Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Christmas and Matansas (gory!)

Well, the last couple of days have been one HECK of an experience for us because we were invited to our first ever Matansa …… YIPES!

We got up very early on Friday morning – mostly because my seven year old son came rushing into my bedroom at 6.30am saying “Come on Mummy we´ve got to go to the Matansa!!!” He was so excited and had struggled to sleep the night before AND had got up an hour early ….. but I got up all the same and didn´t bother showering as I figured I was likely to get a bit dirty during the course of the day…. Ho ho ho, little did she know … !

We arrived at the house of Solidad and her husband Antonio just before 8am. For them, the Matansa is an ancient tradition, a necessary and utterly unemotional process – having needed to do it over and over during their lifetimes in order to eat meat. For me, having never in my life done more than wring a pheasant´s neck, I really didn´t know if I would be able to handle it or not, but knew that I felt it my duty to go, to be there for a small boy who wanted hugely to be there, and to help where I could.

We followed seven seriously big men and another five women out the back of the barn and down into the olive groves where, under a big tree, was a pen about 5m x 3m, within which were 2 huge pigs and four smaller ones. We stayed well out of the way armed with the camera as I was official photographer for the day. I then watched as these seven men worked VERY hard to get one pig sectioned off from the others in order to bring it out of the pen. They do it by looping a rope around the upper jaw – which the pig doesn´t like, and so starts to squeal very loudly. I then saw a glint out of the corner of my eye, and realised that one of the women was holding a very substantial double bladed diamond shaped knife at the ready. My heart was quite literally leaping inside my chest but I knew I couldn´t run at this stage – we had committed and so I switched my focus from how nervous I felt to the pig and what was about to happen – and so I prayed for her and profoundly thanked her ……..

It took seven men and two women a difficult struggling minute to get the immense, squealing pig from all fours onto its side on the pig bench, at which point and not a second wasted very swiftly the knife did it´s job at the base of the front of the neck. A woman was at the feet of the pig with a large plastic bucket to catch the blood that surprisingly rapidly spent itself, beating it vigorously with her hands to prevent it from coagulating --- this blood is essential to the Andalucians who turn it into the most delicious Morcilla – black pudding effectively but mixed with onion, special pork fat from around the intestinal tract, a dozen or more different spices, red, black and sweet pepper and a LOT of garlic. So the kill, the way the animal is sacrificed, is of immense importance, even if it is, for the newcomer, a pretty vivid and “in your face” experience.

Within an hour the men had brought this pig into the shed, scraped the 4 inch long fur off by pouring boiling water over every millimetre of the beast prior to scraping and scraping with knives bringing them out in a muck sweat it was such vigorous work; removed the head cleanly and strung the beast up on a large double sided ladder ready for butchering. At which point, we all went back out to the pig pen for sacrifice number two – which went smoothly other than the fact that this pig clearly realised what was coming having listened to its sister live, and die, that morning and so made even more noise.

Once the kill was over, it was absolutely non stop for the rest of the day. The next most important job is to remove the intestines, completely intact, in order that the women can set about emptying them (including the stomach) and rigorously cleaning them in order that they become the “skin” of the morcilla, salchichón and chorizo. The morcilla (made with blood) is the most crucial of all the jobs as they have to be made the same day as the kill, otherwise the blood turns and is completely wasted. And when I found out that we were making 67 kilos of morcilla (enough for a year for this small family), I realised they had their work cut out for them. It took about 4 hours to simply clean the guts to the satisfaction of the women working – turned inside out, they are washed three times in home made soap and then five times in a mixture of salt, vinegar, lemon slices and flour (for whitening) with a small amount of hot water for making it easier to move them around. Over and over rinsing and scrubbing until they are white, clear and clean. Then they are turned the other way around and the same process is applied but four times on the basis that no poo has touched this side.

Once clean, the process of tying the ends of probably two hundred lengths of intestines is begun, while on another table the fat that has been saved from the process of unravelling the intestines is then minced ready for the morcilla mixture. By the time we were finally ready to start filling the immaculately clean intestines, it was about 4pm and we had breakfasted and lunched in that time (a STAGGERING quantity of food I would never normally eat due to the sheer quantity of FAT involved!) We had used several hundred gallons of water to clean, clean and re-clean the shed where it was all taking place – water that was being boiled in two vast metal vats over fires in the corner of the room.

The process of filling the tubes was no less simple – a woman stood on a breeze block and, with a vast wooden plunger inside a metal tube with a narrowed end, spent the next three hours forcing the thick bloody goo into the tied tubes – over and over and over again, only stopping for a glass of water. Once started, they simply do not stop until the job is done. It was absolutely exhausting to watch, let alone get in there, up to the elbows, in bloody entrails.

