Author: Eric and Shazza

It arrived without warning, as these sorts of things often do, it was the early hours of the Wednesday morning, I was having my usual late night quiet period before bedtime, when I must have inadvertently suffered an unanticipated period of ‘Personal Contemplation’ 😴 However, I was startled back into full consciousness mode by the strangest feeling, one that made me believe that the whole room had just moved, my initial thought was, no surely not, ‘Had I Just Been Dreaming ?’, but that brief thought came to an abrupt end when Shazza, who had already gone to bed two hours earlier, came rushing through and said, “Did you feel that ?”, so it must have been quite some movement to have awoken her from her sound sleep. I looked out from the balcony windows, just to see if there was anything obvious that may confirm our suspicion that we had perhaps just suffered a ‘tremor’ from an earthquake, for example, my balcony window being a lot closer to the seafront than it had been when the sun had gone down that evening 😲 However, fortunately everything looked quite normal, the street lights were still on, but their were no other people looking out of windows, or standing out on the streets, and so we were still not quite sure what it was that we had just experienced, we waited to see if there would be any other ‘tremors’, one’s that would alert us to the need that we may just have to gather some clothes, and other personal items, in case we needed to evacuate the building 😳 However, nothing had actually moved inside the apartment, furniture was still in its usual place and nothing had fallen off the walls, it appeared that it had only been the actual building that had been given a bit of a shake, so we chose not to panic and agreed that it probably wasn’t such a big deal, although it had been a weird feeling all the same. These sort of events are not uncommon throughout Andalucia, so it was more just a case of it being a first experience of such an event for us personally. We felt no other movements, so we just decided to go to bed, on doing so I turned to Shazza, “Well on this occasion the earth did really move for you my love” and laughed, “Yes, and I can tell you this, I certainly didn’t like it very much” she replied. ‘Oh well, I suppose that put and end to any realistic hopes that may have entered my head, about the possibility of any further, more natural, earth moving opportunities occurring during the remainder of the early hours’, I thought to myself 🙁

I have commented, several times in my previous rambles, about other villages and towns, in our Region, experiencing tremors from minor earthquakes, even as close to us as Estepona, but this is the first in our own particular immediate local area and, with the increasing frequency of these incidents, I somehow do not think that it will be the last. The following morning was one of the few occasions where I was in a bit more of a hurry to check the local ‘News & Gloom’ media reports……..

However, what is probably a little more concerning is that the Earthquake that caused this tremor, happened, not inland, but out in the ‘Alboran Sea’, for it is these type of oceanic events, although at much greater magnitudes I hasten to add, that can create ‘Tsunamis’. After considering that thought for a few moments I turned to Shazza and said, “I hope we live high enough up this hill”, she hadn’t reacted to that comment as I anticipated that she would, she just said, in a rather nonchalant way, “Let’s hope we never have to find out”.

On the Thursday morning, and quite separate from the previous nights incident, we received an advanced ‘Orange Weather Alert’, notifying us that ‘Storm Theresa’ was now on its way and was anticipated to reach us on the Friday, I suppose we should be grateful that it wasn’t ’Saint Theresa’, as that may have had other wider Biblical connotations to it 😲 Although, I mused to myself after having that humerous thought, that all of this ‘Armageddon’ hypothesis is now getting to be a lot like that old fable, the one about ‘The Shepherd Boy Who Cried Wolf’ too many times until one day it happened, but he was ignored and got eaten by Wolves. One day this ‘Armageddon M’larky’ will happen, but you will ignore my soothsaying and those ‘Dark Forces’ will wreak their almighty havoc upon you, remember then, if you have the time for such thought’s, that you heard it here second, because another popular publication just happened to mention it first, very many year’s prior to me commencing these ramblings, damn it, always the ‘Best Man’ and never the ‘Groom’, although when I think about it, that is probably correct 😂

On the Thursday night, we suffered two power outages, one at 10pm and another at midnight, but each hadn’t lasted that long, only five minutes or so before the power was restored but, was this the early indications that the storm had made landfall I asked myself ? Storm Theresa had already severely battered the Canary Islands and was travelling North, hitting the Western Andalucian coastline first, although it seemed strange that we were on the Eastern side but were still being warned of major coastal events, it must be one hell of a wide storm I remember thinking, before then seeing a photograph of the dark clouds in the papers on the Friday morning, now tell me, you reader’s out there, that you cannot see a pack of Wolves heads poking out of those demonic clouds 😳

We were both awoken again, during the early hours of the Friday morning, to the sounds of the gale force winds, and the heavy rain battering the external window shutters, although we are quite familiar with these sorts of noises now 🤷‍♂️ But then, just a little later later, due to normal early morning bodily function requirements, if you know what I mean, I had to force myself out from the warm hug that the duvet had been providing me with, and so, as I was already up, I thought that I may as well go and put the kettle on for our morning cuppa, if the electricity was still available that was 🤔 It was, so I sat on the balcony, as usual, and observed the scene being played out in front of me. The heaviest of the rain, that had persisted throughout the early hours, had all but disappeared, well for now at least, although the sky still looked black and threatening and the latest weather picture reflected that we hadn’t, as yet, been hit by the main storm front. However, powerful gale force winds were still battering the Palm Trees outside and, from the balcony windows I could see the white stallions galloping in waves on to the shoreline, battalion after battalion they came relentlessly, but these were not Tsunami like conditions, although in truth I have only ever seen a Tsunami on TV or disaster movies 🤷‍♂️ but it became clearly obvious to me that I had to make the sensible decision, which was to inform Shazza that we should cancel our normal daily walk for that day, but for some reason neither of us had felt a deep sense of disappointment at that decision. The wind screamed and whistled and we could, quite clearly, hear the tumultuous waves as they crashed onto the shoreline below, but we felt extremely safe in our hilltop sanctuary, provided that there wasn’t another earthquake tremor bad enough to force us to evacuate, I mean come on, it really would have been a disgusting sort of day to have had to go and stand outside 😂 I also had to smile a little sarcastically when I considered the ‘Civil Authorities’ advice in Earthquake and After-Shock situations, ‘Go Outside And Stay Clear Of Buildings’, Mmmmmm I thought 🤔 “And if you live in an area surrounded by tall buildings ?”, I was waiting for a gruff voice from the sky telling me that then, I would just have to ‘Suck it up” 😂

The weather has certainly been very unpredictable over the last three months or so here in our part of Spain, and I guess elsewhere too, but I cannot speak with any confidence on what it has been like in those other areas. But, saying that, over the last week here, it has been beautiful and very warm, dare I even mention out aloud the words, ‘Shorts and Tee-Shirts’, so we have of course been able to go on our usual regular local daily walks, but in addition to those we have also had another day out in Estepona, and yes, just in case you were wondering, including the drive to the Organic Farm, and as Shazza informed me, rather sarcastically in my opinion, “Well it would have been be rude not to” 🙄 In that same week we had another day out, but this time in the opposite direction, to the town of La Linea, which as I have mentioned previously, is the Spanish town that is quite literally just across the road from Gibraltar and a short hop, skip and jump from Morocco (See Photo at top of this ramble). However, more recently we have partaken of our normal daily walks into our own local town again, enjoyed our usual coffee stop and on the way back we made the impulse decision to partake of lunch in our favourite Moroccan Cafe/Bar/Eatery, in the Marina. On that walk back from the town we had seen the arrival of the large trucks and trailers with their Fairground Equipment, they hold several fairs here throughout the year but, rather unusually, we hadn’t seen any advance signage of this particular event happening 🤷‍♂️ There is no particular relevance of me telling you that, other than, as I sat on the balcony on that stormy Friday morning I thought to myself, no way would you get me on a ‘Big Wheel’, or any other of those elevated fairground attractions, in any type of weather, but especially not in these current conditions, it’s bad enough trying to keep upright on terra firm in high winds but, also being soaked through to the skin, and suspended a hundred feet or so in the air, come on, where is the enjoyment in that, I may be getting more senior in years but I certainly haven’t lost all my marbles, well not just yet 😂

However, then I had a more serious thought, one where I hoped that this latest storm had best hurry up on its journey North, as in just a little over one weeks time, we would be on a 27 hour overnight ferry journey, crossing the notoriously bumpy ‘Bay of Biscay’, it can be bad enough under normal sea state conditions, I certainly didn’t fancy it under storm force conditions 🤢🤢 Having also looked at the advance ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for Bilbao, for over the 72 hour period prior to that ferry journey where we would be in Bilbao sightseeing, but it certainly didn’t look too promising, weather wise, at least not for the actual ‘outdoor’ sightseeing part of the visit we were hoping to do, so we may just have to consider a much more extensive ‘wet weather’ itinerary I thought to myself, with a bit of a smile on my face 😁

Although that happy thought soon came crashing down to earth when Shazza informed me that during her own pre-visit research, she had identified a handful of more ‘Vegan’ style Cafe/Bars and eateries, that soon wiped the smile off my face I can tell you 😲

Now whilst I may have somewhat inadvertently wandered into the territory of, pictorially at least, indications around the consumption of Anti-Covid Vaccines 🍷, it seems quite appropriate for me to then perhaps just to mention yet another media article I read, on that rather wet and dismal Friday morning, one which actually brought a bit more happy news, and if I am honest, perhaps even brought a bit of a smile back on to my face, although for other’s, it may well be dependent on your opinion on the particular subject.

Now I did briefly mention this subject in a previous ramble, but just to refresh your memories, if this stricter law had come into force, then even as little as just one small glass of beer, or wine, or any other alcoholic beverage, would have meant that you would have been ‘over’ the drink-drive limit and subject to a fine and points off your licence (The points rule is slightly different here in Spain but I won’t go into that now). Personally speaking, for us it would not really have actually created a problem, if the proposed new limit had have been introduced, as Shazza rarely drinks alcohol and, on the very rare occasions when she does, and we both want to have a drink, then we are fortunate enough to be close enough to the Marina, and Town, to walk to the different watering holes, then walk back or get a taxi. I do acknowledge though that there are very good reasons for such laws, but, I ask myself, why not just go to a ‘zero tolerance’ as the legal limit is already quite low at just 0.5grams, but that level does at least allow for being able to have one drink ? Unless of course, there were other more ‘compelling factors’ involved in the decision making process, yes I do have my cynical head on again. By just dropping it to 0.2grams, would very likely catch out even ‘responsible’ drinkers who may not be fully aware that, just the one drink, that they may have had with their lunch, or dinner, would actually take them over the legal limit, meaning that even they would have ended up, if stopped and checked, with being fined, which, apart from the ‘Safety’ concerns, would then of course have included the procurement of very much more money into the ‘Coffers’, but for whom…… Police ? Councils ? Government ? 🤔 Now if the whole premise around this, was solely focused on road safety and saving lives then, surely the ‘zero tolerance’ approach would have been the way to go and made a lot more sense 🤷‍♂️ And to be honest, those who regularly drink to excess, and still choose to drive, will continue to do so, so who was this proposed new law aimed at targeting 🤷‍♂️ However, that said, I personally believe that the reason that this proposed new law was actually voted down, was not, for any ‘practical’ or common sense reasons, but more to do with ‘Political’ manoeuvre’s, for here in Spain whilst there is a two party ‘Coalition Government’, it relies on support from several smaller ‘Regional’ and ‘Minority’ parties to maintain its Parliamentary majority, so in the end it is much the same as many other Governments around the world, more a case of ‘You didn’t scratch my back so I am not scratching your’s’ 😉

Anyway, I hadn’t intended to publish another ramble until after we had commenced our upcoming road trip, and truly I really hadn’t intended to, but I would not have remembered most of this recent stuff during or after that trip, so I followed the common practice of most Government’s, and made a ‘U turn’ on that earlier decision, you however should consider it in a more positive perspective and consider it as a bonus ramble 😂 I may just have to close my eyes for the next week, until we depart on our extended road trip, for if I don’t, you know what will happen, something else will happen in the meantime that I will feel the urge to write about 🤔 Now we cannot have that can we 😉

As far as any other Earthquakes, After-Shocks, Tsunamis or survival of this current storm goes, if you are reading this then you know that we survived, well at least long enough to press the ‘Publish’ button 😂

Until the next ramble ……………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

It made us both smile, during our latest weekly video chat with our Granddaughters, when they greeted us with, “Only 24 more sleeps now” 😂 It made us realise how ‘time’, in their minds, is gauged differently to our own, for we generally think about how long future events are, in terms of either days, weeks or even months. Before we actually do get to see them we have some sightseeing days scheduled in Bilbao first, before we actually board our overnight ferry to the UK, so we actually have fewer sleeps than them before we ourselves commence the start of our own next mini-adventure. We could of course have been with them very much sooner, by departing home and arriving at their house all within the same day, but only if we had opted to have taken a flight directly from Spain to the UK and perhaps, on future visits, that may be the way we will choose to go if the visit is purely to see family. However, this was to be an extended holiday for us, as already mentioned in a previous ramble, where we have chosen to return from the UK via France, and then some travels within Northern Spain before then returning home, so for us, using the car and ferry was to be the best option this time around, travel freedom which has additional advantages over taking a flight, namely no issues about how much weight we are permitted to carry in our ‘hold luggage’, or the size and weight restrictions of any additional ‘cabin baggage’ and of course, using our own transportation will mean having the advantage of a little more available space in the car boot, for perhaps those few little extra’s that we may collect on the return journey 😁 I was thinking French cheeses and bottles of different French flavoured Anti-Covid Vaccines, although that ‘may’ mean that Shazza would perhaps have to limit the size and quantity of any of her ‘little extras’ she was considering purchasing, however, I thought it best not to mention that bit to her just yet as I already knew what her reaction would be, and I am guessing you, my reader’s, would also have a pretty good idea too 😂

But as I started ‘drafting’ this latest ramble, we still had 16 sleeps before we started the outbound leg of our holiday, although 🤔 by the time I get around to publishing this ‘live’ and you get around to reading this, it may very well be less sleeps, I can imagine the excitement that you may be feeling, the thought of all those future rambles about our return trip, dropping like confetti into your ‘Email Inbox’ 😂

The weather has changed once again, after another much briefer spell of the wet stuff and it serves as a reminder to us of one of the main reasons why we chose to relocate here permanently, although, I do have to tell you that after a rather lengthy cold and wet period, we were beginning to start to question that decision ourselves, but only for a very brief moment you understand 😉

The stretch of beach, the bit between the village and the marina, was looking rather green, the rain had certainly encouraged the plant life to sprout through the sand but, as we walked from the marina side towards the town, it was more manicured and ‘beachy’ looking, rather than a lawned park 😂 Now to be completely honest with you, we have not really been up to much, well not ramble worthy content, just our usual daily walks in between the odd periods of wet stuff, with the occasional trip into Estepona, which was just for the change of scenery really. We don’t generally make any advance plans, we just tend to ‘Take Each Day As It Comes’ and then go with the flow, as the saying goes.

On one particular morning, we decided over our morning coffee’s, to just do our usual walking routine, park in the village, walk through the marina into town, stop for coffee, call in at the local fruiterias, Shazza said she didn’t need much, so it wasn’t worth the drive to the Organic farm on the other side of Estepona, perhaps the novelty is wearing off, I thought to myself. Then, like most other days, we would return home for lunch and then spend the rest of the day sat on the balcony, so yes, very much just another ‘Retirement Groundhog Day’ 😁

So, on what was supposed to be, as far as my understanding of the situation was, just a normal routine day, we were sat in the seafront Cafe/Bar just finishing our coffee’s, when Shazza suddenly suggested that we could perhaps walk a little further, as it was such a very nice warm morning and, with the sky literally cloudless, and a lovely shade of blue, with barely a breath of wind, the sea was as flat as a mill pond, only the gentle sounds of it rippling onto the foreshore giving any indication that it was actually moving, it was the sort of day where you could sit on the beach in your reclining sun chair and drift into a peaceful sleep, occasionally waking to the sound of someone letting out a loud snore, although to be honest, that ‘someone’ was generally myself 😂 However, our sun chairs were still in their Winter hidey hole, back in the apartment, rather than in their Summer location in the boot of the car and it was still far too early in the season for the majority of the beach chiringuito’s to have their sun beds out for rent.

“How far do you want to walk ?” I asked, which was a reasonable question under the circumstances, I thought. “Oh I don’t know, until either one of us decides that we have had enough” she replied, which I guess, she thought was a reasonable enough answer 😂 Now Shazza likes the warmth, but on a scale that measures somewhere in between it being not ‘Too Cold’ or not ‘Too Hot’, the only defining difference between the two is generally her personal level of ‘Lethargy’. So we started walking towards the river bridge that defines our ‘Municipal’ boundary, which is actually something that we often do anyway, when we are in no hurry to return home but, on this occasion, as we approached the footbridge across the river, just when I was mentally preparing myself to do an about turn, she asked if I fancied walking a little bit further 😲 It wasn’t so long ago that walking that ‘little bit further’, into the neighbouring municipalities back yard so to speak, was actually quite a regular occurrence, but since the previous two years of drought, with scorchingly Hot Summers and very Warm Winters, and probably much more importantly, with the lack of convenient ‘watering Holes’ on that part of the walk to take some shade, or refreshments, we had stopped doing these longer walks and had let lethargy take over completely. “How much further do you want to walk ?” I asked, once again a reasonable question I thought, although probably a little more relevant than the last time that I had asked her the same question, considering that this was part of the Coastal Path that ran virtually the full length of the Eastern Spanish Coastline, and almost, if not all the way, to the ‘Pyrenees’ and the border with France 😲 “Oh I don’t know, until either one of us decides that we have had enough” she replied, followed by a mischievous chuckle and a wink of her eye. “Perhaps we should stop at the ‘Decathlon’ store when we get to Estepona” I mentioned casually, “I’m not walking that bloody far !” She exclaimed, but at least now I had some sort of vague idea as to just how far our wanderings may take us, although Estepona was still some 8Km away !! After a couple of minutes she suddenly asked, “Anyway, what did you want from Decathlon ?” I laughed, for I had wondered how long it would take for her to ask me that question, “I don’t, but not knowing how long this walk would be I didn’t know whether we would need to pick up some camping gear en route”, she laughed and gave me a gentle nudge in my ribs with her elbow, “Daft Bugger” she said.

