Guesthouse in Costa Tropical, Spain

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Adios to the Casa Excéntrico

Today in Alcampo I saw breakfast bars on special and thought ooh, good, a chance to stock up. I always stock at least 4 types of breakfast bars for guests, in case they get the munchies before they can get to the shops and stock up.

I’m beginning to wonder how long it will take before that automatic reflex disappears. I don’t need to buy loo rolls in bulk anymore. I don’t need six-packs of long-life milk (I drink fresh) or 12 packs of bottled water (I drink filtered) and I can walk past the special offers on bedlinen or towels, because I’m no longer in the hosting business and never again need to wonder what on earth was in the hair oil which permanently stained a pillowslip and put an entire set of guest linen off the usable list. Guests – hungry, thirsty, oily, infuriating or delightful – are literally no longer my business. The Casa Excéntrico has been sold, this month, eight years after I bought it in October 2017, and I thought I had completely come to grips with that until I found myself chucking breakfast bars into my shopping cart.

I’ve just deleted the Casa tab off this website. I wanted to hide it, get used to the idea, but the only option to lose the tab was ‘trash’. Ouch. The last eight years owning a small guesthouse – two guest suites, a shared guest kitchen – has been a fair chunk of my life. I’ll miss the income, I’ll miss some, most, of the guests – fun, zany, eccentric, charming, shy, borderline bonkers, hilarious, lonely, gregarious, adventurous – or recovering from life giving them a sharp smack up the head. The sour, greedy, or uneasily alarming, ones, I won’t miss, but they were very much in the minority. Many were house-hunting in the general area, and some who bought locally became genuine friends. I promoted the house as quirky, a bit peculiar, because frankly it was, and as a result nearly everyone who stayed embraced its oddities.

Twice the atrium and hallway were flooded by heavy rains – the first time, I heard my French guest running down the stairs as I struggled to slosh ankle-deep floodwater up the slight slope out of the hallway towards the drain and thought ‘complain all you like, mate, I don’t control the weather.’ Instead he seized the other heavy yard brush and wordlessly helped – his English was even worse than my French. Many of my guests were Spanish, back to visit family for special occasions, and out nearly all the time as a result. Very few of the rest were English, since when the English come to Spain on holiday they either take a villa or want to be walking distance from the beaches and not have to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. Instead I had Americans wanting to explore ‘real’ Spain, and Canadians, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Egyptian, Vietnamese, Czech, Polish, Estonian, Swiss, the full range of Scandis, Italian, quite a few South Americans. Lots with pets, none with small children unless I was personally related to them. I didn’t ask a lot, since I couldn’t offer a lot (my listing said in large letters, no pool, no aircon, no TV) so guests tended to be young, or generally on a tight budget. Many were travelling alone, some very self-contained, some bursting to chat about the events of each day. They were hikers, cyclists, bikers, writers, students, house-hunters, explorers, restless or recuperating. My very first guest was Danish, 30-something, very good-looking, working on his Masters thesis, and asked diffidently if I’d ‘introduce’ him to the nearest bar. The older woman who’d sold me the house entered the bar a few minutes after we sat down, looked at him with huge interest, then leered approvingly at me. Neither she nor anyone else believed there would ever be any ‘real’ guests, that the house could possibly succeed, but then I never expected to live on its income, I asked only that it supported itself – paid its own overheads and, so far as possible, its own ongoing maintenance, and it did. The pandemic was tough, but as soon as any guests at all were allowed, I could advertise that they would be the only ones at any one time. As lockdown lifted, stage by stage, I had my busiest year to date. There were, over the years, several hundred guests and I kept detailed notes on every one. At first I thought of that as research, maybe a book in it, but some were definitely stranger than fiction.

I won’t miss trudging up and down those stairs with their high risers, or the cleaning, or ironing guest linen. I certainly won’t miss the few crappy guests – one bad guest effortlessly outweighs ten, twenty, lovely ones. The buyers are Spanish, and will continue to run it as a guesthouse, I suspect rather more efficiently and luxuriously than I did. They’re significantly younger, so have much more energy and more enthusiasm than I can drum up, these days. I have no idea if they will play up its eccentricity, as I did, but you know what, if you get a chance to stay there, do let me know how you got on. I’m settling comfortably into my little house (in its own ways, just as quirky, I think it must be me) but I’ll miss the Casa Excéntrico for a while yet. In its own quiet way, it was a great adventure.

