Arguing about all sorts: the third year of our Spanish adventure

Benji and the Romanian labourers had always easy-going about payment. Once or twice we didn’t get to the bank on a Friday to pay them and they were happy to be paid on the Saturday instead. British workers would demand to be paid on the dot or they might not be able to eat that night (or go and down a skinful of beer).
One thing British builders did have over the Spanish though was that they were trained to tidy up after themselves. But, as we were always paying by the day, it often meant they would stop work at 3 o’ clock, pack their tools away in their car, and sweep up for ages – so, I’d rather the Spanish way, thanks; working right up till home time, and I'll sweep up myself.
The British also expected endless cups of tea or maybe beer in the afternoons. In keeping with their tendency to shrink the working day, when Denise and Patrick worked for us they assumed they would finish half an hour earlier on Fridays, because this is what they had done in ‘Ingulund’. I’d never heard that one before and the Spanish didn’t do it. The latter worked steady, regular 8-5 days, with a half hour ‘breakfast’ break around 10am, and an hour for lunch. They didn’t expect so much as a glass of water from us, being entirely self-sufficient, with their bottle of water, boccadillos and maybe a tin of sardinas. 
More important than nationality in finding a suitable worker though was compatibility. You had to be able to get on with your builder or life became unbearable. I was glad, for example that we hadn't employed someone whom everyone said was an excellent builder. A Spanish woman we knew employed this man, known as 'el Pincho,' (or 'little piece' as in a little piece of tortilla), but he refused to let her make any comments or suggestions about the work. Even though it was her house and she was paying, he wouldn't countenance being told by a woman or maybe even a man if he wasn't a builder, what he should be doing (I diagnose small man syndrome). It got so that she dreaded seeing the Pincho, and had to stay out of the house as much as she could. 
'I feel I'm going loco,' she said to me one day. 'I've had to get tablets from the doctor, because that man has made me feel so nerviosa.'
Benji was completely different, so despite cock-ups (which I shall describe later and which cost us thousands of euros) we got on great and we took the rough with the smooth. He worked hard every day, he put in the hours, he tried his best and he talked to us in a pleasant way. I missed him when the job was over. 
Also, he wasn't a penny-pincher like the British, who liked to charge expenses on top of their daily rate. So we had to pay for the petrol to run Denise's generator, whereas  Benji absorbed it as part of his costs. Benji also had all his own tools and even scaffolding. Even our cleaner, who doubled up as a painter and decorator, brought her own scaffolding to paint the exterior of our house. The Spanish were ‘can do’ to the British ‘can’t.’
However, later on, when we employed the ‘master builder’ of the village - a man spoken about in hushed tones - and he was installing our glass bricks, I was surprised that he left no gaps between them as Steve had once told me that this was a common mistake. As we'd been assured this man was the best in the area I assumed he knew something I didn’t (I also didn't want to query his methods as he was held in such high regard and he had a very surly demeanour). Thanks to his expertise we later had to fix the problem of water seeping through the blocks and into the house. 
(I said to Adrian that I might mention this glass bricks story and he said it would be too boring to put in a book… Well, maybe, but it might save one of my dear readers from allowing their builder to make the same mistake and they might also have the courage to stand up to said builder and challenge his ‘superior’ knowledge on other matters, too, having read how I didn't dare. So there.)

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

By now we had a functioning kitchen and I decided to make use of it. Yes, I know I don't like to write about things that don't involve me having a big verbal punch-up with someone, but I thought I'd give everyone a little breather and talk about preserves.
At various times (I can't remember the months each fruit came out and don't want to make the mistake Chris Stewart did in his famous book when he described plucking oranges from trees in the summer), I made combinations of quince, fig, loquat and mango jam, depending on what I found on our trees. The jam worked out fine – a bit thick, because I had no idea about using thermometers and I always added water which you’re not supposed to, but it was tasty, and I used it to sandwich my Victorian sponges together. 
In previous years I'd also used our own almonds to make the traditional British Christmas cake. That was a real potch; I had to first pick the almonds, going native and sometimes risking life and limb to lean out over a drop to get some of them (almond trees are always planted next to precipices); then I had to get a stone and sit outside cracking each one of them – the ants had a field day with the bits of almond that broke – they’d heave pieces four times their body size back to their nests. I tried using a nutcracker but the almonds would go flying in the air because they were the wrong shape. 
I then had to blanch them in hot water and take off the fine skin covering each one and dry them out; only then could they be used. I used up a whole basket of them; some went in the cake and the rest was for the marzipan. Because I could never manage to dry them out properly though after 'blanching' and they were always soggy, it made the marzipan all runny and I had no idea how to dry it out so threw more icing sugar and even flour into it (this is how we women whose mothers run off to live with other men learn our domestic skills).
But I felt it was criminal not to use the almonds. I also felt that I must do a home-made Christmas cake each year or I would be a failure as a mother and wife – so every year I spent hours on the damn things. The cake would then sit there, slowly drying out until February, when a big remaining chunk would be thrown out. The kids hated it and it gave me the runs, so it was left to Adrian to tackle it and he was usually watching his weight by then. 
We also had plenty of oranges from December till May, most of which fell and rotted on the ground, because no-one was interested in eating them. We would occasionally make orange juice, but the kids preferred the shop-bought stuff, without the bits - and so did all the village children (Spanish kids are mega-fussy and prefer junk food). 
I also planted a banana tree and felt a frisson of pleasure each time a bunch of bananas appeared. However, they would always decide to grow high up on a branch over our neighbour’s garden and we could never actually reach them. (We couldn’t ask the neighbour to knock them down for us as we didn’t speak ever since the massive row with his twisted, nasty piece of a work of a wife.) 
So, there were nice fruits in Spain and one could engage in country pursuits whilst reading one's Casa y Campo. But one engaged in these activities in the way one would in the Wild West; the Home Counties it wasn't. 

