17/12 – Christmas? Yea Right!

Apparently it’s Christmas in a week’s time?

Well, it certainly doesn’t feel like it, its really strange being here, knowing that Christmas is just around the corner but it just doesn’t feel the same as back in the UK!

Today it was in the 20’s again and there was no need for a coat, even a jumper was too much, nightmare eh?

Decorations have started to go up around the urbanisations and streets (not like at home when they tend to go up in the last week of August!! I took a few photos of the lights that have been put around the trees in the urbanisation so you can see.

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17/12 – Liesl Leaves Me!

Well this morning I took Liesl to the airport so that she could fly over to be with her cousin Tim who starts chemo therapy on Monday. I have a list as long as my arm (which aint short) to keep me busy while she is away, so I have just started preparing the wall for the carpenter who is coming tomorrow to fit some cupboards in the terrace and hallway.

Amazing weather today, 20 degrees in the shade and almost double that in the sun! Liesl and I said that we hoped the weather would hold out for when Dave, Simon and Jim arrive next week.

Right, DIY to do, better get back to it!

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14/12 – Drink with Gerry and Trisha and Jungle Drums Article

Went out to the very Spanish “Dick Turpin” pub this evening with Gerry and Trisha (the friends we met at the newcomers club), they had moved into their new place yesterday and were manically trying to get things delivered, lights put up, beds made, etc so I think that they were glad of the opportunity to get away from the manic activity that was happening at their place 2 days before they fly back to the UK!

Afterwards with Liesl’s help I pretty much finished off the article for Jungle Drums, its been accepted and was described by the editor as “perfecto!” which I am assuming is good 😉

I have also decided to take out an advert in the magazine as I have been offered a slot half price because of the article.

It should go into the magazine for the January issue and I hope that we get plenty of business from it, by then everything should be setup so I should be able to actually start working.

Guess I had better start to think about what to write about for the next article – it takes so long to perfect the text, never realised how much time it would take!

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13/12 – Good food, good wine and good company

Paul and Jackie came round today for a meal, I cooked so, as usual it was roast chicken, Yorkshire pud etc. Lol, I really should try something new at some point in my life.

Anyway, they are going off on a 5 week holiday to Australia next week (lucky buggers), so it was good to catch up with them before they go.

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12/12 – Table Top Wash Out!

We went to the table top today, what a total wash out, I don’t know whether it was the weather that kept people away – it was a bit colder than normal and overcast.

We paid our 7 euro entrance fee and setup alongside the 4 other stalls! I think that Liesl had 4 or maybe 5 customers, one of which spent the princely sum of 1 euro, so in total it cost us 6 euros’ to go to the event – lol, lesson learned.

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10/12 – Domingos de Mercado

Today was the day of the Sunday craft market in Alicante, we rose early, well for a Sunday anyway, and packed the car with all the essentials, it was not a very warm day – fine in the sun but in the shade it was quite cool, so we wrapped up well (well for Spain anyway, no need for a coat or anything silly like that!).

We arrived at the designated spot 15 minutes early at 9:45 and in typical Spanish style we were amongst the very first there – no need to worry about being late in Spain, some were still setting up at 11am! The setup is pretty good, the local council provide all the tables and chairs, the workmen bring them to the site and set them up at 10:00 – all you have to do is lay out the stall, which was a job for Liesl – of course! I went to put the car in a more secure space as we had just abandoned it, Spanish style in the middle of the side street, in our rush to get there on time!

By the time I returned after parking Liesl had already made her first sale! Good girl! The morning passed into the early afternoon and we had a lot of interest in her cards together with the occasional sale, more importantly both of us got the opportunity to speak Spanish to our captive audience – the other market stall holders!

Liesl spent a lot of the time talking to the Spanish niece of the stall holder next door, she felt less embarrassed at attempting her Spanish at a child rather than an adult – I listened in and she did very very well – although she would never admit it.

