Just when you start to expect things here in Spain, you are brought up sharp by the unexpected. For the last thirteen weeks the builders have turned up for work, on Saturday, regular as clockwork on the button at eight o’clock in the morning. Today no builders on site at all, all day. No explanations. We don’t know why they didn’t show and we have to assume that as next week is a big religious week, then perhaps they will be having the whole of next week off. What a bummer just when we start to see a little light at the end of the project.
Elayne and I went off down to Albox and we have now, finally managed to buy a ‘soft’ headboard for our new bed. We bought it from the shop run by the lady from Barnoldswick. She gave us a twenty percent discount off the advertised price so we are well pleased. We actually saved two hundred euros because we had assumed the price to be three times what we bought it for.
This afternoon Mags and Allen came over to see us. Allen kindly supplied and fitted a water filter onto the caravan supply from the hebe. We had started to find a few unwelcome tiny little crawlies in the hebe water and needed to eliminate them to feel comfortable with it once again. Allen will also fit a complete filtration and water softening system for us when we get into the house. The water is so hard that in just a few years the pipes can become clogged with chalk, and then one has to take up all of the tiles and the floors to renew them, very expensive and a repetitive biannual problem. After Allen had put the filter on we came inside and had a smashing game of whist, whilst enjoying a glass, or three, of sangria. It must be over ten years since we have played whist and it was a real joy, we must do it again soon. Whilst we played, and drank the sangria, it came over dark outside and rained quite heavily. We then saw the most amazing double rainbow in the leaden grey sky. We could see all of the double rainbow from horizon to horizon. What a spectacle, in all of my life I have not seen such a vivid coloured pair of rainbows. Elayne took a wonderful photograph out of the caravan window that accidentally also showed the reflection of the house and yet another rainbow, three in all. A picture in a thousand, well done gal. We're not sure yet what the moth is but it's got very nice markings.

Yesterday we could see snow on the high mountains. Today it is back to being sunny and has the makings of a really nice warm sunny day, we’re ready for a few. The builders are hard at work, three inside and two outside. We are just going off shopping so we’ll see some progress when we return, we hope. The wild flowers are looking good and fresh after their big watering. BTW, I spotted wild sweet-pea plants growing on the side of the tarmac on the way to Taberno yesterday. The flowers are small, deep mauve, but there is no smell to them.
On our way down to do some shopping, I took some pictures of the wild sweet-peas and then we found some super swathes of poppies in flower. I’m sure that our friend Christine Walker will paint a lovely water colour painting of them whilst she is at night school this winter, it’s just her thing.
As we drove down to Taberno this morning, and as we were just passing the town hall and Lentisco’s, my phone rang/vibrated in my pocket. I tried to pull in as well as fishing in my jeans pocket for my phone. I parked right in the front of the town hall on the no parking, no smiling, no skating, no breathing and certainly no enjoying yourself area. The caller was the man from the fireplace shop. He said that he was setting off from Albox, to survey our requirements, and would we meet him in thirty minutes in Lentisco’s car park. What a bit of neat timing. We had time for dos ‘des-cafeinado’ and two pieces of cake on the sunny balcony of Lentisco’s, whilst we endured the wait for him. We brought him up to site and he did his stuff with a tape measure. We will now ring him when we are ready for the fireplace to be installed, perhaps at the end of April.
Later:
We have just come back from our daily visit to the house. At the rate that the builders are working, they will have finished plastering by mid next week, and then…….perhaps the floors and floor tiles. The lounge is starting to look huge with it’s ceiling and upper walls plastered. By the time it is painted ‘blanco’ it will be blooming enormous.

