Hurrah!

The builders are gone!

For the first time in two and a half years our entrance hall is devoid of bricks, tiles, bags of cement and the other paraphernalia of builders.

First, news about Ruth’s mum and dad, dad has made a pretty good recovery from his stroke and his consultant has given him the all clear, and told him he’s remarkably fit for his age! Mum’s not quite so good. We had a few scary days when we thought an infection was getting the better of her, but she’s fought it off and is back in the local hospital in Sherborne. Unfortunately, she will have to move to a nursing home and, after 57 years, mum and dad will have to live apart, very sad.

After spending a couple of weeks with dad when he came out of hospital, we returned to Spain with Andrew and Anna.

Having left the builder with plastering and tiling to complete while we were away, we didn’t quite know what to expect when we returned. Well, the plastering had been done, but the tiling still wasn’t finished as Joaquin was still waiting for extra tiles to be delivered, and we still had water coming through the roof!!

Joaquin was summoned and asked to explain, it was great having Anna here, she spoke to him for us and for once we weren’t left wondering how much we had understood and how much he understood!

Andrew and Anna coped with the camping style accommodation stoically! Although they were only here for a few days we tried to show them a bit of this part of Spain and why we like it so much.

We went to Ronda and another lesser known ‘white town’ called Zahara.

And a trip to the Guadalhorce reservoir.

Andrew and Anna went back on Sunday, on Monday Niall and Annie. Claire, Lucy, Jamie and Sarah arrived – when we planned their visit we had expected our bathrooms and bedrooms to be complete and we expected April in Sunny Spain weather – wrong on both counts!

We borrowed our neighbour’s house so we could accommodate them but unfortunately the weather wasn’t so easy to fix, hopefully when they come next time we’ll get both right!

Especially for our birding friends, we had an unusual visitor in the garden, a hoopoe (we had to email Rosie to find out what it was!)

At least we thought it was unusual, but apparently they are frequent visitors from South Africa.

A small respite before the next visitors, and one of our neighbours, Peter, took us to the Asparagus Fair in Sierra de Yeguas, just down the road. A feast of food sampling of local olive oil, local sausages and CHEESE!!

It was very pretty. Small stands with brightly coloured awnings clustered around the fountain in the square, boys playing with old fashioned wooden tops, a display of birds of prey and dancing in local costume.

We beavered away painting the bedrooms and ordered furniture. The painting, entirely within our control, was completed on time; the tiling and the bedroom furniture were not!

The tiles were eventually delivered, after a six week delay, and were due to be fitted the day Bern, Al and Al arrived. The furniture was delivered a week earlier but, in their enthusiasm, the delivery lads managed to damage the wardrobe as they were building it in the bedroom, ‘ah senor, un problema, pero no problema’ we can fix it next week. But, our friends are arriving on Monday, they need somewhere to sleep! So they put the bed up and left the makings of the wardrobe and chest of drawers piled up in the corner of the bedroom.

In the meantime, Jim, Mick’s son, was due in mid May to collect our Citroën and take it back to England, so we needed to buy a car. A left-hand drive car. The lack of success in selling our house in Tisbury has limited our options a bit, so we settled on a ford focus.

Its taken three weeks to get the paper work sorted out, transferring ownership, insurance, tax but we think we’re there now!

Monday arrived, Filipe is sick, no tiling! A phone call to the bedroom furniture company and they can’t fix the wardrobe till next week!

We collected Bern, Al and Al from the airport and explained our problem. So the decision was made to get up early the next day, as we didn’t know whether or not to expect a builder at 8 in the morning, and go to Granada to visit the Alhambra palace. This was all further complicated by the fact that the water pressure was being turned off at night and we didn’t have enough pressure to fire up the boiler for hot water until 9 in the morning.

So we all got up early, made do with a cold wash, a cup of tea and off we went. We got to Granada at about 10.00, to find all the morning tickets for the Alhambra sold out and only a limited number available for the afternoon. We took a look at the queue and decided we stood a very high risk of not getting a ticket, so we cut our losses and spent the day in Granada city instead.

Resolving to get up very early on Thursday and try again.
We came home to find Joaquin (The Boss) was finishing off the tiling and fixing the leaking roof himself!!

Wednesday turned out to be a bit of a wildlife safari! Flamingos, swallows, lizards, big fish, ducks and a terrapin!

More importantly, Joaquin gave us our house keys back.
The work is ‘finished’!!
There are still two shower screens to fit, a door to the en suite to source and the kitchen to sort out, as well as a lot of painting, but it feels like a milestone!

By Thursday the problem with the water pressure had been fixed and we left the house at 6.00 am and got to the Alhambra Palace in Granada http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/The_Alhambra.html
at 7.30, to find approximately 300 people in the queue ahead of us. The ticket office opens at 8.00 and the grounds open at 8.30! The man at the head of the queue, an American, said he got there at 4.00am!!

We queued for three and a half hours!, and finally got our tickets, for the afternoon with our timed entrance to the Nasrid palaces at 3.30. Thankfully, our guests agreed it was worth it!!

Mick is trying to make off with the fountain under cover of Bern’s jacket because Ruth said she wants one like that in the garden.

At least we now know if anyone wants to go to Granada while they visit, we have to book tickets in advance!

On Friday Mick braved the Seville traffic and headed for a car park we have used before, only to find it closed, fortunately another was easily found. We did the open top bus tour http://www.sevillatour.com/sevilla/vistasevilla_ing.html,
finishing with an excellent lunch in the Corral del Agua http://www.andalunet.com/corral-agua/principal.htm,
a lovely restaurant we discovered last year when Bill and Meg were visiting.

On Saturday they flew home, hopefully we’ve given them a taste of what this lovely region has to offer and they’ll be back soon.

We set to and cleaned up the bathrooms after the final bit of tiling and order another set of bedroom furniture.

We went to a shop in La Roda this time and asked about a suite we had seen in one of their flyers. It became apparent that the one we were interested in wasn’t available, but he could show us others. We looked at some pictures in his brochure and then we piled into his car, leaving his shop open and unattended, and he drove us round the corner to his warehouse to show us the options. In the middle of all this we got a phone call from the other furniture company in Estepa to say the wardrobe repair would be ready tomorrow. So on Tuesday we had two lots of bedroom furniture being assembled, simultaneously!

As you can see we’ve started to put some pictures up too.

The garden is getting little attention at the moment, but the pomegranate is in full bloom, and the fig trees are still looking healthy, and my attempt to grow cherimoya from seeds has resulted in a single very straggly shoot. We’ve eaten all the lemons, so we’re just waiting for the next crop.

Jim and Lizzie arrived to take the car back to England. Unfortunately they only had a short time with us so they could fit in lots of other places on the way back up to St. Malo for the ferry.

On the day they left we drove up to Cordoba, had breakfast and visited the Mesquita www.mezquitadecordoba.org/en/index.html. We said goodbye, they drove on to Madrid for their first night’s stop. We went home.

We now have a two week break before Paul & Ali arrive, so we’re back into a daily routine of house type things, Ruth’s painting a pair of chests for the hall, and Mick’s putting up pictures. We’ve talked to a local carpenter about making some doors for us and by a stroke of luck he’s also the owner of the land behind our house and he can put us in touch with a painter who can paint our hall and stairs - the ceilings are too high for us to attempt without scaffolding and a safety net!!