First Month

One Month today & living in Spain has just got better & better.

We now have made this lovely little house our own with the pictures that make it ours up & the dogs that make it home even more ours.

We have been exploring the area & the shops & have found out just how friendly the Spanish can be, especially if you try to speak Spanish, still a bit Spanglish at the moment, but getting better & more about this later.

We can now watch English TV on the internet & some Spanish channels show American TV shows as well, but they have very interesting ideas about advert breaks. American shows have very clear breaks in them where the broadcasters can insert adverts, Spanish TV ignores these completely & inserts adverts almost like an afterthought, sometimes in the middle of a sentance & once in the middle of a word, very odd.

One channel in particular at least shows a card when it has an advert break, telling you how long the break is going to be, 4 mins, 6mins, 7 mins and at least once, 12 mins ! so you can go for a comfort break or make tea or even an evening meal during the break, very useful.

The good news on this subject is that Mrs D's favourite premium channel, Netflix is going to be available in Spain from the 20th of October so she will be able to overdose on the next screening of Orange is the New Black when it comes on again, Oh Goody.

Whilst I was in England I was a very active member of Castle Donington Library which is a

remarkable place with amazing dedicated staff, all of whom are being very badly treated by the Council (North West Leicestershire if you are interested) and being made redundant, probably early next year & replaced by volunteers, who will have to be trained  presumably by the staff being kicked out, shame on you NWLDC.

Here I decided to visit the library here in town, to see what was what & what an amazing reception. A lovely lady called Carmen greeted us & immediately apologised for her poor English, come on, we live in deep Andalucia, I don't expect anyone to speak English, hers was a darn sight better than my Spanish. On production of our passports, she authorised library cards & mentioned that there were Spanish conversational groups meeting at the library all the time & would we be interested in joining one?

We of course said yes & I attended the first one Wednesday lunchtime. A small group as no other English turned up, so was just the four of us, 2 Students, a young council volunteer & me. We spent an hour talking about ourselves & why they wanted to improve (yes improve) their English & why we had decided on Spain. On my side I just kept pointing out the window at the beautiful blue sky as a darn good reason. Did I mention that all this was free? One other thing, can you imagine in a Deep Andalucian town, that the library looks like this?

Mrs D couldn't make this meeting as a friend who is also moving here had her dogs arriving at the appointed time & as these are 3 massive St Bernards & are temporarily staying with us until her house completes (which it has done today) Someone had to stay & look after these, her toy poodle (Holly who used to be ours) and our own five & stop any issues.

Already I think I know more people here than I ever met in 10 years in Castle Donington, everyone

says Buena or Hola as you pass them in the street and everyone seems to like our woofs. Now it's been 4 weeks we have stopped thinking the holiday is nearly over & realisation is setting in that we have to put up with the blue sky, the sunshine the friendly people, the cheap drinks & food for the rest of our lives, how are we ever going to cope? Oh well, It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

First Fortnight

So, Mrs D & I have been here a fortnight now & settling in just great.

Sorting out the local shops & bars, particularly the bars, There is a great one in what we call Cherry Square & the locals call something else in Spanish of course. Its called Casino & wow, the tapas are amazing, the toilets, well If I said you could eat your food there it would not be an exaggeration.We popped down on sunday for a lateish breakfast with some friends who also live in the town &, well to be fair, we had quite a few drinks & a new & brilliant tapas with each round. We spent about 5 hours there in total & watched a mini fiesta, how better to spend a sunday but sitting in the sun & enjoying the fun.
The town itself is just great, we have an amazing selection of shops from Dia which is cheap & cheerful The Mercadona, not much dearer to the Chinese Shops where you can buy so much stuff, the staff help you get it home & always get a wee gift when you pay, might just be a lighter or a pretty bracelet but wow, what amazing service.
We have been hanging our pictures from home today so the house is looking more "us" now, been walking the dogs but had a wee accident whilst walking Bertie a couple of days ago, we met a German Shepherd cross, no collar or lead but she was outside her own house, they did a few mins of "butt sniffing" & then Luna (that was her name), decided Bertie was a threat & a bit of a fight started, I grabbed Bertie & coz I'm old & decrepit, immediately fell over against the house, bashing my forehead (not enough hair to cushion the blow) leaving a blood mark on the good ladies wall. Luckily, No dog was hurt in the making of this adventure, but I look a right sight & No, I'm not showing a piccy of this but I do wear a hat a little more often. Any way, watching the most amazing sunsets so adios from us until the next time.

First Days

Well first the dogs were off with strangers in a big van, Bertie on his own & the littlies together. Then another van arrived to take the spa tub & a big blind, another van from a charity came to take our excess furniture & suddenly the house seemed empty.


Early Monday morning my wife got on a plane & then I was totally alone.

What is going on? you ask, well, I have taken a slightly earlier retirement than originally planned & decided that we couldn't face another British 9 month winter & are moving, lock stock & 5 smoking dogs to Spain.
Not too easy a decision as neither of us are much beyond ordering a cerveza or cafe con leche grande level in speaking the language (for some reason I keep reverting to French!)
I closed up the office, then sold it, sold the car & then the fun started, fortunately Mrs D had already packed a lot in boxes so when the van arrived on Wednesday night I was ready, thursday didn't quite go to plan, the van had a flat tyre so off to Loughborough & discovered two needed replacing, then back to the house & loading commenced.
What a lot of decisions had to be made as the van wasn't quite big enough, had to leave a tool box, some air coolers & a couple of gas heaters but managed to keep one cooler, a brand new one.

Worst of all was a box marked "Shoes & shit", I pulled out the vacuum packed clothes & squeezed those in but forgot the shoes, Mrs D still hasn't forgiven me for that yet, not sure she ever will.

What can I say about the 1400 mile journey?  Well in the UK it rained, but we did see some beautiful rainbows. We got to the ferry a bit early & managed to change the time so were able to go that night instead of waiting until 5 O'Clock the next day which was nice, got into France in the early hours & bought Diesel (goodness it's cheaper over here, less than a euro per litre !) & then we were off, stopped for breakfast at a service station & lunch at a picnic area, very nice.
We used the autoroutes which was fast but a bit pricey & I managed to get shouted at when I drove through a low headroom booth, totally forgetting all the stuff on the roof rack & broke some signs, whoops, fortunately the barrier came up & I drove off, wasn't chased so must of been OK.

Finally got to Spain & oddly enough it was overcast, I turned to my co-driver & told him to go back, I didn't come to Spain for weather like this !
Again we used the fast routes & drove right through the centre of Madrid, on a Motorway, very cool.
Now we were tooling along at a great pace & then disaster struck, A blowout on a rear tyre (we had replaced both front ones in the UK), The spare turned out to be a 165/13 when all the others were 175/13 so the van didn't handle quite so well after that.

We finally got to the house in Andalucia in the early hours and at that point we had both been up for over 40 hours & the last few miles (should I now say kilometers?) we were hallucinating a bit & singing (badly) to each other to stay awake & alert.
But now we are here, unloaded the van next day (you can't really park for long outside the house, it's a village house on a very narrow street) & just dumped everything in the two spare bedrooms.
A week in and we have internet so no longer need the dongle, TV (Filmon.tv is brilliant) and with the pictures up, it's now looking more like our home. The dogs are settling in well & I will continue this as the New life progresses.