1/2 – “Here Comes the Sun, do do do do!”

Last night we had the storm to end all storms!
As you can see from the photo of the sky the storm was coming in from the sea directly towards our little apartment, we had lightning, thunder and lots and lots of rain!
There is something remarkably beautiful about watching an electrical storm out at sea; watching the lightning arc from the black clouds down to touch the sea and then disperse into the waves is really magical.
The storm seemed to do the trick at marking the end of the poor weather that we have been experiencing recently, oh and I must thank all of those of you that I have spoken to on the phone over the past few days, your support and sympathy for our recent bad weather was touching – NOT! 😉
Anyway, today I am sure you will be happy to know that the weather is glorious again and the temperature at the front of our apartment, in the little sun trap that we have, is 39 degrees.

I have taken another photo, of the same area that the storm came from so that you can see the difference.
We have quite a few things to do over the coming days, tonight we are going to the “international club”, not quite sure what to expect, we think that it may be full of English people, but it will give us the change to socialise and perhaps pick up a few business contacts, tomorrow we are going to Pam and Dave’s house for the evening and dinner (remember they are the people that we bumped into at the San Miguel market a couple of weeks ago).

This evening we went for the first time to the “international club”, its a social club for non-Spanish people, not really what we are into but its an opportunity to meet new people so we thought we would go – we really had a good time!

We had a meal (with wine), a quiz and great conversataion for only 10 euros each – not bad for a night out!

Over the weekend we will drive out to another new area and look at properties, we also have a date at a local bar with some Spanish people that want to learn English, we have agreed to speak for an hour in Spanish and an hour in English – lol, who know what will happen (that is on Sunday) – will keep you posted.

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27/1 – Wooden Houses and more RAIN!

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.

We have never seen the sea as rough as it was that morning, the photo doesnt do it justice, you will have to take my word for it that the white water that you can see is indeed very very rough!

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.

As most of you will know, we have workmen taking off the old paint around the urbanisation in preparation for its new, long awaited, coat of paint (the first in 20+ years), well the storm did some good and seemed to remove quite a lot of paint during the evening, depositing most of it, it seems, in our hallway!

We drove to the office of http://www.costahomes.com/ where we met Patrick to talk about the wooden houses that they sell. The idea is that they will place a house on any land that you buy, it all sounds quite exciting and the prices are very reasonable. We saw a number of plots of land, one was perfect, 5000 meters squared of land, nestled between fields of vines with a view of the mountains to the back, the only draw back was that it was within hearing distance of a busy dual carriageway and although your couldn’t see the traffic you could hear it – we therefore dismissed it.

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.

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26/1 – Rain Rain, Go Away!

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!

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25/2 – Out With Dorothy and Trish

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.

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24/1 – Another Day of “Real Mans Work”

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!

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23/1 – “Real Mans Work”

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!

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21/1 – Casas En Madera (Wooden Houses)

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.

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20/1 – friends reunited!

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 – 😉

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19/1 – Ex, Step Mother-in –laws!

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!

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14/1 – It’s not a small world, it’s a TINY one!

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.

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