We reached the footbridge across another river (Storm Drain) that marked the area known as ‘Caceres Playa’. This footbridge, come cycle path, had a tendency to collapse every-time their was heavy rain, the fast flowing river water, from the mountains, would wash away the sand that secured the rickety wooden foundations, that was often the excuse to end our walks at that point. The Council must have finally realised the false economy of regularly having to repair it and had since built a proper bridge, with more permanent concrete foundations, although that had actually been done some time ago, I had simply forgotten about it, which would prove to be to my disadvantage on this occasion. From this point we could see, on the cliff in front of us, the “Torre de Sal” (The Salt Tower), we have previously walked up to it, in fact we have done so on numerous occasions and, in previous rambles, I have included Photographs of it and the stunning views from it, but the fact that I had not anticipated a walk this far when we had left home that morning meant that I had not come out with either my phone or camera, so you will have to seek out those earlier rambles if you want to see any photo’s 🤷‍♂️

We both agreed, that although it would mean walking up a bit of an incline to reach it, that that would be our end point on this particular day, although we have walked much further on some of those previous occasions, but decided that that would be the extent of our ‘exercise walking’ for that day, and it was more of an exercise walk as we had upped a gear from the ‘Sauntering’ pace, and also because the temperatures, like us, were also beginning to climb and we would still have to walk all the way back 😮‍💨

I had forgotten how beautiful the views were from the ‘Torre de Sal’, with 180 degree views of the Mediterranean Coastline, North beyond the Estepona Bay and up along the peaks of the coastal mountain ranges, then South where, from here, Gibraltar was clearly visible although it looked more like a stand-alone Island and, on such a bright clear day, we could clearly see the whole mountain range on the Northern Coast of Morocco. Behind us there were stunning 180 degree views of those Andalucian mountain ranges with the small whitewashed villages stuck to the sides of them. Near silence surrounded us, only the chitter chattering of a few small birds that hopped and skipped their way through the bushes that grew out of the cliff side rocks and the shrubbery that surrounded it, combined with the gentle sounds of the sea, washing over the jagged rocks below. I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun on my face and arms, listening to these unobtrusive sounds of nature and it felt so calm and peaceful, this is why we prefer being out and surrounded by nature, rather than in the hustle and bustle of the modern world with all its constant physical and technological noise, you don’t appreciate the beauty and the silence until you are surrounded by it. If only we knew, twenty year’s ago, what we know now, probably our choice of where we would live would have been very much different to what it is now, probably somewhere a little more remote, but close to the sea, as in being able to actually see it and walk to it, and living more or less a self-sufficient lifestyle, although within a reasonable distance of the essential modern day necessities, unfortunately you cannot live without them completely, with almost everything these days being so reliant on Technology, but as we reluctantly had to agree, you cannot turn back the clock, or look into what the future may bring, mores the pity…………….

There was an unexpected advantage to agreeing to do this slightly longer walk, for it was now beyond the time we would normally be eating lunch, and it was now very much nearer to the start of the Spanish Lunchtime hours. Shazza announced that she was ‘muchas hambre’ (very hungry) and suggested that, instead of waiting until we returned home, that we should eat a ‘proper’ lunch out, with the bonus that she then wouldn’t have to cook that evening, if we were hungry later she could warm up some of her pre-prepared Spicy Red Lentil soup which we could have with a large chunk of her home-made sour dough bread. Now of course, I thought that that was a bit of a cop out by her, and of course I should have perhaps remonstrated with her 😂 “Sounds like a great idea to me, you choose what and where you would like to eat” I responded happily, for I knew that being an ‘Omnivore’, I could eat at any establishment, whereas Shazza has much more limited choices.

I do believe that it was the mere thought of food, that caused Shazza’s pace to definitely quicken on that return walk, she was somewhere between a fast pace and a jog now 😲 She selected one of our favourite Cafe/Bar’s, ‘Annie’s’ in the town, the one that we often stop at for our morning coffee’s which is located in a nice little sunny Plaza, although one street behind the seafront promenade, it still provided good partial sea views and decent people watching opportunities. Annie was outside wiping the tables when we arrived, she greeted us with a big smile and in the usual Spanish tradition. Because of the time of day she already knew our drinks preference, ‘Radler y Vermut’, she said, more in a confirmatory way than a question, but we also asked for ‘La Carte’ (The menu). “Acabamos de regresar de un paseo hasta la Torre de Sal” I told her (We have just returned from a walk up to the Torre de Sal), she feigned mopping her brow and gestured to us to sit down, our legs certainly appreciated the relief. Annie disappeared inside, a few minutes later she re-appeared with a cold bottle of ‘Radler’ (Lemon flavoured beer that is only 2% alcohol) for Shazza, and a rather larger than usual measure of Vermut, with ice and lemon, for myself, I looked at it and then back at Annie, she just smiled and gave a wink.

Shazza actually has several different food choices here, but to my surprise she went for her usual ‘Goats Cheese Salad’, “Annie’s cook does one of the best I have had” she said, almost apologetically, “You eat whatever you enjoy my love” I replied, I ordered two of my favourite dishes, although to be honest, I do have a lot of favourites here, whether they be individual Tapas, or a main meal, or even the ‘Menu del Dia’, but on this occasion I ordered my usual ‘Ensalata Rusa’, which for me is the best I have tasted, either here in town, the Marina or even in Estepona and, for my main, ‘Braised Pork Cheeks in Sherry Wine Sauce’ which just melts in your mouth, no chewing required and it came with Patata Frites (Chips to you and me). The remaining tables filled up around us very quickly, as the Spanish arrived for their lunches, we had arrived just in the nick of time otherwise we would have been left trying to decide on a ‘Plan B’.

We paid the bill, €33 (£28) and then with full bellies and weary legs we had to complete the last part of the walk. It was a long hot and very much slower walk back, through the marina to the village, where our carriage awaited us, and we were grateful to get home, we both just plonked ourselves into our comfy seats on the balcony and agreed on what an absolutely fantastic day we had just had. “We should do that more often” Shazza said, “What, eat lunches out” I replied, with a cheeky smile on my face, “No, the longer walks” she said, with a pretend scowl on her face, followed by, “Although I suppose the lunches could always be a bit of a reward afterwards”.

You may not be surprised to hear that, by mutual agreement, the following few days walks were of the more usual, sedentary version 😁 I cannot foresee me publishing any further rambles now before commencing our road trip, but hey, you just never know there is still time for ‘periods of contemplation’ which I may just feel the need to share with you 😂

So, until my next ramble………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

It did not take us very long to forget the horrendous and extremely lengthy period of really bad weather that we had experienced over the last three months, even the ‘Works of Fiction’ seemed to reflect a much cheerier disposition for the week ahead, although they still continued to display characteristics that were far closer on the side of ‘pessimism’ rather than ‘optimism’, with the odd dark cloud thrown into the daily weather picture just to keep us guessing. But for now, we found ourselves being able to step out for our morning walks into a very much warmer and sunnier environment and, for the first time this year we were both back to wearing shorts and tee-shirts and it felt quite liberating. As we walked along the bright and picturesque beachfront we observed a multitude of people who, like us, were celebrating the freedom of discarding much heavier winter clothing, many were sat on the beach and the majority were exposing bare flesh and sunbathing although, rather surprisingly, we also observed some swimming in what was an invitingly turquoise green and blue sparkling sea. The daft buggers I thought to myself, as it is still only the end of February, and whilst the sun may have been out in all its glory, the actual sea temperatures at this time of year would realistically still feel more like an ice bath 🥶 However, I quickly chastised myself for perhaps being a little too hasty in my silent criticism of them for, when I thought about it, I realised that some of these crazy people may very well have been visitors, who had quite possibly arrived here from very much colder climates and so, to them at least, the sea temperature may have felt more like, ‘Luxuriating In A Thermal Spa’ 🤭 So I reconsidered my initial hasty judgement of them and smiled and thought, fill your boots, or your budgie smugglers and just enjoy, although we will perhaps just save our own salty water dips for maybe just a while longer 😉

We actually managed to enjoy a full week of gorgeous sun filled days, with temperatures varying between 18–22 degrees(c), our daily walks became more of the sauntering variety, rather than of the ‘Exercise’ type, we made up for it though by extending those walks a little further than our more regular route, returning via the meandering narrow back streets, the one’s we rarely wander, and we re-discovered quaint residential back streets that had small artisan retail shops, the kind that only the locals generally know about and frequent. Some of the elderly female residents were sat outside their front doors, with what we assumed were their neighbours, some on wooden chairs, the kind from yesteryear that you tend to see in bric-a-brac shops, others sat on the more typical white plastic patio chairs or aluminium framed beach chairs. Here in Spain this tradition is known as ‘Sentarse à la Fresca’, although it is not an activity that is just confined to people in Spain and I am certain that each country will of course have their own name for it. They were chitter chattering amongst themselves, occasionally breaking out in a cackle of group laughter, but their eyes focused on us as we drew closer. I nodded in acknowledgement of them and smiled and said, ‘Buen Dia’, they all smiled back and one or two returned the greeting, the other’s just nodding in our direction, they all seemed genuinely pleased that we had spoken to them, but then quickly returned to their much more important conversations. I did wonder what their topics of conversation were, perhaps their fellow neighbours who were not present so ripe for some gossip to be passed about them, maybe the cost of food in the shops these days, or even the state of the economy, perhaps even how things have changed since their younger days, and not for the better either, more likely a combination of all of that and more 😂 This was not actually the first time that we had observed this, we actually see it on a regular basis, at first we felt a little uncomfortable, thinking that we were possibly intruding into, and through, their narrow residential streets with their tightly packed low rise terraced houses , but now we just actually enjoy this friendly interaction when we come across it. Their is an elderly lady, in the village where we park our car, we often see her stood on the street corner and, as we pass, she smiles and gives a wave, the reality is that she probably does this to every car that passes, so it isn’t as if we believe that she actually recognises us personally, or our car, more a case of her perhaps living alone and this is her way of getting out and socialising and not feeling invisible to the outside world, bless her.

On another sun kissed day we payed yet another visit to the Organic farm, Carlos was not present on this occasion as he was out doing deliveries to some Fruiterias in the local area, he had left his father in charge and although his English was minimal, it provided us with the opportunity to once again impress ‘ourselves’ with our level of basic conversational Spanish, although we were not fooling ourselves, it was slow intermittent conversation at times, as we occasionally had a brain fart and struggled to remember some of the relevant words that we needed, the frown and confusion on the old man’s face being our instant recognition that perhaps we still had a long way to go, ‘but we got there in the end and that is what matters’, we said to ourselves as we walked back to the car, we came away with another two carrier bags full of assorted fruit and vegetables, oh deep joy I thought to myself, or words to that effect 🙄 The bonus of taking that morning trip to the Organic Farm was that it gave us another opportunity to take a stop in Estepona Town which was just seven minutes drive and on the way home anyway. We didn’t need anything from the town on this particular occasion so it was just nice to take another leisurely stroll in the sunshine, along the very nice seafront promenade to start with, before then turning away from it and into the main town area. Estepona is always vibrant, we can understand why both Spanish and International tourists love this place, for it beats hands down the numerous other touristy towns that occupy this stretch of the Costa del Sol coastline. We made our way to what has quickly become our favourite Tapas Cafe/Bar here in Estepona, not the seafront one where we often stop, that one is generally just for coffee and people watching opportunities. We sat, under the shade of a sun umbrella, overlooking the small sun-drenched plaza where we were are also able to fulfil our most pleasurable leisurely activities, yes you know the one’s I am talking about 😉 This Cafe/Bar have a full menu of Tapas, which do not change very much and so they are always available, but they also have a ‘Specials Board’ which varies on a daily basis, generally offering around six choices, which are written in Spanish only, on a small blackboard hanging by the door. We can often interpret what they are between ourselves, but occasionally there are some where we just don’t have a clue 🤷‍♂️ Yes of course we could use ‘Google Translate’ on our phones, but where is the adventure in that, so we just choose a couple at random, and include a tapas of ‘Rusa Salat’ (Spanish Potato Salad) off the main menu, that is served with half a dozen or so small biscuit type crackers or bread sticks, the contents of this Rusa Salat, and how it is presented, varies from one establishment to another but of course, they all include potato but can also include chopped up boiled egg, small pieces of ‘Jamon’ (Ham) or Prawns, our’s was just the basic which suited Shazza 😁 She selected the ‘Canalloni de Salmon’ off the ‘Specials Board’, she had obviously recognised the words ‘Cannalloni’ and ‘Salmon’, but when it came out it bore no resemblance to the ‘Italian’ version of Cannelloni, as there was no Pasta involved, more just a generous roll of salmon, stuffed with a mousse like cream, she offered me a taste and it was delicious. I too ordered off the ‘Specials’, but neither of us had a clue what I had ordered, ‘piruleta de carne’, but when it arrived it was a circular piece of grilled meat, rather like a small flattened meat patty, stuck on top of a wooden skewer, served with a mild spicy sauce, and that was delicious too. I did check later on what ‘Piruleta’ meant, which is ‘Lollipop’, so then it became obvious, as it had looked like a lollipop of meat when it was served. These were just tapas, so not large meal type portions, but with the ‘Rusa Salat’ it made a nice light snack lunch, which is all we wanted and they were perfect ‘lite bites’ to accompany my glass of ‘Vermut’, and Shazza’s Diet Pepsi. The Rusa Salat was brought out with our drinks, Shazza’s, because it was a cold dish, came out a few minutes later and mine, because it had to be grilled, or fried, came out shortly afterwards but we were in no hurry for we were just enjoying the leisurely ambience. The thing about these varied Tapas dishes is that often, the picture in your mind of what you expect them to be, or even look like, bears no resemblance to what is actually put in front of you, it adds to the gastronomic adventure and rarely disappoints.

The days passed quickly, we took advantage of the beautiful warm weather and apart from our one weekly domestics cleaning day, we had been out on every single day, combining our leisurely walks with a bit of shopping at the Supermarket, or visiting the Correo (Post Office) to mail cards back to family in the UK and on one day, to collect a new pair of sunglasses I had ordered the previous week from my local Optica (Opticians). Apart from the bits and bobs we sometimes have to do, it is generally just a case of getting some fresh air, maintaining a bit of daily mobility and enjoying the relaxation with time spent in various Cafe/Bars in the town, some on the seafront, other’s in sunny Plazas, or some that are just pavement side one’s, but all offering us the opportunity to just sit and observe the world pass by.

However, after what had been seven full days of glorious, almost summer like weather, the skies once again became much more cloudy, although not grey and bleak, but hazy enough to block out the sunshine and with it, much of the warmth that we had recently enjoyed, so it was back to jeans, short-sleeved shirt and a lightweight hoody top. Some morning’s even commenced with a light mist that hugged the coastline and which hung very low over the mountains and it continued well into the early afternoons, but it hadn’t prevented us from getting out on our daily walks, although we spent much less time at the Cafe/Bars as it became much chillier when we were not actually moving. But this was the prequel for what was to follow, ‘Storm Regina’ apparently, although this was coming in from the Atlantic side which would suffer the worst, but even on this Eastern Mediterranean side, the wind picked up, the sky turned a much darker threatening shade of grey, the thicker and heavier looking clouds hung much lower over the mountains, if their was any sun above them it certainly wasn’t getting through. The temperatures however remained quite reasonable at around 15 degrees(c) and what rain fell was intermittent and fairly light, it certainly looked a lot worse outside the balcony windows than it probably actually was, but still, no matter how light the rainfall was, it still got you wet if you went out in it, so we chose not to and our daily mobility work-outs would be confined to one fifteen minute session on our ‘Tension Bands’, and frequent walks into the kitchen to make hot cuppas 😂

The ‘Works of Fiction’ once again took to forecasting its more pessimistic outlook, alerting us to even more of the wet stuff over the coming week, some a lot heavier than it had been, but not in any real great abundance in comparison to the last few months, However, whether or not any of it would actually materialise would of course be another matter, but it was enough reason for me to be forced to cancel Forrest’s vacation, his daily services would be required once again and surprisingly he wasn’t that upset about it, he had heard that things may be hotting up a little too much for him at his holiday hotel in the Middle East, but not in a good way 😲

Saturday the 28th of February marked a major event on the Calendar, well at least it did for those of us who live in the Spanish Region of Andalusia, for that particular day, ‘Día de Andalucía’ (Andalusia Day) serves to commemorate a very significant date for Andalusian’s. It was on that date forty-six years ago when a ‘Referendum’ was held on the Autonomy of Andalucia, a date on which a massive majority of the Andalusian electorate voted for the Region of ‘Andalusia’ to become an ‘Autonomous Self Governing Region’ of Spain, with its own democratically elected Regional Political Leader, who was empowered to initiate Laws, and Political decisions on matters that effected the region. So, on this date each year it is a Public Holiday in many municipalities and cities of Andalusia, people decorate their balconies with the regional flag and/or with Green and White bunting and, on the day itself, people are encouraged to wear some sort of clothing with that colour combination, or at least that is what the local media had stated.