(Two listings, this was for the front room)

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Musing about relationships between the well-matured. Well, no change there then. And a quick catch-up.

I’m in the throes of creating a blogger who actually makes money from blogging – what a novel idea – and it did remind me I’ve not updated here for a goodish while. Oops. Between running holiday rentals upstairs through a growing minefield of official Spanish bureaucracy, wondering whether I’ll be getting a sixth foster dog (not six at once! I’m currently left with one, the ubiquitous Kim), still teaching English in twenty-two countries around the world, and idly planning huge changes for the next ten years while knowing everything could go tits up tomorrow, I’ve been busy. Life in Spain. Love it. 

 I’ve also been writing, of course, always, my happy place. Every book ever written has, or in my opinion should have, at least ten percent experience to be credible, a lot of research to be worth reading, and a massive dollop of imagination to be enjoyable. As a writer one does sometimes get bogged down in the research, or fall short on the imagination. Still, that’s why the title is about musing, because there is a lot needed for the current book. The challenge is not only the plot, and the setting, and a satisfactory conclusion, but drawing an angry obsessive man and a vague stubborn woman beyond social necessity, when life throws them together (inevitably, murder is the catalyst) into something that readers will root for – a non-relationship that works. Watch this space. 

Yup, non-relationship. After all these years of banging on about mature singles getting together. Thing is I’m one of the ever-increasing demographic of women who face they like men but not enough to live with one. Likely to live out my life solo, not generally too dismayed about it. IF the perfect man happened along, AND thought I was the perfect woman, yin to his yang, that would be very interesting indeed but the odds are pretty much a million to one. I am however enduringly fascinated by the way people, even the most extraordinarily mismatched people, can create working relationships, however unconventional some are, from a shared past which has changed its parameters, or from scratch. I’ve had a few. Some could have gone fulltime – decided against, instead wove what could have been into a book. Write what you know. But readers like happy endings, right? So the rest of this very long blog is all about musing and unless you’re older and single and also musing about the future you can go now, and thanks for popping by, take care xx 

Living in a largely ex-pat community made up of couples and singles, one becomes very aware that marriages which change after years of togetherness – such as retirement, planned early or involuntary, throwing couples together full-time – have new challenges, even for those who have decades together, and still have the rest of the road to travel. They are used to each other, certainly. Used to being exasperated by each other, too, but know what to expect, recognise each other’s moods and impulses, know how to irritate the hell out of each other but also how to make peace again. 

Starting over after fifty, after sixty, with someone new who is more than halfway through life, is way harder than it was thirty years earlier even though more people are marrying in the autumn of their lives than has ever happened before. Not for the same reasons – no babies, for starters, because we’re not talking about May December marriages, we’re talking both being at the very least September, sometimes October, often later. Well, there is ONE reason shared with May / December marriages. Money is usually a factor. None of our autumn lovers have vast amounts of it, as a rule. More a case of sharing resources, deciding which nest to sell and which to share. Shared pensions, for the already retired, will stretch a little further than one each. There’s company, too. Family has shrunk, and former offspring are busy with their own lives. Friends have moved or died or changed beyond what is comfortable. Health and mobility might start becoming an issue and unlucky the couple both having issues at the same time – normally they’ll be able to support each other through that. Take turns, almost. 

Don’t get me wrong, these are not the reasons foremost in the autumnal couple’s mind (apart from those determined to marry for financial security), but they are factors which simply don’t occur to spring couples. When you are alone, at any age, and meet someone congenial who fancies you, at any age, the rush is the rush. The sap rises, you are delighted, you bounce as you walk, your eyes brighten and the world is bathed in sudden colour. But new autumnal couples (whether alone for a while or suddenly facing life alone after years in relationships which have ended) find the biggest issue they have to face is compromise. LOTS of compromise. On so very many levels! He likes going to bed straight after the news, she is happiest nodding off in front of the telly and only heading to bed after waking up to go to the loo at two in the morning – or the other way round. Established couples take that in their stride as it evolves over the years. New couples have to get used to it. 

 As to what telly they both like to watch – don’t even go there. Control of the remote is one of the perks of being single. 

They both snore, that’s pretty much a given after middle age, so it’s a race to get to sleep first or lie awake resenting the winner. If the shared nest has two rooms, phew. Otherwise – an issue, until deafness comes to the rescue.

One of them may drink more, much more, than the other. One may even smoke, although that’s rarer the older both are. Chances are rare both are on the same page re social life, too. Each other’s friends …

Food? You practically need two fridges, and half the time would rather be eating different meals, or cooked different ways. He likes his steak blue and she likes hers indistinguishable from shoe leather. She likes long walks along the beach, he’s far happier pottering in the garden or little building projects – or, always in these examples, the other way round. She may have a cat and he a dog and they, too, have to share the new set up in uneasy détente. Some couples do get together simply to stave off a lonely future pinching pennies, on the sensible foundation of shared friends, shared habits, similar lifestyles, and they make it work, but make no mistake, tolerance, compromise, and more compromise, is their glue no matter how similar they are. 

 Of course this applies to friends too, we’ve all found that, there are subjects that we both accept are off the table even with friends who go back forever, like politics, or religion, or the books they like and you thought were trite, or pretentious, or so worthy as to be unbearably depressing. Still, you can restrict your time with friends, enjoy their company very much within those careful parameters, then go your separate ways until arranging the next meeting.

Older types who choose to extend this into going home together and considerately picking their way through the potential minefields 24/7 for the rest of their lives – not as easy as you’d think. The young have make-up sex to smooth over many of the cracks. The older you get, the less of a patch sex offers. For starters, half the time you’re having to stop to massage unexpected agonising cramps, or there are false starts, plus it simply doesn’t happen as often. Affection, hugs, shoulder rubs, light kisses, can become issues of their own. To some they are only ever a prelude to seduction so why bother if seduction isn’t on the table. When you’ve lived alone for a while, a spontaneous hug out of the blue from your new companion is delightful but why? What’s the agenda? What do you want? So the happiest couples are those who share displays of affection constantly, without agenda, but that’s a new habit to be built and maintained and when both have been single a while, it doesn’t come effortlessly. Yet to give up on something pretty good because they don’t tick every box . . . there’s a trend towards permanent relationships which aren’t full-time, not even romantic, but a bit more than friendship. 

 I wrote a series of whodunits (Grasshopper Lawns, links in the side bar, they’re absolutely brilliant, try one  😊) featuring four older protagonists who did achieve all the compromises necessary for ongoing unconventional relationships, and I have left them to get on with their lives before the inevitable onset of age presents challenges – failing hearing, failing eyesight, losing faculties, the rising inevitability of health issues. Nobody enjoys perfect health forever. They should make it, they’ve got each other for strong support and will cope. My other books have explored other characters getting close, soppy old romantic that I am. But now I’m thinking through a different, mismatched, sort of relationship, one that is non-romantic yet works, and it takes a lot of musing.  

Still here? GREAT! Any thoughts on the topic in the comments would be awesome! 

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Decree 31/2024 Turismo

Decree 31/2024 is nineteen pages in Spanish relating to changes in the control and administration of tourism, which is booming as never before, specifically to regulate the accommodation of tourists heading to registered and new hosts. It was published on 22nd January 2024, and comes into full effect on 22nd January 2025. My usual readers can skip this blog entirely.

The Decree, unlike earlier ones, does take a sharp look at rural hosts – rural being defined (elsewhere online, hopefully accurately) as municipalities with fewer than ten thousand people.

Some of us hosts in small towns or out in the campo missed the news and have missed the six month deadline for some options, which was on 22nd August. Although the decree also covers non-resident owners renting out holiday properties I couldn’t find an English translation, so I put it through an online translator with – we’ve all been there – erratic results. This is therefore certainly not guaranteed to be fully accurate or even comprehensive – more than once numbers skipped, or were out of sequence, and I too skipped over bits which quite obviously referred to hotels or agents handling multiple properties – but if you too are a host and suddenly hearing rumours of having to upgrade to a five star standard or lose your licence, I picked out twenty points of potential interest. Some were the source of the rumours, a couple are new, a few modified, others are common sense and reiterated. I do appreciate this is quite a niche blog.

Bottom line, if your municipality doesn’t want you around you could be in trouble. For the rest – not quite as scary as I thought. Unless Google Translate missed something really terrifying.   

1.     The main change, and covered in exhaustive detail – control, or more control, is now given to the local municipalities, to ensure tourist accommodation is compatible or complementary to the municipality.

2.     A major change – agents operating the property on behalf of the owner(s) must, regardless of the title enabling them to do so, appear as owners of the operation in the responsible declaration referred to in article 9 of this decree. Anyone handling more than two separate properties is affected.

3.     In brief, private properties let out in their entirety cannot offer more than 15 places. There must be 2 bathrooms if more than 5 guests, and 3 bathrooms if more than 8 guests. However if your villa sleeps up to 15 people this article is not going to be of much use and you need to read the decree itself. (Niche. Yup.)   

4.     This blog is primarily for the smaller-scale host, registered, paying their taxes, advertising through the holiday websites, and offering rooms or suites on their property. If you notice a vital omission please add it to the comments! We are in a sub-section all our own, sink or swim together . . .

5.     Those renting parts of their own premises cannot offer more than 6 rooms (without entering a different category) and each room cannot sleep more than four people. Two must be in beds that are not bunk beds. Two convertible beds will be allowed in the living room, counting towards the maximum capacity of the dwelling. The owner of the property must be resident on the property.

6.     The minimum space which can be offered to tourists is 25 m² with a minimum of 14 m² per guest. My understanding is this does not require bedrooms larger than the average master bedroom, rather can be calculated on the total space dedicated to the guest(s).

7.     Bedrooms and living rooms – this is not a new requirement – must have direct ventilation to the outside or to ventilated patios and some kind of window darkening system (unless the building is protected and can be exempt for architectural or historical reasons). Equally, cave-type constructions are allowed but must comply with territorial and urban planning regulations, for both this and the next point.

8.     Kitchens and bathrooms must have direct or forced ventilation for air renewal.

9.     That airconditioning issue – the decree specifies it must be provided from May to August, but can be fixed or portable units. Equally, “centralized or non-centralized heating by fixed or portable elements in the bedrooms and living rooms, if the period of operation includes the months of December, January, February and March, without incandescent elements or combustion of flammable liquids or gases being admissible under any circumstances”.  Fires out, gas heaters out, radiators or electric heaters in.  

10.  Hosts must provide users with a 24-hour telephone number to immediately answer and resolve any queries or incidents relating to the home. There were rumours a phone must be supplied in each room. Yes if you are a hotel and guests need to reach Reception. Otherwise nope. Just keep your mobile phone with you 24/7.

11.  Clean the room(s) when guests move in and out. Well, duh. Have official Complaint and Claim Forms from the Andalusian Government available to users and a sign announcing them in a visible place inside the home. Well, that’s not new either, I had to get them in a hurry after my 2019 inspection. They can be ordered online even from Amazon.es – the correct forms, specific to Turismo requirements.

12.  Notifications should be clear re the rules of coexistence, restricted areas, and shared facilities. Not sure if this is new but common sense anyway. Factors such as the admission (and / or existence) of pets in the dwelling, restrictions re smoking, garbage disposal, guidelines re noise, vibrations, etc., required environmentally and municipally should be clearly established. In an apartment block any evacuation plan must be posted on the door of the dwelling. The decree confirms, further on, these regulations should be in at least Spanish and English, other languages optional.   

13.  Check-in is from 15h00, check-out up to 11h00, unless specifically agreed otherwise. Keys should not be left out in public roads for the guests to collect (is that new? Would you, anyway?) and guests are not to be kept waiting to check in, even at peak times, for more than an absolute maximum of an hour.

14.  Article 9 covers the requirements for new registration and I have not covered that here. One of the requirements was providing a plan of the property, and a certificate stating it will be suitable for hosting, and acceptable to the municipality, ideally from an architect. As best I can tell an existing host has already provided the necessary information, has been inspected in the past, and should not need to re-register. If in doubt whether you have provided all the necessary, check that section – it is mainly identification, contact details, and suitability of the property. If I am wrong – please say! I will update this blog if I hear anything suggesting re-registering is obligatory.

15.  That said, the registering of guests does change from the Guardia Civil in October. Registering guests is covered in Article 9 – you do have to – and the Guardia Civil website is giving details of the change.   

