This is an updated version of a post from 2020 about my life after I emigrated from the UK to live in Spain in 2008.
Life quickly settled down in Montejaque where I was living with my German wife, Rita, who I sometimes refer to in these blogs, for obvious reasons, as The Meter Maid. After a short spell at The Olive Press newspaper, during which time I also contributed articles to SUR in English, the Euro Weekly News and Olive Country Life magazine, the latter based in Alcalá La Real (Jaén), I became a blogger.
First steps
I got myself a website to promote my various activities, namely translating and interpreting, holiday rentals and house sales. The blog was a ruse to attract potential clients to the site.
In the meantime, after three years we left our little house in the village and moved to the campo just outside Ronda. I got a garden, Rita got a pool and we both got a house you could reach by car, which meant no more schlepping shopping up the hill to our house in Montejaque.
I was invited to write a blog for the online version of The Olive Press and for another local website, now defunct.
As time went on, I grew disillusioned with translating. It’s boring being cooped up indoors with a laptop and a dictionary. And interpreting at the hospital, at the bank, at the lawyer’s became a nightmare in that many clients didn’t really want an interpreter, they wanted someone to solve their medical, financial or legal problems.
So I gave that all up. I continued to help out friends in exchange for a cup of coffee or a breakfast, but that’s a different kettle of fish.
The house sales didn’t really work too well either – too much competition. Around the same time, I got writer’s block. So I stopped blogging and my website lapsed.
Expanding family
Over the last six years I have acquired some grandchildren of my own to add to the six on the German side of the family. All boys, born in 2016, 2019, 2020, and 2023 two in Bow, East London and two in St Leonard’s on Sea near Hastings, East Sussex.
The coronavirus pandemic then arrived and ruined everything: the Confirmation of a grandson in Germany, my 70th birthday celebration, an extended family knees-up in Germany, visits to the UK to see my children, grandchildren and brother and our annual tide of visitors from Germany and the UK to use our pool (sorry, I mean to see us!) were all cancelled.
Covid aftermath
The COVID-19 lockdown with its random fatalities and the death in a plane crash of a family member in Australia got me thinking about life and death – I was then 70, after all. I’m now 74 and still here!
Back in 2021 COVID-19 kick-started me into action: gardening, carpentry, mending garden furniture, painting, pressure-washing terraces and, after lockdown was eased, more socialising and eating out.
Rita and I tidied up our affairs and sorted out new Wills. I bought new clothes and new furniture and we spent a tidy sum on sorting our water out and becoming a virtually chemical-free home.
A descalzificador, a reverse osmosis unit, an ozone making machine, an industrial ozone vacuum cleaner and defumigator and an ozonised pool all meant no more limescale clogging up our pipes, boiler, radiators, taps, kettle and human digestive systems, no more bottled water and the contingent plastic waste, no more cleaning products and no more pool chemicals.
Back to writing
I decided I wanted to write again so approached Karl Smallman about writing a blog for his Secret Serranía website, and that’s what happened, I became a regular contributor.
Since then I got myself a website of my own again, www.help-me-ronda.com. That’s where I post most of my stuff these days, although I post also on www.eyeonspain.com.
So, that completes my odyssey from North Devon to South Spain … I hope you enjoyed reading about my journey and that you continue to enjoy my writing.
Please feel free to give feedback by using the comments section at the end of each article.
© Diary of a Nobody
Links:
From North Devon to South Spain in seven decades… Part One: The Early Years
From North Devon to South Spain in seven decades… Part Two: After The Hangover
From North Devon to South Spain in seven decades… Part Three: A New Life in Andalucía
Photos:
Psychology Today
Rigor Textual
Secret Serrania
United Nations
Tags:
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