A second helping of Spinach

After I’d written my last blog, there was a great outpouring of anguish. Crying, wailing, stamping of feet and just a general malaise that my words of wisdom from our time in Spain were to end. But I just said to José, “come on now, you’re a grown man in your late forties and a teacher at that. Pull yourself together and get on with your lesson” so he dried his eyes and did just that. 

It has been an interesting time in the interim, but no-one wants to hear about life in Bexhill. It doesn’t have the same element of je ne sais quoi about it, although in Bexhill where the average age is 92, there is a lot of je-ne-sais-ing going on!

Fast forward to 2023 and here we are again in Spain, looking for a property to buy. I am practising my e-Spinach once more, pronounced as ‘eh?’ not eeeeee like in Yorkshire, where “Eeee spinach” means, ‘what the hell have you served me for me dinner and where’s me chips?’ We’ve only been here a week but the madness has continued like we were never away and so it felt only fair to you, my loyal readers, to offer you a little more insight into the workings of the Spanish way of life.

The customer service remains as wonderful as ever. We are staying with friends but as we were due to arrive into Malaga so late, we arranged to stay overnight at the airport hotel. In actual fact our flight was nearly 3 hours late, maddeningly just under the time limit for when we would have claimed enough compensation to fly BA to New York, First Class. On checking in at the hotel, the son of the family checking in before us asked the tubby, middle-aged man if there was any food available. Without looking up, the guy, who made it obvious he rather have been having a colonoscopy, just said “there’s a vending machine” and gesticulated with his whitlows. I glanced at it. There was a ham and cheese sandwich in there, pleading to be set free, looking for all the world like it had been prepared for Franco when he popped over to Malaga for a paddle to take his mind off the Civil War. 

Thankfully we didn’t need food. We had eaten our combined body weight in sandwiches, crisps, mini quiches and bulgur wheat salad in the BA lounge. Where’s a hotpot when you need one? Still, it was free at the point of scoffing, so who cares? We didn’t…..not after the three large G&T’s we poured ourselves, although there was something off with that gin as it made me feel a little wobbly for a while afterwards.

And so onto the house-hunting. We set up a few visits - and when I say ‘we’ I mean José, because if I’d done the talking, we could have ended up inadvertently arranging to go for a cervical smear. The very first visit was set up for just after 10am and we arrived at the inmobiliaria 5 minutes early (yes, your lessons continue - that’s ‘estate agent’ in Spanish). The guy chatted to us, then chatted on the phone, then chatted to us some more and then eventually told us that we were going to view the house with his colleague. Cue said colleague, a young lady who came in late, looking for all the world like she’d been on the sangrias all night and wearing what can only be described as a pelmet on her legs. I am not denigrating this young lady for what she was wearing - people can wear what they like - but this small piece of cloth barely covered her surname.  There was one moment when she arrived in the office that was straight out of a ‘Carry On’ film, where she bent over her desk to get the air con remote that had fallen. All it needed was the sound effect of a Swannee Whistle and Sid James leching.

https://youtu.be/NvyAqL3H4Js

Sexism aside, we set off with this young lady to our first house which was off the beaten track, as so many are. We drove down this tiny, twisty-turny road and found our way blocked by a car. It appeared that the car had stopped working and given the fact that it was on a slight incline, could have had the handbrake taken off and rolled backwards a little so we could pass. But this is Spain. The lady waved and gave that shrug that says ‘I know I’m in your way but I don’t give a toss because a man is fixing this and I am beholden to him’ So much for equality! We sat there for 10 minutes during which time, the said man looked at the engine, scratched his armpit, touched a couple of things under the bonnet (which would be my limit!) then eventually brought his car up and jump started her car.

Not once did he acknowledge we were there and needed to get past. ‘Lady’ then proceeded to reverse her car back onto her drive, whilst ‘man’ stood watching, then slowly….very slowly….carefully folded up the jump leads and put them back into his car before reversing, very dramatically I might add, out of the way. 

We went past, only to see that the house we were to view was right behind this one. We could have left our car where it was and walked! The estate agent who was in the car with us never mentioned this, but was probably still sleeping off the sangria and wondering why she hadn’t put a maxi skirt. When we got out, we were greeted by a red faced little Englishman who was virtually jumping up and down like a demented hobbit and demanded to know where we’d been. He told us he’d been waiting for ages for us and had another visit at 11am, so we couldn’t look at the house. In the time he was ranting at pelmet skirt, we could have been round the house twice. José took charge and firmly told this man that we were there now and we would take 5 minutes to look round the house so could he start showing us. I don’t know who was more shocked, me or the little man but he showed us round, too scared to deny my hubby the viewing.

