Tuesday and Wednesdays Blog.

The very last day of February, wow we have survived so far! Spring in Spain starts tomorrowJ
It seems to be a strange coincidence that whenever there is a bank holiday looming the internet connection with Iberband goes ‘off line‘. I had trouble last thing yesterday, before we went out, and today I am not able to connect properly just yet today.
When we got to the Hostel (where we dance) last night, everyone was stood about outside, obviously our dance teacher with the key had not arrived. We then got a message to say that as it was bank holiday today he (the dance teacher) had gone home for the holiday (wherever that is) and therefore the night was cancelled. Had he turned up we would have had the biggest turn out of people to dance since the Christmas break. Well all dressed up and no where to go, what can one do? but retire to Lentisco’s and drown our sorrows. It was strange but we were home for ten so we cranked up the genny and had some tea before retiring to bed just after midnight.
We were going to play tennis today but as with lots of things in this strange place the Public Sports Centre is closed on Public Holidays. Elayne and I went down to Allen and Mags house and we played some very competitive table tennis in the blazing hot sun. We had a lovely time with them. We will play tennis when ever Allen is not committed to having to work.
The builders are finishing the wall rendering and have started to remove some of the cornicing to make way for fitting the stairs on the outside of the house. Jose has been up twice today, once to deliver two more window frames and just now he is removing nearly all the roof props and the shuttering boards from site. The polystyrene cornice mouldings have now been removed from all of the sides of the house except above the front porch. The cement rendering is drying very fast and is lightening in colour as it does so. It is starting to look really good. We realise that there is still lots to do yet, but we do feel that perhaps spring is in the air (now that might be a good title for a song?).
Tuesday Blog, just back on line, sorry.
This morning we were literally woken up by knocking on the caravan door at five minutes to eight. I stumble from bed and shouted around the corner of the door ‘momento’ to a bemused Dario. I slung some slob outs on and couldn’t connect with my comb so went back to the door and invited him in. As we passed the bedroom door Elayne was still in bed. I sat Dario down and opened the curtains whilst trying to explain to him that when it is not windy we sleep very soundly. Anyway we all laughed at it as Elayne emerged in her dressing gown. Explanation: it may be noticed that we have two doors into the caravan, one to the bedroom end and the other to the lounge end. In December we taped the lounge end door and some of the windows up to reduce the draughts whilst we sat and worked in the lounge, dining and kitchen area. These are still taped up until we get well into March as it can still turn cold in the evenings. Thus Dario came in by the bedroom end door this morning. He wanted to talk about the house lounge double doors out onto the patio. The builders standard fit is by putting in double sliding doors and we have requested outward opening double fully glazed doors. All sorted now.
This next paragraph is for the fans of my genny exploits. The instruction booklet advises that after twenty hour use or after one month one should drain out all the old oil and re-fill it with new. It sounds easy except that the oil drain plug is almost underneath the genny. After much puzzlement and debate with “’er ’oo knows nearly everything” I pulled the genny to the edge of the lay-by, wedged it up on some wood and did the deed by draining nearly one and a half litres of oil. Why is it that the container that one uses for this job is always smaller than the amount of oil to be drained? I managed in the end without too much spillage and then re-filling was easy.
O! yes and the house. Well today has been all rendering around the north and south sides of the house. I would have suspected that they would have finish this rendering by tomorrow, except that it is a bank holiday (Andalusia Day) tomorrow. Now if they were Swiss I would suspect that we would not see them again now until Monday. We shall see. Jose has been up this afternoon delivering the rejas. we will have a look at them when we go for our inspection.
Update bulletin on Ivan. We saw and spoke to him last night and he is being very brave despite being very sore, what a hero. J The original pain has now gone so we are all keeping our fingers crossed for his early full recovery. He has three little slits where they went in to remove the offending appendix, it’s amazing what they can do now without invasive surgery.
We are dancing tonight after missing last week and I think that we will be playing tennis on Thursday, another week almost gone.

