This time four years ago...

This is the time of year when we think back to our journey here. So far we've been remembering sleeping in our van in temperatures of minus 5, getting lost in north Spain and feeling a little shell-shocked on arrival. I'd like to do the journey again one day, we weren't really able to fully enjoy the trip through France and Spain - as there were so many unanswered questions. Not least the fact that when we departed on Boxing Day we hadn't at that point signed anything on the house and were operating entirely on a verbal agreement.

We're now entering into our 5^th year. This is the first time since we've been here that we really have a plan. When we moved here, we really could be doing anything now. We could have been doing bed and breakfast, working in supermarkets, making and selling crafts, Ian doing design work on the coasts.... As it now transpires, a combination of our websites and writing will give us an income and we won't need to worry about doing bed and breakfast – although the option is there if we need to do something else in the future.

It will be nice to have a year of relative normality with a plan that we can work to. I think that part of the reason why our move here has been a success is because we didn't have a plan, this meant that we were able to take advantage of opportunities as they have arose. However, it is nice to know what we are working towards. All we need to do is to get a kitchen installed and we'll be close to leading a normal life . I bet four years ago we didn't think we'd have spent over a year having to go outside to peel potatoes or drain saucepans...

Christmas

Well, we had a very good Christmas – a wet one – but nice all the same. In fact it has rained solidly for about 2 weeks now. The funny thing is, it is actually warm. Today it is already 15 degrees outside – it is warmer outside than inside!

We had a lot of fun over Christmas, planning to cover the top of our bedside tables with polymer clay and listening to an audiobook. We went for a walk on Sunday which was the only nice day. We also did some jewelry making. I bought us a couple of jewelry source books for Christmas, one on rings, one on bracelets. I know that they contain some 'inspirational' pieces which are not the sort that would be worn to the supermarket. However they also contain lots of more wearable pieces. Sadly, instead of thinking small sparkly diamonds, Ian was motivated to look for a lump of Extremaduran quartz to set in a ring. Of course, the highlight of Christmas was in no doubt my ukulele. Strangely, Ian seemed to be less excited than me.

Coming back from our walk we saw a few people walking out of the village. We greeted them all with a cheery greeting. With a beaming smile we shouted out hello to the mayor, and various other village elders. More and more of them were coming towards us, which we did think was a little odd – we also commented that they didn't seem particularly pleased to see us and our novelty hats and gormless smiles and bellowing greetings. This, as we found out about two seconds later, was because we had managed to get ourselves caught up in a funeral procession. It was a little embarrassing and I just really wish that things like that wouldn't happen to us. We did take our novelty hats off, and I do remember when we were going to Dad's funeral, that that simple touch by strangers meant quite a lot.

We then went back to the house the long way round to avoid getting caught up in any more processions. We saw some storks circling the Church so it looks like they are coming back now.

The doors are nearly finished – in fact Antonio is just putting a sealer around the last frame as I type. What a big job! As I have said before, I am so glad that we changed our mind with the doors and got bigger frames. They certainly look imposing. Trouble is, we are now spending half of our time opening doors to let animals out and half of our time opening doors to let them back in again!

Odd

I think Antonio thinks we're a little odd. Several reasons, one being the fact that Ian emails me photos of the doors. Antonio assumed I was away, and was a little bemused to find that I was only in my workshop...

Talking of my workshop, we are going to have to make a decision what to do about the roof. It is still leaking, and after heavy rain there is standing water in my workshop. We've used our floor cleaner to suck up the water and this morning there was three buckets worth of water.

There was a big storm last night, first time we've had thunder and lightening for ages. Poor Sam was really scared. His knees knock when he's scared which makes him look like a cartoon dog.

Still really pleased with how the internal doors are looking although I have realized that I can get shut in the ensuite bathroom. Once we have the door handles fitted it will be fine, but until then I need to remember not to shut the door firmly behind me...

The Doors are Back

Antonio has just popped in to return the doors that he removed last week. However they're looking a bit different.

