This evening our friends from La Marina, Paul and Jackie came around for a meal, Liesl cooked her ‘famous’ Spanish chicken and I made baked Alaska for desert, it was a great night and had been a very warm day so although we didn’t have to resort to turning on the air conditioning, it was warm enough to have the ceiling fans on for most of the night – not bad for March!

We had a look at the lunar eclipse, but although the sky was perfectly clear, to be honest I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about – pretty under whelmed with the event really – perhaps the amount of wine that I had drunk was having an effect on my ability to see properly.
Towards the end of the evening Paul offered an invite to his house on Sunday, if the weather was again good, to have a dip in the pool, I accepted, the girls thought we were both mad.

Needless to say Sunday was another scorcher and when we had walked Hetty (this time on La Marina beach for a change), we drove over to Paul and Jackie’s villa and Paul and I jumped into the pool, it was fantastic; I wouldn’t say that it was warm by any stretch of the imagination, but it was certainly acceptable, again, not bad for March!

This evening, Sunday, we are going to go down to the Sunset Bar to attempt to speak some more in Spanish, my friend Xavi, pronounced Shabi, is going to come down and chat as well – he writes the web site for our urbanisation http://www.carabassi.net/granalacant

Last night we were booked to attend a ‘murder mystery’ night at the InterClub, however as we were walking out of the door Liesl said “you know what I really fancy an Indian” so, taking this to mean a meal and not the guy that lives in the next block, we drove down to Safron’s Indian Resturant – http://www.saffron.biz – we had a great meal.

The owner and the waiter spotted us looking at this months Jungle Drums article and we ended up in conversation about it, they had both said that they had read it and had found it very interesting – its really good to hear that people enjoy it and find it useful!

After the meal we decided to pop into Raffles Bar – http://www.raffles-alicante.com – after we had dropped the car back home, for a quick glass of vino tinto.

We had a chat with the owners, also Pam and Dave (not to be confused with the friends we had around for a meal last Friday) and they introduced us to Anne and John who have recently opened a bodega (sort of Spanish off licence, but their main trade is selling wine straight from the barrel which is very common in Spain), its only a short walk (or stagger) away, so we stopped and had another drink and chatted to them.

Then Liesl’s Irish accent was picked up by a fellow countryman and that resulted in more glasses of wine and conversation, then finally we bumped into, at the bar, a couple that we had met last November in Cocoas Bar whilst they were out on holiday – they had recently taken possession of their new villa, it was great to catch up with them, they were over again for the week to complete some paperwork, so as you can guess that lead to more drinks and conversation!

By the end of the evening we were well and truly ‘oiled’ so we staggered home to bed – great night out!

Had a busy weekend just past, on Friday evening our friends Dave & Pam (the ones that we bumped into at the San Miguel market) came round for a meal, Liesl cooked her ‘famous’ Spanish chicken, vegetables and spicy potatoes and Pam and I made the desert, baked Alaska – yummy!

We had a great time; Pam and Dave are fantastic company it was nice to hear what they had been up to. The told us that they had decided to try to live to a budget this week, however they had blown it by Wednesday! Sounds familiar, its far too easy to eat out here! They have kindly invited us to go to their place later on in March for the weekend so that we can all go out walking and exploring – we are both really looking forward to it, although Pam and Dave may regret inviting us for that long – hehe.

On Saturday morning we went to visit Heather and Ken, I had a surprise planned for the afternoon, I had arranged with a local acquaintance for permission to come to his house to pick oranges, he has around 200 trees and they are bowing with the weight of oranges on them, he cant give them away and was happy to offer for us to take whatever we wanted, we were there for less than 15 minutes when we had already picked 5 carrier bags of oranges (at least 25 kilo’s!), we thanked him and left, I cannot tell you how many oranges we must have eaten that afternoon, but needless to say our insides were probably very orange by the end of the day – they were the most delicious oranges I have ever had the pleasure to eat!

On Saturday evening we were invited to go out by Heather and Ken to a local bar where they were meeting some Irish people that they had met in the local ‘ferreteria’ (hardware store), I don’t know, what are they like, picking people up in the local hardware store! Anyway, we had a great evening and, as usual, had far too much to drink. We ended up sitting outside the bar as the music was a little too loud for us (getting old!), and although it was by no means warm, I found it to be quite nice sitting outside – although I may have been in the minority as Ken was shivering!

On Sunday we had a lazy day with Heather and Ken, sunbathing on their terrace, the temperature hit 40 degrees in the sun and in the evening Liesl and I visited the Sunset bar to attempt to abuse some of the local Spanish with our version of their language, fortunately (for them) there were only English in the bar – we had a great night anyway.

A week, last Friday we went out with friends Paul and Jackie, we met them when they had a cleaning business and used to clean our apartment for us and prepare it for new guests (when we were back in the UK and rented this place out). Paul and Jackie were great when we first arrived in Spain, like Bob and Jackie, they came to help us settle in and were really great friends. Well on the evening in question it was Paul’s birthday and they had invited us to go out with them for a meal, we went to a Hungarian restaurant, and it was a really posh place and currently Paul’s favourite restaurant. We had a fabulous meal and really enjoyed the company – as you can see from the picture!

After the meal, we went to Heather and Ken’s place to stay the night as they had, yet again, offered for us to use their spare room.

