A new life in Andalucía

We still haven´t found what we´re looking for

We´re off to the UK for a week on Monday to visit friends and when we get back to Spain, we will have been here in the Málaga province for nearly three months, so almost half-time. 

As I have mentioned before, we really do like this area: the countryside is beautiful, the white-washed villages are sizeable but they haven´t lost their charm and the access to Málaga city centre, the airport, the coast, Ronda - to list but a few places – is simply excellent.  We´ve met some very nice people - and dogs - and we are greatly enjoying the peace and quiet in and around the finca we have rented. 

Can you feel a ´but` coming on?  You´re right, there is a ´but` and it´s quite a big one too: despite the general slump in the housing market (which we selfishly welcome of course), this region – mostly due to the advantages I have described above – is still very expensive as far as property is concerned and our budget does not seem to be compatible with our list of `must haves´ with regards to our future home.  We have looked at a few houses but they are either out of our price range or - if we can afford them – not what we are looking for. (Somehow, we cannot really see ourselves living in a 50m² glorified tool shed plonked on a plot of land which looks like a desert, not a mature tree or shrub in sight.) 

House prices are all over the place at the moment.  Apparently estate agents in Spain don´t value houses - the owners simply state what they want for their property (this, as you can imagine, is often totally unrealistic and sometimes downright greedy).  If the house doesn´t sell subsequently, the asking price simply gets reduced, at times drastically, depending on how desperate the owner is to sell.  However, the pound is so weak compared to the euro at the moment that a reduction in price still does not mean you are getting yourself a bargain.  (Over the last year we have seen the exchange rate drop from 1.5 to a mere 1.2).  Besides, here in the Sierra de las Nieves not many people are indeed anxious to sell their house.  A lot of the properties around here are owned by comfortably off northern Europeans who still reside in their home country for most of the year and therefore only use their finca as a holiday home.  A lot of them have snapped up their plot for next to nothing around ten years ago and had their house built relatively cheaply.  Now, patting themselves on the back to have proceeded before the market went absolutely crazy, they are the proud owners of a nice finca which even now would probably fetch ten times more than they paid for it and – of course – they are in no hurry to sell. 

So, unless a miracle happens (we might decide we want to live in a village house or a shed after all or somebody might feel really sorry for us and reduce their sales price by at least 50%, or who knows, we might even win the lottery – were we to start buying a ticket), it is decidedly looking as if we´ll start exploring again when we get back from our little holiday in England.  For our next venture, we are thinking of having a sniff around the Córdoba area where you still seem to get quite a bit of house and land for your hard-earned money.  Ah well, it´ll be another chapter in the book, I suppose.

Maybe we should just buy ourselves a mobile home and be done with it?

The last straw

Friday is market day in the village.  We usually get there around midmorning, buy our fruit and veg for the week ahead and then pop into the fishmonger´s and the butcher´s.  Laden with heavy shopping bags, we like to have a coffee or a soft drink in a bar before eventually returning home.

There are several bars in the village and we have recently started visiting an establishment, run by Brits and therefore known as the ´British bar`.  The handy thing about the place is that they have a little library with English books and as Ian is an avid reader of thrillers, he borrows a couple to see him through the week.  You can also buy PG tips, brown sauce and other ´essentials` to satisfy any cravings you may have for UK delicacies.  Furthermore, they sell free range eggs (€1.50 for a dozen) which are much tastier than the supermarket equivalent.  The only fly in the ointment is the appalling attitude of some of the people who run the bar.  Ian has often moaned about one particular guy (whom I shall name Grumpy) whose lack of friendliness could even be described as plain rudeness.  He is one of these people who think they are doing you a big favour, allowing you to be their customer and he is the only person ever who has managed to serve Ian and take his money without uttering one single word.  “Hello, what can I get you?  A cortado (coffee with just a dash of milk)?  Certainly, sir.  Coming up straight away.  Do sit down, I´ll bring it over to the table.”  Sentences like that don´t feature in Grumpy´s linguistic repertoire.  So until now we´ve simply put up with the atrocious service, mainly because of the convenience of getting our hands on some reading material.  Until yesterday that is when Grumpy simply went one step too far. 