Even as the official photographer, I put myself to either sweeping up or carrying hot or cold water as required in order to earn at least half of my lunch – and the whole time, watching these women work for no pay, but for the knowledge that when it comes to their Matansa, these same women will come and support them in their immense load of work – I cannot tell you how much respect and humility I felt. It is no wonder to me that these women laugh raucously about love, sex, bodies, medical conditions – there are no subjects about which they behave shyly – because when you have, every year for 20, 30 or 40 years, gone through this process which starts at the end of November and goes on until early January by the time that each family has made sure that their children, cousins, aunts and uncles have all successfully prepared their year´s supply of meat, you really have shared MAJOR exhaustion, every aspect of your life over the past year, and the sheer extraordinarily hard work that is involved in preparing for, cooking for, and seeing through the annual Matansa …..

I have also learned that this tradition is becoming less and less frequent now. The young here have no interest in seeing through this tradition because although they all realise that the meat is without doubt better, purer, cleaner etc, it is an absolutely MONSTER job for which you need to have a large space, facilities, to say nothing for about 30 different and very large metal and plastic buckets for working with the dozens of different parts of the pigs, of which quite literally the bits thrown are the hair, eyes, poo and bones after being boiled. NO waste at all.

Having spent Friday and Saturday (afternoon only) with Soledad´s Matansa, we spent today up the mountain at friends helping with day 2 of their Matansa. And today I was far less precious. I got in there turning the mincers and pressers that force the goo down a tube onto which the other women had rolled the tubes of cleaned intestines, and I even handled the intestines which felt positively vile! But I know that I really did pull my weight for which they were immensely grateful – Paqui’s work won’t be done for several days yet, but another pair of hands is ALWAYS so very welcome.

So there it is – and now what is left for me to do is take my disk filled with photos to the printers where I am going to print loads off and put together a collage for Soledad and her family – Matansa 2007! I will save you all the shock of seeing them - they are not Sunday family viewing .....

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Catching Up With Myself!


WELCOME TO CASA LA CELADA!

Bed and Breakfast

Art Gallery

Villa For Rent

For more information please do visit our website http://www.casa-la-celada.com/ - we are smack in the heart of Andalucia - brilliantly placed for moving around the sumptious and unexplored inland treasures of Spain. The house is bedecked in my own paintings of which a tiny few are available to see on the art site http://www.amanda-hamilton.com/ - making it a truly beautiful home. We have a hot tub on our huge roof terrace where a glass of wine can be enjoyed at the same time as gazing out over the rolling olive groves - or do you fancy sunbathing in November?!

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

The Explosion Called TIM

Location - Granada

I had followed my fab friend Giles who has his own ski school and accomodation company here (www.sierraessence.com) from the pretty valley village of Pinos Genil just off the Sierra Nevada road down into Granada with the rough plan of going to an Arabian spa after briefly meeting an ex ski instructor employee of his called Tim first. Tim had travelled down from Nice via Barcelona by train and bus with his pot-head brother and sister in law, and by all accounts has a bit of a scatty reputation. As we started along the road that joins El Corte Inglés with the Plaza Reál, Tim rang as agreed to say he was “organised” and was told by Giles where we were and “to head along the pedestrian road and we´ll bump into each other”.

Well, Giles and I were deep in conversation about I have no idea what when I suddenly registered a man belting towards us at such a pace that you would imagine him being chased by the Terminator. He shot past us arms and legs flailing in all directions like a spastic octopus before Giles abruptly stopped dead in his tracks and turning around shouted “TIM!”. The whirling dervish cannoned against the wall, bouncing off it, spinning round in a circle, taking a martial arts stance wildly glared at us with the most shockingly blue bolting eyes set in the reddest eyelids making me immediately think he was absolutely out of his head on drugs …… But instead he dragged his totally shattered reputation for being “cool” back into harness, raked his fingers through his wiry unkempt hair and stammered out “It´s okay Man, it´s just I´ve been sitting down a lot these past couple of days and wanted to loosen myself up a bit ….” I burst out laughing and barely stopped for the rest of “the Tim Encounter”…….. !

Las Alpujarras

5th August 2007 still staying at Pinos Genil in Granada .....

Well, today being Sunday, and my muscles protesting if anything rather more than they did yesterday, I decided to go easy on my body and instead be demanding of my car. I packed my sponge bag, bathers and a clean pair of knickers and headed off on what turned out to be an absolute marathon of everything!

For map enthusiasts, I took the A44 Granada-MotrSil road as far as Lanjarón which took me over a fantastic bridge with a ravine gaping beneath it and then through the Lecrin valley which I had heard of but didn´t think much of until I saw it – it gets a WOW! And then I was off the motorway and heading up into La Alpujarra – the range of Sierra Nevada mountain that cuts right across the southern side and where the famous Pueblos Blancos reside.

