View from a Jeweller

I entered the Jewellery Trade in 1972 & worked for an amazing professional for almost 15 years before starting to specialise in Valuation & insurance work, finally retiring in 2015.

In all that time I never felt ashamed of my trade, through Gold booms & crashes, silver booms & crashes & The Blood Diamond debacle.

That is until 2016. On my web page & Business Facebook page I never indulged in Political posts or Religious posts as my clients political, Religious & yes, even sexual orientation was their business & nothing to do with me or our love of beautiful things.

During my long career as a Valuer, both Corporate & Independent I used many sources for my information, even the overly complicated Rapaport list, I even listened to Martin Rapaport at a conference a few years ago & was impressed with his enthusiasm & energy.

Today however I am disgusted by the reports coming out that a Victory for a Racist, Sexist, Homophobic, overgrown child in the US elections is "good" for the jewellery trade. These reports are coming from none other than Martin Rapaprt himself, and I quote, "The diamond and jewellery trade will benefit as the new policies create a more prosperous middle class and greater numbers of wealthy consumers. Global uncertainty will also increase demand for investment diamonds as a store of wealth"

How any anyone can crow that this victory is anything but a nightmare for the world but is great for the diamond trade is disgraceful & disingenuous.

Rant Over.

Hello & Soon Please Goodbye 2016

I have to start this blog on a positive note, I have had a great year personally, just over 12 months ago my wife & I moved, lock stock & dogs to Spain, to a fantastic little town in the middle of Andalucia in Jaen district & it has been a life changing occurrence.
The weather has been amazing, the people have been welcoming & we are slowly but surely learning Spanish (or as we call it Spanglish)
Why did we move? Well Mrs D has had Breast Cancer, a very aggressive form but caught early & thank goodness, operated on very quickly thanks to the wonderful people at Derby Royal Infirmary, However the operations, Radio Therapy & Chemo Therapy left her very weak & unable to work so I started my own business from home so I could be on hand for her all the time. That's good right, well it was until the New Rules decided that as I worked more than 24 hours a week, she was not entitled to any benefits.
Now my Step brother had died in the previous year of a really horrible & nasty illness & far too young & I inherited his pension, cashed out one of my frozen pensions so as we had very little money, we had paid the rent, Council tax & Bedroom tax for the whole year, when the benefits stopped we suddenly were only in advance by about a month so by Christmas we would have been on the streets.
I cashed out another frozen pension & bought the house we now live in here in Spain, for the magnificent total of 24,000 Euros.at the time, just over £17,000.
It was the best move we have ever made, my wife has lost over 30 kilos on the better diet, we can now afford fresh food & of course the walking as it so seldom rains or is too cold & miserable. We help a local Dog Rescue centre by offering Foster care, including puppies, we had over 14 a couple of weeks ago but are now down to a more reasonable 8 (only 5 are actually ours)
So as you can see, the world is rosy, everything is fantastic.
Except no, 2016 has been a bloody awful year elsewhere & I'll start with the obvious.
Lemmy Kilmister,  Natalie Cole, David Bowie, David Margulies, Alan Rickman, Dan Haggerty, Frank Finlay, Sir Terry Wogan, Maurice White, George Kennedy, Tony Warren, George Martin, Keith Emerson, Sylvia Anderson,  Paul Daniels, Garry Shandling, Earl Hamner Jr., Ronnie Corbett, Victoria Wood, Prince, Burt Kwouk, Muhammad Ali, Kenny Baker, Gene Wilder, Arnold Palmer, Pete Burns, Bobby Vee, Janet Reno, Leonard Cohen, ok Lemmie & Natalie died in late Dec 2015 but you get the picture.
This list is by no means exhaustive but you can see even from this truncated list what a crap year it has been, all of these greats & many others as well, lost for ever, stars of stage, screen, music, poetry, sport, comedy & politics all gone.
To complete the year, two other major factors have conspired to make this the year that we will not wish to remember.