We could see from the outset that the house was not for us. It was far too small and the view from one window was of the whitewashed walls of the neighbour. That was infinitely better than the view from another window, which was a massive pile of rubbish the neighbour had dumped on their (the neighbour’s) land, but which our potential new house looked directly onto. And then we went to the upstairs patio, where this little wrinkly old man told us with an exaggerated Peter Butterworth ‘Carry On’ style wink that it was “very private and good for an all over tan…if you know what I mean?” I knew what he meant and I didn’t want to think of said little old man out there in the buff, more so when I saw his sallow, diddly little wife sitting downstairs flicking through a Margaret Drabble. Never was there more need for mental floss than at that moment!!

We made our excuses and left him to rush off to his 11am appointment, whilst we went to the car park of a local bar where we met the other estate agent. We transferred to his clapped out old ‘wanker’ and drove out to the next property.

For those of you not in the know, you will need to read an earlier blog, however the word Pajero in Spanish literally translates as ‘wanker’. Nissan chose to ignore this and named the car thus. 

Once at the next property, it was beautiful. An old cortijo (Country House) with loads of rooms, loads of potential and at a very good price. There was a reason for that. It adjoined an olive mill. Noisy, smelly and not conducive to a life in the country, we left and moved onto the third place.

When we arrived there, the estate agent had no idea if he was in the right place, but we sat outside the gate and waited for someone to come. Thankfully we were in the right place or we could have still been sitting there. The place was ma-hoo-sive but was currently being used as a country retreat for recovering drug addicts. There were two guys sitting watching TV looking for all the world like they wanted to know if we had any smack on us; that sad look of desperation and resigned determination etched in their faces. That was irrelevant to the woman whose house it was, who gleefully told us that these people would be chucked out if the place was sold and so not to worry about that. It was a nice place, but was not quite what we were looking for. 

We went back to Iznajar in the wanker, said our goodbyes and went for breakfast. We had imagined that the two houses we had booked to see would be completed in an hour. Three hours later, we were beginning to flag from lack of nutrition so headed for some much needed provender before doing the same again the next day………(to be continued)

Episode 30: The serious one

So, after the news of the last blog, I thought I would take a little time to explain the situation we're in so that you can all see what's been happening in our little world. I know I don't have to explain myself to you lot, but it's sort of cathartic, so I'm going to unburden myself and if you don't want to read something a little more serious than usual, bugger off!!

Since we arrived on these shores in July last year, all we've heard from people here in Spain at every available moment is "estamos en crisis" (we are in crisis). It's like a mantra chanted by anyone and everyone and when I say that, I do mean it. I'm not exaggerating........am I lovely Belinda?

"estamos en crisis", apparently. Just some of the many signs around

The interesting juxtaposition with the UK is that each time we've come back, apart from David Cameron being more of a moron and Nick Clegg dancing to any tune just to stay in Government, nothing has really changed that much to the casual observer. Of course things have changed; people are cutting back and there is a sense of how awful it all is, but like true Brits, we just get on with it and butter some more scones. Here in Spain they like a drama, although sadly not on the TV where the daily diet of people shouting at one another on TV shows just gets exponentially worse as the recession deepens.

The British way of coping

Anyway, we set up the school last year. We managed to negotiate a discount on the rent, because with this country being in the grip of a tightening recession, people were desperate to rent and we had the market on our side. We populated the place with desks and other goo-gaws and then went into full advertising mode. Eventually this paid off with more and more people coming to us every month. It got exciting and we met some really wonderful students, some of whom may be reading this as I like them so much, I befriended them on Facebook (hi guys!). Don't worry, we all know how much they will regret it when I start stalking them, but say nothing for the time being. They still like me!

We used an online company called "Let's Bonus", that I've mentioned before. Basically, we offer a month at a heavily discounted rate in the hope that it would attract people to the school. They would see how wonderful we are and would stay, which many people did. The one downside of this is that more left than stayed, so we ended up working all hours for no massive reward. Still, the more of these promo's we ran, the more people DID stay and we gradually increased our numbers.

Due to the tax laws in this country, we had to move out of my in-laws and into our own place, otherwise the country would reduce José's parents' pension as they would see that there were people living with them who were paying tax and who could look after them. The truth of the matter is that the very first month we made a profit, we had to find a flat and pay the deposit, which soaked up everything we made and more. So we were back to only just covering our bills.

