Living with the Presidente.

I did not plan to be here writing this. I had planned to be driving back to El Presidente after visiting my daughter and son.
So why am I here I hear you ask ?????>
The hire car needs petrol...............................ok.............fill it up then.................can't.......................WHY????
Some large handed ape ( can't spell the big furry animal one ) had b******d up the cap and it won't undo.
So I have to wait ( car parked in a restricted parking place and no other available round here ) for 2 hours for the RAC to come and sort it.

I wish I had my swear box here !!!!!!

Still in this cold country......................and there is ICE on the water butt.

I had forgotten ( again )  just how cold it is here ( UK ).

So I have my jeans and my jumpers here and my thick ( fur  ...not real...inside ) gillet here ..........and............
my SANDALS.................cos I don't do shoes anymore.
Well, I can't wear prpoer shoes without tights...........and I don't DO tights.

I must look crazy tripping down the High Street with all my winter wear and SANDALS..........but I can hide a smile that says...................I'm going home to sunny Spain in 4 days time.

On a more serious note.......................home includes the Grafitti and of course, the reprecussions from that.

Still, El Presidente WILL sort it....................just as soon as we get out of this COLD.

 

Well here I am.....................with El Presidente...................in a cold land.................England ! ! !

Actually, it's not too bad, but I packed the wooly knickers just in case ! ! !

Stange, upseting things have been happening back at the ranch ( Spain ), in the few days since El Presidente and Moi left ( last Wednesday ).

Some person, ( idiot, nasty, not enough words to write what I mean ! ! ), grafittied all along the front walls of the building and round the outside pool wall. The words, which I am not going to repeat, were derogatory to El Presidente..........VERY derogatory.

Who did it ???? Your guess is as good as mine. Our administrator says it must be someone El Presidente upset. Of course people get upset, especially when they don't get thieir own way, but they should remember that the rules are set by the Community and not by El Presidente.

And anyway, there is never any need for that type of cowardly revenge. I always say that if you can't put your name to whatever you've written.......then you should not write it. The grafitti had no signature ( surprise )

All these people ( person....whoever ) have achieved is a bill for the Community to clean up the walls and this will be not inconsiderable because some of the affected area is cotogran and upsetting the owners who were disgusted with the writings and worked swiftly to cover up the horrendous messages.

El Presidente ?.................of course he is upset by all this..................but as people have e mailed me to say.......he is a good man.

He is far nicer than me, I might be tempted to chop off a few hands.

I have spent the whole morning ( bearing in mind I am catching a plane at 4.30pm ) e mailing owners about an Englich Satallite TV system for El Presidente.

It should have been easy...........................use the bind copy so that we are not broadcasting ( no pun intended ) everyone's e-mail to everbody..................OK..........................type the message so it is easy to understand, don't miss anything out..................press send...................................

NOTHING.................apparently you can only send a message to 50 people at a time.

It must have been designed by a MAN.....................why didn't it tell me that in the first place ???????????

OK.

Copy and paste half the e mail addresses and stick them on another message...........NO.............can't do that.

OK.

Delete half the addresses and send.....................NO....................still the same message............you cannot sent this message to more than 50 people.

I KNOW THAT...............there are now 27 on my list.

Go sit on the balcony for cigarette ( 2 )

Try again.....................NO.....................**+$$##++++++*********** ( swear box full )

El Presidente...............haven't you done it yet? Don't forget we've got a plane to catch......***+++$$$333**** ( swear box overflowing )

CALM DOWN ( how ? )

start again........send three e mails all with the same message to 25 people each in blind ( of course ).

Post master general is busy sending 9 back to me but the others must have been delivered cos 3 people have agreed to the system already.

El Presidente asks.........have you packed yet????????? .............***+++$$$##****( need a new swear box ).

Off to pack now.........think I'll have a cigarette first !!!!

See you soon, take care.

One thing that living in Spain ( and with the Presidente ) has taught me is to always think about what I say to people and to think about what they say to me.

