The view from the back

We must now be on the fast track LOL if you can call it that , our new appointment is not the stated 40 days but 26 days and as it's easier to get problems out of the way In one go we have a joint appointment at believe it or not high noon ! 

We've not decided if well go ourselves this time or get a solicitor to go in our stead , it's ok raising to the challenge and trying to conform to Spanish society but time is moving on and this needs to come to a end , we either get our NIE  or we leave Spain for one of the other Mediterranean countries . 

Now I've never run from anything but this place is insane the burocacy is mainly pointless and the rules are close to xenophobic. For a country that is happy to be a member of the family of European States and receive its share of economic support it treats visitors sorry family members like that cousin that nobody talks about .

i even got an attachment with the appointment explaining how a false financial statement is classed as fraud under EU law ! ME commit fraud ! The cheek of it they need to start a whole lot closer to home with that one ,

let he who has not got their hand out cast the first euro. Eh ! 

The lovely wife has been a little under the weather recently , suffering from a mystery rash all over her upper body having worked our way through the usual suspects like wash powder , soaps etc it just got worse. Now she didn't feel ill as such but it is unsightly and itchy oh so itchy . She had tried various lotions designed to soothe the chemists pocket but to no avail, So it's off to the doctor , but where ? 

We ended up at the medico clinico , Mojacar . A nice Dr , Spanish with very good English and very attentive. After 45 mins he made a proclamation " your allergic " and " your stressed with high blood pressure " no Sh*t Sherlock ! He offered a diet sheet and asked do you know why you might be stressed ? By the time the lovely wife had listed all the issues with the rental and the NIE and her mom not been well and our daughter having a bumpy time at work plus her shares loosing 15% in a week ( I told her to buy into the post office , B&B and get her others back at the lower rate ) but no it's hassle ?? All of that for a lady of a certain age is too much. 

The diet sheet has only 10 food items that are allowed , that incs olive , corn and soya oil plus chicken , white fish,  rice and potatoes, for Deseret you can have melon, pear or lemon and that's it 10 items. Having tried this for a week along with more lotions and tablets the rash is going, I showed my support by following the same diet, well almost I put chilli sauce on most of mine ! 

On her return visit, we were all pleased to hear that the diet sheet was no more and the rash was almost gone , but as for the BP it was almost bursting ! " why are you so stressed " asked the Dr ? Well it was Friday the day after our visit to the office of the aliens and the lovely wife , not being one to bare a grudge ( much ) had been ranting on about our visit every time the subject arose, he said this is no good you will have to calm down , I've been saying that for 29 years 50 weeks and all I ever got was a sore throut ! So it's bi daily BP testing and a return visit in 6 weeks. The cost for these sage words €1 yes €1 , sorry per minute ! Attentive yes , chatty yes and on the same money as that other chatty man Alan Carr . 

As keen readers will be aware today was the day, the day we were scheduled to awake from our dormancy and attend the office for aliens in Almeria to apply for our registration and NIE. 
After our 40 day slumber we arose before dawn partook of a light breakfast of coffee and toast, confident our paperwork met all requirements having been checked by a legal eagle familiar  with these things we set off. I left the tomtom in the hall as this is our 4 th visit its a part of town I've become very familiar with. 
Our journey was un eventful just me and the lovely wife and the near empty autovia we cruised on in near silence, must be apprehensive ? I don't know why , we're good this time all bases covered . We arrived an hour early and found the game of shuffle board with the parking spots in full flow with players trying to out manoeuvre the next guy or gal to a spot in The same post code.  
Having past through security , he said hola ? Getting way too familiar ! We went to reception for our tickets and was sent to the salòn , now my sitting room has a sofa and comfy chairs but no such luck wood seats bolted to a steel beam , it was like rush hour at Marrakech Central station we took our seat and practiced our numbers counting along as the  PA system called them out . The time soon past and I was up " Mesa 23 " we had agreed that we were going together even though we had separate appointments an hour apart ? 
So off we trotted to Mesa 23 we sat down I greeted the gent in Spanish and was cut dead , not a glimpse of a human sole , he replied in Spanish, what? I offered him my ticket number he didn't want it , so I passed him my papers and application with passport , he looked at the application form and said two ! Ah got yer as I had another part completed just for this occasion in fact I had several he was not impressed when a few ticks later he had two copies both signed in his presence he continued to rummage in my papers pulling out my UK bank statement showing the balance from the house and the remainder of my settlement a nice looking sum, his response , españa ? No englaterra , that was it off he went mumbling in Spanish not a word I could hear or understand,  Perdón Señor no entiendo, yo hablo español sólo un poco! Been practicing that , he pushed his chair back and went a wandering this surprised me as I expected the boot ! 
He came back with a young lady who spoke English this calmed the lovely wife for ten seconds but as soon as his accomplice sorry assistance spoke we disagreed , she said he needs you to have these funds in Spanish bank , well the lovely wife looked her in the eye and firmly said Why ? I'll keep my money where I want ! We have a household account in a Spanish visitor account .
 She stepped back and they had a huddle he returned and started to rummage again she said this is ok ( funny that ) but must be in Spanish , WHY ? It's ok for me but this is Spain so he needs Spanish , He then passed and mumbled about our health care insurance cert , she said this is ok but , you guessed it must be in Spanish ! We had no choice but to leave beaten again but not defeated. 
On the way home we called at the bank and saw the manager he said it was all rubbish and printed a statement in Spanish for our household account and said that will be enough for them they have no idea . As for the medical cert that's costing €60 to have translated , it will be ready next Wednesday I have already requested a new appointment online and are waiting for a reply.  

