Just so you know...

Juan came back whilst I was out teaching on Friday afternoon. He dug some more.

This is how our door looks now....

From the inside...

We had wanted to bring the outside down so that we didn't have two steps down into the kitchen. I would have been happy with ONE step down into the kitchen, but Juan and FR decided it would be nice if it were all level.

Obviously, we need a new door anyway.

But at the moment, we have to jump out of the house and scramble up a good metre to the outside loo/washing machine room/dog food store/vacuum cleaner store...most useful things store actually!

It bothers me slightly that the house seems to be held up by a car jack....

Just need to get it all sorted out by Wednesday - storms are predicted.

Work has commenced....

FR announced earlier this week that Juan the Digger would be coming on Friday. I knew something was afoot because he - and Ruy - had been drilling holes in the concrete in front of the house. It's in FR's nature to play things by ear (including the trumpet) and he really does believe that if we once talked about how we'd like the front of the house and the garden to look, then that is 'it'! No need to revise, clarify, check....And apparently we have had the definite discussion already....shame I can't really remember it.

SO! It was 'quite interesting' this morning when I returned from teaching (which I'm loving and more about it very soon...) and found my garden in a state of disarray. To put it mildly!

You only have to look at the header picture on my blog to see that our 'garden' needs sorting. It slopes and there's a lot of ugly concrete and rubbly bits. But after a year, we'd sort of got used to it. 

By midday, it looked like this:

And at one point, I was a prisoner in the kitchen as this was outside:

This was a lot of digging Juan was doing.

 Bit from here, a bit from there - oh sod it, let's just trash the lot!

Well, apart from that bit in the middle....how long will that stay, I wonder?

And if there's anything exciting going on in the village, you can be sure Sergio will be along to get a closer look! He has four HUGE dogs - or at least I used to think they were huge. Pippin is about as big as two of them but not quite as big as the other two - yet! However, by this time, a lot of the rubble and mess had been cleared away and there is the vague sign that it might all actually be OK....one day!

This is not the last you'll hear about this....but I'm taking this one day at a time. Juan will be back at 10 in the morning. There may be more photos....including the one of how our door looks now! You may laugh.

My name is NOT Earl....

Blog post disclaimer:  I do know that bad things happen to good people. I don't think life is always fair. I wish there were a formula.
That said, please read this slightly tongue-in-cheek post....and allow me to enjoy what I see as my good luck and good fortune.

Karma....very simply is the idea that if you do good things, good things will happen?

And vice versa.

Well,  I'm not sure I am a 'believer' as such but it seems to be a reasonable premise by which to live your life.
I have a standing joke with FR about Karma when we set off to go into town.


If HE is driving, we will meet a tractor, be almost forced off the road by an incompetent aged citizen coming in the opposite direction, be stopped by a policeman, be sent on a detour, have to stop at every traffic light and zebra crossing and have every car in front of us travelling at an almost negative speed or taking an age to carry out a simple manoeuvre....Whereas, if I am driving, traffic lights automatically turn green as I approach, I'm waved on by policemen, cars wait for me to pull out.....get the picture?

I call this KARMA...I enjoy telling him that I don't believe everyone else on the road is an idiot with murderous intent or enjoy getting something over on another driver - as he does - and I am treated with due respect and consideration as a result.

I exaggerate, of course. A bit.

The Earl that I am not, in the title of this post, is a reference to a TV programme called 'My name is Earl'. A man who felt the bad things he'd done in his past had caught up with him and were causing him lots of bad luck in the present. So he makes a list of all the people he had been bad to with the intention of putting things right with them and so negate his bad Karma. It was a very funny series and I loved it!

I said I'd tell you some big news a little while ago. And I will - it's big for me though not so big for anyone else, of course. But it struck me that it was also a little bit of Karma too.

When I first met Sam I was working at the Interlengua Academy and had just had my hours extended and my contract improved. I was very happy with this. At the same time, I was offered some work with one of the main companies in town - Derprosa - to hold English conversation classes with some of the managers and key staff who needed to use English on the phone and for business purposes. It was very well-paid work and required little in the way of preparation...a very tempting offer. And around this time I met Sam for the first time. She was urgently seeking work and I admit to feeling immensely 'good' when I passed her the contact details for the job at Derprosa...my halo very nearly choked me. But it wasn't a totally selfless act. I had been told that the work would be evenings and as such, clashed with the contract with Interlengua...I felt I couldn't turn that work down after I'd been given such a good offer.