At this juncture, so many people were asking us about helping them with things like CV's and interviews. Added to this, so many young people in Spain were planning on moving to English speaking countries to try and get a job, as there's nothing here. Spain has the highest level of youth unemployment in the whole of Europe at over 50%.  We consequently created a one day seminar for such a thing, priced it very cheaply and advertised it across the whole of Galicia in the most popular Sunday newspaper, expecting that we would get at least 20 or 30 expressions of interest. We received not one single email or phone call about it after we spent a small fortune advertising it. The advert had been placed in a terrible spot in the newspaper, so José called our contact guy there and expressed our unhappiness in the hope that they would re-run it for free. No-one was more surprised than us when they did and this time, they put it in a far more prominent position, so we sat back and waited for the emails to flood in. None came. I can't tell you how miserable we both felt that week. We were sure that we had a winner with this one and that the money we made from these seminars would cover us through the summer months, when students tail off.

Two or three months of this passed and of course, we started to lose students as the summer months approached. This is natural here in Spain as people tend to shut down during the summer (not that you would notice much difference to the customer service in the winter, but there you have it). Interestingly though, we found other students who wanted to come for a short time and so we continued to make just enough money until the end of July when we closed for a month. 

Wonder what they got up to
in summer?!

This month's closure bothered both of us, as we still had to find rent on the school and the flat but we weren't bringing in any money. No-one studies in August and those who do only do so because they really have to, which means that many schools close down for the month as there isn't the business. Those who do stay open often only do so for part of the day, just to give you a flavour of the hours that are kept here and why we made the decision to close. And yes, it was also because as there was only the two of us running the school and we were working 12 hours a day, 5 days a week, we were more exhausted than a prostitute in the whorehouse January sale. Still, many of the people who left us for the summer holidays told us that they would definitely be back in September or October without a doubt, so while we knew we would never be millionaires in this place, we went on holiday knowing that we were planning new things for the next year and that we should have enough people coming back to keep us going whilst we attracted new students.

Well, we worked hard during the first couple of weeks of the holiday, planning and arranging the new courses. We had our hearts set on an Immersion Weekend, which is where students go and speak their second language from Friday evening until Sunday lunchtime when we would all go our separate ways. 

We stayed home and ate scones instead

We had expressions of interest from 4 or 5 people and were quietly confident that we could attract around 8 or 10 in total. We priced ourselves much lower than all the other courses around ("estamos en crisis", remember!) although there was no other competition here in Galicia that we found. Our website was updated, posters printed, flyers were sent out and another advert in the Sunday newspaper was placed but the silence was deafening. Even the previous expressions of interest all dropped out, making one excuse after another.

Then the new academic year started and we were back to work with about a quarter of the students we had when we finished in July. Quiet optimism eventually led to loud screaming despair as most of our previous students never (re)darkened our door, until one day, out of the blue, José put his serious face on and asked me if we should go back to the UK. It was an odd question when it came. Well, not really an odd question, but odd in the way it made me feel. I wanted to shout a resounding "YES!" as loud as I could but I really wasn't sure when push came to shove that was what I wanted. We both missed England a lot but those feelings had settled a great deal and we were getting on with living a different life out here. 
We both liked working for ourselves, as challenging as it could be at times but we both missed having a life. We've managed for the past year and were planning on at least another two with no discernible social life to speak of, but this time, the numbers just didn't add up. September was going to leave us with a shortfall and at the end of October, we would be losing our nurses group as they were coming to the end of their course. Unless we could recruit about 40 more people in a week, we would continue losing money. And so, we made the decision to come home.

I feel sad typing that, yet I also feel happy; so this is how a bipolar disorder feels!! We'd moved into a lovely flat and I do love living here. I've made some new friends and I'm no longer working for the NHS, all positives in my life. José naturally loves being five minutes down the road from his parents and he too likes the freedom we have working for ourselves.......although two years ago I wouldn't have called a 60 hour week 'freedom'. Yet it is. It's our business and we can do what we damn well like without anyone else coming up with crap reasoning to take on more work with less staff etc etc etc. You've all been there!

Other creams are available

Yet, I miss speaking English and being able to arrange things. My mantra to José is "can you just ring this person and say blah blah blah about blah blah blah", because my speaking skills are not what I need them to be. I miss English TV, English chemists where you have a choice of what verruca cream you buy, English bread shops with proper malted bread and English roads where, compared to here, the drivers all drive like the Amish. 