So the men in black they still say no but big lad says theres always a sequel. 

Well it wasn't quite a raid but it was a farce ! At 03:30 this morning I awoke to the door bell going , the button is down at the gate so I thought go away as you do :-) and ignored it but it kept ringing . So up I get to the window to see blue lights flashing on top of a police car at the gate and a officer waving a spot light around, I thought now you don't see that every day I best go and have a look ! Fearing the worst as our past encounter with the Guardia on a traffic stop plummeted in to  a game of charades due to the lack of linguistic skills between the four of us before gave up and they let us go. Not in the mood for a game I put the out side lights on and opened the door and remembering the advice from our pool guy of "talk firmly " I wound my self up to my full bare foot 1.86m and in a deep voice with the spot light in my eyes said HOLA??? And waved for them to come through the unlocked gate they didn't move I got back ( in Spanish of course ) , hello good evening do you speak Spanish well being half asleep and up-to that point I'm fine I confidently said Si un poco I waved again and said una casa pointing but they did not move so we have I Mexican stand off ? We re 20m apart separated by gravel and I'm in bare feet do I keep waving like a nutter or go and put some shoes on ? So I went back in and the door closed behind me and the bell started ringing, thinking of how much fun I was having in the moon light in my shorts at 03:35 I decided to would be unfair not to allow the lovely wife to join in so I made sure she didn't miss out by waking her up from the dead , she was so keen to play she was off down the drive in her bath robe trying to start a game of charades. When I went to join her they showed us a picture of our absent neighbours who we've only seen over the wall and asked , I think , if they were in ? We said no and pointed next door they said number 21 ? We said no number 20 and pointed to the big number on the wall, then the mistake we tried to help ! As our neighbours are part time they went back to the uk 3 weeks ago so we tried to say this but they disagreed so we used the iPad and bing translator they disagreed they used the iPad to ask if we knew where they are so we said aero puerto englaterra  Whist the lovely wife did a great mime of a take off followed by a whooshing noise , maximum points I thought had to be a deciding round to us ? But no they challenged with no españa so we walked them down the road showed them the number 21 outside the next gate and the house is empty shrugged our shoulders and bid them good night , as we walked back I remembered our rental agent is acting for them on another property of theirs and thought it would be our duty to help the Guardia in every way so I grabbed his card and eagerly said telephono whilst pointing at the card señor Davis llama señor phelps ! The officer understood what I meant and was on the phone in no time , well real time was 03:55 I do like to help when I can especially as señor Davis has been so helpful to us over the last few weeks , maybe they went to see him too ? As for the why what when we barely got past the who , I'm sure the gossip will tell soon enough if not their back for Christmas so we'll just have to wait . Look its 04:00 coffee time .

Well the quiet time was shattered by the guy behind spending all day exercising his chain saw by cutting down 3 trees on our boundary using the chip n slice method of sitting atop the tree and cutting bits off small enough to go on the fire, the saw was running for hours . He achieved his goal of letting the sun in to his garden and the wind into ours :-( , he had a side effect of improving the view from our balcony into their sun loungers and bed rooms so probably needed more thought !  In an attempt to mitigate our €246 electric bill I investigated our usage with the lovely wife , unplugging every thing and unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you view it the meter stopped turning . Our largest use as we don't use the air con is the pool pump at 1HP or .75 KWh the cooking is mainly gas with occasional electric oven followed by the washer at .36 kWh . The 1274 kWh on 60 days was €160 before IVA and the power and rental charges that makes 1 kWh = €0.125 plus Iva or £0.106 plus Iva as this is an area I had some insight in the raw cost per unit kWh is the same in the UK as Andalusia the difference is the additional charges that change my raw €160 into a bill for €246, in the Uk the same usage would result in a final bill of £141.79 in vat at 5% ( €179.17 ). Our additional costs where mainly the power or capacity charge based on 5.5 kWh per day at €0.091 and tax at 21% not 5% . Even if we went solar with battery back up and only used grid as a last resort we would still have charges of €45 plus any usage due to the power charges and tax. So with a calmer mind if you combine the utility spend of gas , elec and water my personal experience is that a uk 4 bed is the same cost as a Spanish 4  bed at the moment but the tax is the killer, it's still a mystery where it all went though ? I've not seen any electric puddles anywhere. 

Not much to report , the days roll by as we wait for our appointment at the office of the aliens. Had our first utility bills, the electric was massive but once you allow for there being no gas bill and the fact that it's in euros and for 2 months it's actually about the same as in the uk . But what a weird way of working it out , made even more complicated as we tried to decide shares between us and the land lord. The water was good considering how much it takes to keep the pool full and as the bill was all ours apart from 4 days I paid it all as the calculation looked even more complicated than the leccy . The final cost per m3 was 25% less then in the uk  at 1.45€ and it rained every day there ( well it seemed like it) it's just a shame that the only use for this cheap water is in the pool and down the loo whilst we pay €125 per m3 for something to drink.  We had a run out on Saturday down along the coast from Garucha to nijar stopping off at the usual photo points at Cabo de Gata on through carbonaras and nijar. Lovely and quiet now the tourists have gone ( listen to me tourists ) got a parking space when ever needed and still 30c on the beach now crowded with anglers rods replacing parasols.