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

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

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

Changing Clocks, Cats Eyes and Winter Weather

Am I the only person I know who LOATHES with a deep and vengeful passion the fact that, like lemmings to the cliff, the whole world changes their clocks with religious monotony twice a year without ever fighting against the reality that this ritual freaks out thousands of families every year, twice a year, for life?

I HATE it. More children get killed immediately after the Winter clock change than at any other time because people don't see them, and what would be wrong with enjoying the last of the afternoon sun after school .... WHY DO WE DO IT????? And don't tell me it's about the farmers, every farmer I have ever met gets up when he or she NEEDS to get up, not because GMT or British Summer Time said so.

As we drove yesterday afternoon in the dark rainy gloam to Teruel, I really FELT Winter here for the first time. It is a proper drive - 45 minutes of which 30 are along VERY Spanish mountain roads - beautiful in the Summer, when you can see, and rather HAIRY in the dark, when you can't see three metres infront of your nose because there are no Cats Eyes on hairpin bends! What a wonderful invention Cats Eyes are, but I guess in a country as enormous as Spain, the idea of putting them on really dangerous roads would mean millions of the things and there isn't the wealth to do it (arguably because, some people say, that the Government, Officials and the Estate Agents pocket it all - but I wouldn't DARE be so contentious)!.

And we went all that way so I could buy knitting wool - rather cotton - to knit my son some sweaters to keep him from freezing solid in the imminent sub zero temperatures - BUT....... ALL THE SHOPS WERE SHUT! WHY?? A perfectly normal Saturday evening in Spain, and every single bleedin' shop was shut! I was SO frustrated - all the diesel, sweaty hairpin bend palms and promises, and we couldn't even buy a hot chocolate! HOW FRUSTRATING!

We then had to drive the 45 minutes back in pitch darkness and I actually found myself feeling really grateful - because I am being gently eased into the reality that in about 2 months I will be facing some of my worst fears - driving in snow and ice consistently for 6-7 weeks! So the moral for me?

Get USED TO IT GIRL!!!

Have you visited my website yet? www.amanda-hamilton.com

Education, Blisters and Dust

Okay I need to have a grump here. Why? Spain's rural education system - that's why ............ The education system here in the mountains absolutely stinks. If you want to give your child a chance here to succeed and have any sense of their own brilliance, my honest view is that you need to be prepared to put a LOT of behind the scenes effort in. Sometimes I feel like opening a separate blog on the subject to offend the Powers that Be sufficiently that SOMETHING GETS DONE to support these bored out of their wits children. My own son is learning everything in a foreign language, and so for now he is hugely stretched, but it is a living tragedy that while in the UK and other parts of Europe we have the likes of Montessori and Steiner inspiration, here, we have a system staffed by gum chewing unshaven litter bugs setting the example for the next generation. Boo Hiss - watch this space as I do not intend to take it lying down!

They don't even have a system for teaching children to read like the Oxford Learning Tree - my son's first book, which his teacher suggested he chose himself, had words such as Haciendonos in it- for a 6 year old who had never read a Spanish book!! Very not funny!

However, moving onto more practical things, I have British friends here who are in the process of moving from their Masia in the Mountains - QUITE the most beautiful position - too isolated for a single Mum but an absolute Dream for an adventurous, land loving family. We spent the entire morning on All Saints Day heaving tons of gravel to finish off an outside walled garden - hence lots of blisters all round!. On a clear day, you can see the Mediterranean from their house ........... It makes me yearn for my very own home with VIEWS and a parcel of land around it. I am almost certain that I won't be buying it here as prices are British in their expensiveness - but then in fairness, Rubielos is a BREATHTAKINGLY beautiful village. Fortunately there is still a more reasonable market in the villages around Rubielos de Mora, but greed is becoming a known entity now ...

Read my Blog about my ruin in Fuentes to get an idea of the prices - oh, and the greed!



Don't forget to check out my website - www.amanda-hamilton.com

World's Longest Derek & Clive

A day on the beach today - it has been GLORIOUS weather again after a few days of utter drear. We scooted off this morning utterly oblivious of clocks changing or anything remotely practical like that, armed with a picnic and gardening tools. By the time my 6 year old wanted lunch, his nose was SO blocked I started looking for tissues - NONE anywhere. So, ever resourceful, I had an idea. Dig a hole and blow your nose into the hole. TEN MINUTES LATER this child was waving his head around with the scariest entrails hanging out of his head - about a foot long on each side. I couldn't bring myself to help, I thought I was going to gag, so left him to it! He finally sorted it out by burying it an inch at a time until it finally decided to reluctantly detach.

