There’s always room for more chat here about food, life in Spain revolves around it and we’re no different to everyone else! So, a bit later about food, the importance of friends, and what Spain looks like when it ISN’T blazing hot!
We are now into May, so showery and cool weather is the norm, though we are frequently teased by really hot days with wall-to-wall sunshine fooling us into thinking summer might be here at last. The Spanish say that summer doesn’t arrive here until the 40th of May – think about it! In general they may be right. Although we usually have warm and sunny days they are frequently punctuated by cooler, wetter periods. We’ve had a lot of rain recently, though not all at once! When it comes down, it REALLY comes down and is generally rather impressive.
Well that might not look like the nicest photo in the world but that’s the view we had the other day, straight down the valley to Fortuna, and over to the mountains of Cartagena on the coast. What valley? Where’s Fortuna? Which mountains? Where’s the coast? Exactly! We could see nothing for a while, until the rain stopped. We also had phenomenal thunder and lightning, very energising! The noise the rain makes as it hammers down is incredible, especially on the roof, as old houses have no attics or roof spaces – and then came the hailstones. Well, we stood and looked at our cars being pummelled by hail but there wasn’t anything we could do, so we just admired the ferocity of nature. As it turned out there was no damage to the cars or anything else, though the hailstones here have been known to be bigger than golf balls which is quite scary.
That’s the more normal view from the terrace down the valley towards Fortuna, a bit of a difference!
Meanwhile everything in the garden is growing like mad due to the rain and now at last the really warm weather is kicking in. My wee lilac tree is starting to bloom, and the scent is divine. I think I will have to get a few more to join it – there’s that long bed of soil by the side of the house which could easily be filled with lilac trees and a rose bush or two.
At the other end of that bed is quite a lot of lavender which also smells so good. I’d like to see if I could get a couple of buddleia bushes to fill in the gaps, though I need to check to see if they can withstand the very hot summers here.
I forgot that we have a pomegranate tree on the hill round the back of the house! It’s not very big and I think tends to get a bit neglected as we forget it’s there. We need to get someone to help sort the garden next winter, when the plants are all “sleeping”, so we will move the pomegranate to the lower walled garden which is really for our fruit trees. Our three vines there are growing like mad and it won’t be long before they start to produce little grapes. Then I can plant a red seedless variety. Also in the lower garden we have a lemon tree and a blood orange tree just starting a bit of a growth spurt, and they will be joined by the clementine tree which is currently outside the walled garden. A bit of serious physical work to dig up, move and replant those trees, so you can see why we will need help.
The wildflowers are appearing literally overnight – the photo above is what we can see away over the “sheugh” to the other side of the village. I’ve had to zoom in a fair bit to let you see the flowers but really the whole hillsides are covered in these lovely see purple flowers. I have no idea what they are but I hope the bees enjoy them – they have a great feast this year!
We were hoping to get over to Norn Iron next month but it’s not working out very well so we’ll have to wait until our usual pre-Christmas visit to get there. Laurie and the children will be over with us towards the end of August, and I jut can’t wait to see them. They will see some big changes in the house as we’ve been busy getting as many little jobs done as well as the bigger ones. We’re currently spring cleaning – there’s something very cathartic about getting rid of things you haven’t used in a long time, clearing the space clears your mind and soul as well! I have more bags of clothes to take to the charity shop – the rule usually is that if you bring something new into the house then something has to leave to make room for it, so no hanging on to clothes that are too big or too small, or that haven’t been worn in a year. It is the best feeling when everything is neat and orderly, at least now we are able to find things!
We’ve had to scrape a couple of walls in the grandsons’ twin bedroom and in Peter’s art studio, as they were getting a bit flaky – old house and all that! That’s now done, and the walls have had a coat of diluted bleach, and a coat of diluted PVA glue to size them so they’ll now be painted this week. New blind will go up in the twin room, lots of pictures on the walls, and lovely rug for the floor. Will post pics when we’ve done it. Next job this week is to finish the plastering in the pool courtyard then paint all the walls and floor white. Then I can get decorating with the solar lights!
A real treat for me recently was getting my hair done – I don’t go very often but my goodness doesn’t it make you feel great to have a bit of pampering? I wouldn’t enjoy a spa treatment or massage at all, but my word I love having a cut, wash and blow-dry! Very low-maintenance, that’s me!