Kate hasn't seen them as she's in her workshop with the cats and the dogs so this post is as much for her to see the doors as anyone else.

I'm really pleased. I think they look better than I ever imagined. We've asked Antonio to price up two different designs for the glass panels, but we can also get our own designs produced if we wish, so I think we may have to have a think.

Kate already has a vision of doors topped with Tiffany sheep gamboling through a Tiffany field. I'm rather looking forward to her expressing her creative vision to Antonio.

I Survived!

We survived this morning's craft session with 4 eight year olds. They made chocolate things (they were supposed to be truffles but looked more like something a reindeer might have left behind), a Christmas monster, a clothes peg angel, Christmas card and a cone angel.

I have never seen so much glitter.

I think they enjoyed themselves. Ian was Mr Grumpy combined with Scrooge, hiding in the back room. Although he was dragged out of hiding to put the hairdryer on the glitter and glue soaked Christmas monsters to try to dry them out, which signaled a high level of giggling. I understand enough 8-year old level Spanish to know that they were amused by Ian having a hairdryer.

There was a lot of singing. One of the girls is a very good singer and the rest were enthusiastic. I played Christmas songs in English first, that I found on the Internet, but then played the rest in Spanish which gave them no end of opportunity for more singing.

The left us with boxes full of glue and glitter sodden angels and monsters. I went for a lie down in a darkened room and Ian was left muttering darkly about Christmas, children and glitter.

New Mirror At Last

I see Kate has mentioned that we finally found a mirror for the shower room. We've been looking everywhere that we've been for the past 6 months or so but hadn't seen anything that seemed suitable. It needed to fit in with the silver/grey colour scheme and not be too large as there's not a huge amount of space over the sink, with the light and power socket.

It was a bit of a surprise to find one a Chinese Hyper Bazaar - our new favourite shop. Kate is a big believer in fate and so perhaps it had a hand in us seeing Mike parking his car yesterday. She certainly believes that the blame for June 10 2000 lies squarely with fate. Not sure what happened that day - guess she had a bad day on the horses!

More Doors

We've had our fire going in the back room now for 4 days, and are wondering how we ever lived without it. We had our new doors in situ for about 2 hours and wondered how we ever lived without them. Shame the new doors were so briefly in place - we're back to being doorless.

The new doors have now gone away to be varnished. The picture above is the doors to the new kitchen, as you can see they are fitted but not varnished, he's obviously done all the planing etc before he can finish the doors. It has been such a big job, Antonio has worked on every one separately and they are looking great. Our new door handle locks won't fit, so we've had to sort out new ones (just the lock part, not the actual handles), but that wasn't too much of a problem. We're now thinking about what sort of glass we want in the panel above the doors.

Today we went to the bank to get our account put in joint names. This, actually, was nowhere near as traumatic as I was expecting - the main problem being that my sole account was linked to my passport and we need to link it to our NIE cards. Anyway, it is all sorted and we're both responsible for each other's debts. Oh hooray!

I also went to the optician. That, too, was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. No doubt due to the fact that they gave me the illiterate test - despite the fact I'd been practicing my Spanish alphabet. I am now the proud owner of reading glasses. I will be interested to see how they compare with the 1.99 magnifying glasses that I bought from the Woolworths-alike in Dorchester. It was all very quick, no messing around with glycoma tests or that sort of thing. Can you see - yes or no - here's your glasses - goodbye. Actually, it was not like that, at least the last bit wasn't. I was overwhelmed with frame options and came out with a pair of pink and grey glasses, with frames, including the test for 70 euros, which we didn't think was too bad.

But this wasn't all. We were really on a roll. We went to Zafra to the wood shop to look at door handles for the bathrooms, we then popped to Carrefour, however on the way we saw Mike's car outside a large Chinese warehouse which we never knew existed. We stopped to say hello - and found a tremendous bazaar. We bought essentials such as a pair of pink shoe laces and some glitter, and Ian and Mike wandered off and found a perfect mirror for the shower room. I obviously don't have a pic yet, however it is perfect. We knew eventually we'd find one, however didn't expect it to be in a Chinese warehouse on the outskirts of Zafra that we didn't know existed.

