I don’t expect any of you to offer any sympathy when I report that its STILL raining and blowing a gale, I have been guilty of telling you all how hot and sunny its been here while you have been freezing in the UK, so now is the opportunity for you to get your own back.
Its bl***dy cold here! And what’s more the wind is really strong, coming up from the coast over the steep cliffs that our apartment overlooks from the top floor, the gales were so strong last night that we didn’t get much sleep, we could hear things moving around on the roof (presumably our air conditioning units getting bashed by the gale) and the shutters that we have on each of the windows were taking a beating, being blown by the wind and having the rain rattle against them – not a good nights sleep.
In fact this morning we found further evidence of how windy it had been last night when we went outside to drive to the wooden house builders with whom we had an appointment. A tree on our urbanisation, on the next block down (so about 15 feet from our block door) had been uprooted during the night – see the photo. 
The main nagging doubt that we came away with was that it sounded too good to be true, and this was confirmed when we visited another “temporary house” builder in the area (the wooden structures are build on concrete legs and are therefore regarded as ‘portable’, although I would not like to see anyone try to move one!) This builder seemed a little more open to discussing the legality of building on land that was smaller than the minimum required by law to build on (that of 10,000 meters squared), he told us that it was his responsibility to point out that if we proceeded when we would in fact be breaking the law, he also pointed out that they had never sold a house ‘legally’ and that EVERYONE builds this type of house on land smaller than that allowed by law and that the worst that could happen would be a fine from the local town hall!!!
We decided to think very carefully before going down this route, it just seemed too risky.
Terrible weather today, its been raining for most of the day (yes, stop laughing now please!), its been overcast and miserable pretty much all day and I am sitting here in the terrace, the rain is hitting the glass in sheets and there have been a flash or two of lightning – just like being back in the UK really!
Today Dorothy, remember, Liesl’s ex-step-mother, returned from her travels inland with her friend Trish and kindly took Liesl and I out for a meal. We went to Fantasia, just down the road, and had a great meal with 2 bottles of wine, the total bill only came to 42 euros – not bad for 4 people really.
Ok, so NOW I understand why people go to offices – this isn’t so much fun after a night of aching muscles I never knew existed in the human body!
Learned how to mix concrete today – well to be honest I have re-learned it as my father, I am sure, has demonstrated it many times, but like I mentioned yesterday I remember clearly that there was no mouse or keyboard involved – I therefore deleted the experience from my memory.
I made 5 barrow loads of “muck” and now I think that I have broken my back! I think that I need to go back to computers as at least there I only get sore fingers!
My father has always ‘ribbed’ me that I have never done a “real mans job” as I tend to “play” with computers, it’s something that has always managed to wind me up, but I guess I have usually managed to retort with something as equally insensitive so I guess we are equal.
Well today my father can eat his words as I did a “real mans job”
Ken, my father in law, asked me to help him with some minor building work that he wanted to do, basically breaking up some concrete at the front of his house and extending a water pipe to make an outside tap and then re-cementing it all in afterwards. Now I am sure that my father, the builder, would laugh at this being described as “building work” and would say something like “it’s a 2 minute job”, but never the less, it involved me expending physical effort on something that was neither a mouse nor a keyboard, therefore in my book it constitutes “building work”.
As it happened I really enjoyed it, I came home after the day sore and aching – it’s the only exercise that my body has experienced in many a month (or year I hear you shout – thanks!), but it felt good to have achieved something and even better to have helped out, in at least a little way, my father in law, who incidentally is in his seventies and still much more capable than I think that I will ever be with a shovel!
Over the past week we have been thinking about wooden houses quite a bit. When we were at the market last Sunday a chap was advertising custom built wooden houses on private plots of land for an amazing price and we have been thinking about the possibility and doing sums all week. Today we drove out into the country around Elche looking at possible sites and trying to find some more idea’s.
We drove past, by accident, another wooden house manufacturer – http://www.casasenmadera-siglo21.com so we had a look, through the fence as it was closed, at some of their designs, we decided to give them a ring in the week and see what sort of price we would be looking at to have one built to our design – sounds exciting!