Europe ruling on the straightness of bananas. This Referendum was explicitly stated to be advisory when put before Parliament, except in a pamphlet & the New Prime Minister decided to totally ignore this & stated Brexit means Brexit, the most asinine statement since... well probably ever.
Fortunately a High Court case decided otherwise & that she did not have the authority to Fire the pistol, I mean initiate Article 50 on her own, only Parliament could do so, & then in an even bigger show of arrogance, appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, if she looses there she could always appeal to the European Court of Justice,   oh wait!
There were so many lies told by the Brexit side that the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service) is considering a case against them under rules which proscribe the interference with political will, we shall see how that plays out. I'm thinking the £350m a week should go to the NHS, The fact that the

EU is considering Turkey could join the EU & "Flood the UK with Turkish workers", this despite the fact that of 30 points the EU demands for considering joining, only one has been met.
Then a couple of days ago, More lies, racism, untruths & downright illegality reigned in the USA, a 4 times bankrupt was elected President. One who refuses to pay people who work for him, farms out much of his capital expenditure to China, who has never held a political post in his life, is sponsored by the KKK & White Supremacist Groups, who refuses to show his tax Accounts & who wanted to ban a whole religious group from the country & an idiot who claims that Climate Change is a scam, started by the Chinese & finally one openly helped by another country, hacking emails (by the way, soliciting aid from another country in US elections is illegal)
Oddly enough, his opponent got more votes but due to the odd way the US voting system works, he was still elected, or at least until the electoral college has its say, but I'm not holding my breath.
So 2016, whilst I personally think it's been a good year for me, really we will be glad to see the back of you.

It's Been a Good Year

Ok, it's a bit more than a year, but only just, about 13 & a bit months to be exactish but we can still say it's been a good year.

15 Months ago we were going to lose our home in the UK as apparently working more than 24 hours a week (me that is) meant my wife, recovering from a double mastectomy was not eligible for benefits anymore. Fortunately I had used a chunk of pension money to pay our council tax & bedroom tax & rent to the end of the year but as were getting reduced figures on benefit that would have run out before Christmas so we would have been on the streets.

The lucky break was having enough pension left to pay for this house in Spain outright & enough left over to move ourselves & the dogs here as well.
Another cashed out pension, my last until I'm 65, was enough for us to live on for the next couple of years.

We have now lived through a Winter & Summer here, there really isn't a spring or autumn (fall to my American friends)
We now have registered at the local town hall & navigated the extremely funny way Spain has of buying a car so we are mobile.

We are organising Health Care (private) & have cried at the stupidity seen back in the UK on the 23rd June, the daft comments of some people have left us speechless.
We watch with despair the Election proceedings in the USA & so far are not regretting moving to a country that has not really had an effective government for the last year & yet somehow still seems to function, weirdly at times bit still functions.

Anyway, my blogs have got to be upbeat, hey. I live in a country where it's mid October & today is the first day since April, I have put jeans on instead of shorts because the daytime temperature has dropped to 17 degrees celsius (62.6F for those not used to metric yet)

I thought today's chat would be about roundabouts, these are maybe something my friends across the pond haven't encountered much but they allow 3, 4 & even more roads to intersect often without the assistance of traffic lights. Don't take any notice of the way the cars are going, that's what happens when you drive on the left, not too many countries do that (Spain isn't one of them)

In the UK, the first roundabout was built in 1909 which is quite remarkable as the car industry itself was not many years old at that
time, it was built at Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire & is quite beautiful, however here in Martos & quite possibly other places as well roundabouts, small & large are taken to a whole new level.

As I said in my last post, Martos is built in the centre of the Olive area of Andalucia & the roundabouts in many cases reflect this.

In the middle of one of the streets towards town is an Olive Press. At the other end of this road are some Olive Pickers in Steel basket work which is quite stunning but as yet, I have not been able to photograph it as I can only see it from the bus.

I have photographed this one (on the left) as it is a steam engine, presumably originally used to industrialise the pressing or something similar.

Water is a common theme on the roundabouts, in a country that doesn't really have a lot of rain & some of these are quite fantastic.

The photo on the left is at the top of the road leading down to the bus station & the one on the right is at the bottom of that same road.

One of my favourite roundabouts is at the end of our road & has the Tabac & a great bar, El Casino on

it, Unfortunately it also has one of the few places in Martos where you have to pay for parking, Officially it is Fuenta Nueva but we always call it Cherry Square as when we came out here to buy the house we bought a huge bag of cherries (for about a Euro) & ate them in the shade, a fantastic & lasting memory.