So, off to my friend Anitas’s son Jack, who is such a brilliant hairdresser, and look what a fantastic job he did on my hair! I love it! He works in London as well as here in Spain, so I will need to keep an eye on the times he’s here for the next time I need a wee snip or two.
I know I’ve complained here before about the state of our water – it is very, very hard, full of calcium, and that’s when we get any. We have to regularly take the nozzles off the taps and remove the cal build up. If neighbours are using their taps there’s never enough pressure for the water to get up the hill to our house, a bit of a nuisance to say the least. We moved to this house more than six years ago and there’s not been one single day where we have had an uninterrupted water supply. Empty taps, empty basins, can’t shower, use the washing machine or the dishwasher. Look at that photo, below, tap on, no bleeping water!
Mostly its off for between ten minutes and about half an hour, but the other day it was off for hours with nobody using the water, so I checked with the neighbours who said they also had had no supply for hours. Now, given that they’re Spanish, I’d have thought that they might have phoned the emergency number to report a fault, but no, older Spanish people just seem to always accept what’s going on and wait patiently for someone else to sort it. Well that someone was me! I phoned the emergency number for Aqualia, our supplier, at about 9pm, had a slow conversation with the woman there, then got put through to an engineer and had another slow conversation with him. Incidentally, the conversations were slow because it was all in Spanish and I have to think and work out what to say! To cut a long story short, I was able to make myself understood, the engineer came out within half an hour and sorted out a blockage of calcium in the main water pipe at the bottom of the road which delivers the supply to all of us. Job done, water coming out of the taps at tremendous pressure again, hooray! No matter how competent you think you are at speaking another language, when you’re older it’s flipping exhausting!
Well now, here’s a thing…while I was prepping the start of this issue of the blog we had a power cut. This happens very, very rarely here, I think we’ve only had two stoppages in the time we’ve lived here, that’s more than six years. On one occasion the power came back on within ten minutes. On the other, a line down the road had been hit by lightning in a storm, leaving all of us in the dark. On that occasion, the engineers came out around 9:30pm, bringing a big cherry picker, and were able to reconnect all the wires, including our internet cable. The chap reconnecting our internet fibre cable thingy was Colombian, he had a bit of a time reaching it – he had to go up and out onto our front upstairs terrace, securely clip himself onto a pole and reconnect the wiring. My word but he did a great job, you can see how precarious the job was, hanging over the verandah roof looking down onto the terrace below, it was difficult even just to watch him! Oh, and spot the moon up high too, it was about 10:30pm when they’d reconnected us and everyone else – they weren’t leaving till the job was done!
However, recently, the power outage was not just any power cut, but one that took out almost the whole of Spain and Portugal, as well as some of Andorra, France and Italy. We were without power from 12:30pm to 02:45am, quite a stretch.
Thank goodness most of it was during the day, with plenty of daylight. There was absolutely nothing we could do, and it was very difficult to find out what was happening. Most of the English language radio stations were down too, as were shops and everywhere else! We were able to listen in to Spanish radio stations so we knew the issue was very, very widespread. We heard the power should be back within 6 to 10 hours – with us it was 14 hours.
Happily we had plenty of diesel in the cars – I make a point of never letting the level go below half full, just in case! We also had plenty of water, and we have a gas hob so cooking and making tea and coffee is not a problem. Phones and kindle are always charged to the max. The REAL problem was that nobody had any idea why the power system had collapsed. There were official reports of solar activity which were soon rubbished by meterologists and radio hams. So, nobody knows what happened, except those who DO know, and they’re not telling us. I am so NOT a conspiracy theorist but having lived through the whole covid lockdown fiasco I do wonder if this was a planned exercise in control, again.
Anyhow, we survived. We brought in our wee solar lights from the terrace, and used some candles for extra light. Rather romantic! We had left some overhead lights on and when the power came back and the lights went on it was a bit of a shock to the face – I kept waiting for someone to ask me “Have you ever had a sneaking admiration for the Gestapo?!”
I suppose time will tell, though for now it seems reasonable to believe it was either something to do with an over-dependence on “green” energy, or it was enemy sabotage. Or maybe even a planned exercise in control, who knows? Well “they” do, and they’re not telling us.