I had a chat to the book seller in the stall next to me, asking him whether he had read all his books and whether today was a busy market day. He said that he hadn’t read all his books (saw the funny side of my question) and that today was a very poorly attended market, of the 4 weeks that he had been coming, this was the slowest one (in terms of punters), probably because it was cooler today than it has been.

Poorly attended market or not, Liesl did remarkably well for her first week, she managed to raise enough money for us to pay for our normal weekly shop – so as far as we are concerned it was a great success!

We finally packed up at 2:15 and headed back to let Hetty out – she had crossed her legs for the whole time that we were away so we took her into Santa Pola for a walk along the beach and sea front.

Tomorrow I have offered to take a friend (Gerry of Gerry and Trisha from the “newcommers club”) to Torrevieja to try to track down some money that seems to have gone missing between the UK and Spain! Hope he has plenty of patience!

We have booked a place at a “table top sale” on Tuesday 12th December for us to hopefully sell some of the excess stuff that we have here and also to try to sell some more of Liesl’s cards.

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8 /12 & 9/12 – Friends, Cards, Cards and Pinoso

We met up with Gerry and Trisha on Friday night for a drink in the White Rose, had a really good evening although Liesl is clearly still suffering from the dinner dance episode as she was on coke all night – poor thing! I did mistakenly buy her a glass of red wine when we arrived, more from habit than by mistake really and by the end of the evening it was still not fully drunk – now for those of you that know Liesl, you will also know that this is NOT NORMAL!

We spent pretty much all morning printing and sticking “hand made by Liesl Cavender” stickers to the cards that Liesl had been fevering away making over the past days and weeks to build her stocks up in preparation for the Sunday craft market, I also made a new email address of [email protected] that we added to the stickers incase anyone wanted to email special requirement cards into her.

We photographed all the different styles of card (over 70 in total) for future reference, or for a web site at some point in the future (wonder who will be making that?), stuck the “hand made” labels on the back, put each card, together with envelope, into a little plastic bag and stuck the price on – they ranged from 1.50 euro’s up to 2.50 euros’s per card, pretty cheap when you consider the cost of cards in the shops!

Liesl even had a little sign written out telling the punters that the cards were left blank so that they could put their own message inside – las tarjetas no están escritas puedes completar con tus propias palabras.

In the afternoon we took a drive up and around the Pinoso area, about 40 minutes inland, west of Alicante and to the north of Murcia to have a drive around and look at estate agents details to see what we might be able to buy. Ideally we were looking for a small farmhouse with at least 3 bedrooms and some land in an area that was close to civilisation and not too isolated. We drove through some stunning countryside with fabulous views but didn’t get to see too many estate agents details as we were there at siesta time (between 1 and 5) and everywhere was closed, it was well worth the trip though and I took some web site addresses away to have a look at later on.

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7/12 – No International Club and a trip to Alicante

Had to ring John and Maurine this evening as a certain person is still feeling a little ‘delicate’ – he he, poor thing.

They were very understanding, having seen Liesl the previous evening and promised to book us tickets for the Christmas dinner as they would be going to that as well.

I decided to ‘pop’ into Alicante to buy some stickers for the back of Liesl’s cards so that we can print something like ‘hand made by Liesl’, well it was an absolute nightmare!

After the hour drive to Alicante, it’s usually about 15 mins, I found PC City.

Nope, the smallest labels they had were far too big – ok I thought, lets try El Corte Ingles as they say in Spain that if you can’t find it in there then you can’t find it anywhere. By the time that I had made my way through the traffic and found the car park underneath El Corte Ingles, another hour had passed!

Ok, given that we had shopped here before this should be pretty easy, I thought, they have a large ‘paperia’ so I made my way there. On the way I received a call from Trisha (we met Trisha and Gerry at the newcomers club on Saturday), inviting us out for a drink on Friday – must remember to add that to our calendar – social life seems to be picking up
!