On Sunday we had a lazy day with Heather and Ken, we visited the market in La Marina, Liesl bought some more cookery books (we could open a cookery book library!) and went to look at some 4×4 cars that were for sale in the local garage, in the evening Liesl and I went to the Sunset Bar in Gran Alacant for our weekly Spanish conversation, however the Spanish had clearly heard that we were coming and the place was devoid of anyone except a poor German guy called Karsten, who is fluent in Spanish and actually teaches it at a local college, so we ended up abusing him all evening with our Spanish! Poor guy, bet he wont go back there again!

Monday and Tuesday were very busy for both Liesl and I at work, I had a number of jobs on and Liesl had month end to contend with, so we both put our noses against the grind stone and got on with it.

Wednesday was a little quieter for me, but Liesl still had her head inside Excel and Sage (her accounting programs), however she managed to find me a spreadsheet to update for her – nice eh?

Wednesday evening was Valentines night, I had booked tickets at raffles bar – http://www.raffles-alicante.com/, they were having a ‘tickets only’ evening with live music and a buffet. We had a great evening and Liesl even managed to get me up onto the dance floor – must have had too much vino tinto!

On Thursday, we had arranged to visit some properties about an hour inland; we were to meet the estate agent at a convenient petrol station close to the first property. Heather and Ken had said that they would like to come to see the houses so we went in their car (the only one with sufficient seats for the 4 of us!). The first house was in 16,000m2 of land (about 4 acres!), although that was all that was there, the house was about ready to fall down and it really did need to be torn down and another one built! The price was not that good – certainly not good enough for us to be able to afford to rebuild the house so we dismissed it.

The second house was in a much smaller plot, 2500m2, but still large enough for an orchard and perhaps a vegetable plot, the house itself was solid but it was a little smaller than we wanted, take a look at the pictures, it didn’t yet have electricity, but it was possible to connect it as the exchange was at the bottom of the road. The agent only had 2 houses for us to look at that day, so we returned home hoping to see many more places in the coming months!

On Thursday evening we had a “race night” booked at the InterClub, given my inherent knowledge of the sport of kings, a product of being dragged mercilessly around race tracks by my father (sorry Dad, I enjoyed it really!) from an early age, we decided that we had a good chance of winning some money, however our confidence took a knock when we saw toy a fabric race track, toy wooden horses and 2 dice being set up! Perhaps this could be more of a game of chance than we had originally thought! Never the less, we had a great time, we met a charming couple on our table, had a 4 course meal, complete with wine all evening for 10 euro’s each – not bad for a night out!

The end of the week ended up as manic as the start of the week, I ended up working most of Saturday as well – nightmare! Liesl spent most of Saturday night ‘home making’ and cleaning ready for the ‘inspection’ when Pam and Dave come for a meal on Friday.

On Sunday it was a fabulous day and we managed to get down onto the beach to walk Hetty and relax a little and in the evening Heather and Ken came to our place for a lovely home made cottage pie – I love the fact that Liesl is getting back into home cooking!

This evening we have been invited out to a meal with Paul and Jackie (our friends that live in La Marina – they have just come back from a 6 week holiday in Australia!), its Paul’s birthday on Sunday so we are going out to celebrate. Heather and Ken have been kind enough to offer to look after Hetty for the evening and we will be staying at their house when we get back from the meal, so we both look forward to spending a pleasent day with them on Sunday.

On Sunday evening we are going back to the Sunset bar to abuse some of the locals with our Spanish, hopefully they will take pity on us and help us practice!

It’s been a hectic working week this week, the weather hasn’t been changeable, sunny one day and overcast another. Work seems to be getting busier and I am certainly getting to know more and more people and having the opportunity with each new customer to build up more relationships and get the BlueMoon Solutions name known.

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

Last night we visited Pam and Dave’s place in San Miguel for a meal, Liesl’s migraine had thankfully subsided so we set off on the journey, it took us about an hour to get there and was dark when we arrived.

I had agreed to drive so that she could have a drink (and so that we could actually find our way home again afterwards!) – sorry Liesl!

Pam had cooked a lovely meal of chicken breasts in herbs, roast tatties, veg and a really nice Yorkshire pudding, she was clearly quite nervous about cooking, but really she had no need to be nervous at all, the meal was fantastic, we both really enjoyed it – it was nice to have some home cooked English grub for a change!

After the meal we sat and chatted about old times, remembering parties at our houses in the UK, friends (Dave, “the boys”) and discussing places to visit in and around Spain, we agreed that we would accompany them on some of their walks, one in particular sounded great, a really long “board walk” in the Torrevieja area – Pam was even kind enough to invite us to stay over one weekend with Hetty so that we could do the walk and enjoy the evening without the drive back – lol, not sure whether the offer would still stand after having put up with us all evening!

Pam also mentioned a couple that they spent a lot of time with in Spain – “Gwen & Tony”; Liesl and I looked at each other as we recognised the names from somewhere, then we remembered that our friends from the UK Bob & Jackie, who also have a place in Torrevieja, keep mentioning their good friends from Spain called “Tony and Gwen”. It would not be unusual, given the rate with which these things tend to occur over here, if they were the same people – must make a note to ask Bob where their friends live!

We ended the evening with Pam and Dave agreeing to visit us in 2 weeks time for a meal – I had better get tidying!