Take this morning................................the doorbell rang and a rather harrassed looking man stood in the doorway. He asked for El Presidente ( who was in the shower ) so I told him he was inavailable right now but could I help? Well he said, it's a bit delicate..........................I've got this problem......................AND.......................well the apartment next door to me is the problem really. Why, says I, what's wrong with it ? Well, there's nothing actually wrong with the apartment I don't think, but there's certainly something wrong with the woman who lives there. Why, is she ill I asked, getting ready to do my Florence Nightingale act. Well, no, she's not ill, I don't think, he says. Well, what's wrong then says I??
Well................................she's um, well she's, you know..............( no I don't ).................................. STARKERS...................and her doors wide open. 

Guess who ??? we've had this before haven't we ??

Enter a sparkling clean El Presidente........................Hi Darling says Mrs El Presidente............there's just a little problem.................( that's called passing the buck, but I prefer to think of it as delegating!!! )

Later on in the day I was chatting to my friend upstairs on msn and she invited me up for coffee tomorrow before I fly off to UK for a few days.
Great says I, see you then.......................................Yes she says and .................you can see my hole........................................
There's no answer to that ! ! !

Five people have called today to tell El Presidente that the doormat is missing from the main door ! ! !

Only one person has said the foyers look nice ! ! !

And the moral of it all is..................................?????

When El Presidente checked the Community bank account on line, he found that Mrs ************************** had paid her arrears in full.......................................................................................

We have just 'tarted' up the main foyers and they DO look good................AND......................somebody has pinched the bloomin' mat ! ! !

We have had these large mats which are changed each month for about three years now.........................and the one in Fase 2 in the main foyer has GONE.

Now who wants a 2 metre by 1 metre charcoal grey mat ??

Soooooooooo, if anybody has any ideas......................answers on a post card please ASAP.

El Presidente is NOT best pleased ! ! !

           

                                                       




We had another 'mass' gathering today to put up pin boards, rule boards,wall decorations and pictures and place four artificial plants in the foyers. 
Well........half a dozen people turned up !!
The first person turned up on our doorstep at 10am and we went down to meet the others at 10.30am, only to find that the poster asking for helpers stated 11 am.
The MEN did the drilling and the women did the passing and the sweeping up ( nothing changes does it?? )
Actually, the whole thing went off really well...............................until I put my BIG FOOT ( mouth ) in it.........................
We were all chatting away and someone mentioned arrears ( you know......the unpaid community fees ) and I was saying how good El Presidente was in explaining to those with debts the whys and wherefores of the situation, how he is calm and talks reasonably to everyone. I said, if it was me I would just say, 'You owe the money, I don't want any excuses, just pay up' ( that's why I'm NOT and NEVER will be Presidente !! ).
Anyway, I didn't think any more about it and when we were on the way back to out apartment, basking in the afterglow of a job well done, El Presidente says to Moi.............................do you know who that was you were chatting too ??
When says Moi......................when you were talking about Community fee arears says El Presidente.
No, says Moi, why ??
Well that was Mrs ************************************ and she is in arrears !!!
Both feet right in again Mrs El Presidente !!!                            
                                                                                
                                                                                                  

El Presidente has spent a considerable time looking at the different TV systems available to find a LEGAL one which will benifit the Community.
The only way forward is to have a Communal aerial on top of the Communal Communication Room which is on the roof of the building. Then we need it wired so that ALL 184 apartments can join in if they want..............then it will be Communal.

SIMPLE.............................well, that's what I thought.

Lots of 'professionals' have been to have a look.......................so far, we have only two quotes. There was the chappie who said he would give us 20 channels for 350€ ( each apartment ) of course.............these turned out to be 
re broadcasted and therefore ILLEGAL.
Then along came a chappie only contactable by mobile ( obviously of no fixed abode ) who wanted to charge 65,000€.
Then along came two men who said that unless we told them exactly how many people would want to join the system RIGHT NOW......he couldn't give us a price.
Some 'professionals want us to limit the channels because it's cheaper....and get the Community to agree which channels to have...............that should take about three years to sort.

