Friday 8-9-2006

The other big problem in paying for things in cash is the time it takes to count it out.
Today we went down to the bank and withdrew €19000 in 50’s and 20’s. It took ten minutes at the bank before the safe will open by staff request (this is a safety system devised to deter would be bank robbers, who obviously have only a short concentration span and by the time the vaults have opened the would be robber has got tired and gone off to rob the ice cream van) to allow the money to be taken out. It then takes one minute for the machine to count this five inch pile of notes, but as the machine is ‘occasionally wrong‘, it has to be then recounted again by hand. This can take nearly fifteen minutes by which time the bank lady has repetitive strain syndrome from counting 500 notes and we are sat like the nodding dogs in the back of a car on a bumpy road trying to ensure that the bank lady has counted it all correctly. Even after she has finished and stretched her weary arms etc., we are still nodding like a couple of gnomes to anyone who happens to be passing. Then feeling like a Securicor guard, but not trying to look like them we take the money to the car in Elayne’s handbag which is tucked under her arm and now looks for all the world as if it might have €19000 in it. We lock the car doors as soon as we are both in and set off up the motorway to the caravan mans’ place looking in the mirror every six second to ensure that we are not going to be ‘this weeks heist’ for the El Pinar Mafia.
When we arrive at the caravan mans’ place, Juan is in his office and he is such a nice guy that he talks incessantly about everything under the sun before he also then gets round to counting the heap of money that has now been sat on his desk naked for twenty five minutes. We have not as yet got the ‘change of ownership documents’ saying that the vans are ours so it‘s sort of ‘in limbo and venerable us‘ time. All the while he is receiving phone calls, which one could be forgiven for imagining might be tip off’s to the Puerto Lumbreras Mafia now to say that a lot of dosh is sat in front of this English couple if they would care to send the lads round quickly it should be an easy and swift payday.
Well none of this happened but we did all sit there like nodding dogs for another ten minutes whilst he also counts the money. Juan counts a lot faster than the bank girl, well, he is a trader. It’s all correct and we have our ownership documents.
Juan will deliver both vans to us at Taberno on Tuesday, that’s if Javier, as requested, has extended the caravan bases and firmed up the ground by then, to stop the delivery lorry from slipping off the soft soil and ending up down in one of our fig trees.
We have a ‘drink of relief ‘drink and lunch time snack and then head up to site. Not much change, the hebe is nearly finished and has it’s top on and the square manhole is taking shape. We did comment that logic had not been used , as the square manhole, where one presumes it will be filled from, should really have been next to the track where the water man can easier reach it. But we just hope that the water man carries a really long pipe with him, because probably he will just ‘know how it’s going to be’.
Today’s pictures: The yellow rock denotes one of our plot boundaries. Looking down the ramble, the grey river bed, half of which is ours. Your truly surveying the rambla from above, it must be about 50 metres deep and we have not as yet been down into the bottom of it.