spanish Coastguard and Guardia Civil authorities, and far too much for us to keep guard of on our own, fortunately we were to discover that there were other ‘Independent’ organisations assisting our cause and on the lookout for foreign invaders. Even so, it did come as a bit of a surprise to us when a foreign invader did actually turn up on our own town’s seafront beach 😲 although the authorities were alert and swiftly discovered the intruder.

As you may imagine, it was a bit of a bind having to now conduct this extra surveillance and, being an ‘Unofficial’ activity, we were of course not re-imbursed for the expenditure involved, so we had to foot our own bill for all the additional refreshments incurred, Tapas, Menu del Dia’s, Cervesa’s and Anti-Covid Vaccines, but hey, we felt that it was our civic responsibility, the least we could do and so yes, whilst it can sometimes be a tough life, we knew that someone had to do it and, if we succeeded in our mission, we would have stories to tell our Grandchildren about our part in the Spanish war effort and our participation in ‘Grandad & Nanas Army’, who knows, perhaps one day they will make a TV programme about us 😂 Shortly after that incident we thought unknown Invader’s had dispersed their secret weapon as the sky overhead went partially dark, shielding what had been bright sunshine, a darkness that would impact on the whole of Europe, but then we remembered it was a natural phenomenon and not the launch of a secret weapon.

I did finally receive a communication from the UK Government in my Email inbox, but not one that contained my ‘Personal Survival Booklet’, or even any mention to the potential risk of war, no this was to inform me about the change to the Residency requirements for British Citizens living in Spain, at least it wasn’t my call up papers for ‘National Service’ I thought to myself 🤭 On reading it I also discovered that the content of the communication also had no impact on us personally.

When UK citizens, who were already residing in Spain, prior to Brexshit, elected to take official residency, rather than continue to ‘fly under the radar’, they were issued with a Green paper certificate, however, since Brexshit, new residents are issued with a ‘Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero’ (TIE) which is a plastic Identification Card, the size of a Bank or Credit Card, which contains Biometric Data. With the forthcoming introduction of the European Entry System (EES), not to be confused with the upcoming introduction of the ETIAS (Electronic Visitor Visa), this old green paper certificate, without the biometric data, will no longer be accepted and so residents who are in possession of this paper certificate are being encouraged to apply for the newer TIE Card, otherwise they are likely to encounter problems when, after leaving the country, find that they cannot re-enter Spain. As well as the advice being issued via UK Channels, the Spanish, and other European media organisations and Social Media Platforms, are also publicising this information, however, I think it would still be a safe bet on there being some people who will take no notice, for whatever reason, then state, once EES is officially introduced, that they didn’t know about it 🤷‍♂️

Now that piece of information also enables me to link in very conveniently with an update on the introduction of the European ETIAS system, which is simply an on-line application process to enable visitors to obtain an electronic ‘Visitor’ Visa. The E-visa will cost €7 and, once issued, it is valid for 3 year’s. However, there has been numerous delays with the introduction of ETIAS, as not all countries within the EU are ready with the technology aspects required to seamlessly link the EU’s Border Points of Entry/Exit together, so now it has been announced that there is to be yet ‘another delay’ with its introduction 🤷‍♂️ There has been some outcry from visitor’s from other countries about the need for the ETIAS system, but this is not something that is new, other Countries, USA and Canada for example, have been operating a similar system for several year’s and, in case people are unaware, the UK introduced their own electronic on-line visitor visa system in January this year, which comes into operation on 2nd April, that application process currently costs £10 (€12) and is soon to increase to £16 (€19) and is only valid for 2 year’s 😲 The anti-European media conveniently omit to mention this in their coverage on the subject 🤷‍♂️

Being a citizen of the UK, whilst now being an official resident within an EU Country, we were of course interested to discover what, if any, impact this may have on our ability to cross borders. Fortunately it doesn’t, we are British Citizens and UK Passport holders, so we do not have to apply for a UK ETA when we return to visit, and being official residents in Spain, with our Biometric TIE Cards, neither do we need to apply for an E-Visa on the upcoming ETIAS system when we return 👍