I think I started saying WOW after about the first half second, and carried on saying WOW for a very very very long time. I went through Lanjarón, Órgiva, Carataunas, Pampaneira. Then I diverted and visited Bubión and Capileira – these three last mentioned villages are the “famous” ones – and I think I understand why now ….. Rather than turning round, I carried on after a bit of a walk in Capileira searching for the Barranco (Ravine) where they do organised descents like I did the other day, but apparently every year, on the 5th August, all tourism offices close in the Sierra Nevada as they open the passes at the top – and trust me to pick that very day to go and find out information!!!

Not to be deterred, I continued – all the while I should add snaking around every single crevice of mountainside, because these villages are quite literally clinging for their very LIVES onto the sides of these mountains – and you drive for what seems like forever and then round a bend and WHAM there´s another one even more remote than the last, but still totally painted white with pots and pots of geraniums, ivies etc adorning the place (that`´s if you get out and have a look around). Well, I detoured for a little while at Mecina and walked down to Fondales and back up where I stumbled across what must have been a God-Arranged Appointment for me – because there, on the side of the road, were a bunch of bestomached Spaniards cooking a paella – but not just any ordinary paella – because this one was being cooked in a paella pan three metres wide!!! And being the quiet, retiring type, I asked if I could have a go cooking it – and they LET ME!! So I spent about half an hour or so shovelling red and green peppers and squid around with a very long handled giant paella spade as the several gallons of olive oil gently did their bit! It was AMAZING! Apparently, they were cooking enough paella to serve eight HUNDRED PEOPLE!!

The chief cook did invite me, on behalf of the village, to stay and eat with them, but I graciously declined mostly because I felt conspicuously alone and didn´t want to have the hassle of trying to “make friends” in order to change that …. I had already long since decided that these mountains, having always been my idea of heaven knowing nothing about them, were simply WAY TOO REMOTE for me to even think of living – and that actually I wanted to get on and get OUT OF THEM!!!

So I went through : Pitres – another blindingly white mountain hugging valley, then
Portugos ditto
Busquistar ditto
Trevélez ditto
Bérchules ditto

And by now, I was humming to myself the music from The Eagles song “Hotel California”, and, wondering why, I imagined myself singing the words – and I kept on humming the bit where he sings “You can check out any time you like but, you can NEVER LEAVE!!!”!!!!

I started to get claustrophobia !! GET ME OUT OF HERE!

So I changed cars – in my imagination, and swapped my Citröen C2 for a convertible Lambourghini, slammed it into second gear and drove like Schumacher on his last lap –through Narila, Mecina Bombarón, Yegen, alor, then Mecina, Marirena, and FINALLY to Laroles, where I started to feel less like a starved dog chained three inches away from a decent meal. The hysteria subsided KNOWING that I was now only (ha ha) 26 km from Puerto de la Ragua, where I had decided to make my escape from the interminable beauty of the Alpujarras. On and on … and then WOW! Going DOWNHILL!! It HAD to be a good sign!! I was, thankfully, still gloating with the achievement of cooking (some of the) paella for 800 people and so my hysteria melted quickly as La Calahorra came into view, with its beautiful renaissance castle high up on the hill – although my hysteria soon welled again as I saw the rain in the distance sheeting down beneath black clouds – and knowing how it rains here when it rains, I decided to get on to Guadix so that I could stop and either sleep through it or at least let it pass.

5 km the wrong side of Guadix, the rain and I met each other! It was fast, furious, torrential and utterly blinding. The droplets were bouncing 6 inches off the motorway and through the haze of it all I realised I was driving through scenery that I wanted to SEE! So I pulled off at Guadix, and instead of going into the city, followed my hunch and went to Benalúa – where I met the cave people! Benalúa is, visually speaking, hard to even believe. It is a lunar landscape of mountain and hill with nothing growing on or around, but with the hills having been made into houses – but CAVE HOUSES! It was like being on Wimbledon Common with the Wombles all coming out to play. The facades were beautiful – white, tiled, utterly “normal”, but then there was no “house” behind, just a monster great big hill with the house being inside it! I stopped for a coffee at the Cuevas La Granja – a sort of Cave Hotel – just to take a moment to take it all in.

I carried on off the beaten track and went down a road I will never forget to a village called Belerda de Guadix and that has to be a MUST DO drive for anyone anywhere near Granada – it is literally like driving along the moon with these amazing mountains with the strangest stringy structure – I tried to think of an analogy to help people visualise it and the best thing I can think of is from Pirates of the Carribean - Davy Jones´ beard!!