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Another day, my friend Jenny and I were perched on a couple of stools in the kitchen area of the casa, quietly chatting, and during a momentary lapse in conversation a woman I recognised but whose name I didn't know appeared right in front of us! She must have thought no-one was in, because we were so quiet, and had crept through the garden, sneaked through the side door and was now in my kitchen!
'Oh, I didn't know you were here,' she said, startled.
Yeah. I bet you didn't. If Jenny and I hadn’t been there she'd have taken what she fancied – slipped it into her bag and even if I’d seen her coming out, she could say she'd popped in to say ‘hola’. I could hardly ask to search her bag.
'Aurelia' (we later found out her name) recovered her composure quickly and casually began chatting as though she were an invited guest. I tried my best to be off, but I was too shocked to think straight. Suddenly, seeing my potato masher, she piped up: 
‘I like that. Get me one of those from your país.’
‘Muy bien’, I replied. 'Let's see. It cost me five libras esterlinas, so that will be seven euros.'
‘Que?’ 
She was astounded – either at the price or at the fact I’d suggested she pay for it. Some of these little users thought us guiris would do anything to integrate. 
This was all because I'd been kind enough one day to give her a lift to the village when I’d seen her walking along the main road in the heat. It’s a strange (though not all that exceptional) person who thinks that because you do them a favour, you are now going to do anything else for them that they might want you to do. 
I made the mistake of buying another woman a coffee now and again in the bar. She was the sister of a lovely guy we'd made friends with, called Andres (we used to fight with him, in a nice way, over who'd pay). The sister seemed pleasant enough and I thought she must be a good person, being Andres' sister. My reward for buying her coffee was her 20-something son coming around one evening asking to borrow 50 euros. 
'Mi madre needs it to take the grand-son to school on the coast tomorrow. She has to buy petrol.'
50 euros would buy a lot of petrol, I thought, and I was suspicious about getting it back. He looked a bit rough around the edges. Bad teeth.
'She can give it to you back on Monday,' he said, jerking about a bit as he spoke, as though his nerves were on edge.
'Sorry, but I've only got 20,' I said (I never liked lending money as I hated having to ask for it back, so I would at least minimise my losses). I took a note out of my purse.
At that moment, Adrian walked in and when I explained and despite my pointed look, he said:
'Oh, wait, I've got another 20,' and off he went to fetch it.
Of course, we never saw that 40 euros again. We asked, we went around her house - it was demeaning, but it was the principle. And we found out she owed money to everyone - had even borrowed 200 euros off a poor Romanian woman and never given it back.
(And the stupid woman even to this day will try and catch my eye and smile when she passes. I look straight through her.)
Anyway back to Aurelia. One of our cortijo guests who had stayed for a week told us that the woman had managed to get lifts off them five times; they loved the restaurant where she helped out in the other village, and after them offering her a lift one night early in their stay, she proceeded to make them wait every night they went there until her shift had finished near midnight, to give her a lift. They found it a drag, but didn't feel they could say no. Yes, she definitely thought we Brits were a soft touch. (she was right)
A British acquaintance once said to Adrian what a ‘kind’ woman Aurelia was. Adrian challenged her:
'Kind? If that's the case, tell me one thing she's ever done for you for which she didn't stand to gain.'
'Well, usually she offers to clean our house.'
'What? For nothing?'
'Mmm, no... Oh, okay. I give in. You’re right,’ she said. 'Actually, come to think of it, when she did do some cleaning for us she wasn't very good at it and charged rather a lot!'