What a day. It is the unexpected surprises in a day that make it a bit different from how you imagined the day was going to be. We firstly awoke this morning, having had a really good long and quiet nights sleep, no wind to worry about. The builders arrived and then Carlos arrived. As we left for Albox to check out the kitchen design samples against the kitchen tiles that we have ordered, we had a discussion with Carlos up at the house. As we got nearer the house we noticed that the builders were working outside the house on the east side removing the outside cornice polystyrene. This cornice is the decorative joint edge between the outside walls and the roof tiles. It is a bit like an inside cornice between the ceiling and the walls except in total reverse. We have got so used to seeing the polystyrene in place that the cornice looks very elegant, see pictures. We will eventually have this cornice white and the outside walls a very light lemon/cream sort of off white. We did our stuff in Albox and came to lots of good conclusions about the work tops and the kitchen unit colours.
We arrived back in camp just after two o’clock. As it was siesta time we delayed putting on the genny, and as it was so warm and gentle outside, we walked off a little way down the campo with the cats and sat on the warm ground and soaked up the sounds and smells of the land, and the mauve carpet of the caper flowers, for half an hour. What a delight listening to the bees in the blossom. As we were sauntering back to the caravan feeling at peace with the world, we noticed that one of the almond trees that we passed had done with its blossom stage and now has tiny little almond pods growing from where the flowers have been. We looked and saw that other trees were also reaching this stage.
As if all of this was not enough glorious excitement for one day or even one week, we also saw that the builders have started to put two of the white window frames into the house. What a difference they make, the house almost comes alive now, having some of its eyes in. These window units are double glazed and have built in security outside blinds/shutters that are worked from inside the rooms. They are designed to allow you to leave the windows open, pull down the blinds and then slant the blinds further to let the air and a little bit of light back through and into the rooms, for hot days and hot nights. On the outside of these windows will then be put our rejas (pronounced wreckers). These are traditional decorative wrought iron grills and were used before the security blinds came into being but for the same reason, allowing cool air into the house.
We are going up to the house soon and we already know that Carlos has marked out all the electric points with a can of spray paint. He’s even marked outside where the air con fans and condenser units will be under the stairs.
More later if I find that I have missed anything. What a day, it has dissolved all the not so good windy days into the past. We don’t remember many Mondays as exciting as this when we worked for a living.
And there’s more:
Just been upto the house and it’s gone better than we could imagine. They have put six windows in place and they have cemented the outside wall to the east side of the front door and around the end from the roof, down to where we will have ‘finishing stone work’ from the floor, a quarter way up the outside walls. If you don’t understand this description, and I hardly do myself, see the pictures.

We didn’t know it but we have two out of three builders on site today putting in the door surrounds. We also had a visit from Carlos, and his wife, to discuss the final wiring layout plus the kitchen design, the internal doors and the wardrobe doors. When we had finished talking about these minor things, we talked about what we both did before this part of our lives. Carlos said that when he was in Argentina he worked for a firm that made and repaired distribution transformers, well muchos transformer insulating, papermaking discussions. Carlos is starting work on site tomorrow. The builders also said that if it is not too windy they will make a start on the stairs and the patio on Lunes (Monday, although not sure which one). Watch this space for another exciting week up on the mountain tops here in Spain.
We are not mentioning England’s defeat against Ireland in the six nations yesterday.
Just a little mention because a lot of you know our eldest grandson Ivan. He is in hospital just now recovering from having his appendix removed today. Get well soon Ivan we all love you. Now you have been mentioned on our International web site, Ivan, you can tell your pals how famous you are.

