12/1 – Night Out!

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!

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13/1 – The Morning After (and another fiesta!)

Someone, who will remain nameless, felt a little worse for wear this morning – I, of course, skipped out of bed and went for a walk – lol

We spent most of the day lazing around in the terrace at Heather and Ken’s place in La Marina, it was a really nice warm day and Heather couldn’t believe that on one side of the terrace (in the shade) it was 20 degrees while on the other side (the sunny side) it was 36 degrees – not bad for the 2nd Saturday in January?

In the evening we went, with Heather and Ken, to the grand opening of Raffles Piano Bar and Lounge – sounds very grand but it’s a really nice piano bar that has opened up across the road to our apartment, the owners, Pam and Dave are great people and have made us feel very welcomed, it was good to see them get their venture off the ground and nice to experience their opening night with them.

For part of the evening Dave had arranged for a professional singer friend of his (name escapes me) to come over from the UK to perform on the opening night, he did a number of songs and even walked amongst the customers, on one particular song, inviting them to join in. Yep you guessed it, on this song he thrust the microphone in front of me and I decided to give it a go – hehe, I did a fantastic job (if I say so myself) which was only marred, in my opinion, by Liesl saying that she couldn’t hear anything I was singing and perhaps the artist had turned off the microphone to save my embarrassment (or the audiences ears from bleeding!)

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6/1 – Three Kings Day!

Historically the Spanish have not celebrated the 25th of December as their main holiday, although, of course, they recognise it as a special day (any excuse for another holiday!). The main festival day for them is the day when the 3 kings (wise men to you and me) visited the baby Jesus on the 6th January. However because of the popularity of the ‘westernised’ Father Christmas the children now tend to get presents on both the 25th December and on the 6th January (I’m sure that they don’t complain too much about that!)

On the evening of the 5th January, celebrations and parades are held in all of the towns where three processions are lead through the town, each one followed by one of the three kings.

We had decided that we would visit the celebrations in Alicante as it’s the largest town within reasonable driving distance from our home, our reasoning was that the celebrations would be the best although we did feel a little guilty that we would not be visiting our closest smaller town, Santa Pola – but hey, we could do that another year!

We were forced to reconsider our plans when, at the bank earlier in the day, we asked the cashier for some information about the fiesta and she agreed that Alicante was indeed the largest and most lavish celebration, however she warned that we should go very early (at about 2pm for an 8pm start!) and that we should consider taking the bus in as there would simply be no parking available within a reasonable walk to the town centre – this all sounded a bit too much like hard work to us! We just wanted to see some floats and catch some of the sweets that we had heard would be liberally thrown around – sad eh?

We re-planned and decided that it would be much nicer if we supported the local community and visited the celebrations at Santa Pola – how fickle are we?

It was fantastic!

Firstly it was a very mild night, a thick jumper or tea shirt and light coat were all that were needed to keep warm – in fact Liesl had dressed in warm clothing on the advice of her mum (which was based on her cold experience last year, so it was sound advice), she had a fleece on top of her clothes and a heavy coat on top of that, she did decide however, after I protested, to leave the gloves at home. Poor girl was roasting, she had to take the coat off on the way home for fear of passing out from heat exhaustion!

We arrived at about 7:15 but didn’t know when the procession would start, or from what direction it would come, we did know that it would go towards the castle, so we started there. There were hundreds of people lining the streets, many more in the castle square where there was music and lights and general merriment. A number of things amazed us as we wandered around, firstly the PA and sound system comprised of several thousand pounds worth of technical equipment, cabling, computers, laser lights, huge speaker sets etc, all left out in the open, no one specifically watching over them (that we could see) – we said that it was amazing that none of the equipment was protected from the elements (I guess it just doesn’t rain that often here) and also none of it was protected from would be thieves – I guess the crowd would not take kindly to someone stealing from the largest and most religious festival of the year!

We were also amazed by the amount of work that had clearly gone into the preparation – we didn’t know whether the same decorations, costumes and models were wheeled out every year, but we suspected that they were made each year. One that particularly caught Liesl’s eye was a miniature model town, presumably Bethlehem in the year 0. It was housed in a small glass walled cabin and even had lighting to mimic a full day, when the sun went down, the fire lights at the side of each of the houses lit up – someone, had put a great deal of effort into it.

The processions started at around 8:00 with a band leading the first kings group through the streets, there were about 3 groups of ‘dancers’ in front of the king, the first group were children aged about 3-5 dressed as mice doing a little dance, we talked about how this group could have included Ella, the daughter of good friends of ours from the UK, Chris and Linda, we really could picture here in that group dancing away and waving to her family as she passed them!

Next followed a group of slightly older children with a more choreographed dance, but again in equally matching and clearly hand made dress, we wondered who could have been responsible for the costumes – they were all pretty much identical, so we suspected that instructions had not gone back to the parents of those involved as that would have, we guessed, resulted in different costumes – we also couldn’t believe that the state provided them, we finally decided that it must have been down to the schools – we must find out from someone.