Finally....................we have an offer from someone ( who has an office address, a business registered in Spain and all the right paperwork, a mobile and a landline ) to put a dish on each block ( we have two blocks, just to complicate the system ) and wire up for everybody to get English satallite TV from Astra 2 ( LEGAL ) for the price of 200€ each ( buy your own box )..........................NO monthly payments......................................THE CATCH ??????
to make it viable for him ( his company ) he really needs an uptake of 40 people to start with.

So, El Presidente has put up a notice and I'm about to e mail the masses to see what response there is.

MEANWHILE...........................I'll stick with the wire coathanger.................NO; NO it doesn't work....but it's FREE.

GUESS WHO GOT TO MOP THE C*** UP ??????


                          

El Presidente and Moi went out early this morning to play Irish Road bowling. As we emerged from the garages ( which are the apartment basement....so to speak ) I asked El presidente if it had been raining. No he said, why ? Well says I, I'm sure there was a lot of water on the floor in the upper part of the garage. There's two levels to our garages and usually any water congregates in the bottom bit, where are car is parked ( of course !! ), but the water I thought I saw was in the top bit. Don't be daft, says El Presidente, it's a beautiful day and it didn't rain last night...........you've got water on the brain !!

OK.

We got back about 2pm and there were three notes stuck on our door saying......................there's a lot of water in the upper garage area.....................not on my brain then, El Presidente !!!

So off he trots to have a look and of course, ..........................there's a lot of water in the upper garage area !!!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ( our apartment ) the doorbell's ringing and so is the landline AND the mobile to tell me...................................YES, you've guessed it !!..........................there's a lot of water in the upper garage area !!

INSURANCE.................that's why we've got it ................to cope with this sort of emergency...............and it's a 24 hour call out...................AND...............they only speak Spanish ( well, it is Spain after all ).

Of course, we have no real idea where the water is coming from, it could be from any one of about 60 apartments and we don't have access to them unless the owners happen to be here ( which of course, most of them are not ). It could be a burst boiler but from the aroma eminating from the garage area, it is something more sinister.

Out comes the Spanish dictionary.......................and El Presidente rings the Insurance company...............well he tries but obviously they have better things to do on a sunny Sunday afternoon ( don't we all ) than talk to us. Several attempt later, El Presidente gets to talk to a Spanish gentleman who informs him that this is not  an emergency and please wait until tomorrow and ring again.
El Presidente decides that it must be his Spanish that's at fault and he hasn't explained the position well enough and dashes off to see if one of our Spanish owners is in.
As luck would have it he was in , so he came down to speak to the Insurance people. Trouble was, they'd all gone for a siesta or something cos they weren't answering the phone again.

MEANWHILE....................the water was getting higher !!........................can't turn it off cos we obviously cannot turn off all the water in the apartments or we'd have a riot !!
The Insurance people answered the phone at the next attempt by El Presidente and our helpful Spanish owner explained ( with a great deal of gesticulation and shouting ) what the problem was.
We were told to send for Pele and Canno who are the Spanish 'unbungers' and 'flusherouters' who have been here before, several times, to clear out our garages when they have flooded ( another story !! ), then send the bill to the Insurers.

Pele and Canno arrived within half an hour and El Presidente went down to meet them.

It turned out that we had a BLOCKAGE in the main waste pipe, you know the dirty water pipe which is also the soil pipe, which is full of s***................................................El Presidente was not amused at the thought of tons of this stuff flowing freely through the garages !!

Anyway, they attached thier big blow/suck pipes and sucked........................and what came out ?????




SOAP POWDER......................BIG SOAP POWDER, sort of concreted together. 

( there's a moral in this somewhere!!  and I'll look for it tomorrow !! )