Last night Elayne and I went down to Albox to a fairly new Chinese Restaurant called The Wok. In there you can have a set meal of as much starters as you want (the starter courses offered are the equivalent of the cheaper end of the main menu in the UK) including soups, deep fried prawns, roast duckling and sauce with Chinese pancakes and a myriad of other things around a self help bar (a Chinese version of the Pizza Hut salad bar). Then you go to another bar an select your main course meats (from chicken to prawns to calamari to ribs to beef to pork chops) raw, take them to a counter where fish etc is fast boiled and then everything stir fried in a huge red hot wok. This wokking bit is done with much flamboyance and fire eating sized leaping flames, by a man with no eyebrows. The heat makes every one retreat back from the counter a step or two. Then there is a good selection of fruit sweets or help yourself to ice cream from the fridge. Elayne had a half a bottle of wine whilst I had a couple of beers. The bill for all this was €28.50 which is about £8.90 each. It was really good, but I said that probably if we went again I would be happy to go to the starter bar twice rather than bothering with the main course. Now that’s made you all hungry hasn’t it?
Coincidentally yesterday morning we went to two ferriteria (DIY shops) in Albox. In one we were going to buy some small pieces of metal pipe with which to try to direct the sound and the fumes from the new genny away from the caravan. We found two small sections that seemed to be off-cuts from some longer sections. With some other items we went to the one and only till, first ones there for a change. Well these pipe sections had no price on, so an assistant was called. I suggest that €1 each would be OK by me but this was met with a blank we are not amused stare, the lady in the queue behind, with a smile, said it was worth a try. Whilst this negotiation was going on several others joined the queue. By the time the assistant returned we had about six couples behind us all looking agitated and with us shrugging our shoulders at every one, like you do when you cause a problem. They then wanted to charge me €15 for the pieces, to which I refused and handed the pieces back, much frowning from the check out rottweiler. We said sorry for the delay to the people behind us and left. At the next ferriteria we got talking to a splendid elderly chap and his wife who were looking at generators. We compared notes and when I mentioned to them about our new noisy genny he said that we should go to a motor bike shop and get a cheap motor bike silencer, what a good idea. Anyway we couldn’t find a silencer that would fit the exhaust outlet pipe in the end and said that we would go down next week to find a tyre stockist and see if they had any used but serviceable and cheap silencers from cars. When we arrived at the restaurant last night both of these couples were sitting within two tables of where we chose to sit, neither of them knew each other but both remembered us. Also in there were our friends Pam and Bob, Gill and Malcolm and Tia and Mark. We spoke to the elderly gent and his wife and then as the other couple, whom we had kept waiting in the queue, got up to leave they came across and the man said, with a twinkle in his eye, that if we are going to the ferriteria anytime again, would we please tell him and then he can go somewhere else, what a laugh we all had. With such a good atmosphere in there we took over two hours with our meal before we headed home.
The house inspection last night revealed something that we had hoped for but not actually said anything about. The walk ways from the main hall to the two smaller bedrooms and their bathroom passes through two wall sections. We had hoped that they would add an arch to the part from the hall into the small passage way that leads to the bedrooms and bathroom. We found that they are going to put an arch to both walk through sections. We are quite chuffed about this. The pictures will show you how simply they do these arches, bearing in mind that these are not exterior or load bearing walls. I am also taking daily time lapse pictures of the house and as the outside walls are now built I was feeling that this was just taking the same picture day after day with no changes. However when I look at these pictures you can see pallet loads of bricks, placed after delivery, and then over the next few days these are diminished and more are delivered that take their place. So there is change but it’s a little more subtle just now. When they turn back to the roof section to finish it then the pictures will change.
Right that’s it for Saturday. I have to watch three 6 Nation rugby games this afternoon so I’d better limber up a little in preparation.

Moan day. The door frames are not fitted yet, in fact they are still where they were put yesterday (inside) when they arrived. It is most frustrating not being able to see and watch what the builders are doing.
We have now had the new genny running for about twelve hours in total. It is going to be very economic compared to the petrol genies. For instance, the petrol gennies used about eight litres of petrol per day and so cost about €250 per month (our usage probably averages seven to eight hours per day). The new genny has used about eight litres of diesel B in twelve hours. Therefore it will cost about €130 per month. It is advertised as ’silent’. Although the noise is not as raucous as the petrol gennies, we would still like to find a silencer for it that would reduce the noise more. It is not silent by any stretch of the imagination. I have temporarily put some flexible tin foil chimney liner on the end of the exhaust exit and it has made a little difference. We are going to see if we can find a tyre stockist and get them to let us have an old car exhaust silencer and some pipe work. Any other ideas out there would be very welcome and appreciated. We are going out for a Chinese tonight, sort of a postponed valentines meal, it was too windy for us to leave the cats a few weeks back. Pictures tomorrow.