According to the media blurb, Cultural competitions are often held in conjunction with the day in some larger cities, especially in the Malaga area, schools are closed for a ‘Cultural Week’ (Semana Cultural) which, on the Friday, is often a day of celebration in schools with a traditional Andalusian Breakfast being served (desayuno andaluz), consisting of a slice of toast with a thin layer of olive oil and an orange juice, students colour pictures that refer to the symbols and insignia of Andalusia, its history and customs, put on plays and sing the Andalusian Anthem, the Himno de Andalucía. To be honest with you, I didn’t actually know that they had one, it seems that we never stop learning things about our new home country and Region 🤔

We had of course, subject to the weather of course, agreed that it would be good idea to go and celebrate with our fellow Andalucian’s, seeing as we now live here. However, the truth of the matter is this, even though it was a grey and overcast morning we decided that we should go and join in these ‘alleged’ patriotic regional celebrations, in our opinion it would have been so rude of us not to. But as we drove down the hill towards the village I mentioned to Shazza that it seemed a bit odd that we had not seen any evidence of Green & White Bunting, or the Regional Flag, displayed anywhere, not on Apartment balconies, Villas or Houses, and on our usual walking route not even on local ‘Official’ buildings, there was only the usual Andalucian Regional Flag on the flagpole at the car park in the village, but that is always there come rain or shine every day of the year.

When I ordered our morning coffee’s I wished the two lady owner’s ’Feliz Dia de Andalusia’, they both gave wide beaming smiles as if it came as a surprise that a foreigner had known what day it was, they both said, ‘Muchas Gracias’. But then I asked, “Por qué no hay banderas regionales ni banderines verdes y blancos en ninguna parte?”, (Why are there no Regional Flags or Green and White Buntings displayed anywhere ?), they both just shrugged their shoulders and told me that it is a Public Holiday, most of the main retail shops are closed, and for most locals it is just a reason for some to take an extra day off work. So from that I made the assumption that, apart perhaps from some major Andalusian Cities and Towns, it perhaps isn’t such a big deal everywhere, as perhaps a lot of the media and social media ‘Influencers’ would have you believe 🤷‍♂️ Shazza did check her local Social Media App on her phone, whilst we were sat drinking our coffee’s, she discovered that our much smaller community of ‘Manilva’, up the hill where our ‘Ayuntamiento’ (Town Hall) is located, were actually celebrating the day, in a fashion, with a local choir singing the ‘Himno de Andalucia’ and some other minor events, wine and local produce tasting, my previous memories of these local events, on the two occasions we had gone to check out the food and wine events, were not exactly one’s that would encourage us to hurry back, so we agreed that as the weather wasn’t exactly great for sitting around, we would return home and if the weather was better on the following day that we would come out and have a nice proper full lunch somewhere. It wasn’t and so we didn’t 🙁

But here we are, having just entered the month of March and, in a little less than four weeks before this month is out, we will commence our extended road trip, which could hopefully last for 5-6 weeks, subject to the weather of course, and/or, other more undesirable impacts from ‘Global Events’ that are kicking off right now as I type this. It just confirms the hypocrisy of the Worlds political leader’s when once a year, they spout the words ‘Lest We Forget’ 🤷‍♂️

And in other news…………….

Although there is a lot going on the news recently, Locally, Regionally, Nationally and Globally, I have selected two particular Media headlines, primarily because, whilst they do also impact on other’s, this time they are also of particular interest to Shazza and myself on a more personal level, although, I will just add the comment that, in all likelihood, although good news for us, neither will, in reality, have any major practical impact on our lives or lifestyle here in Spain.

Why is that of personal interest to us you may ask ? Well, as some of my readers who have been following my rambles since the time we came to live here in Spain will know, our ‘Temporary Residency Visas’ have a travel restriction whereby, in the first five years of our current residency period, we cannot spend more than 10 months, within the whole of that year five period, outside of Spain. But what you probably didn’t know was, once we have applied, and obtained, at the end of that 5 year ‘Temporary Residency’ period, our ‘Permanent Residency Visa’, which will then have to be renewed every 5 years, the travel restrictions applied to that Visa states that we cannot spend more than 6 months, in any one single year, outside of Spain. However, the good news is that this ‘new court ruling’ now scraps that travel restriction so, if we wanted to, once we have obtained our ‘Permanent Residency Visa’, hopefully in June 2028, there will no longer be any time restrictions on how long we can spend outside of Spain. Just a pity that it hadn’t come into force before we sold our Motorhome 🤷‍♂️ What has not been clarified however, is whether the initial travel restrictions on our 5 year ‘Temporary Residency Visa’ is still applicable, that being the 10 month travel restriction, although in truth that isn’t a major issue either, as in our first, very nearly three years here, and even including the proposed dates in our upcoming extended road trip, we will still have used up just over two months of that 10 month allowance, so we have plenty of accrued travel credit in our back pockets.

So moving on to the next ‘quite big’ media story……..

Today, as I write this, Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory, and now that we live here in Spain that brings about its own unique issues due to ‘Brexshit’. It is, physically speaking, just a half an hours drive from our front door to the Gibraltar Frontier Crossing, and with lots of British Goods in the large Morrisons Supermarket located across in Gibraltar, the tax free goods, and of course not forgetting the very much cheaper fuel costs, it is an attractive place for some ‘British Expats’ in Spain, who live close to it, to go and visit. However, due to ‘Brexshit’ it means that when we now cross the ‘Frontier’ (Border) we have to have our British Passport stamped as exiting the EU, something we never had to do when we first bought our property here in 2015, when the UK used to be a member of the wider EU community. Now, and bearing in mind the 10 month travel restriction that we have attached to our ‘Temporary Residency Visas’, crossing the Frontier on a regular basis since 2020, would certainly have eaten away into that limited travel allowance. We are also restricted to what Products that we can and cannot bring back into Spain, due to the conflicting UK and EU rules. Even people who come to visit us, if they choose to fly into, or out of Gibraltar, means that we have to collect them, or return them, on the Spanish side so that we do not have our Passports stamped as leaving the country and losing yet another day’s travel allowance. Whilst on the subject of the Airport, there are currently only flights from Gibraltar to the UK, no other European destinations. So you can imagine our feelings when we read the following headlines……..

So, and subject to all the formal political ratifications and approvals, which have already been agreed by the UK, Gibraltarian and Spanish Governments, as from April 2026, there will be no physical border crossing between Spain and Gibraltar. So for us personally, as we are ‘Officially’ Spanish Residents, we will no longer have our British Passports stamped as exiting the EU, meaning that we now will not lose a day off our travel allowance each time we cross, we can purchase goods from Gibraltar without restrictions and, albeit a little further into the future, we may soon be able to take flights to other European destinations and so no longer have to travel to/from Malaga Airport, which is 75 minutes drive away 👍

However, when Governments negotiate such changes, their are always winners and losers, as their was for UK Citizens when Brexshit became effective, this new agreement will be no different. Some, who currently have certain advantages with the ‘current’ procedures, like those who currently use Gibraltar as a convenient place to stop, thereby temporarily halting the ticking ‘Schengen Clock’ for example, well this former ‘Non-Schengen Zone’ sanctuary will cease to exist as under the new agreement, Gibraltar will fall under the EU Schengen Zone rules, which of course means that the Schengen Clock will continue to tick if you entered the Schengen Zone from elsewhere, or it will commence, or re-commence ticking, once you enter Gibraltar via the Air or Sea Port, ‘Brexshit, the gift that keeps giving’ 🤷‍♂️ Now the UK Government are at pains to stress that they have not negotiated away Britain’s Sovereignty of Gibraltar, other’s however, tend to believe otherwise 🤔

To be totally honest, whilst Shazza and myself may consider ourselves as potential ‘Beneficiaries’ of both of these changes, realistically and practically speaking, it will not make any great impact on our lives. However, had these things have perhaps happened back in October 2020, when we chose to fully retire and we still owned our Motorhome, but still may have decided to make Spain our permanent home, then perhaps our lifestyle would have been a lot different to what it is now, as we could have actually lived our European full-timing Motorhome adventure as we had originally planned to do, but hey, it was not to be, at that time 🤷‍♂️ However, that door may now have just re-opened, should we choose to go through it of course, only this time, it would be as ‘Spanish’ residents, with a freedom to travel, without the ‘Schengen Shuffle’ or ‘Visa Residency’ time-restrictions, so one may say, ‘Brexshit, the gift that keeps giving’ but this time, with a different more positive connotation to it 🤔

Until the next ramble……………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

I cannot remember what day it was, too much water has passed under the bridge since then, quite literally, but by the powers of deduction, it was obviously at some point between publishing my last ramble, and publishing this one, 🤔 However, I can confirm that it would have been on a rare non-rainy day, so now I come to think of it, as we hadn’t had many of those, I remember that it was Friday the 13th February, we were sat in one of our favourite seafront Cafe/Bars drinking our Cafe con Leche’s, nothing new there then, but thinking back, Tina Turner was crooning away in the background, 🎶 I Can’t Stand The Rain 🎶 and we both commented on just how appropriate that song was at that particular time. However, what I remember most about it was how it felt so good, to once again feel the warmth of the sunshine, and the warming breath of a very mild westerly breeze, on my face. Shazza and I used this time to each sit in silence, well we had done a lot of chitter chattering the whole way along the first part of our walk that morning, so we agreed that we had probably both used up our allocation of words for that morning 😂 So we were each able to just sit, gazing out upon the vast wide and empty expanse of shoreline that stretched out in front of us. The sea, having worn itself out after such a long period of turbulence, was now a picture of serenity once again, with its calm turquoise greens and blues just sparkling away in the sunlight. The scars, wreaked from the havoc created by the seemingly never ending storms, had now all but gone from the beaches, although some work was still in progress, repairing the damage to underground water drainage pipes that had been displaced, along with the tons of sand, such had been those extreme forces of nature. However, the extremely efficient army of local council workers had now very quickly removed the mountains of debris, the co-ordinated teams had scraped, raked and manicured the whole foreshore, bringing it back to looking a lot more like its more normal ‘Blue Flag’ award standard. These are unsung heroes in my book, they barely get noticed by passers-by as they toil relentlessly under the sun in their green ‘high-vis’ uniforms, conducting what must be a very monotonous task. But I for one noticed them, for there is absolutely nothing that evades my prying eyes constantly seeking out ramble worthy content. Not even the dog walker on the beach who allowed her dog to crap on the beach before hurriedly scampering away, without cleaning it up, did not escape my scrutiny and which got her a very much deserved loud ‘tut’ from your’s truly I can tell you, she was lucky that she was too far away to be vocally admonished, it is dog owner’s like her that give responsible owner’s a bad press, I thought to myself. There will of course be those who will spring to her defence with statements like “It will wash away with the tide”, and yes, hopefully it will, at some point, although perhaps not before another unsuspecting beach walker, or jogger, finds it adhered to the bottom of their flip-flop, or trainers 🤷‍♂️

It had been good to get out for a longish walk, and to see other’s out in abundance once again too, all taking the opportunity of another, albeit brief, respite in the weather, not having to rush around between torrential raindrops, or walking, bent over double, protecting themselves from the gale force wind, eyes fixed firmly on the ground directly at their feet, so as not to step in lake-sized puddles, or dog crap. Now they, and we, were able to just saunter, making the most of every valuable second of this unexpected change in the weather. These few dry hours of the day had truly been totally unexpected, because the ‘Works of Fiction’ had actually predicted, forecasted, or probably more accurately, just used the less technological ‘Madame Zelda’s Mystic Fortune Telling Service’ and guessed, that we were once again supposed to have wall to wall rain again on this day, dawn til dusk, which would continue for ‘at least’ the next forty-eight hours, well I suppose they did have a 50/50 chance of getting it right 🤷‍♂️

The Cafe/Bar was not as busy as it often can be, probably because we had arrived slightly later than usual that particular morning, but all the usual suspects were still there, including the German expat couple we had come to know, for not even the weather, good or bad, can interfere with the mandatory leisurely Spanish morning coffee routine. Upon arrival we of course engaged in the traditional round of pleasantries with our fellow customer’s, as well as with the two lady owner’s who, on this particular morning, were both stood side by side on the steps at the entrance, “Dos Cafe con Leche” one of them simply said, “Si Gracias” I responded, and within a minute or so our ‘Vaso’s’ (Glasses) of piping hot coffee were delivered to our table, by the more elderly of the two lady owners, whom we engaged in a brief conversation with, primarily about this unexpected, but very much welcomed weather, well it would have been rude not to have at least acknowledged this moment of rare sunshine and warmth.

I was well overdue a haircut so, after our leisurely coffee’s, we bid ‘Hasta Luego’ to our fellow customers, many of whom were now indulging in slightly stronger beverages 😲 well I suppose the sun was very nearly over the yard arm, to quote a nautical expression, depending on which direction you were looking at that yard arm I suppose, but it was far too early for either Shazza or I. Whilst I called in at my usual Moroccan barbers shop, Shazza wandered off up into the town’s Main Street, you won’t need many guesses at to which shop she would almost certainly be stopping off at 😂 Although, as you read on, the question is, could this be the beginning of the end of us giving our routine custom to this particular favourite trading post 😲 When I was finished having my hair cut, and feeling a little more lightheaded 🤭 I found her sat in the sunshine, on the wall overlooking the beach, my barber’s was just around the corner and she had already informed me where she would be waiting. Neither of us were in any hurry to walk back to the village to where the car was parked, so we discussed finding somewhere for lunch, we wanted nothing too heavy though, so we spent a few minutes trying to decide whether to stay in town, or whether to walk back to the Marina. We agreed that it was too early for the Spanish lunch time, which would have meant us being sat at a table in an empty establishment like a couple of ‘Billy No Mates’, and we certainly didn’t want to try and kill another hour and a half just waiting for more diners to appear so as to create a better dining ambience.

We sauntered back towards the Marina, allowing us more time to soak up every ray of golden sunshine, whilst looking out at the gorgeous sparkling colours of the sea, it is amazing at just how the feeling of warming sunshine can make you feel so happy. We were just casually chatting about this between ourselves as we walked and talking about just how relaxed we both felt right at that moment, “Neither of us really needs a lot to make us happy and content these days do we ?” Shazza commented, and she was right, for generally speaking, we now find ourselves just being happy with our lot, even our previously intense ‘Itchy Feet Syndrome’ has quelled somewhat these days, leading her to ask, “Do you think that we are both just getting old ?”. Mmmmm 🤔 I didn’t like the sound of that word ‘Old’, so I paused for a moment before answering, “Well yes, it is a fact that we are both getting more ‘Senior’ in years, one of us a little quicker than the other, but”, I paused again, before finishing my response, “I actually truly believe that we have now found the ‘sweet spot’ in our lives, no longer needing to seek out the next adventure, just being content with what we have in the here and now”. She half muttered an agreement, but not convincingly then, after a few moments I saw the scowl appear on her face, “But that doesn’t mean that we cannot still have some travel adventures if we want to, does it ?” She said. “Of course not” I replied, for it is true that we do still have those moments when the ‘Itchy Feet’ return and we find ourselves having to scratch them, when we do, we generally go somewhere and do something, whether that be going somewhere different, either for a day, or even a few days on a Spanish mini-break, or sometimes a longer extended holiday break like we are going to do in only a few weeks time, however, in the main, nowadays, it would be true to say that we tend to just relax and enjoy the moments we have here, in this small corner of the Iberian Peninsular, although, we will see just how true that last statement is in a few months time, when we are once again dealing with Spanish bureaucracy, applying to extend our residency permits once again 🫣

At least in the Marina complex it was much busier than on the seafront in the town, with the usual menagerie of International Expats, who tend to eat lunch much earlier in the day than our Mediterranean cousins. Of course, us being us, we wanted to sit outside, and not just because of the sunshine, regular readers will know our particular reason for that 😉 However, with the sun shining, the very calm water in the Marina sparkling alongside the shiny white hulls of the different sized boats, which were sat quite sedentary on their moorings, everybody and their dogs, and I mean that quite literally about the dogs, also wanted to be sat outside at tables in the sunshine and yes okay, who could blame them I suppose, and so, as a consequence, our choices were somewhat limited.

The last time we ate at the ‘Mexican’ Cafe/Restaurant in the Marina, which happened to be a good couple of year’s ago, we found that, unfortunately, they did not cater very well for Shazza’s more ‘Plant Based’ palate, or indeed for anyone of a more Vegetarian/Vegan persuasion, unless you wanted a basic Salad. However, on this occasion, with it being one of the few establishments that had an outside table that was free, and right at the front and immediately overlooking the Marina, we stood and perused the menu board that was attached outside, this time Shazza identified a whole host of things that she could eat, they had obviously had a change to their menu options since our last visit and not one menu item mentioned the words ‘Goats Cheese’. We both ordered ‘Burritos’, Shazza a Mediterranean Vegetable and Black Bean one, myself a Chilli Beef one, which also came with both black and red beans, lots of them, I guess this is why Mexicans always seem so jovial, they are always ‘Full of Beans’ 🤭 Both came with Mexican Rice and three bowls of dips, Sour Cream, Guacamole and a very spicy Chilli Salsa 🥵 Shazza settled for her more usual bottle of sparkling water but for me, finally, after weeks of incarceration with no dining out, I finally got to treat myself to a very nice (large) glass of Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷 Should I really still be calling it that I wonder ? In truth we do ‘occasionally’ open a bottle of wine at home, where we will both have a glass (or two), but that is, in all honesty, a very rare occurrence, for some inexplicable reason 🤷‍♂️ Although we always have plenty of bottles of the stuff on the wine rack, it is my emergency fluid supply, just in case of another drought, although not much chance of that happening this year. Somehow though, drinking wine at home just never seems to quite taste the same, not like the stuff you quaff when you are out in public, perhaps because it always tastes better when combined with a spot of ‘People Watching’, or when conducting our moral duties of ‘Fashion Policing’ or ‘Body Beautiful Observations’ 😂

It was mid afternoon when we drove back into our small residential complex, our slightly younger Spanish neighbours, Miguel and Katya, who are probably in their late forties or very early fifties and who live directly above us, had followed us in through the gates in their car, we have not seen them for several weeks, partly because of our incarcerations due to the weather, but also because they both still work on a full-time basis. We stopped and passed the usual pleasantries and chatted, just about general stuff, as you do and, although they both speak excellent English, we always try to converse with them, initially at least, in our stumbling erratic Spanish, they acknowledge the fact by giving a warm appreciative smile and they never criticise us, or make fun of us, when we occasionally get some of the words not quite right, or in the wrong place in a sentence, or when we have to slip back into our own mother tongue, which I do have to say, is getting less and less. I remember a few years ago when Miguel had told me, in a casual conversation, how it irritated him that a lot of other ‘International Expats’, not just British I hasten to add, and who have resided in our small community in excess of 10 years, still do not speak the most basic of Spanish words which, I guess subconsciously at least, is probably why we always attempt to speak to them both in Spanish, and to be honest, after three years here, I guess that is the way it should be, even if it isn’t perfect. It reminded me of an answer to a question I had seen about whether, in these more touristy areas, you really do need to speak Spanish.