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Meanwhile at the cortijo, there was another brick-thief at large. A pile left there following some works just kept getting smaller. Then one day, with his usual drunken red-face and watery-eyes we spotted a scruffy 'weekend neighbour' climbing down towards our land, clearly on his way to nick more. He clocked us and had to think quickly.
‘Hey, amigo, can I take those bricks?’ he asked.
‘No, you can’t,’ Adrian said, ‘we need them ourselves.’ 
‘Fucking cheek,’ Adrian said. ‘He blanks us all the time and then when he wants something, I’m his amigo.’ 
It was the usual codicia/coveting of our goods followed by the stealing of them.
‘Let’s get them into the car straight away,’ Adrian said, 'before laddy gets the chance to take them anyway.' 
Many times we had to go and buy something again, because a neighbour had stolen it, usually from our garden or land.
Then a weird thing started to happen. We'd know we had plenty of water in our alberca, which was sited a 10 minute climb away at the top of the hill, and we'd turn the tap on but nothing would come out. 
'Shit, the water must have run out,' I said the first time it happened. But then when we went down to investigate we found one of the taps on our pipes had been switched off.
This kept happening, so one day when we were up the bar we saw amigo. Adrian went straight up to collar him as he stood with his mates by the serving hatch:
'Hey. Are you the one who's been cutting off our water?'
'Si. It's for my irrigation.' He was too surprised to deny it.
'Well don't do it again! That's our water, not yours.'
We only got that water every 13 days in the summer; if he diverted it onto his land and emptied our alberca  we could end up screwed. We also suspected it had been him who had been going up and closing our metal gate in the acequia and opening his instead - If that happened on the critical day when the water was sent down to us, we could find ourselves with no water for two weeks. We were worried this might happen over the summer when guests could be there. He promised not to do it again.
Another time, sacks of cement disappeared from Simon and Charlotte's house they were building below our cortijo. Our poolman told them that he'd seen amigo on their land, carrying up large sacks. The following week he was cementing his patio. 
Also when our house and pool were being cleaned one Saturday, someone came in broad daylight and took the pool vacuum and net (worth about 100 euros together), which the cleaner had left for a little while by the side of the pool while they cleaned inside the house. This was a weekend when amigo was visiting and our pool could be seen only from his house.
So it was with some irony that I listened to the locals saying the Romanians couldn't be trusted. 
‘Don’t let them see what you’ve got,’ Benjamin would say. 'Don't ever let them into your house. It's okay to talk to them in the street. But keep them away from your things.'
It reminded me of the Peter Mayle book about Provence where he wrote that the French didn't trust the Spanish and Italian cherry-pickers when they came to help with the annual harvest. Well, our friends from the village sometimes went up to do the ‘vendimia’ (wine harvest) in France, so they’d be very insulted to hear that. The French blamed foreigners for causing all the problems. They believed the Germans were responsible for the litter, the Belgians for road accidents, the Swiss and Germans for pushing up property prices and they didn’t like the English constantly complaining about French loos. Mayle reckoned the French themselves were in fact responsible for most of these problems. 
Similarly in our area of Andalucía, the Spanish always blamed foreigners, specifically the Romanians, for all the thieving. Well, sorry, but with the exception of English Denise, all the evidence pointed to the Spanish populace as the perpetrators of the many thefts committed against us. 

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

At this stage the garden gates hadn't been fitted, as they might have got damaged with the wheel-barrows coming in and out. So the house was vulnerable to theft. Denise had already stolen the beautiful glass bricks and God knows what else might have gone walk-about. We seemed to be constantly buying tools, ladders, and sacks and pallets of all descriptions.
One day we were in the downstairs room which looked out onto the garden, when I saw Juan, one of the nicer neighbours, walking straight through the garden, picking up as many of our bricks as he could carry and making off with them.
'Ade. Quick! Get out there. Juan's stealing our bricks!' I said.
Adrian was out in an instant.
'What are you doing?' Adrian asked.
'Benjamín said I can help myself to them,' Juan replied.
'Well, Benjamín didn't buy them, so he has no right to give them away. We're still using them,' Adrian replied. 'We haven't finished the obra.'
The bricks were going to be used to build housing for the kitchen and bathroom sinks and to support the work surfaces. 
'Sorry. I'll bring back what I took then,' Juan said.
'No, it's okay. You can keep what you took. But don't take any more,' Adrian said, soft as usual.
(Of course we had no idea how many he'd taken. And it meant we had to order more later on.)
We were talking to a Spanish builder who had done some work for us a week or so later and while talking about the locals' thieving habits I said:
'Yes, we had a big pile of sand at the bottom of our track [on our land outside the village]. It's just disappeared.' 
It had been left over from some works we'd done and had served as a barrier to stop people driving onto the property (and casing the joint); it would also no doubt have been useful later on.
'Oh, that was me,' he replied. 'I needed a bit of sand for a job I was doing. I knew you wouldn't mind.'
Because he was our 'friend’ I felt guilty for even mentioning it; I didn't want to make him feel awkward…   
The previous month I'd gone up to our olive terraces one morning while the children were in school. I thought I'd spend a few pleasant hours gathering olives to take to the mill (I was an obsessive olive-picker) when I found a woman in her 60s, helping herself.
'What are you doing? Who are you?' I asked.
'I live down there,' she said, pointing off to the left. 'And who are you?'
'I'm the owner of this land. I've come to collect my olives.'
She had the decency to look embarrassed then, with her bucketful of my olives next to her.
'The cabrero said I could have the olives,' she said.
'But it's not the goatherd's land. It's my land and I want my olives.
'I'll go and fetch what I took then,' she said sheepishly.
And like Adrian with the bricks, I said, 'Oh, that's okay. You can keep what you've taken. But don't take any more. I collect these for the oil.'
Bloody goatherd. He'd asked if he could gather up the little branches for his goats, we said he could and then he acts like it's his land and his olives to give away.
If you didnt super-glue your stuff to the ground, off it would go.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