At the minute it seems to be one little trial after another…first (and frequently!) no water, then no electricity, and now our water boiler has checked in the towel and needs replacing. Seriously, in the last year we’ve also had to replace and buy a new television, new oven, new microwave…I’m scared to mention the computer in case something goes wrong! Avelino came and installed our new boiler so we can have hot water again – I’m sure the neighbours might have started to think murder was being committed here due to the shrieks of me trying to shower and wash my hair in cold water – I’m too old to be cold!
Back to a wee quickie on food and drink, as so much of our lives here revolve round this! The husband just loves rice pudding – no, I don’t judge him for it – and guess what we found in Aldi recently….
Good grief, rice pudding liqueur! The husband is in his element, he even sneaked a wee taste of it in the car on the way home, before I got a chance to take a photo! My take on it? Revolting! I’m not a drinker at all, so a wee sip every few months of my home-made limoncello is enough for me.
When you come to live in Spain there are lots of different groups you can join in order to follow your passions, meet new people, learn more about your area, or whatever. It’s a really good way of getting to know other people, and it really does help you to feel a bit more settled in a foreign land. There are two main bits of advice I would offer to anyone:
- Try to dip in and out a bit, in a variety of groups, before fully committing yourself to one particular thing. It’s really important to have a wide range of areas so you don’t limit yourself to the “same old, same old”. In other words, don’t restrict yourself too much!
- Don’t give away too much, too soon. I’m aware this might sound a bit strange, but what I mean is, don’t fall into new friendships straightaway just because they happen to share your language – you might find you get taken advantage of.
We have made some truly wonderful friends since being here, and I’m sure they’ll continue to be so! Unfortunately there have been a few who turned out to be real stinkers, wanting to cause trouble and spreading malicious lies and gossip about others. You really have to wonder what sort of miserable lives these people lead that makes them feel so vindictive towards others. They must be really unhappy in themselves, that they can’t bear to see other people being happy. A word of advice to those who fall into this category – you won’t be any happier by trying to bring others down, if you don’t like something in your own life then change it instead of letting your jealousy take over your life.
I have learned to just let these people go – I’m too old to deal with any childish nonsense, I just don’t engage with them. I don’t just ignore them, I give them the gift of invisibility, that’s much more efffective.
I might tell you more about one or two of these types in a further issue….watch this space!
Recently I have started a wee “Lunch Bunch” ladies’ group, We meet every month for lunch, and take it in turns to decide where and when to get together.
I have been part of a few different but similar groups since I came to Spain but one by one I left them, mainly due to the bitching and backbiting that crept into things. So, a group of us decided it would be good to have a smaller group of people who had no agenda other than enjoying each others’ company and enjoying a good lunch out. So far, so good! These women really are the loveliest bunch, you know that if you leave the table for any reason they’re only going to say nice things about you! Just as it should be, too. The other great thing is that because we take it in turns to decide a venue we are all getting to try places some of us haven’t been to before. It’s just great to go out for an afternoon of laughter and chat, and good food, wine and craic!
Crikey it’s all about the food, again! Anyhow, we’re off again for lunch soon at one of our favourite places, Frank’s Restaurant, in Torrevieja. They do the most amazing hot stone grills, specialising in steaks, ribs, lamb and lobster.
They also provide an excellent menu del dia, for only €12.95, which is phenomenal value. The food is great which is what keeps us coming back. We don’t care if it takes us nearly an hour to get there, we’re retired, have car, can travel, and like to go where the great food is! Have a look at their website, https://franksrestaurante.com/en/ and prepare to be very, very jealous!
One last thing before I sign off – the husband has just had a little basal cell carcinoma removed at our local hospital, all done successfully, thank goodness. An occupational hazard of living in a very sunny country, and a reminder to NOT cook yourself in the sun, no matter how tempting! I think as we age our skin thins, maybe making us more susceptible to things like skin cancers, so it’s a good early warning sign to take more care!
That’s about it for now, we’re off to settle down to paperwor, to look at what to do with the husband’s pensions held in the UK, as well as his state pension which will be coming up soon. It will be a bit of a boost to our disposable income… could someone please whisper to him that my shoe size is 6/39?!
Till next time, be good!
My life in Spain 