22-9-2006 Friday

15th to 21st September
In the last six days we have been very busy and at times very dirty and dusty. The very first night after Juan and the driver had left we settled down in our El Pinar bed attire. We were ruddy frozen by midnight and spent the remainder of the night putting more and more clothes on, needless to say we were not ‘bright eyed and bushy tailed’ by morning. We have now bought extra blankets and sleep relatively warm all night.
We have gone from that first pretty bad and windy first night managing with just a torch and a Camping Gas stove to having 240 volts from the ‘genny’ running lights, fridge, freezer and micro wave. We have now connected up the bottle gas so that we have cooker, oven and gas fire. We have bought a water butt and have installed a submersible water pump in it so that we have all the taps, sinks and shower working although only on cold just yet.
We still have to conquer the central heating/hot water system and we do have to carry all of our water up to site from a village water supply in Taberno. For the first few days we used two buckets of hot water and stood up in the portacabin for washing after our dusty days work.
On Tuesday we had a television and a sky dish installed. We can watch over 150 television stations and even Yorkshire TV, should we wish. It will take at least three years to work our way through them all. Quite soon we will have an internet/ telephone microwave link installed (in the mean while we can go down the road to Albox where they have six computers that can be used.
The cats, bless them, are now enjoying exploring the area but come galloping back home when tea time is called by you know who.
The evening sun and the sunsets are astonishing and we have baskets full of almonds.
All in all we are getting more and more civilised and organised with life with each new day here. On Monday next our furniture and chattels are coming so it will be quite exciting to be reunited with everything. Elayne is longing to see her wardrobe clothing, shoes and play station once more and I am looking forward to having and using my work tools and having the ‘puter’ back.
It is exactly two months today since we left the UK (20-7-2006). What a journey it has been. Elayne and I hope that you all have enjoyed the trip with us so far and we look forward to keeping you abreast of our further developments and on the building of the house, over the next six to nine to twelve months.
Our friends John and Christine Young from Bradford are ‘passing by’ en route to Benerraba in early October and we look forward to them calling in so that we can show them Taberno and the house site.
Today Thursday we visited an internet café in Huecal Overa (about 20k SE of here and at the other side of the Med Motorway) but could only make the computer machines accept the pictures that we wanted to post on the blog. Therefore this text will now be posted as soon as we can get a machine that understands Microsoft Works from our laptop. More soon as we get even better organised. Thanks you for your comments, it really feels good that we are being read.
Note for our dear friends Mike and Joan. Thanks for suggesting that we put the blog down as a book, if you talk to any publishers you can be on commission (JK Rawlings here we come). Also, yes, the comments and our replies can be read by everyone, so ‘mind your P and Q’s as I do have the veto option on this blog.