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This is Peter and Maureen Scargill's Spanish website. We live in Galera in Andalusia (for clarity, that is the English spelling - Mid-Spain they spell it Andalucia and pronounce it "And-a-loo-thee-a").

We've had a home in Spain for more than 14 years and it is now our permanent base though we retain a small home in the UK.

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Archive

Spanish Sunset, Spanish Solar array and my first scorpion. The jacussi takes shape and the dish is up and running

We briefly made a new friend on Tuesday – a large black beetle about the size of a large thumbnail and built out of what looked like black iron. He put up a valiant fight. The next morning we discovered another resident – a scorpion – I must admit my first reaction was to run as far away as possible – especially when the tail went up – but like the beetle, he’s now gone to meet his maker. This morning’s job then was to get the mesh up on all the windows – done – granted I’m now covered in silicon sealant. Maureen is outside attending to the builder who’s going to put in a platform and she’s unpacking the jacuzzi – my computer desk should hopefully be here in a couple of hours. Place is starting to take shape but I’ll save the photos until we get a little further along. Yesterday (Wednesday) we went off to the garden centre to see what had happened to the promised delivery of a garden table and chairs – turns out they’d written the wrong telephone number down – the delivery guy had gone out for a wander about with the furniture and broken one of the chairs in the process. Anyway, all sorted now… we have our external furniture.

Meanwhile last night we saw an interesting sight – we were just coming back into the village when we noticed another solar farm… sun was going down and the cells were all dutifully pointing at the dying sun. I took a photo, put the camera away and next time I looked around, all of them (several dozen huge photovoltiacs) swung around ready to face the morning sun the next day. Most impressive. The camera shot doesn’t really show the scale of these things.

We had the guys over yesterday fitting the satellite up – and what a time they had – apparently there’s a shortage of cement in some of the rendering so their bolts would not stick – but after a couple of hours it’s in and running. Later this year we’ll see if we can get one of the new FreeSat boxes running but for now at least we can catch up on the news – including the immensely important news from Tuesday that the first practical jet pack was indeed demonstrated successfully in Oshkosh. Apparently another thing that’s taking off especially around seaside resorts is WIMAX – but nothing like that here yet as far as we can see (though you could describe the rural broadband as being not a million miles off it).

Maureen’s been adding a little colour to the place – one issue here is shortage of vegetation due to the heat and lack of water and so it always help to put some flowers out on display – and we’ve bought a range of items that don’t require a lot of maintainance (aloe vera)… I’ve been trying to find the best way to make use of the solar lamps we’ve dotted all over – and it looks like within a couple of days we’ll have the platform ready to fire up the jacuzi. A nice surprise was the inclusion of an MP3 socket on the built-in CD so we can hook in the Internet radio.As “Riviera Radio” is now Maureen’s favourite station that’ll keep her happy. Personally I’m more into rock so the upstairs den will soon be getting a bass unit once the computer desk is in place.

At the time of writing it’s midnighy on Thursday, it’s been a lovely day, I’ve finished the insect screens and I’m catching up on a few FSB jobs on the computer not to mention an email mountain. After a much-bodged telephone conversation in Spanish (lots of groans and ERMS from me) – Maureen went off and met the furniture delivery people – I’ve fitted an outside lamp and things like loo roll holders to one bathroom (haven’t touched upstairs yet) and the builder has finished the level platform for the jacussi and fitted us out with an outside socket – and a hose connector. The picture of the pots above is now out of date – we have plants. More later. IKEA next….

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