That wasn't the last argument we had (of course) during the building project.  Following the recommendation of Benjamín, we usually got our supplies from a builders' yard in a nearby town. The owner was great; he would let us have whatever we wanted and then bill us at the end of each month. Everyone called him (not to his face) the 'Povrecico' (Pobrecito - the poor, little one), as the locals pronounced it.
One week, however, we needed materials more urgently than the Povre could supply them, so Adrian ordered several pallets of bricks from the builders' merchant in our village. Unfortunately for the machista image of this Peter Sutcliffe lookalike his name was Narciso (Hyacinth). 
When the bricks  arrived we opened one of them to find that all the bricks were broken. So later on that day, we spotted Narciso near the bar, so we told him, he nodded, and we thought nothing more of it. The next week, however, when we opened an envelope which had been pushed under our door the bill inside it included 70 euros for the pallet of broken bricks. 
He was standing outside his almacén as we drove through the village. Adrian stopped the car to tell him about the mistake. 
‘You still have to pay for them,’ he said.
'Uh, we’re not going to pay for a pallet of broken bricks,’ I replied. 
'Right. Well you can tell the company which supplies the bricks then,' he said, and he tapped a number into his mobile ‘phone and shoved it a few inches from my face. 
‘You’re the one with the contract with them,' I answered. ‘Our contract is with you. You talk to them’. 
I knew he was trying to humiliate me. 
He glared then with a face full of hatred and spat out: 
‘You’re a mujer muy agresiva, and everyone in the village knows it.’
‘Ya esta. That's it,’ I said (silently flattered that I might be so famous in the village). I got out of the car and stomped home (a minute’s walk away). 
'I will never speak to that man again!' I fumed to Adrian. 'And don't order one more thing off him. If you do, don't expect me to liaise with him. He's a filthy pig! I knew he was no good. Everyone knows he's a bloody cheat. Well he's not going to cheat us!'
The following week he told Adrian that the company had taken the bricks back and hadn’t charged him for them! He'd made all that fuss over nothing. 
It was only now that Benjamín told us a story about him.
'Si, he is no good. I did a job once which involved using thermacillas [insulating bricks] and then one Friday my wife was sorting out the bills and she asked if I'd used the small bricks, because he'd billed me for four pallets. Pero mira, I hadn't even used bricks on the job. I told him, but he wouldn't have it. He said he had definitely supplied me with the bricks. So I paid him but I promised myself never to order a thing off him again - ni un saco de cemento.'
‘Well, that’s the difference between you and us, Benjamín. You pay him and don’t use him again; we don’t pay him and don’t use him again.'
We really didn't seem to be having a lot of luck with some of the characters we came across. During our first three years in Spain I'd lost count of the number of disputes we'd had with the local low-lifes. I mentioned to one of our more trusted workmen that by now we knew all the baddies near and wide.
‘No, you don’t,’ he laughed. ‘Take my word for it - there are loads more.’
‘Tell us who they are then, and maybe we won’t have so much bother all the time,’ I pleaded with him. But he wouldn’t give names. He felt it wasn't his role to bad-mouth others - people whom he'd known all his life; we had to make up our own minds about people (through being regularly ripped off by them). 
That's not the approach I took with friends or with anyone for that matter. I often warned new-comers against some of the baddies. What did I care? I was only telling them the truth about what people are like and what they’d done, and I saved many people a whole lot of trouble by doing it (didn't tend to get any thanks for it, mind). 
But if someone had had the decency or could have been bothered to warn us, we would have done so many things differently – for example, if someone had told us that we really did need a lawyer when purchasing property, the lawyer might have insisted the paperwork be sorted at the cortijo before we bought it. Because no-one mentioned this and because we thought the property was so cheap and a lawyer would be an unnecessary expense (Pepe Lopez, the corredor whom we bought through, convinced us of this), we just went ahead without a lawyer. We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. 
Being risk-takers who have bought a lot of property in the UK and Spain we expected to make some dud decisions occasionally. But take Ricardo, the slimy dumper-man-come-mule-trader-come-con-artist - couldn't anyone have told us beforehand that we should have nothing to do with him? When we're there in the middle of some big, God-damn awful conflict (again) and they say, 'Oh yes, I could have told you that man was no good!' 
CALL YOURSELVES OUR FRIENDS? WELL BLOODY ACT LIKE FRIENDS THEN!