It is warm enough now, well on some days, to spend the afternoon and early evening on the balcony, the daylight hours extending now to a little beyond 7:30pm, and in just a few more weeks, when the clocks go forward by one hour on to European Summertime, it will be more like 9:00pm as the sunsets get progressively later 😁 One evening, whilst we were sat on the balcony, the sun had just begun to disappear behind the thickening night clouds, although there were still some flickers of hazy blue sky obstinately hanging on, the calm sea reflected a much softer blue now, no longer were there any sparkling turquoise greens. I could hear the Gulls circling noisily overhead, above the foreshore, the evening dinner bell must be close to sounding I thought to myself as the evening tide made its way inbound. The freighter’s on the horizon were becoming more of silhouettes, they were getting much harder to distinguish through the descending veil of light grey haze and then, the next time I lifted my eyes from the book I was reading, the horizon had disappeared altogether, making it impossible to distinguish it from the natural line that separated the sea from the sky. As I sat just looking out upon the various landscapes surrounding my elevated observation post, the lights in the grounds of the neighboring complex came on, albeit dusk had still not yet fully arrived, but I noticed that the earlier much lighter breeze was beginning to turn into more of a stronger wind, the heavy leaves on the palm trees starting to sway rhythmically with it, and beginning to make much more noise, the temperature also started to fall quite rapidly as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Shazza had already retreated into the living room by this time and had turned on the three bar halogen heater, and it wasn’t long afterwards that the orange glow of the fire tempted me inside too. I sighed a contented sigh at what a very enjoyable day it had been, amazing how just a little bit of sunshine and warmth can physically, and psychologically, do to brighten up your day’s.

There is a saying that goes, ‘Enjoy each and every day whilst you can’, well that saying is most definitely true at the moment, for whilst we had enjoyed that previous days weather respite, during the very early hours of the morning, I heard the now familiar tap tap tapping on the external window shutters, and the wind blowing outside had certainly picked up and both lasted well on into the night, I lay awake listening to the gentle rhythm of the rain and wondered what the daylight of morning would bring, for right now it is more like a ‘Lucky Dip’ and certainly much like that famous Forrest Gump line, “You just don’t know what your gonna get”.

What is that other saying ? the one about ‘Giving with one hand whilst taking away with the other’. The ‘Works of Fiction’ had at least got one prediction correct, the previous warm and sunny day had only been a ‘very brief respite’ and what followed was to be another forty-eight hours of incarceration 🙁 As I skimmed through the usual array of ‘Doom and Gloom’ articles in the morning’s media over those following two days, it did serve to remind me that it wasn’t just Spanish people that were rapidly growing webbed feet, for many parts of Europe were suffering their own, not so pleasant, meteorological events, some suffering more than other’s and it reminded me to be grateful for the fact that, at least in our particular corner of Southern Spain, that we had in fact been extremely fortunate in the grand scheme of things.

We do not have to count down the number of weeks it is before our first vacation of the year, because our Grandchildren are already doing that for us, it is the very first thing they say to us on our weekly video chats with them, followed by, “Will you take us bowling again ?”, “Can you take us to the Park ?”, “Can we go to the Pizza Restaurant ?”, they each reel of a long list of the things they want us to do with them, each one making sure they include something different to what their sisters have asked, to which we of course just simply reply, ‘Yes’, in the full knowledge that we will not be able to fulfil every single one of their requests as we only have so much time to spend with them, but ‘Yes’ is much easier than trying to explain the ‘Adult logical reasons’ why not everything will actually be possible, within the time frame we have with them. However, it also serves as a timely reminder to the two of us, that we only have a few weeks remaining to up our stamina levels, in readiness for what will certainly be a full body and mental wellness workout 😲 So, our current, more sedentary exercise regime, will be totally insufficient for the demands of three ‘very active’ grandchildren, our fingers are crossed that, hopefully, the weather will soon change and we will be able to extend our walks a little more, and of course up the pace 😮‍💨 as their will be no opportunity, when we are with them in a little under five weeks, for me to grab my more customary afternoon Siesta’s 😲 “Shazza, as you are the younger, perhaps you may consider having some dedicated Girlie time with them for an hour or so 🤔”, reply unprintable, “No, I didn’t think so 🙁”

The weather did eventually change for the better, we were now, once again, awakening to the much more desirable blue skies and sunshine and, although the different ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts were still squabbling with each other, like a bunch of school kids in the playground, over how warm the daily temperatures would be, or the strengths and directions of the wind, it really didn’t matter to us, as long as we saw that sunshine symbol in the forecast, that was all we needed, so confident was I that there would be no more rain in the next ten days or so, hopefully much longer than that, I even let ‘Forrest Gump’ go on vacation for a while, although I do have him on speed dial just in case he is required at short notice 😁

I won’t bore you with the details, suffice to say that not only had the meteorological conditions resumed their normal sunny service in our part of Spain, but so did our normal daily routines, we went out ‘every single day’ on our usual walks, occasionally extending them but not, if we are honest, for any reasons of upping our stamina levels, more a case of having been incarcerated for so long we just wanted to enjoy most of our time outside of the confines of the apartment.

Shazza informed me one morning, whilst enjoying our first coffee of the day, taken now back in my happy place on the balcony, that she had discovered an Organic Fruit and Vegetable Farm just on the outskirts of Estepona, on the Northern side of the town. Obviously the reason she was informing me of this was because it was more her way of telling me where we would be going that morning, that was as soon as I got my arse into gear and got washed and dressed 😂 The ‘Works of Fiction’ predicted the afternoon temperature to climb to 24 degrees(c), it was already 18 degrees(c) at 10:00am so they may just have guessed correctly this time around. I put the route into ‘Google Car Play’ and off we went, it didn’t take long before we remembered that we needed to re-set the Air-Con system in the car from warm to cold 🥵 The location was a little further outside of Estepona than it had initially looked, but not that far. Now it is not often that you get personal service from a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a firm, unless of course you are from a more entitled background and the chauffeur drops you off at the door 💵💰🤑 and to be honest, we didn’t know that we were at the time. The sales area was a metal shipping container set at the entrance of a large field, we waited for the only other customer to be served and then a very friendly youngish chap, early to mid thirties I guessed, dressed as you would expect a land worker to be dressed, introduced himself in perfect English, “Hello, I am Carlos, Is this your first time here ?” he asked, when we answered ‘Yes’ he said, “Okay, it is quiet this morning so let me show you around my farm”. We chatted as we walked and we learnt about Carlos, his previous life and how he came to own this farm, his family was originally from up in the hillside town of ‘Antequera’, before they then moved to ‘Cordoba’, he had left home and worked in the ‘Science Based Agricultural Industry’ in Northern Europe, before returning to Spain and starting this farm just three year’s ago. He was ‘A Very Happy And Pleasant Chap’ and we both took an instant liking to him, he was very enthusiastic about his farm and his plans for the future and was keen to confirm that all of his produce was grown without any chemicals or pesticides, 100% Organic he proudly stated. There was not much produce on the hand-made wooden racking in the container, but he explained that the rain and flooding had taken it’s toll on the ground and crops, but he had plenty out in his fields that had survived and ready for cultivating, so out we went back into the fields stopping to cut handfuls of fresh ‘Kale’, Bright Green and Dark Purple varieties. As you may imagine, we came away with two plastic carrier bags full of different fruits and vegetables and he said that if we wanted anything specific that he didn’t already have available, just to let him know and he would grow it, Shazza suggested Fresh Ginger and he said that he already had plans to grow it as part of his expansion plans. As we left he gave us his card, so that we could contact him if we had any other suggestions for produce that he didn’t already grow, but to be honest he already grows such a wide range and much more than there is on our local supermarket shelves, but that is when I noticed his official title of ‘CEO & Owner’. I chuckled and said that I had never been dealt with personally by a CEO before, he laughed, “Nothing but personal service here’ he says, and then thanked us for our custom.

Now okay, for Shazza this farm produce location was a major discovery for her, she waxed lyrically about it all the way back to Estepona and I knew from that, that this would not be our last visit, and that it would probably now extend the distance we travel on our weekly shopping trips 😲 For me, somewhat of a ‘Plant Based’ heathen in her eyes, I wasn’t convinced that I would be able to tell any difference in taste between these fruit and vegetables, from the the ones that we have been eating from both the Supermarket, or the Fruiterias, in our local town 🤷‍♂️ Although, some of the local produce in the supermarket has been seen to contain labels stating country of Origin in countries as far away as Peru, not very local eh, considering that much of the same produce is actually grown here in Spain 🙄 So at least she will know that by purchasing from the local farm, that we are actually supporting the local Spanish economy, now that cannot be a bad thing can it 🤷‍♂️

We parked on the waste ground in Estepona, opposite the large Carrefour supermarket, and walked into the town along the seafront promenade and, in the rapidly rising heat it felt a long walk, but we were definitely not complaining. The first stop was my E-Cigarette supplier, the last time I had visited to re-stock my supply of vape fluids was nearly six months ago, and as we do not have a ‘Vape Store’ in our own town this is the nearest, so I ensure that when I come here I purchase in bulk. The shop is at the top end of the town but just around the corner from it is a very pleasant Plaza, with a couple of ‘Taperias’, so just right for a nice ‘Vermut & Tapas’ lunch, yes of course we did, it would have been rude not to. Estepona is such a vibrant place and we love coming here, although, even though it is only a twenty-minute drive from home, we probably do not come as often as we could, not only was it a very productive day, but it also made for a nice change of scenery.

And In Other News……….

Perhaps the reporter for the European Weekly News (EWN) had some insider information that the other Global Tabloid Press do not have, for when reporting on the Supreme Courts ruling in the USA very recently, it would appear that, according to the EWN this is, and not a case of you saw it in Eric’s ramble so it must be true, that TRUMP is now the ‘Former’ President 🤔 Perhaps this could just be a ‘typo’ ? or perhaps a case of CNN and FOX News being a little slow off the mark ? Or perhaps…………. the Iranians got to him first 🤷‍♂️

Until my next scintillating ramble, from what is now a Sunnier part of Spain, wherever you may be in the world right now, stay warm, stay dry or just enjoy the sunshine, but ultimately, stay safe 😉

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

When the days are more wet than dry, when incarceration, over our own freedom to choose becomes a choice that is taken out of our own hands, then, having a ‘Comfort Zone’ in which to feel safe and secure, is definitely something of a luxury. There were times, not very long ago, when being incarcerated, for more than two consecutive days, even within the relative comforts of our own home, resulted in the onset of ‘Cabin Fever’, our need, not just a leisurely desire, to get out on our walks along the seafront, to feel the fresh air upon our faces, the wind in our hair and, the sights and sounds of life going on around us, were quite overwhelming. However, over the last few months in particular, when those incarceration periods have become more frequent and much more extended periods, four to five days at a time, but where we now realise that ‘Cabin Fever’ no longer strikes, I have to wonder whether this is just a case of putting our positive heads on and saying, “It’s the weather, we have no control over it, so it is what it is 🤷‍♂️”, or, is the reason for that lack of feeling that we are being forcibly imprisoned in our own homes, a little more sinister ? A case perhaps of us becoming just a little too comfortable in our ‘Comfort Zone’ where Lethargy overrides personal motivation to want to get out and move ?

For those of you who are regular reader’s, you will already be familiar with my more ‘contemplative’ ramblings, I don’t necessarily need to have any excuses, to write about the numerous things that are going on in my thoughts at any given time, and I certainly do not necessarily have to feel incarcerated before willingly sharing such thoughts with you, whether you want me to or not. However, these recent, and much more frequent periods of incarceration, have entailed me having much more time on my hands, and subsequently as a consequence, with I hasten to add, some other coincidental things being thrown into the mix, I have had a lot more time to do a lot more contemplating but with a nagging voice inside my head screaming, ‘Don’t Get All Philasophical On Me !’ So on yet another stormy and miserably wet morning, I found myself sat on the balcony staring into space and posing myself a question, ‘Is having a Comfort Zone a good thing or a bad thing ?’

Now this wasn’t a question that I had just conjured up from thin air, in fact it was a comment that was made recently, during one of the ‘many conversations’ that Shazza and I often have between ourselves, on a wide variety of subjects. We had made the decision to come and live permanently here in Spain in June of 2023, in complete acknowledgement and agreement, that in doing so we would be away from all of our immediate family, including our three grandchildren who, at the time of our move, the twins were 7 years old and the youngest just 4 years of age. Although we knew that they would be keen to come out and stay with us at least once a year, and we would occasionally return to the UK to see them and other family and friends, but we had told them that we did not intend to return to the UK on an annual basis, perhaps every couple of year’s or so, as we wanted and intended to use the opportunity, of us being based in Europe, to travel to and explore many other European countries, and perhaps even some countries further afield that were on our personal bucket lists. However, in the very nearly 3 year’s that we have lived here in Spain, whilst we have had some extended road trips exploring other areas of Spain in this time, a few days with our daughter in Germany one Christmas and, a few days in Austria attending a large family wedding event, we have not travelled anywhere else in Europe on personal holidays in this time, although we regularly both sit and watch ‘You Tube’ tourist documentaries on countries within Europe, and of course, we make all the right noises about visiting them 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, on a wet and dreary afternoon we were scrolling through the lists of programmes on the TV when we came across one entitled, ‘Old People’s Care Home for 4 Year Olds’ and that gained our interest. Now I won’t go into too much detail but basically, it was a ‘Social Experiment’ in an Australian Care Home where they introduced a group of ten, 4 year olds, to a similar numbered group of elderly residents aged 84 year’s and above and over a period of seven full weeks these individuals spent everyday with each other doing a variety of things, both in and out of the care home environment. As you may imagine, it was quite amusing to watch, especially as 4 year olds do not have any sort of ‘Filter’, they say exactly what is in their heads, likewise the ‘Older Adults’ were set in their own ways, it was set over six separate episodes and we binged watched the first series in one day, we found ourselves laughing, tutting and even shedding a tear at the end. But why am I telling you this, well initially, our reason for watching it had nothing to do with the ‘Old Age’ aspect, I mean this was about ‘Old People’ so, as far as I was concerned their was absolutely no correlation there, I mean I am not even a ‘Septuagenarian’ yet, well not for another seven months, but in my head I am still barely fifty-years old and still as healthy and fit, although yes I will admit to making some old people’s noises occasionally, when I first get out of bed usually or, on sitting down when we get home after one of our long walks, but to be completely truthful I have probably been making those exact same noises for the last twenty-years 😂 But here is the real impact the programme had on the both of us, we missed the one-on-one ‘in the flesh’ contact with our three grandaughter’s, it reminded us of just how much fun they are, the energy they have, and the energy they make us have in doing things with them, and the conversations we have with them. It made us realise just how much of their growing up years that we have missed out on and why, perhaps, when we have so much free time in our retirement, that we can not hop on the relatively short flight back to the UK, to go and see them a little more often.

We already knew that we would get to see them all again this Summer, for whilst they have confirmed that they are definitely coming during the school holidays, the exact dates still have to be determined, but we will be here nonetheless. However, it got us to thinking how we could kill two birds with one stone as it were, by also satisfying one of our own personal holiday trips. One of the biggest regrets I have is in not actually taking the opportunity to do any real travel explorations of France, whilst we were living in our Motorhome full-time, yes we had done a bit but not a great deal, we were always in a rush to get elsewhere, France was always just on the doorstep and we all know that we never usually visit places that are so close to home 🤷‍♂️ Whenever we travelled from the UK to Spain, in either the Motorhome or the car, we always took the ferry directly to either Bilbao or Santander then drove straight down here to the apartment, to what was then just our holiday ‘Bolt Hole’. So, we have made the decision and have booked the ferries and, in a little over six weeks time we will head up to Bilbao, where we will spend a couple of days exploring the city before departing for the UK. Strange how many times we have departed, and returned, via Bilbao but never stopped to look around 🤷‍♂️ We will put this right this time. We spent a little over three weeks in the UK last year, visiting family and friends, this time we will spend only one week, stopping first in Wiltshire to spend a few days with our grandchildren whilst they are on their Easter school holidays, then driving up to South Yorkshire to spend Easter with Shazza’s mum, then we will return to Wiltshire to spend a short time again with the Grandchildren, before catching an overnight ferry to the north coast of France. I have made a rough route plan, there are far too many places to explore in just one trip, so we have a general direction to head towards but with no definitive locations to stop at, and no time period for how long we will stay at any one location, but we will celebrate Shazza’s birthday whilst we are there and the France part of this particular trip could well stretch to just beyond three weeks, then back into Spain with stops at San Sebastián, Zaragoza and Toledo, which are three major places in Spain that we have not yet visited and are on our ‘To Do List’, before then heading home once again. We need to be back at home in May to get all our ducks in a row (Administration) in readiness to submit our annual Spanish Tax Return, and then, at the end of May, our daughter and son-in-law from Germany, will be our first scheduled visitors of the year.

