23-9-2006 Sunday
Today started, once again, with morning coffee, tostardo (toasted French bread with tomato and grilled cheese) and serious ablutions at Lentisco’s bar, what a life! This was followed by a walk up to the local church to see if we could see the inside (seeing that it was nearly eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning) for a change. The church was, as usual closed and bolted. We did see a coach, bearing a few very well dressed Spaniards, leave the village square at about quarter to eleven and one wonders if church clergy here also service many districts as per the C of E churches in East Keswick and Bardsey etc.
This afternoon we went ‘down the track’ to visit Dave, Ruby and daughter Fathom (Chi Chi) Stead. They are a really nice family that have settled here. Dave is a solar and wind energy genius who has built their own house and energy system and very quickly and easily baffled me with all the details of his solar and wind generated energy system.
When we arrived back here we had a really splendid and surprise visit from Angela and Phil Kendall, from further down the rambla towards Albox, who are originally from Salford, Manchester (but we forgave them very quickly). They have been here for six years and were so generous with their information. Recently their daughter joined them here from Salford and has also quickly settled into local life and now has a boyfriend in Albox. We had a long and really nice chatter with them over a cup of tea. They are also into EBay and the internet, via micro wave, so we can easily keep in touch when we also get back on line.
What a super day it turned out to be from only quite a modest early potential.
24/25-9-2006 Monday and Tuesday
The furniture etc arrived about half past one today. As there was only really lots and lots of boxes and only two or three pieces of real furniture it took the removal men just about two hours to offload it all into the portacabin. We then spent the rest of the day and a lot of Tuesday just juggling the boxes and finding out what was in them. The removal men in the UK did as best they could with writing on each box details of it’s content but of course when you are looking for the iron for instance you have to search in five or six heavy boxes marked kitchen. There was 113 items in the end and all of them arrived with very little damage considering. When we unpacked the vacuum we found a little snake that had perished due to getting stuck to the brown sticky paper.