However, I almost choked again when Sam eventually started working there as it turned out she was asked to work mornings not afternoons!! Aaargh....

In the intervening couple of years -  when we moved to Villalobos and I resigned from Interlengua - I confess to thinking more than once that those hours of morning work that Sam had 'could' have been mine and would have been so wonderfully convenient. And of course, Sam had passed on lots of teaching hours to me too - she didn't enjoy teaching children; I did. She taught the adults and we were both happy.

Well, Sam has also paid me back in spades when she left to return to Scotland recently, by making it a straight-forward task for me to take up where she left off at Derprosa. My only concern was that I would have to become 'autonoma' or self-employed to take on the work and that is a big commitment as a fixed payment has to be made every month, regardless of what you earn. However, the company want more hours now as they have recently been taken over by a big multi-national company and English is the common language. I will be doing not 'part' time work, but 'half' time work....

I started on Thursday and think I may enjoy this new venture very much. I will be able to continue with my children's classes too for the most part as only a small part of the work is in the afternoon. I am very happy indeed and unutterably grateful to anyone or anything that played a part in making this situation possible - I will call it Karma.

I will also make sure I try to be very good to people I meet every day. You never know!

Axxx

Making and Doing

On the whole, we're a family that likes to make things, to do things and whilst we've spent a fairly dormant winter, when the sun comes out, it seems to stir all our creative juices and activity begins.

FR has arranged to have some frames made to provide shade both for the car and for the front of the house. This has resulted in us meeting Juan, who has a piece of land in Villalobos and does all types of metal work if he's asked nicely.  He's incredibly knowledgeable about plants and nature and told us off for having too much water in one of our pot plants...then told us exactly where we had to plant it. He showed us his barn or 'nave' across the valley and then let us into the secret of what he keeps there.....snails! Snails for eating, that he feeds a purely organic and natural diet, including peppermint, thyme, asparagus and other goodly sounding fodder. I don't like eating snails particularly but these sound like the Rolls Royce version and for a millisecond, I found my mouth was watering as he described their juicy succulence. I'll let you know if I succumb...

There has also been the marking of the ground in front of the house - strange lines have been carved out whilst Ruy, Romy and I were out with Pippin the other day. These are lines where a digger will come and trash the front of the house, digging down a good foot or so to allow us to have a proper door-sized opening into our house. At the moment, the door opens and you have to go down two steps to reach the kitchen floor level - anyone tall has to duck to get in and it's something that's annoyed FR since we moved in. So the outside of the house has to come down to reduce the difference between inside and out. It's not going to be an easy job and we're levelling the significant slope and putting down a decent patio at the same time. Could be a dusty summer!!


On Thursday, two of my English students came over. Rocio and Lucia are sisters and I have been teaching them English since last summer, when we had a great time learning nursery rhymes, playing with plastic food, reading books and generally enjoying ourselves.


We discovered a shared love of drawing and making crafty things - their mother is incredibly talented at making jewellery, sewing, knitting and crochet and the girls are equally gifted. I now focus their English class through something creative - we've made cards, painted masks, made Treasure Maps and all sorts of other things.







This week, as Thursday was Labour Day and a holiday, they came to me so we could paint and make as much mess as we wanted and to save me carting all my paint, ink, stamps and stencils to their house.

We've started Art Journals and Romy usually joins us as she's at the same school and they all get on well together. It was a lovely, happy and creative afternoon -  all in English too, even the trampolining!











It pleased me greatly that they spent time with me, painting and then after a spot of trampolining, they went up to Romy's bedroom and began drawing more things...












Yesterday, I bought myself a little wooden box in town and spent another very happy afternoon tangling it to keep my Zentangle pens in and I'm very pleased with the result!

Front and top

One side

And the other side

I did the back too, but perhaps you don't need to see all of it to get the picture!

Mateo got a guitar for Christmas and although progress is slow, I love listening to him practising and exploration of different chords. He has a good ear and makes some really nice sounds, although it's hard to convince him of that - I think he thought he'd find it easier than he does. It's a beautiful guitar and really does make a good sound - hopefully, he'll continue to practice and reach a stage where he can enjoy his own strumming.

Not to be outdone on the art stakes, Ruy produced a little work of art of his own - this is so typical of Ruy's sparse and precise style, I couldn't resist sharing it.

Love him!!

What inspires you to get out and make or do?

How many beans make five?

Don't ask me why I've called this post 'How many beans make five?' because I really don't know! I just couldn't think of anything else and this little phrase just popped into my head....maybe there's a reason but it's not obvious just yet. (The answer, by the way, is 'a bean, a bean, a bean and a half, a half a bean and a bean'.)

I think it's because it's such a while since I posted and I have no single 'theme' for this one. I would have liked to tell you some 'big' news (well, biggish for me) but as yet, there isn't any! This is par for the course for Andalucia and how things are arranged here....but soon, there will either be some 'big' news or, of course, there won't!

It's been a busy few weeks and so bear with me as I give you a whistlestop tour of my world in pictures and just a few words.

I started painting with my Zentangles....

The beginnings of the Villa Family orchard...perhaps!

My four-month old 'puppy' on guard!

Signs that some work is beginning
(though after the cement went in, there's been no further progress just yet!)

My iris flowered!

We had Semana Santa and to my shame, I didn't go to a single procession! Romy and I went to Granada for a day and had a lovely time, including lunch...Romy's pizza was so big, she couldn't finish it!

Then after Semana Santa, my mum came! She came in a much more relaxed and healthy state than last time, when she was really tired out with looking after my dad. We had a lovely week, sitting in the garden, chatting, going out for lunch with the children and popping in to see Sam before she left.

There were lots of crosswords, but not between us!

Pippin was so good with her and didn't jump up or behave badly - and they got on like a house on fire.

The time went far too quickly though!

Having Mum to stay was good for another reason too as it did help take my mind off Sam and family leaving us for Scotland this week. We had a great get together with lots of her friends on Thursday night and all was jolly and fun until this photo was taken....

 ...when we gave each other a hug and immediately the tears began!! However, one week on and they are all safely back in Scotland; the girls have started school there and Sam starts her new job today....so a little chapter has ended and a new one has begun. One day soon - a visit to Perth, I think! Means I can also visit another friend there at the same time...which is beginning to sound like an excellent plan.

So, lots of beans here - possibly a few more than five - but magical ones and ones that will be taking seed and growing and bringing new stories for my blog in time to come. (There, I knew I'd find a way to bring it together at the end!!)

And do forgive me if I have been absent from your blog in recent times...we're one computer down and I've been otherwise occupied - I shall be finding time to catch up, comment and get back into the swing of things again very soon.

Here, it's a 'bank holiday' so we have another four days of holiday before life gets back to normal again next Monday. Enjoy your May Days wherever you are.

Axxx

A day in pictures

Sometimes, it's not necessary to say much.

Growing apace

And a very happy dog...

All the little pots have a potential apple tree growing in them....
also, there are strawberries, a hazelnut tree and a monkey puzzle tree.
Hopefully!

Three of our eight new hens...

Four of them in their new home.

This is Daisy, I believe....

My garden has sprouted a host of iris.

And this year, I know this is pear blossom!

In the garden enjoying a bottle of bubbly and great craic with my friend, Sam.
(Will miss you beyond words when you return to Scotland.)

Out for a walk with the girls....

And Ruy of course, who found a beautiful lizard....

One for the album....

No, Jasmin is not looking at a mobile phone!

Chicken herding...

How some days can be...pretty well perfect.

A year on...

Just over a year ago, we'd just started negotiations to buy the house we're now living in. I had it in my mind that it was at the end of February that we'd seen the house, but it was at the beginning. As I was driving home from a class the other day, there was just a fuzz of pink showing on the almond trees that line parts of the road and the sky was blue and bright. Spring was just returning after a cold and damp winter.  A year on and time for a little reflection methinks...

Escher

The house had been on the market since we first arrived in Alcala - but at a price that excluded us looking - but I had liked the look of it from the start. Indeed, I had driven out to Villalobos three times during our first two years in rented accommodation.  Each time, I'd get about half way and decide - no, it was just too far out - only on the last time did I find the house itself. I guess knew deep down that we'd always end up living here.

Now, the journey is a well-known route of twists and turns, occasionally made stressful by a large car coming towards you - most people drive as though there is no one else on the road, but thus far, we've avoided contact; it's a route that Mateo has walked several times just because he felt like it; it's the route the little local bus follows like clockwork twice a day, taking the children and other village folk to and from town and the schools - often a full and jolly load.

We planted a few trees last year and recently, FR has planted another dozen trees in the garden and on the land - including cherry, almond, fig and walnut. They're all young trees so it's going to be a while before they start to be productive, but it's so lovely to think they're in and growing and putting forth buds and blossom.

We've had some ups and downs in the past year but our house has done a sterling job in keeping us cool in the summer months and warm and dry in the winter ones. Until we can sort out the outside and the entrance to the house, we will have to accept that dust, dirt and mud will enter every time we do. I have become accustomed to sweeping the kitchen floor and seeing half of it wander off again - ants and little beetles are in all the gaps in the tiles and no matter what I do, I can't keep them out. A key reason why I won't be making chocolates to sell any more - certainly not this year - not while Pippin is a puppy and running me ragged either!

We'll have to take small steps in improving the outbuildings as our budget is small and precious but FR has already dug foundations for a new summer kitchen/store room which he plans to start when the weather improves. We discovered that the roof on the outbuildings contains asbestos and so will have to be professionally removed - an expensive job - but one that will have to be done. I rather fancy having a Zentangle Barn. Maybe not this.....

Our darling Darwin is buried at the top of the land on the corner and I certainly have a little chat with him now and then. There's another smaller set of stones, which is the last of the hamsters...we found her in her food bowl, sunflower seed still between her teeth and we hope she died happy...
But Pippin is making himself an integral  family member and whilst trying to train him not to chew anything and everything in sight, it was absolutely the right thing and the right time to have found him. 

I've settled into a routine of teaching young children in their own homes - mainly siblings - and love reading, singing and playing with them. We make our own versions of 'Snakes and Ladders', draw pictures to go with Nursery Rhymes, make up wild and wonderful new animals or play counting games. I often find that the time flies by. There may be a big change afoot though - more of which later. Can't say anything just yet....

Our neighbours have not been as bad as we were led to believe but they are not good. It's a shame but they are a problem family and on more than one occasion, we have been caught up a little in their problems. Sometimes the problems are not so little...However, it does amuse me that they call FR 'el inglés' - the Englishman!!

We know many of our village neighbours and I can chat away with them about this and that. One thing they always tell me is how polite my children are - yeah! The Spanish don't say please and thank you as a matter of course. They're not rude but it's not their custom to require the expressions that I take for granted and which were instilled in me from childhood. Whenever I meet the parents of  my children's friends, they are always super-impressed by these little courtesies that spill from my children unbidden. We might not always mean them or even think about them but I have come to value a 'thank you' when I get one. And I have on occasions found myself thinking that the whole of Spain needs some training in customer service...but then the general public are so incredibly kind, friendly, generous and willing to help ..I do wonder why they can sometimes turn so rude when they are behind a desk or in a shop...strange.

I chose the two images by Escher because I love his work. It's not Zentangle but it reminds me a little of the complexities that it's possible to achieve in this new art form that I have discovered this year. I am totally hooked and there's nothing I like better than sitting down on my sofa and drawing - maybe watching an episode of 'Judge John Deed', or with a favourite film, like 'A Room with a View' or 'The Princess Bride' or just sitting at the dining table on my own, filling page after page with tangles. I love that my workshops have found several converts - some of whom are so good and talented that it makes my jaw drop when I see what they have done - and we meet every two weeks. It's probably the fastest two and a half hours in the week! Such wonderful concentration and focus. Yes, this is the year I discovered Zentangle, and I won't ever forget it!
On my tangle blog, you can see a recent tangle I did of the outline of La Mota. I think I shall do several more - it's such an iconic image and the tangles are perfect for it. And here are some spirals.

These are my general and unspecific thoughts after a year in our home. I love to go out in the garden, despite there being still so much to do there. I love the sun tracking from one end of the house to the other during the day. I love going out at night and looking up to a sky so full of stars it seems like a painting. I love the birdsong in the morning. I love walking around the countryside and breathing in the different scents along the way. There's not much I don't like....and that's not a bad reflection, is it?

Why do you love YOUR house - new or old?