Afterwards we drove back and had a bit to eat in a local café and then walked Hetty down on the beach, it was a lovely warm day and there were quite a few on the beach.
Liesl suggested that we drive out and find Pam and Dave’s house and do a surprise visit on them (Pam and Dave are the couple that we met purely by chance at the Sunday market in San Miguel the previous week).
We used TomTom to get us to San Miguel and then stopped to have a look around the town and asked for final directions at a local pub, the people we asked were obviously English, so we asked in English whether they knew the address we were trying to find, they didn’t, but satisfied that we were clearly lost tourists with no Spanish ability at all they offered to help us speak to the “locals” and helpfully told us that we should “say donde es” to that bloke over there and point at the address. LOL, we thanked them and walked over to the waiter asking “Perdón señor, pero, donde esta aquí?”
It was naughty but felt nice to have a better grasp on the language than our fellow Brits abroad.
The waiter asked a Spanish local who proceeded to give us precise and extremely accurate, as it turned out, instructions on how to get to the address, the old boy even re-iterated them with pen and paper to help, all in Spanish and all perfectly understandable, we found Pam and Dave’s place first time, without trouble.
Their house is amazing!
Its 3 storeys high with a number of terraces, the terrace on the 1st floor has a hot tub! It has 3 bedrooms, garage and is in quite a bit of land, all new and looks lovely – then those of you that know Pam know how manic she is about cleaning – sorry Pam!
We had a great afternoon sitting on their front terrace chatting and catching up, it was a scorching hot day and Liesl and I even managed to catch the sun, perhaps its driving around all day with the hood down that did it!
In the evening we walked Hetty down to Dorothy’s place and helped her with a bottle of wine that she was struggling to drink – 😉
Liesl’s ex step mother, and therefore my ex step mother in law (if there is such a relation); Dorothy is over from Ireland at the moment with her friend Trisha. Dorothy has a place just down the road from our apartment.
We invited them around for a meal and a few drinks and had a fantastic time, Liesl cooked a great meal of “patatas bravas” (spicy potatoes) and “pollo con limón y ajillo” (chicken with lemon and garlic), it was really nice and very Spanish – ask her for the recipe if you fancy it – a great start to the weekend!
After a great night at Raffles we met up with Heather and Ken as they promised to take us to the Sunday market in the lemon groves. When we arrived at their house they asked whether we would prefer to go to the market at San Miguel – given that we had never been there before, and the fact that it sounded like a drink, we said yes!
It was a huge market, and quite different from the other markets we had been to, just as we walked in, I bumped into one of my customers, Jon from McCormick Properties, so we had a quick chat.
We walked further on in the market and looked at a few stalls; Ken was interested in getting some quotes for a piece of metal work that he wanted doing at his house. Whilst continuing to stroll through the market we bumped, literally, into Pam and Dave – they are the people that we originally bought our house in Irthlingborough from (5 Holbush Way), amazingly they had also moved to Spain around the same time as we had.
It was incredible to think that we had lost touch with this couple just after we bought their house (our last house in the UK) six years ago and the next time that we saw them was in a market in the Costa Blanca in Spain!
We exchanged contact details and have promised to meet up so that we can catch up properly.
Went out this evening with Gina and David – www.onthemovesl.com – David was the guy that moved us from the UK over to here. Heather (Liesl’s mum) and Ken were good enough to offer to look after Hetty for the evening and let us ‘crash’ over at their house as they happen to live in the same town as Gina and David.
As you can expect we had a totally alcohol free night 😉
We went to a local bar “the palms” and sat in the outside area (which was closed in with plastic gazebo type walls), we had the patio heater on and it was perfectly warm – nice and toasty (sure it was the heater and not the alcohol anyway!)
We then went on to another bar and finished the night in the early hours of the morning when we staggered back to Heather and Ken’s, hopefully not disturbing them too much as we “crept” in – I’m sure that we sounded, and looked, like a herd or marauding elephants!