We had a delivery of door frames today, so together with Carlos yesterday saying that he is coming up today to fit them, it should be quite an exciting site visit tonight.
Just to annoy (and I don’t usually) a certain someone who dared to complain that she was ‘not interested in the damn genny, how was her and the lads bedrooms coming on’. We re-positioned the big genny this afternoon a bit further away from the caravan but still up the leeward side of the portacabin. We have built a block wall around it and then we have twisted the exhaust cowl so that it points away from the caravan. It is certainly more quiet and the fumes are less noticeable. Obviously diesel (and particularly farm diesel) is a lot more economic than petrol but the diesel fumes are not good and the diesel liquid is not as pleasant to handle. I’ll report more on the economy as we use it more. There you go Debs, just for the big boys J ))
We met up with a fabulous lady called Jane this morning. She and her husband and children live in a house that they built themselves. Bill is a builder and Jane is an interpreter. They both built their house whilst they both worked. She has kindly taken us under her wing and will help us to become registered into the Spanish Social Security and Health system. We are meeting up again next week.
It’s a nice enough sort of day after a cold and breezy night. The sun is shining just now but there are dark clouds about. It’s about 17 degrees and the barometer is reading 1016mb.

We received our new genny today. I had a call from the lorry driver (lives in Hereford and works for a haulage firm in Kidderminster). I guided him to Taberno car park thinking that we can either off load into my car or he can drive up to site if it’s a bit heavy. What I didn’t anticipate was that he would arrive in a forty foot articulated lorry and that the genny would weigh one hundred and seventy kg with out packaging. One thing was very plain, he was not going to bring the lorry and genny up to the caravan, no way Jose. So little genny sat on it’s own in a forty foot container looks small but O! boy looks can be deceiving. We stripped all the packaging off it and slid and dragged it to the back of the container. I then drew my car up, with the tail open, to the back of the lorry. The height difference was probably three foot. The lorry driver is a jovial and very portly young man who clearly does not do aerobics. One each side of the genny and we slide it off the back of the lorry and aim the front end at the back of the car. Between vehicles it sticks at an angle of about forty five degrees. I am close to total rupture and the driver is on the brink of a heart attack whilst the genny is precariously dangling twixt lorry and car. All we could do was to tip the genny right up on its butt end and push and shove it into the car sufficiently to then turn it back on its proper end. The lorry driver was so relieved to have got rid of the genny that he looked almost happy when I last saw him. The back of the car was a bit like a waterlogged sailing boat to drive but I drove back to the caravan in very circumspect manner (about 5MPH). Would you believe just when you need the assistance of three burly (compared to yours truly) builders it’s five to two and siesta for an hour. Anyway, bless ‘em, they came over as soon as they had rested and then the genny between four of us was easy to off load.
When I had read the instruction booklet (translated from Chinese to English)for the third time I went out and switched it on. It is advertised as ‘silent’, well compared to Elland Road when Leeds have just got through to the European Cup, it is, but compared to the petrol genny’s it is about the same only a deeper more resonant sound. Then there is the smell of diesel, phew!! Well we do have it just near the caravan and the exhaust pipe is almost pointing at the caravan so I suppose these things will be a problem. Tomorrow we will decide where it should be sited and we will buy some pipes to deflect the exhaust up and away.
Carlos (the multi talented electrician, joiner and general factotum) came up to site today to show us his interpretation of the electrical diagram for the whole of the house. It is brilliant and he has thought of many things that we hadn’t. He has put the whole thing on ‘AutoCAD’ so that now it is on his ‘puter ,we can amend and alter as we wish, until he actually puts the cables in. He has also shown us some kitchen designs (he will also make and fit these, what a man) to digest and discuss and tomorrow he says that he will be up on site putting door surrounds in place. We also had two other new guys up on the roof today but we didn’t get to meet them and we still don’t know what they were discussing up there with Dario,. Perhaps they are tiling the roof soon.