Well, after all that, I decided to get back here – I had been driving since 8.40am and it was by now about 6pm. So I headed down the A92 – another TOTAL WOW of a motorway right through the Sierra Nevada on the left and the Sierra Huétor on my right – on and on the last 50kms back to Granada, driving through the centre down “No Entry” roads trying to find something I recognised before finally making it back here at about 7pm!

The Upshot? Well, all I can say is I am glad that I didn´t move to the Alpujarras 10 years ago – the number of houses for sale there is just amazing – the word remote just simply doesn´t begin to conjure up the absolute isolation of the deepest villages – and to live there you would really have to think twice about whether you EVER wanted to come out and have contact with the real world because it was such a JOB to get either in or out!

Next stop : Córdoba!

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Blues Cazorla !

WOW! What an AMAZING music festival that was! 40 degree temperatures and the likes of Muddy Waters & Eric Clapton devotees playing the most brilliant blues music all day deep into the night and out the other side! During the day there was an endless haze of cigarette smoke (and heaven knows what other kinds of smoke too for that matter) together with Heineken cans and bodies being thrown into the fountains to cool off from the blistering mountain mid-day heat while the bands took their turns and their lives in their hands playing on the rather eccentrically wired up stage in the Plaza de Santa Maria.

The musicians were brilliant, although I have to say that I think that Jerry Portnoy´s facial expressions were rather lost on the Spanish devotees from what was being muttered around us. He was talking to Bob Margolin (they did a duo set in the crippling heat) effectively saying it was the longest day of his life - but he looked immaculate even if he was sweating buckets on the inside. To be fair to him, the electrics did explode during his and Bob Margolin´s act on Friday after having been giving them low grade electric shocks throughout their number, so perhaps by then he was a bit cheesed off with it all, but it cracked me up when he was speaking through the mike to the sound techs about needing less reverb and simply said in his strong american drawl "pocito reverb" !! I guess reverb must be a universal word! When the system finally blew, he muttered something under his breath and started packing away his harmonica while Bob, ever the utter professional, came to the front of the stage and finished the number miming all of Jerry´s harmonica bits which everyone found hilarious.

The show stoppers for me though, had to be the Barcelona band Txus Blues & J Bluesfingers - their song called Tango which turned into an Ode to the Tanga (yes ladies, Thongs), had the crowd eating out of their hands, but the finale to end all, was their song called "Soy harMonica Lewinsky" - I have never in my life seen anyone play a harmonica as pornographically as that and it was sidesplittingly funny!

So put it in your diary - Blues Cazorla - you can find their website always at www.bluescazorla.com and book your accommodation VERY early - it is a Cult Show and apparently one of the largest blues festivals in the whole of Spain!

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

When Cricket simply isn´t Cricket

I screamed today - a proper, genuine, head turning, embarrassing scream at the top of my voice. Where? Cazorla - the MOST beautiful whitewashed pueblo to the south west of the Sierra de Seguro, Cazorla y Las Villas mountains in Jaén, one of the unknown provinces of the huge and beautiful Andalusían area of Spain. And Why? Well, I was deep in conversation with a NOT especially nice or forthcoming Spaniard while my son was crawling around on the floor doing what he does when he spies a cricket - and that is being intent on catching the critter and bringing it to me for due inspection in great and fascinating detail before the thing leaps off to live another day.

However my son is now seven and understands that interrupting is NOT cool, especially when Mum is trying to get to grips with pretty complicated Spanish facts, which I was. Replaying the tape now, I remember him tapping me gently on the arm saying Mama, but I rather ignored him as I am working at gently but constantly suggesting that he DOESN'T BLITHERING WELL INTERRUPT UNLESS THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE ....

Mistake ....

Because he finally said "Mum I have to interrupt because I think there´s a huge cricket going up your trouser leg ............."

That did it. I threw my papers onto the floor (not surfaced, an ocean of dust in fact), and started to undo the zip to my white trousers oblivious to the fact that the man I had been talking to started to snort back the giggles. THAT made the cricket move, and THAT drew my attention to where it was - WELL ABOVE MY KNEE - at which point I SCREAMED! Trousers were down in a second (man decent enough to pull a door past me so that I could strip off in some semblance of dignity) and find this 3-4inch monster of a cricket inside my left trouser leg!

HELL there are times when you realise the advantage of living in Tiny Critter Country!!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Shooting Stars

The adventure continues! My son and I have escaped the humdrum of our school term life for a few weeks with our wonderful although less than reliable campervan! Bless her she is 12 years old after all so I can´t complain, but it is a little tiring when we have no means whatsoever of cooling our fridge! So we have stayed put in one place for 3 weeks, and I have to say I am loving it. Loving it for a zillion reasons, but most of all because it is the first time since I met my ex husband thirteen years ago that I have been truly having a holiday doing what I want to do, rather than going along with someone else´s idea.....