Of course, there was no reason for me to open up my soul and tell you all of that, but I wanted to. We don't want pitying looks when we come back and we don't want people wondering why we never gave it more than just a year. We would have if we could have, but the strength of the recession here is biting more than we ever realised it would. Some people don't have money and those who do are keeping it by them in case they need it in the near future and the way things are going here, there's every possibility they might.

This blog is dedicated to all the lovely people we have met over the past year, particularly those who came back this term and those who would have come back if they hadn't already left the country. Thank you from the lovely José and myself.

Episode 29: I am not Spinach

I can't begin to tell you how much José and I miss the UK. It's not just the fact that everyone speaks a language we both understand (although the jury is still out on Brummie!), but we miss the simpler things in life that you can't get here, like BOGOF offers in the supermarket or old people smelling of urine. And no, for a country rich in vineyards they don't smell of urine here, but wine. It's just as unpleasant but somehow, not the same.

Bloody ham and sodding cheese.
Kill me now!!!

When we were over in August, we marvelled at the things we used to take for granted when we lived there before: 

• sandwiches that weren't just ham and cheese
• sandwiches that had spread or butter in them and weren't just dried bread & filling
• sandwiches that you could buy in supermarkets and specialist sandwich shops, many of which looked edible, rather than those sitting dried up in some long forgotten bar covered in flies.

In fact, sandwiches in general got the thumbs up from me and the lovely José. It's amazing what you miss when you no longer have it, as I believe a famous Pope once said.

Stop it. Immediately!

I'm going to put on my serious voice now, so please stop clipping your nails at the same time you're reading this and listen, as you'll need to read this next bit very carefully. José and I have missed sandwiches so very much, that we have decided to come back to the UK to live and are closing the school here in Spain at the end of October. There, I've said it.

When we came to Spain, we didn't realise how important sandwiches were in our lives. Just being able to walk into Marks and Spencer and 5 minutes later be able to walk out with a coronation chicken triple decker, crisps and a bottle of coke meant the world to us. And it wasn't just sandwiches included in this emotional turmoil, but tortilla wraps and big baps too. 

Just looking at this picture makes me want to cry real man tears

Where M&S led, Sainsburys and Tesco followed suit, followed by Asda and then Lidl's 'Come-and-get-it-before-it-goes-off' lunchtime menu, consisting of a Spam butty, with goat & herb flavoured crisps, washed down with a bottle of Ukrainian fizzy pop.

Well, Lidl need to use up their stocks somehow.

I think I'm in love

José and I can no longer live like this. We've spent hundreds of pounds importing Mothers Pride and corned beef to Spain, only to find out at 11 o'clock at night that we'd run out of Branston Pickle and couldn't buy any from anywhere in this place that shopping forgot. That's not to mention the total lack of pickled onions. Yes, they do those little silverskin ones, but they are so fey and weak compared to their big butch cousins that make you fart like a racehorse. And so, gentle readers, the dream became a nightmare and we came to the conclusion that we were left with no option but to return to that Green and Pleasant Land we call England. England, home of the baguette and brie so beloved by us both and where we can swap the healthy green grapes option with a Kit-Kat in Tesco's Meal Deal and no-one cares.

Oh yes, and Spain is in a massive, humungous recession/depression at the moment and we weren't able to attract enough customers to sustain the school.

See you in Waitrose for the Christmas shopping!!

xx

Episode 28: In a jam

Tartas de mariposas,
or butterfly cakes!

As I said in the last blog, we're back to work in the school and I can't say that I'm thrilled about it. There's nothing wrong with the work you understand, but I was enjoying not having to think about work and bills and suchlike and now that reality has kicked me in the la-la's, I don't like it. So, instead of thinking about it, I have been doing other things instead. In the last week I've hardly stopped. Now, you would think that not stopping would be good for my waistline, but sadly my version of not stopping involves making jams/lemon curd, cakes and crumpets. I did break out into a small sweat when I upped and cleaned the place through, but that was only out of necessity because there was flour and sugar everywhere. And you might know that where there is jam-making, there's a saga, which I will now attempt to reproduce for you, so that you can live it as if you were there. 