Utterly disgusting!

Do visit my more humane blog at my website : www.amanda-hamilton.com - that's the artist site!

Saxophones, Heart Attacks and Happy Ever After

I am learning the saxophone! Actually, I have had a tenor sax for over 6 years, but a very sensitive pregnancy meant I couldn't bear playing it, and then a baby - well, as my sister beautifully put it "you're either busy, very busy or asleep". Hence I am learning it now, 6 years later, nearly 2,000 metres up in the mountains. Oh, and also, at 6€ per month for four loosely half hour lessons (for loosely read roughly an hour), I feel I am onto a winner, even if my mouth and tongue do feel like Jah Jah Binks' tongue zapping in Star Wars I.

The heart attack - not literally thanks be to my Guardian Angel, came when I exited the School of Music to see my son hare-ing round the corner on his bike. That is nothing new - all the children here hare everywhere on their bikes, however this particular corner leads to the "main road" - down which juggernauts cannon, followed by a convoy of cars.

I asked my son if he had been on the "Main Road", to which he sheepishly told me he had, and how sorry he was.

I asked if he had done it before with his friends, to which he answered yes he had.

My blood ran ice cold. The child I thought I knew had deliberately lied to me, and not only lied to me consistently, but over something ENORMOUSLY dangerous. A death inducing danger, seriously.

How to handle? A first for me - all our problems thus far had been relatively easy to resolve with a Star Awards Chart for good behaviour etc - and now this - a REAL biggie.

Obviously the bike had to go in the garage. Trust had been breached, so the bike was banned. A lunch party today was cancelled, as was football practice. But none of this seemed to hit the spot for me, and I couldn't put my finger on why.

I like meditating - so I created a space to get quiet, and during a bit of quiet time felt the need to put a giant sheet of blank paper on our kitchen table in our tiny kitchen with pens, crayons, glue and paints. My hope being to "see" something through creative drawing with my son.

Well, he drew. He drew the Music School, the Plaza, the Tree, and me playing my saxophone. He drew a loop of him bicycling. But no Main Road. I asked "where is the main road? We need to draw that in" and I put it in the other side of the Music School. He then over and over drew his path on the bike ..... NOT ONCE did it go onto the Main Road .....

Turns out, he thought that the Plaza was a Main Road because a lot of cars park there - when I said "what about the "vueltas" (circuits) round here?" pointing to the Main Road, he looked at me wide eyed and said "But Mummy I would never ever go THERE without you"!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PHEW!! Heaves a HUGE sigh of relief that my son isn't a liar, he does value his life, and he does respect his Mum's house rules!

Who Needs Nutcrackers?

We went almond picking last week - it was the Day of Pilar - I don't understand the Saints here yet but there are lots and that means days off which we love. Armed with 3 plastic bags we headed off up the hill.

The trees are teeming with almonds at the moment - hard to understand how the Spanish charge 4€ per 200g when they are dropping off in their thousands - except of course when you come to opening them - or figuring out how to open them.

But that's what I love about a simpler life - who needs nutcrackers that pinch the flap of skin between thumb and fingers when you can sit with a socking great big stone in your lap and crack them with a hammer?!

Living the Dream in Spain

This is my first post even though I have been living my dream here in Spain since May. I want to share my experiences, the ups and the downs, in the hope of giving courage and inspiration to people who want to pursue their dreams but feel they can't, for whatever reasons.

A brief history : I have wanted to move to Spain for a decade, but my life circumstances at the time made it impossible. However post a divorce, impossibly expensive cost of living in the UK and encouragement from some very loyal friends, I bought a campervan and began my explorations.

A year later (oh, and a few court cases), I and my then just 6 year old son arrived in the Sierra de Gudar mountains, about an hour inland from Valencia. In a campervan! Every nook and cranny was jam packed with food, paint (I am an artist by profession), natural remedies, clothes to last through +40 degress and -15 degrees, and all the other bits and pieces that the removers said could not be stored in Madrid.

We had been here before, but we had no friends as such - acquaintances, yes. Knowledge of SOME spanish traditions, yes, but essentially (and looking back with six months under my belt), we, more importantly I, knew nothing!

Keep reading to hear more of our adventures here - I have a boy to get out of a lovely bath!