The final group that passed us before the first king was of older children again, probably from 9 – 14 years, their choreography was clearly more practiced, but the costumes again were all matching, down to the red shoes that they each wore.

Then we were passed by the first king, to me the guy looked pretty much like Santa Claus, but I am reliably informed he looked nothing like him – check it out for yourself and make up your own mind in the pictures. He was on a trailer along with about 4 helpers; they were all pulled by a tractor and what looked like a very surprised farmer! Its strange that neither the farmer or the tractor were dressed up at all – lol, perhaps they didn’t know what they had been asked to go and pull through the streets until they arrived!

The king and his helpers threw 1000’s of wrapped, boiled sweets into the crowd as they passed, children scrambled to grab them as they dropped to the floor, most already had carrier bags quarter full with sweets, some even ran along side helping themselves to more as the king moved slowly forwards. We managed to catch and pick up a good couple of handfuls worth and we found a good use for the pockets of the heavy coat that Liesl had brought with her – well it wasn’t needed to keep her warm!

We also gave some sweets to 2 little girls that were standing next to us, their father seemed to own the restaurant that we were standing in front of, they couldn’t have been older than 3 years old and carefully and suspiciously accepted the sweets from us – perhaps they were wondering why on earth these strange foreigners would want to give away such a precious commodity.

Well that was the first procession through, the next two processions pretty much followed the same format as the first, smaller children, then slightly older ones and then the teenagers followed by the sweet wielding king and his helpers. We gathered more sweets, gave most away to our 2 new friends and Liesl even managed to practice some of her Spanish out on them, saying “ven aqui” (come here) and “más caramelo” (more sweets), well it seemed to do the trick – either that or the kids though “I have no idea what these people are on about but perhaps if I smile and walk towards them they might hand over some of their sweets again” – they were right!

After the processions there were 2 open backed lorries full of presents, they were being mobbed by the parents (sad eh?) and some of the children got a look in – we decided that as neither Liesl or I had previously played rugby that we would let the other adults, and whichever children didn’t get squashed, get the goodies (plastic dolls etc.)

Finally everyone congregated in the square to listen to what the 3 kings had to say – we have no idea what they said – lol – but they looked very impressive!

Afterwards we wondered back to the car and decided that we wanted to pop into a Spanish bar while the crowds cleared, Liesl spotted one and we went in, it WAS a Spanish bar, but it was playing Iron Maiden and had model (well I hope they were model) skulls on the shelf behind the bar – nice.

I nervously asked whether they had red wine, “¿tiene vino tinto?”, fully expecting, at the best, a laugh and an answer of “no” and at worst a punch in the mouth, however they were actually all very friendly and the bar man brought over 2 glasses of nice red wine and a small saucer of various nuts for us to eat, its was a nice diversion from having to push through the crowds to get to the car.

We finished our wine, found the car and made our way home – a good night was had by all.

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2/1 – Started Work!

Had my first BlueMoon Solutions (Spain) job today, for a guy that emailed me after reading my email in Jungle Drums, he was having problems with a USB hard drive that he had bought to backup his laptop, fixed the problem for him anyway, and earned an hours work – not bad for my first day I thought!

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31/12 – Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Last night we saw in the New Year at a street party with our friends Gerry (the one in the skirt!) and Trisha, their family and about 50 other neighbours!

There was food, there was chat and there was just a little alcohol – of course Liesl and I felt that we had to oblige by taking the odd drink!

At midnight we overlooked a spectacular fireworks display, the whole evening was a great success and for it to be warm enough to be outside partying at midnight on the last day of the year made it all the more special.

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31/12 – Sun, Mountains, Snow and Jungles!

It’s the last day of the year and it’s a real scorcher, well in the 30’s – nightmare eh?

The Jungle Drums magazine came out yesterday so we grabbed a copy, the article that I wrote looks great and the advert also looks good so hopefully someone will be impressed enough to ring and ask for some help!

Yesterday we also drove inland a little, to ‘Onil’ and ‘Castalla’ (the red circle on the map) to have a look at the prices around there for both rental of business premises and for house prices, the place was quite Spanish and certainly it would drop us in the deep end with our language skills – Liesl thinks that we should improve our Spanish dramatically before we even think about moving somewhere like that – I on the other hand think that we should just go for it, I’m sure that Liesl’s more sensible approach will be the way that we go.

The price of a small 3 or 4 bedroomed place around ‘Onil’ with about 4000m2 of land worked out to be around 150,000€ (around £100,000), so its much cheaper than here on the coast where the same property with much less land would be around 3 times the price! It was a nice drive, about an hour, which took us up into and beyond the mountains, roof down, and sunny but with snow on the ground as we got into the mountains – extremely beautiful and stunning landscape; I wish I had taken my camera so that I could have showed you.