We have two holiday lets in Spain, with some vacancies for this year: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Just below the casa Andres was hovering as usual. I had seen him first when we were doing a recky one day with Benjamín. 
'Sois ingleses?' he'd asked, calling up from his garden.
'Yes we speak English,' we replied in our diplomatic Welsh way.
'Ah, I only speak German,' he said.
'Sehr gut,' I answered. 'We can talk in German then.' I asked him in German where he'd learnt it; whether he had worked in Germany?
'Que?' he replied flustered. It seemed his Deutsch was a bit rusty.
Reverting to Spanish, on the spur of the moment I decided to ask if he'd mind us putting a window in an upstairs room which would overlook the path running towards his front door (Benjamín had said we wouldn't get agreement for a window, but I thought it was worth a try).
'Yes, I suppose that would be okay,' he said. 'As long as you can also put some guttering on the same side, because the water pours off the roof onto my land.'
'Muy bien,' I replied, really pleased to have thought of it. Before he could change his mind first thing the next day I got the Romanians to smash through a wall they'd built. It was south facing and the views of the sierra were going to be magnificent. We also got the electrician to install the TV point and a whole stack of electrical points in the room. This would be a stunning salón with the sunlight streaming in.
A few days later after the men had fitted the lintel, a woman was calling up from the garden. She wanted to speak to us.
'You can't do that!' she was shouting and pointing. 'You have no right to put a window in that wall!'
She was shrieking. 'Que cara tiene! What a cheek! You didn't ask my permission!'
'Who are you?' Adrian shouted back.
'I'm the dueña of this house, that's who!'
'Well we didn't even know you existed,' Adrian replied. 'So how were we supposed to ask your permission? And anyway, your husband here gave us el permiso.' He nodded towards Andres who was standing silently nearby.
'Don't ask him! He's an idiot!' she shouted back. 'You get rid of it. I won't have it! I want it gone by tomorrow!'
There was nothing for it. Although the window didn't overlook their house, it overlooked a slither of their land. And although we had no idea why it would have got her so enraged, you had to have the permission of the neighbours if you wanted a window to overlook their property. We now had to pay the labourers to once more fill in the window and the electrical points were all in the wrong place. It also meant we had to pay for an expensive velux window to be installed in the roof for extra light.
Benjamín thought we should try and get our own back:
'Mira. They've got their gate attached to the side of your house. Eso es ilegal! You can insist that they move it.' 
But we didn't have the energy to start a legal case. We also could have reneged on the agreement to do the guttering, but Adrian still wanted it done (and over-ruled me).
We were, however, generally lucky with the attitude of the neighbours to the building work (even harridan and cuckhold below), in that they never complained about the noisy machines running six days a week. There was also mess in the streets, with dumper trucks unloading sand which had to be shovelled and wheel-barrowed in. Nobody said a word, and when we tried to apologise anyway, we’d be told: ‘No importa. We all do work from time to time’. 
And another good thing (I like to look on the bright side) was that now we'd had the argument with old fish-face we could happily ignore her forever more. This was when we perfected the 'blanking technique.'
It went like this: you see someone in the street, outside the bar, or in the grocers' and you think:
'Mmm, I know that ugly, dyed-red hair, hard-faced cow with the square face. Who is she now? Oh, yes! She's my neighbour!' 
They disappear so much from your mind that you could happily sit next to them in a cafe, oblivious, forgetting you'd ever spoken to them. It's a marvellous technique and one I thoroughly recommend.

We have two holiday lets in Spain, with some vacancies for this year: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

