Our House in the Alpujarras

My first visit of 2013. The almond blossom is on the trees and sunshine is pleasantly warm. Could this possibly be January ?

The village is quiet having just had its annual fiesta and all are nursing sore heads and holes in their pockets.  And what a fiesta it was by all accounts. As the locals sat there children in front and the older statesmen and women behind. 2 comedians risque but so far so good. By all accounts what happened next was a watershed for sleepy Yegen. A woman comes onto the stage and begins to sing but just as folk are settling in to her melody she does a bucks fizz and rips her clothes of to reveal the briefest of micro bikini's. The hosts did appologise afterwards if they had offended anyone Dohh!! I'm sure there were no complaints from the old men who hadn't seen this much of a woman for many years.

One of our number is sadly taken ill. He is fighting for his life in Granada hospital with myeloid leukaemia which kind of puts a damper of the atmosphere.

On the plus side I have TV to watch with the new 1.2m dish albeit that we have lost Channel 5 and it is said others will follow.

I have also paid my tax bills for the house for the year. At just over e130 for the year I am somewhat surprised with a rye smile of course. There seems to be lots of bills floating around for different houses in the village with different names on them. The postman has kindly rounded up any with an english sounding name on them and shoved them all into 1 ex-pats box. Some of these are known to have been previous inhabitants of the village others never heard of. I also have my neighbour presenting me with a demand for an unknown spaniard at my house. I produce my own demand and explain in my broken spanish that it is just me. This is not helped by the fact that I belatedly note that the ayuntamiento has addressed it to Marx Cavell. My poor neighbour knows not wether the brothers have moved in next door but one or if communism has arrived in Yegen.