Trev's at it again

As a kitten Trevor loved to play with bits of screwed up paper and the shinier the better. We'd throw paper around the room and curl up laughing when she brought them back to be thrown again. Little did we know that we were fostering a behaviour that would come back to bite us. We turned Trev into a cat burglar.

I think I mentioned in an early post that she's well known now for stealing from our neighbours, one of them even going so far as closing the curtains when she sees Trev looking into the house from her stalking post on the terrace wall. "I'm sure she's casing the house, sussing out what is small enough to get out" our neighbour told us. We've had hair rollers, carrier bags, a watch, various bags of nails, screws and washers and even wall tiles (no, we couldn't work out how she did those either).

As time passed she lost interest in bringing her treasures home. The stash of un-returned plunder was thrown away and things generally calmed down. Curtains and doors were left open, backs were turned, people forgot. That was when the new people moved into a house in the next street, a young couple with a small child.

It started again just before Christmas. I came home from work one day to find two small silver Christmas tree decorations on the kitchen floor. I put them on a high shelf and made a mental note to ask around the neighbours if anybody had noticed them missing. Then came a plug (complete with about 30cm of cable) which had been cut off an electrical appliance. Then a collection of red serviettes, wrapping paper and bows, carrier bags from a well known electrical store and a small football. The ball had the name Paquito written on it so I finally had a clue...which led nowhere.

A few days ago I got up, walked across the kitchen and realised my feet were wet. Half asleep I looked down and saw the floor was covered in little lumps of wet, brown fibrous stuff. They trailed through the kitchen and into the living room. They were stuck to the curtains, hidden under the rugs and generally spread as much as possible. That was when I noticed the filter tips. A quick check of the water bowl confirmed my suspicions, it contained a very wet and empty packet of cigarettes. Close by I found three small paintings done by a child. They were very good actually, showing a basic understanding of 3D, but I digress...

I'm going to have to go round to our new neighbours, who I suspect had a silver themed Christmas tree, who recently bought a new electrical appliance and then cut the cable off the old one. I guess they smoke English cigarettes, that their daughter is a budding artist and possibly has a friend called Paco. I'm going to have to try and explain the unlikely reason why they need to keep their doors and windows closed for a while. I'm going to have to give Trev another ASBO. Lets hope they find it funny.

You may or may not know that in Spain the kids get their presents from the three kings and not Santa, and that they receive them on the evening of January 4th (I think).

Throughout Spain The Three Kings arrive in processions and each area has its own take on how it should be done. In Malaga they arrive by boat before snaking through the city streets, throwing sweets to the kids. I've heard of cities where The Kings are on elephants, and when we lived in Estepona the kid's gifts were carried on the backs of camels. There's usually lots of music, excitement and the occasional casualty as the onlookers are pelted with hard sweets by The Kings and their attendants. Here in The Land Of The Smiling Mule, as always, it's scaled down. The kings arrive on tractors, their way led by the municipal band. For me you can keep your elephants, the cast of thousands, this scaled down event is packed with charm and the whole village takes part. But even better than the evening procession is what happens earlier that day, the can drag.

The Land of The Smiling Mule sits in the foothills of a range of mountains and when the wind's in the right direction clouds being blown across the Atlantic get trapped and hide the village from the rest of the world. Rumour has it that one Christmas the clouds arrived and sat so low and dense that The Three Kings couldn't find the village, so nobody got any presents that year. To ensure that never happened again the kids were told they needed to make as much noise as possible to guide The Kings to the village. So, at mid-day on January 4th all the kids drag long chains of tin cans through the streets of the village to attract the attention of The Kings. It really is VERY noisy and you can physically feel the excited tension in the air. I've been here for about five years now and never known the kids to miss out on their presents, so it proves it must work!

Well, it's been a while...again. Christmas came and went, as did New Year, Three Kings and the winter sales, in fact the whole festive circus passed without a blog mention. I know, I know, a prize winning blogger I am not. It seems this is as good as it gets, so I'll get on with it.