Strewth nearly the end of March already. The rains seem to have stopped and today is bright (a little sun) but in the northerly breeze it’s still quite chilly. We are not out and about today but I will be going down to Taberno to see if there is any mail and to get a new gas bottle from the petrol station. We had a very welcome letter today, from my cousin Peter and his wife Joyce, that was only posted on Saturday 24th March. They have just returned from what sounds like a world tour, what an experience they have had. Their letter must have missed the Spanish holding station and so came direct to us.
The house looks good in the morning light and we again missed the builders arriving this morning. It’s the SSS again (Spanish Sleeping Sickness), I’m trying not to feel guilty about it but it’s quite a strain. The builders are again working inside the house so that’s OK even though it’s frustrating not being able to watch them. We know that the plasterer must have now moved into the lounge because we can see the scaffold system that he stands on to do the ceiling across the lounge window. We do admire their eleven hours on site each day, but it’s still not fast enough for us.
Easter week here is one of the largest festival periods of the year (we are told). We are going to have to get clued up on all the activities and parades so that we don’t miss them. Apart from all the religious celebrations a chap told us yesterday that the youngsters get together in clapped out old cars and race along and around the rambla down in Albox. He said that it was quite a spectacle to watch on a nice day. I think that event will be on the rambla south of Albox and out towards Almanzora, but we need to find out when, if we want to go. We will consult with Mags and Allen to see what the best bits of it all are.

As we came out of Lentisco’s last night there was a deluge rain storm going on. We got our feet and tops wet running to the car. I was seriously worried that we might not get back onto our side of the rambla if it had started to flood. However it was still quite dry in the bottom and by the time we came over the mountain tops back to the caravan the rain was just a few spots on the windscreen and it had not rained equally hard on site. Today we have been down to Albox , and went, after our FEB at Bar International, to order our log burning stove and fireplace surround. The guy down there spoke as much English as I did Spanish but with a lot of friendly smiling and gesticulating we managed. He will come up to do a survey soon. We arrange with every one to phone us when they set off and then we meet in Lentisco’s car park and I guide them up to site. We told him that we will be needing the fire in about four or five weeks and this seemed OK to him. Another job successfully done.
We visited the small town of Almazora after the fire shop. We have been through it before, when people were taking us around to see already built properties last year. It not a very likeable place and we are very glad that we were not seduced into anything in that area. The town though has a derelict palace next to a church (Palacio de Almanzora built from1700-1900). It is in a ruined state but it has been magnificent in it’s hay days. What a great shame that it could not have been restored to it’s former glory, however, when a country is thirty to forty years behind the rest of Europe, and having suffered the destruction wrought by a civil war and then having a further thirty five years of dictatorship, one can see that what to us would be a priority restoration, would fall down the list of priorities and come a long way after the vivid memories of starvation and depravation of those times. The buildings, although left, are still surprisingly in fair condition should someone come along and rescue it. Pictures also of wild roadside lavender etc.
Since coming back home we have had a quite heavy thunder storm. It has been thunder and lightning all around us with hailstones bouncing down and gradually climbing the outside of the caravan windows (see pictures). The temperature outside dropped down to 3 degrees. Come to sunny Spain! The storm has now moved off to the west and the skies are once more becoming lighter.
We filled the car up with petrol this morning. We have just done over 15000km in eight months since we got the car. It is a very reliable and trustworthy friend to us.
We didn’t get up to site yesterday, so we have to see two days progress when we go up tonight.
Just been: Small hall way plastered and the top half of our bedroom plastered, rock on. The rain has washed the solarium tiles so that they look really good.

It’s just like being in England again. 7 degrees, chilly, overcast after a nights’ on and off rain. We can’t see the mountains because of the mist and it’s wet and muddy underfoot (that should cheer up Sandra Pinder, who has complained that we are putting too many sunny pictures on the blog and this is making her depressedJ . The 7th of November was our last dollop of decent rain.
We have been out to furniture shops again this morning and have returned after buying a dining room table and six chairs, plus a lovely patio table and four chairs. Unfortunately we are not able to show them on the blog because of copyright laws, you’ll just have to visit us to see them in the flesh, so to speak. If only we could be as decisive over the fireplace and log burning stove.
I’m going to wax my lyrical’s once more. We go off most mornings to hunt for furniture or to do the shopping or banking or soliciting (if you know what I mean) and we often have a light lunch out, of tapas and or a salad, together with a lunch time drink. This lunch habit is super, however nothing at all can beat buying a fresh pan (French type bread stick) from down town and coming back to the caravan and having the pan with cheese and soup. It is one of retired life’s real pleasures, and if enjoyment is linked to fatness, then we need to increase the size of the house way before we move in. It’s just after four o’clock now and we have just finished our caravan lunch. One side of me now requires a siesta (what a good idea) but as we are out dancing tonight we have to scrub up so that we do not look like a couple of hill billies when we go out. What a stressful life we now lead ;-))))))(lots of winkey smiley, if it corrupts).
It has rained most of this morning but is now brightening up a little. The land and the wild flowers look really refreshed and vibrantly coloured whilst the almond trees are a lovely shade of lime green.
The builders are doing much of the same as yesterday, we think, but we will only be able to note the changes when we have been up to site this evening (on our way to dancing). Oooops we were too late to go up to site tonight so we are not aware of what has been done until tomorrow night, must try harder.