Now, with June and July having to be spent here in Spain, as we have to apply to renew our Spanish Residency Permits (Mid June) and then wait to receive our new Identity Residency Cards, which could take between 4-6 weeks and then, with the two-week Summer visit to us by Chris, Sarah and our Grandaughter’s, we may, or may not, get a chance for a mini-break somewhere before those two events. One of my nephews and his wife and young son, who live in Australia, have also said that they are potentially planning a Summer trip to Europe and would like to come and stay with us as part of that trip, so that will fit into the schedule of visitor’s somewhere 🤷‍♂️

However, earlier in this ramble I also alluded to a certain ‘Septuagenarian’ event taking place later in the year. Shazza has decided that as we only really marked my 50th, and did nothing special to mark my 60th, this time she wanted us to make a memory, with the proviso that she will be organising it and that I am not to question any unscheduled withdrawals from the Bank Account 😲 My OCD Buddy certainly had some concerns over my agreeing to that one I can tell you !! My sole input, I have been informed, is to decide only on which European City, excluding any in Spain or UK, in which I would like to celebrate this event. Oh my goodness, choices choices, Copenhagen ? Oslo ? Florence ? Rome ? Athens ? Although, coming to think about it, I seem to recall seeing something about an annual five day wine festival in Budapest ? 🍷🍷🍷 Although I may not have too many memories of that city, or my birthday, afterwards 😂

So, it looks as if we are going to have another busy year ahead of us, with Shazza’s mum scheduled to arrive for her two-week stay in October, which quite conveniently brings me back to my original question, ‘Is having a comfort zone a good thing, or a bad thing ?’ Well we certainly do have our own very nice ‘Comfort Zone’, both within our safe and secure home and also, with our location, we have everything we need on our doorstep, a swimming pool just steps away from our front door, an incredible choice of a number of lovely sandy beaches, the nearest just a five minute drive from our front door, a lovely long seafront and promenade to walk along, so many Cafe/Bars and Restaurants to choose from, when it isn’t raining of course, we have all the day to day shops we could ever need, top notch medical facilities close by and with two Airport’s also nearby (Gibraltar and Malaga), within just a short drive away, which enable visitor’s to get to us quite easily. So yes, being in our ‘Comfort Zone’ is definitely a good thing, in my humble opinion. But, just because we have a perfectly good ‘Comfort Zone’ should not mean that we should not, or cannot, step outside of it occasionally, especially whilst we are both still capable of doing so, for we just never know when the time may come when we cannot do so, for whatever reason 🤔

Unlike our prolonged periods of recent incarcerations, where we have had little choice in the matter, we do still have the freedom to decide for ourselves, if, when, and on how many occasions, we may choose to leave our particular ‘Comfort Zone’, only ‘other’ external global factors can interfere with that, if we allow them to.

If this stormy weather doesn’t stop soon, you may have to persevere with even more of my ‘Contemplative’ thoughts 😂

Until the next time………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

My favourite place in our apartment is the balcony where I am protected from the outside elements by the large glazed windows and the two double ‘French Style’ glazed doors. I spend many hours in here, no matter the season or time of the day, although at night in these Winter months it can get a little too chilly without any heating, although I do occasionally make use of a small portable fan heater. Once any of the routine domestic chores have been done, more usually the weekly cleaning regime or, like on one morning recently, fitting a new lock and handle mechanism on the kitchen door or, after we have returned from one of our walks or shopping trips, this is where I retreat to, for this is my ‘Haven of Peace’. We often eat our lunch in this space, although if it is a bit chilly Shazza will eat her’s in the living room where it is much warmer, but the cooler balcony doesn’t tend to bother me so much. I can spend hours in here, doing stuff on my iPad, or reading whatever book I have on the go on my Kindle or, much more usually, just sitting gazing out of the window, often in my own little world where I sit and contemplate things, which can be about anything and everything. The important thing is that this to me is a place where, whatever is going on in the wider outside world, it doesn’t encroach into here, other than in my thoughts that is. I have been spending a lot of time sat in my happy place recently, due to the adverse weather conditions we have been experiencing in our small corner of the world, although, reading the media headlines from around the world I am very aware that we were not the only one’s suffering an unusually prolonged period of very wet and stormy weather.

As I sit watching the fast flowing raindrops cascading down the windows, and listening to the gale force wind whistling relentlessly outside, sometimes not even being able to look out upon the sea as the rainfall is so heavy that it creates a curtain of thick grey mist. At one stage my thoughts drifted to when we were living in a house back in England on days such as these, we would have awoken, listened to the wind and rain outside and, although being in a nice warm centrally heated home, we would have probably still have scrunched up our shoulders and rubbed the palms of our hands together as we gazed out upon the wet and wintry scene before us, “Oh well, just another couple of months to go and Spring will arrive, with hopefully, a bit milder temperature” I would most likely have said, for I do tend to make such profound positive statements like that from time to time. The difference about living in England though, was that this type of wintery weather would have been quite normal, and it would almost certainly have been accompanied with frost, ice and snow but there would be nothing unusual about any of that. Even so, and I chuckled to myself as I thought about it, even though we were used to living through such Winter weather, year in, year out, without fail, we would still have moaned about it, for it’s a British national pastime, this moaning and groaning lark, it’s a compulsory subject in our education system don’t you know 😂 Some, more privileged members of British Society, even go on to University to get a degree in the art, and that art, of moaning and groaning, is not just confined to the subject of the weather either. Now let us also be honest, for the Brits are not alone in having specific traditional national behaviours, other countries around the globe also have their own specific education priorities too, and equally mandatory subjects that must be taught, learned and practiced for their regular use in daily life, of course these specialised arts vary, from country to country, for example, some teach their citizens how to queue jump, without feeling any guilt or embarrassment, I mean they have very busy lives, unlike everyone else, so they do not have time to stand in a line waiting for something. With other’s it is the art of never saying Please, or Thank You, probably the most globally recognised one though is the art of ensuring that one’s towel gets on to a sun bed before anyone else’s 😂 I find these human behaviours to be really amusing to watch and they can be easily turned into a game to pass some time, a bit like when travelling on a long journey in a car, bus or train and you have to count the number of certain coloured cars on the road, or horses in a field, but this particular ‘traits game’ is called ‘Guess The Nationality’, it can be especially fun whilst doing a spot of ‘People Watching’ in busy tourist locations 🤭 However, this game is not as easy as it once was, perhaps a reflection on the state of our world today, for now it seems that a lot of these once specific Nationality traits, are now becoming more common and widespread in their use throughout many different Nationalities 🤔

Over the last couple of months, since the beginning of December last year, we have been pestered by the presence of numerous ‘Unwelcome Visitor’s’, they arrive, without being invited, and each one, without fail, overstays their welcome 😲 I will publicly name and shame them here and now, although they already know who they are, Alice, Frances, Ingrid, Harry, Joseph and now Kristin. Okay yes, you have probably already guessed that these particular ‘Unwelcome Visitor’s’ are all major storms, which have followed swiftly on the coat tails of each other providing little, or no, respite from the trail of devastation that each one of them had created, although it has to be said that these trails of devastation have varied dramatically, dependent of course on which areas they had hit the worst, fortunately, in our small corner of the Costa del Sol, we have certainly been spared from any of the more ‘serious’ devastation, only really suffering from the inconvenience of not being able to get out as much for our regular walks. However, and yes, somewhat surprisingly for our area, even the snow had stretched its long white arms down to within 15km (9 miles) of Estepona, and that, I do have to say, is just a little too close for comfort for my liking ! Strange when I think about it now, but this time last year we were actually praying for ‘some’ rain, in order to end the previous two year’s of severe drought but now, we are frantically praying for it all to just stop, I guess we are just never happy eh ! 😂

Anyway, enough about the weather, because we cannot do anything about it 🤷‍♂️ although I afford myself a bit of a chuckle when an amusing thought suddenly enters my head, for without a doubt it will not be too long and then Shazza and I will both be moaning and groaning again, about it being too hot, the crowds of tourists and of course those bloody mosquito’s 😂

Personally speaking, the one biggest casualty of all of these storms was the potential for them to have had a devastating impact on my rambles, although I am sure that there may be some who may have welcomed that devastation 😂 They have certainly made it more difficult for us to get out and about in order for me to find some little anecdotes to write about in respect of our everyday life here in this part of Spain. However, that little voice in my head says, “When has anything ever really stopped you from finding something to ramble about Eric ?”, it may have a point 🤔

So, as the very noisy and whistling gale force wind almost relentlessy permeates my ear drums and rattles the windows, accompanied by the seriously heavy rain, which continuously hammers on the windows, I sit, with a steaming mug of coffee on the table beside me and my iPad on my lap, I place my fingers, well the usual two of them, on to the keyboard, and await for my brains cognitive diary to release the information about the things that have happened since my last publication, a couple of weeks earlier………………….

Now you will recall that on one of our recent walks, along the seafront promenade, their was an incident with a large turtle that had become entrapped in a fishing net, by the way, it has since been confirmed that it was in fact a ‘Loggerhead’, well that incident, fortunately, had a happy ending and ‘Tommy’, which I nicknamed him, although not actually knowing what gender it was, but he was released from his constraints and lived to swim, probably into another fishing net, on another day. Now, as I wrote at the time, these sort of incidents are not an everyday occurrence here and, generally speaking, we rarely witness anything too exciting happening on our daily walks. However, just like standing for hour’s waiting for a Bus, then eventually two turning up together, so it was that we encountered yet another incident, just a week later, on another of our walks and, quite coincidentally, within just a few metres of where the ‘Tommy the Turtle’ incident had unfolded.

There had been a short break in the otherwise elongated period of stormy weather, the ever present dark rain threatening clouds had suddenly parted, revealing just a glimpse of blue sky and some weak hazy sunshine managing to break through briefly, it was still a pretty blustery day but we took the opportunity to break free from our recent days of enforced confinement, dressed appropriately, prepared for the possibility of getting caught in yet another downpour. It felt so good to be able to get back outside, into the fresh air, surprisingly it was a little warmer than we had anticipated and we both unzipped our outer rain jackets. Due to these constantly and rapidly varying weather conditions, on this occasion we had decided to drive straight into the town, rather than park up at the bottom of the hill, in our usual spot in the village where we would normally take the longer walk along the seafront promenade. However, we had parked not in our usual town car park, but on the opposite side of the busy A7 road that dissects the town, the reason for doing so was actually two fold, firstly to compensate for the lack of distance we would be walking on this occasion from our more usual route, and secondly, we were parked just a shortish distance from our local high street supermarket, which we wanted to call into on our way back home, after we had called in to the ‘bank’ and ‘fruiteria’ of course. Anyway, after having crossed the footbridge that stretched across the four lane road below, we made our way down a back street towards the seafront promenade, we could see the flashing blue lights on the two Ambulances parked on the seafront, but before we got there an elderly lady, wearing slippers, I notice these kinds of small details, probably due to my previous long career as a Police Investigator 🤭 she was coming from the direction of whatever the incident was, she stopped as she reached us and rattled several sentences off, at machine gun speed, in Spanish, but we missed most of what she said apart from the words, ‘Hombre’ (Man), ‘fallecido’ (Died) and ‘caminando’ (Walking). As we approached we could hear the quite obvious sound of an elderly woman crying, quite loudly, in between these bursts of tears she was saying something, between heavy sobs, we couldn’t decipher her words. The ambulance crews had sealed off the promenade with blue and white tape, to prevent passers-by from ‘rubber necking’. We veered away from the scene and although we didn’t know the details of the actual incident, or of the people involved, from what we had been told, by the elderly slipper footed lady, and from the wails of the woman at the scene, we had already made our own assumptions. As we continued our walk, we both agreed that this incident had had a bit of a negative impact on our mood, that led to us both discussing, during our routine ‘Cafe con Leche’ stop, our own mortality and some of the realities of either of us passing away suddenly, here in Spain, without any close support from family or even friends. We have often discussed this subject, since moving here permanently and both not being spring chickens as it were, in those previous discussions we had considered the practical formalities that we would have to conduct, we both had Wills, but then there were the peculiarities of the Spanish Funeral system, burials/cremations must take place within forty-eight hours of a persons death, unless they are under suspicious circumstances, then their were the financial aspects and complications of having just one ‘Joint Account’, they freeze bank accounts totally upon a persons death 😲 So yes, we had discussed all of these things, on several occasions, but we had never really considered the immediate effect and aftermath. What if we had come out for our normal daily walk, or to do some shopping, then either one of us had keeled over and died, suddenly and right there on a public street, how on earth do you deal with that ? And for us, with no immediate family to call upon, or no real close friends, just neighbours or acquaintances, the last thing on your mind would be the formalities or practicalities, there would be the initial distress and the shock to deal with 🤷‍♂️ To say it put a real downer on our morning would be a gross understatement and whereas the ‘Tommy Turtle’ incident had had a happy ending, this one most certainly hadn’t. We both deem ourselves to be very fit and healthy, no serious underlying medical conditions and on no medications, medically prescribed or over the counter, but we have never had our good health actually medically confirmed for a long long time, but then again, why would we, surely you only visit the doctor’s when you feel really poorly, or you know that you have some sort of a medical issue that needs a specialist medical consultation 🤷‍♂️ Or perhaps Eric, you ‘are getting old’ when you start talking about getting old ?

Quite coincidentally the following morning, whilst speed reading some of the Global News Headlines, I came across an article, re-published from one that had first appeared in August 2025, something news media publications do regularly as ‘page fillers’, but again the timing being quite coincidental bearing in mind the nature of the previous days tragic incident, which had prompted personal reflections on our own health and rising age related senior status.

In 2025, Singapore became the world’s 6th ‘Official Blue Zone’ country, although, it is a little different to the other five. Researcher’s had discovered that in the already established five ‘Blue Zone’ areas, Longevity had been derived naturally, or to put it another way, nothing had been changed in these areas natural environments, their cultures, dietary aspects or traditional social lifestyles, people were living the same way today as they always had. However, in Singapore, this Blue Zone area has been physically engineered, by the Government, to promote Longevity, by providing better more environmentally friendly areas by building more Green Spaces, providing funding to promote social aspects and of course promoting and encouraging healthy dietary and fitness regimes. None of the things that had been engineered were mandatory, or enforced, but somehow it appears to have worked and over a period of several years research, the results comparisons show that more people in Singapore are living for longer.

Now I am sure that many of us know that there are numerous other countries, globally, where people can, and many do, live to be ‘Centenarians’, the main difference being that they are not in the high concentration of numbers that there are in the officially categorised ‘Blue Zone’ areas. But that got me to thinking once again, because I have visited this ‘Blue Zone’ subject before, but I continually hear the claims being made about the ‘Healthy Mediterranean Diet’, so why is it, I ask myself, that only one Island area in Greece, and one geographical area in Sardinia, has attained this ‘Official’ Blue Zone Status ? Or could it be that ‘Netflix’ documentary film makers just keep going to the same already established ‘Blue Zone’ areas or, perhaps, there are other areas currently being researched but not yet given the Longevity status 🤷‍♂️ Now of course, me being me, and nothing better to do with myself on these stormy wet weather days, I went to the font of all knowledge, yes ‘Senor Google’, well it would have been rude of me not to, and I asked the straightforward question ‘Are there any Blue Zones’ in Spain?’ However, this is the unexpected response I received………………

It took a bit of time to work out the correct phraseology, but eventually I succeeded and discovered that there is a small geographical inland area in the Region of Galicia, Northern Spain, that has a higher than average number of Centenarians but, research is still ongoing before it can be officially designated as a ‘Blue Zone’. It had been hoped that this area in Galicia would have made it into 6th place in the Blue Zone listings, unfortunately, Singapore has pipped it to the post 🤷‍♂️

Having now watched a lot of documentaries on these ‘Blue Zones’, on both ‘Netflix’ and ‘You Tube’ over the last few years, I have come to realise that this Longevity stuff is not solely about the kind of diet that you eat, although certain ‘foodie’ groups will attempt to hi-jack the ‘Longetivity’ label for their own ends, that includes ‘Vegan’, ‘Plant Based’, ‘Vegetarian’ and ‘Carnivore’ groups. Not that dietary considerations are not important, they are, but when you watch and listen to a wide variety of these documentaries, they all confirm that it is not just one thing that has been responsible, for these areas having larger than average groups of people who have become ‘Centenarians’, but it is actually a series of normal everyday lifestyle habits and behaviours, conducted over a period of decades, that have combined to create these ‘Blue Zones’, apart from Singapore that is, which has been physically engineered to promote Longevity.

One of the things that really grabbed my attention and intrigued me, and not every documentary mentioned this, but what grabbed my attention about the larger majority of these ‘Centenarians’ within the established ‘Blue Zones’, was the fact that none of them suffered with any major medical issues, No Cancers, Diabetes, Respiratory Issues, Cardiology issues and very few, if any, were medically categorised as being Obese 🤷‍♂️ Did some of them eat red meats in their diets ? Yes they did, although moderate consumption. Did they drink Wine ? Again Yes, in moderate consumption, which as you can imagine was actually music to my particular ears 😂 But what I did find amazing was, that these groups of Centenarians had all survived the Pandemic, whereas during the Covid outbreak, globally, it was the elderly (Over 65) and those ‘generally’ suffering with underlying medical conditions, who accounted for the majority of fatalities, although not all. Now most of you who have come to know me, through these rambles, know that I have a cynical and very skeptical nature, I don’t just accept what someone says, or by which spreadsheet of facts they opt to show to prove their case, and that also applies to the ‘Blue Zone’ research, but I do have to say, I found these ‘Blue Zone’ documentaries, more so the actual ‘Centanarian’ characters that were interviewed, quite inspirational and although I am not a betting man, on this occasion I would like to wager that none of these current ‘Centenarians’ give a damn about their official title, or that they live in a ‘Blue Zone’, they just carry on as normal, happy with their everyday lives and lifestyles. But here is the important ‘key factor’ that I personally take away from watching such documentaries, ‘You do not have to live in a Blue Zone to live a long, happy and healthy life’, but perhaps by adopting some of ‘their’ normal lifestyle behaviour’s and habits, within our own environments, it may just help in achieving it 😉

WOW ! All of this latest ‘Blue Zone’ stuff, that I have just rambled on about, was prompted by that one sad incident down on the Promenade, by the joint conversation that Shazza and I had had shortly afterwards, and perhaps, my own individual thoughts on it for days afterwards. It just goes to prove that things that you see, or hear, even though they may not directly involve you, can have an impact on you 🙄 However, on a much more agreeable note, to end this particular ramble, I am going to now go and engage in one of those ‘Longevity’ positive attributes, time I think to partake of a ‘large’ dose of Anti-COVID Vaccine 🍷

Wherever you may be in the world reading this, please stay safe in whatever climatic phenomenon you are currently experiencing 🙏

Until the next time………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

There has been a cold icy crispness in the air for many weeks now, the rainy season had started right at the beginning of December, much earlier than normal this year, but what was more unusual was its persistence, for usually there would be three or four days of continuous rain before the sun would re-appear again, for up to a week or so, before another three of four days of rainfall. Although, the last two winters have actually been the opposite, unusually warm and dry, hence the following two years of severe drought, no chance of that happening again in 2026, as our local Embalse is currently sitting at 85% of its total capacity and, for safety reasons, they are actually having to conduct controlled releases of some of it. However, like most of Europe, North, South, East and West, last year, since the beginning of December and right through until the first week of January this year, the whole of Europe, including our location right down here in the South, the place everyone associates with perpetual winter sunshine, was being battered with persistent storms, many wreaking havoc and causing widespread floods as they do, and sadly, causing some fatalities as a consequence.