Christmas day was a bit odd. We usually go out of our way to do something untraditional but decided this last year to stay home and do whatever it is that people do. (Eat turkey and argue I'm told.) So, after breakfast we decided to exchange gifts. I was sure I'd bought the perfect gift and was looking forward to seeing P's face when he opened it. Paper started to fly as we both tore into our presents. Like a couple of excited kids we got the paper off, turned the boxes over and saw we'd bought each other the same thing, a digital photo frame. It's never happened before in all the years we've been together and it was so strange. Now, we all like to think we'd be generous in spirit at times like this, grateful and mature. Forget it. We both flipped the boxes over and started reading the blurb on the back to see which one was the best. Boys and their toys eh!

Later we each wanted to play with our new toys, as you do, and work out their little intricacies. That was when we realised the next hitch, we both have the same photos in our respective archives. So we fiddled for a while, adjusting settings, uploading pics until we were satisfied they worked. Then we read the instructions. Then we were ready to put the frames where we wanted them. Believe me, when you live in an open-plan house it's really easy to achieve digital photo frame overkill. Even though we put one in the kitchen and one in the living room you could still see them both. Every time the image changed we found we involuntarily glanced over. After a couple of hours of eyes flicking constantly from one to the other and seeing the same photos we pulled the plugs.

The best photo of Christmas has to be Trevor (above) who got inside some wrapping paper and stayed there for several days. Very wise.

I can't come out today, it's raining.

There's a river that runs through the Smiling Mule. During the summer it's a series of muddy puddles, but through the winter it's fast flowing and deep.

Last month we had some heavy rain and in one day the river rose by two and a half metres. Most people live on this side of the river, but there are a few who live on the other side, and Maria is one of them. She lives alone in a house where she can't see any other buildings. She's recently had her house connected to the main water supply, before which she relied on rain water which collected on the top of a hill behind the house and ran down a home-made system of pipes. I can't decide whether I think Maria is really brave or barking mad. The last time I saw her she was excited about having a floor laid in her bedroom. I assumed she meant she was having the tiles renewed, but as we talked I realised she meant she was "having a floor put it". Until now the floors in her house were earth, topped with carefully chosen, flat stones from the river. "The problem", she said, "is that during the winter the ground gets wet and leaches its way into the house through the floors." No wonder she was excited at the prospect of a bedroom floor!

Contacting Maria can be difficult. She has no land telephone and relies on a cell phone, but the other side hardly gets a signal. There's a patch about a metre square, somewhere behind her house where she usually gets a signal of sorts which she calls her office, and that's where she stands to make calls. After the heavy rain of last month I got a call from her. We'd arranged to meet and she called to say she couldn't get over the river so was stuck at home until the water levels dropped. She said she was fine (it takes a lot to faze Maria), that she had plenty of food and books and would be in touch when the river allowed.

I've decided at the moment I admire Maria. She doesn't have to live like this, she wants to. She's lucky enough to have choices and brave enough to make her choices work for her, but I'm sure when we next meet and I'm sat with my mouth open listening to what she's put up with I'll go back to thinking she's as mad as a bag of snakes.

Oh, and the above picture is in fact that same river. I think it dates from the 60's and shows the kids from the other side going to school.

Digital frustrations

Over the years we've had a few digital cameras. We always take care of them, they've never been dropped, accidentally ended up in a swimming pool or had wine spilt on them as I've seen happen with others. So why is it they all end up useless after a year or two?
Our latest camera has been showing signs of giving up over the last months. When we go to view the photos we sometimes get an error message saying the card is empty, but they upload on to the computer. Once we've uploaded we delete images from the card, only to find out later that they hadn't gone and duplicate themselves in our pictures file. Nothing major, just annoying and a sign that all isn't well.
Last week P took a party of kids from school to Granada to draw, paint and photograph examples of Islamic design as the foundation of an art project. He took lots of photos but when he went to upload them onto his computer it said the card had not been formatted and if he formatted it now he'd lose any pictures already on it.
It seems to me that digital cameras have a very short life span. In our experience they start to become unpredictable after a couple of years and shortly after that unusable.
We tend to buy middle price cameras so I don't think the problem is we're being cheapskates. That said, we're thinking of splashing out a bit and buying a digital SLR but nervous that the extra cost would end up a waste of money if this too has a short life span.
If you're reading this and have a digital camera please leave your thoughts in a comment because I'd be interested to know whether other people have found the same thing happen to them.
Thanks.