We moved into the casa on the 1st of February, as planned. Some of the floors had been concreted and we had a cold water tap up and running and a functioning toilet (the latter being my main requirement before occupation). The building would continue all around us, with the men turning up at 8am on the dot six days a week (until 'summer hours' began and then the generator would flick into action at 7am). So all day long there was the constant noise of the 'grupo' as they called it, the cement mixer and Benjamín shouting orders to the labourers. We stayed out as much as we could, helped by the fact that Benjamín would say one day that he needed three bags of cement and a couple of tools, to which we'd reply:
'Es todo? Because, as you know, we have to go all the way down the coast for it and don't want to have to go tomorrow.'
'Si, si, es todo.'
The next day, he'd say he needed us to go and get tiles, and off we'd traipse again.
And so we lived in dust and dirt, sleeping together on two sofa-beds in one room. The kids went off to school like urchins (not helped one day, when, as Avril was leaving for school, Benji flicked watery cement into her face and onto her clothes as a joke – she burst out crying and I had to clean her up and change her clothes).
By March we were able to use a second room to cook on our free-standing gas cooker, powered by a bombona and we prepared food on a little butchers block from IKEA. We ate perched on the sofa-beds in semi-darkness, as we had to keep the shutters closed, with no glass due in them for some time (until the outside walls were all finished which wouldn't be for months). Years later, people would look at the house and you could tell they were thinking, weren’t we jammy, having such a beautiful house, and I'd think, 'yeah, and most of you wouldn’t have put up with months of living on a building site.'
Although the bath was in place quite quickly, the hot water boiler couldn't be connected because of some bureaucratic nonsense (okay, it had to have a boletín, to check it was safe). But I got so that I was so desperate for a bath I could have cried. Then I had the brainwave of boiling up all the saucepans and kettles I could find and pouring them into the bath – sounds obvious, but it hadn’t occurred to me. Even with only a few centimetres of water in it, it was bliss. It was like the old days of the tin bath and water boiled over a fire. I was at one with my forefathers. I also felt a wonderful freedom and independence.
This was because I'd been trying to cadge the odd bath up at Helen's in Adreimal. I was desperate because although we had two showers at the cortijo I hated showering, especially in a cold cortijo in winter. So, a few times over the autumn on market day, I'd go to Adreimal and then drop by Helen's. 
'Do you mind if I have a bath?' I'd say after we'd had a cup of tea.
'No, that's fine,' she'd answer.
'Right.'
Off I'd go to the bathroom. I'd then return to the living room.
'Have you got a towel?' I'd ask as there would be appear to be none in the bathroom. She'd pop out of the room and return with a miniscule hand towel. Then, there would be no shampoo in the bathroom and I'd have to ask, could she please let me have some? We were supposed to be best friends. 
It came to the crunch when I called in and Helen was chatting to her neighbour, little Carmen, over a cup of tea and I joined them and sat for nearly an hour, without being offered a cup.
'She's giving you a message!' Adrian declared. And it all became clear.
I should have noticed the signs, but because she always had this jolly facade I didn't pick up on them. I'd believed her when she'd made a solemn promise that Steve working for us (or standing around and getting paid for it, as the case may be) would never affect our friendship... It had damaged it irreparably. 
As one door shuts however, another opens, and we discovered that we had some wonderful neighbours in the village – Josefina and Paco.  No sooner had we moved in than there would be carrier-bagfuls of chirimoyas (custard apples), tomatoes and mangoes left outside the front door. And over the next few months and years Josefina would invite us for countless meals of arroz, which is what they called paella and she would look after Tom and Avril and feed them egg and chips if we were going to be late coming back from a shopping trip; she would water the garden when we were away.  We tried to reciprocate in a different way (she wouldn’t have liked my primarily vegetarian dinners – ‘Y el carne?’), by baking cakes for her and Paco (chocolate banana cake, bara brith, walnut and honey teabread...). And we'd do her heavy shopping of beer and milk and take her to hospital appointments. She particularly liked a trip to the coast with me. She looked nervous if Adrian drove, clinging the whole time to the inside handle of the door and lurching her whole body backwards (as I do every time a 'plane I'm on takes off).
Pretty soon, we were going out together regularly. Being my senior, she would try and boss me about.  She’d reluctantly agree to enter a cafe so I could get my morning caffeine fix. But the whole time she would sit (raring to get going on the round of market day tat if we went to Almuñécar), rarely willing to drink anything herself.  Sometimes I’d persuade her to have a manzanilla or a tila. I’d flick through Ideal, while she just sat with her own thoughts.  Not having had the luxury of learning to read and write she had nothing to distract herself. But unlike other people who don’t read a lot (for example our handyman in Wales or my Dad) she didn’t then yack nonstop.  
She was terrified of escalators, which she saw as some new-fangled thing.  I found this out when we got on one at Al Campo one day; she grabbed hold of me as we were going up, lost her balance and I had to use all my strength to pull her upright with one arm as I clung to the banister of the escalator with the other.  She nearly pulled me backwards with her and let’s just say she’s powerfully built; we would have both been goners. Not all the neighbours were darlings of course. In Spain, if you have one good neighbour, you have another one sent from the Devil himself.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