In our immediate area we have not suffered any major flooding since the devastating flood of December 2016, but this year, in a space of just seven days, between Christmas and New Year, we had received two ‘Red Alerts’ on our mobile phones warning of a ‘Danger of Flooding’ in our immediate area. Fortunately, although the storms did arrive as forecasted by the ‘Works of Fiction’, the threat of severe flooding didn’t, it appeared that we had escaped the worst, we discovered later that we had been extremely fortunate, as the small community of Manilva, which is just a ten minute drive further up the hill from us, and Estepona, just across the bay and only a twenty minute drive away, were not so fortunate, with flooded streets and homes, rivers and storm drains had been breached by the rising floodwaters and there just seemed to be no rhyme or reason for why we hadn’t suffered the same fate as our neighbouring communities, or was there ? Before the rainy season started we had witnessed the local council cleaning out all of the street drains, and clearing the storm drains of any debris, going as far as cutting back a lot of overgrown shrubbery lining the flood drains and the river beds, which could hinder the rapid free flow of flood waters from escaping into the sea, perhaps they had learned the hard lessons from the devastation caused nine year’s previously, prior planning and preparation had obviously payed off on this occasion.

Apart from the days when it has been particularly wet, and I have to say that there has been rather a lot of those wet days over the last few weeks, even so, we have started this New Year with pretty much the same pattern of activity as we had ended the previous year, that being with taking our daily walks along the seafront. Our walks are generally just about maintaining mobility, rather than for any real fitness objectives, although when we want to treat them as more of an ‘Exercise Session’ we just tend to up the pace in which we walk and often just extend the distance slightly, but the majority of our daily walks generally tend to be a distance of between 3-4 miles, with of course the mandatory refreshment stop at the midway point, well it would be rude not to wouldn’t it 🤭

One of my particular ‘quirks’, and yes I know that I have many of those, they come naturally, with the privilege of age and that is my excuse and I am sticking to it. So, in addition to my other quirks, or shall we just call them casual pastimes, such as the ‘People Watching’, ‘Fashion Policing’ and of course the ‘Body Beautiful Observations’ is the listening to, and observing, the sights and sounds of nature that is around me. Currently such observations are more related to the noises that accompany the strong, and extremely blustery winds, as they unceremoniously barge a pathway through the Palm Trees without even an excuse me, or to the high pitched whistling as this invisible force makes its way down narrow streets and alleyways kicking out of the way anything in its path, paper, tin cans and sometimes even empty wheelie bins (Trash cans to my readers over the pond). I particularly enjoy listening to the sounds of the waves as they crash on to the shoreline, or watch them, like Olympic gymnasts, leaping much higher than the thick block on block sea defence boulders, that protect the small entrance to the Marina, whipping up a spray of sand, grit and often larger pebbles as they do so, which then lay scattered on the surrounding roads and pathways. As I sit hugging my Vaso (Glass) of Cafe con Leche, I watch, almost hypnotically, at the white clumps of cloud as they race each other across the sky, like busy commuters in a hurry to get to their destinations. The debri strewn across the beach serving as evidence, not that any was required, of the very recent raging ‘Storm Francis’ that had hit our coastline. So I guess, if I really want to analyse my own behaviour’s, our walks are not solely as a means of exercise, or just to get from one point to another, they are actually also an excellent medium by way of promoting a good feeling of mental health, now you cannot argue with that and, as an added bonus, neither do you need to queue up at your GP’s surgery to get a prescription for it 😉

However, one of the downsides of this mental awareness activity is that I could also hear ‘other’, more familiar seasonal wintry sounds, although this time they were an unwanted intrusion emanating from the human element, namely the harsh and persistent guttural sounds of phlegm choking coughs, often going hand in hand with the sounds of sneezes, some gentle whilst other’s were much more boisterous and louder in their nature and, no matter where we walked, or sat, there was to be no respite from them, they attacked us from all directions. So although the weather may not have been the best, even in these much chillier conditions, Shazza and I still choose to sit outside in the fresh air, rather than being inside in the much warmer but more confined spaces, where bacterial infections are able to breed and multiply and are more easily distributed to newer hosts, even without any formal pre-arranged invitation. So yes, as a consequence of the Covid Pandemic, both Shazza and I still suffer with that same ‘paranoia’, although perhaps that is not such a bad trait, as we have both managed to remain free, although probably more by luck than judgement, from any of these more ‘usual’ seasonal bugs, as well as some of the more newer more recent one’s such as the newer strain of Covid, or the more recent wave of the Nora-virus that is doing the rounds. I find it interesting that the media refer to these rampant wandering bacterial infections by their respective official titles, whilst the Government’s and associated Health Authorities are still only loosely referring to them as just ‘Flu Like’ viruses, I wonder what they think they could be 🙄 The mandatory wearing of face masks, in clinical and medical environments and in care homes, has been extended here in Andalusia until the 6th February, this, according to the Regional Health Authority is, more of a precautionary measure, rather than an indication of anything more sinister, and hey, why would we have any cause to disbelieve them I ask myself ?

One morning, when we reached the sanctuary of one of our more usual seafront Cafe’s, two of our four ‘preferred’ choices of hostelry still remaining closed for their extended seasonal breaks, we sat outside, overlooking the promenade, beach and sea but were sheltered from the strong wind by their very efficient external patio windbreak, which was conveniently closed to the windward side but open on the opposite side and to the front. We were warmed a little, from both the piping hot coffee and also from the weaker, but still warm, rays of sunshine that occasionally managed to force themselves through the somewhat swiftly moving blocks of thick white cloud. Many of the locals, who were sat on tables around us, obviously because all of the inside tables were occupied, huddled beneath their own deep layers of weather protection, many of whom we observed were constantly sniffling into their paper tissues 😲 As is usual they acknowledged our presence in the usual polite manner, which we obviously returned. Their response, to my comment that it was ‘Muy Frio” (Very Cold), was to give a shrug of their shoulders, smile and respond with, ‘Es Invierno” (It is Winter), but their response was not given in a clever or rude manner, just in a matter of fact sort of way, for yes it was indeed Winter, although some did acknowledge that this latest extended period of cold and wet weather was a little unusual for these parts. We had to smile when a woman, who was in a group of other, more elderly ladies, sat to one side of us, pointed at a person passing by the Cafe, this particular individual was wearing Summer shorts and a tee-shirt !! The elderly woman said, not in what you would reasonably consider to be anywhere like a hushed voice, “Obviamente un visitante del Ártico” (Obviously a visitor from the Arctic) before letting out a loud chuckle, her colleagues laughed, we laughed and several of the occupants on other tables laughed as well. Who says the Spanish don’t have a sense of humour ?

This sort of un-orchestrated chatter amongst strangers is common in Cafe’s and Bars but initially, not long after we had come to live here permanently, when our understanding and knowledge of the local lingo was in its infancy, we could never understand what was being said, or why the sudden laughter, Were they talking about us ? Were they laughing at us ? and although we were never made to feel unwelcome, we couldn’t help but feel a little isolated. So, now that we have a little better understanding, we are happy and much more comfortable in our surroundings, it has been worth the effort trying to learn Spanish, although we are both still a long way from being anywhere near perfect, but we have enough knowledge and understanding to at least now be a part of, and not just on the periphery, of such normal daily interactions.

In recent days, the storms have quelled, the mornings and evenings in particular are still pretty cold for this part of Spain, and the rain has not stopped completely, being more of drizzle or light rain rather than the heavier more torrential stuff, and that wet stuff only appears now for much shorter periods during the day, either at some point during the morning, afternoon or evenings, but rarely now for the whole day. The blue sky has returned, bringing with it longer periods of warming sunshine during the afternoons, and being back to the normal expected winter temperatures, which vary between 14 degrees(c) and, on a really good day, 18 degrees(c) although the strength of the wind remains variable from one day to the next, but we can handle going out in the winds.

Now the storms have passed, well for now at least, and the blocked roads and flooded streets in the nearby villages and towns have been cleared, we decided to go and have a change of view for our daily walk and headed the short distance into Estepona. It was a bright and sunny morning, although as we left home at 10:00am the mercury was still only registering 10 degrees(c) but that was better than the more recent 5-6 degrees(c) 🥶 However, by the by time we had reached our destination it had already risen another 3 degrees(c). We parked on a piece of waste ground opposite the large ‘Carrefour’ supermarket at the Northern end of Estepona which appears to also be the new home for the abundance of Winter Sun van dwellers, some temporary whilst other’s looked a little more long term. Recently the local authorities had put a height barrier across the wasteland by the Marina, this is where the majority of Motorhomers used to congregate, including ourselves in our former nomadic Motorhome days, but now they have re-located to this new piece of wasteland, which is right opposite the large Carrefour supermarket, where I suspect they will now choose to stock up on their groceries, beer and wine, whilst also being able to utilise the convenient eateries, situated both inside and outside of the supermarket, and of course their very convenient toilet facilities, during the hours when the store is open 😉 Now of course this will inevitably mean a loss of revenue to the numerous Cafe/Bars and Restaraunts, and the smaller Supermarket, that are located in the Marina complex. However, looking at it from both viewpoints, this large group of nomadic travellers, in their variety of vehicle sizes, shapes, colours and varying states of aesthetic beauty, will no longer be ‘eye-sores’ (Local media description not my own) for the occupants of the numerous expensive apartments that had to once overlook them. This new location, well currently at least as their is a new block of Apartments being constructed to the side of this wasteland, has no such overlooking issues and to be honest, from a motor-homers perspective, it is probably a much better location, as in addition to the large Supermarket across the road, this particularly large area of wasteland is on much higher ground and so not affected quite as much from the flooding issues as was often the case at the other location, which was often water logged, created by the waves that constantly used to breach the sea wall and from the rain filled potholed ground. The new location has partial views of the sea, and is quite literally just across the road from the promenade, beach and sea and still within a very easy walking distance of the town and all its facilities, probably a little closer than the original waste ground park up, so in the end it has turned out to be a bit of a win-win all round for both parties I suppose, but for how long it will stay that way for the Motorhomers, well that is always the perennial question ?

As we walked in to the town along the promenade we saw the state of the long beach, which was in an identical condition to our own after the latest storm and, as we wandered along some of the smaller back streets we could see that a lot of the litter and debris, washed down on the floodwaters, was still very much evident along with water soaked furniture, and personal possessions, strewn outside homes and the small businesses that had been victims of the flooding. The main reason for visiting Estepona on that particular day, a Sunday, other than the change of views for our daily walk, was that for months Shazza had wanted to go and take a look at the Sunday Farmer’s Market that set up in one of the Plaza’s just behind the main promenade, but we never quite found the enthusiasm to do it 🤷‍♂️ It was a very pleasant walk along the long promenade into the town, their were lots of people, either sauntering, like ourselves just enjoying a period of warm dry weather, their were joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, pram pushers (Some even had children and not dogs in them 😂). Unlike our own town,which is just really a normal working town that just happens to be situated right on the seafront, Estepona is a larger and more of what you would consider a holiday tourist destination, although behind the very long and wide seafront promenade is the main town, a combination of the old town and the new much more modern architecture, but it generally blends in well. I must admit that, had we have been able to have afforded it at the time, we would have preferred to have bought a property here, but even then, back in early 2015 , the property prices were out of our price range, now over ten years later, they are way beyond it, so beggars cannot be choosers, as the saying goes, although we do just happen to live in a pretty nice and slightly less touristy location, beauty is in the eye of the beholder as another saying goes.

We made our way to the location of this advertised ‘Sunday Farmers Market’ only to discover that their were just two stalls, each of which displayed the barest minimum of produce, the bulk of it being Oranges, this being the picking season for them. So it appeared that this is more of a Summer Attraction, and our lethargy in not getting here sooner had been to our own detriment, well for one of us it was, speaking for myself, I wasn’t particularly that bothered, I mean ‘ just how many vegetables can a person eat 🤷‍♂️’ Although instant reflection on that question, what with Shazza still well into her our ‘Plant Based’ dietary regime, that was probably a very stupid question Eric, just plain stupid ! Although ‘our’ local Fruiteria owner will be pleased to discover that he won’t be going out of business any time soon 😂 We had not come with any intention of visiting the main shopping area, it would have literally have just been window shopping anyway, because the majority of the retail shops in the main town area were closed, unlike a lot of places these days where Sunday’s are just normal shopping days, Spain still adheres to the Catholic principle of it being a rest day, that is apart from some specific periods during the Calendar year when it would appear that commercialism overrules principles 🤭 Anyway, the temperature had continued to rise as we walked around, it was now a very pleasant 18 degrees(c), so we walked back along the seafront, stopped at our usual seafront cafe when we are in Estepona, for a coffee and sandwich. The seafront was well busy now, not quite the levels of the Summer crowds, but it provided more than sufficient ‘People Watching’ opportunities, I could have stayed in that exact spot for the rest of the afternoon but Shazza had other ideas. She needed a new large saucepan and ‘Carrefour’ would have exactly what she needed, and it was the last time, after the recent festive period, that it would be permitted to be open on a Sunday. Strange really, before arriving Shazza had told me that she only needed one new saucepan, yet we left the store with not only the said saucepan, but also two new cutlery knives and a couple of new pillows for the bed, items that we also apparently required, although were never once mentioned before entering the store 🤔

A couple of days later when we went out on one of our normal daily walks, ‘It Had Commenced Just Like Any Other Day’, it was a bit overcast and chilly, but dry, the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecast some rain for later in the afternoon, and for many more days in the coming week, so we decided to get out whilst we still could. We were just approaching the Southern end of our local town when, in the distance at one end of the promenade I could see a Guardia Civil police vehicle parked up by the promenade wall, on the actual pedestrian walkway, with its blue lights flashing. My curiosity was raised, could it be that they were waiting to intercept another inflatable dinghy with ‘unauthorised’ Immigrants about to be offloaded on to our beach, or drug smugglers ? These are regular activities that occur all along the whole stretch of this coastline, from La Linea in the South all the way up and beyond Malaga to the North. As we got closer we could see a second Guardia Civil vehicle, one uniformed Officer was stood right on the front of the beach and it looked like he was filming something in the water on his mobile phone, but their was no vessel anywhere nearby, three other Officers were stood on the promenade, one had binoculars hung around his neck. We stood and looked out to sea, at first we could not see anything, then as our gaze went to just in front of where the Officer on the beach was standing, we saw something in the water, it appeared to be floating on the surface, but barely moving, with the swells of the waves we could not make out what it was, perhaps a clump of bin bags, a stash of drugs which had perhaps fallen overboard, or been discarded, by smugglers, or perhaps a body 😲 We watched for several minutes, intrigued as to what this shape was in the water, it was close to shore but just a little too far out to wade in and retrieve it, we could hear conversation going on over the police hand held radios that they were carrying, perhaps they had called for a police boat to assist them ? A small crowd had begun to form, we were part of it, and so Shazza asked one of the locals, in perfect Spanish, if they knew what was going on. “Una gran tortuga quedó atrapada en las redes de los pescadores” (A large sea turtle is trapped in fishermen’s nets) they told her. As we continued to watch we saw a large flipper, and I do mean large, it appeared out of the water and was thrashing around frantically, then its large head popped above the surface, this was certainly no small turtle you see regularly in the rivers here, but what was this large species doing here, and this close to shore ?The poor animal was gasping for breath each time it managed to raise its head out of the water, but the weighted net was pulling it down and keeping it under the water, it was obviously getting extremely tired as it struggled continuously to free itself, the frequency of it coming up for air was getting fewer and fewer.

I have often watched nature documentaries on TV which show the impact of pollution in our oceans, many that show a wide variety of species getting trapped in discarded fishing equipment, nets, ropes and many other plastic products, but I never expected to witness it happening before my very eyes on our own stretch of public beach here in Spain. Now to be clear, this turtle was not trapped in a ‘discarded’ fishing net, this small net was one which the local fishermen stretch out from small fishing boats that are, when not in use, parked up on the beach and then hand hauled into the shallow water, they are put out and recovered in the same day but the timings vary according to the tides. The nets remain close to shore to catch generally the small Boquerones (Anchovies) that swim in huge numbers up and down the coastline. We do on occasions during our walks, or whilst sat enjoying our coffee, see pods of dolphins hunting and feasting on them, but we have never seen large turtles like this one along our coastline before. We stood and watched as this terrible scene played out before us for around twenty-minutes, then with no obvious signs of help arriving from land or sea we decided that we didn’t want to watch the animal drown, so we continued with our walk into the town.

