Green Lemons are Limes

The Search Goes On

The next time we boarded a plane Dad was with us, he was keen to be involved with our adventure and we were delighted.

After yet another failed attempt to get our paperwork, this time on our own, we travelled to Almeria city just to find the offices had moved and no-one knew where too, we decided to concentrate on finding a house and having quality family time.

We saw loads of properties and even after making it clear that liveable meant it the property had a roof, we were still shown ones without. Sometimes we didn’t even get out of the car the properties were so far from what we were looking for.

 We had a few disagreements on the way, mainly with a new build that the boy’s thought would be perfect but I hated it, no way could I live in the small modern characterless box.

Then after hours of on-line searching, more hours with estate agents we found it!

It was liveable, but with work needing to be done to it, two rooms needed a complete renovation. It had land but not too much and it even had a stable that had been partly converted to a flat, it would make a perfect grandparents annexe. 

There was something very odd about it though, the property was not being lived it but as we walked around it looked like someone had just gone to work and not come back, the beds were unmade, washing up left on the kitchen table and personal items lying about, it was strange. Pushing the warning voice in my head away, we put in an offer, as we did so my phone rang we had an offer placed on our UK house. Could it be we were really in business?

We returned to the Uk and our house sale fell through, we would give it a few more weeks if we had no joy we would rent it out. 

We had no more offers on our house, rent it out it must be. It had only been on the rental market one day when we had a viewing, imagine my surprise when I opened the door to someone I had met just the day before at a group I sometimes attended. We had got on well at that first meeting, she loved our house and she agreed to rent it there and then. She was to be the most wonderful tenant for four years.

Let it begin

It was time to start if we wanted to be in Spain before our Daughter sat her stat exam we needed to make headway.

With Dad doing well, we felt able to start putting our plans into action.

Flights were booked and off we went to house hunt.

We knew nothing, we were greener than a green lemon or lime!

Paperwork was a nightmare mainly because we listened to the wrong people and got really rubbish advice. 

So following blindly like you do when you are under the impression someone else knows what they are talking about, we travelled the 30 km to the town where we would meet and pay a lady to get us our NIE (tax identification) number. It was bitterly cold that day, in one of the towns in Spain that has the most extreme weather, loads of snow in the winter and burning hot in the summer. We waited and waited and waited a bit more, we were too early the office in the police station wasn’t yet open.

When at last we got into the office for what should have been a straight forward meeting, it became clear it wasn’t going to happen. 

The lady who gets people NIE’s for a living seemed not to be known and her Spanish was a little better than mine, at this point mine was almost non-existent. We left with no NIE numbers, she still wanted to be paid though!

We decided to leave the paperwork for now and we had appointments booked to start looking for a house. I had been an estate agent for years in London and weirdly thought we would get the same sort of professionalism as I used to give, sadly I was mistaken. (please note there are very good estates agents out there, it was just unfortunate we didn’t meet any at this time!) 

We had two day’s in which to house hunt, we were looking with the same agent both days. He had the list of things we were looking for, I tend to be rather organised when it comes to house hunting.

Both days went pretty much the same way, we saw loads of the countryside around where we were looking to live, which was lovely. The houses not so much, I wanted a house that needed work but we could live in whilst we did it, call me strange but to me, if a property hasn’t got a roof then it’s uninhabitable. Not according to this estate agent, but then he also told us that it never snowed in the area, whilst he was sat under a photo of the village in the snow. I was starting to have issues trusting him, not sure why! 

One of the properties, if the situation had been different, I would have bought, it was pretty much a ruin, hardly any roof and no way could you live in it, but it had bags and bags of character, views to die for and I loved it but totally impractical for our families needs. It was in the middle of no-where had no road or track to get to it, you had to park at the end of the nearest track and go on foot for about 10 minutes. It would be a total money pit and our pit was more like a puddle.

Our trip came to an end with no paperwork and no house, the plus was I got to see a lot of derelict building, I've got a bit of a thing for ruins.

Back to Blighty, we went and back to looking at property details on internet websites, I was shocked at how little information was given (property details have got better since then and laws have changed which has helped purchasers no end in the last twelve years). I was looking at properties and then realising we had viewed them already, the photo’s where taken in such a way that at first glance you would think they were different houses when you compared the photos to standing outside. Of course the agents want to show off a property to it’s best, however, sometimes we got a surprise. The price differences for the same property were mental sometimes as much as fifty thousand difference depending on the agent, turned out that this would be their commission, nice if you can get it.

New Kind of Normal

Time moves on, as it has a habit of doing. Life over the coming months was not easy for any of us. It was made harder by some very spiteful behaviour on one person’s part, but that another story. It’s fair to say that sometimes death brings out the worst in people.

We all found a new kind of normal, life goes on and you have to go with it.