A consequence of the clocks going forward was that we did not awake until nine o’clock this morning. The builders were hard at work and we had not even heard them arrive. When I think that during most of my working life I was up at six fifteen, even sometimes at the week end, I can only presume that we both have some sort of ex-pat Spanish sleeping sickness. Even the cats didn’t jump on us until nine this morning, so they were also confused by the time change.
Today has been a little overcast and we believe that we actually saw two rain drops on the windscreen as we drove to Mojacar this morning. The Med still looked good close up. We stopped several times, usually near furniture shops, and took some more pictures of the lovely spring wild flowers. We thought that through the lack of rain here the land would remain dry and arid all year round, we didn’t expect seeing swathes of spring flowers in all their glory all over the place. What a delight they are to see. (see pictures).
BTW, for the boys, the diesel genny is running perfectly now and ran continuously yesterday for about eight hours. So obviously, and with hind sight, it clearly does not like petrol engine sump oil. We are both relieved that it is at last working again for it’s living. We did try to make contact with the UK slow suppliers of the genny to see if they could give an answer to the problem, but we got no replies to email. We then looked again at Ebay and found that the suppliers have closed their Ebay account, after more bad customer comments. It means that we are on our own with this genny so getting it working again is good. May it run for a long time, un-hindered by me.
As we came back from looking at today’s progress on the house, there was two distinct rumbles of thunder up in the mountains. The sky is low and dark and we have occasional spatters of rain on the caravan windows. This is the first time that we have heard thunder since a thunder and lightening storm we had way back in November. The weather systems are coming from the Med in the south east.
The kitchen has it’s ceiling plastered and they have grouted the top half of the wall tiles. The two guest bedrooms are now fully plastered and the plasterer is now starting to plaster the walls of the small hallway. Outside, the marble crazy-paving wall covering is starting to go on the lower part of the walls. It’s all happening.
As I finish typing it is really raining, only the second rain we have had since moving down here to the lay-by in December (apart from the snow of course). It’s now bucketing down, the flowers and the land will be so pleased. It’s very snugly in the warm caravan with the rain pelting on the roof, it reminds me of when we went camping in tents as youngsters. In those days we were in rough sleeping bags and the rain sent a fine spray through the canvas onto our faces as we slept, but the noise was great as we were warm.

Today is the first day of B.S.Time (eat your heart out Australia) and because it is Sunday we are not sure how this will affect tomorrow morning when the builders arrive for work (yes they’ve had yet another Sunday off). Increasingly, (and with our signalling system with Dario) we find ourselves waking up and getting up, convinced that the builders are having another Saints Day off, only to find them hard at work and us having not heard them arrive. We will see.
We have had the pleasure of Allen and Mags coming up to see us and the house today. Allen is an absolute font of knowledge about local building and swimming pools, and each time we meet I learn loads of basic stuff, as an ex-paper worker, from him and them that we should already know, but don’t. They are a really nice couple and their friendship is a joy to us. We were able to take them up to and show them the house, so far. We also talked about swimming pools systems, air conditioning units, water purifiers and generators. They stayed with us for perhaps two hours, great.
Elayne has been convinced that the balustrades on the solarium are slanting. After a little time tonight she has agreed that it is all an optical illusion, thank goodness, because I would have hated telling the builders that it has all to come down again. As it is, tomorrow, I have to tell the builder that has put the wall tiles in place, that he has put some tiles upside down. This again is about us being on site all the time to keep an eye on things.
Our diesel genny is now running OK again. We can conclude that it needs special diesel genny type oil in it’s sump. Oooops I put 10-40 four stroke petrol engine grade in and it didn’t like it, so gradually broke down on ever increasing occasions until it would only run for about half an hour and then stall. I drained the oil again, cleaned the oil filter with diesel fuel, and re-filled it with diesel genny oil and it is now purring away like a cat with a bowl of cream. Thank goodness, because we need this 5kv genny running well for when we get into the house. It’s still good to have the petrol genny’s as stand by.