Nope, don’t sell them here – if you want to print onto a blank tea shirt then we can sell you a kit to do that – but ‘no tengo etiquetas’ (I don’t have labels), ho hum. The assistant was helpful though, she suggested that I try the ‘informática’ on the fifth floor of the ‘other’ El Corte Ingles shop about 5 minutes walk down the road.

Fount it!

Yep, they had labels, but again they were larger than I wanted, however with the words “if you can’t get it in El Corte Ingles then you can’t get it anywhere” ringing in my ears I decided to buy them, if I don’t get these now then I will never find any I thought to myself.

At last, now I just had to fight my way back to the car park – I had been shopping for a further 30 minutes so far.

On my walk back I passed a third El Corte Ingles, 30 yards from the first one that I had gone into, that seemed to specialise in computer equipment so I popped in there – just to have a look – yep, you guessed it, they had exactly what I was looking for!

Now, how to approach the delicate negotiations, in Spanish, of “can I swap this for this please guv?”

Thankfully the assistant was very accommodating to my appalling attempt “Yo compro a que en el otro El Corte Ingles, pero no es bien. Es posible con….eerrrm swap?”

Believe me, you don’t need to translate it to figure out that the assistant too great pity on me by saying “Si, no problema Señor”, it would have been just as easy for him to say “que?”

Right, mission accomplished, it’s only taken a little over 3 hours so far! I made my way for the car and got home finally at around 9:30, having spent the sum total of around 11 euros on the labels and probably about 20 euro’s on petrol – lol, at least it was warm enough to have the roof down on the way home – life’s still good.

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6/12 – Dinner Dance…

Went out this evening with Liesl’s mum and Ken to a dinner and dance, 10 euro’s each for a three course meal, with as much wine as you can drink – don’t think they had counted on Liesl coming!

There was also a live act with dancing (us not them!)

Had a great time, met loads of new people and some that we had already had the pleasure of meeting – Liesl did have a little too much ‘vino tinto’ – which for those of you that know us well is an almost impossible task – although, as usual, she was the life and soul of the party, getting everyone up to dance and chatting to everyone.

One of the couples, John and Maurine have kindly invited us along to the ‘International Club’ tomorrow evening, I said that if Liesl had sobered up by then that we would meet them at their house in Gran Alacant and go down together.

Once we got home Liesl stumbled straight to bed and I took Hetty out for a short walk before making a start on the first draft of my magazine column – quite excited!

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5/12 – My Very Own Magazine Column!

Went to visit some friends yesterday, Paul and Jackie, Paul has a pool cleaning business www.pjs-pools.com – they told us that they are off to Australia in a few weeks on a well deserved holiday – lucky buggers!

We sat and chatted on their terrace for a couple of hours and when we left Jackie gave us a bag full of oranges and lemons from the trees that she has been growing in their front garden – sometimes its easy to forget that its common for people to have little fruit trees growing in their gardens, amazing really, she said that she has has so much fruit from them that even though she has given away as much as she can, she is still having to throw fruit away – in total I think that she has 5 trees, each only about 5 ft tall – just amazing!

Met with Dave today from “the” local English speaking magazine “Jungle Drums” – http://www.thejungledrums.com/, he has asked me to write a monthly column to be published, if it’s any good, in the magazine – quite excited about this but I have no idea what to write about; somehow I think that detailed technical information about the intricacies of how” Transmission Control Protocol” works is not what he is looking for – all suggestions gratefully appreciated!

There is always the opportunity to get more interest in BlueMoon Soluciones through the article – work, work, work eh!

On the plus side, I get to advertise in the magazine at a reduced rate and he has even invited us along to the magazine Christmas party on the 20th December – a meal in a ‘very’ Spanish restaurant – wonder whether now would be the time to ask whether they have any Marmite? 😉

At least it will be another social event and chance to meet people.

We are going out tonight to a dinner / dance in Santa Pola (the nearest town) with Liesl’s mum and Ken – it should be a good night and another opportunity to meet new people.

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