So, we're enjoying a bit of R&R before the carpenter comes back on Monday. I really know that we shouldn't moan - and I do try not to. However I am really happy when we don't have carpenters here at 8 in the morning through to 8 at night, except for a late breakfast and siesta. Hopefully by the end of next week we'll have our internal doors fitted, be able to keep the house warm and start planning for the new year....

Interesting Fact #1

Since we've stepped up our activity on FreeNeedle etc, we've been looking more closely at what makes things tick.

Guess what the second most popular thing is that people search for on FreeNeedle at the moment...?? It's 'owl'. So apparently owls must be this season's must-have item.

Shrivelled Olives

Last Sunday we went for a walk and commented on some olive trees that we saw with tiny olives. We were musing as to whether these were a special type of olive. However it transpires that they are normal olives but the lack of rain has stopped them growing properly.

While it has rained this autumn, it's really not done so very much. We had a downpour a couple of months ago when we were watching the roof of my work shop, but nothing really since. We had some red strawberries a couple of weeks ago from our strawberry plant, however I don't know if this is normal or a reflection of the odd weather.

Oh yes, broody hen is no longer broody. The drastic action of shutting her out of her nest seemed to work. She forgot almost straight away to be broody! In the spring we'll let them hatch chicks, but it really wouldn't be fair to let them have chicks now.

Vigilante

We've had the pleasure, over the last couple of nights, of children pushing our front door. Because we have no internal doors, not even the temporary ones to which we had grown most fond, it is very easy to get the dogs over-excited by a banging at the door. Which a little band of youngsters have been finding most amusing. We've tried ignoring it, and then Ian tried waiting inside and flinging the door open, which they have taken to be even more exciting. Unfortunately they started throwing stones, which damaged the front door. Although it's only a chip, we weren't very happy. Ian stood upstairs with his camera - however we both decided that him stood on the balcony in the darkness was getting decidedly weird - and the danger is it might get considered as being more of a game and we could end up with them thinking that we were joining in the fun. So yesterday Ian went down to the Town Hall to see Joe the policeman and have a word with him. The children are very young, maybe 7 or 8 and we don't think that they even know that they damaged the door and they had just worked themselves into a frenzy.

Anyway, Ian went down and stressed that we were generally tolerant and happy-go-lucky (ha) however we wanted to stop this from escalating from being a harmless game to being vandalism. Ian originally planned taking the approach where he was going to say how understood how fun this can be for children and that he too, played the game when he was younger (I blame the parents), however it was beginning to sound way too much like a confession and I am not certain that 'Knock Out Ginger' is an internationally known game. It sounded as though he was turning himself in for knocking out Ginger. We have learned now that keeping things simple is always best.

I am sure that it will soon die down and when we can actually stop the dogs from charging up and down things will be easier. We did have a temporary 'barrier' across last year, however I've often wondered if Billy got caught between that and the wall, so we've not put anything in this time. Hey ho - the joys of village life.

Next Saturday I am having a Christmas craft session with my English class. I'm not quite sure how it happened! I just need to think of something to do with them now. Yet again, I had to clarify that the craft session was starting at 10.30 in the morning and not the 10.30 in the evening!

Did I mention that I now have a fourth in my class? They must feel that they are getting something from the classes! I find it alarming at how hilarious they find some things. In fact, sometimes they laugh so much that I have to go out of the room and make sure that I haven't suddenly grown another head. They love drawing monsters and I believe that if they had an exam in monster drawing they'd all be set to get top marks. But all I have to do is say 'draw a monster with 3 eyes wearing sunglasses and they are almost on the floor with laughter. Strange.

Antonio is here working on the doors now. As I mentioned, he works the strange Spanish day of breaking in the afternoon and then coming back in the evening. He says that he will be finished in a couple of weeks. It is such a big job as with every door frame being slightly different, he is making each one bespoke. He's been doing the planing of the doors today and he says he'll be hanging them on Monday. They are not treated at the moment, though, so not sure when or how he'll be doing that. Really looking forward to the doors being finished. We can really then start getting organized....