It’ a funny overcast day today with the forecasts saying that we may have some rain. It’s only 9.5 degrees and the barometer is down at 1009mb. We are going to take the cats down to the vets in Albox today. They have to have their booster jabs (for cat flu, I think). This will be their first experience of this new Spanish vet so we’ll see how Elayne takes it!!!. We are reliably informed that they speak good English there so that helps a little.
The builders are working ‘in the house’ so we can’t see what they are doing, quite frustrating. Dario told us this morning, that we have got the ‘entrado principal’ (front door) that we wanted and that he is bringing it up to site this afternoon, pictures later.
We had a call this morning from a haulage company to say that, finally, we are going to see our new genny tomorrow. I bought this on Ebay from a firm up in Penrith in December. I could have walked it down here on my wheel barrow in less time than this has taken to get here. In actual fact it left the UK only on the 7-2-2007, the rest of the time has been down to the firm b…ing about.. The gennys that we are using run on unleaded petrol and cost about €8/day to run (at €0.96/litre). On a thirty day month that is €240 = approx £150/month. The new genny runs on Diesel B (farm red diesel) at €0.65/ltr and we are hoping that it will be more efficient. It professes to be ‘very quiet’ so we will see how it all pans out. This new genny will give us 5Kv (the others are 2Kv) so it will be far better for us when we move ‘up the road’. The electrician is putting a special switch in the house so that if we ever get mains electricity we can switch back to the genny when there are power cuts (mains power cuts are a feature of life here in Spain, so you are well advised to have back up).
Later….
The vet was a really nice chap and excellent with the cats, both him and his assistant spoke good English, so no problems on that side. He also gave them injections to protect against leukemia. We are all back at base now and Dario has just arrived with our lovely front door. I’ll see if I can get a picture of it later.
It’s just started raining, the forecasters got it correct for a change. It won’t stop the builders from working, or interrupt their siesta. It’s the very first time that it has rained on our new roof (I’ve a good mind to go up and put a sheet of polythene over it to keep it dry.

Wow!! It’s quarter past seven and I have not started writing the blog yet, well I suppose I have but I’m late. It’s been a really nice busy day, just like I like them. We have dared to go to a furniture (muebles) showroom today and have both fallen for a settee type of arrangement that will fit into the lounge area of the house. It’s a sort of a four seater settee with an ‘L’ shape end. Each of the three seats has a pull out leg rest section and an adjustable head rest (not electric, been there, done that) and then we would want a two seater settee as well. The place has beds, tables, chairs and some amazing objects d’art. The people there are very helpful so I have warned them that we will return quite soon.
I put the fourth and final level on the wind shield wall along the caravan today. I used my shiny new wheelbarrow and instead of walking twenty times along the wall carrying two heavy bricks, I walked along the wall just five times and carried five heavy bricks each time, how’s that for economy of scale. With the camino banking and the wall we are now about 1.5 metres under the top of the wall. We hope it make some difference, we don’t think that it can do harm. XXXX (fingers crossed).
The builders have finished the outside walls today. They have marked out all the rooms and interior walls and they are now putting the inside cavity walls with polystyrene sheeting between the two walls. The bricks that they use are thermal bricks and with the double thermal walls, we are happy that it will be as well insulated as it can be. With the outside walls being in place we can now sort of see the shape of it all. We have a meeting most mornings with Dario to fore-warn him of the types of doors, and colours of stone cladding that we will want on the bottom quarter of the exterior walls. To say that we do not speak much of each others’ language, we do very well with these meetings. From now on, because they have finished the outside walls, we will not be able to see much of what they are doing each day, which will make our site visits at seven o’clock, when they have gone, even more exciting.
It’s has been a lovely day today with no wind and warm sunshine.

