We learned last night that we have lost our Wednesday evening entertainer at Lentisco’s. John Carey (entertainer) has opened a bar down on Mojacar playa and we suspect that he is going to put all his energy into this bar, which is not surprising really. However the crowd up here feel a little let down at being dropped so suddenly and quickly. I know that John has been ill recently, perhaps that has had a bearing on his decision. Until Paco finds another entertainer (and he will because of the bar takings on such nights) we are grounded now, all except one nights’ dancing.
This morning we woke to arriving builders. Jose left two lads here that we have not seen before. They started taking the metal shuttering off the edges of the roof. The wind was blowing quite hard but they stayed and have stuck to their task.
We decided, despite the wind, to go down to Huercal Overa to play tennis. One of our genny’s has been running badly so on the way to HO we dropped it of at Santo Petar for Philip to have a look at for us. Philip was not at home but we spoke to him on the phone and his parents, Margaret and Ken let us leave the genny anyway.
Elayne and I had a super hour and a half in warm sunshine on the sheltered courts. It was so warm that I bared my legs for the second time this year.
After tennis and as we arrived back at the caravan, my mobile phone (thank goodness for mobile phones out here) went off, it was Philip to say that the genny was mended and ready for collection (what service). I told Philip that as we were going down to Mojacar tomorrow (to collect another huge dollop of euros for the builder, the third of five stage payments) we would collect the genny on the way back. When I asked him how much it would be he said €5. He had sussed out the problem in seconds (a blocked exhaust filter) and fixed it in minutes. What a splendid, honest chap. I would have not been surprised, nor too upset, to have had to pay ten times that much to have it fixed.
The builders, whilst we have been away, have started building walls on the roof? These walls are the inner solarium walls that will support the forty five degree roof. This roof is going to partially surround the solarium. The other part of the solarium, above the two porches and some of the back, will have open balustrades. They have put an enormous pile of bricks up there and have fixed up a hoist to bring barrow loads of cement up to roof level.
Later a heavy brick lorry arrived and dropped of another nine or ten pallets of bricks (200 bricks per pallet), two of which went straight up onto the roof to join the rest. I estimate that we now have about 2800 bricks on site (perhaps 600 of which are now up on the roof).
Elayne and I did wonder what the next stage would be but we did not imagine it to be building walls on the roof, nor did we expect any work on the roof to start just forty eight hours after the concrete had been laid, exciting isn’t it? The props underneath the roof are still all in place so I suppose it is all quite strong.