So here we are, on the most beautiful campsite in Jaén, Andalucia, on the outskirts of a very typically southern spanish village called Cazorla (Cathorla). Cazorla is a gateway to the immense, breathtaking and HUMUMGOUS national park that spreads up and all around Cazorla. It offers something for everyone, from hang gliding, to 4x4 mountain trails, to horse riding, to river swimming, to rock climbing, to natural health holiday retreats (visit my lovely friends Diana & Roger Birch´s website http://www.losabedules-cazorla.com/ for the MOST magical location for a holiday out here with everything available that you could possibly want including the most gorgeous salt water swimming pool ....).

We have been enchanted by this village / town with its lanes that are only JUST wide enough to get a car through with an inch or two to spare on either side (used only for donkeys laden with their baskets on either side), with the balconies overhead heaving with geraniums and asparagus plants to name a few of the leaves I recognise!

It is a painter and artist paradise here with the nearby beautiful cities of Úbeda and Baeza, and we haven´t as yet got much further! But what I have done, after lights out, is quietly creep out of our lovely wagon up the terraces of the campsite to where the sky opens above your head - and on my first night here, the sky honoured me with FOUR shooting stars ..... Beautiful.

More to come .....

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

MY CASTLE IN SPAIN, AKA THE RUIN!


This is a photo of my kitchen stove ............ The house was owned by a very elderly man who, on his death, requested that the house be given to a Sisterhood of Nuns in Teruel. Clearly on his death his body was simply dealt with, and nothing else has happened since that day ... as you will see as the blogs progress!
The kitchen still has his flagon by the fire, and his old coat over a chair. the blackened back of the fire place shows where he would have cooked. There is an old cupboard with greasy stained old cooking implements ... and how he washed things up I will never know as the house has never had a water supply .....

Things I have Learned Since Becoming A Single Mum ...


Children don´t care if the beds aren´t made : Beds are for practicing handstands, roly polys and making dens ............

Children don´t care if the floors are dirty : Floors are for humungous train track layouts, skateboards and rollerblades ........

Time spent ironing is always wasted

Food is for eating, but best if used for sculptures or artwork first .....

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

My First Painting Commission in Spain!



MY NEW PAINTING!!!

This one is called "Neighbours" and it is inspired by the villages all around where we live. I have tried to upload it into my Art Blog, but for reasons I simply cannot understand, the technology available to me won´t have it.

However, I am just THRILLED to see this picture online - and there is a wonderful story behind it ...........

I discovered not so long ago that I had to have FOUR, yes FOUR fillings. I had not been to a dentist in the UK in more than four years, and that was the result. Totally depressing, especially as I am absolutely HOPELESS about dentistry.

After visiting a recommended dentist with my son, and being utterly traumatised by the experience, I checked myself into another, across the road. Truly the cleanest, smiliest place imaginable and I thoroughly recommend it.

Well, after the first filling (requiring 40 mins for TWO injections to take effect before I was calm enough for him to start drilling) , I left in a tizz totally forgetting to pay! On my second visit, I was flapping about this, but the dentist said to me that he had visited my website, and liked my pictures so much that he wanted me to pay him with a painting, rather than with money! HOW COOL IS THAT!

So this picture is now awaiting to be positioned on the wall of Dental Siete, Clínica Lopez Olivas in Teruel! And what makes me rather smile, is that it could be two rows of clenched teeth - and that was NOT deliberate!!.............

Sunday, June 17, 2007

My Castle-In-The-Making-In-Spain aka THE RUIN!


Having made reference to the fact that I have written a blog about owning a ruin, I thought I should therefore actually write the blog about it ......

Last year (2006), when we first arrived out here, already knowing how exquisitely beautiful this area was I started the hunt for my very own piece of Spanish Paradise. I already knew that property was well within my reach as I had done some researches during our 2005 visits and was thrilled that we could own our own home with enough space for all we needed for an affordable price. I could hardly wait as people told me of their various places that were on offer.

And boy, did I see some country piles. Literally. Shockingly wrecked piles of broken stones, non-existent roofs and views into the house opposite, and all at the most imaginative and totally unjustifiable prices. My heart utterly sank. I had put so much effort into the process of moving, fought for a long and precious year through the courts to get leave to bring my son here for the education of a lifetime, and that year of delay had allowed house prices to double, and in some parts of Rubielos, triple.

It looked as though my hope, and a HUGE part of the Dream I wanted to live, could simply never happen.

And then one day, a friend of a friend came to see a "possible" purchase with me to give his view. He made all the right mutterings to the greedy beyond belief owners, and then as we left, said to me "it is far too much money and will cost you twice what they are asking to renovate it." So I simply said "then please, Javier, find me something cheaper, because I have looked and looked and looked and I CAN'T find it!".