It is our eldest son, Stephen’s, birthday today, he’s at the big 40 and that is a very sobering thought for Elayne and I.
Have a super day Steve. Him, Debs, Ivan and Ollie are all off skiing for a week to Chamonix today. We had a nice long telephone chat with them all, early this morning, before they set off for the airport and they are all very excited.
We had a really nice Chinese meal, at the Wok Buffet, with Mags and Allen last night. The time flew by and as we were leaving we were given two bottles of red wine and they brought some apple and peach liqueurs to our table. They poured the drinks into the little Chinese lacquer glasses for us and then left the bottles on the table for us to go round again.
On our way down to Huercal Overa, after the phone call this morning, to look for more furniture shops, we became aware that there was a cross country car, motor bike, quad bike type rally going on down in the ramblas. Allen and Mags had told us about it last night. It was amazing to see, because each vehicle was kicking up enormous clouds of dust so that you could see the dust rising ages before you saw any vehicle. It was very much like watching the Dakar Rally across the Sahara Desert (I think that’s the one anyway) As we got into town roads were blocked off leading to where the support teams were stationed opposite the sports stadium, where we play tennis.(see pictures). There was some very high powered teams involved.
The roadsides on the way to and from HO look fabulous at the moment with masses of wild yellow and white marguerite type of flowers in thick swathes along each side. It’s a very beautiful time of the year here, especially if you are prepared to get down on the floor to ‘little plant’ level. Even our land looks quite ordinary until you get down on hands and knees to look at the very smallest plants, it’s very rewarding. The Spanish equivalent of yellow broom is coming out all over and the mimosa is in full flower, it is a lovely vivid yellow. Since we spotted the first almond blossoms, in the very middle of January, there has been something blossoming somewhere right through.
We also saw our fourth snake today. It was about two and a half foot long and it was making it’s way across the main road in front of us as we drove. I had to pull over to the other side of the road to miss it so Elayne saw more of it than I did. From our book we think that it might have been another southern smooth snake. It was the largest one that we have seen so far.
We also have some house martins back in the area again, they are fabulous little birds and migrate from South Africa. In the UK the first house martins usually arrive about mid May. What a bonus for us, I didn’t think that we would see them over here.
Until later, we are not quite sure what the builders are doing today, we presume it will be more of the same, tiles and plastering. The picture of the silver upright tank on last nights blog is the oil storage tank for the hot water and central heating system, it has a polythene heavy duty sack inside, that then has the oil in. It will be filled from a tanker when we get it installed and sorted out.

Interesting thought, as the clocks go forward on Sunday. Here in Spain we have light failing at about eight o’clock in the evening, half an hour after sunset. Next week the light will fail at nine o’clock. On the other side of the coin, in the morning, sunrise is about half past seven, dawn being three quarters of an hour before that. So at the moment we have eleven hours of daylight each day. Our days draw out at just six minutes per week as apposed to the UK eighteen minutes per week. Question for science: When does the length of daylight in the UK surpass the length of daylight in Spain, as it surely does? Just thought I’d ask in case anyone knows.
Again we have six men on site today, although as yet we can not see what they are doing. As I write, Jose has just arrived in his pickup truck with an enormous amount of marble pieces on the back. We think that this will be broken up like crazy paving for the bottom six hundred millimetres of the wall around the house. We asked that it should be as light as possible and I think that they have obliged. This section then has a grey marble border between the random marble pieces and the yeso’d top part of the wall. See previous pictures of the outside walls to get the drift.
Today has been very sunny with a little wind but in the last hour (now 16-40hrs) it has clouded over from the north.
Elayne and I are looking forward to going to the Wok Buffet again tonight with our good friends Mags and Allen.
It’s now 17-10hrs and we have a delivery of radiators and other electrical paraphernalia on site, wow!.
One of the pictures is of one of our favourite lunchtime tapas bars in Albox.