Dad seemed to be doing better than I dared to hope, as a recovering alcoholic my biggest fear was that he would find anaesthetic in the bottom of a bottle, he didn’t. He was desperately lonely and we did everything we could to help with that. Family days out and he even had the girls overnight so Barry and I could go to a concert, it was a late birthday/ anniversary treat, Mum had died 2 days before our wedding anniversary and 4 days before my birthday, so not a lot to celebrate then.

Regularly I would meet my Dad in his office and we would go to lunch, one day however he wanted me to meet him in a café and not the office, this worried me.

As it turned out he was much more worried than I was. As we sat drinking our coffee, with him looking nervous, this surprised me as it was the first time I had seen him looking this way, he was an extremely confident person and fazed by nothing.

He asked how I would feel if he had a girlfriend, my answer was that as long as she was older than me I didn’t care, I just wanted him to be happy. I do not know why he thought I may disown him (maybe too many horror stories on the internet) for trying to build a new life for himself but that was his biggest fear. Never would I have stood in the way of him being happy, ever!

He told me that he had started online dating, but on a site for business people, he didn’t want to go out with a woman that he could not hold a decent conversation with. He had had a few disastrous dates, with women that bored him, but now had found a lady he liked very much.

Yes, she was older than me, phew!

She was very successful in a highly specialized field of research, she had been divorced for a large number of years and had three grown-up children, she was clever, funny and beautiful. My next question was when would I meet her, that I was told would not be for a while yet.

Their relationship went from strength to strength and we started feeling that we could put our plans to move to Spain back on track.

Of course, luck wasn’t on our side, the housing market had taken a nosedive and our house was now worth considerably less than it had when we had first looked to market it. We were not going to let a small thing like money stop us, so slowly we started to plan again.

Goodbyes

The dreaded day arrived. A kind and slightly mad friend was to collect my girls from school. We had decided that it was better they didn't attend the funeral. They were too young to deal with other peoples grief as well as their own. So to keep things as normal as possible off to school they went. My beautiful friend would collect them, in her most outrageous hat and make sure they had someone to talk to if needed and a bit of fun, to help them through the day. Bless her, she came to the church to support me too. 

You find out who your friends are in times like this, I can't even begin to thank all those who were there for me in one way or another. Some looked after my girl, some gave my Mum healing, some were a shoulder to cry on and others, made a huge effort to turn up at the church even though they lived miles away and had job and families of their own. It was two of these very special people that had me in tears as I exited the car outside the front of the church, I just hadn't expected them to be there and I was overcome with emotion and gratitude for them.

The close family had gathered at my parent's house, to follow the hearse either in the funeral cars or in their cars. Mum was leaving home for the last time.

The funeral directors all dressed in the black top hat and tails looking like something from Oliver Twist, one walking in front of the hearse until we got to the main road.

The church was packed over 200 people who had turned up to say goodbye to my Mum. The vicar managed to do a good job and not say anything inappropriate, Mum's friend told those gathered about the beautiful woman my Mum had been, all the fantastic work she had done to help others and all the adventures she had created for her grandchildren. 

I read a poem, tripping on my way up to the lectern, put me at ease, I could almost hear my mum giggling.

Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep

By Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight. 
I am the soft stars that shine at night. 
Do not stand at my grave and cry, 
I am not there; I did not die.

I had chosen this poem because as a strange teenager I had loved it so much that it was on the wall next to my bed and I read it every night.

The service included Mum's favourite hymn ' Jesus I have promised'.

We had found a list in her Filofax of the songs to play as people left the church, we were relieved that 'Always look on the Bright side of life' by Monty Python had been crossed out. So she left her family for the last time to travel alone to the crematorium and be returned to the ground to 'Smile' by  Barbara Streisand.

Father Gerald

As the day of the funeral drew closer, family and friends went to meet the vicar. Now that was an experience, I walked into his very cluttered office, a desk in the middle surrounded by boxes and files. When he joined me I was surprised to find a South African version of the character Rowan Atkinson played in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'.  
I was the last person to meet with him, so I was just putting meat on the bones of what others had told him. 

He was very keen to tell me about himself, moving from South Africa and the fact that he had been widowed just two years before. Then he had moved to the UK and not unpacked yet, I could see that!
He then went on to tell me that my Dad would remarry within a year, just as he had done. It was shocking to be told this before the funeral of my Mother had even taken place, I didn't know how to react, it was so inappropriate. Of course, if my Dad did decide to remarry that would be up to him, but now a total stranger deciding for him all I could say was 'REALLY!'
As soon as I walked out of the house I suddenly found the situation funny, giggling to myself as I walked to my car, I thought how The Church of England must be a bit short of vicars to have this man in their ranks. I wondered if he was even capable of doing a service, time would tell.
Everything was now in place hymns and the music was chosen, venue for the wake booked, harpist for the wake booked, crematorium sorted, speeches were written and flowers order. 
All we had to do now was wait for the dreaded day to arrive.