I truly never expected to hear another word, but bless his heart, he came back to me about a week later and said "I want to show you a house - it needs work".

And we went off to Fuentes de Rubielos - the most beautiful, tiny little village where the school had 9 children, the bar above cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, and the houses create a crescent moon at the head of a several hundred mile valley that stretches out into the distance. We parked behind several buildings as Javier said that it was easier to walk the last bit - it was a steep descent down a road wide enough for a car, where at the bottom the road ended, and the view stretched out ahead for miles and miles and miles. I simply stood, holding the railings, breathing in this amazing sight.

Javier coughed behind me and said "this is the house" - pointing to the house immediately behind me - the house that no-one could EVER build in front of, that would ALWAYS be blessed with this view of unspoilt paradise. To this day I can remember that first moment, those first impressions, and my first feeling of "oh my Goodness I am going to DIE" as we looked around it! Now you will understand the photo I have put at the top of the page!! That´s it!

The ceilings were propped up with wooden posts as the beams were cracked and splitting. It was pitch dark, the wiring was twisted fibre threads and the floor covered in about three inches of dust. But Javier took me in and we went up and up, visiting each of the three floors in turn, each one about 35 square meters so not big, but each with the largest side facing that view. We even had to kick a door down to see into one of the rooms where I later retrieved the most exquisite pale lime green antique pottery bread making bowl!

To say this house is a project is the understatement of the century, but it was a total bargain. I had been looking at wrecks with a price tag of 75,000€ upwards, and Javier told me that the Nuns who owned this dear little house wanted 15,000€ for a quick sale. So I am the proud owner of a piece of paradise at the end of Calle Los Hornos (Baker Street!!) - and will find a better name for her once I have managed to fund her renovation - and no suggestions such as Sherlock's Finding thank you!

I LONG to renovate her in order to be able to rent her out when I am not there - but I also long to preserve a part of her "just for me" - so I have, for a year, been thinking and mulling over the possible way of creating something that can be a good rent producer for holiday lets, while also maintaining my own magical space...... and finally I got there the other day and can now see exactly how I want her to be - a ground floor with two double bedrooms with a wetroom type bathroom, an open plan first floor for cooking, eating, living and loving the view with a balcony, and then a lockable door to my Crow's Nest retreat on the top floor where I will have my white muslin and wrought iron bed with fairy lights, a loo and basin, the world's tiniest art studio and the final quarter - a tiny, perfectly formed roof terrace!

Watch this space (I always say that I know) - but as time goes by I will, I am sure, get the permissions I need, the plans drawn up, and the project begun ...........................

Memories of our first visit

In the process of packing, tidying and turfing, I came across the most wonderful piece of history the other day - it was Zack's 2005 scrapbook.

I decided when we very first came to Spain in our gorgeous Fiat Ducato Concorde motorhome that we should chart our journey, so armed with a Collage kit, cheap felts and a lot of glue, we set about sticking and scribbling and drawing a page a day to remind us of our wonderful adventure.

Looking through it again, I was reminded of the middle part of the "christening" we had here - Spain's way of whetting our appetite as to what was to follow. It went like this :

We had spent a few days with a travel bug in Ampolla - the rice growing peninsula that pokes out above Benicassim and below Tarragona - neither of us being very well it was a great place to park up and recuperate. When we were better, we set sail, so to speak, for this very village - Rubielos de Mora - for the simple reason that it was en route to Teruel and I had seen something about Teruel on the television!

We looked at our map, and decided to take the more direct route through the mountains - Morella and then down down down through Nogeruelas to our final destination. It all looked SOOOOO easy!

We set off, great roads (of course - we were still in the Community of Valencia!) - and then found the road we needed to wind down to Rubielos - it went vertically up a mountain beside us with hairpin bends all the way! Not to be daunted, the tarmac being smooth, clear and fresh, I set off with my son at my side.

Ten minutes of uphill but decent driving and the signs changed - Welcome to Aragon in effect - and OH MY - at that immediate point, so did the ROAD. The tarmac stopped, the road narrowed, and the cliff edge suddenly had no barrier.

I have never gulped so hard in all my life. There I was, "totally in control" with my just five year old little boy trusting in my every decision, teetering on the edge of the worst road I had ever seen, thousands of feet up, with absolutely NO means of turning my 6m wagon around! There was nothing for it - onwards and upwards and forwards it was, clenching the steering wheel until my knuckles ached, singing songs my father used to sing as we bumped and lurched our way through the potholes.

But the moment that utterly split my knife edge stomach knots was when we rounded a corner - and I MEAN a corner, and there in front of us were hundreds and hundreds of sheep and goats all coming straight at us!! There was no road to be seen for the bobbing woolly mass of movement! So we simply switched the engine off, and enjoyed the show.