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear bloggers, happy birthday to you.
This is the two hundredth blog that we have written since we started on Tuesday 11th July 2006.
The progress towards our goal, that we have seen, is very amazing. We wonder what we will be doing if and when we write the three hundredth blog.
We are getting over one hundred hits (visits) a week on the blog and as described before, they are coming from all over the world. It is all very gratifying and I still implore you all to drop the odd comment onto the bottom of the blog and then press ‘publish’ it becomes a lot more fun then for all concerned.
The house is stagnant today because it’s Domingo (Sunday) however it is singing, on it’s last few remaining roof props, in the fresh winds that we have had all last night and up to now (11-58hrs).
I have been up and built a small wind break around the sky dish. It is being battered by the wind, even though it is screwed to two blocks and set in cement in the ground. We want to avoid having to fork out €50 every few weeks for someone to come up to re-align it. I’ve built the dry block wall about 1 metre high and 1 metre long so it should reduce the wind effect a little. It nearly blew my wig off up there, so when things calm down again I will perhaps do a better job on the wall.
We are staying put today. Earlier I had a lovely long telephone call with my sister Nina, and Elayne is just now on the phone to her brother Jim (in Caithness) wishing him a ‘happy birthday. He says that they have not had any real snow up there this year so far. We can really show them in Scotland a thing or two about tough living, here in Spain. They are both well and like us all, looking forward to summer.

In the picture of the electricity wire we hope that you also notice a pair of Hoopo's. They are delightfull little bird with an alarm crest on their heads that flashes up and down. This pair have been wintering in North Africa and we are now seeing them here for the first time since about November. I only wish that the camera that we carry with us was upto such demanding pictures, but alas it is not to be.

B....er, I had not realised that the rugby is only on every two weeks.
We went to bed last night with the wind starting to get up once more, however it fizzled out at about two o’clock so we had quite a good nights sleep.
I know that it’s not my birthday just yet, but after yesterdays muscle wrenching block carrying, to make the dry brick wall wind shade, my body today is not in good enough shape to contemplate more similar aerobics without the use of assistance in the shape of a wheel barrow. My body will recover in a few days but a wheel barrow and cement mixer will become really well used tools once I am let loose on the outside areas of the house. So whilst I was at Fran Marie’s (Taberno’s builders merchants) this morning I bought a Rolls Royce type of wheel barrow that has a handle that can be pulled up and over the barrow so that one can hook it up to a hoist for lifting bricks, sand, cement or sandwiches up onto another plane. It also has a very deep carrying compartment so that I make less trips backwards and forwards with my loads. Sadly it’s raining this afternoon so I can’t go and give it a test drive.
When the builders arrived this morning, we showed Dario the front door that we would like him to get for us, and we told him where to get it from (he gets a discount when he buys these items). We told him that he must go and buy it ‘rapido’ because it was the only one of it’s type in the builders merchants/DIY shop in Albox.
Let me tell you what happens with items like this. We have a set price agreement with the builder for the completion of the house to set standards which include windows, doors, built in wardrobes, tiles, plumbing, electrics, bathroom fixtures and fittings like this. He has also built into that fixed price a set amount for all of these items. For instance all the tile work will be done to a price of €7/square metre. We have gone over budget with most of the tiles so we will be paying between €700 and €1000 extra on top of the €7 for the tiles that we have chosen (I have estimated that we will have about 370 square meters of tiles when it is all done). The kitchen allowance is €5000 and therefore we will try to keep within this, anything over we will pay extra for. The front door is budgeted at €400 and the door we set our hearts on is €850 so we will pay the extra €450. It is a very fair system and stops people abusing the fixed price to the builder. It also focuses our minds on not being too excessive in our demands. We are a few thousand over budget at the moment but the biggest challenge will be in trying to keep within the kitchen budget. If at the end of the day we get the house that we want and are not completely broke, we will have achieved our objective.
The outside walls to the north, east, west and half of the south sides are now built, but then of course tomorrow is another Sunday, I’m sure that they having more than one Sunday off each week.