Of course not all the Roundabouts are completely explicable, at the entrance to Martos by the Industrial Estate entrance is a quite unusual roundabout with a Fiat 600, painted totally bronze & I mean totally in the centre, it always makes me
smile on our trips back from Alcala or Ventas or the Sunday market.

Being a Catholic country, clearly religion plays a big part in many locals' lives & this is sometimes reflected in the roundabout decoration, I have shown one here that is typical.

Whilst I love the town of Martos which we have made our home, we do get out & about locally & have noticed that other towns also set great store & obvious pride in their roundabouts.

For example in Alcala la Real near the Aldi store is a really fun
roundabout with colourfully painted trees, at the other end of the town as you enter it near the Hospital is one with trees that have colourful boxes set into the branches.

In Luque, a pretty little town about half an hour
away set in the hills is one of the tiniest roundabouts that can still be called such without naming it a mini roundabout, it is just large enough to hold the lamp standard surrounded by a stone plinth but still qualifies.

To finish I am showing what doesn't really qualify as a roundabout but nevertheless, I love. Heading from our house up the the pink Church is a tiny narrow lane, at the top it sort of dead ends unless you have a death wish & is mostly steps but technically there are 3 roads meeting, if you squint a bit & in the centre is this.

Until the next time enjoy & raise a glass to people who enjoy beauty.

And Now It's Home

And Now It's Home, Yes, Martos is now our home & will be forever, we even have prepaid funeral plans here so no more England, not that we could afford it there anyway.

Martos is a great town, perched on the edge of a giant lump of rock, & clinging to the sides of it, & which is called La Pena, Google translates this as The Pain or The Sorrow or possible The Pity, if you have tried to climb it you would know why!

Martos is basically an agricultural town, massively dependent on Olives, in fact it is said that the best olives & therefore the best olive oil in the world hails from here but it is so much more, One of the large industrial areas at the bottom of the town in anchored by Valeo one of the world largest manufacturers of lighting for cars and of course we have Mercadona, Carrefour & a large Dia & Dia Express as well as loads of
Chinese bazaars.

Most of the bars offer free tapas, I'm sorry for the coastal people who have to pay for tapas, it's mostly free here, in fact, haven't found one that charges yet. A whole street Pierre Cibie (Known locally as the street of Trees) is pretty much just bars & restaurants & flipping amazing choices, La Tiza being the best there (IMHO) The street
is totally closed during one week in August for a celebration of San Bartolome & fills with street markets & fairground rides in the street & also in the park adjoining. Charlottes is also good & a 5 min walk from our little piece of heaven.

Our little piece of heaven, they say you cant buy happiness, well we did, Casa Happiness has a sign over the door saying Felicidad so there. It is in the old part of town which is great if you want to go down into the town proper but a killer in summer walking back, fortunately a bus ride is less than one Euro anywhere in town to anywhere else and  a taxi (Candy Taxi highly recommended) is 5 Euros.

The earliest records of Martos seem to be around 250AD when it was called Tucci, but was obviously

Tucci

established much earlier & after which we have named one of our locally rescued dogs and there are many Roman blocks some around & in the Library & loads built into the base of the town hall.

There is a ruined castle which is somewhat odd (for a history buff anyway) as the locals seem to have built their houses on & around it. I know that many ruins in Europe were scavenged for the stones but the Martenos have taken it to a whole new level. The castle seems to have been established as part of the walled city around the mid 13th Century & enlarged & changed many times over the next couple of centuries, Several towers still remain but as I say, they seem to have been incorporated directly into local houses.

 

The first picture shows the best tower It has a rubble tube from a window where restoration is taking place, the next photo shows the remains of someones bathroom, there used to be a shower head, now removed, built into the castle wall, The third & fourth photos show houses still built on & against the wall & another tower, I guess the original inhabitants of the town did not want to use space on which they could grow another few olive trees!

There is more to this town than I could fit into this one blog, I've already hinted at the doors in a previous one, still got to do windows, the wrought iron work, the windows, the tiny cobbled streets one of which fooled one of our Rescue Dog vans! & the roundabouts but these are all for another day.

Hasta Luego