That night, once settled on our new campsite, my son got out his collage set and started creating an ocean of woolly sheep with cotton wool blobs and stick legs - and then started dotting the page with tiny black dots absolutely everywhere. And when I asked why? "That's the sheep poo Mummy". !!!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

A Bit of History to this Single Mum in Spain Story

I have just sat back and re-read the posts I have put here since I haphazardly started this Blogging adventure whenever ago it was, and I have understood why a friend of mine sent me an email saying "Positive Thinking needs to be upped" ........ It would appear that the blog gets my attention when someone or something gets RIGHT UP MY NOSE!!

Saying that, I am only now seeing that using the Blog as well as my long Catch-up list of emails is another way of keeping in touch - and it may even give the incentive or lunatic encouragement to other single Mums, or anyone for that matter, to have the courage to listen to their hearts and dreams and GO FOR IT.

So I am going to share a little of me here, in the hope of inspiring you - because I honestly believe with my whole heart, that if I could do what I have done, from the non-person I was for the decade from 1993 - 2003, then ANYONE CAN..........

My dream to live in Spain started about fifteen years ago. It was a whisper, an itch ..... It was always the same : thoughts of Spain, coming to Spain - I would meet myself in the thought, or at the airport - but a happier, younger, freer self - and when I had to leave, I always had to say goodbye to that precious, free-spirited self. It was always there. But circumstances, truly awful ones that threatened my own survival, caused me to give up my dream, give up everything I ever believed in, instead compromising myself and my integrity in order to live a complete lie, pretending it wasn't as awful as it was .....

Until November 2003, when a woman who to this day I trust with my whole being knocked on the inpenetrable shell of protection I had built around myself in order to survive, with a love and belief in who I had been and who I was underneath all the ghastliness - and with her unfailing support and belief, I began the process of setting myself free - free from myself, free from an unspeakable relationship that had brought me to the edge of reason, free in a way I had never dared to allow myself to imagine ........

And little by little, piece by piece, I started to pick away the broken pieces, dust them down, polish them up, and put myself back together again. Through this process, which was in turns both joyful and agonising, I found that dreams I had long since buried started to pop up - and little by little I found ways of making those dreams come true - dancing til dawn, food fights with my son, climbing little Welsh hills, pancakes for breakfast at the weekend, and even owning my own campervan. Then, one day, THE BIG ONE returned ...

THE Dream I had always had for as long as I could remember as a grown up -

The Dream to Live in Spain ........

And when I whispered it, I felt a flutter inside me that I had forgotten existed. And when I spoke it out-loud, EVERYONE who truly loved me and cared for me simply shrieked with joy, pouring their positive energy into what I thought was an impossible and stupid idea.

With more help than I can possibly either describe or thank enough, the absurd idea began to take shape. Together with my family, friends and support network, we drew the lines around the abstract idea - which bits felt right, which bits felt wrong, which details needed more attention ......

And with every step I took, I grew. With every obstacle I overcame, I bowed down to myself with pride at my new found ability to HANDLE IT. It was, and continues to be, the Adventure of a Lifetime - and I truly believe that there is no such thing as fate now - I found the courage to make my own luck, I have created the Dream day by day, sometimes scary moment by scary moment, but I have learned, and continue to learn that with each new experience, no matter how seemingly hopeless or unresolvable, I CAN HANDLE IT! I BELIEVE in our wild and crazy adventure, in swimming naked in unknown rivers at dawn, in lying on the cold earth watching the majesty of the vultures playing in the eddies overhead with their magnificent grace - and the greatest gift in all of it is that I get to share this with the most beautiful child - my son - who is learning more than I can ever imagine from this experience, good and bad, rich and scary, and teaching me a lot about remembering how to play and trust this amazing world in which we all live .............

So thank you to all of you - friends I know and friends I have yet to meet - and may you all find your own star to follow - I simply cannot recommend it highly enough.

With LOVE xx

Friday, June 15, 2007

Where Living the Dream can be a NIGHTMARE!!!!

I am dead on my feet this afternoon - and I think I could write a book on the hideous, complicated process of changing the identity of a vehicle from English to Spanish ..... I would have preferred to stab myself repeatedly in the eyeballs with chillis in hindsight ............!!

It is, without doubt, far easier for a European to change their residency, or to have dual residency, than it is to change the "residency" of a motorhome - and that is what I have been doing my uttermost to achieve.