A fabulous day down here today. Wall to wall sun and in the low twenties. After shopping this morning, we had a mixed salada, chips and a long drink for lunch on the terrace at Lentisco’s. That still enchants me because it is just a jolly nice way to have lunch. You eat, drink, and watch the world go by in the warming sun.
O! yes and then there is the building. On our inspection trip up to site last night (after the builders departed) we noted that they had put the main ensuite bathroom window hole bang in the middle of the outside wall and they had the lintel ready to put in place first thing this morning. This would have meant that our double size shower place would only have been 750mm wide. OK on length but not able to turn round to walk to the other end of the shower. Thus I had to be up at half past seven (still darkish) this morning (after dreaming and worrying about it all night) so that I could go to site before the builders arrived to re-check what we found last night. Then when the builders arrived I shot up the camino, you could almost see their faces saying ‘what now’ after yesterday. Anyway after a bit of plan searching, they agreed to remove the ceramic bricks and move the window along so that we will have about one meter width in the shower, enough not to crack your arms on the walls when you’re doing your hair. That corrected, they have moved on at a fair pace today again. A lot of the north facing side, except the front door area, has been done and the bedroom section on the south side is well on it’s way. The west kitchen walls will be finished by tonight. One presumes that tomorrow (if it’s not a Saint’s day) they will work on the west and south lounge walls.
We have been warned that this frantic pace will slow down as we get into the plumbing, electrician-ing and plastering phase. Fine, as long as there is progress and the weather keeps improving we will be OK.
To finish we have today taken delivery of the 175 cement blocks that I mentioned the other day. Three pallets of 75 blocks each weighing about thirteen kg. We set off this afternoon dry building a wall along the camino side of the caravan and portacabin. I said that if I laid just one layer today I could take my time and finish perhaps three layers by early next week. Well it is hard to do just a little and then leave it so we ended up doing all three layers and perhaps we may add one more if it all seems stable enough. This will act as a further wind break, we hope, which will help should we have more winds, we will see. Now I am ‘kerry packard’ and my back and arms are aching like mad. I’ll just have to sit in and watch the rugby this week end to recuperate, I may have no option.
E: Many a slip twixt cup and lip!!
Chief editor, yeahhhhhh!!!!!
BTW we have seen a fabulous front door for the house. It incorporates old style Spanish with modern elegance and security. More on this later if we get to buy it.

It is a glorious sunny day today with a lovely ambient temperature of 16 (in the sun probably 22). I’ve been out removing the layers of dust from inside the car’s engine compartment whilst Elayne has been catching up on the ironing and watching ‘Place in the sun’.
The builders have been finishing off the roof brick work and now have demolished (it seems to be the only way to describe how they are taking these props, rails and wooden shuttering boards from the ceiling. How they haven‘t had a board hitting them on the head yet is a miracle) some of the downstairs support props. They are starting to build the downstairs walls and already we can see the shape of our bedroom and bathroom coming on.
We do have a problem though.
Some while ago we expressed concern that the builders had not put down a membrane on the concrete to protect from rising damp. We were assured that they had not yet got to this stage and that ‘they do! know what they are doing’. OK we thought, that is re-assuring and we are happy to be told this. It occurred to Elayne, just now, that they are now building the walls and we still have not seen any sight of membrane or damp proof course. We typed our concern into a free translation web site, translated it to Spanish, printed it out and took it up to the builders. The builders then talked to Dario and Jose and one or both of them have said that they will come up to talk to us. We are not sure when this will be but the builders are carrying on building at an alarming rate. If we cannot get any satisfactory explanation then we will have to call Chema (the architect)
BTW this is the third time that we have done a hard copy translation and, with an apology for us not speaking Spanish written into it, it is a very good way of communicating our, hard to explain, requirements after our humble Spanish words fail us. We always do it with a smile and we always get a smile back.
We will have to now await further developments. Meanwhile our bedroom wall is now over two meters tall.
More about this together with wall pictures later.