The one about the sink

Ever since we moved into our small (but beautifully formed) house five years ago one of the sinks in the kitchen has been a bit dicky. We've had several plumbers come to fix it, each one slagging off the work of the one before and adding an extra pipe here and there, and none of them actually fixing the problem. What we've been left with is a sink which sometimes drains, sometimes not, sometimes smells, sometimes not and so much pipework it looks like the Madrid Metro system in the cupboard underneath. A couple of days ago it all came to a head when all the dirty water from the dishwasher erupted from the outlet pipe and flooded the kitchen. I'd had enough. It was time to get the big boys in. I contacted a company which specialises in unblocking drains and they came this morning.
"Oh dear, oh dear" said #1 when he opened the cupboard. "Looks to me like somebody's been trying to do the job of a professional here", he managed (cleverly I thought) to say whilst sucking his teeth. My heart sank. "Compressed air", he said, "that's what's needed here". "Compressed air", repeated #2. I stood back and watched them shoot compressed air down the main outlet. "That should do it", #1 said with a smile. "Should do it", echoed #2. I felt my eyebrows meet in the middle. "But how do you know it's worked", I asked. "Because it's compressed air", he said, "and that's what it does, it works". Then he got a pen out and I thought, "oh please, no, please don't draw me a picture!" But I was wrong, he started to write my bill.
This is the point in the spaghetti western that my home has turned into with all the cowboys wandering through it that I know I should make a stand, say my piece and refuse to pay. But the problem is I always think they must know what they're doing and certainly know more than I do. "You are going to put my plumbing tribute to the Madrid Metro system back aren't you?" - I said instead. "That's my colleague's department", slimed #1. "Work of art" said #2, "should see my plumbing..." I pushed that thought away and replaced it with a confident glimpse of future sink heaven, all draining and odourless after its treatment of compressed air.
They raided my wallet and left. Wanting to get everything back to normal I started putting the clutter back into the cupboard under the sink, and that's when I heard the drip.
Does anybody know a good plumber?

Children in need

How far would you go to raise money for charity?

Introducing George

There's a road in The land Of The Smiling Mule which (as far as I know) doesn't have a name, but it's known as The Ski Slope. It's only a few metres long and connects two busy streets and it's very steep. Everybody has their own method of tackling the Ski Slope, for me it involves a standing start, turning off the air conditioning (my car would never make it otherwise) and a very deep breath. When you get to the top it's a very tight turn onto a busy one-way street, not made easier by the police cars parked on the double yellow lines across the road, which often means making the turn in a couple of attempts. However, the police station does close for lunch between two and five and their working day finishes at eight, our criminals are either very accommodating and stick to office hours or are afraid of the dark, but it does mean taking on the Ski Slope out of office hours is that bit easier.
Anyway, I was making my way home yesterday and I had to tackle the Ski Slope. I stopped the car at the bottom, made sure everything was switched off (does anybody else turn the car radio off when they have to do a tricky maneuver?) and went for it. Sounding like some boy racer I revved the car up and started my ascent. It's not until you get to the top that you can see whether the police cars are there or not so it involves a sharp stab at the brakes, a quick look forward for the police cars, a quick look left for cars coming up the hill and then some fancy foot work to get the car steady before turning out and carrying on up the hill. It was at this point I noticed movement from the corner of my eye, and before I knew what was happening there was a man sat in the back seat of my car.
Note: The Land Of The Smiling Mule sits on a hillside so it's streets are all steep. When you drive into the village (at the bottom) there are often people hanging around waiting for a lift to the top. It doesn't matter if they know you or not, if you stop for any reason somebody will get in the back of your car and tell you where they want dropping off. It takes a bit of getting used to but it's a good system and it works well, but I've never experienced it at the top of the Ski Slope before.
"ARE YOU CRAZY?" I shouted while slamming on the brakes and looking in the mirror to see who it was. "Oh, hi George..."
I don't know his real name but I call him George and he seems happy enough with that. George has made it his mission to categorise everybody in the village into one of two types, you're either a good person or a bad person. If you're a good person he laughs at you, but if you're a bad person he steps back to put a bigger space between you and him and hangs his head. The only words I've heard him speak are "good person/people" and "bad person/people", but when he laughs he laughs like a drain and you can't help joining in.
I was really angry and as I pulled away and carried on up the hill I told him so. He laughed. I parked at the top of the village, I didn't know where he wanted to go but from there everywhere was down hill, and stopped him getting out of the car. In my best Spanish I explained what he did was dangerous and never to try to get into a car on that corner again. He laughed. I dropped my tone and said it again, trying to sound as serious as I could. He laughed. I got out of the car and opened the door for him, "I think this is where you get out George". He shook my hand, said "good person" and doubled over laughing.

Djinns in the toilet

It wasn't that I didn't understand what she was saying, I'd read the book too, it's just that we both interpreted the words differently, taken different elements seriously.
We were in an old house, on the edge of a medina somewhere on Morocco's Atlantic coast. We'd finished dinner and were cleaning away in the kitchen when K suggested we kept some of the leftover food out for the Djinns. We both laughed but I knew K was half serious, or at least testing me for a reaction. She was convinced the house had other occupants, mischievous souls who had to be respected if we were going to live together happily for the weekend. I threw all the leftover food into the bin and heard a little voice behind me say, "you'll be sorry". To be honest the whole Djinn thing was getting on my nerves. We'd already been told we mustn't use the toilet after midnight (I can't remember now why), so when I did I found myself creeping around a dark house at the dead of night, urinating in silence and sloping back to bed all to keep K and her Djinns at bay.
We'd also been told to watch out for things disappearing and reappearing in another place. K was really keen to witness this one and constantly made a mental note of where all our clutter was. A couple of times she got excited about items being moved, "I left it over there" she'd say, "I know I did." Reminding her there was a housekeeper didn't do much to curb her enthusiasm.
Our last morning came all to quickly and I was in the bedroom packing. K passed the open door and laughed at my open case on the bed, "I wouldn't leave that open if I were you, a Djinn might get in it and end up going home with you." I rolled my eyes and sighed.
On our first night back home I got up in the middle of the night for a pee. As I went to switch on the light there was a crackling sound and I heard the fuses trip. I tried to flick the fuse but it wouldn't work, the house remained in darkness. I decided it could wait till the morning to sort out and went into the bathroom. My feet suddenly felt cold and I realised I was standing in water. What the...? By torch light I threw some towels on to the wet floor and added looking at the plumbing to my list of things to do the next day.
The next morning I went into the bathroom again to find it dry. Odd. The fuse box worked again and gave me electricity, very odd. After breakfast I went upstairs to put some oil on our new, oak cupboard doors we'd recently had put in. They were in pieces and hanging off the hinges. Odder still.
Maybe it's coincidence, maybe not. Maybe I'd better call K and ask her again about the chapter on exorcising Djinns.

Smoke and mirrors

Is it just me, or has anybody else noticed you don't see

Lewis Hamilton and Tutankhamun in the same room?

Bugger, I forgot my mantra.

There IS a God

I purposely haven't written anything about the American election result because there are other people much more capable of doing a better job. The Teapot Monk is one such person and you can find his thoughts here. I did however steal this YouTube video from him...



...I would like to thank every American who voted for Barack Obama.

watching and waiting

Message from the Ambassador - October 2008

"...Whilst many leave the UK to settle in Spain, the UK is still a country where many foreign nationals want to settle. You may have seen in the news that on 25 November the first identity cards for people from countries outside the European Economic Area will be issued to people who apply to stay in the UK as a student (or applications based on marriage or partnership). These ID cards will replace the vignettes previously placed in passports. ID cards will then be rolled out until everyone living in the UK has one. I know that there’s a strong demand amongst many UK nationals living in Spain for an ID card so that we don’t always have to carry passports around as a form of identification. Keep looking at our website for more news on this."
And the website address is http://ukinspain.fco.gov.uk/en/

Free rice

This is a small way to make a big difference. Go to http://www.freerice.com/index.php and answer some of the general knowledge questions (you can change the level of difficulty) and for every correct answer the sponsors donate rice to the World Food Programme.

Go on, test yourself and make a difference!

<...> insert missing words

Before I came to live in a small place I was a bit concerned that everybody would know everything about me, then I realised that's only a problem if you have something to hide, which I don't, so my concerns were laid to rest.

It's been interesting over the years to hear back snippets of information about myself which have done the rounds of the grape vine before finally finding their way back home. I've come to the conclusion that people simply don't listen, or rather they hear but don't listen and that causes problems. If you hear something but don't listen there are gaps in what you know, and gaps have to be filled if you want what you know to make sense.

The latest round of "fill-in the missing words" has been about me working at the school for the last month. I had to tell everybody what I was doing and why because the temporary job interfered with my other job and I wanted the least amount of disruption to clients as possible. Within days I started getting panic calls from clients asking if it was true I'd folded my small business and was now working full-time at school. Somebody stopped me on the street and congratulated me on my new job teaching I.T. at school. "NOOOO!" I sighed, "I'm the temporary paper-clip monitor" and explained the situation again. (I wonder if this gem originated with the hags because on more than one occasion I parked the car close to where they have their hag fest and heard mention of "computer" as I carried a laptop bag from the car.) Anyway, I then received a call from a client asking me where in Gibraltar I was working because he was about to take his lunch break and would pop over for a quick haircut. What? "No, I'm not in Gibraltar, I'm in Pleasantville and I'm the temporary paper-clip monitor" I repeated again. Then there was the call asking me how easy it was to get my new job as Head of I.T. at school. I was tempted to say it was REALLY easy because it was an imaginary job and hey, if we all listen to Willy Wonker (or was it Judy Garland?) if we wish hard enough anything can come true. But no, I explained AGAIN that it was temporary and a lowly paper-clip monitor.

I finished at school last week and smiled to myself when I thought of all those people who didn't listen and filled in the gaps. Over dinner last night P mentioned somebody at school had sent me an email on my school email account, not realising I'd finished. So in case it was something important I opened that account for the first time since I'd finished and found the in-box full of emails saying "I didn't realise you were only temporary..."



Nurse, I'm ready for my medication!

On being proactive

Photo ID cards for Brits living in Spain

Please sign the petition you will find HERE to help British nationals living in Spain receive the photo ID cards we desperately want.

There is a fundamental flaw in the online petition site, it will only allow one signing per email address. So, if there are two or more who want to sign this please use separate email addresses for each signing. All information given is strictly confidential. So come on, sign our petition...or the fluffy kitten gets it!

Thanks in advance.

Goons go to Morocco

I didn't do French, I did woodwork. S said he had a smattering of French, but not enough to understand what was going on. P said he did O' level French twice (we sighed), but he failed it both times. K said nothing but slowly shook her head. We'd all assumed that one of the others would be able to communicate on our behalf, or that a mix of Spanish and English would work. We were wrong.



We were stood in a strange (but beautiful) house which we'd rented for the weekend in Morocco. In front of us stood a woman who was clearly very friendly and welcoming, glad to see us, mid way through cooking our dinner and trying to get something across in a language none of us understood. Bugger!



We were using Spanish and English and she was using French and Arabic, but her husband spoke some Spanish so he was called in to help. It went something like this:
Simo: My wife she cooks your food, yes?
Us: Ahh, yes.
Simo: But she needs deen...no, one moment, she wants you to understand about dee, deener. Now, yes, if it's possible?

Us: Ohhhhh, she wants to show us what she's cooking. (We go into the kitchen, followed by Simo and his wife, who are talking together in rapid Arabic.)

Us: Hhmmm it smells wonderful.

Simo: No.

Us: No?

Simo: No, you don't understand. The deener for food, yes?

Us: Yes.

Simo: No. You pay for house, yes?

Us: Yes.

Simo: And the deener food is from us.

Me: Wow, thank you so much. That is so kind of you...(to the others) Dinner is on the house.

(We all smiled a lot, shook their hands and thanked them, but they just looked confused.)

Simo: (Muttering in Arabic takes his wallet from his pocket and gestures giving money to his wife.) She cooks your dinner, you have to give her deenero.



For any none Spanish (or Spanglish) speakers, "dinero" is Spanish for "money".



Six people, four languages, one syllable...an ebarrassing cock-up.

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This pic is crying out for a caption...please leave one

Pushing my luck and my temper

WARNING This will probably be a long post, so make a cup of tea first.

There are issues with residency permits for Brits living in Spain. Basically the Spanish authorities stopped supplying European residents with photo ID cards a while ago and replaced them with non-photo certificates of residency. So what do I use as photo ID? Driving license? No. I have a Spanish "foreigner's" driving licence and the photo is only stapled to the card (cheap-skates) which makes it unusable as official ID. I can't reapply for a UK licence because I don't have an address there. I had two options, either carry my passport wherever I go or simply refuse to renew my residency card when it expired. The card expired two years ago and I've been using it constantly ever since as photo ID...and to all the unobservant shop assistants throughout Andalucia, I thank you from the heart of my bottom.

In the meantime I wrote to the British Ambassador and asked for an explanation as to why I was expected to carry my passport around (I know, I lied, it's bad and I deserve to be spanked) wherever I go. It transpires that the Spanish government are in fact playing by the rules (at this point Andaloo is rolling his eyes and doing that lemon sucking thing with his face) and doing the right thing. They (the Spanish government) are allowing European nationals resident in Spain to use the photo ID cards from their birth country in Spain instead of using a Spanish one. Problem solved? No. The UK don't have photo ID cards so we have nothing to use as a substitute other than our passports.

So, back to my situation. I decided not to renew my expired residency card and push my luck. I knew that one day I'd need to do something official and my luck would be up, but until then I'd keep on pushing. Well, my luck ran out. As I mentioned I've been doing some work. OK stop smirking, you've had this long intro so it's obvious what's coming...but I didn't. Yup, I got a call to say my residency had expired and unless I renew it they can't pay me. Now that's what I call motivation! So, on Friday I trotted off to the Big Smoke along with some new staff at school to be processed. I'm still angry and frustrated at the number of hoops I had to jump through to get this all new and improved certificate of residency, but that's another post, this one's already too long. The bottom line is I got it. What's interesting (or ironic) is, the others I went with all got photo ID cards. Why? Well, one is Canadian, two are Americans and the third is from Lebanon. It's absolutely BONKERS!

Limes under the sofa

So, here I am two weeks into my temporary job and feeling for the first time that I can come up for air. It's been difficult for lots of reasons, not least because I'm still doing my original job in the evenings too. I've found it hard to switch off, my mind has been racing and that's stopped me from sleeping, but over the last couple of evenings I've gone whole hours without thinking about work...a big step forward. When I just had the one job I was lucky enough that it afforded me time to sort out all the mundane house stuff as well. With both of us working full time we've had to make some changes, one of them being we had to do something about the cats being locked up all day, getting bored and trashing the house. (The first thing we do when we get home from work is re-make the bed that was perfectly made when we left the house that morning, collect the limes from under the sofa, put the chocolate wrappers back in the bin etc, etc...) We decided the answer was a simple catflap. Unfortunately the catflap idea coincided with our new neighbours arriving with a kitten, Jay. Jay? What a stupid name for a cat, so we renamed him Colin Con Cojones. Colin and Trevor have hit it off big time, I think Colin sees Trev as a bit of local totty and Trev just thinks colin is a big dolly to play with. The day the catflap was installed we got home expecting to find our cats happy and liberated. Wrong. What we found was our cats sitting outside looking through the catflap as if to say "what exactly am I supposed to do with this, and who's going to hold it open for me anyway?" Inside the house was Colin looking fat and happy on the sofa and two empty food bowls. Now...what was plan B?