Mitzi was in flatties until
1956, when she sold her eldest
child to buy some Dr. Scholl's

One of my favourite things when we go to America is grape jelly with my morning toast, so I decided to recreate it right here in Spain. Grapes are expensive here and as you know, we've not got two centimos to scratch our arses with at present, so we went visiting as volunteers to the local hospital in order to snaffle an adequate supply from patient's bedsides; half a dozen here, four there; no-one missed them. I also managed to bag a nice story CD about life as a disabled Jewish transvestite in Spain in the early 20th century (which was terrible for them if my Spanish is correct. Apparently they didn't get peep-toe sandals here until 1955). We also bagged a set of false teeth, a nice clock radio (well, she didn't look as if she was going to need it where she was going) and an invitation to Ramón and Vera's grandson's circumcision in two weeks, which we politely declined.

Grapes gathered, we regrouped in our kitchen and followed the recipe to the letter. Now, it said in the book that jellies (as opposed to jams) don't need as much boiling and that.....and I quote......"less is more". Well you might know that this turned out to not be the case. Having boiled the first lot for "less" time, we were dismayed to find that it was as runny as it had been the day before when we'd put it in the jar. We decided to try and boil it a little more, but one morning later it was still as runny, although made a delicious addition to some rather tasteless white wine we'd bought off a dodgy geezer called Juan Borneveryminute, behind the back of the local churreria. 

It's a washing powder and
apparently gets right to the
bottom of the wash

We boiled it again, although this time, we added some pectin; home made and natural you understand - none of this jam sugar processed muck! Actually we would have used it if we could find it, but this being a Third World country when it comes to supermarkets, they don't sell jam sugar here. I suppose with the recession and a 25% unemployment figure, there are lots more people with time on their hands to make their own pectin, thus leaving the shelves of the local supermarket free to sell other things like 86 different varieties of bloody olive bloody oil and something called Colon!  And do I need to point out that you can't buy custard here? We had to ship it from the UK and yes, I'm aware of how to make it from scratch, but there are some places where one just has to draw a line. 

When he put Doña Encarnación's
teeth in, José's transformation
was astounding

Where was I? Oh yes, the pectin. This time I only reboiled the one jar and the following morning, full of anxiety and trepidation, I noticed that some of the jam had actually started to set a little. Buoyed up by this minute victory, I got more apples (well, we were due another round of volunteering - and we took those teeth back as they didn't suit either of us....they made José look like Red Rum) and made some more pectin. Using the one jar that was half set, I poured pectin in with gay abandon and boiled it as if my life depended on it. The following morning, you'll never guess................yes, a jar of runny grape jelly; not even half set like the time before. Slightly miffed by this, we went to work, once José had wrestled the jar off me to save me from throwing it out of the kitchen window. Dejectedly the jar sat, unloved on the kitchen table all day.

That night when we came home from work, I moved the jar out of the way and let out such a yell that José thought I'd 'entangled' myself whilst waxing my tanga line. It was set! The jelly was set! So, after four lots of boiling, several kilo's of apples and goodness knows how much electricity, I have my own home-made jelly at only €23,50 a jar the way I made it. Yes, it's delicious; I had some on my breakfast this morning, which was a little strange as I have muesli on a Sunday. How on earth can that author say that "less is more" until I realised, it's not her fault but the fault of her husband!!!!!

This is just a shamelessly gratuitous picture of a tanga because it's mentioned in the last paragraph. If you think this is good, tune in next week for my blog about male nudity!!!

Until the next time my lovelies
xxx

Episode 27: Holidayzzzzzz

So, here we are again. Six weeks ago today, the lovely José and I walked out of the school and breathed a rather large sigh of relief that we were about to have 5 weeks holiday. What appears to be three days later, here I am, sitting at my usual desk having done a week's work. And do I feel like I've had a holiday?? Do I bogroll!

Much more wholesome
than a picture of a
Methodist gangbang

When the day finally came where I no longer had to get up at stupid-o'clock to go to work and pretend I know something about the English Language, what happened............? We both woke up at 6am and lay there as startled as a virgin in a Methodist gangbang, both feeling like we'd already been done over. I sent a carrier pigeon over to his side of the bed with a message: Are you awake? He was and was counting every episode of "Friends" in his head in an attempt to get himself back to sleep. I should have done that: "One.......Twozzzzzzzzzzz" Needless to say, he watches those particular DVD's when I'm not around.

Well, the holiday started in earnest, but once Ernest left and went home, we were able to relax!! (Ha! The oldies are the best, so I'm told.) Anyway, the moment we started our holiday, we never damn well stopped working. All the jobs in the flat that were put off were done, plus I did José's favourite thing......<looking around the lounge and talking in an inquisitive tone> "José my love.....don't you think that these units would look better over here?" He LOVES it when I do that. You see, my family and I suffer from some sort of furniture removal syndrome although I feel that it's worth pointing out right now that I'm nowhere near as bad as my sister. Sometimes she would get up at 4am when she couldn't sleep and move all the furniture round in the lounge as the family slept. I'm not sure if it was a need within her or to confuse hell out of them when they came downstairs in the morning half asleep and wondered if they'd woken up in someone else's house. I do have to keep reminding José of this, to show him just how bad it could be.