We entered the bar just before 12 o´ clock and – as usual – had to greet him before – surprise, surprise – he actually mumbled “Mornin´” back to us.  (Without a smile of course.  Steady now – wouldn´t want to overdo it, would we?)  We ordered our drinks at the bar and took them over to a table.  A few minutes later a friend came in, invited us to a coffee and again, we ordered at the bar and carried the coffees over to the table ourselves.  When we eventually got up to leave, Grumpy dragged himself over to our vacated table, grabbed some of the cups and glasses and muttered darkly but very audibly: “Ok, I´ll clear up your mess then.”  I was gobsmacked - for a few seconds – after which I seriously had to bite my tongue so as not to cause a scene.  (I had even helpfully stacked up all cups and saucers, put the spoons in one cup and separated used from unused sugar sachets – yeah, well – don´t ask, that´s me!)  Sure thing, you are entitled to get annoyed if somebody at home doesn´t clear up after themselves but if you run a bar, please correct me if I´m wrong here, isn´t clearing tables part of the job???  We often do take our empties back to the bar, actually, to save the person serving a bit of work; however, we don´t tend to be quite so cooperative when dealing with such a miseryguts.

Well, the camel´s got the hump now and its back is well and truly broken.  ¡Basta ya!  Enough is enough.  Bye bye British bar.  Incidentally our friend has suggested we should give the bar another try and said it might grow on us (like mould) but we´re not convinced.  We´ll be joining the village library next week and we´ll stock up on English goodies when we´re in the UK next month.  As for the eggs (not good for your cholesterol level anyway), you never know, I might be able to persuade Ian to have a couple of chickens of our own.  Then again – pigs might fly and, even more unlikely, Grumpy might one day realise that he is in fact running a hospitality and not a hostility business.

Thank you for visiting my blog.  I hope you´ve enjoyed it.  Do look in again sometime soon.  Goodbye and have a nice day ;)

The best things in life are free

The recent fuel crisis has not gone entirely unnoticed here in our little corner of the world but it has certainly not been quite as drastic as we might have expected at first.

Yesterday, we went to the little filling station which is housed within the olive oil cooperative on the outskirts of the village and didn´t even have to queue to get our hands on the diesel pump.  What we have noticed though is that since our arrival in Spain last September, fuel prices have increased tremendously.  We now pay almost €1.30 for a litre of diesel compared to just over €1 when we first got here.  I dread to think what prices are like in the UK at the moment.

The traders had all made it to yesterday´s market in the village square, their range of products almost as varied as always, with the slight exception of the non-availability of lettuces and oranges.  We managed to get the latter in the local supermarket where most shelves were fully stocked apart from the fresh meat and bread counters which looked very bare indeed.

Earlier in the week, not too sure exactly when we would be able to fill up the car again, we deliberately avoided its use and walked into the village, giving the X-Trail a few days off.

One morning, we set off for a walk in the surrounding countryside.  The rolling hills were dotted with wild flowers, the air was clean and fresh and the only sound you could hear was birdsong and the occasional bark of a dog.  Chica, the spaniel, came along and had no end of fun, chasing after the stones we threw for her.  We arrived back home two hours later with an orange which had fallen off a tree and conveniently rolled onto the edge of our path.  We munched it that same morning and it was by far the sweetest and juiciest orange I have ever tasted – and the cheapest too.  So much enjoyment and not a single centimo was spent.  How comforting to know that there are still pleasant things to do which nobody in this materialistic society in which we live can spoil for others.

Happiness - for some - is simply having a lifetime supply of stones.

Yer can tek a man aht o´ Yorkshire ...

My father-in-law, who turned 85 earlier this year, has been out to visit us twice since we moved to Spain.  The first time, last Christmas, Ian went back to the UK, so he could accompany his father on his flight over which happened to be the first time the old boy had been on board a plane for quite some time.  To be able to visit us, Alan had to apply for a new passport, as his old one had long expired.  He was charged 66 pounds for the privilege but has since been ´generously` refunded in full for this expense (why he couldn´t have simply been given a new passport free of charge beggars belief).  When Alan and Ian flew out from Stansted to Almería on a cold and wet December morning, Alan´s hand luggage was kept to one side and examined more thoroughly after having been X-rayed.  Unfortunately, it had slipped my husband´s mind to warn his father not to carry any sharp objects in his cabin luggage but even Ian was amazed when the security officer unearthed not one, not two but three pairs of scissors from the depths of Alan´s holdall.  When questioned why he was travelling with three pairs of scissors, the old man replied: “Well, everytime I wondered if I´d packed a pair, I couldn´t be bothered to rummage through my bag to check, so instead, I simply threw in another one.”  The airport official saw the funny side of it and as Alan didn´t exactly look like somebody about to highjack a plane, he even let him select and keep his favourite pair. 