There has of course been a lot more going’s on in the wider world since my last ramble, the continuing natural disasters and what appears to be indiscriminate attacks in towns and cities within Europe, by individual’s, on members of the unsuspecting public who are just going about their normal lives and business, with no apparent motive by these nutters 🤷‍♂️ Then there are the continuing conflicts in several war torn areas of the globe, and of course all of the usual political stuff. I don’t know about you, but I get sick of seeing, although not necessarily reading, all the media articles by so called ‘Experts’ or ‘Influencer’s’ telling us what we should, or should not, be eating to stay healthy, how much and what type of exercises we need to be doing, they all generally contradict each other, by way of example I told you in one of my recent rambles how I read about a University Medical Research Team had declared that drinking ‘red wine’ was healthy for you, in moderation of course, but recently, one of those so called ‘TV Doctors’ has stated that it is a fallacy and it is not healthy 🤷‍♂️ So these are both supposed to be ‘Medical Experts’ yet they issue conflicting statements, no wonder people just ignore medical advice these days or just go with the one that suits there own persuasion, so of course, it goes without saying that I stand with the University Medical Opinion on their stance on the ‘red wine’ subject 🤭 But with all of this ‘doom and gloom’ reporting, conflicts with medical opinions, the diets that are bad, the exercises you should be doing, the diseases that are circulating, the places it is not safe to go on holiday to, my goodness it is no wonder that there are so many ‘alleged’ mental health issues in our world today, it is even driving me to requiring another dose, or two, of Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷🍷 but then again, I never really needed any sort of an excuse to self-medicate 🤭

Locally, in our neighbouring town of Estepona, this last weekend we have just had a combined weekend event, a ‘Cheese Fair’ that was actually 30 stalls selling much more than just Cheese and, the ‘Saborea Estepona’ event which is a Tapas Route in the town with more than 30 bars and restaurants offering Tapa and beer, or a soft drink or water, for only €3 (£2.50) or with wine €4 (£3.30). Well of course it would have been rude not to, needless to say, I drove to the event, whilst Shazza ‘volunteered’ to be the duty driver on the return journey 🤗 I doubt any of the medical experts would have considered it to have been a healthy event though 🥴😂

The following day Shazza asked whether I would be interested in going to a ‘Farmer’s Market’ but, as you very well know by now, Shazza ‘asking’ does not necessarily mean that it is a ‘question’ or one which she requires me to give any sort of a response to, in either the positive or negative form. Now we have never been to this particular ‘monthly market’ before, she informed me that all she knew was that it was held on an actual farm, located in our neighbouring Province of ‘Cadiz’, just around a half hour’s drive away. Now I am no expert in the agricultural produce field, or in any other field when it comes down to it, so my curiosity was raised, I mean how different can a vegetable that is grown in one Province of Spain, be any different to that grown in another Province of Spain, and especially as on this occasion we were only talking about a distance of 30Km 🤷‍♂️

It was another lovely, bright, warm and sunny morning when we left home and we found the location of the ‘Farmers Market’ without any problem, the field we were directed to park the car in was a short distance from where the actual stalls were set up and, although parts were still pretty soggy from recent weather events, it was already pretty much full, but we managed to find a patch of grass that didn’t look as if it would present us with any problems in getting back out again, and if we did, I consoled myself with the thought that it was a farm after all, and farms have tractors 🚜