Smarter than the
average pyjamas!

Anyway, we had built a load of bookcases for the library of CD's/DVD's and books we have, only for me to decide that they would look better in a slightly different format; once we'd loaded them all up of course! Funny thing is that in this case, he agreed with me, but everytime he left the lounge, I heard a strange banging coming from the kitchen. I'm certain that's a head-shaped dent in the worktop by the cooker hob.

Our first week's holiday was a blur of birthday parties (my mother-in-law), house tidying and working. I wanted to do all the work for the new term at the beginning of the holiday in order to get it out of the way, a job I came to be grateful for in our last week. It was hard work and I thought we were never going to finish it, although being able to do it all in my Yogi Bear onesie made it all the more enjoyable.

Other flavours of mouldy soup are available

Week 2 saw us entertaining French people for 6 days. Not all French people, just two of them you understand. Trust me, two is enough! Then in the middle of week 3, we came to the UK. On the way to the airport on that Wednesday morning, I suddenly realised that I'd made soup on Monday evening (in the middle of a hot summer? Don't ask! I just had a craving) and having had a large bowlful on the Monday evening, intended to finish it on the Tuesday. With this in mind, I put the pan of soup in the oven ready to take out and warm up. As we blissfully drove to the airport, looking forward to being back in Blighty, I realised I'd not finished it on the Tuesday and there it would sit for 2 whole weeks. There's nothing like a little soup drama to upset the equilibrium.

I was looking for a picture of a rotting
corpse, but this one of the Spanish 
Duchess of Alba seemed close enough

Did we relax once home? Did we? No, we bloody well didn't. Two days in London, two days in Hastings, four days in Lincoln, three days in North Yorkshire, two more days in Lincoln, one night in Stansted and then home. We were knackered, not to mention disorientated!! Sure, we had a great time seeing friends and family, but it wasn't long enough and we did too much in too short a time. By the time we got home on the Wednesday of our last week's holiday, I didn't feel like I'd had 5 minutes to myself since we stopped working. Of course, the moment I walked in, I just had to check the soup situation. I had visions of the mould having taken over the oven and the build up of fumes having blown the door off, where José imagined that the smell would have alerted the neighbours to a couple of rotting corpses in the flat and we would find our front door broken down and police tape all over the place. Instead, we found nothing of the sort. I won't describe the soup to you as I can't think about it even now without gagging, but needless to say, I flushed it away as quickly as I possibly could and disinfected both the pan and the oven within minutes. Had José stood still long enough, he would have been hosed down with disinfectant too. Mind you, that wouldn't have been a bad thing. When we go to airports, he has this thing about covering himself with every conceivable fragrance known to man. It works quite well on Ryanair as it serves as a sort of pungent exclusion zone for our three seat row. When he got home, he was still ponging pretty strongly of stuff that it started to take the paint off the kitchen wall. A dousing of Dettol wouldn't have hurt.

On the last day of the holiday, we decided to go to the local town council and register ourselves as living in the area. Only the Spanish can do things this way............when we walked in, there were three ladies at the front desk and all three had people with them. One finished and she beckoned us over. José told her what we were there for and so she told us to stand in the queue for the lady on her right. Whilst waiting, another three people came in and she put two on her right side queue and one on her left. That's it! That was her job! It beggars belief. Councils up and down the country are losing money mano over puño (hand over fist!) and they employ someone to put people in the right queue. To be fair, I think she had other roles; she was also employed to tut loudly at people who were very common and offer withering looks at those who were wearing clashing colours. She earned her money that morning, I can tell you!

Dedicated to my mum, who looked after us so well whilst we were in the UK.
Thanks for the new pants which fit like a glove! (insert your own joke here) xxx

Episode 26: Feathering the nest

"Freakie"

So, here we are in our little flat, or the Love Shack as I call it. I only call it that because it gets the neighbours talking.........as if they hadn't had enough to talk about with two overweight, middle-aged gay men moving in! Still, while they're talking about us they're leaving someone else alone and I now know the Spanish for weirdo (rather strangely, they call them "freakies"). Plus, we're in crisis in this country and they have to get their kicks where they can.

