Ramblings in Retirement

February 2006

Hello all, what a strange month we have had here, cold, wet and miserable for the first week then warm and sunny (reaching 20 degrees) in the middle and then back to a few days of rain at the end. Hopefully it has all stopped and we start to enjoy some great sunshine.

That said, there is a definite sign that spring is on the way, our Mimosa tree has flowered and has been resplendent with yellow blossom as you can see. Similarly, all around the Costa Blanca there has been a profusion of almond blossom (it is said that the Costa Blanca is named after the white Almond blossom) and Penny and I took these pictures in the Jalon valley.

So, it’s all go in the garden again, aching back, dog tired and humping rubbish, oh it’s great to

be retired.

Penny has had a fair old time of it with travelling back and forth to the UK to have her tests for Angina, it seems that every two weeks she is flying back and forth. As I write, she has returned once more for an appointment with the specialist who will presumably deliver his prognosis. The people at Jet2 airline have made a packet from me constantly changing flights and charging 25€ a time. Meanwhile I have been left with instructions to buy paint and to decorate the hallway, finish the gravelling and, complete the new rose bed!! Bye the way, you may recall that I had installed an irrigation system for the “lawn” area but it would not work as the water pressure was insufficient, I resolved the problem by installing a pump to push the water up and it works perfectly. No more hosing thank God!

Spain’s a Laugh

As I said at the beginning of the year I want to tell you of things going on here in Spain and I’ll start with an update on the “NO Smoking” law passed as of 1^st January. Firstly, the tobacco companies who fear a reduction in sales have taken action and significantly reduced their prices (pack of 20 now 1.85€, about £1.28) resulting in a 17.51% increase in sales (so now you can get lung cancer more cheaply)! Next, shopkeepers who were previously able to sell cigarettes, are to be compensated (a total of 3 million euros) for prepaid licences to sell cigarettes. It is said that this has created a new type of tourist; one who comes for cheap fags! In a humorous twist, I read two news articles, one where the Spanish President Zapatero, was found to be smoking during a government meeting (smoking is banned in all offices and workplaces) and another instance in Benidorm, where a policeman was denounced by his colleagues for smoking in the station!

I have reproduced an article I read recently which I found to be fun but also true (wish I had written it) you’ll enjoy……

The Opposite of TT (OTT)

To the fleeting, fitness-cons­cious British visitor, the cavalier attitude of the Spanish to their physical well-being is a mystery that comes without a government health warning. One tabloid co­lumnist was so culture-shocked af­ter returning from a week on the Costa that he devoted half a page to his impressions of a nation which, it appeared to him, have turned smoking into a national pastime. "Premier league smo­king," he wrote. "Ashtrays like the debris of a new Krakatoa smo­king. Ten people in a room pac­king Marlboro and no abstentions smoking - these are folk who put more petrol per week in their lighters than they do in their cars". Certainly it may seem that the Hispanics are on a fast lane to the mortuary, walking a knife-edge over the twin precipices of chronic bronchitis and cirrhosis of the liver, the dawn chorus of sun-dried old men coughing their lungs up over their breakfast of Ducados and Anis is as normal here as the twitter of birdsong in an English country lane. Except that the very fact that they are old and sun-dried would suggest that smoking Duca­dos and drinking Anis couldn't be that bad for you - and might even do you good.

Spain is probably the only country in the world where you can order coffee and brandy at nine in the morning without anyone raising an eyebrow or carting you off to an AA meeting. It's a country where mus (a card game) rather than muesli is on the menu at bre­akfast, where no self-respecting macho Iberico would be seen drin­king freshly squeezed fruit juice, even though Spain has oranges growing on trees and supplies them to half of northern Europe. The Spanish prefer to kick start their day with lashings of choleste­rol - doughnuts and, chocolate, bre­ad and oil. In defiance to the rest of sterilised, laboratory tested, va­cuum packed Europe, they lunch in tapas bars littered with the butts of cigarettes and the heads of prawns, feeding off unsavoury loo­king chorizo sausages and serrrano hams which hang dripping from fly blown ceilings, glazed with the dust of ages and having received a double smoking from the thick fog produced by Chesterfield chain smokers. Then, at an hour when their northern European counter­parts are taking their viagra and vi­tamin drinks to bed. Spanish families are trooping into restaurants to consume cheese floating in oil, pil pil prawns spiced to heart attack-inducing levels, whole legs of lamb, fatted suckling pigs and vast quantities of white bread washed down with pre-dinner fino, during dinner tinto and after-dinner Soberano (a source of great mirth to the British who pronounce it Sober-ano). Olympic gold smoking" conti­nues throughout. Because Spain is indeed a nation that could smoke and drink for Europe. This is a na­tion which demands to do its drin­king and smoking where and when it chooses.

The very fact that half of the Spanish population is in a perma­nent alcohol and tobacco induced euphoria may explain why they are so completely and recklessly ' the opposite of TT in other ways. Such as why they live in the fast lane but overtake on the inside la­ne, insist on kissing each not once but twice and have a national dance that involves more stamping and arm flailing than doing a Jane Fonda work out while having a row with your mother in law. It may be the reason why two peo­ple conducting a conversation on the same piece of pavement do it at a decibel level that would assu­me their other listener was deaf as a post (not that post - the one th­ree streets away). With the energy they expend on eating and drin­king, shouting, kissing and dancing it's no wonder they have to put everything off till manana. Ironically and despite their ap­parently unhealthy lifestyle, the Spanish statistically live longer than other European nationalities. And so they have the last laugh. Because while others are watching their weight and weighing their lettuce and monitoring their cho­lesterol levels and avoiding UV rays and free radicals, the Spanish are on a giant live-for-today ben­der of fun. They regard life as an open invitation to a non-stop party which they intend to enjoy to the last knockings, even if they have to be carried out of it horizontally at the finish which is after all, how most of us end our days whether we attend the party or not. While half the world is going" TT, Spain remains gloriously quite the opposite - indeed, OTT is an ad­jective made to describe them. And long may it be so. (Thanks to Rebecca Ridgeway of the Costa Blanca News)

On Friday 24^th I was returning in my car EKE from a rather successful days golf (in the top six of the spring trophy) when I was pulled over by the Guardia Civil, they wanted to see my documents and finding everything in order they proceeded to give me a ticking off for not having the crash bar raised on the drivers side, fair cop.

Finally, here is a picture of my Auntie Ann who at the ripe old age of 86 looks great, doesn’t she.

Hasta Luego