We arrived back in La Gloria the second week of January. Everyone knew my Dad had died and many locals came up to say a few words, look compassionately at me and so on. The Spanish were really good at that sort of thing. I'd always been useless at it.
When I was 18 a neighbour's brother-in-law died (he'd been riding a bike while drunk and got knocked off it and killed). Because I didn't know how to react or what to say, I simply avoided the neighbour. She must have thought I was an idiot or a heartless bitch; I reckon I stayed out of her way for at least six months, terrified I'd say the wrong thing.
The Spanish were very different. They didn't shy away from death. I openly started crying in front of several of them when they made a few sympathetic noises. But my tears dried up quickly (I'd got most of them out before Dad died). Having worked in mental health I was also familiar with the theory of stages in bereavement, so I pencilled in 'nervous breakdown' for June (this would occur six months after the death). 
I also took comfort in the thought that when we'd bought a plot for him, I was told there was space for one more. So I thought, 'Oh well, I'll be next and then I'll be in with Daddy.' Adrian said he'd be cremated and his ashes could be placed on the grave. So that was all sorted.
We were now once more installed in the cortijo, but not for long; we were determined to move into the casa on the 1st of February, whatever. (This was a good tactic as it encouraged the builders to crack on and at least make one room habitable.)
The battery on the two rechargeable lanterns had just run out late one night and there was nothing for it but to go to bed, when my mobile rang. I climbed out of bed, stumbled through the open archway into the cold salon and picked up the 'phone. It was my best friend from University, Fabiana, who lived in Brighton.
'How's your Dad?' was one of her first questions. When he had first been taken ill I'd 'phoned her and said that if he died I might need to come and see her, as I wouldn't know how to cope. She was brilliant at that sort of thing. Then I'd completely forgotten about her.
'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said, when I broke the news. She had loved my Dad more than she'd loved her own father. Hers had been a bastard, by all accounts. He was some high-faluting academic who toured America giving lectures. Nothing she did was ever good enough. Even getting into Cambridge wasn't enough. How come she hadn't got a First? Actually, my Dad had been a bit pushy on the academic front, but he also had an unconditional love for me, that Fabiana hadn't had from her Dad. (In fact, she'd undergone years of counselling in her 20s just to try and get over some of the psychological and emotional damage her father had inflicted on her.)
I wouldn't be visiting her now though; I was back in Spain and would just get on with things. After all the trauma of Dad's illness and death, it would have been great if we could have used the last two days of our tarjeta de cinco noches and stay in a parador, but this wasn't possible. Adrian had 'phoned them before Christmas when we knew we wouldn't be able to get back as the funeral had been delayed, and asked if we could carry the two days over, given the circumstances. They refused. 
We were also expecting visitors. It had been arranged some time earlier for my friend Janice to come and visit in January. She was coming with her new partner and her teenage daughter.
'You have to hire a car,' I told her.
'No, we'll manage with public transport,' she replied.
'No, there are no trains and hardly any buses. You definitely need a car,' I insisted.
They then turned up at the bus station in the nearest town, having flown into Granada and then got a bus. I drove the 20 kilometres to pick the three of them up and bring them to the cortijo. As there were four of us and three of them, Adrian and I then had to do relays in order to go anywhere. So, the first evening, Adrian had to drive them to La Gloria (a 12 mile round trip), then come back in the car to pick up me, Avril and Tom, so that we could have a few drinks at the bar. Then, when it was time to return, there were another two round trips. The following morning, he took me and the children from the cortijo to school, then went back to pick Janice, Craig and Keira up so that they could come and see the progress at the casa and go for coffee. At lunch-time it was the same four journeys again. Thank God it was only a lightning visit, because I was bloody fed up by the time I took them back to the bus station. 
Visitors often liked to disregard advice, assuming they knew better. So another couple of friends whom we'd suggested should bring warm clothes because it could be very cold in November, came only with summer gear; they felt sure we'd exaggerated. They then had to spend their second day buying fleecy pyjamas, dressing gowns and slippers. They stayed in Marita's smart-looking ice-box of a house. She left a basket of firewood that would heat the area just in front of the fireplace for about an hour and they were then supposed to fend for themselves, sourcing a local supply of wood during their five-day stay in a rural village with no command of the Spanish language. 