We've been here a month and a half now and time flies when.....well, time flies! Not being Spanish has advantages and disadvantages. For one, I don't have to wear a large sombrero and call everyone "Gringo". Yes, I know that's Mexican, but allow me some dramatic licence - I have to churn this drivel out on a regular basis and occasionally - only very occasionally mind you - I may have to liven this up with a little flight of fancy!

It's a little known fact that Girls Aloud had to turn to other means of
financial support during this recent quiet spell. 

The one certain advantage of not knowing the language is that I didn't have to tell my mother-in-law that we were moving house and flying the family coop. I just look at José with that look in my eye that tells him it's all down to him once again. Sometimes I think he hates me just a little bit :-)

Moyshe and Shlomo Weintraub, preparing for their recent
Trolley Dash outside Newcastle Lidl's in June 2012; won
after Shlomo correctly identified all 42 shades of
LovelyLegs stockings on a Radio Newcastle phone-in

Well the day came and José bottled up the nerve, then unbottled a couple of tequila beers. He necked those in the butchest way possible (but still with a hint of style of course), drew himself up to his full 5'6½" and told his mother. I think he would have had a more favourable reaction if he'd rustled up a pork and apricot cobbler in the local synagogue kitchen for the rabbi's lunch. Bless her, she was a little shell-shocked and for a couple of days, I could do nothing more than waft her occasionally with the "Hola" magazine (lovely piece on Julio Iglesias and his 9th or 10th wife...or 11th, I'm not sure). She would occasionally mutter something incomprehensible in Spanish, which I found out later translated to "how could you take my son away from me you fat English bastard", which I thought it was nice of the local priest to translate for her.

Because I can do the laugh, I
had to be Muttley, but that
suit itched like buggery!

Then the questions started............why can't you continue to live here?........why have you only just moved back to Spain and already you're moving out again?........what is your appendix for? Poor José hardly dare set foot outside our bedroom door, or he would be bombarded with more questions, most of which he had already answered on a number of occasions. It's not because María has Alzheimer's and forgets she's asked - oh no, she's still as sharp as a tack - she was hoping to catch him out and get a different answer or wear him down. In the end, we had to disguise ourselves when we came home in order to disorientate her. She may not have Alzheimer's but it was three weeks before she realised that the Dastardly & Muttley who were living in her house were not who they were cracked up to be.

Strangely enough
Deirdre still lives; still
inside her plastic box

Eventually María started to come round and even talked about having the flat back without us clomping through and moving all her prized possessions out because we didn't like them. The trouble with that was that as she went looking for them to fill in the spaces of the things we had originally put out and then taken down to bring to the new flat, she couldn't find them. Why, you may be asking yourself. Because we threw most of them away I answer!!! Poor woman, she's really starting to doubt her sanity and that was never our intention.

She also makes funny little comments about living with just Pepe now, such as "if he does that once more, I'll knife him and you two won't be around to stop me". She's such a wag, my mother-in-law! You could tell she was so looking forward to having the flat back. Not sure about my father-in-law though; the jury's still out on that one.......as indeed it may be in the future if her prediction comes true.

So, back to us: we've been here a month and a half now and María's getting there, but still finding it a little difficult to let go. She brings us food parcels and only the other day offered to do our ironing at very reasonable rates. We go round for lunch on a weekend to steal food from their cupboard and we also take them to the doctors when they need to go and on little shopping trips - "Ooh look at that lovely piece of marble María. It would make a lovely headstone". She's sharp though and doesn't miss a trick, so I'm going to have to up my game.

Dedicated to my lovely mother-in-law María, whom I love dearly. This picture was taken in
December 2011, shortly before she set the dog on me. How we laughed!

Episode 25: Flying the coop

Hello - remember me? What can I say??? It's been a whole five weeks since I last published a blog on here and to be honest, some days I totally forgot that this page existed. Then I remembered you, my public, out there in the dark and so here I am. There is, of course, a good reason for my tardiness - I just couldn't be arsed to write! No, bless you, that's not the case. As if! I shall endeavour to explain.............