We are going to a street party tonight with Gerry and Trisha (and their family) who have arrive for Hogmanay, there was also mention of kilts – so look out for the pictures – hehe.

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29/12 – We’re In Business At Last!

I collected all the officially signed paperwork for the business and managed to setup a bank account, so I am finally ready to start trading!

The article and advertisments should go into the various publications in early January, hopefully that will generate some interest, guess I should get on and complete the second article.

Fingers crossed!

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25/12 – Christmas in the Sun!

Today is Christmas day and some of us are suffering from a little over indulgence at the disco we went to last night (at Raffles the new ‘piano bar’ that has opened just 3 minutes staggering distance away from the apartment).

As you can see from the photo, Liesl again was the life and soul of party, however this time, unlike me, she had the foresight to stop drinking early and take some water – so she is hangover free this morning!

Once we were all ‘alive’ at about 11am we went down to the beach to celebrate Christmas with a bottle of bubbly, it’s a fantastically warm day and is pushing twenty degrees in the shade.

We asked a passer by to take a photo of the group, below, before we returned to the apartment to set about organising a traditional British Christmas dinner (yes, very Spanish I know!)

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23/12 – The Boys Arrive and ……

We went to Alicante airport this morning to collect our Dave (our old neighbour from the UK and one of our closest friends), Simon and Jim, also very good friends that used to live close to us but moved to Southampton a few years ago – probably to get away from the late night wine and debauchery that used to go on in our house in Irthlingborough until we became the good, clean living people we are today!

Anyway, on the way to the airport at about 11am we spotted what we at first thought was snow at the side of the road, we both looked at each other and then back at the white stuff and said “no!” in unison. It couldn’t be snow, this was Spain and it was a nice bright sunny winter’s day.

As we drove on we saw more of the stuff, mostly rapidly melting, but sure enough it had snowed during the night – quite a bit in fact and by the expressions on the Spaniards that were standing around looking at the fields they were as surprised as we were!

We collected the boys from the airport and stopped the car as we drove back to take a picture of a melting snowman that someone had made at the side of the road, we thanked the guys for bringing the British weather with them.

It’s great to have some of our closest friends over to stay, they hired a car so we could all drive about together, and although they were only staying for 3 nights it was going a great time, we just knew it.

Gerry and Trisha (friends from the new comers club) were kind enough to offer their house to us, so Simon and Jim were ensconced there, while Dave had to put up with staying at the apartment with Liesl, Hetty and I.

Once the boys were settled in we went into Alicante and had a walk along the harbour looking at the thousands of little fish that gather at the waters edge and looking at the extremely expensive boats in the harbour. Jim has recently setup his own business teaching other people to skipper and delivering boats – http://www.marvinmarine.co.uk/.

As they are “boaty people” they were able to tell us interesting facts about the vessels moored in the harbour, many of which were worth several million pounds! I understand that our other friend Dave is partial to a good cruise as well 😉

We stopped at a café in the marina and had a coffee before returning to Gran Alacant where we popped to get stocked up for the next few days of socialising.

Outside the supermarkets the local council had planted Ponsetta plants around the usual palm trees that are planted along the walkways outside, back in the UK; they are house plants and wouldn’t survive outside. Liesl commented that my mum would have loved them; she was exactly right so I couldn’t resist taking a photo to show you.

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20/12 – RAIN!

Busy day today, the carpenter had spent the last 2 days fitting some much needed cupboard space to our hall and terrace, we can now pack away all of my tools, Liesl’s card making paraphernalia and the excess amount of towels that we bought when we were renting the place out.

Its good to get the stuff packed away and out of sight, but because the carpenter took 2 days to do the job (he quoted for 1 day) I am now a long way behind on the arm long list that Liesl left for me!

Just finished cleaning the windows, which is no mean feat! For those of you that don’t know our apartment, it has 70’s style aluminium double glazed units that slot in and out of the runners that form the window sills. Some of the panes can be lifted out, but it takes great care as they are very large (the terrace ones measure about 5ft x 2.5ft), so trying to man handle these heavy panes out of their runners without dropping them the 4 stories down is quite an art – needless to say no one was killed that day by falling glass!

I also went to Guadamar to collect the rubber stamp that Liesl had ordered from a book shop for her card making. The owner, not surprisingly, didn’t remember me so I had a great time of trying to explain who I was, why I was in her shop and what I wanted, all in Spanish with many charades like hand movements!

After Guadamar, I drove down to Torrevieja to get some electrical manuals guarantee stamped for Gerry and Trisha, however as the customer service señora explained to me after I had driven the 35km to the shop, the manuals cannot be stamped until 30 days after you have tested the goods as, until that time is up Spanish law says that the goods can simply be returned for a refund – great trip – then it started to rain just to top it off!

I am going out tonight to the Jungle Drums Christmas party in Santa Pola, I wonder what will be on the menu – scary!

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