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.