It all looked so simple to begin with - I went to Trafico in Teruel where I had to pay 60+€ tax and a fee of 17€ to start the process of re-registering (it's called rematriculacion here for anyone thinking of doing it). That gave me green temporary Spanish plates which I was told gave me permission to circulate for two months, and that I needed to take with me to the Ayuntamiento (Town Hall) so I could pay another tax - annual road tax this time of another 60+€. Trafico also told me that I needed to have an up to date ITV - think MOT in the UK and you are about there - only it is the most facile and pointless series of tests that actually make a mockery of the safety of vehicles on the road in Spain if you want my opinion.

So off I went with all taxes paid to the ITV centre in Sarrion - the closest to where I live, with a spring in my step thinking that I was moments away from having my Spanish plates and all done.

IDIOT!!!

After ages, the man who worked there told me that I had to have a particular number - on the V5c In the UK it is K, Type Approval Number - which I do not have on her V5C. On writing to DVLA, I learned that all motorhomes are exempt from Type Approval Numbers, however they helpfully gave me the address of somewhere were I could get a certificate to this effect. The address was for people bringing a motorhome INTO the UK, not for exporting it!

Fingernails getting more and more bitten, I spoke to the wonderful people who sold me the motorcaravan in the first place - South Hereford Motorcaravan Centre - and the lovely Des gave me the number of a local Fiat garage, as my motorhome is a Fiat Ducato - in the hope that they could help me with this number - and ........... no.

(Not so silent scream) ...........

So I rang Fiat in Teruel, my closest city, and was told that well, yes, they sort of could help, but I would need to take all the papers to them, they would look at them and then send them off to Fiat in Madrid and in 2 weeks or so, I would have the papers ........... But I NEED TO LEAVE NOW!

Rafa, in Sarrion ITV, had told me that I needed a Homologacion Individual - and I found out today that to have that done would cost me 1,600€ and that I would have to drive to Zaragoza IN the motorhome - 3 hours each way - with my son in school from 9.30 - 1.30pm and then no-one to collect him .....

So instead I drove the motorhome to the coast - to Sagunto ITV - and presented my papers in the vague and distant hope that they would say that everything is in order - BUT - no!

I am still missing one vital and essential and crucial piece of paper - I COULD SCREAM AGAIN! I drove from the ITV centre in Sagunto into the heart of Valencia - NO MEAN FEAT in a 6m motorhome - and tried to find somewhere to park her while waiting for an Inginiero - someone who could measure the distance between the wheels, the height, depth, breadth, attachments, type of wheel, engine capacity, weight, you name it. I found a spot and put my hazard warning lights on, waiting for the police to tell me why I couldn't park there, and sure enough, just as I was falling asleep, up drove two police motorbikes! So I jumped out and said I was waiting for them as I had been driving around for half an hour looking for somewhere to park - so they let me park in a no parking place! Within 20 minutes (and after a coffee and a pee in the pub opposite), I went back to find ANOTHER police bike circling her with a tow truck alongside!! OH YIPES! He was really nice though - he was actually there to tow away the car behind me and just wanted me to move the wagon in order that he could pull out the car behind! I only found that out after apologising and explaining for about 5 minutes!

Finally, the Inginiero arrived, established within minutes that I was single (!) and did what I mentioned above. He told me about the normal cost for the Homologacion being 1,600€ - and then charged me 120€ for what he had done......... He now has to send that off to some office in Valencia who stamp and officialise it, and he then sends it back to me and with that, I am led to believe that I can pass the ITV without further ado. Saying that though, he also said that my reversing light is on the left, and it should be on the right - so at least I can put that right before I go back and HOPEFULLY get this blithering test passed!

Say a prayer for me = it is enough to make me grey overnight, especially as we want to leave for our summer holiday within two weeks!!!!

Don't forget to visit the website by the way - or my other blog which is accessed via the website under the link News - www.amanda-hamilton.com

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Holidays, holidays, holidays

Hello!!!

I have a lot of excuses for going so quiet ....... !

We have been doing the most delicious quantity of travelling these past months - taking ourselves off to Benidorm (hmm ....... !), on to Alicante (smiles), on to Cartagena (remembering hail stones beating down on the ocean), and on to the delicious Mazarron and Puerto Del Mazarron, which were utterly breathtaking in their beauty. I can recommend the Hotel Bahia not for its food, but for the unspeakably beautiful views if you can get a room on the sea side of the hotel ..... LOVELY to wake up to and to walk along.

I feel as though I owe about a thousand blogs for those experiences, but the reality is that they will come in bits and bobs as time allows - so keep coming back for now!

Also, do visit the website ongoingingly - my wonderful website designer, Georgina, is soon to be putting on a modest expansion of the paintings I have done inspired by Rubielos de Mora.

Other than that, we are soon to be embarking on our wonderful summer holiday - a campervan trip down to and around Andalucia - so any recommendations or contacts would be well received.

Love to all,

Amanda