After first visiting our usual Fruiteria on the upper high street, where I thought it best not to mention that we were only there because Shazza could not find anything at the Estepona Farmers Market 🤭 We then headed back down to the Plaza where we had noticed earlier that ‘Annie’s’ Cafe/Bar had re-opened. Shazza claimed an empty outside table whilst I went inside to order, on warmer days we would usually just sit, soaking up the warm sunshine, waiting for Annie, or her son ‘Juanma’, to come out and take our order, but as it was overcast and still quite chilly in the Easterly breeze, we chose haste over leisure. Annie was stood behind the bar when I entered and a big beaming smile came across her face when she saw me walking towards her, she scurried around and gave me a hug, and the traditional friendly greeting of a kiss on either cheek, “Hola, Que tal ? (Hello, how are you) she enquired, “Feliz Ano Nuevo, soy Muy bien gracias, et tu ?” (Happy New Year, I am very well thank you, and you ?) I responded. I placed our usual order of two coffees but also added a bacon roll for myself, a rare occurrence these days I hasten to add, Shazza had her much healthier breakfast before leaving home. When Annie delivered our coffee’s outside, she copied the same friendly greeting with Shazza, this extra friendly behaviour is what probably makes this particular Cafe/Bar our favourite, that, and the fact that Annie is our unofficial local language tutor. Not that any of our other three usual Cafe/Bars are unfriendly, quite the opposite, but in them we are just like the other’s, a couple of their regulars who exchange the basic verbal pleasantries.

On our walk back we could see the larger crowd that had amassed around where there was now a turtle rescue operation in full swing. A small motorised Guardia Civil vessel was on the scene, the two people on board attempting to cut the fishing net, but it looked difficult, the swell kept moving the boat dangerously close to the beach where, under the water were sharp rugged rock formations, so every so often one of the rescuers would have to rush back to the wheelhouse to re-manoeuvre the vessel into a safer position. Of course the additional problem was that the turtle was in a distressed state, it had no idea that these people were trying to help it, for all it knew it was they that may have been the one’s whose net it had been entrapped in and they were going to kill it, so it became a tug of war as, even in its exhausted state, it still attempted to swim clear and thrashed its large flipper in and out of the water. Thankfully, after watching for what must have been another thirty or forty minutes, one of the rescuers gave a thumbs up signal and we saw the large shape swim out to deeper water and disappear under it. We hoped that it had not been injured, either from its own initial struggles to free itself from the net, or from the resulting rescue attempts.

There are many days when we make this same walk where we see nothing out of the ordinary, but then, very occasionally we witness events like this, or a pod of hunting dolphins rounding up a shoal of sardines then feasting upon them or, fuel smugglers loading large containers from the beach onto a waiting boat and even, although some years ago now, a shootout on the beach between the police and drug smugglers who had had their motorised dinghy forced onto the beach by an overhead Guardia Civil helicopter. Over our past ten year’s or so we still consider our lives here to be a bit ‘Forrest Gump’, not with just the weather but with daily life in general, ‘You just never know what you are going to get’.

When we returned home I had to satisfy my curiosity about what sort of large turtle this could possibly have been so ‘Mr Google’ was called upon to assist. I discovered, to my surprise, that there are several species of Oceanic Turtles that survive throughout the Mediterranean, but the largest are the endangered ‘Loggerhead’ and also the ‘Green’ turtles, but which one we had seen we couldn’t really establish, the size could have matched either but if it had have been the Loggerhead, weighing in at an average of 180Kg, then I can understand why the rescue had been so difficult.

The forecasted rain from the ‘Works of Fiction’ predictions, which was supposed to arrive at around 3pm, finally made an appearance eight hours later 🙄 I awoke several times during the night and could hear it tapping quite loudly on the external security shutters but, by the morning, when we got up, it was dry and bright, but no sunshine. This, according to the ‘Works of Fiction’, would be the same weather pattern for the coming week, so we would have to rely on our own ‘Forrest Gump’ methodology to determine whether when, or if, we could get out for more of our walks 🤷‍♂️

Just before I finish with this latest ramble I have to just provide you, my reader’s, with some evidence to support my belief that this world of our’s has actually gone ‘Stark Raving Barking Mad’, and yes, the Pun is intended.

Until my next ramble…………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

As this is the first of this new year’s rambles I would of course like to commence by wishing you all a, ‘Feliz y Prospero Ano Nuevo’ (Happy and Prosperous New Year) and both Shazza and myself trust that, wherever you were in the world last year celebrating the festive period, we hope that you had a safe and very pleasant one.

Now then, there is a popular saying, one that is used in a variety of ways, and on a variety of different occasions throughout a year, generally associated with when there is a clearing out of possessions that are no longer required, or just general clutter that accumulates over time, when perhaps people move House or do major Spring Cleaning, or when there is a Change of Government, even a Change of Management or staff etc. etc. but, it is also a statement that is heard more traditionally at the start of each New Year, and that statement is of course, “Out With The Old and In With The New”. I have repeated that same sentence myself over the years, not just at New Year, although now, as each year seems to be racing by, and far too swiftly for my liking, I am beginning to find myself a little less fond of its use, especially when it is a phrase aimed directly at me from my own beloved’s lips, “Happy New Year darling, out with the old, and in with the new” she said, as we both awoke on a rather grey and miserable wet first day of 2026, making sure of course that she put an emphasis on the words ‘out with the old’ and doing so in a mischievous manner, with a wry smile on her face, followed by a cheeky chuckle and wink of her eye. I quickly remind her that we now live in Spain where, ‘officially’, people are not considered as being ‘Old’ until they reach the age of 74 years, “No need to worry then my darling, well not for another five years at least” she says, with a much too hearty a laugh for my liking. So, should I be concerned that she is now looking for a newer, more younger model, rather than the older more familiar one I ask myself 😲 I am confident that I don’t really have anything to worry about, well not for the time being at least, for there is something to be said for us more senior models, familiarity, reliability (If you exclude DIY skills 😁), and there is even a certain comfort in already being aware of all the quirks, groans and squeaking parts 😂

Anyway, what have we been up to since the last ramble ? Well, we entertained what were our last visitor’s for 2025, my Sister and Brother-in-Law from Australia, but I already referred to that in my last ramblings. They arrived with us on the 18th December and departed again on the 22nd December, ready to take on the next stage of their ‘Grand-parenting duties’ back in the UK, before returning home to the land down under, armed with the knowledge, from people already well experienced in the Grand parenting field, that this would be the start of a very long journey for them, and we didn’t mean it in the context of their personal holiday travels, although with two of their three new favourite ‘little people’ now living on the other side of the world to themselves, those long haul trips may also become more regular events 🤭

I think they agreed with us, due to the much cooler Spanish Winter temperatures, and this year, the much wetter conditions, that perhaps their next visit to us should be in the Spring or Summer, to see Spain at its best, with its colourful countryside and Fiesta’s and of course its warm temperatures. But nevertheless, they had enjoyed their few days with us and between the clouds, that brought some light rainfall, we did manage to get out on the three full days that they were with us and they commented on just how relaxed everything felt. I guess living in a busy city the much calmer vibes of this part of Southern Spain is very noticeable.

Once we had driven our guests back to the airport on the Monday morning, we returned and, after a brief stop at our local supermarket, got ourselves settled down at home again, where we enjoyed a somewhat quiet, but very enjoyable, Christmas and New Year period by ourselves. We had our ‘British’ traditional Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve and then, throughout Christmas Day afternoon, and early evening, we had a selection of both Hot and Cold ‘Spanish’ style Tapas, so keeping a foot in each camp as it were. We of course ignored the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts most days and trusted once again in our own ‘Forrest Gump’ methodology, which you will not be surprised to hear, turned out to be much more accurate than the official predictions 🙄 so we were able to get out for our regular walks along the seafront on most days, which was nice in the sunshine, although we did have to get wrapped up against the bitterly cold and icy ‘Polar Blast’ that was impacting the whole of Europe at this time. However, the cold didn’t prevent us from partaking of our usual refreshment stops and people watching opportunities, after all their are some traditions and routines that still have to be maintained, festive season or not, it would be rude not to.

We did however take a break from our walking routine on Christmas Day, not for any religious reason you understand, no purely practicalities, because all of the Cafe/Bars were closed on that particular day, how inconsiderate of them 😂 Fortunately for us, the Spanish do not celebrate ‘Boxing Day’ (26th December) as a National Holiday, so the majority of the shops and Cafe/Bars were once again open and so we were able to once again resume our more usual daily routine. Apart from the almost mandatory over-indulgence of Christmas food, Christmas Music and Christmas Movies, this year’s festive period had been pretty much just normal days on our own particular Calendar, although we had of course spoken, via video calls, or text messages, with our family and friends located in the various different countries around the globe, to exchange festive wishes. To be honest even those family communications are just normal regular events that ordinarily take place throughout the duration of the year anyway, but we at least did get to share the excitement of our Grandchildren as they opened up their presents 🤗 Apart from the calls and texts and consuming some of the more specific and traditional festive fayre for this time of year, for ourselves it wasn’t really that different from any of our normal day’s. But then of course, being retired and already living a life of leisure, we don’t have cause to celebrate, or perhaps fully appreciate, the extended time off from work like a lot of other’s still have to do. All in all, the Christmas and New Year festive period were just normal kind of days for us although, and I say this with a smile on my face, without as many of the vegetables, legumes and many other of the more usual ‘Plant Based’ delicacies we would generally consume on a daily basis, so yes, for me in particular, it did feel rather like a bit of a holiday, as I got stuck in to my Turkey, Mince Pies, Christmas Pudding and all of the other totally unhealthy delicacies that are an essential part of the festive celebrations and, with their only being the two of us, well somebody had to suffer and eat, and drink, the majority of it 😂 However, I am sure that I will pay for that over indulgence when I next stand on the bathroom scales 🫣

Now I cannot say this with any certainty, but perhaps their may be some of you reading this ramble that ‘may’ probably think that we are a couple of lonely old sod’s who live in isolation, but that would be a totally wrong assumption, for whilst we do tend to choose to live a more ‘secluded’ lifestyle, enjoying doing things together by ourselves, rather than in wider social groups, that should not be confused with us being lonely or anti-social. We do still actually enjoy being amongst other people, and also enjoy speaking to them, as and when the opportunities arise throughout the year. Even at this time of year, we have lost count of how many people we have said ‘Feliz Navidad y Una Prospero Ano Nuevo’ (Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year) to, people that we do regularly see and speak to, and even complete stranger’s that we see on our walks or meet in the Cafe/Bars, or exchanging the pleasantries with the familiar faces of the shopkeepers and staff in the retail shops, the owner’s and staff in the Cafe/Bars that we regularly frequent.

I do confess that sometimes we even ask ourselves whether we are a bit of an oddity, preferring our own company rather than joining the multitude of ‘Expat’ groups that exist, so it was a bit reassuring to talk with a German couple we have come to know, who just happen to frequent the same Spanish Cafe/Bars as ourselves. They came over for a chat, and of course to exchange festive greetings, and we discovered that they, like ourselves, were spending the festive period by themselves this year, after having a hectic Christmas in 2024 visiting a whole host of relatives and friends back in their native homeland. We of course also saw some of our Spanish, and other International neighbours, who live in our own residential community, whilst we were coming and going, as well as the Cleaner and Gardner, whose only day’s off were on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, so I don’t know, perhaps it is just an age thing, where we no longer feel that we have to be out partying, or house hopping, or travelling hundreds of miles to be with family and friends at this time of year 🤷‍♂️

We do of course sometimes miss the much closer proximity of our immediate family, that goes without saying, but that also applies to at any other time of the year, not just during the festive period, but we already knew beforehand that this would be one of the more negative aspects of coming to live permanently in another country. However, we do still get to see and speak with them on both Christmas Day and on New Year’s Eve, as well as throughout the rest of the year, thanks to the advances in communication technology, but also, their enthusiasm in wanting to regularly come out to visit us here in Spain, both during our former ‘Schengen Shuffle’ periods and since permanently re-locating to live here, probably more than we had initially envisaged means that perhaps the time and distance apart is not felt as much. So, ‘Isolated’ we are not whereas, our choice of ‘Seclusion’, does have its own advantages 😉

What came as a bit of a surprise for us this year was a rare occurrence, for our particular area of Spain, was the sight of snow on the ‘lower foothills’ of our surrounding mountains, we rarely get to see snow even on the higher peaks that surround our particular area and, whilst frost, snow and ice is not unusual in many other parts of Spain, even Granada has its Ski slopes up in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but you can be Ski-ing on the ‘Pistes’ in the morning and Sunbathing on the Costa del Sol beaches in the afternoon, but the white stuff is not a common sight in our particular area, we are much more accustomed to reading about it in the media, as opposed to actually seeing it with our own eyes, fortunately though, even those lower foothills are still a good drive away from us.

Additionally, some of the Costa del Sol beaches, around an hour or so away, in Malaga City and extending further North along the coast, found people waking up to what they initially thought was snow covering the sand, promenades and streets, but it had actually been due to a heavy hailstorm and, as a consequence of the very cold temperatures, it hadn’t melted away.

During the evening of the 27th December, around 9pm, we were sat watching a film on Netflix when we both nearly jumped out of our skins, both of our mobile phones, in unison, let out a high pitched beeping alarm. It was a ‘Red Alert’ from the local ‘Civil Guard Authorities’ warning of ‘Extreme Danger’ in our local area and wider parts of the Malaga Province from rising flood water, even instructing people living in low lying and coastal areas, or by Rivers, to get to higher ground 😲

Now I may have mentioned this once or twice before in these rambles, but neither Shazza or myself are what you would call particularly religious, although Shazza can often be heard in prayer, or at least I think she is praying, for she often uses the phrases ‘Oh My God’ or ‘Jesus Christ’, and not just at Christmas 🤭 However I did just happen to remind her that, very recently, the ‘Authorities’ had held a Tsunami exercise, and on top of that we have also, very recently, experienced several ‘Earthquakes’ in our immediate local area and now, a ‘Red Alert’ informing us of ‘Extreme Danger’ from ‘Flooding’. Now it cannot be just a coincidence that all the world’s Media is full of stories about the increase in the number of ‘Food Banks’ that exist, and of course, the wide assortment of various ‘Bacterial Viruses’ that are currently in global circulation which, once again appears to have increased in this last year, so perhaps these may be considered, although not vocalised by any Governments as being, ‘Famine’ and ‘Pestilence’ 😲 But somewhere deep in the recesses of my memory, I recalled very similar references, to all of these types of events happening at the same time, and published in a certain globally popular book, more usually found in religious buildings, as well as bedside lockers in hotel rooms where, in it, in a chapter that made numerous ‘Revelations’ (You may need to have read this certain book to understand that little quip) but in that particular publication it associated the combination of all of these things coming together as being events that would mark towards the end of the world and humanity as we know it, they used the word ‘Armageddon’ to describe such an apocalyptic event 😲

However, after the loud beeping had stopped, I went on to the balcony and looked out through the windows at the stormy weather, and whilst I could certainly see through the flashing lights in the dark sky, the cavalry of white stallions riding in battalions on the tumultous waves towards the shoreline, and I could hear the heavy rumbles of thunder, created by their rapidly approaching hooves, but I didn’t see any evidence of them being led by the ‘Four Horsemen Of The Apocolypse’. So although it was quite a nasty and chaotic night out in the stormy weather, I assured Shazza that I could not see the troublesome foursome riding towards us, and as we were living on a hill and excess water tended to run downhill, I considered that we were safe enough in our elevated sanctuary, so I sat back down, picked up my glass of Anti-Covid Vaccine in one hand, and grabbed a handful of Salted Peanuts with the other, and we both finished watching the film 🤷‍♂️

I have mentioned on numerous occasions in these rambles at just how strange it appears, that we seem to sit between two weather systems, one to the North of us from Estepona, which as I keep mentioning is only a 20 minute drive away, the other to the South of us, and in the area around the town of La Linea, which is only a 30 minute drive away 🤷‍♂️ So although the media reports from around our own area, and further afield, reflected a weekend of devastation we had appeared to have escaped. We went for a walk the following morning, just to see with our own eyes, whether there had been any sort of localised flooding or damage in the Village, Marina or our local town of Sabinillas, which may not have been disastrous enough to make the media headlines, but there was absolutely nothing, other than the puddles of water after the weekends heavy rainfall. We both asked the same question of ourselves ‘How can this be ?’ but as usual, we could find no answer, not even the locals in the Cafe/Bar that morning could believe the carnage created just a few miles up the road, was this divine intervention ? or, as we more realistically suspected, just another case of sheer good luck 🙏

The remaining days before the next festive event, New Year’s Eve, was just back to the more usual daily routines, walks, coffee stops, shopping, post Christmas clean of the apartment and the laundry. The Spanish celebrate New Year’s Eve a lot more quietly, although the larger Cities and Towns do celebrate with fireworks when the clocks strike midnight, but usually family events are spent at home and the Bars, Cafe’s and Restaurants are not generally open, at least to the general public although larger Spanish family groups may hold events behind closed doors in some of them. The Marina’s, who cater more for the tourist and expat communities do however hold the usual New Year’s Eve parties, but these are generally closed events, where attendance and tables have to be booked months in advance.

The next major celebration for the Spanish is, as I may have mentioned in a more recent ramble, is ‘Three Kings Day’ on 6th January, although the large parades are held the day before. This celebration is actually more like our Christmas Day for the Spanish, when gifts are exchanged and festive meals are consumed, including the traditional ‘Roscón de Reyes’, although I must confess to having our’s a little earlier than we really should have, but just so that our visitor’s could experience something that was Traditionally Festively Spanish, as they would not actually be in Spain for either Christmas or New Year.

On New Year’s Eve Day, Shazza and I conducted our own personal review of 2025 and, we agreed that whilst initially we had thought that we hadn’t done that much throughout the year, it had actually been another reasonably active, and productive one, we had enjoyed several travel experiences of our own, both extended one’s and some mini-breaks, we had hosted and entertained several family visitors, met up with some friends in different locations in both the UK and Spain and, we had completed two major projects in our apartment (En-suite Bathroom and complete redecoration of the apartment), so we had agreed that at least we had not just been sat on our arses over the last twelve months.