It was a short walk to the area where the stalls were set up, but there were not that many stalls, no more than a dozen at most, and the stallholders were not selling produce from just the farm itself, if at all, but appeared to be local producers, selling everything from the expected fruit and vegetables to a small business that produced what are called ‘Super Foods’ grown using ‘Hydroponics’, other’s selling everything from natural honey, home-baked Sour Dough breads and vegan cakes, wax candles and naturally scented soaps, hand-made cork fruit bowls, it became immediately obvious that this was not, by definition at least, purely farm produce, however, what did become obvious, and probably the reason for Shazza actually want to come to this particular market, was that the majority of the produce for sale was ‘Plant Based’ and many advertised as being ‘Vegan’, which also immediately blew any chance of me getting a proper ‘Burger’ from the mobile van that was also in attendance, yup, that too was ‘Vegan’ or ‘Plant Based’ ☹️ Come on now, what self-respecting farm would not at least be able to offer a Beef product, or a hot Pork Roll and, I have to be totally honest here, other than the Avocado’s that were at least three times larger in size than I had ever seen in a Supermarket or Fruiterias, everything else looked pretty much the same as I had seen it on a shelf anywhere else 🤷‍♂️ Perhaps they should have been totally up front and advertised it as a ‘Vegan Produce Market’. However, and I am sure you would not expect otherwise, Shazza did buy some giant Avocados and a container of ‘Hydroponic’ something or other, she obviously thought that it would have been rude not to. I don’t think we spent any longer than half an hour at the market and Shazza had already decided that we probably would not be attending again, you can imagine my disappointment upon hearing this news 🤭 We had no problems getting out of the car park, no tractor’s required and we made our way back home to deposit Shazza’s selected treasures.

Not wanting to waste the rest of the lovely day, we decided a walk would be in order and, as it was a Sunday, and the first ‘Official’ day of Summer, and as all the local’s and tourist’s would be out enjoying the weather, and the Spanish do like to enjoy a long Sunday lunch, we thought it would be nice to also enjoy the ambience amongst them. It would also be our 18th Wedding Anniversary, the following day, but Monday’s are usually very quiet with very little, if any, ambience, so although we do not usually celebrate such events, we decided that that afternoon we would partake of a nice celebratory and more formal lunch than we normally would, we selected an Italian Restaurant in the Marina. It was nice, busy but not crowded, nice table linen and, proper linen napkins, which always adds a few Euro’s on to the bill 🤭 We have been here on numerous occasions but we had not used this particular establishment since last August, so it did feel like more of a special occasion. We enjoyed our celebratory lunch overlooking the marina moorings, I observed how full the boat moorings are now looking, many having being placed back in the water after their winter in the nearby hardstanding storage area, their are a still a few empty moorings but not many, all of the restaurants were busy, the formal and less formal one’s, the Cafe/Bars were full and there were a fair amount of people just sauntering around, looking at the boats, the fish and of course the bling and fake designer products on display from the ‘Looky Looky’ men, ‘everything cheap, Asda price’ they would call out with big grins on their faces. We took a slow leisurely walk back to the car, the majority of the Chiringuito’s are now open, each establishment having their sunbeds and parasols laid out in neat rows, the wooden boardwalks are now on the sand and the only thing left, visually, to declare the Tourist Season well and truly open, are the placing of the yellow marker buoys just off the beach to delineate the swimming areas and beach toy launching areas. Their are elements of the busy tourist season that we both dislike, but initially, after the much quieter Winter period, their are elements of it that we actually like too and, although our local area is an ‘Open All Year’ location, at this time of the year it does feel as though it is beginning to come alive again and will offer us so many ‘People Watching’ opportunities to while away the hour’s on the beach, or whilst sat enjoying an Anti-Covid Vaccine, or perhaps a few more 😉

But right now, we have just nine days before we depart on our own trip, with a few days to do some sightseeing on our way up through Spain before we catch our ferry to the UK, by the time we return, which will be nearly a month that we would have been away, this place will probably be buzzing with activity, the beaches will be full, there will be no just walking into a Cafe/Bar/Restaurant without having first made a reservation, something we tend not to do, so we will just take ‘pot luck’ at where we can eat. The temperatures should be well into the higher end of the twenty somethings and so we will be adopting our Summer schedule, mornings around our own communal pool, afternoons in the shade, perhaps a few days down on our favourite stretch of beach and Dinners in the slightly cooler evenings. All doors and windows open throughout the day and night, yes, we haven’t even started our trip back to the UK yet, but we are already looking forward to coming back home 🤭

Until perhaps the next time, if or whenever that may be 🤔

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena