Category: Uncategorized

I have to start this particular ramble with an apology, specifically to the people of ‘Athens’. Why ? You may well ask 🤔 Well you may recall that in my last ramble I suggested, that due to the rain, but more particularly, the thick dusty orange sand that we had been experiencing here in Spain for several days (The ‘Clima’), that the presenter’s of a certain UK TV Holiday Property Programme (That I just happen to keep mentioning), should perhaps seek out a different Country to focus their attentions upon, either Italy, Greece or Turkey, all of which were, at that time, experiencing a much more ‘Healthier Mediterranean Lifestyle’ than we were here in Spain.

So how was I to know that my particular nemesis, which as you well know by now, are those pesky ‘Dark Forces’, had surreptitiously signed up and ‘Subscribed’ to my Blog posts, then used my words as ammunition for them to then target other’s. Why do I suspect this, well less than a week after publishing that last ramble, I was conducting my usual morning review of the media headlines and I came across this………………… 😲🫣

Now I know that my ‘Rambles’ may not be one of the most popular Blogs on the global social media circuit (Understatement), but that does not mean that I welcome all, or even any, ‘Undesirables’ to ‘Follow’ my literary masterpieces just to make up the numbers. So, I checked my list of ‘Subscribers’ on my Admin Pages, a task that didn’t actually take very long 😂 but there was no evidence of any ‘Subscriber’ going by the name or title of ‘darkforces@******.com’, or any other similar prefix, although, funny old thing, I discovered that I do actually have one follower, subscribed as ‘Anonymous’ 🤔 So, as a consequence, Shazza and I may just have to take that trip to Rome, which is on our ‘Bucket List’, sooner rather than later, calling in to ‘Vatican City’, where I will request an audience with the Pope and ask him to conduct an ‘Exorcism’ on my Blog Account 😲

I do have some good news though 🤗 We have enjoyed a change of fortune, for it has rained continuously for several days now and as a consequence it has cleared away all remnants of the ‘Clima’, well we know where that went don’t we 🫣 and so the air is once again clear, people can now get out again from behind their locked doors and windows and enjoy the much healthier fresh air, although if they do they may very well catch ‘Pneumonia’ as a result of doing so, as they are likely to get soaked to the skin, as it is still raining rather heavily and this is expected to continue over the Easter weekend. But that in itself is good news, no, I do not mean about people contracting ‘Pneumonia’, but because all of our ‘Embalces’ are now beginning to fill up, more importantly for us, the one that directly supplies our area, ‘Embalce La Concepcion’, has increased its water level, from what was a dangerously low 25% just a couple of weeks ago, to now being very nearly 48% and, with these heavy downpours, over the next few days, and weeks, the ‘Run Off’s’ from the Mountain rivers, streams and storm drains our fingers are crossed that this figure will increase to, hopefully, somewhere nearer the 60% level 🤞 So even though the sky has been unusually sunless for this time of year the black and stormy clouds may themselves possess a Silver lining, as this should result in our current domestic water usage restrictions being eased, albeit they may not be totally lifted, as we do not anticipate our communal swimming pool ban being lifted just yet.

Before we came to live permanently in Spain, during the previous eight year’s that we have been coming here on our frequent ‘Schengen Shuffle’ trips, which sometimes happened to coincide with the Easter period, Shazza and I had joined outdoor religious Easter Mass services amongst the crowds in the square outside our local town church, although I didn’t go forward to participate in ‘Holy Communion’, and then afterwards, we joined the entourage of people following the ‘Holy Statuette’ and musical band that then paraded through the streets of the town, we had also participated in other similar processions and events during these Easter periods in some of our other local municipalities. These religious gatherings are an important part of the Spanish cultural heritage and lifestyle, as they are of course in many other countries too, and the planning and preparation for each event takes place months in advance. However, and almost as if by some divine intervention, generally the weather during this Holy Week had always remained dry and sunny. Unfortunately though it was not to be on this occasion, it was as if the numerous prayer’s for essential rainfall were actually stronger and far outweighed those who were praying for the better weather over this particular period. Due to the atrocious weather, and yes it was probably very close to being of biblical proportions, numerous events right around the country were either cancelled, or were held indoors in a much more confined space, where the numbers of those able to attend were severely limited. So I suppose we could say that this Easter period has brought us some ‘Mixed Blessings’.

Now, I am sure that a lot of people, like myself, have heard of the Actor, Antonio Banderas, but it is only over the last couple of years that I became aware that he actually originates from Malaga. Following the local Spanish Media, I have also discovered that he is quite heavily involved in lots of local issues and events, from the obvious areas of, Film, Theatre, Music, Arts, but also many other cultural and social events and he is truly loved here by the normal everyday people, not just the more privileged members of Spanish Society, not just within the province of Malaga, but also within the whole of the Andalusian Region. So it came as no surprise to me to see him appear in the local media during this ‘Semana Santa’ (Saint’s Week) period.

As you do know, I often criticise the media, in all of its forms, and usually for very good reason, not least for its habitual doom and gloom contents, but I do also have to confess that, at times, mind you it is only ‘At Times’, it can also reveal some quite interesting facts, although perhaps to some it may be considered as ‘Trivia’, as opposed to earth shattering revelations. By way of an example, whilst I did of course know that Antonio Banderas was Spanish, I did not know that he originated from just up the road from where we live in Spain, neither did I know that Michael Portillo (Journalist, Broadcaster and former UK Conservative Politician), or Anthony Paul Beke, better known as ‘Anton Du Beke’ (British Ballroom dancer, author and television presenter, probably best known for being a professional dancer and a judge on the British celebrity dancing show Strictly Come Dancing), both originate from Spain and have family still living here. Okay, I did say that these were not earth shattering revelations 🤷‍♂️ However, it raised my curiosity and so I decided to research on which other famous British people originated from Spain. However, did you know that ‘Mr. Google’ has a sense of humour, because when I typed into the ‘search’ bar, “Were any famous British Men or Women born in Spain ?”, the answer came back, “No, only babies” 😂 Okay, that it is an old joke I know, but I hope it raised a smile on your face. However, I did do a check and there was a very long list of people, dating way back in the annals of History to more modern times, the majority of names which meant nothing to me personally, which will not come as any surprise to you, me being a self-confessed History heathen, but, in addition to the two names that I have already mentioned (Portillo and Du Beke), there were four other names that stood out to me, Helena Bonham Carter  (English actress), Paloma Faith (English singer and songwriter), Gerry Halliwell (English singer, member of the pop group the Spice Girls) and Michelle Keegan (English actress). Sometimes, only sometimes mind you, just like the media, sometimes even my rambles can contain less than earth shattering pieces of trivia 🤭 Seeing that I am on the subject of historical events, or should that be ‘hysterical’ 🤔 Shazza and I have been together now for a little over 19 year’s, but today, Easter Sunday 2024, we celebrate our 17th Wedding Anniversary and quite honestly, and we do both agree on this, but it really doesn’t feel that long, the years have just sped by, which I suppose is good in one way, but in another, well it is quite scary at how fast time is ticking away 😲

So all that is left to say on this latest ramble is that both Shazza and I wish all our reader’s a very, Happy Easter, wherever you may be in the world.

Until the next ramble………………

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, “La Vida Es Buena”

So you will have already gathered from reading my recent rambles, if you were not already aware that is, that down here on the Southern Eastern tip of Spain, that it is not wall to wall sunshine every day of the year here, but generally speaking, well it does tend to be pretty decent here when all is said and done. However, very recently in these rambles, if I am not talking about being hit with one adverse sort of weather condition, then I am talking about another, but it appears that it has just been one of those year’s when you could hardly call things ‘Normal’ and, for those of you, who like myself, watch a lot of the nature programmes on TV and Netflix, you will know that it is much the same for large parts of our world, so it isn’t as if we are special or anything.

For several days now, we have been experiencing a phenomenon known as the ‘Clima’, a term used here to describe the orange coloured sand that is blown in on the wind, across the sea from the Sahara Desert. This fine orange dusty sand quite literally covers everything in its path which isn’t under cover, buildings, pavements, roads, vehicles, outdoor furniture, everything, absolutely everything and as large swathes of Spain are known for their numerous white-washed villages and towns, well lets just say that it tends to make the ‘Clima’ a lot more noticeable, as you may imagine. But even this ‘Clima’ is not an unusual occurrence here, it just tends to vary year on year in its degree of intensity and this year it is by no means the worst that Shazza and I have ever experienced.

A couple of years ago when we were here, on one of our temporary ‘Schengen Shuffle’ visits, it had arrived in great quantities, but accompanied with heavy rain, so it rapidly turned into quite a thick sticky orange mud, which ended up taking several weeks to get rid of it from all the nooks and crannies it had secreted itself into within our car. This time, fortunately, there was no rain with it and so it arrived on the wind just as a thick layer of Orange dust, so for days we had been living in a continuous thick ‘smog’ like condition, throughout both the day’s and night’s, the air was thick with it and it reminded me of scenes that I had seen of London streets, in some of those old ‘Dickins’ Victorian era movies. My car was once again covered ‘head to toe’ in the stuff, or should that be ‘roof to tyres’ 🤔 It was pointless putting it through a car wash because, had I have done so, well it would have been just as bad again within minutes of driving away, so for now I will just have to wait until this ‘Clima’ has passed over, although it is still forecast to last for several more days and now, before it goes, another long spell of rain is also due, so who knows, that rainfall may just do the job for me and save a trip to the car wash 🤷‍♂️

The National ‘Works of Fiction’ have now also issued a colour coded map of the country, which shows the ‘Air Quality’ during this ‘Clima’ period, they are currently strongly advising anyone who resides in the ‘Red’ areas marked on the map, particularly those who suffer with ‘Bronchial’, or other serious ‘Breathing’ difficulties, to remain indoors with all windows and doors closed 😲

I hope you will forgive me, for as I sit here looking out upon the grey ‘orange tinged’ mist, and witness the first large raindrops fall on the pavement below, accompanied by the rolls of thunder and the flashes of lightning, I afford myself a smile as I think about programmes like ‘A Place In The Sun’ (I seem to be plugging that programme a lot lately, perhaps they will pay me some promotional commission 🤔), but they always make such a big deal about the amount of annual days of sunshine that this part of Spain gets, and they regularly promote ‘A Healthy Mediterranean Lifestyle’, although it conveniently neglects to mention the numerous annual Wildfires, Floods, Sandstorms and Droughts 🤭 So where are they right now I wonder, if they have any sense they will probably be filming in more sunnier Mediterranean coastal resorts like Italy, Greece or Turkey, which are not currently suffering with either this ‘Clima’ or the ‘Rain’ and where you may currently be able to enjoy a much healthier Mediterranean lifestyle.

As you may also well imagine, Shazza and I have not let this ‘Clima’ weather condition prevent us from getting out for our usual daily walks, for very fortunately we do not suffer with any breathing issues, although, now that I come to think about it, that is not strictly true, for sometimes my beloved, especially during the night, can be heard doing a particular farmyard animal impression 🐷 However, when she wakes up in the morning’s and complains to me that she had woken up in the middle of the night and could not breathe, I don’t own up to the fact that it may just have had something to do with me putting my hand over her face 🤭

So back to the humdrum of normal everyday life and there I was, one morning very recently, sat alone at the beach cafe next to the car park on our favourite stretch of beach, Shazza had gone for her appointment at her regular hairdresser’s in the village. There was quite a strong Easterly wind blowing in off the sea, whilst not only serving to dump even more sand on our location, it was also driving the orange sand even further inland, share and share alike, that’s what I was always taught as a child. The turbulent waves with their white frothy crests were crashing noisily up on to the shoreline, just a few metres away from where I was sat, there were no other customer’s, just me, sat with my mug of hot strong coffee, I got lost in my thoughts, mesmerised just watching and listening to the boisterous waves.

When Shazza was finished at the hairdresser’s we continued along the promenade and walked into the town where we stopped for a coffee, before returning to the Marina to enjoy a leisurely lunch, but under cover from both the wind and the sand. I think that we do tend to live a relatively simple, and certainly a much more relaxing lifestyle these days, apart from the rare occasions when we may have to deal with Spanish Bureaucracy that is, although, to be honest, it is not that often that we stop for leisurely lunches during the week, but we do enjoy the walks and, some days just a stop for a coffee will suffice 😉 I think that we both could enjoy taking leisurely lunches out every day of the week, as we currently rarely spend even half of our allocated monthly ‘personal expenditure’ budget. However, our decision not to, is more about wanting to maintain our healthier ‘Plant Based’ diets, at least during weekdays, as their are not a lot of ‘Plant Based’ options readily available in the majority of the Cafe/Bars and Restaurants in our neck of the woods, so it would get pretty boring if we had to just stick to using the establishments that do. Now the truth is that there is actually a lot of variety of food establishments here, both in the Marina and the local town, however, the majority of them serve more of the traditional type menu options, basically meat and more meat, deep fried or grilled but, to be fair, they will usually list a ‘Vegetarian’ option on the menu, but, more often than not, that generally just means salad 🤷‍♂️ We are also beginning to identify some dedicated ‘Vegan’ establishments in the wider area, but as yet, in this part of Spain at least, they are still pretty sparse and Shazza is not actually a ‘Vegan’, but those type of establishments, by their very nature, do of course offer a wider variety of ‘Plant Based’ options. Because of the limitations on ‘Plant Based’ options in our immediate local area, Shazza has compromised and she will now eat ‘some’ varieties of fish when we go out, and/or Goat’s Cheese. As for myself, well I am pretty easily catered for, as I do still eat all varieties of Fish, and even Meat. So we do tend to stick to eating out primarily at weekends, when it then becomes more of a treat for the both of us, but for me, the real advantage has nothing to do with menu options, more a case of weekends having much more people out and about, so the ambience is much better, as of course are the people watching opportunities 😉

The windy conditions were set to get stronger over the next few days, reaching 40-50mph which prompted the ‘Works of Fiction’ to issue yet another weather warning, this time for what they described as a ‘Coastal Event’, stretching right along the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca coastlines, with wave heights expected of between 3-5 metres. Now personally, I really do enjoy these sort of weather conditions, being able to see at close quarter’s, although not too close you understand, the raw power of the sea as it stampedes in and batters the rocks, watching as the tumultuous waves climb, and breach with ease, the outer harbour wall of the Marina, watching as the waves race along the beachfront and getting ever closer up the sand, even threatening at some points to breach the low promenade wall. Then there is the accompanying noise it brings with it, just one long continuous loud repetitive drone, much like the sound of the engines of aircraft getting ever closer, as they race down the runway, gaining speed before they lift into the air. I have also experienced these same conditions in the UK very many times in the past, at many different coastal locations in England, Scotland and Wales, although more commonly during the Autumn and Winter periods, the only significant difference being that back then, I would have been huddled in a thick warm outer coat, braced against the icy wind and cold weather nipping at my exposed skin, but here, it is very warm and humid, my thin outer jacket being more of a protection from the wind than the temperature which remains in the low twenty somethings. To think that in probably no more than a fortnight’s time, it will all change again and I will very probably be mentioning, in these rambles, all about the bright cloudless blue sky, the flat mill pond like sea conditions, and the crystal clear water, I certainly think that nature is truly awesome, it provides us with so much variety although, at times, it can perhaps also be a little scary.

Over the few days that followed, we continued to go out in these conditions, in the knowledge that, if the ‘Works of Fiction’ forecast was accurate, we could very possibly be confined to barracks for over a week 😲 We were not alone on our daily walks, the advance party of Easter holiday makers had arrived and although the beaches may have been pretty much deserted, the Cafe’s, Restaurants and Chiringuito’s were benefiting from this recent influx of tourist cash combined with these current adverse weather conditions, for whilst the tourists may not have been able to sunbathe on the beach, or swim safely in the sea, at least they could sit and watch it from behind the windows, or protection of the zipped up weather canopies, whilst they enjoyed their breakfast’s and lunches.

Shazza and I really can empathise with those tourists, who have probably been looking forward to coming here for many moths away from some of the much cooler northerly climates, having parted with their hard earned money which they may have been saving for months, and then spent it both getting here and also on their holiday accommodations, expectant of a sunny beach holiday for a week or two. Generally speaking, even Shazza and I much prefer the warmer sunnier weather, however, for us, now living here permanently, it is currently a double edged sword, for we also desperately need the extended periods of rain 🙄 It reminds me of that saying, “You can please some of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people, all of the time”.

My feet are also now beginning to feel a little itchy, and no it isn’t a medical condition, before any of you ask 🙄 “I am beginning to feel the need to get back ‘On The Road’, to do some more travelling again“ so I say to Shazza one morning over coffee, “I am not getting any younger you know, so each hour, of each day, of each week is time that I am never going to get back so we need to start thinking about our travel agenda”. Shazza, is a little more circumspect about it and just says,“We still have plenty of time, there is no hurry”. I give her my indignant look, “That’s fine for you to say, but you’re almost a decade younger than me”. She just laughs, “But you are still a fit and healthy ‘old man’, and I am sure that you have a good few year’s left in you yet”, then she laughs again, more mischievously this time, and then gives me a wink of her eye. The cheeky bugger, I think to myself.

Talking about future travel, and I may already have mentioned this once or twice before in these rambles, we have a large family re-union event in Austria in August, many of our wider family members, who reside in many parts of the world, will all be gathering, from as far afield as Australia, to those a little closer who live in Germany, France and the UK, and which will also now include two very recent ‘new borns’, one in Germany and the other in France, meaning that Shazza and I have also gained new titles, ‘Great Aunt and Uncle’, as if ‘Nana Shazza and Grandad Eric’ didn’t already make us feel older than we would actually like 🙄 But in respect of that particular event, we have now pre-booked, and pre-paid, for everything necessary for that trip, Return Flights, Airport Car Parking, Hotel Accommodations in Munich (Our Daughter and Son-in-Law have paid for our three night Hotel accommodation in Austria) and we have also booked our Return Rail Tickets from Munich to the event location in Austria. I love it when a plan comes together, although special thanks must go to my ‘Carer’ who organised it all on-line in no more than fifteen minutes, there are some really good things about modern technology these days, so me, and my OCD buddy are well happy 🤭

We have also just had our Water Bill for the last three months usage, a little earlier than I had anticipated, but the good news is that we used no more water, during this billing period, than we did in the preceding three months, even though in this current billing period we had some family visitor’s for nearly a week and of course the recent Contractor’s and, I discovered that both of our last two bills were even less than the one that preceded both of them, which was a period when we were not on water usage restrictions, so we are at least getting it right and so when I receive the actual paper invoice, which always arrives a couple of weeks after we have paid our Direct Debit, I will be able to confirm our actual water consumption, so who knows, perhaps we will be able to have our family come stay with us in August as originally planned, instead of them having to stay in a hotel 🤗 So, for the time being, as far as we are concerned, “The Rain In Spain” can fall as much as it likes at the moment as long as it keeps filling those Embalces.

And just as a footnote to bring this latest ramble to an end, seeing as I started on the subject of the weather, I may as well end on the same note. Just this morning we awoke to the news that whilst we continue to have the Rain, just up the road from us, perhaps no more than an hour away, and all over the rest of the Andalusian Region, even up into the Alicante area, “It Is Snowing” 😲 Eventually when it melts, some of it may also find its way into the Embalces, so the good news just keeps on coming, well okay, perhaps just for some of us 🙄

Until my next ramble…………..

Hasta Luego Mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena (Life Is Good)

The weather, or more specifically, the serious drought conditions that we are currently experiencing here in our part of Southern Spain have, I know, dominated many of my rambles recently and upon reflection I guess that I really should apologise to you all, for continuously going on about the water situation, especially as ‘some’ of you will be on the opposite side of that divide, suffering with far too much of the wet stuff, but also, wherever else you may happen to be in this world of our’s right now, you too may even have your own ‘other’ issues to contend with, as one such example, those who currently live in Iceland and suffering with a fourth volcanic eruption in as many months so, why would, or should, you want to read about ‘our’ particular issues, which to be honest do pale into insignificance compared to what some other’s are going through right now ?

So okay, apology issued and, hopefully received in the quite sincere spirit it was intended. But for those who may still have some slight interest in our particular drought situation and, especially after reading my last ramble on the anticipated wet stuff, and therefore may have a couple of questions they would like answering, it would be rude of me not to.

So the first question, did we actually get those four consecutive days of rain and, were they of the biblically epic proportions which had been forecast by the generally unreliable ‘Works of Fiction’ ? Well let’s just say a resounding YES to receiving ‘some’ of the wet stuff, as I can confirm that it was wet at some period during all four of those days, but NO, it was not anywhere near being that of the biblically epic proportions and, at times, it was no more than just a prolonged period of light drizzle, which let’s be honest, is actually no good to man nor beast really. But our hopes were raised a little, as we did get some short periods of the really hard rainfall, the sort of stuff that can actually start to refill Embalces (Reservoirs) and make you wish that you hadn’t paid to put the car through the automated wash the day before it started. However, also throughout each of those four days, the wet stuff and dark overcast sky was interrupted with some much brighter periods, even as far as getting some lengthy periods of warm sunshine that, in all honesty, was a bit like one of those pantomime villains, turning up to spoil the party when their presence was not really desired. So, all in all, although we had assisted in preparing the ‘ARK’, by loading it with a huge cargo of live animals and then ‘stood to’, at full readiness, to slip our moorings at a moments notice. But alas, our rescue mission did not have to swing into action and so, unfortunately, we had to unload all the animals again, two by two, the unloading was a lot quicker though, as the buggers just raced off uncontrollably in all directions 🙄 it was like a scene out of the film ‘Jumanji’ (the original version with Robin Williams) what with the Zebras, Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Giraffes and Rhinoceros, to name but a few, now running wild through the streets of ‘San Luis de Sabinillas’, that was all apart from the Turkeys, Chickens, Pigs, Sheep and Cows, which I have to confess we did ‘save’, for ourselves, not that we have now become farmer’s, no, they are now sleeping peacefully, in meal size portions, securely stowed away in our Fridge Freezer, well it would have been totally irresponsible of us not to, as they do not have any road sense and could have just ended up as road kill from falling under the feet of the other much larger and heavier stampeding beasts 😲 So we felt that it was the only responsible thing to do, better to prevent that kind of carnage on what are already congested roads, the human animals can manage that sort of carnage quite well without any assistance from us 😂 And yes, I can already hear your confusion, but you are not alone in that respect, for I too was most surprised also, as I didn’t know that such African beasts also roamed amongst the vast Spanish wilderness, well you learn something new everyday 🤷‍♂️ or perhaps it is just the enclosures in the Spanish animal parks and zoo’s that are looking a little empty now 🤔

Secondly, did enough rain actually fall over those four days to top up the water levels in our Embalces ? Well the answer to that one is also both a YES and a NO. According to those in the know, namely the Spanish ‘Works of Fiction’ (AEMET), that four day rainfall added 3% overall to the water levels, whereas we actually required very much more. Now, In my best Michael Caine voice, not a lot of people know this, but there are in fact around 74 Embalces in the Andalusian Region alone, six of which actually serve our own Province of Malaga, however the primary one that provides the water to our particular part of the ‘Costa del Sol’ is the ‘Embalce de La Concepcion’. Before the recent rainfall that was at only 25% of its total capacity but, after the four days of rain it had risen to 28% and that 3% increase was as a direct result of the rain that fell into the Embalce itself, but even though the rain had stopped after the fourth day, the water levels have still continued to rise, and this is due, according to the experts in the know on this sort of stuff, to the run-off from the streams, rivers and storm drains flowing down from high up in the mountains and which will continue to flow down into the Embalces, potentially for up to a further three weeks.

So, the better news is that, at the time of ‘drafting’ this ramble the water level in our particular Embalce has now risen to 35% and, the water authorities have stated that we ‘should’ now have enough water to last us until May, provided of course that ‘we’ continue to stick to the current usage restrictions that are in place. So at least in the short term we will not be facing having to queue up for water at stand-pipes in the street’s 👏 Still on the good news front, but this time only for those planning on coming to Spain for their holidays, is that Hotels, and other officially ‘Certified and Licensed’ holiday accommodations, will have no water restrictions placed on them and guests can use the swimming pool facilities, additionally, Community Public Swimming Pools can also remain open, which means that the Spanish ‘Tourist Economy’ should not be impacted, as a consequence, no tourist sector industry or business should ‘Go Under’, no employees within those sectors will lose their jobs, or have their working hours reduced, so that too really is good news.

For permanent residents though, there is no change to the domestic water usage restrictions and we are still not permitted to use private community communal swimming pools 🤷‍♂️ As I have said previously, and purely from a personal perspective, Shazza and I are not bothered too much about not being able to use our communal pool facilities, we are after all only a five-minute drive from the beach and sea, but it will of course be good to get it available again, hopefully in the not so distant future, when the water situation permits. However, and still continuing on the good news theme, the water situation is now being monitored every two weeks, so you will forgive us if, and this isn’t anything personal you understand, that when the tourist hoards do arrive for their holidays, we permanent residents are hoping that it continues to rain at every opportunity 😂

The advance forecast, looking towards the end of March, shows some further optimistic news, several more days of rain, although it will not be continuous rain throughout the whole of those particular days, and of course we also already know how unreliable the ‘Works of Fiction’ can be, especially when they try to anticipate weather patterns that far in advance, but we have to remain positive, and of course optimistic, because every drop of the wet stuff that falls these days is a highly valued commodity and resource.

The timing of this last four days of wet stuff did actually have a bit of a silver lining to it though, well at least for Shazza and myself, because our kitchen contractors arrived first thing on a rather wet Tuesday morning, to commence the demolition of our existing kitchen, so it didn’t really matter to us what the weather was doing outside as we would be confined inside for the duration anyway. We obviously couldn’t use either the Washing Machine or Dishwasher, never mind the fact that we didn’t physically have either after the first couple of hours anyway, and it was pointless trying to do any cleaning, like mopping all the tiled floors, not whilst the contractor’s were in and creating a lot of mess, however, I am certain that we still didn’t save anything on our water usage over the week, what with the amount of extra water we must have used with all the additional Tea’s and Coffee’s that were being consumed on a daily basis by our temporary guests, and, as a consequence of probably making them too many refreshments, there was the additional usage of the guest room toilet facilities. Strange really because they flushed the toilet every single time they used it, I would have thought, being primarily Spanish, and aware of the current need to conserve water that they would have all been utilising the principle of “If its yellow then let it mellow, only if its brown do you flush it down” and just agree between themselves that the last one out, at the end of the day, would give the toilet a flush 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, we will not know how we have faired on our water usage until we receive the bill, which isn’t due until the middle of April, however, whilst we cannot legislate for what other’s are doing, Shazza and I will continue to keep minimising our own personal water usage as far is as reasonably practical, we currently still have plenty of wet wipes and deodorant 😉

For those that may be interested, I thought that I would provide you with a selection of images, some of which are of the old kitchen layout and colour scheme, then what the kitchen looked like during the demolition stage and finally, some of our newly installed kitchen, which was all completed (well very nearly 🤔) in eight days, although in reality it was seven, as one of those days was a Sunday, a non-working day.

So this is what our kitchen looked like on that first morning, before the demolition gang got their hammers and drills out…………….

BEFORE

Now if any of you are, or have previously been, viewers of the British TV property programme ‘A Place In The Sun’, then our old kitchen colour scheme, worktops and cupboards, will look very familiar to you. I think that no matter what area of Spain people purchased their property in, these kitchen fixtures, fittings and colour schemes, were all pretty much installed within the properties with the same bog standard kitchens, which, in the case of our apartment, was just over 20 years ago.

However, in our particular case, the previous owner, and there had only been the one prior to us purchasing the apartment nine years ago, had not undertaken any major internal structural changes, not even with the original appliances, he had only conducted, or had had done on his behalf, some not very good minor DIY, I wonder if his DIY expert was called Eric, as it was probably about the same standard as someone else with that name !! Although to be honest, had I have attempted to do any work on the electrics, which is extremely unlikely, I would certainly have made a much better, and safer, job of it. However, fortunately his DIY projects only extended as far as installing some sloping shelving on the back kitchen wall, although I am certain that they were not supposed to be sloping, and a lot of additional electrical extension sockets above, below and even out of sight behind wall units and cupboards, which also included four, self-installed, under cupboard unit strip lights which, as we were to discover to our horror, that he, or his ‘Cowboy Electrician’, had not made a very good job of any of it, I would even go as far as to say, the very crude connections running from the existing electrical feeds, and believe me, their were numerous, were all left in a pretty dangerous state, all hidden out of sight, until that was, our kitchen installer came to initially measure up and when he removed some of the kitchen appliances he revealed these fire hazards just waiting to happen 😲 It was only then that we discovered why some of the electrical ‘things’ had never worked since we had moved into the property, albeit they were minor items that we were not that bothered about, as they were not of any real practical importance during the short periods we had been using the property merely as a temporary ‘Bolt Hole’.

Fortunately, this is now all being rectified by our proper Spanish ‘Certified’ Electrician, who is rewiring the whole kitchen properly, and safely, and refitting new, and more modern, electrical sockets to where ‘we’ now actually need and want them. The other major bit of work is to the existing plumbing, as with our particular new kitchen design layout we are changing the locations of some of the items (Sink and Drainer, Washing Machine and Dishwasher), so the existing cold water inlet pipe, the internal hot water feed pipe and the grey water drainage pipe, all need to be either re-located or extended. The other change to the current layout is that on the large white tiled back wall, where there were just the two ‘sloping’ wooden shelf units, and the electronic security gate entry/exit system, we will now be adding a tall storage cupboard, to hide away things like step ladders, ironing board, mop bucket and brooms etc. and then next to that cupboard, running part way down the back wall, a breakfast bar with storage under, and then just above it, the old wooden sloping shelving will be replaced with two new, colour co-ordinated, off-set floating shelves. As the majority of the current appliances were certainly well over nine year’s old, like the Electric Hob and separate Oven, which were both quite literally on their last legs, the bulky Microwave (which we are considering donating to a museum), Washing Machine, Tumble Dryer and Fridge/freezer, I elected to just completely renew ‘all’ of the kitchen appliances, with one notable exception of course, that being Shazza, as she is still, ‘currently at least’, an irreplaceable kitchen appliance, but I may consider auditioning for the the latest new TV production of ‘A New Wife In The Sun’ 🤭 I can of course smile to myself as I write this, safe in the knowledge that I am not going to get a hefty slap around my head for that comment, as Shazza never reads any of my literary masterpieces ? No okay, you are probably right, we will stick with just calling them ‘rambles’ 😂 We have also opted to go for a more modern style of ‘integrated’ kitchen, which sounds a bit posh, but all that really means is that all of the free standing appliances will be hidden behind colour matched and connected cupboard doors, which will definitely mean I will now never be able to find anything, or that will be my excuse anyway 🤭 We have also chosen, what we believe to be, a fairly neutral colour scheme and, as we have no intentions of installing another new kitchen in our lifetime in this property, I suppose at some point, with changes in technologies and designs, it too at some point will begin to look dated, but I guess that ageing process comes to us all eventually.

Last year, once we had made the big decision to turn our ‘Bolt Hole’ into our ‘permanent’ home here in Spain, we had at that point both agreed that there needed to be two major projects conducted as a priority, the installation of a brand new kitchen, and then, a complete re-fit and modernisation of our Master En-suite bathroom. So this new kitchen installation is that first ‘project’ underway and, hopefully, we will also have completed the second project, the En-suite bathroom, before the end of this year. Additionally, and although we cannot really call it a ‘project’ as such, our third priority, once all the major messy stuff has been completed, is to fully redecorate the apartment again, we last did that when we initially purchased the property, so by the end of it all, we will feel as if we have put our own personal stamp and signature on the place and be able to then truly call this ‘Our Home’ 🤗

We of course knew, with all these kitchen works going on, that there would be a lot of noise, with hammering, electric drills and saws etc and of course, the unavoidable rubble and dust that is created. That meant that during the transition period, we would have no serviceable kitchen, Fridge/Freezer or cooking facilities, so we made the decision that for this interim period we would keep the old museum piece microwave, the bread toaster and our kettle, so that between the periods when the mains electricity was turned off, we were at least able to make something quick and easy for our lunches, and of course hot drinks for ourselves and our guests. So, our actual Living/Dining area became our temporary kitchen, food storage and preparation area, which added to the inconvenience, as we also had to utilise this limited space as a storage area, for the new worktops, splash backs, kitchen furniture and new appliances, whilst they were waiting to be fitted, we were effectively living in a building site. For the majority of the days, whilst the contractor’s were working, we were camped out on our balcony, looking at the lines of raindrops as they continually raced each other from the top of the french style glazed doors, to the bottom. At the end of each day, once the contractors had departed, we were able to then go out and eat a hot meal which, even in the wet and drizzly conditions, enabled us to get out of the four walls and away from the dust and to get some fresh air, more importantly, to exchange the constant noise of hammering and drilling, which was still ringing in our ears, for some more normal natural environmental sounds, the sound of the sea, the chinking of wine glasses, sounds of other people’s conversations and of course to enjoy a spot of people watching, the inclement weather did not stop people from going out to eat, thank goodness. It should also go without saying really, but we both felt the need to enjoy, and perhaps partake of a few extra, Anti-Covid Vaccines than we normally would, purely for medicinal purposes you understand, and of course, to clear all the dust from the builder’s rubble from our throats and my goodness, what a lot of dust there was to clear 😉

THE TRANSITION PERIOD

It only took the Spanish contractors, ‘Marco’, ‘Jose’ and ‘Brian’, (yes he was a Spanish ‘Brian’’ and not an English ‘Brian’) two full days to finish the demolition part of the task, (note to self 🤔: re-stock the medicine cabinet with headache tablets, ear plugs and purchase more Tea and Coffee). Then ‘Marco’ worked alone, for a further two full days, on the Electrical and Plumbing aspects and, by the start of day four, it was yet another change of contractor, ‘Sam’ a qualified Carpenter, who was British, and has lived here in Spain with his wife and children in excess of thirteen years, he had been tasked to complete the installation of our new kitchen and it soon became clearly apparent that he was a perfectionist. ‘Marco’, the electrician/plumber, returned again on the final day to check that all the appliances were working, that there were no leaks from the new plumbing installations and to finish off and tidy the electrical connections and any cables and wirings, however, at the beginning of this project we did not know exactly when that completion day would actually be, it had originally been allocated for a full two weeks worth of work. The only day there had been no work conducted was on the Sunday, which we were grateful for as we were ready for a peaceful day, and I imagine our neighbours were too !! However, on the contractor’s working days they started by 08:30am, which as you can probably imagine, meant that at least ‘one’ of us had to get up a lot earlier than usual, but mentioning no names, ‘She’ was not overly impressed at having to force herself out from under the duvet at such an ungodly hour of the day 🤭, however, I still dutifully delivered her morning coffee and iPad to her. Unusually, the Spanish contractor’s did not stop for lunch, so there were no typical two-hour Spanish ‘Siesta Periods’, so we were hopeful that they would be all done by the end of working day seven, on the following Tuesday 🤞

Then it would be our turn to get stuck in, to re-paint the kitchen ceiling and some other minor painting bits ‘n’ pieces, we then commenced a really thourough in depth clean of the whole apartment, not just in the new kitchen, so that we could get rid of all of the dust and grit which had accumulated in every nook and cranny in most areas of the apartment, even though we had tried to keep all the internal doors closed 🤷‍♂️ Then we needed to go and do a major shop as all the food cupboards, and Fridge/Freezer, were devoid of sustenance, before we could then, or perhaps more accurately, I should say Shazza 😉 could then commence the task of re-organising her kitchen drawers and cupboards, that could take a little longer than normal, as we would now have storage drawers and cupboards in different locations to where they had been previously. The truth is that even in the old kitchen I could never find anything, as Shazza has her own unique methodology when it comes to the kitchen storage solutions, which do not necessarily tend to match with what would have been my more OCD induced logically organised one’s 🤷‍♂️ But it works out quite well really, because when I say that I will prepare Lunch, or cook Dinner, but then, every two minutes shout through to her “Shazza, where do you store the mixing bowls ? Where is the blender ? Where do you keep the kitchen scales ? Which cupboard are the spices in ?” She would eventually just come through and say, “Oh, it will be quicker if I just do it myself 😤”. Oh well, that’s another cunning plan that appears to work quite effectively, I think to myself 🤭

The following Tuesday evening arrived and, ‘Joe’, the owner of the firm, arrived in person to check over the work and complete the handover of the finished project, well perhaps not quite fully finished, as we had discovered that their were some outstanding issues 🙄 The main issue was that they had delivered the wrong model of Fridge/Freezer, although they stated that it was an error by the supplier, but my question was, shouldn’t ‘they’ have checked what had been delivered to their premises ‘before’ delivering the appliances to us 🤔 Fortunately, all of the other new appliances were correct. The issue was that Shazza had specifically wanted, and ordered, a “NO FROST’ fridge freezer model, with the freezer part having ‘three’ large food storage boxes, but what arrived was an inferior ‘LOW FROST’ model, and with only two large freezer food storage boxes and a small ice maker tray. A new fridge was ordered and we were told that the correct model ‘should’ be delivered to us by the weekend, it arrived the following Monday afternoon. The next issue was that part of the new worktop was missing, although it was only a small part and would not prevent us from using the kitchen, but without that piece, they could not finish fitting part of the splash back either. Then, at the end of the breakfast bar, running the full width and height, from the floor to the wall there should have been a colour co-ordinated end panel, it was missing and so that too had to be re-ordered. Finally, we should have had a new double light switch fitted at the entrance to the kitchen, which would have had a switch to turn on the ceiling lights and a separate switch to turn on the under cupboard LED lighting, they didn’t have it and would need to go and purchase one, so they needed to come back another day to complete all of these outstanding tasks. We were told to use the incorrect Fridge/Freezer they had installed until the correct one was delivered, so at least we did have something to use however, to me, this felt like finally completing a jigsaw puzzle only to discover right at the end that pieces were missing, and although there was nothing too major, apart from perhaps not having the correct Fridge/Freezer, for me, and my OCD, it was an irritation I could have done without. Now I do have to say, that to his credit, ‘Joe’ did not to try a make any excuses, he put his hands up and admitted that the errors had been his and so, being a little forgiving, I adopted the stance that sometimes, mistakes happen, but these were not serious one’s and could be remedied relatively quickly.

Now to be totally honest, on the grand scale of things and notwithstanding these relatively minor issues, but from start to finish, the standard and quality of work provided by the actual on site Contractor’s, including the respect they gave to our property, as well as us, and the overall quality of their workmanship, well all I can I say is that, ‘It Exceeded Even Our Own Expectations’ and as an additional bonus, for which, I hasten to add, their has been no additional charge, we both had the opportunity to practice some of our limited Spanish speaking skills with our Spanish contractor’s, and of course, refreshing our own English language speaking skills with ‘Sam’ 😂

It had been quite difficult to visualise, even from the high quality computer generated 3D images provided to us beforehand, whether our chosen new kitchen layout, and colour scheme, would actually work, whether the remodelling of the kitchen layout would flow, as we had wanted it to, or whether the installation of an additional cupboard and breakfast bar on the back wall would make the kitchen appear smaller, but happily it didn’t, whether it was because we had chosen an ‘Integrated’ style of kitchen, so that visually it had smooth flowing lines, and/or the neutral colour scheme, I don’t honestly know, but we both agreed that our kitchen actually now looks and feels slightly more spacious than it had done previously 🤷‍♂️ although obviously it isn’t, and so we are both exceptionally pleased with the final product, so much so that we have now commissioned the same firm to draw up some design plans, and provide us with quotes, for our En-suite bathroom project which we hope to have completed by the Summer.

THE BIG REVEAL

Although it is not quite the complete finished product quite just yet, as there is some finishing off to do, by both the Contractor’s and then some personal touches by ourselves, but we love the new layout and we think that the new colour scheme works very well 👍

As a bit of an added bonus, well for me rather than Shazza, and seeing as we had a proper qualified Electrician on hand, I took full advantage of his presence whilst he was doing the last minute tidying up of the wiring bits and pieces. We had three loose, and badly fitted, electrical wall sockets, where the original builder’s of these apartments had made too large a hole, for the electrical socket and light switch in our bedroom to fit into properly, and also the same issue on two of the lower electrical wall sockets in the guest bedroom. Shazza had been mithering me for ages to look at, and of course rectify them, now I can proudly state that I had been quite pro-active with the ‘looking’ part of this task, and also with the scratching of my head and sucking my teeth, just like a proper contractor would do. However, I hadn’t to date spent very much time, well actually, no time whatsoever would be a more accurate statement, on the actual ‘rectification’ bit 🙄 Well, you should know me well enough by now, from some of my previous rambles, at just how enthusiastic and skilful I am at conducting DIY tasks, but do not judge me too harshly for I had gone as far as buying what I needed to commence the work, some thin sheets of wire mesh and some quick drying plaster, however, whether the tub of plaster would still be in date and usable now is another matter. But, as you will also already be aware, I never look a ‘Gift Horse In The Mouth’, especially when one conveniently presents itself right at my feet, so this was the perfect opportunity to finally get these outstanding tasks sorted, or perhaps more accurately, to get someone else to get them sorted for me 😉 What’s that old saying ? Something about ‘Not Buying A Dog and Then Biting Yourself’ 🤔🤭 So ‘Marco’ willingly came to my rescue and although he was quite insistent that he did not want any payment for his time and trouble, about fifteen minutes worth, and that included the head scratching and teeth sucking. However, he was most appreciative for the opportunity to now purchase some of his own chosen flavoured brand of Anti-Covid Vaccines 😉 So, if any of you are looking to buy, at a knock down price of course, some brand new, unused and still in its original packaging, sheets of thin wire mesh and, a small unopened tub of plaster, although the ‘Use By Date’ may now be illegible to read for some reason 🙄 then you of course know how to contact me, however, I am sort of making and educated guess that I will have to perhaps wait for quite some time to receive potential enquiries, especially as it is on a collection only basis 😂

So we now have our new, more modern, kitchen and we have completed this kitchen project by re-painting the ceiling and those horrible looking yellow tiles have now been re-painted ‘Grey’. The whole apartment has had a thorough Spring clean, moving all the furniture and cleaning behind and underneath it, all ceiling lights and wall fixtures and fittings, skirting boards, tiled floors etc. you name it, it all got cleaned, so we were both more than ready for a bit of a rest and to get back to our normal everyday routines. We have only around three weeks to fully enjoy this though, as the first week of April, just after Easter Monday, we have to start to get ourselves organised, administratively wise, to commence our first ‘Residency Permit Renewal’ processes and procedures, it is amazing, but gosh where did that first year go 😲 Although, in reality, it is actually only 10 months, but we have to commence the renewal process sixty-days in advance of our current ‘Residency Permits’ expiry dates on 13th June. Fortunately, these next ‘residency Permits’ will be valid this time around for a further two year’s, before they need to be done again, meaning that we will be free to concentrate on other, more exciting things, for the remainder of this year and throughout all of 2025. The other bonus, with being occupied with other things during this last year is, we have only used one week of our travel allowance in this our first year.

Just as a refresher, for those reading this who may be considering applying for the Non-Lucrative Visa (NLV), now or in the future, is that one of the requirements/restrictions associated to this particular NLV (Retirement Non-Working Visa) is that you are only permitted to travel, outside of Spain’s Borders, for a total of 10 months in the first 5 year period. Now you can break that ten month period down any way you like over those five years, taking longer periods one year and a shorter period in another, but if you want to apply for ‘Permanent Residency’ at the end of the five year ‘Temporary Residency’ period, you cannot have exceeded the ten month restriction and, very importantly, the onus is on you to prove that you have not exceeded that ten months and not for the Spanish Immigration to prove that you have.

For our own purposes, Shazza and I have just simplified it down to considering ourselves to basically having two months per year, to travel outside of the Spanish Borders, within our own particular ‘Temporary Residency Periods’, (which commence each year on 13th June). However, and in addition to that two months travel outside of Spain, we can of course still travel, Internally within Spain, which includes the Balearic and Canaries group of Islands, as often as we like without any restrictions. So with us having a rather lean travel period in this our first residency year, that will mean, as from 13th June this year, we will be carrying a surplus of seven weeks over into our second ‘Residency Year’, so we could, if we so choose, travel outside of Spain for a period of just under four months, now that opens up a lot of potentially viable extended travel opportunities 🤔

So just as my mind starts to drift into the potential vast list of destinations around the globe we could travel to, I hear the dulcet tones of my beloved, “Are you making the Dinner this evening ? You really need to familiarise yourself with where everything is in the kitchen cupboards and also with the use of the new Induction Hob and the Oven and Grill”, damn it, another ploy that hasn’t worked I groan to myself 🙄 Oh well, until the next ramble………….

Adios mi Amigos, ‘La Vida Es Buena”

During our previous eight year’s of visiting this part of Spain, before we took up full time residency here in June of last year and, usually by the end of February, but certainly by the first week of March at the latest, it would have been time to point our Motorhome North towards the ferry port at either Bilbao or Santander, as we would once again have been at the end of yet another one of our ninety day ‘Schengen Shuffle’ periods, reluctantly having to then return to the UK. Always just as everything here was beginning to prepare to open up, ready to commence another new tourist season, even now that feeling of disappointment at having to leave at the end of those 90 day periods is still very much emblazoned into our memories, as we were always disappointed at the feeling of being forced out, not just of Spain but out of Europe. It is something that Shazza and I were chatting about very recently, as we were strolling along the Promenade on one of our regular morning walks, but happily, here we now are, back at the point where we would normally be having to leave. Once again we were watching our small corner of the Costa del Sol waking up, as it began to once again shed the remnants of its Winter coat, but this time we smiled at each other, for it is now a nice feeling, knowing that we no longer ‘have’ to leave and so not having that feeling of disappointment. This is now, what will quite probably remain, our forever home, although we don’t risk saying that out too loud, for we never know if, or when, our feet will start getting that certain familiar ‘itch’ to travel and start another adventure again. Although however, the years do now appear to be flying past, far too quickly for my liking, and I am not certain that I would really want to go through all of the upheavals of selling up and re-locating elsewhere again, we certainly have no desire to return to the UK, other than for short breaks to visit family that is.

Easter is now just around the corner, a period on the Spanish Calendar which doesn’t just mark the start of the ‘Fiesta’ season, commencing with all the Religious parades and festivals that will take place all around the Country, from the smallest of Villages to the largest of Cities, but it is also the period when the first real influx of holidaying tourists start to arrive. Now although our town is an open all year location which, unlike some other tourist resorts, means that it does not actually close down or feel like a ghost town during the Winter for those five or six months of the year, life here just tends to go on as usual, just not quite as busy with the additional temporary residents although, there is still a significant change in the ambience as many, although not all, of the Chiringuitos (Beach Bars) do tend to close up for the Winter and, some seasonal type ‘tourist tat’ retail outlets also use that less busy period to pull down their shutters to enable them to go and take their annual vacations, but with everything else, well life just goes on regardless really. Now that we have acclimatised here we do feel the drop in the Winter temperatures so we do both find that we tend to miss the heat of the Summer, the frequent Fiesta’s, the Medieval Markets and of course the light nights, but we certainly do not miss the crowds.

Although we have been here now for nine months, on a full time basis, we are still continuing to settle in, to what is still in some ways, our new environment, and as our Spanish vocabulary improves, although at a much slower pace than either of us would really have wanted, because we did not really anticipate, in advance of coming to live here, that we would be amongst a community where the primary language spoken, even amongst the majority of Spanish people, is English. However, like a lot of things in this life, there are advantages and disadvantages to everything, so we just continue to do what we can and attempt to seek out the mainly Spanish speaking venues, like our small Spanish seafront Cafe where we continue our Spanish education by practicing our words in still very much disjointed conversations, but also by trying to understand the subject’s that are being discussed from the words that are spoken by the other primarily Spanish customer’s, words that we are now beginning to recognise, but this is still a little harder than we had expected, as learning the words is one thing, but picking them out from the sentences that are delivered at quite a rapid pace is quite another, it is quite a different challenge but we get a certain satisfaction when we actually understand what is being said on the surrounding tables. Little by little we are beginning to converse more and more within the small Spanish enclave in which we mingle which, other than for practicing our own general conversational skills, also has other benefits, in that it enables us to discover little snippets of information about the wider Spanish way of life. In one such conversation we discovered, to our surprise, that the majority of Spanish people do not actually venture very far, globally speaking, when they take their annual holidays, many choose to stay within this their own country, visiting relatives or friends who may live elsewhere in the many other different Regions and Provinces of Spain, or some just head to the Spanish Balearic or Canary Islands for a change of scenery, few, it would appear, take flights to the longer haul tourist destinations such as the Carribean. I guess with a Country the size of Spain, already surrounded as it is with its vast variety of beach locations along both its Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, with different Mountain ranges that stretch from the North to the South of the country, providing numerous opportunities to either hike in the Summer or Ski in the Winter, to wander and explore through its vast number of Nature Parks or its Lakes, Rivers, Waterfalls and numerous old Towns, Cities and Villages that are filled with history. Spain also has varying geographical climates throughout the year, from those that tend to be much cooler in the North and Central areas, to the searing heat of the South. When we thought about this it did provoke us to ask the question to ourselves of ‘Why would you actually need to travel to other Countries if you have all of this variet already on your doorstep ?’, But for us, our wider travels are due to our wanderlust and a personal desire to go and visit many different Countries to experience their differing cultures.

In the main though, it would appear that the majority of the Spanish people are just quite happy with their lot, and so they are more than satisfied to remain within their own Country. However, their is also another possible answer, perhaps it may also be just a simple matter of individual personal economics for, generally speaking, the Spanish income levels from employment are very much lower here than in a lot of its other neighbouring European counterparts and, with a few minor geographical exceptions, this is a country with very good, and inexpensive, public transport systems, so travelling throughout Spain to each of its corners, North, South, East or West, either by Road, Rail or Bus, it is not a major drain on a families limited financial resources.

The road network, throughout the length and breadth of Spain, we have found is also exceptionally good and, unlike some other European countries, the majority of the motorway networks are generally still mainly all ‘Toll Free’ here, but those that do incur a charge to use them, well to be honest, they are not that expensive in comparison to say France or Italy. We often used to travel from the Northern most Coast of Spain, Bilbao or Santander, to right down here in the South, almost 700 miles, using all Toll free motorways. However, unless you are in a particular hurry, the exceptional ‘N’ roads, many of which run parallel to the Motorway routes, take you through some amazing landscapes and pass through towns and villages that you would otherwise not get to see, we are certainly looking forward to doing much more exploration of the whole of Spain, and as we will not be in a hurry we may, on some of those occasions, elect to leave the car at home and let the Bus or Train take the strain 👍

On yet another one of our morning walks recently, again it was a nice sunny Spring morning, which is nice as it does enable us to sit outside at one of our favourite seafront Cafe’s and do a spot of people watching as we sit and drink our coffee’s and eat our Tostado’s, but this sort of weather is doing nothing to help fill the reservoirs 🤷‍♂️ However, no good going on about it, we have no control over the weather and hopefully, sooner rather than very much later, Mother Nature will sort herself out 🤞 We couldn’t help but notice the numerous very industrious council workers, they were certainly out in force, the beaches were being cleaned of the debris that had floated in, not just the seaweed but also the man-made debris that had been discarded, although to be honest they do tend to do these beach cleans quite regularly, often on an almost daily basis and even during these quieter Autumn and Winter months, but now all of these long stretches of sand have been levelled, and groomed, and are looking immaculate. We had also observed, over recent weeks, that even the promenade planted areas had been spruced up, some of the old brick edged borders having been totally renewed with more attractive looking stonework borders and now, due to the continuing drought conditions, they have been re-planted with much hardier plants that require much less water. Along one stretch of the promenade, between the small village of ‘Castellón de la Duquesa’, located on one side of the Marina, and the place where we generally park our car next to the beach, the brightly coloured bench seating which was decorated with nautical scenes, made up from small pieces of painted mosaic tiles, were being repaired where pieces had fallen off, either due to the ravages of the weather or human interventions (Kids jumping on them or footballs kicked at them). This repair work looked to be a very slow and painstaking task, we stopped to admire the workers handy work and could see that each piece was being re-applied with much care and attention. On the Promenade on the opposite side of the Marina, which stretches to our small town of ‘San Luis de Sabinillas’ the beachfront Chiringuito’s had also started to get themselves ready to re-open, the straw topped sun umbrellas had been put back out, in their neat regimented rows, many of them bearing new straw hats, the sun beds had all been washed down and gleamed white and blue, we didn’t question where the water may have come from for this purpose, we gave them the benefit of the doubt, seeing as there was lots of crystal clear salt water just a few metres away 😉 but once washed they were placed underneath the beach umbrellas outside their respective establishments, new canvas sun shades were in the process of being installed above the bar terraces and, where necessary, external areas were being re-painted. Even the flag poles were now sporting new clean flags, the Spanish National one, The Andalusian Regional Flag, the Malaga Provincial Flag, the Blue European Union Flag and of course, some may even say the most important one, the flag that proudly reflected yet another year’s award of the prestigious “Blue Flag Beach Status’ for the water quality.

Although it is never really completely deserted here, as there are always a steady stream of temporary visitors throughout the Autumn and Winter months, from those who stay on the local campsite in their Caravans and Motorhomes (No Tents on this particular site), and those who either own, or rent, properties in the area, so that they too can enjoy the Winter Sun and temperate climate of the Costa del Sol, but their is still a distinct change in the ambience between the Winter and Summer months and now, for us, to have experienced spending our first four combined seasons of the year here, instead of just two ninety day chunks of it, it does feel a little bit special to have actually witnessed these changing seasons for ourselves and yes, we do still continue to enjoy those ‘Pinch Me, Am I Dreaming’ moments and remember the days when we used to make these very same walks and would often say “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually lived here”, and now, look at us, here we are, which puts a slightly and more positive twist on what is generally accepted as being more a statement of caution, ‘Be Careful What You Wish For’, or the other popular one, ‘Better the Devil you know’.

Now I may have mentioned, in one of my earlier rambles, that on 16th December last year, we were out and about somewhere, when Shazza received a telephone call from our local Health Centre, informing her that her State Healthcare Card had arrived. When we applied for them, back in July last year, as part of our initial residency process procedures, we were told that we could be waiting for up to a year to get these, as their was a massive backlog, so this was good news getting them after only five months. However, when we went to pick up the card, the same day as getting the phone call, we discovered that it was actually only Shazza’s card that had arrived, mine hadn’t 🤷‍♂️ I waited until mid-January before going back to check on the status of mine, but it had still not been received and, when the receptionist checked my medical database records, it reflected that my card had actually been issued and sent out by the Andalusian Health Authority on the 23rd November 🤔 The receptionist told me to give it another month as it may be stuck in the Postal System, what with there being Christmas, New Year and the ‘Three Kings Day’, although it did still seem odd that Shazza and I had both applied for our Health Cards at the same time and she had received her’s before Christmas 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, I gave it another month and went back to check again towards the end of February, but alas still no sign of my Health Card. Now I had done some on-line research in between time and discovered that if my Health Card had not been received, within a month of it being issued, then I needed to report this to the Issuing Authority, via our local Healthcare Centre, and using a specific form. However, the receptionist tried to tell me that I would have to just make another new application for a Health Card. However, sometimes you have to just get firm with some of these people and so I politely informed her that this was not the correct procedure, that it needed to be reported on a completely different form stating that it was ‘No Recibor’ (Not received), so that they could then cancel the original card, in case it had been intercepted and being used illegally by someone else. The Andalusian Health Authority, upon receipt of this form, would then issue me a new card, but simply submitting another ‘initial application form’ for a Health Card would possibly only have created confusion, more questions from them but even more importantly, adding to the already long delay. I could tell by her body language and facial expression that she was disgruntled that I was actually telling ‘her’ what she actually needed to do, however, seeing that my own body language and facial expression and change in my tone of voice, she soon realised that I was not going to leave, so she went to speak to another member of the back room staff, who looked over her glasses in my direction, I then saw her typing into her computer. The receptionist came back and told me that the form had been sent, I enquired as to how long she thought it would take for me to receive the new card, she responded in the usual fashion, palms of her hands turned upwards, her arms raised to shoulder height, she raised her shoulders a few inches, just to add to her ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude, and with the facial expression that said “Who Knows !!”. So I left the Health Centre wondering wether I would ever receive my Health Card. Now in the grand scheme of things it wasn’t really a major issue, practically speaking, as I was already in possession of a paper form, which acted as my ‘Temporary’ authorisation to receive free State Healthcare, should I require it, but you know me and my OCD, I should have an ‘Official’ plastic Health Card, Shazza had her’s and so I wanted mine, otherwise I didn’t feel that my residency documentation or status was, as yet, quite fully complete. Although I didn’t really hold out much hope of receiving it promptly, it had taken 5 months for Shazza to receive her’s 🙄 But sometimes even I can get pleasantly surprised by the rare efficiency of the Spanish bureaucratic processes, for it was just one week later that the newly issued Health Card arrived, this time however, it would appear that even the issuing authority hadn’t trusted sending it directly to our local Health Centre, but instead they had sent it in the post directly to me at our home address. So now, thankfully, my OCD has once again calmed down and that is it, I now feel complete, just in time to commence the first annual renewal process of our Residency Permits 🙄

Fortunately the renewal process is a much more simplified procedure than the initial application and, things like our Health Cards and Driving licences do not need renewing, the majority of the administration will be processed by our Solicitors, we basically just have to provide the documentary evidence that proves we continue to meet the annual Financial Income aspects (€36,000 net per year). Once we have completed this upcoming renewal procedure, we will not be required to conduct any further renewal actions until the end of March 2026 which will then take us to March 2028 which, at that point we can then start the process to obtain our ‘Permanent Residency Permits’ 😁

After my last ramble, where I mentioned the continuing and worsening drought conditions, well it would appear that even with some of the prolonged periods of the wet stuff, four consecutive days of it has been forecast to arrive, but still, the news coming out from the Spanish Meteorology Agency (AEMET) ‘Works of Fiction’ is still not looking very positive.

So you may, or perhaps you may not 🤔 be asking the question about how the lack of water will impact Spain over the Summer months, especially with the huge influx of temporary additional residents during what is a continuing and worsening drought situation. Well for the Government it is going to be something of a double edged sword really, for whilst us permanent residents will still have to legally comply with the drought restrictions and limitations to how much water we can use on a daily basis, and still not be able to use our private communal pools during the scorching Summer months, what is creating much discontent is in the announcement from the Government, who have just recently given assurances, that ‘tourists’ will not be effected, Hotels will still have access to water, for their guests to take baths and showers and flush their toilets, they will also be able to use the hotel swimming pools, although I am not sure how this will impact on privately owned rental villas, that still all seems to be a little confusing at the moment with no clear guidance having yet been issued by the powers that be, and with differing rules, not just between Regions, but also local Councils within the same Province the discontent is becoming much more vocal 🤷‍♂️ Now of course, there have been lots of murmurings of discontent from ‘permanent’ residents here, and I don’t just mean from those within the International Expat communities, but the much greater and larger number of permanent Spanish Citizens, whose complaints are, ‘Why do they have to suffer restrictions when the Tourists won’t ?’ Now from a purely personal perspective, Shazza and I would rather have drinking water coming through our own domestic water taps, rather than having to collect it on a daily basis from Stand Pipes in the street and, not having the use of our communal swimming pool is also not really that much of an issue for us, as there is a very big, and wide, bathing facility just a few minutes down the road, and it comes complete with it’s own beach 🤭 Whilst we can certainly understand the feelings of the local Spanish population, the reality is this, one of Spain’s most lucrative incomes, after the exporting of Fruit and Vegetables, is via the Tourism Sector, so if the large number of Tourists who would generally visit Spain each year, were to find themselves being restricted to their water usage whilst here, and not being able to use swimming pools, then quite simply, those tourists would quite possibly elect to go elsewhere for their holiday, where those facilities were readily available, which for Spain, would not just have an impact on the lack of incomes from the Holiday Accommodations, the Hotels and Rental properties, but also the wider hospitality sector that supports the tourism industry, Bars, Cafe’s, Restaurants, the wide range of tourist attractions, including the Coach and Boat Tour companies, Car Hire and Taxi companies etc. etc. So the wider risk is that some business, without the crucial incomes that they receive from the influx of seasonal tourist cash, is a very realistic risk that, much like the lack of tourism that occurred during the Covid Pandemic, many businesses could risk going under, which of course would then mean growing unemployment, so it certainly is one of those Catch 22 situations with no easy or quick solutions, other than to get some unseasonal prolonged periods of rain. But these are the realities of our world today, dare I use those words ‘Climate Change’, but this is just one of the many consequences of that, and of course not having heeded the warnings over recent decades, whilst we here in Southern Europe are not getting enough rainfall, other countries are getting too much, globally the Volcanic Eruptions, Earthquakes, Floods and Fires are ever increasing in their frequency, the ice caps continue to melt at a phenomenal rate and the sea levels are rising but still, the World’s Governments continue to do what they have always done, business as usual “Stay Calm And Carry On”.

But the weather is a strange beast at the best of times so you can never trust in what the ‘Works of Fiction’ predict and what we are actually going to get.

It really does feel strange at times, just a little over two hours drive North from us, still in our region of Andalusia, but in the Granada Province, on Sunday 3rd March, up in the more mountainous areas, they have very recently experienced temperatures of -14.5 degrees(c), whilst, at the very same time, down here on the coast, we had temperatures of +22 degrees(c), quite a massive 36 degree difference between two different areas which, distance wise, are not really that very far apart. Just a pity that the harsh frost was not actually deep snow because at least when it melted, and flowed down from the mountain rivers and streams, at least that may have brought a little relief and have helped, even if only a little, in starting to at least provide some top up to the water levels in the Embalces.

Now I am not usually one who would get overly excited at potentially being held a prisoner inside my own four walls for what could be several days, however, in light of the current water shortage problems, we can only hope and pray that for once, the ‘Works of Fiction’ do actually get it right 🙏⛈️ Our local forecast reflects the wet stuff starting to fall during the night on the Wednesday, and then not letting up until the early hours of the following Monday morning, yes, four whole days of rain, brilliant 🤗😄 But of course, what is actually forecast and what we will actually get could be quite two different things and, to be perfectly honest and realistic, even four consecutive days of the wet stuff would not really be sufficient to make a huge difference in the water levels in the Embalces, but let’s show a bit of positivity here Eric, at least its a start, a little is better than nothing and after that, well all we can do is hope for even more ‘unseasonably’ wet weather over the coming weeks, so my Prayer mat is still out but, being out of practice with its use, and knowing my luck, we may just end up with ‘Fire and Brimstone and a plague of Locusts’ 😂

I do have to make a bit of a confession, as it won’t just be the rainfall that will be keeping Shazza and I housebound over this anticipated rainy period 🤔 On the Tuesday morning, before the rainfall of hopefully biblically epic proportions arrives, our kitchen demolition team are due to arrive to commence ripping out the old one, before hopefully, a few days later, installing our completely brand new kitchen furniture and appliances, so the confession is that we would have been housebound during this period anyway so not just as a consequence of the weather. However, more about how those things develop in my next ramble, in relation to both the weather and the new kitchen. So please, ‘Works of Fiction’, hear my prayers and bring on the wet stuff in torrents, totally selfish of me I know and, as much as I would like to take credit for coming to the assistance of our new home Country and its water shortage issues, I unfortunately actually have nothing to do with the timing of these weather conditions, just in case any of you were actually wondering. I know that I may often use the word ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’, but just perhaps not always in the most appropriate of circumstances, but then again, who knows, perhaps I do have a direct line to the big man, or of course woman, we have to be careful these days with what may possibly be construed as sexist statements 🤭

So, as you can see, Shazza and I are just getting on with our daily lives, our only real concerns at this time being whether the Supermarkets over here will soon run out of, ‘Bottled Water’, Wet Wipes’ and ‘Deodorant’ 😂😂

Until my next ramble,

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, “La Vida es Buena”

It only seemed like yesterday when we had returned from our short sunny Spanish mini-break just up the coast in Nerja and then publishing my last ramble about it, but as I commence drafting this latest masterpiece it was a bit of a shock to discover that that was actually thirty-one days ago 😲 Somehow we find ourselves on the cusp of entering the month of March, so although this last month had 29 days in it, what on earth happened to the month of February we find ourselves asking 🤷‍♂️ Now if we had been busy doing lots of exciting things or Shazza cajoling me into more surprise mini-adventures then perhaps I could understand the time flying past, but that has not been the case. The reality is simply that we have just been getting on with our normal everyday lives, you know the sort of usual stuff, the walks, sometimes in our own local neighbourhood and sometimes, just for a change of scenery, we would take the short twenty-minute drive to Estepona and walk along their very nice promenade, but overall nothing worth writing about really.

We collected our first visitors of the year, from Malaga Airport, on Thursday 15th February, Shazza’s Aunt and Uncle from the UK, this was their fifth visit to us so they were coming primarily to enjoy the warmer Spanish weather, the UK being its usual cold and wet self at this time of year, rather than them coming for any major sightseeing purposes, they had done most of that on their previous visits to us. So we made no real plans, other than on the Friday evening, we had pre-booked a table at the ‘La Bodega’ restaurant in the Marina where they had some entertainment, it was to be a ‘Motown Night’, which fitted well into the style of music for our particular age categories. For the remainder of their six day visit to us, Shazza and I decided to just leave it up to them if they wanted us to take them anywhere in particular.

The following morning, which for three people in particular, commenced a little later than for myself, but our guests decided that they wanted to go and take a look at the small village of Manilva, a short drive inland up the mountain, why I do not know, as their is very little of interest going on at this time of year, it is primarily a wine production area but the vines had not started producing any of their fruits just yet so their were no associated fiesta’s. We parked up and took them to a Cafe that we know, which has a large panoramic window overlooking the countryside, and the surrounding mountains, with views of other whitewashed villages and towns in the distance.

One of the smaller more famous towns is Caceres, which is probably the most photographed in this area, and so I was somewhat surprised when they told us that they had not visited it on any of their previous visits to us, so of course, with it being literally on our doorstep, that, we agreed, would be our next port of call. Sharon and I have been to Caceres a few times now, it is built on the side of the mountain and the streets are on various levels, mainly narrow and cobbled streets and walkways, it would certainly test our guests stamina and fitness as they are both a little older than myself, but added to that, Shazza’s uncle had undergone replacement knee surgery a couple of years ago and it has never been right since. However, we had pre-warned them both but they were still keen to go and take a look, on our own previous visits we had never quite made it to the top of the village to the Church that sits at the peak alongside the remnants of the old castle, perhaps today we may make it if we took it at a steady pace 🤔

I had driven us up to Manilva, but Shazza elected to do the drive to Caceres, only because she had researched the parking availability and decided to go into the small town, to a subterranean multi-storey car park right in the centre, which required concentration and careful negotiation of the small and narrow cobbled roads. Since suffering with my detached retina in 2022, the focus in my right eye is not perfect, and never will be, so whilst it is good enough for me to drive on, or through, towns with normal road widths, I do tend to over compensate on distance to anything within my field of vision on the right hand side, so as their would be little, if any, margin for error driving through Caceres, she had demoted me to the co-pilots seat. As it turned out this was a good decision, for even she had wished she had worn her brown trousers that day 🤭 On our previous visits we had parked just outside the town which, as it turned out, would have been the better option on this occasion too, what is it they say about hindsight 🤔 However, credit where credit is due, Shazza got us safely in, and out, without gaining any go-faster striping down the sides of the car or any unwanted dents, with the added bonus that we both lost a few extra pounds from the amount of sweating we did, and that had nothing to do with the physical excursions of walking up and down steep hills just lots of close quarter manoeuvring in the car !!

It was a nice warm and sunny day and the tourists were out in force, meaning that we couldn’t find even one empty table at any of the Cafe/Bar establishments, so we wandered up and down the narrow streets until we saw a sign pointing upwards towards the ‘Castle Cafe’. We got about two thirds of the way up the narrow winding cobbled alleyways until eventually Shazza’s Aunt and Uncle declared that they needed a rest before they could go any further, I said I would continue a little further to see whether I could find the cafe, but the narrow walkway just continued to twist and climb, so I knew they would not be able to make it to even the point that I had got to, although disappointingly I knew that it could not have been much further to the top as I could now see the top of the church spire, perhaps Shazza and I will finally complete it ourselves on another day 🙄

We drove back down to our local town of Sabinillas, via a different route, where our guests got to see some other tremendous panoramic views of the coastline as we descended. After a wander along the sun drenched promenade we stopped at several hostelries for much needed Anti-Covid Vaccines, well it would have been rude not to 🤭 and then we went to our local Indian Restaurant for a very pleasant, albeit well overdue, lunch. We spent the rest of the late afternoon, and evening, sat on the balcony just chatting, Shazza had made a large jug of rather potent Sangria, which we all enjoyed, accompanied with an assortment of nibbles, that was followed by her deciding to show her recently acquired skill (I use that term ‘Skill’ very loosely) at producing several of her different alcohol flavoured cocktail concoction’s. I don’t think any of them noticed that I was happy to just sit with my one glass of Sangria. Now both Shazza and I very rarely drink alcohol when we are at home, I enjoy my couple, or three, glasses of red wine when we are out, and Shazza her small beers, but Shazza likes to be sociable when we have guests staying, so there will be no prizes for guessing who didn’t wake up with a headache the following morning 😂

The next morning, which for some further alcohol related reason was another very relaxed start to the day 🤭 our guests said that they would like to revisit Estepona. Since their last visit the seafront promenade had changed considerably, what was once a road has now been reformed into a much wider and full length pedestrian and cyclists promenade. There is now a new Social and Cultural Centre which, on the top, has a 360 degree viewing platform. I have mentioned this in previous rambles and provided photographs, but for our current guests, this would be a first. It was yet again another sun drenched day, with temperatures in the low twenties and so another chance to get back into our more comfortable attire of Shorts, Tee-shirts and flip-flops, My carer (Shazza) had given me permission to drive, so I parked the car in the usual place, for free, at the Northern side of Estepona, opposite the large Carrefour supermarket and then we crossed the road and strolled along the long seafront promenade, enjoying the sea views and the new look pedestrianised area. Just before we got to the Marina was the social and cultural building and, for just €1 each, we took the lift to the top, when we had first come here it was free, but we were not complaining it is worth every Euro 👍

After a gentle wander back we headed into town, through the nice shaded shop lined street and into one of our favourite Plaza’s in Estepona, the ‘Plaza de Flores’. Our intention was to take our guests to a lovely Tapas restaurant that we often frequent whenever we come to the town, but we had left it too late and all the tables were full and their were queues of people waiting for one to become free. There is another Tapas Restaurant in the opposite corner ‘Avocado Tapas & Vinos’ and we were fortunate to claim the last free table. Now we had used this one on several occasions in the past, and it was very nice, the service had been very friendly and all the tapas were very good. However, it had been closed for many months, whilst it was being re-furbished and it was also now under new Management. We were served our drinks pretty promptly, considering they were very busy, but at the time of ordering our drinks we had also asked for a menu and whilst the drinks were forthcoming the menu’s were not. After the third time of asking, around ten minutes later, we eventually got our menu’s, we each selected what we wanted and then we waited for someone to come and take our order, I told one waiter as he passed that we were ready to order, but he never came back to us to take it, some minutes later I attracted the attention of a female waitress and informed her that we were ready to order, she signalled that she would be with us in one minute, that minute came and went as did the next five minutes, I attracted the male waiter’s attention once again and he nodded in acknowledgement that he had seen me, however, yet again he too failed to materialise to take our food order, although we saw him attend to other tables with people who had only recently sat down after us. We gave it a further five minutes, finished our drinks and as the male waiter passed we all stood up and I asked for the bill. He returned a couple of minutes later with the bill and said ‘Is that all you want ?’. I replied, “No, we wanted to eat but we have asked three times and none of you came to take our order, so we will give our money to someone who may appreciate our custom”. Needless to say I didn’t leave a tip but when we were sat at our next bar I did leave them a much deserving review on ‘Trip Advisor’, I prefer to use the much more effective principle of, ‘Don’t get angry, get even’. I suggested to Shazza and our guests that we could drive back to our own town and go for a very nice lunch at our favourite Indian Restaurant, where, funny old thing, we were warmly greeted and the service and food, as always, was excellent.

The following morning we drove back to Estepona for a walk around the Sunday Market held at the Marina. To be honest, it is not something we tend to do very often these days, having done it numerous times over the last nine years when we had visitor’s, and to me, one ‘tourist tat’ market is basically just like any other. Although Shazza’s Aunt and Uncle have been before, they wanted to go again so, as we had nothing better to do and it was only just down the road, why not. However, we needed to be back to our own Town by 1:30pm as I had pre-booked us a table at our favourite seafront promenade Fish restaurant. We wandered up the long row of stalls, and back down the opposite side, not one of us actually bought anything though. As we were there and the Bullring was not far away, a five minute walk, and they had a Sunday ‘Flea Market’ on, we took a wander across but again our wallets and purses remained firmly in our pockets. I do not believe that Estepona hosts any actual traditional bull fights there anymore, given the poor state of the ring, with the grass and weeds and flaking paint. The growing much younger ‘Animal Welfare’ community have a strong influence these days, and so there are very few venues around the Country that continue to hold these historic and traditional events, although that said, their are still many strong Traditionalists in varying regions around the Country, albeit primarily in the North, where bullfighting is still a popular and regular event on the Calendar, both for locals and tourists alike. Shazza and I have visited several bullrings on our travels, even sleeping outside some of their doors in our Motorhoming days, but as yet we have not attended an actual bullfight, whether we would or not is a question yet to be answered, if or when, the occasion or opportunity were to arise.

The weather was remaining kind for our current guests, another warm and very sunny day, the few days prior to their arrival we had felt a big dip in the daytime temperatures and experienced mainly grey and overcast skies, with some small amounts of drizzle, we had pre-booked this sunshine but were told at the time of ordering that we could only have six consecutive days, so we had reserved these six especially for our visitor’s, we are good like that 😉 We made it to our lunch reservation in plenty of time. Although it is possible, and totally acceptable, to just choose your dish as an individual to eat yourself, Shazza and I usually just do the more traditional thing and order a combination of two, or sometimes three, types of fish, two salad items and a basket of bread to share between us, so this is what we all agreed to do and on this occasion, with their being the four of us and with the wide choice of fish on offer, we could each choose our particular favourite and whether we wanted it Fried or Grilled. We ordered a large plate of large sweet Tomato’s, topped with fresh finely chopped garlic and a large plate of olive oil marinated Red peppers, topped with White Onions, Tuna, Boiled Segmented Eggs and a basket of warm bread, as our accompaniment’s, our guests ordered a bowl of french fries, not something we normally tend to have when we come here on our own but why not, they were available on the menu. I have said this many times before, so forgive me for repeating myself, but I like the Spanish dining experiences, once you have booked your table it is your’s for as long as you want it, their is never any rush to get you to finish, pay the bill and then get you out to prepare the table ready for other customer’s, if other prospective customers arrive, who have not pre-booked, they are told that they can wait if they wish, to see if a table becomes available but with no guarantees on how long that may be. On occasions when we have finished our meal and our drinks and we see a couple waiting, we will often tell them that we are about to pay the bill and leave, which is appreciated by both the awaiting customers and the restaurant staff. The other thing I like, at this particular restaurant, is that the food does not all arrive at once, the salad is not treated as a starter, although it does generally come out to your table first, with the bread, but it is also eaten alongside the fish courses which they cook fresh to order, so each dish comes out as and when it is ready.

Once we had finished our lunch we sauntered back towards the Marina and stopped at one of the bars on the lower level that overlook the boat moorings, where we enjoyed an extra couple of Anti-Covid Vaccines, whilst people watching, as you do 😉

On the Monday, our guests last full day, they decided to just have a more leisurely day, do I need to give you the daily weather briefing 🤔 No I didn’t think so. We parked the car at our usual place by the beach in the former fishing village and walked through the Marina and on into the town. We walked the full length of the promenade then re-traced our steps, stopping at one of the Cafe/Bar’s for refreshments before returning to the Marina, where instead of turning right we turned left and walked to the outer harbour wall, where we got a better view of the larger moored Motor Yachts, we looked back at the hills with their whitewashed residences towering over the Marina, they each had spectacular views out to sea and would be far too expensive for my short pockets. We strolled back and enjoyed a light lunch at one of the Cafe/Bars in the Marina, then returned home for a leisurely afternoon and evening. Shazza had decided to roast a chicken and serve it up with a variety of different salad items she had prepared herself, beetroot and orange salad, Greek salad, Hummus, Sweet Potato and normal oven roasted potato with chunks of freshly baked home made sour dough bread, she always puts on a good spread does my Shazza. That evening was the first time in five days that we had turned on the TV, we introduced them to the excellent six season ‘Netflix’ series “The Good Doctor’, although we had already watched all seasons of it, we still enjoyed watching the first few episodes again, our guests were hooked and said that they would be continuing to watch it when they returned home. We dropped our visitor’s off at Malaga Airport around lunchtime on the Tuesday and then returned home, after a quick stop at Fuengirola ‘Miramar’ retail shopping mall. The following morning we awoke to a grey overcast sky and a strong Easterly wind, our fine weather booking reservation had expired 🤷‍♂️

As usual, during these Spanish Winter months, generally our daily and even weekly activities are dictated to by the ‘Works of Fiction’, as at this time of year the weather often changes without giving any advance notice to the meteorological authorities, which really creates havoc with their already highly contentious ten day weather crystal ball ‘guesses’ forecasts 🤭 But we are now used to these changes in the weather conditions, shifting regularly between periods of dry, warm and sunny days, followed by two or three cloudy, chilly and quite windy one’s, there has been some of the wet stuff to add in to the mix but certainly not in sufficient quantity to make any significant difference to the water levels in any of the ‘Embalces’ (Reservoirs) and so not easing the major drought crisis in the Country as a whole. Up until recently, in this small corner of the Costa del Sol coastline, we had been fortunate not to have to endure the full water restrictions that had been put in place in other areas of the Country, or indeed in some of the other areas in our own Province of Malaga.

However, the day after our visitor’s had returned to the UK, on the 21st February those drought restrictions had now changed for us, for unlike some other areas, until now, we had not suffered from having our domestic water supply cut off for 10 hours each night, however, we have now received official notification that we are now limited to 160 Litres of water each, per day, with immediate effect, and the water pressure will be reduced between midnight and 06:00am. The consequences of exceeding these limitations is a hefty fine and for us, like the majority of properties whose water supplies come from the mains supply, we are on a water meter so our usage can be checked, which I suspect will be conducted at the end of each quarterly billing period. The actual reduction in water pressure, during the early hours, will have no real adverse impact on us personally, but it does on those who live on the higher levels of High Rise apartment blocks who, even under normal circumstances, already suffer from low water pressures, but also those who work in the tourist hospitality sector, as many of the Cafe’s, Bars and Restaurants do not close until after midnight, so for those going home after long shifts to take a shower after working in hot, greasy, smelly kitchens they are the one’s who will suffer the most.

Now although we had not previously been under any mandatory water usage restrictions, we had still been trying to be responsible and doing our bit by not wasting water, or over-using this essential resource. However, we had never before given any real thought to just how many litres of water, as individuals, we each use per day, I knew that taking a shower was more water efficient than filling a bath, but now I have discovered that even one ten minute shower can use between 100-150 Litres of water, then there is toilet flushing, how many times do we flush the toilet ? how many litres of water does it take to refill it ? This is not something that we had previously given any thought to whatsoever, but even washing up the dishes in the sink, or casually rinsing off breakfast or lunchtime pots and pans and crockery, or using the Washing machine or the Dishwasher, or just filling the kettle for our morning, afternoon and evening cuppas, filling the water filter jug for our fresh drinking water, leaving a tap running whilst brushing teeth or when rinsing hands, and then the water we use for our weekly cleaning of bathrooms and the mopping of all the tiled floors, we don’t have carpets and, although many of these things may not all be daily events, it all has to be included and averaged out from within our 320 Litre a day allowance. This new regime of water monitoring has made us realise just how much water we each use without thinking about it, so my OCD has now gone into overdrive and I have put battery operated cooking timer devices by all the water taps (only joking, but who knows, that may actually have to also become a reality 🤔). So now, when you read my rambles and I say that we keep praying for long periods of heavy rain, I am actually being quite serious, because there is a real risk, if we do not get the much needed rainfall to increase the water levels in the Embalces, that we may have to go to purchasing bottled water, and I am sure that there will now be a run on that commodity too and if things really do not improve soon, we may even have to fill containers of water from stand pipes in the street 😲

Now who would have thought that all of our years of living full time in a Motorhome that that lifestyle would become both practical and beneficial to us now living back in a more conventional lifestyle ? Yes, in the days of living in a plastic box on wheels we had been used to constantly having to be careful with our water usage, restricting our washing up to just once, at the end of each day, we were also accustomed to taking marine type showers (wetting down, soaping up, rinsing off) and using the Australasian principle of toilet flushing, which, if you are not familiar with that system, is remembering a simple rhyme, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, but if its brown, flush it down”. We were surprised however to discover that it is in fact more economical to use a dishwasher once a day than it is to fill a kitchen sink or washing up bowl, I am all in favour of that particular water saving measure 😁 So now it is time to be a lot more considerate when enjoying, what until now has just been one of the simple life pleasures and one’s that we have just taken for granted, but now, if we want to continue to have these essential domestic facilities in our home, and not have to resort to filling bottles from stand pipes in the street, it is ‘Time To Pay The Piper’ as the saying goes. When we were looking at all the Pro’s and Con’s of coming to live here permanently, this certainly was not something that was on our radar, so there really is no such thing as a ‘real paradise’.

So, unless the rains come, and soon, and for extended periods, we may also have to make other sacrifices and that is with having any other guests staying with us. We may get away with our Daughter and Son-in-Law from Germany visiting in the middle of July, they have already booked and pre-paid for their flights, but their visit to us is just for 5 days and then, within a couple of weeks of them returning to Germany, we will be travelling to Austria for a week, so we may be able to manage our water usage before they arrive and also whilst they are with us, and then of course we will not be using any whilst we ourselves are away. However, unfortunately we have had to tell our Son and Daughter-in-Law NOT to book any flights from the UK for their intended two week visit to us in August, for with them and our three grandchildren there would be no way we could justify or manage the additional water usage for five extra people. If that scenario happens then we have already decided that, although we had not planned a return visit to the UK this year, we will perhaps do an extended road trip, where we could go and visit them, but also use the trip to do some touring through France, it will be just a case of working out the logistics, something else that we have the benefit of having had to do, often at short notice, in our former nomadic lifestyle when living full time in our Motor Home. It really is true that, throughout life you never stop learning and some of the experiences you encounter can potentially prove beneficial in later life 😉

We had a notification from the Tax Consultant that we met with back in November, part of our Solicitor’s firm, that we needed to submit our Tax Returns by the end of March. So, as we have asked them to do this on our behalf, we arranged another meeting to find out exactly what information they require to submit to the Spanish Tax Authority, and also to confirm that all of our UK Government Pensions are subject to the ‘No Double Taxation Agreement’ between Spain and the UK, meaning that we will continue to pay tax in the UK and not here in Spain. However, apart from those Government Pensions, any other Worldwide Assets (Property, Vehicles, Boats etc.) or Financial Incomes (Interest Payments on Bank Accounts, Shares, Investments, Insurances etc.) are all subject to being taxed in Spain. Now for us, as we do not have any other property or Shares etc, it is actually a relatively simple process, although we do have to declare any interest we have received on our UK Bank Savings Account, which in our case is not a Kings Ransom. We were asked to complete a Form declaring all our Worldwide Assets outside of Spain, you only need to do this once and not annually, unless the value of any assets, existing or newly acquired, and outside of Spain, exceeds €20k of the value already declared. We also needed to provide a spreadsheet of all our Incomes, including our Government Pensions, and Interest on our Savings for the 2023 Financial Year, the Spanish Tax year runs from 1st January to 31st December. As I already keep a detailed record of all this information for my own benefit, I had that Spreadsheet completed and returned to the Tax Consultant within an hour of having this second meeting. They need the Gross Value of all of our Incomes only so as to be able to place us into the correct tax band category, as the total value of our incomes will decide how much tax we pay on our Interest Savings, which could be anything between 24% and 60%. Unlike the fairly straightforward UK Tax Band Categories, in Spain their are numerous tax income levels and so we have asked our tax consultant to calculate wether it would be more financially beneficial to submit individual tax returns or a joint return.

Fortunately for us, we sold our UK property over 10 years ago, so we have no property assets outside of Spain. It would be a little more complicated for those who sold their UK properties in the same financial year they came to live in Spain. Or, if someone continues to own a property asset outside of Spain and also earns a rental income from it. It is certainly something that people need to take into consideration when thinking of applying for a Residency Visa here in Spain, or indeed any other Country. For those who have been following my rambles for a few year’s now, you will probably now understand a little better why it took us so long before we took the decision to actually make the move here, we both spent a lot of time doing our own research and then, cross-checking each other’s understanding of what each of us had read. My advice is, for what it is worth, is that whilst it is good to hear of other’s experiences, you need to check the ‘Official’ guidance and rules, as no one persons circumstances and situation are the same so, what you may read on a forum, or hear from a friend of a friend, may not be accurate or applicable to yourselves. It isn’t actually that complicated, provided you are methodical in your research and take a step-by-step approach, and of course, something really beneficial in this instance is having someone in the partnership who suffers with OCD 😂

Now, I may sometimes be a little cynical about social media forums but, they can also be advantageous, for amongst the gossip, the individual opinions, scaremongering and having to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’, occasionally you come across really useful snippets of information. By way of an example, Shazza had learnt from one of her local Ex-pat community forums that the England Women’s National Football Team (Lionesses) were coming to Spain at the end of February to play two friendly matches against Austria, and then, just a few days later, Italy. Both games were to be played at the same stadium, which just happened to be, not a large City stadium in Malaga, Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona or Sevilla, but a very small all seat stadium with only a 7,000 capacity. Quite fortunately, the location of that stadium was just a short 30 minute drive from us, so Shazza got onto the Spanish stadium ticket office website and booked us tickets for both games, Austria on the 23rd and Italy on the 27th, the total cost for the four Tickets €44 (£37.60). The supporters seating is all raised with good views over the playing areas and she got us seats on the front row overlooking the half way line, I started practicing my lines a week or so before the first game 🎶 Sweet Caroline, So Good, So Good, So Good 🎶

It was a good game and the Lionesses went in 3-0 up at half time, at the end of the game the girls came away 7-2 winners over Austria but I felt a little sorry for the opponents, for every time that England scored a goal, the loudspeaker would rock out with music that all the English supporters sang along with, with plenty of gusto, but when Austria scored their was no musical celebration from the grounds sound system, although we did clap in appreciation of their efforts. At the end of the game the whole England team, including substitutes and coaching staffs, all came over to applaud the England supporters

It was a similar format for the next match against Italy four days later, we were sat in almost the same seats, just a couple further along. No disrespect to the previous opponents but I anticipated that the Italians would provide much stiffer opposition, in the end they didn’t, we came away winning 5-1 👍 As with the previous match, there was musical celebrations from the ground sound system every time the Lionesses scored, but not when the Italians did, which to me wasn’t very sporting as both games were just friendly International matches but I guess there really is a much closer bond between the Spanish and the English 😉 Both of the games were televised on the UK ITV channels, you may have heard me if you were watching, I was the one who was verbally coaching the Lionesses every pass and move, well someone had to as the coach just sat in the dugout having a cuppa, and perhaps I may also have commented on some of the decisions made by the match officials, but if I am totally honest and upon reflection, maybe they didn’t really need to go and have their eyes tested 🤭 but, I do have to say that on one occasion, the referee did listen to my advice to dish out a yellow card to one of our opponents after a rather meaty challenge 😂

At the start of next week they are coming to dis-assemble and remove our old kitchen and appliances, and then commence installing our new one and all new appliances, which is scheduled to take a fortnight to complete, although they have indicated that it shouldn’t take the full two weeks 🤞

So today is Andalusia Day, a Regional holiday, but no fiesta to mark it, well not in our small town at least. It seems odd to be saying this, but unfortunately it is yet another warm and very sunny day, if only we could have at least a weeks worth of the wet stuff, the real bad ass rainfall, but alas there is none forecast in the immediate future 😢 So until my next ramble, I hope you enjoy standing under your shower’s, with unrestricted lashings of water raining down upon your heads, rather than like us having to resort to using ‘wet wipes’, although we are lucky that the beach and sea is only a five minute drive away, if you don’t mind suffering with a bit of hyperthermia in the process of getting a wash and, I hope you appreciate the luxury of being able to flush your toilets as often as you ‘want’ to 🚽😂

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, “La Vida Sigue Siendo Bastante Buena Aqui”(Life is still pretty good here) 😉

It was the 24th January, brilliant sunshine, clear blue sky and just a little over 20 degrees(c) with only the slightest hint of a breeze, so there we were, sat on a sun-drenched balcony, overlooking the pool with its vast array of brown canvas covered sun beds, the sound of the gentle waves of the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea gently lapping up onto the shoreline, which was no more than fifty metres away from where we were sat. However, just being sat there, soaking up the sunshine and the ambience, we were immediately transported back to another time, well over 11 years ago now, which was the very last time that we had taken our last proper fourteen night luxury holiday, in a five star seafront RIU Hotel in Mexico. Now, whilst we may be in yet another RIU hotel, which for those that do not know, is actually a Spanish owned Hotel Chain Group, who have luxury accommodations all over the world, but we were certainly not in Mexico, we were not on a fourteen night holiday and neither had we travelled on a long haul flight to enjoy these luxurious accommodations. We were in fact still in Spain and just a two hour leisurely drive North from our own sun drenched balcony. Shazza had decided that ‘we’ should take a short four day break, which I guess you may say, coming from what is our own normal everyday seaside location home, to another seaside location just up the coastline, is probably a little like taking ‘A Busman’s Holiday’ just to exchange one sea view balcony for another.

So, you may be wondering, what were we doing here, and more importantly, why would a tight Yorkshireman even contemplate actually paying for the privilege of enjoying a hotel balcony with a sea view when we already owned our own ? To answer that I guess that I need to rewind a little first, for this had been one of those ‘Shazza’s Adventures’, totally unplanned and unscheduled and sprung upon me with no prior warning, “Yes At Last, Shazza Is Back” I thought to myself, which I guess, after having seemingly lost her ‘MoJo’ recently, is a good thing, isn’t it …………🤔

Some three weeks earlier………………..

For the both of us, there is actually a massive difference between actually being ill, as opposed to just not feeling quite right. If we were really ill and if, after perhaps suffering for a week, the symptoms did not decline, or perhaps even tended to worsen, then quite possibly we may have considered making an appointment to see a doctor, but, if we are just ‘not feeling quite right’, that would basically just entail us waiting, and continuing to suffer, until whatever it was that was making us feel ‘not quite right’, just disappeared again of it’s own accord. However, I do have to say that it is very unusual for both Shazza and I to suffer with ‘something’ at the same time and, that ‘something’ having identical symptoms, but that is exactly what had happened to us right at the start of the New Year, although nothing to do with our New Year’s Eve festivities I hasten to add, but this ‘not feeling quite right’ had started within a day or so after New Year’s Day. We had actually both been sleeping relatively well at night, getting a good 6-8 hours (Shazza probably nearer 10 🤭) yet, not long after we had woken up and started moving about, just doing normal routine sort of stuff, nothing too strenuous, we both felt extremely fatigued and just wanting to go back to sleep, with that fatigue came a constant nausea and we both had a strange discomfort in our stomachs, although that discomfort is hard to actually describe as it was not a pain, or even an ache, no ‘delly belly’ symptoms or anything like that, just an indescribable sort of discomfort in the pit of our stomachs, although, I have to say that it didn’t stop us eating normally, so we cannot have been that bad 🙄 Neither of us were suffering with any Cold or Flu like symptoms, no coughs and sneezes, watery eyes, sore throats, fever or headaches, we both just did not feel ‘quite right’ and that feeling lasted every single day, morning through night, for a little over two weeks. Of course we considered whether we had perhaps contracted this new strain of ‘Covid’ that is currently circulating, especially with the knowledge that, over the last couple of months, the infection rates for both Influenza and Covid, here in Andalusia, have gone up by 37%. We had also only recently returned from our Christmas trip to Munich, having been confined in a very small, re-circulated air, metal tube, on both the outward and return flights for a period of three hours on each journey, necessitating mixing, at very close quarters, amongst hoards of total strangers on the aircraft and in the Airports, those strangers having themselves travelled from god knows where in the wider world. Then, whilst in Munich we had travelled on numerous busy trains, and of course visited busy city centre venues and hostelries. So, we asked ourselves, could it be possible that we had both contracted this latest new strain of ‘Covid’ as we had got out of the habit of wearing face masks ? It was certainly one possible explanation that we could not confidently rule out, although we were not suffering with shortness of breath or other associated bronchial symptoms 🤷‍♂️

So of course, we did what everybody else probably does, knowing full well of course that we shouldn’t, but you do it anyway don’t you ? Yes we foolishly went on-line and checked out what ‘Dr Google’ had to say about our symptoms and, having done so, of course, and as already anticipated, we were bombarded with a vast number of potentially very serious medical conditions that we could be suffering from, each of them varying in their degree of seriousness, from potentially fatal diseases, requiring us to seek immediate urgent hospital admission, to those just necessitating us having to go to see a doctor, albeit as a matter of some urgency and, of course, each diagnosis we checked on the long list of medical contenders included ‘Covid’, just by way of ensuring that they covered all eventualities and possibilities 🙄 Now although neither of us are medically qualified, we discounted ‘all’ of their diagnosis with deep disdain, although I have to say that secretly, at some point after our on-line consultations, when we each found ourselves alone, we surreptitiously checked that the other’s life insurance policy premiums were duly paid and up to date 😂

We did however still try to continue to take our walks, although not daily, whilst ensuring we kept our distance from other’s just to be on the safe side in case we did have Covid, so not wishing to transmit it to other’s, we had also unearthed our supply of face masks again, for when close proximity with other’s could not be avoided, like when we went to do the weekly shopping. However, and very fortunately, the weather did come to our assistance with needing to restrict and restrain our normal daily outdoor movements. Between ourselves we check four different ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts, on a daily basis, and on the extremely rare occasions when all four actually reflect the same daily forecast then, generally speaking, those predicted forecasts do tend to be somewhere near accurate. Although their was one rebellious ‘Works of Fiction’ forecaster who, whilst generally agreeing with the other’s, in that we were in for a full weeks worth of rain, which was to vary from the lighter more drizzly stuffy, to the much heavier and prolonged downpours with periods of thunder and lightening, which happened to give us something different to entertain us whilst we were confined. However, this particular rebel, being a lot like myself, more of an eternal optimist, actually showed some periods within that otherwise dismal weeks forecast, of there being some brighter and drier periods and, as it turned out, the rebellious one was, on this occasion, proven to be right 👍 But overall we were generally confined to barracks for the majority of that week and so didn’t need to beat ourselves up too much about being extremely lethargic and not taking our more usual daily exercise. We consoled ourselves with the fact that they were having far worse weather conditions in the Northern parts of Spain, with heavy snow, and not just in the higher mountainous areas where it was normal at this time of year, whereas we on the other hand, although experiencing some rain, the temperatures remained between 15-18 degree(c) whilst up North, in the snow, it had fallen as low as -13 degrees(c) 🥶

Eventually, after what seemed an eternity, we awoke one morning to happily discover that we actually felt ‘normal’ again, although actually defining what is ‘normal’ about us can sometimes be a little difficult to articulate, but suffice to say that we were no longer suffering from fatigue, there was no nausea and no stomach discomfort, so whatever ‘bug’ we had contracted had finally outlived its incubation period, and without the need for any medical intervention, so we finally both felt healthy again, to be perfectly honest, I have always trusted that, if left to its own devices, the bodies immune system will, generally speaking, deal with any routine bugs and infections and introducing over the counter medications to relieve symptoms can often interfere with the bodies natural immune system defences.

Now, this couple of weeks of ‘not feeling quite right’ and the subsequent confinement, was not actually the catalyst for Shazza’s sudden mini-adventure, however, as a consequence of it, and in combination with virtually a week’s poor weather conditions, we tended to watch a lot more afternoon TV, in particular a programme called ‘A Place In The Sun, What Happened Next ?’, which entailed the original presenter revisiting the people who had purchased properties in Spain, and elsewhere in Europe, to see basically how they had settled in several years later, to their new lifestyles. Many of them had done some improvements to their new homes, ranging from extensive renovations, or basic internal improvements or perhaps even just a spot of re-decorating but, they had all settled in to their new communities and had started to explore their new environments and venturing a little further afield from their immediate communities.

When we initially purchased, what had been intended as just a temporary sort of ‘Bolt Hole’, some nine year’s previously, we of course re-decorated, and purchased a few new furnishings and then, on each short ninety-day return visit we also spent some of our time exploring our local area, that had been fun and also very interesting. However, since making this our permanent home, over the last seven months, we both feel that we have begun to just slip back into a more ‘conventional’ style of living, enjoying our immediate local area but not really venturing anywhere too far from our immediate home base anymore. Now yes, we do have our ‘Bucket List’ of trips, and we do still have every good intention of doing some of them over the next few year’s, but we both agreed that recently we were beginning to allow ourselves to just get a little too comfortable in our routines and daily lives. Now perhaps we can be forgiven, for that is the ‘problem’ we have, with having everything that we need literally already on our doorstep, a nice comfortable home with nice sea and Mountain View’s, a swimming pool just a two-minute walk from our front door, the sea, several beaches, the marina, the town, beach bars, cafe’s, restaurants, shops, walks etc. etc. etc. although, I do have to just say that describing those things in our lives as a ‘problem’ has brought a rather wry smile to my face 😁 But in truth, we are in danger of losing our appetite for adventure, of not taking opportunities to see new places, many of which are also pretty much right on our doorstep. Yes we have visited quite a few places over the last few years, both along the coastline and inland, but there are still lots of places, relatively local and within only a couple of hours drive, places that we have both said we would like to visit, but it seems that recently our ‘get up and go’ had got up and gone, without us 😲 So watching these ‘Relocation’ programmes on the TV served to give us a gentle kick up the backside and so we both agreed, in principle at least, that we need to re-ignite our wanderlust and sense of adventure.

I had actually mentioned to Shazza, just prior to us not feeling quite right, about going on a ‘day trip’ to ‘Nerja’, which is a pretty tourist town just around the bay from Malaga and only around a two hour drive away, it was one of those places that we had both previously said that we would like to visit, however, on that occasion she had just screwed her nose up in a disinterested sort of way.

So you can probably imagine my surprise when suddenly, the morning after getting over our unknown illness, she announces “Should we go away for a few days ?”, I picked up first on the ‘few days’ part of her sentence and immediately thought she was going to suggest going to ‘Granada’, which to be honest, for me, at this time of year, with temperatures still on the cool side in the Sierra Nevada mountains, it wasn’t a prospect that I would cherish. I gave her one of my non-committal sort of looks, “So where do you fancy going for these few days ?” I asked, whilst at the same time subconsciously starting to think about where I had stored my thermals, but I was pleasantly surprised when she suggested going to ‘Nerja’. Of course, Shazza being Shazza, this had not really been a spur of the moment decision, as when I said that it sounded like a good idea, she instantaneously reeled off the particular Hotel that she wanted to stay at, and a list of places that we would could visit whilst we were there. “When do you want to go ?” I enquired, but then nearly choked on my coffee when she came back instantaneously with “Tommorrow” 😲 There was certainly nothing actually stopping us from going, so as soon as I had said ‘Okay, why not” that was it, she immediately went on-line and booked us in for three nights at the RIU Monica seafront hotel in ‘Nerja’.

We packed our suitcases that evening, it was the first time that we would get to use our individual and recently acquired new ‘Cabin Baggage’ sized cases and, although we had agreed that we were in no real rush to depart the following morning, as we could not Check-in to our hotel room until 3pm, that morning, as soon as we had drunk our morning coffee’s, Shazza seemed to me to be a little too eager to get on the road, but leave we did, a little after 10:00am, when we didn’t actually need to depart until nearer 1pm 🤷‍♂️ However, the reason for such a prompt departure was soon to become abundantly clear.

It has been quite some time since I have experienced the ‘Shazza Adventures’ syndrome, so I had forgotten that she would already have had some sort of hidden itinerary already organised and planned in her mind, one that she would not share with me beforehand and would only divulge when it was too late for me to protest, or to actually have an opinion about 🙄 Part of her itinerary was to visit the ‘Cueva Nerja’ which are a series of caverns stretching for almost 5 kilometres (or 3.1 miles in our previous UK distance measurements), these caverns being one of Spain’s major tourist attractions. The caves have actually existed for centuries, even used as dwellings in Prehistoric times, but they were only rediscovered in more recent times. On the 12th January 1959, five friends followed a flock of bats that had entered through a narrow sinkhole, now known as “La Mina“, which formed one of only two natural entrances to the cave system. The caverns contain the world’s largest ‘stalactite’, measuring a height of 33 metres (a little over 108 feet). However, a third entrance was created in 1960, to allow easy access for tourists. The cave is divided into two main parts, known as Nerja I and Nerja II. Nerja I includes the Show Galleries which are open to the public, Nerja II is only accessible to those doing research projects. So, Shazza’s plan was to go and visit the caves first, prior to checking-in at the hotel, it seemed to be a good plan to me and a good use of our day, with the added bonus that I like exploring caves, which she knows. So, with Shazza (Luis Hamilton) ‘electing’ to do the driving, I was more than happy to settle back and just enjoy the morning sunshine and the stunning scenery, on one side the glittering blue sea and on the other, the mountains. I of course made sure to point out to Shazza, the snow capped ‘Sierra Nevada’ mountains in the distance, just in case she had already started to formulate any other secret ‘Shazza Adventures’ in her mind 🤭

We could have parked in a large car park at the caves for just €2, however, literally outside the entrance there was an area of rough ground that was also being utilised for car parking, for a fee of only €1, well who can turn down a saving of 50% 😂 The actual cost to go into the cave was €33 (€17.50 for Shazza and for geriatrics over 65 years, like myself, €15.50) but believe me, it was well worth the cost. Now just for anyone reading this who has already visited ‘St Michael’s Cave’ on Gibraltar, then imagine that, but on a very much larger scale !! You can also download an App, completely free, onto your phone (Translations in different languages, Top Tip: select the children’s version which provides a much more interesting narrative 👍). There is no restricted headroom inside the cave, so no need to worry about claustrophobia, or having to wear a hard hat and ruining your hairstyle 🤭, the walkways are wide and well illuminated and you are permitted to take photographs, but you cannot use a ‘flash’. Once you have completed the cave tour, which took us between 45-60 minutes, but there is no time restriction and will depend of course on how fast you walk, there is also the usual ‘Tourist Tat’ shop as you exit, and an on-site cafeteria and then a nice garden area to walk around, with shaded picnic tables if you elect to bring your own food. There is also a footbridge, which will take you across to the small coastal town of ‘Maro’, so you could make a full day of it, if you so wished.

Shazza had done her ‘due diligence’ research on the on-site Cafeteria and said that the reviews were not very good in respect of the quality and price of the food or the service from the staff, however, just outside the entrance, right across from where we had parked our car, there was a ‘Taberna’ with a nice inner courtyard, now that had received a lot of very good reviews, so that is where we chose to have our lunch. There were lots of menu choices but we selected to share a plate of ‘Mixta Tapas’, and we ordered two small cold beers, it would have been rude not to 😁 We didn’t expect there to be too much, portion wise, as far as quantity of Tapas, but boy were we surprised when it was delivered to the table, there was a selection of 7 different choice Tapas and we were glad that we had not ordered one each, as there was more than enough for the both of us, the total bill was also very nice at only €15 😁

We had an enjoyable time at the caves and then, after our lunch stop, we made our way into Nerja and found our hotel, just a short 15 minute drive away from the Caves. There was car parking available at the hotel, which we could have pre-booked at €23 per day 😲 However, once again, as part of Shazza’s due diligence research, she had located a public car park just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel on the opposite side of the road, for just €1 per day, it was a no brainer.

We would not be having a big layout on food costs over the next 3-4 days either, as our hotel booking came with ‘Half Board’ included in the price, Desayuno y Cena (Breakfast and Dinner). Having stayed in numerous RIU hotels around the world over the years, we knew that we would be spoilt for choice in the Buffet Style restaurant and that the quality would be top notch, we were not to be disappointed. When we checked-in, the very friendly receptionist informed us that the hotel was fully booked and therefore the ‘Standard Double Room’ with a balcony and sea view, that we had pre-booked twenty-four hours earlier, was not available, so we had been upgraded to a ‘Double De-Luxe’, at no additional cost. As we were doing the check-in procedure another member of staff came over and presented us each with a glass of Champagne, a welcome drink, although I suspect that it was probably ‘Cava’, but it was a very appreciative welcoming touch and so we both enjoyed our additional unexpected Anti-Covid Medications 👍

When we entered our ‘upgraded’ room all the curtains were closed and so we set about opening them to let the beautiful sunshine in, but my heart sunk, for whilst the room was very large with two massive beds and a separate side table and chairs, with the usual large screen TV, mini bar, tea and coffee making facilities etc, but when I pulled back the curtains, although there was a large and wide floor to ceiling window, it only had a side view of the swimming pool and the sea, and no balcony, to say that I was disappointed would be a massive understatement 😔

Shazza went down a hallway in our room to where the large bathroom facilities were located, shortly afterwards she called for me to go and have a look. To be honest, a bathroom is a bathroom, as far as I was concerned 🤷‍♂️ so as long as it had the usual facilities I didn’t really care that much. However as I walked down the hallway towards her, she opened up another set of curtains to reveal a double patio door leading on to a very generous balcony, with a table and two chairs and …… a front facing pool and sea view !! (See Photo at top of blog page) my face was almost not wide enough to fit the smile that now appeared right across it 🤗

We spent the rest of the afternoon ‘at leisure’, which as you may imagine, entailed a great deal of time sat on the sun soaked balcony 😎 and perhaps a little bit of time in ‘Personal Contemplation’, which as you know, is always best done with one’s eyes closed 😉 Later we had a bit of an exploration outside our room to find out where the other facilities were located, which included a small, but adequate, indoor heated pool, a small but well equipped gymnasium (but do not expect a practical review of any of the equipment 😂), Buffet Restaurant with a large outside terrace, separate internal Bar area, lots of internal seating areas, an outside snack bar and seating area, and of course the outside pool and sun lounging area, with an external security gate that gave entry directly onto the seafront promenade. This particular RIU hotel had only been graded as a Four Star, probably because it did not have individual cooking stations in the buffet restaurant or a separate ‘A La Carte’ restaurant as its sister hotels have in some of the long haul destinations, but even so, in my book at least, it would have been well worth the full Five Stars as it was immaculately clean, all over the hotel and not just our room, without exception all of the staff were so very friendly, the food was absolutely superb and the multitude of culinary choices enabled everyone, irrespective of their dietary needs, to find something to suit their palate, and it was plentiful 👍

We both enjoyed a wonderful night’s sleep, each having the equivalent of a double bed to ourselves, so there was no need for me to have to pinch back any covers from you know who 😉 As is usual these days, I awoke quite early, Shazza was still in dreamland, so I made myself a mug of hot coffee and sat on the balcony watching the sun rise, whilst listening to the gentle waves lapping up on to the shoreline. There were several joggers and walkers out and about on the promenade, of course I would have joined them, but I had only just made a nice hot cuppa and I had also left my tight fitting, almost obscene, Lycra at home (Not a thought to ponder on !!), I suppose I could have always just worn my ‘budgie smugglers’, perhaps tomorrow morning eh !! Once Shazza had awoken I made her a cuppa, some morning routines never change even on a mini-break holiday 😁 We showered and then enjoyed a hearty breakfast, I succumbed and had two bacon sandwiches, well it would have been rude not to seeing as they had gone to the trouble of cooking it just as I like it 😉 Full Continental style and full English breakfasts were also available, Shazza stuck to her healthy cereal and fruit. Today was going to be spent exploring Nerja itself, which was only a short distance walk away.

We knew that Nerja was a very popular ‘All Year Round’ Tourist destination, this was confirmed by the vast amount of ‘Tourist Tat’ shops we passed in almost every alleyway that we wandered along, with of course numerous Cafe/Bars and Restaurants, and lots of Hotels and Holiday Rental properties, but it was pleasant enough and their were plenty of people out and about, which added to the holiday ambience.

After a lot of wearing out more of the rubber soles on our flip-flops we found a quiet plaza with a nice Cafe, so of course it would have been rude of us not to. Once suitably refreshed the next port of call, conveniently only a couple of minutes walk away, was the museum that showed how the Region and the town had evolved since prehistoric times. We always like to go and take a look at such places, although we never spend too much time in them, something to do with us both being ‘History Heathens’, although sometimes we do learn some little snippets of information that, at the time is quite interesting to read, or see, but we generally quite conveniently tend to forget it again very shortly afterwards 🤷‍♂️ To be absolutely truthful, the best Museum we have ever visited was the ‘Museum of Liverpool’, in the UK, an account of which appeared in one of my previous rambles, when we were staying at Southport in the van and went to the City on the train for a day trip, unlike this one which cost us €3 each entrance fee, which was in itself extremely reasonable, but in comparison, the entrance fee to the one in Liverpool was, quite remarkably, ‘Free’. The Nerja museum looked pretty new, so perhaps they are still gathering exhibition pieces and information to put on display, but it passed around thirty minutes and at least it was much cooler inside 🥵

Sightseeing completed we decided to try and find somewhere to eat lunch, I wouldn’t normally have eaten breakfast and then had a lunch, but all this walking had given me an appetite, but we were not going to be mugged in broad daylight at the ‘Tourist’ eateries, so we spent some time wandering in and out of alleyways looking for a more suitable venue. As it happened we found ourselves about half way back to the hotel at a nice pavement side Cafe/Restaurant just off the promenade, and after perusing the menu we took a seat, ordered a couple of Anti-Covid Vaccines and awaited the delivery of our healthy lunch.

That was it for our second day’s activities, we spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening ‘At Leisure’ as they say, a spot of more people watching but this time from our room balcony, which can often provide some amusement in itself, especially when looking at the swimwear styles of some folk, or should I say, the lack of it 😲 We agreed that whilst some may wish not to return home with any ‘White Bits’, us ‘prudes’ agreed that, perhaps ‘G-Strings’ should probably be adorned by the much more youthful and appropriately sized individuals, although I guess I should really take my hat off to them, if only for the purpose of providing them with something to assist in covering certain ‘full figured’ individuals body parts 🤭

Our final full day was to involve another short fifteen minute drive in the car, to the inland and slightly more elevated hillside town of ‘Frigiliana’. Now this was another one of those places that we had often seen on that programme that I have mentioned earlier in this ramble, ‘A Place In The Sun’. On the programme it had looked very pretty, as a lot of Spanish whitewashed Towns and Villages of course do, and, as it was on the doorstep so to speak, it would be an opportunity to see what it actually looked like ‘In the flesh’. The Town (or Village 🤷‍♂️) is divided into two parts, each having a selection of retail establishments to service the local community, however, the main part was the more ‘Touristy’ bit, you know, with all the usual ‘Tourist Tat’ shops, as well as the vast array of Cafe/Bars and Restaurants. Shazza had of course done her due diligence and had identified the location of the main car park, which was quite a modern looking underground multi-storey car park, at extremely economical hourly rates, we were the only vehicle in it when we arrived at 10:00am 🤔 We had not thought this trip out too well, it was a hillside Town (or Village) with very ‘narrow’ cobbled and winding streets on varying levels, perhaps flip-flops were not the best choice of footwear on this occasion, and of course, being surrounded by varying height mountainous terrains, the streets that had not yet been touched by the warming sunshine made it a little chilly, if only we had brought our warmer fleeces, this is what happens when you become accustomed to the much warmer living down at sea-level 🙄

We decided to just wander, up and down the various narrow streets, looking for somewhere to grab a warming coffee, but everywhere was shut, apart from a couple of ‘Panaderias’ (Bakery), a small mini-market and a small car garage, even the ‘Tourist Tat’ establishments were closed along with the all the Cafe/Bars and Restaurants, surely some of the locals must have occasionally gone out for a morning coffee, that’s where they usually meet with other locals to catch up with all the local gossip. We knew that some retail businesses, and hostelries, would close down at this time of year to have their vacations, and some notices on locked entrance doors indicated that this was the case, but surely not all of them at the same time. We continued to just wander, the streets were nicely decorated with colourful plants in brightly painted plant pots, their were small inner courtyards with half a dozen small houses packed in like sardines around them, it was a pretty place, just totally devoid of almost any other human presence 😲 We were glad that when we were property hunting that we had not come here in the height of Summer, when it would have been fully open for business and had that charm feeling, to then discover that for the rest of the year we would have little to do, unless we drove down to the sea, even the main facilities like Supermarkets, Banks, Post Office etc. were located down in Nerja.

Our calf muscles had had enough, as had we, mainly because we were constantly trying to stop our flip-flops from rolling away down the street without us, so we decided that whilst this charming hillside Town (or Village) would probably have been much nicer had we have chosen to visit in the Summer ‘Tourist Season’, for us, well at least when we next see it featured on ‘A Place In The Sun’ we will know the reality of living all year round here. We made our way back to the car park where we did finally discover a Cafe that was open, with chairs and tables in the sunshine, so as we had not eaten breakfast in the hotel that morning, as we had decided that we would get here first and then enjoy ‘A Brunch In The Sun’, we settled for a ‘Cafe con Leche Y Tostado’, which I have to say was very nice.

It was a little after midday by the time we returned to the hotel and, after a short coffee break on our balcony, we decided to take a final walk along the seafront promenade, but this time in the opposite direction to the Town, when we returned we stopped at the Hotel poolside snack bar, ordered a couple of small cold beers, Shazza had a bowl of ‘Parmesan’ coated ‘Patata Fritas’ (Chips) and I settled for a slice of ‘Tortilla’ (Spanish Omelette), we sat in the sunshine and both agreed that it had been a very nice few days break and that we should do this a lot more often, even taking much longer breaks and travelling much further afield, there are still a lot of wonderful places to see throughout Spain. However, in the next few weeks we had other commitments, Shazza’s Aunt and Uncle, who have made a point of regularly visiting us here in Spain over the last 9 years, albeit often at short notice, were arriving on 15th February and then two weeks after they leave, we would be having our much awaited new kitchen installed. My daughter and Son-in-Law have now booked their visit to us in July, arriving the day after her Birthday, our Son, Daughter-in-Law and three Grandchildren have asked if they can come out again this Summer, although no dates have yet been confirmed, and of course we have our trip to Austria at the beginning of August. So with our first Annual Spanish Tax Returns to be submitted in April, our first car service to be done here in Spain in May (already pre-booked) and, the commencement of our Residency renewals to start sorting out, at the beginning of April, so we have another busy start to the first half of this year. We, or should I say, Shazza, will have to pick any future ‘Adventures’ in between those known commitments, as for me, well I have the very important task of ensuring that the money is in the bank and readily available, for I may well get very little advance notice of such adventures beforehand 😂

until my next ramble………….

Hasta Luego mi Amigo’s, La Vida Es Buena 👍

It is an odd sort of feeling, one day we feel as if we have lived here for ages and settled in to normal daily life, but then there are other days when we still feel as if we have to pinch ourselves. It was a pleasant sunny Sunday morning, quite warm, we had gone out for our usual daily walk into our local town, which was relatively busy for a Sunday, with parents sat around the play park chewing the fat with other parents, whilst their charges burnt off excess energy on the various pieces of play equipment, the more elderly folk sat on benches just enjoying warming their arthritic bones in the warming rays of the sun, and the usual array of dog walkers, and joggers, and cyclists, just strutting or pedalling their stuff, all seemingly without a care in the world, it felt nice to be out and about amongst them.

Our usual Spanish Cafe was still closed for its festive break, but we had another that we also regularly use, just by way of a change and one that had taken full financial advantage by remaining open, whilst its competitors were taking their short festive break. It was a good decision by them as almost all of the outside tables were occupied, some enjoying a late breakfast, others with ‘Tapas’ and enjoying a beer or even a glass of wine, although it was still far too early for me to partake of that kind of Anti-Covid Vaccine, or was it, surely their is no bad time to take a precautionary dose of health medication 🤔 We were fortunate that one table was just being vacated as we approached and, as a bonus, it was front row with a good beach and sea-view and so we were able to sit with our sunglasses on, not just to protect our eyes from the glare but also to conceal our eyes from our people watching targets 😂 The lady owner was busy serving the hoards, but when she glanced over and saw us sit down she called across “Hola, Y Feliz Ano Nuevo, Dos Cafe con Leche ?” (Hello and Happy New year, two coffee’s ?), I responded with “Si Gracias, Y la misma para ti” (Yes thank you and the same to you), there is a nice feel good factor in knowing that you are treated as regular customer’s, although I have to say that I noted a few frowned expressions coming from some of the people on the tables that had arrived before us, and who were obviously still waiting to be served. We sat, trying to listen in to some of the conversations, there was too much of a mix though, Spanish, English, Irish, German and some with a Scandinavian sort of twang to them, although I didn’t know enough about the different languages to discern which part of Scandinavia they were from. There was just too much jibber jabbering taking place to really tune in to any one specific conversation, however, the ambience was good. Whilst we sat enjoying our coffee there were times when Shazza and I would just chatter amongst ourselves, nothing specific just small talk, as you do, and then there were periods of silence between us as we each just enjoyed the moment, people watching, as you do, it would have been rude not to when people had gone to all the effort of promenading up and down in front of us 😁 This was also another one of those ‘pinch me’ moments, how many times over the past few years had we sat here, or in a similar position on this seafront promenade, in the sunshine, looking out at the sea and the mountains and said to each other, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually lived here” and then felt sad at the thought of having to return to the UK. We both wondered how long we would continue to keep having these ‘Pinch Me Moments’, personally speaking, I hope we never stop having them, for every time that we do, it just makes us feel so contented with our lives, and that feeling is priceless.

Usually on a weekend we would eat lunch out somewhere on both days, either somewhere in town along the seafront, or in the Marina, or as we had done the previous evening, chose to eat dinner at our local Indian Restaurant. We had forfeited eating out the previous weekend after returning from our recent, and rather over indulgent, week long trip to Munich, as we were trying to get back on the straight and narrow, for we had both put on a few extra kilo’s, although it had not been as bad as it could have been, at least the bathroom scales hadn’t shouted, “Get off you fat t***s” when we got on them upon our return. But we had also decided that for a change, the following day, we would go in to Estepona, as I had discovered, on Facebook, a new 100% ‘Plant Based’ restaurant and so thought that we would give it a go. When we usually go out to eat, Shazza has to make do with what the menu’s have to offer, to suit her more disciplined ‘Plant Based’ dietary requirements, whereas I do not have the same restricted options as I am more of a ‘Flexitarian’. We both tend to eat completely Plant Based meals when we are at home, during weekdays, and so I use the eating out at weekends as a bit of a treat, if I want to satisfy my more carnivorous tastebuds, although to be completely honest, even then it is, more often than not, either Fish or Chicken, rather than what is more commonly referred to as ‘red meat’. We have been on this ‘Plant Based’ diet now for four years would you believe, and we still smile when we think back to the time when we first started, then it was more of a Shazza spontaneous decision and it was only supposed to be for one month, to participate in the annual ‘Veganuary’ event 🤷‍♂️ Strange really, but it only took about 2-3 weeks for our tastebuds to get used to the new ‘Plant Based’ regime and for our digestive systems to adapt to not eating meat, although I can certainly understand why some people never actually get to that stage, or beyond, as lots of vegetables, legumes (beans) and fruit = lots of 💨💨💨 So when people tell me that I am just full of hot air, they are actually correct 🤭

I awoke on the Monday morning and after what had been a very nice warm weekend it now felt unusually cold, I sat enjoying my morning coffee on the balcony, the sun was only just rising so it was still rather dusky with not yet quite enough daylight for the street lamps to turn themselves off. The thermometer though was registering the morning temperature as only being 5 degrees(c) 🥶 which, in itself, is unusually low for this part of the Costa del Sol. I remember thinking how nice it will be to be able to get back to the warmer mornings when I can sit enjoying my morning coffee wearing only my shorts again, instead of my PJ’s, slippers and wrapped in my thick dressing gown. However, once the sun had awoken properly, and rubbed the sleep from its eyes, the temperatures would start to rise and soon reach the more usual daily afternoon winter temperature of around 16 degrees(c), but the chill factor in the light breeze would reduce that to nearer 14 degrees(c), so for our trip into Estepona we would need to dress appropriately.

I checked the morning and weekly ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts for Spain and could see that the Sierra Nevada area, around 3 hours further north from us, and the Pyrenees, a good 10 hours even further North, were both enjoying some of the usual seasonal snow, which was a good thing economically for Spain as it attracts the winter skiers ⛷️ and snow boarders 🏂 I also routinely check the temperatures in both the UK and in Munich, where we discovered that we had timed our visit to perfection as they were now experiencing very low minus temperatures during both the daytime and at nights 🥶

We parked in our usual place in Estepona, just a little outside the main town at the North end of the promenade, in a car park opposite the large ‘Carrefour’ supermarket. Unusually, for this particular parking area, their were several free parking bays, we parked near the top end as upon our return we needed to pop into the supermarket to purchase a new ironing board as Shazza had broken the old one, applying too much weight on the iron trying to get sharp creases into her knickers I suspect 😂

It was a lovely sunny morning and so clear that both Gibraltar and Africa were clearly visible from the promenade. I don’t know why, but looking out across the sea to another continent always makes me feel pretty happy and puts a bit of a spring in my step, strange but true. We were too early for lunch so we just strolled along the promenade, it was fairly busy with other’s just doing much the same as us, meandering rather than power walking, we stopped at one of the many seafront Cafes, sat outside in the sunshine with our coffee’s, listening to a busker with his guitar, me attempting to guess the tunes he was playing, it wasn’t loud banging pop music tunes, just gentle rhythmic strumming, he was very good and I could have sat there listening for much longer. Shazza and I can often be thinking the same things, without actually knowing it at the time, the other evening I was sat watching the TV when suddenly, for no apparent reason, in my mind I wondered whether we had any spare Oat milk left, as I had noticed that particular morning when I had made the coffees that the carton in the fridge was getting low, but I hadn’t bothered checking. Without me say anything about it, quite literally within seconds of me having that thought, she got up off the sofa and made her way towards the kitchen, “Where are you going” I asked, “Just to check to see if we have any more cartons of Milk” she responded 😲 Now, here we were at the Cafe in Estepona, in a moment of quiet contemplation, just enjoying the buskers tunes, I started to wonder where we would have been in the van in the UK, if we had not chosen to take up residency here, for we would by now have already departed Spain, our ninety day restricted travel period having been used up and not yet quite ready to be permitted to return. As I sat thinking about this, Shazza pipes up with “Isn’t it nice to be sat here in the sunshine, instead of parked up in the van somewhere in the cold, in the UK, waiting to catch a ferry back for our next ninety days” 😲 Cue spooky sci-fi music………👽

We finished our coffee’s and, as we left the Cafe to continue our stroll along the promenade, I went across to the busker and placed some loose change into his open guitar case, he nodded and smiled in appreciation. Right at that very moment I thought to myself, was it about time to get my own Spanish Guitar back out of its case and try to re-learn playing it, perhaps I may get to a level where I could busk enough to pay for our lunches, although in reality, if we waited for me to get to that level, we would both probably starve to death 😂 But quite literally, just a few moments later, Shazza says, “You should start to learn to play your guitar again, you could come and do some busking, earn some money, then take me to lunch” 😲 She laughed sarcastically, a cold shudder ran down my spine……………..

We walked almost the full length of the promenade before turning and re-tracing our steps, we veered off towards the town in the direction of where the ‘Plant Based’ restaurant was located. We were the only customer’s, but was that because it was still a little early ? Was it because the food was not that good ? Or was it because it was 100% Plant Based food with no other ‘more normal’ menu options available ? However, this was a delightful change for Shazza as the menu comprised of several different ‘Starters’, ‘Mains’ and ‘Desserts’ options and she was truly spoilt for choice, it wasn’t a problem for me either, I can and will eat almost anything, Plant Based or otherwise. To be completely honest, it was a little expensive for what it was, both with the establishment itself, which was more a Cafe than a restaurant, seating was only outside, but it was not in the sunshine so it was a little chilly on that particular day, although in the warmer weather it would have been very nice. We both agreed that we didn’t want a full three-course afternoon lunch, just ‘Mains’ and, although it was nothing special, as we both settled for Burger and Chips, the food was actually very tasty and so we agreed that we would be open to returning at some point to sample some of the other menu options, although Shazza has already made many of them herself at home, but in order to give her a break from cooking, and to enjoy a meal out, this certainly provided her with decent ‘Plant Based’ options, rather than the more usual Salads with Goat Cheese. We were both quite full from our lunch so we walked back to the Supermarket, purchased a new ironing board and then went home and enjoyed an afternoon at leisure sat on the balcony, the afternoon sun pouring in through the windows, it had been a nice morning and early afternoon, just being out somewhere different for our more usual walk.

Things were back to normal now that the festive season was at its official end, the steady flow of cars passed on the street below, as people returned to their normal daily habits, going to work and doing the school runs and it also provided me with something else to focus on as a break from reading the morning ‘Doom & Gloom’ in the various International media reports, which can get rather depressing, and yes those ‘Doom and Gloom’ reports do also include some of the less attractive sides to Life in Spain. As we do not live in a Major heavily populated Town or City here in Spain and, due to our fortunate position of being retired, in good health, with a ‘reasonable’ amount of financial security and no family to support, we are somewhat shielded from the majority of the more negative aspects of everyday life. However, as we now begin to spend more and more time listening to the Spanish National News channels and reading the National newspapers, it is fair to say that Spain has very similar issues to almost everywhere else in Europe, Politically, Economically, and with Religious differences, Racism, Crime, Illegal Immigration and Environmental issues, fortunately though, it does have the advantage, in certain areas of the country, of having a very nice climate, most of the year at least.

As far as the climate goes, the short cold snap we have recently experienced down here on the Costa del Sol, has also been much the same in other areas of Europe too, even though some areas in Northern Europe are generally colder at this time of year, those too have been experiencing much colder than normal patterns of weather, it would be easy to jump on the band wagon and blame it all on ‘Climate Change’, a currently very populist theme at the moment, but, reading some news articles and watching a lot of nature and environmental documentaries, it would also appear that for ‘decades’ their have always been freak periods of weather, both with hot and cold temperatures and also with lots of unnatural environmental phenomena that have occurred. I am not saying that Climate Change is not a potentially very serious issue, but my more cynical side also thinks that, and purely from my own un-professional and unacademic lay man’s perspective, the climate change debate could also perhaps be being used to conveniently suit arguments by other’s, for more ulterior motives or purposes, both Politically and Corporately 🤷‍♂️ The truth, whatever that may be, is out there somewhere (no spooky sci-fi music required this time though thank you) and perhaps we will only come to realise what that truth is, when it eventually comes and slaps us in the face, in the meantime, we all have our lives to be getting on with 😉 I will continue to live what life I have left by following my own simple code, which is to respect other’s, no matter what colour of skin they have, what language they speak or their religious belief, to keep as fit and healthy as I possibly can and finally, to not worry about things that I have no power to control or influence, if we all followed these simple, yet basic, principles then I am certain that the world in which we live would be a much better place than it is right now, here endeth my New Year sermon 🤭

One thing that has certainly been beyond my control or influence is the weather, more particularly the rain, which we have desperately needed here in Southern Spain for very many months. Believe me when I tell you that I have attempted to influence it, by singing in the Shower, very very loudly, which, to be honest, at one point I really thought had worked, when I heard what I thought were several loud bangs of thunder, but that turned out to only be the neighbours banging on the walls instructing me to shut up, in a very disrespectful manner I hasten to add 😲 Perhaps they should have suggested an alternative song they would have preferred me to sing 😁 But perhaps now they will encourage me to sing some more, as we have recently had a couple of days of Thunder, Lightning and ‘torrential downpours’ and, there is a couple of more days where the ‘Works of Fiction’ have forecasted even more, but ‘Would It Be Enough ?’, to fill the ‘Embalces’ (reservoirs) and hopefully prevent us from having to collect our drinking water from stand pipes in the street, but much more importantly, enable us to use our swimming pool again, when the weather permits that is.

I have managed to convince Shazza that we should in fact employ the services of a ‘professional’ plumber to deal with the couple of our currently awaiting DIY tasks, for they would require the mains water to be turned off and, should I not rectify the issues satisfactorily, that could entail us being without water until such time as we could then get a professional out to repair ‘my’ repair 🤭 Although I have been ‘instructed’ to watch closely, and take note, of how the repair is conducted by the professional, in case needed for the future, I already told her that there was no need as I already knew how to scratch my head, whilst at the same time sucking my teeth and wearing an expensive looking frown, as you may guess, she wasn’t impressed. But at least now my tools will remain in an ‘as new’ and ‘pristine’ condition until the next time ‘she’ suggests a DIY task needs undertaking. The plumber is coming out within the next couple of days 😉 We have now also just paid the second instalment for our soon to be new kitchen installation, this is the largest of the four instalments and with it they can now go ahead and order the necessary cupboards, drawers, work surfaces and all the necessary appliances as well as obtaining the necessary licences from our local council. These licences are just one of those many quirks with doing any works on property here in Spain that you need to be aware of, as I have probably already mentioned in a previous ramble, but at least that is another thing that is progressing. I have also already managed to pre-book my car in for its annual service, although that is not due until May, but it needs to be taken to the main KIA dealer in Malaga, which is always very busy, so leaving the pre-booking until nearer the time could have meant not getting the required date that I want, in order to fit in with our other plans, have I mentioned that Shazza believes that I suffer with OCD 😂

So yes, I know, it was less than a week ago when I stated that these rambles would probably become less frequent, what can I say, I lied 🤷‍♂️

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, La Vida Es Buena