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

The next stage was to empty and clean my Dad's council house. He'd been there for 40 years, the last 20 on his own, mostly. The council would be cock-a-hoop at the prospect of housing a family there now. As the other siblings had all gone back to work in their various countries, Adrian and I now organised the funeral.
This was when the bickering started over Dad's final wishes. Christopher and Andrea had it in their heads that Dad should be cremated and his ashes scattered over the lake next to his village in what was now the Czech Republic.
'But Dad always said: 'wrap me in a plastic bag and bury me under a tree,' I argued. I didn't like the idea of his ashes being so far away and somewhere I'd never been and would probably never go.
My Dad's mate Tony joined in:
'No. Cremation is loads better. If you get buried, people never come to look after your grave and it gets all overgrown and horrible.'
I nearly gave in, despite knowing what Dad wanted. But I'd asked the lawyer to dig out his will and after taking days, they rang to say they'd finally got it out of archives and the first line read: 'I want to be buried...'
That sorted it. Adrian and I then arranged a humanist service and burial. I had to battle a bit about that as well.
'Shouldn't he have a Christian burial just in case?' Christopher said. 
'But it's so false,' I countered. 'He didn't believe in any of that.'
I got my way and for the music we chose his favourite, Johnny Cash, singing 'Walk the Line,' the German version of Marlene Dietrich's 'Falling in Love Again,' (Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fuß Auf Liebe Eingestellt') and Elvis' 'Wooden Heart.' Not because Dad had especially liked the last two - he liked American country and Cajun music, but we wanted a German feel to it. 
The humanist Minister spoke for three quarters of an hour exclusively about Dad, about how his mother used to make them such a big Sunday lunch that he had to lie down afterwards, how she had ten children to feed and took in laundry from the hotels, how his father took holiday-makers for boat trips, and my father served as ball-boy when the rich people played tennis nearby. We were taken back to the Sudetenland of the 1930s.
She could have also mentioned other facts about my Dad:
Despite having no school qualifications, he could play music by ear, including the accordion, the harmonica and a kiddies' xylophone (he probably could have played other instruments but we didn't own any); he could ride a horse without a saddle (one time when he had to find his Regiment after being on leave in the war, he found a horse and rode it for a few days until he found his fellow Germans on the Russian front); when he was 50 he could still do a hand-spring (I memorised the moment - I was ten at the time in the back garden); he was brilliant at ping-pong and could beat my ex-boyfriend hands down - he also wasn't scared to stand at the edge of a punt in his 60s and work the pole so that we glided down the River Cam - my boyfriend was too scared in case he fell in; he could cook lovely vegetarian pasta (especially for me) and was known for his baking - especially his peaches and cream 'Kuchen;' he was like a mother to my husband, fussing and making him packed sandwiches with Hovis bread and salamis whenever Adrian was in Wales on business - Adrian always stayed with him because, unlike Adrian's mother, my Dad would cook a substantial meal each day, always with two desserts (say, trifle and apfel strudel). The list goes on.
Anyway, back to the funeral and he was put in some kind of bio-degradable white wicker casket, which looked absolutely charming, but I didn't envy anyone trying to lift it (it looked so flimsy I was worried he might fall out of it any second).
My friend Ceri came up as the casket was being taken to the grave:
'I know I shouldn't say it, but that was really some funeral. It was so different. None of all that God stuff and hymns and things, but all about who your Dad was as a person.'
Then it was off to a pub nearby. Unconventionally, and because the buffet option sounded rubbish and I didn't know how many to order for, we'd opted for a '2 for 1' pub. Andrea, Christopher and I were going thirds on the cost.
Adrian then went around the tables, handing out the 2 for 1 menu, which included such delights as chicken curry with rice, beef lasagne, various burgers; everything served with a choice of chips, salad or jacket potato. We also took an order for a round of drinks for everyone.
'And what about if we want something that isn't on the 2 for 1 menu?'
It was the Stammtisch bloke I'd met in the hospital.
'Then I won't take your order,' Adrian replied, smiling.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

On the ninth day of his hospital stay, Dad rallied a bit and we revived the plan for Mam to see him. She spent half an hour at his bedside. She said what he wanted to hear and she kissed him on the lips. He said something back to her. He then fell into a deep sleep. He hadn't seen her for 30 years. It was a magical moment.
He was more at peace after that and slept most of Thursday and Friday and into Saturday morning. Just after Andrea left the hospital to pick up her husband and children from Heathrow (they were flying in from Germany and were desperate to see their Grandad), he was suddenly in such pain and nothing that the nurses gave him seemed to help. After an hour of this, I told them to put him on the morphine. They reckoned there was no going back from that; he wouldn't wake again.
So by the time Andrea got back with the family at around 6 o' clock, I had to tell them the bad news that there was no chance of him seeing or speaking to them.
'I don't care,' her husband said, tearfully. 'As long as I can see him and the kids can.'
It was a blessing really, as he now looked so tranquil. The last time my children saw him his whole face had been contorted in pain.
The same Saturday I was pestering Adrian to change his 'plane ticket. He was due to come back from Spain on the Tuesday. 'At least come Monday,' I'd said. 'I need you here.'
The Sunday afternoon passed silently. I was sitting next to his bed quietly reading the Mail on Sunday when I came across an article about Bob Monkhouse. We hadn't been allowed to like him in our house. We were a Labour family and he supported Maggie Thatcher (so I wouldn't have found his joke funny: 'When I told everyone I was going to be a comedian, they laughed. Well, they're not laughing now!').
During the final stages of Bob Monkhouse's illness his wife had stayed constantly by his side. One night she was so exhausted that she went off to sleep for a couple of hours and when she got back to him he'd died. She'd been so sorry that she hadn't been there for him, but someone told her that people like to go 'on their own,' and will often wait until their loved ones have left, before feeling able to let go and go off on their journey.
As Dad was now sleeping constantly there didn't seem much point in staying during the nights anymore, so I suggested to Christopher and Andrea that we just visit daytimes from now on.
I was with him that last day until 8pm, but I was feeling nauseous and there were signs everywhere about patients on the ward being vulnerable to the slightest infection and stating that no-one should enter if they were ill in any way.
'Dad,' I said, 'I have to go. I feel sicky and they'll kill me if they catch me being sick in the loos. I'll be back first thing in the morning.'
There was no acknowledgement, but they say the hearing is the last thing to go. I don't remember if I kissed him - maybe not, with me feeling sick. And off I went.
The call came just before midnight. We knew what it was. After being told, Christopher and I got dressed and drove back to the hospital. We spent a few minutes with him, while the nurses got a bag of his personal effects together. He looked the picture of health; tanned, solid, robust. And I kissed him for the last time.