Muchos later.
Our bedroom outside wall is up to the ceiling already (including window space and lintel). I have just spoken with our friend Allen (our tennis friends Mags and Allen) about a damp proof course and he has kindly re-assured us that in Spain, new builds do not have a damp proof course. Allen went on to tell me that in actual fact an all over synthetic membrane, here, could cause slippage problems over time with all the small earth tremors that they have (I think that I saw an article that said there was something like fifty small tremors every day but of course we don’t feel most of them) I can see that over a period of time a house could go sledging off down the rambla all on its own neoprene sledge. We have now decided we do not really want a damp proof course any more.
We are just settling down again after having five vehicles here at one time this afternoon. It’s gone mad.
We now have Carlos (a really nice guy), in the team, doing all the electrics, plus the kitchen and the bedroom wardrobe carpentry. I did ask if he was any good with a broom as well. He will be working here with us, on and off, for some time now. His English is very good and he has an English speaking secretary called Cristina (his spelling) which will be helpful.
The terrace and solarium tiles arrived this afternoon (all 750 of them). TG they sent the ones that we chose. By tonight nearly all of the east side walls of the house will be up. Muchos rapido, what?

There’s me thinking no one took any notice of this blog and I already have had two complaints about not showing ‘work in progress’ on the roof yesterday. Well I thought I would see if you were paying attention, and found that you were in respect of the roof, but you were not in respect of the mystery object picture yesterday. I’ll give you one more shot at it. If you know what it is, write a short comment on the bottom of the blog (and don’t forget to press the ‘publish’ button). First prize for correct entry is a week in Burwash, second prize is two weeks in Burwash.
The builders are on site again today so the roof tiles look a little more complete. The very top section, above the tiles will be cemented and painted white. The section under the bottom tiles, that is now white, is the polystyrene edge shape former. It gives a convoluted, decorative roofing edge joining the roof and walls together. When the former is removed it will be grey concrete but it will then be painted white. I did think that I saw them start on the chimney yesterday, but we are still without.
We understand that the weather in the UK has been a little grotty yesterday and today. Please accept our sympathies. Next month spring starts and the clocks go forwards into BST. We go to CET (Central European Time) but I’m not sure if it is the same weekend as the UK clock change. There you are, you feel better already (and I feel really
good ((gloat ;-))))))

After a peaceful night we have a glorious day with 18-19 degrees, that’s all we want, it’s not much to ask for is it?
We have been to Vera (pronounced Bera) today to our solicitor Isobel Lopez, she’s a lovely lady. Jodie from Lighthouse Properties was with us in case we had any language difficulties (thanks a lot Jodie). We now have our Spanish wills fully made out and witnessed by the notary in Vera and then registered in Madrid. We also now have our full residency papers which just have to be verified in Almeria. We have an appointment (already) to go to Almeria on the 13-4-2007 to have our finger prints taken, have our passports inspected and to hand over three passport photographs, one of which will be put onto a Spanish official ID card. We also collected the land title deeds that now record that we are the recognized owners of a property and land on this site, again this has been officially recorded in Madrid.
As if that were not enough for one day, we have returned to camp to find that we are now the proud owners of a tiled roof, see pictures. Do you like the style of the tiles? (you dare say no ;-))))
The almond blossoms are at their very best and the glorious day is restoring our faith and morale. It will only take England to beat Ireland a week on Saturday and then France after that and life will seem good again.(E: ho ho ho!)

Today the builders are on the roof (it’s still howling a bit) and they are setting the solarium floor angle to allow for drainage, we think. All the little cement channels that they put down on the roof on Saturday were all at a height to angle the whole floor to one end. Today they are putting cement in between these channels and leveling to each side channel. We will further see when we go up on site tonight. We walk up every night, after they have left, to take pictures of the day’s progress.
When we got back from Albox we also noticed that there are about 400 roof tiles stacked up on the roof ready for laying, we presume, tomorrow after the floor cement dries.
Quite often, when you are driving about, you will see a complete roof, plus chimney, stood on just the concrete pillars, no walls, like ours will be quite soon. Our roof is still on the hundreds of jacks for support whilst the pillar concrete is fully setting (we think that this takes two to three weeks). To avoid a long lay off they will complete the roof, in full, so that the end of the roof work will coincide with the curing of the concrete pillars. They will then run straight on and build the house walls whilst at the same time have protection from the rain and the heat.
We think that this is how it all works. Watch this space and we will find out together.