More Door Frames

I told you we were fixated with our door frames. Here's a picture with Ian giving a sense of proportion to the door frame. Look at Tib's eyes in the background - you can see why cat's eyes used to mark roads got their name!

Goodbye Mr Chipboard Doors

As Kate has mentioned, Antonio has been fitting the frames for our internal doors. It's reassuring to see that he seems to be attempting to finish the job with an urgency that he never applied to starting the job.

Anyway here's a picture.

It doesn't really get across the sense of scale which is the aspect of them that we are finding most striking - they really do look huge.

If I spoke Chicken

...then I think my ears would be burning. Needless to say that our broody hen took great exception to being taken out of her nest and locked out of the barn. While I don't speak Chicken, the gist of what she was saying was blatantly clear. She'll be locked out later today too, so it will be interesting to see if she is still so grumpy.

The carpenter is fitting our internal doors now - we are delighted so far. I keep finding Ian stood looking at door frames. How that takes me back, it is several months now since we've found ourselves gazing at awe at new developments in the house. I am glad that we changed our thoughts about the doors and 'traded up'. We'll take some pics later.

The carpenter works different hours to Manuel. Manuel used to start at 8.30 and work through to 4ish. The carpenter works more traditional hours and is starting at 8.30, breaking for siesta at 2 and starting again at 5 and working through to 8/8.30 ish. It shouldn't take him long to finish the work.

Broody Hen - Drastic Action

We're going to have to take drastic action with our broody hen. She has been broody for several weeks now, and it looks like she just thinks she is hatching invisible elephant eggs. From what I've read we need to stop her from feeling comfy and not give her the chance to find a nice warm dark corner to nest. We'll try locking her out of the chicken shed during the day and see what happens.

Spot's eggs are coming less frequently now, however it is quite surprising that she's laying at all this time of year.

Hi honey, I'm home!

After my flying visit to the UK, I got back home safely Sunday afternoon after another smooth journey. Once more my thanks to Jim for getting up at 4.45am to get me to the airport.

On the flight over to Malaga I was sat beside Geoff the homeopathic sheep farmer from Devon. He said he found it near impossible to sleep on a plane, but after 20 minutes of stimulating conversation with me, he gave it a bloody good go!

At Malaga the route through to the station doesn't seem to have changed too much since last December, but unlike last year, when I ended up as part of a group of about a dozen wandering around in circles, I found my way through easily the first time. As ever there was the obligatory group of inept looking brits stood around the ticket machine pressing random buttons - I was obviously in my element.

For once I did make a positive contribution and the first pair of tickets were dispensed to a couple also heading for Córdoba as the train arrived. Fortunately the next few tickets were quickly dispensed and myself and a couple off on a walking holiday just managed to get on before the train departed. It wouldn't have affected my journey had I missed it, but it did mean that I didn't need to spend the next 30 minutes exposed to the elements. The rain in Bristol appeared to have followed me all the way to Malaga.

By coincidence, the ticket I bought for the trip to Córdoba placed me next to the couple I met at the ticket machine at the airport. They were a teacher and teaching assistant from Swindon on their way to make arrangements for an exchange trip for their school. Last year I spent the trip to Córdoba chatting to Jonny, who I'm convinced was a Harry Enfield character bought to life - I've still got his phone number in case I should ever be passing, but haven't had the need to call yet.

I had a stroke of luck at Córdoba, just managing to catch the 1pm bus, rather than the 3.30pm departure I had been expecting. We had torrential rain after coming over the hills outside Córdoba, but fortunately the typically Spanish bus driver adjusted his driving style to cope with the dangerous conditions - he accelerated to about to twice the normal speed to get out of the rain as quickly as possible. He must have been quite an inspiration to those other drivers as he appeared from nowhere in their rear view mirrors.

All told I was home a couple of hours earlier than expected.