So, what do we have planned for 2026 🤔 Well I am certain that this will come as no surprise to you, but again we actually have nothing actually planned, we will just go with the flow again 🤷‍♂️ We do know that their are a couple of official ‘Bureaucratic’ process that we will have to conduct this year, the most important one being the renewal of our residency permit for another two year’s, but that isn’t until June, before that, in May, getting together all the documentation ready to submit our Annual Spanish Tax return, although to be honest they are both primarily administrative processes. We already know, although not exact dates, that at various points throughout the coming year, we will again host family and friends, other than that there will be the annual Fiesta’s and of course our own personal travels, which we have discussed and will hopefully involve city breaks around other parts of Europe and also a bit more exploration around different parts of Spain.

There is one immediate task I now have to complete, as we move into a New Year, and that is to conduct my 2025 end of year Financial Review. I did the same last year for 2024, which I shared with you, as many people who were themselves thinking of making the move to Spain were interested in, although I have to say that the interest came primarily from those living in the USA and Canada. However with that 2024 Financial Review, being our first ‘full’ year of living in Spain, there was nothing to compare it with, so it will be interesting to see how we have done, in respect of any ‘Cost of Living’ variations and what amendments and increases we may need to make to our monthly individual budget pots 🤔 Although I do this review for my own personal benefit, do let me know if you would be interested in me again publishing my 2025 review, but with one proviso from me, this review is based on our lives here, just the two of us, owning our property with no Mortgage or Rent to pay, retired and with no other income other than our Pensions. It will be different for people who are younger and have to work or indeed come with other family dependents.

In conclusion to a slightly longer first ramble of the year than I had initially intended, so at least some things don’t change eh 😂 But can I just say that no matter where you, my reader’s, may be living in the world, yes the grass is ‘sometimes’ greener on the other side of the fence, and sometimes it isn’t, depending on what your expectations are and, of course, if you elect never to cross that fence then you will never know 🤷‍♂️ Yes, the world can sometimes appear to be an unpleasant place to live in, no matter where you live or, what you choose to believe, from reading the usual Media publications or on the numerous Social Media Channels, but remember, especially with the Social Media one’s, the publishers of that content are there to solely make money for themselves, from you, although you cannot criticise them for that. Even the mainstream media headlines, they are only a very small snapshot of what may, or may not, be going on in the much larger outside world and they too, like the individuals on Social Media, are ‘Influencer’s’ trying to influence your thought’s and actions. Yes there are a multitude of bacterial viruses in circulation, some more usual ones and other newer one’s, but that is the same almost anywhere these days and the majority are treatable, either by regulated medications or via your own safeguards and common sense actions. There are lots of things going on this world that do not, or quite possibly, will not, impact on ‘you’ personally and, there are also many things that may, but for which you personally will have no control or influence over, and I wonder where you may have you heard that many times before 🤔 So, let 2026 be the year where you just ‘Live The Best Possible Life That You Can’, yes you may have to navigate some challenges put in your way, but also remember that when they arise, take any opportunities that may also be available to you. You never know, upon reflection, you may already acknowledge and accept, that you may already be living that best life, you just hadn’t realised it because ‘others’ influenced you to believe otherwise, sometimes though, you just cannot see something that is already right in front of you, because you were looking in a different direction 😉

FELIZ ANOS NUEVOS 2026 🎉🍾🍷

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

As I mentioned in my previous ramble, the cooler Winter temperatures had started to descend upon us just as we commenced our short mini-trip to Almeria and although, once we had returned home, the temperatures did start to return to their more normal milder highs for this time of year, between 18-20 degrees(c), with warming sunshine, it was to be only a temporary reprieve. The first week of December arrived with a bit of a surprise, but not a pleasant one, for it started with a whole week of extremely cold air temperatures, not just the normal downward trend that we have become accustomed to here. We both found ourselves having to dig out our warmer longer sleeved shirts, our thicker winter sweaters and even warm outer coats, we couldn’t honestly recall ever having to resort to wearing three thick layers of clothing whilst spending any of our previous Winter’s here in this part of Spain. Sod’s Law struck as well, as our two bar halogen electric heater, that we rely upon to keep us warm during the chillier Winter evening’s, also decided that this would be an opportune moment for it to give up the ghost, so whether we wanted to or not, we had to brave the elements and go into our local town to purchase a new one. So 2025 has certainly been a funny old year, weather wise that is, as we have experienced an unusually and excessively long, and much hotter Spring and Summer period, temperatures up to 45 degrees(c) which, for these parts at least, had been some 10 degrees(c) higher than normal 🥵 and now, here we were, at the beginning of December, experiencing a very much earlier, and very much colder, Winter period 🤷‍♂️ Although putting it into some sort of perspective, as yet, our Winters in this part of Spain do not involve having to face Frost, Ice or Snow, but with the climate changing globally, who knows what we may encounter in future year’s 🤷‍♂️

It had been just a couple of days or so after publishing my last ramble, when I was sat on the balcony enjoying my usual morning coffee, gazing out of the window lost in my own little world of thoughts when Shazza graced me with her presence, “Did the earth move for you this morning my darling ?”, she said with a rye grin on her face. ‘Oh my God !’ I thought to myself in horror, dementia must have finally set in, quite suddenly and with no prior warning, for surely I would have remembered such a rare rampant bedroom olympics event like that happening 😂 I hadn’t at that point perused the morning news media, I am never in a hurry these days to see what ‘Doom and Gloom’ is happening around the world, usually it is just the same shit just a different day, however I guessed that somewhere here in Spain there had been yet another Earthquake. They are not that unusual here and happen many times throughout the year, although usually they are minor quakes, or one’s that occur up in the more mountainous areas, like the Province of Granada for example, or even out in the Alboran Sea, the part of the Mediterranean which lay between Southern Spain and the coast of Africa. So it did come as a bit of a shock (No pun intended) when she informed me that the latest ones had occurred in both Fuengirola, only one hour North of us, and a smaller one even closer to home, in Estepona, just twenty minutes away 😲

However, unlike a James Bond Martini, we were ‘Niether Stirred Or Shaken’ 😂

There was another local media article that morning, and one that did grab my attention, one which involved an event that we both agreed that we should make the effort to go and see as, according to the journalist who reported on it stating that we ‘may not’ get another opportunity to see it for another 17 year’s, this event being a ‘Super Moon’, although I did mention to Shazza that, if all goes according to my personal mortality plan, thinking of my ‘Blue Zone’ age target here 😉 then we should both get to see at least another one, perhaps even more. Shazza just gave me one of her looks and then said, in her pessimistic tone, “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself my love, what with all of these viruses doing their rounds once again, Super Flu, Covid, Nora Virus, Monkey Pox, Avian Flu, Wild Boar infected with African Swine Flu, Western Nile Disease and TB, and that’s only if World War III doesn’t kick off and get us first” 😲 I laughed, “Is it staying so cheerful that keeps you going my darling ?” I asked her 🤭

Now in relation to this ‘Super Moon’ and to be completely truthful, I should say that it was perhaps just one of us that was probably more eager than the other to go out in the freezing cold to stand staring up at a moon and, as the less than enthusiastic one pointed out, we would very likely get to see it anyway from our very own balcony, Mmmmmm 🤔 she may have a point, I thought quietly to myself. However, as quick as a flash I asked her, by way of an example, “Would you have preferred to have gone and actually looked at Van Gogh’s Paintings, in an exhibition hall or, just to have looked at pictures of them on Google 🙄” She smiled mischievously, “But ‘you’ would still actually physically get to see this Supermoon with your own eyes, and not just a photograph of it, and from the warmth and comfort of your own home” she said. I laughed again, “Damn it, okay you have got me there” I replied. She then smiled and said, “But, if you do really want to actually go out and see it, we could always go to the Marina where we could perhaps partake of Dinner whilst watching it, so we could enjoy a nice meal and a dose, or two, of Anti-Covid Vaccines into the bargain, Win Win !” She said with a smile, and in a manner that sounded very much like I had been manipulated, once again !

As it happened, neither of us actually got to witness this ‘Super Moon’ event, as the ‘Works of Fiction’ decided not to play ball and instead, on the one night it was due to appear, they served up a thick carpet of cloud, that not even the golden rays of a ‘Super Moon’ could penetrate, so it wasn’t that ‘Super’ was it 🤷‍♂️ So, in the end we did not bother going out for Dinner therefore I lost out on two counts, no Super Moon and no Anti-Covid Vaccines either ☹️

Now those of you with a good memory may recall that, in a very much earlier ramble, nearer the beginning of this year, I mentioned that once we had got our new bathroom renovation completed, that our last major task was to finish re-decorating the whole apartment. We had initially re-decorated it throughout, when we first bought the apartment in 2015, which although that may seem to be a long time ago, in all fairness, for the first eight years we had owned the apartment, we had not been living in it full time, just for two ‘separate’ three month periods every year during our ‘Schengen Shuffle’ trips, so in my view it wasn’t looking that bad. We had however, already made a start on some of the rooms earlier this year, just before the arrival of our Summer guests, that included the guest room and bathroom, the kitchen and the balcony but we now had the master bedroom (the en-suite already having been done as part of the renovation work), the inner hallway and the Living/Dining room to do and Shazza was insistent that she wanted to do two coats of paint in each of those rooms 😳 Although she said that she had no start date in mind, she did want to go to the Pinturas (Paint Shop) as soon as possible to get the paint, masking tape and new rollers in readiness for when she decided to fire the starting gun, so on the day we went to post our Christmas Cards at the main Correos (Post Office) in town, we also made a diversionary port of call to the Pinturas and acquired everything that was necessary.

Needless to say, Shazza fired the starting gun on the decorating task the following day, which in truth I had already suspected that she would, I know her too well for it to have come as any sort of a surprise 🙄 “Well, your sister and brother-in-law arrive in three weeks time, just before Christmas, and I want it to be all completed by then” she said. Now normally I would do all the ceilings and coving’s, and she would do the walls and skirting boards, but this time she said that she was going to do it all herself, what the cheeky bugger actually said was, and I quote her word for word, “At your age I don’t want you climbing up and down ladders or over stretching and falling off 😲” Well, you can probably already imagine just how hard I remonstrated with her, it must have been at least a full two minutes 😂 So we did come to a compromise, whereupon I agreed to become her labourer, which involved me being the furniture shifter, washer of accessories (Removable Light and Electrical Socket covers and surrounds, glass book shelves, ceiling light glass lampshades, ornaments and all that sort of stuff etc), also I would be responsible for keeping the kitchen clean and tidy throughout the day, washing and tidying up after our meals, do the bit of outstanding ironing that was on the side waiting to be done, and of course the very important task of being the tea boy. I actually think that, upon hindsight, I probably pulled the short straw on this occasion, I mean how hard can it actually be to spread paint across a wall using a roller 🤔 However, I kept that thought to myself, more for reasons to do with my own personal survival 😂 At the end of the day, well a total of six full days actually, when all is said and done, it was still a sort of joint effort, and I do have to say that Shazza had made an excellent job of the re-decorating, so good in fact that I almost suggested that I could rent out ‘her’ decorating services to our neighbours so that ‘we’ could earn some additional income to top up our Pensions, however, that was another thought that quite sensibly I believed, was probably best kept to myself too 🤭

We did take a day off at the mid-way point, partly because after a period of four nice warm and sunny days the ‘Works of Fiction’ had forecasted that we had a mixed bag of drizzle, rain and falling temperatures coming, so we wanted to enjoy what may have been our last chance of enjoying a walk in some pleasant sunshine, and an opportunity to sit having a morning coffee, looking out upon the Beach, Sea and Mountain View’s and of course engaging in a spot of ‘People Watching’, it would have been rude not to of course. The other reason being that Shazza was getting withdrawal symptoms from not visiting the ‘Fruiterias’ for several days 😂

As we strolled along the promenade, the bit between the Marina and the town, there was not a single breath of wind, the flags high up on the flag poles by the beach, lay limp and motionless, the sea was virtually a still calm, although there was a sea haze that partially obscured the view of the mountains that were located across the other side of the bay. We saw one of the local fishing boats just a short distance from the beach, actually it was unusually close, normally the local beach fishermen use much smaller boats, which they either row out, or which are powered by small outboard motors, but which run no risk of running aground in the shallower waters in order to fish this close to the beach, usually in search of the vast shoals of Boquerones (Anchovies), a particular delicacy of the Spanish. So we were intrigued as to what this larger boat was up to, we stopped and watched, had they run aground we wondered 🤔 As we looked out at the boat we could see a line at the stern of the vessel, stretching out in a seaward direction, from the Starboard side (Right), I realised that this was an anchor line, preventing the boat from actually drifting too close to the shoreline, and so not risking their vessel from running aground, and then we saw one of the two occupants on-board throw out a small net on the Port (Left) Bow side, obviously trying to get their share of the Boquerones. Our curiosity satisfied we continued with our walk, we never know what we are going to see on our walks, sometimes nothing out of the ordinary but then, on another day, well who knows what will catch our attention, a pod of dolphins close to shore, working as a team to create a tight ball of fish, which they then force to the surface before plunging into them to feed, or perhaps a flock of cormorants following a shoal of fish then diving and splashing into the water, like a squadron of fighter aircraft picking them off one by one, paddle-boarders, wind surfers, sailing yachts, dog walkers, even those brave enough to take a dip into the much cooler Winter water and then, sometimes, we see absolutely nothing at all out on the water and we just listen to the waves as they wash up onto the shoreline, sometimes just gentle ripples and sometimes crashing white horses, it is all just a feast for the senses and food for the soul 🤷‍♂️ Whether we choose to live the remainder of our lives out here, or we elect to move elsewhere, as we never know what the future has in store for us, but if we do move again, by choice or otherwise, then Shazza and I are in full agreement that that location must be, by or very close to the sea, for their is something just so magical and tranquil about it.

As I made reference to a little earlier in this ramble, my younger Sister and my Brother-in-Law are coming to stay with us for a few days just before Christmas, although they will be departing just before the big day itself. They have lived in Brisbane, Australia for somewhere near 25 year’s, perhaps even longer 🤔although we have seen them several times during that period, once when we went on our own month long mini-tour of Australias Eastern Coast, Sydney up to Cairns, and again on several of their own visits back to the UK, although the last time we actually saw them was last Summer, at my daughter’s wedding reception in Austria. They now have two, of their three son’s, living here in Europe, with their wives and two Grandchildren, so they are on their own pre-Christmas family tour and using the opportunity to come and stay with us for three full days. They have never visited us, or this part of Spain before, so let’s just hope that the weather does not live up to the advance dismal forecast that the ‘Works of Fiction’ are currently predicting ☔️

Now although I do have a very strong urge to now burst out into a rendition of a ‘Wham’ Christmas song, which I am sure you will be pleased to hear that I am not going to do, although the damn tune is already tumbling around in my head as I tap away on the keyboard, 🎶This Christmas🎶 we are spending, once again, by ourselves here in Spain. We have done this several times and, more often than not, we have pre-booked a table at a local Restaurant, usually in the Marina complex, to go and have a traditional Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day. However, we didn’t have a very good experience last year and it certainly wasn’t worth the money we paid. However, one of the best Christmas Dinner’s that we did have one year, was when we stayed here at home and had a Spanish themed ‘Tapas’ style affair, Shazza preparing a huge selection of both cold and hot tasty treats, which were actually served at intervals throughout the day. In the morning we had played both traditional Christmas songs, and more Pop Music type Christmas tunes, from the 50’s right up to the 90’s, which we each remembered from our separate childhoods and teenage year’s and then beyond. We had also enjoyed what had become in the UK for us, a Christmas Morning glass (or three 🤭) of Ruby Port, with perhaps the odd savoury pre-dinner snack just to put us on, and then later in the afternoon and evening we would enjoy a bottle (or two 🙄) of Anti-Covid Vaccine, whilst gorging our way through our extended Christmas Tapas Dinner, and whilst watching Christmas themed TV programmes, and movies. At various points during the morning, afternoon and evening, we enjoyed making, and receiving, video calls with family and friends. I have to say that, well at least from what we could remember of that alcohol infused festive day, that we actually both thoroughly enjoyed it. So this year we have decided to do much the same sort of thing again and so, over the last couple of weeks, we have both been coming up with some ideas on what we can either conjure up ourselves, or what we can purchase from the local shops and supermarkets, ranging from Shazza’s ‘go to’ fresh Prawns, in a sizzling infused garlic and chile oil, with chunks of her home-made sour dough bread 😋 Hot ‘salt n pepper’ chicken wings, that she does herself in the Air-Fryer, home-made quiche, sausage rolls, fresh Salmon slices with soft cheese on crackers, Vegetable spring rolls, Duck spring rolls with Hoi Sin sauce, Assorted Sushi perhaps even Empanadas, or whatever else we may happen to come across, things that as yet, we don’t even know that we actually fancy 😂. Of course, this will, at some point during the later part of the evening, be completed with some traditional Christmas Pudding and perhaps even some mince pies. Just thinking about it all is making me salivate and yes, just in case some of you were wondering, our more usual ‘Plant Based’ dietary regime will go ‘temporarily’ on hold, well it is Christmas after all 🎉🥳 Of course, the bathroom scales will also, very conveniently, get lost somewhere in the apartment for several weeks afterwards 😂

For us, here in Spain, the festive celebrations do not end on the 31st December with the New Year’s Eve celebrations, for the biggest festive event here in Spain is not actually held until the 6th January, ‘Día de los Reyes Magos’ (Three Kings Day) with almost every village, town and city holding vibrant street parades, so let’s just hope that we can manage, after our own Christmas stuffing, to ‘waddle’ our way into our local town to participate 😂

So, until the first ramble of the coming year, all that is left for me to say, to each and everyone of you is, a massive thank you for continuing to read my ramblings, not just during this last year, but over the last 12 year’s, and of course, from both Shazza and myself, to wish you all

Feliz Año Nuevo 2026

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena