Bedrock

A simple enough idea, Maureen was off to Chicago while Bob and I came over here to sunny Spain. Of course, the best laid plans always screw up and so on Saturday we all went off to the airport and Bob and I went off to customs leaving Maureen to sort her flight to the USA, fully expecting her to follow us shortly thereafter.

Except, no. Next thing we had a call on the mobile to say that Expedia had screwed up her flight from Newcastle to London, the first stage of the trip to Chicago. As it turns out they managed to fit her on a revised set of flights on Sunday – I’ve not yet asked but I suspect it was a very LONG flight.

Meanwhile Bob and I had a pleasant flight over to Murcia and arrived pretty much on time to very nice sunshine with peaks of 25 degrees C – nice. Off we went to find my favourite supermarket only to discover that my brand new Orange phone has a tendency to crash. To put this in perspective this is the 4th of the same model I’ve had from Orange due to a sound issue… the sound works great this time, it just dies every now and then – NOT what you want when navigating (using Tom-tom on the phone) through a foreign country.

Anyway, we found a smashing shopping centre just outside Malaga by accident and off we went to buy the week’s groceries.

We arrived in Galera in the early hours of Sunday morning, had a couple of beers and that was that, apart from Bob locking himself in the bathroom thanks to a dodgy Spanish lock. The good news is the Jacuzzi works a treat and with a little effort Bob managed to fix the lock after extricating himself with a handy kitchen knife.

Sunday the sun was out – but it didn’t really LOOK like a hot day so we set about repairing the Pergola. We spent much of the day outside examining cracked roof tiles and planning out the repairs only to come in at teatime looking like a pair of tomatoes. We could not believe that a half-serious sun could do so much in so little time and this morning I’m suffering as the skin on my head shrinks! Factor 80 I think from now on. To make matters worse just as the skin on my head was shrinking I scraped the lot on a lower-than-usual bathroom doorframe and so now I look like I’ve been through a war and hurting accordingly.

Low-current electronic lamps are supposed to last for 2 years – but, it looks like the Chinese weren’t told that because my mate Les over here reckons 1-in-10 over here will fail out of the box… the ones we bought over here are certainly not even living up to their already bad reputation. This morning, accordingly we went off shopping for replacement roofing materials for the Pergola and 4 replacement electronic lamps. The former cost an arm and a leg at the thieving BAZA hardware store and as for the lamps – erm, no – I’ll bring them over from the UK – would you believe up to 15 EUROS for one lamp!!!

That’s the EASY part of the day. We got some DIY done around lunchtime and about half way through Bob had a mishap with the stairs. That’s an understatement, he tripped up on the stairs an broke his right leg – as I want readers to keep reading I’ll skip the details.

So now we’re in a foreign country, bereft of the ability to speak the language, with a bust leg. At this point I’d like to sing the praises of Les at Spanish Inland Properties who came out – helped me get Bob into his people-mover and off we went to the local hospital in BAZA (as good as anything I’ve seen in the UK up to now). Latest news is that they have put pins in Bob’s leg and want him to stay here for a while.

Meanwhile – we’ve had some pretty amazing winds which put pay to the roofing on the Pergola and the builder is coming in this weekend hopefully to make a new start on that. Despite excellent weather generally it remains cool in the cave, rather cooler than I’d like and I’ve ordered a load of wood for the fire which should be here tonight.

The broadband meantime is working a treat and so no problems in that direction – that also means I’m getting a regular flood of emails from the UK to keep me busy.

Comments are closed.