Dolores, or Diego as he's known from
Monday to Friday, runs a naked knitting
group here in Spain on Saturday evenings

There are moments in one's life that are memorable for all sorts of reasons: your first true love, your first taste of alcohol, your first pay packet, the first time you wear ladies underwear and call yourself Dolores. Well, at the tender ages of 48 and 49 (I'm naturally the younger of the two of us), José and I are finally breaking the shackles of the family home and moving out into the big wide world on our own. We had planned to do this in our twenties, but his mother wouldn't let us! In all seriousness (and this is about as serious as it gets), we were planning to do this a little later in the year, but circumstances have forced us to do it sooner than expected. It's nothing sinister you understand, but I won't bore you with the details other than to say that it's basically to do with the business and my in-laws not losing their pension by us all living under the same roof. See, I told you it was a boring reason; I can hear you all yawning now. Stay tuned gentle reader, for there are tales of sex and intrigue afoot.


So, we went searching for flats and that was more difficult than expected. Some of the flats on the internet that we liked and were in our price bracket were also in the price bracket of 2000 other people, some of whom I wouldn't cross the road to smack. After a plethora of emails flying backwards and forward to various estate agencies (or Inmobiliarias, as they inexplicably call them round these 'ere parts), we received results equivalent to the amount of firing neurones in my head; ie none! Squatting entered our heads for one brief moment and we did see a place that would have looked rather lovely with its front window punched out and a manky old sofa from the landfill placed under the dado, but we decided that after one brief run-in with the local police, we wouldn't chance that one again. Well, I say run-in, I gave one officer the glad eye and sent a drink over, but I don't think I was his type. I was so embarrassed! I won't be going back to that Mormon church again; not even for the full John Travolta Massage Experience they were advertising.

So, we settled on going to see someone in one of these Inmobiliarias and actually paying some rent and several weeks ago, found ourselves in the back of a rather swishy Mercedes, being driven to look at several places. 

This is not the same paper
clip that I had in my pocket, but
it was a red one and is available
to see, should anyone not
believe me.

The first one was an attic flat. Two bedrooms, en-suite, small lounge, small kitchen, small second bathroom, small second bedroom and small cleaning lady once a week (although she doesn't do toilets!) It was small, with not enough space to swing my rather ample hips, let alone a recently deceased member of the feline family. We looked around the place and decided that the owner and his reasonably large-chested girlfriend were not strict Catholics, owing to the large packet of condoms that were opened on the bedside table and delicately strewn across as if to announce to all and sundry, "Look at us, we have regular sex". I had a paper clip in my pocket and the urge to punch a hole in one was so strong, but I resisted, although only because he never took his eyes of us when we were in the bedroom and I had no opportunity.

The wonders of modern medicine

The second place was nice, but at the top of the Galician equivalent of an Alp. Some of you may have realised that I'm not the most energetic of people and consider regular gym attendance to be once a year on New Years Day. What felt like sixteen flights of stairs later and with no lift in the building, we found ourselves in a rather nice little flat with a big kitchen and a view of the local roundabout - and I'm not talking about the ones that little children go round and round on either, which in turn would make me sound like a paedophile. It wasn't that pretty, but at least the journey out of there was much easier than the journey in. With excuses of "our parents are elderly and knackered and would never get up here without an iron lung", we left and went onto the next place.

I couldn't find a picture
of a rotting gusset, but
I think this comes close
enough!

Bingo!! Three bedrooms, one very large lounge diner, a nice sized kitchen, one en-suite and one large separate bathroom AND a parking space in the garage under the building. The only downside was the smell like an an old age pensioner's rotting gusset in the hallway by the second bedroom, but we decided that we could live with that as it was likely coming from the rug in the hall but we could buy another and put that one in the storage room we also had, adjacent to the garage space. The estate agent didn't speak a word of English, so in the car on the way back to the office, we were deciding how much we could ask the landlord to reduce the rent by and then we would snap it off him. Our driver received a call from his wife. She had another couple with her who wanted - nay, were desperate - to see this perfect flat. Bugger!!


I don´t think that JL and I have made a decision as quickly as this before. He literally shouted down the phone at this woman that we were taking the flat and under no circumstances was she to send any pond scum round to set foot in what was now to be our new home. Actually, when we got back to the office, the couple seemed quite nice, but that's not the point. It's perro (dog) eat perro in this Spanish world at the moment and so we found ourselves there and then with a new address. Paperwork was hurriedly completed and then the hard work began..............telling my in-laws!


Was anyone hanging on for the sex that I promised at the beginning of the blog?? Well, when we got back to the flat for the first time after we'd been with the estate agent, there were a couple of cats hard at it in the garden behind the flat. Phwoarrrrrrrrr!

Poor Bernard the cat was furious,especially as he'd told Tiger that those days
were behind him now and he was being faithful to his beloved Frou-Frou

Tune in next time for tales of derring-do with the furniture removers and I'll try not to keep you so long this time.