Despite our warnings, Alan arrived with a suitcase full of trendy summer clothes (3/4 trousers, shorts, T-shirts … you name it).  Unfortunately, he had totally underestimated just how cold it gets high up in the mountains in winter time, so Ian ended up lending him a warm jacket and we persuaded him to leave all his clothes with us to save him having to carry a heavy suitcase when coming out for his summer stint.

On both of Alan´s visits, we left his return flight open, so he could decide for himself when he wanted to escape back to the comforts of his own home.  Before he came out the first time, Ian asked him during a telephone conversation roughly how long he envisaged staying.  “Well, about eight weeks I think”, came the answer which caused Ian even more palpitations.  The old man had obviously thought if he were to make such a long trip, he´d better ensure it was worth all the hassle.  It turned out that on both visits he was more than ready to head back to the Yorkshire hills after about a fortnight.  “It´s not that I´m not enjoying myself here, far from it…”, he was eager to point out, “… but I do miss my independence.”  You can´t really argue with that.  Back in South Yorkshire, he catches a bus into town everyday, buys a newspaper, does a bit of shopping, goes to the pub for a couple of pints and a meal, tootles off back home for a siesta after which he watches Sky Sports, whereas here in Spain, he totally relies on us to take him places.  

Despite his advanced years, Alan is still very much in possession of his faculties; he really does play a mean game of dominoes.  He loves his food (as long as it involves some form of potatoes and lashings of gravy) and drink but never over-indulges: “I know when I´ve had enough.” is his motto which he often quotes if offered another glass of wine or a pudding after his lunch.  He´s not as agile as he used to be and he is now also quite hard of hearing.  When I asked him what happened to his hearing aid, he shrugged his shoulders (this was after making me repeat the question of course) and informed me it had one day fallen victim to the washing machine.  The fact that he can´t hear very well is probably more of a nuisance for us (having to say everything twice) than for him.  Last Friday we went into the village and I explained to my father-in-law that we´d be going to the market to buy some fresh fruit and veg.  “Great”, he smiled.  When we eventually reached the village square where the market was in full swing, Alan looked up, stopped in his tracks and turned to me with a surprised look on his face: “Oh, it´s market day today, is it?” 

Throughout his stay he´s amused us with a few antics like for example when he got sunburnt hands and arms despite having put on sun cream, as he claimed.  The mystery was eventually revealed – the alleged sun lotion he´d been applying, turned out to be hand cream.  (Well, the tube had Spanish writing on it, so how was he supposed to know?)  I had to laugh when he mistook the fabric laundry basket in his bedroom for a gigantic waste paper bin and started filling it with used paper handkerchiefs.  (Easily done, especially as the plastic bin in the bathroom was a bit on the small side.)  On his last day he managed to lock himself out on the back patio but instead of making himself heard, he simply sat down and read his book until we found and freed him.

So, after two weeks and a bit we took him back to Málaga airport on Tuesday where we saw him being given a tray to put in all his loose change and other paraphenalia from the innards of his trouser pockets. (I wasn´t really that surprised when a red tooth brush made an appearance.)  Clutching the tray in one hand and his holdall firmly in the other, Alan walked through the metal detector doorway only to be sent straight back and asked to put the tray and bag through the X-ray machine.  He seemed to be confused that he was going one way, whilst his belongings went another.  (Just as well he didn´t decide to lie down on the conveyor belt to get himself X-rayed together with his luggage.)  He eventually disappeared from view, ascending the escalator heading towards the airport shopping area, giving us a royal wave.  To our great relief, he phoned us some hours later to say he´d arrived back home safe and sound.  “Got me jacket on…”, he informed me, “… about to go to´t chippy.”  “Will they be open yet?”, I enquired.  “Well yes, they open at five”, he retorted.  A quick glance at my watch (it was half past five) soon confirmed that my father-in-law was still tuned into Spanish time and had forgotten to set his watch back an hour.  He would have had a long wait for his grub – bless him. 

Alan and Ian in Málaga