9/2 – A Week of Work and Books
I have even managed to secure my first Spanish customers (woohoo), however their English is much better than my Spanish so it wasn’t that difficult! They are a small business in Gran Alacant that specialise in providing accounting and legal services to foreigners, FAB (Foreigners Advisory Bureau) have a small network (technically not a difficult site) but they are a business and that is the type of work that I want to encourage, so its great that they have chosen me to look after their IT.
Even though this month has been busy with work, its still nothing like it had been at Getronics, its still nice to finish early or start late or even take the whole day off (which is what Liesl and I had planned for today so that we could visit some houses), however the estate agent wasn’t able to setup any viewings so we decided to do some more work and try to take an easier week next week.
I finished 2 books over the past 6 weeks, the first was Clarkson’s latest offering “…and another thing”, which was just hilarious, the second was a book that I read in less than 2 weeks – something I have never done before, I have never been so engaged in a book that I have not wanted to put it down. The book was written by a great friend of mine, Bob Thorogood, yes the same Bob who, with his wife Jackie had helped us so much when we first arrived in Spain by looking after Liesl when she arrived on her own.
I don’t know whether I was so engaged in the book because of my relationship with Bob or whether its just a fascinating read, I am convinced that its the latter. Bob has written about his fascinating life experiences from being almost abandoned/adopted (read the book to find out what I mean here!), through to holding one of the top positions within the Northamptonshire Police force, he relays many of his true life experiences whilst working at various ranks in the Police and he has clearly seems and experienced a great deal in his life – I wish I new as much about my own father as I now know about this man (mental note made to do something about that!)
Anyway, if you want to get a copy, he has a web site – http://www.behindthecallofduty.co.uk/ – buy a copy its well worth it! I would loan my copy out, however I have one of the more common signed copies, I recommend that you get one of the rare unsigned copies, it will appreciate much more in value!
This week we also met up with James and Linda friends of one of Liesl’s card making friends, they are looking to move permanently to Spain (about an hour away from here) later on this year, depending on the progress of their house, it was great to meet up with them and offer any advice / experiences that we had in hope that it would save them headaches, they promised to meet up again when they arrive for good.
On Wednesday we met with Jane who is cousin to Dorothy (remember, she is Liesl’s ex-step mother) and her husband, Michael. They are buying a duplex (a duplex is a property that seems unique to Spain, I have certainly not heard of them in the UK, imagine a row of terraced houses – each house a single story consisting of a living room, kitchen, dining area and a number of bedrooms, so quite large – with another row of terraced houses on top, each duplex is fully self contained with the entrance to the bottom one being from the street, the entrance to the top on via a set of stairs to the side of the first duplex. So the duplex that Jane & Michael are buying is the one that is on top of Dorothy’s place, the top duplex benefits from a roof terrace, while the bottom one has a garden / driveway. They were very friendly people that currently worked in Ireland; we had a couple of vino tinto’s and enjoyed a very pleasant evening.
Throughout the week, progress on the renovations of our 
apartment blocks has continued, on Thursday the noise made by the workmen noticeably increased by a number of decibels, looking out of the terrace (which is where I tend to work now as it has a fantastic view of the sea and coast), I managed to focus on what I thought to be the source of the new noise. I could see a huge amount of smoke (which I now think is sanded paint fragments) billowing from the side of one of the blocks! When I focussed closer I could see that a workman was holding some type of machine against the block wall and it was he that was producing the smoke and the incredible noise, he was totally obscured by the smoke!
I had talked to one of our neighbours, Hans, previously and he had said
that the builders were waiting on a machine to arrive from Germany that would help them speed up progress on the reformation – I think that the machine has now arrived – Heaven knows what its going to sound like when it gets around to our part of the block
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