16.  Section 13 is very specific about requirements. Some are obvious. Furnishings and fittings should be ready for immediate use, electricity and hot / cold running water supplied. The kitchen needs 2 ways of heating food, a refrigerator, the necessary cooking and serving utensils, cutlery, crockery, bottle opener, scissors, can opener, and wringer. Appliances such as blender, toaster, etc., should have instruction manuals. Bathrooms – hand soap, gel, shampoo, one hand towel and bath towel per person, non-slip flooring, washable floor rug(s), additional loo paper, loo brush, waste bin, power socket by the mirror, hairdryer, and shelf, are all jumbled together. It is specified there should be a door on, at the very least, the lavatory, unless it is part of the bathroom and that has a door. The bedroom(s) require a replacement set of bed linen be available. Bed size is minimum 80 x 190 if single, minimum 135 x 190 if double. There must be cupboard space and adequate hangers, and a light point close to the bed. The mattresses need to be a minimum thickness of 18 centimetres, protected, and stain resistant.

17.  This section was surprisingly short – first aid kit, smoke detector near the kitchen, fire extinguisher. Some of the hosting websites require more health and safety arrangements, this is the legal requirement.

18.  I think this is new – a map of the town showing leisure areas, restaurants, cafés, shops, parking, medical services and urban transport. It can be printed or electronic.

19.  One squawk I had seen said there had to be dedicated parking for guests. The requirement is in fact that dedicated parking must be available to one tenth of the number of guests, and is therefore aimed at larger establishments.

20. Added in to the notes and general conditions at the end of the decree are recommendations like a cradle provided on request, and a few other items not mentioned earlier. The availability of a second key on request, for one. Parking is mentioned again – either on site or arranged nearby, which does not need to be covered or secure, simply specific and available. There should be a safe in each room, and a full-length mirror. Daily or weekly cleaning must be included in the price. A dishwasher is required if the house has more than two bedrooms. Bunk beds may not be installed in the dining room. Because they are basically in the summary and not detailed in the very comprehensive decree as most points have been, they are, although peremptory in tone, presumably not requirements. They do explain why readers of the decree got nervous. This blog, I said earlier, is for smaller / rural operators. I have assumed those with very large elaborate set-ups would have a support team, including legal advisors, who have been on the job since this all came out in February 2024. Still, potential hefty fines are being waved about and anyone who falls foul of the powers that be could be in trouble, so I am not assuming I have no need to research any further, neither should you. Ears and eyes open and remember the deadline for any upgrades / necessary changes is 22 February 2025.

Nineteen pages of legalese boiled down into one blog, fingers crossed it helped.

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Talking SLOWER and LOUDER worth a try, guys . . . #LivinginSpain

Last week was a very Spanish week, testing my shrunken vocabulary well past its limits.  Monday I knew I could no longer ignore my high temperature, complete loss of appetite, and other slightly alarming  symptoms:  definitely not covid, equally definitely needing antibiotics of some kind. Thanks to being registered as an autónoma, I have a “health card” (tarjeta sanitaria) but how to use it in these viral times? Turns out – write a note (in Spanish) describing your symptoms, go to the local clinic, hand in the note and card, they will hand back the card after checking they have all your contact details on computer, and a doctor will phone you at home for consultation / advice. Simple. The reality was they kept the card for ages, as they puzzled through what Google thought I wanted to say, but it was no hardship queueing at suitably-spaced intervals in the sunny street. They finally called me inside to provide a urine sample  before handing the card back.

Colour me impressed, I got the phone call (in English) within 10 minutes of getting home, the sample had been tested, a UTI confirmed, antibiotics and painkillers prescribed. Colour me VERY impressed, I didn’t need to pick up the script, just go to the farmacia and hand in my card, all the details had been loaded on the card. I was in and out with my meds in 10 minutes and of course nothing to pay because the social may cost a lot but it covers everything.  So much for Monday.

Tuesday morning woken at sparrows by a very voluble Spanish gent on the phone. The English system of talking to stupid furriners, Slower And Louder, may be mocked but I can’t see the Spanish way of dealing with stupid furriners, Use Different Words With Every Try and Talk Faster, really works either. After ten minutes of getting nowhere I scraped up enough Spanish to ask him to send a Whatsapp so I could translate it. Aha! He was an Inspector from the Tourist Department, and he was coming to inspect the place on Thursday morning.  So much for a day or two recovering in bed with languid cups of tea. The house hasn’t seen a paying guest since October, thank you covid, and I’m not dedicated to immaculate  when it is only me.  When I applied for my temporary hosting licence back in 2018 I was told I’d have an inspection within the month and then I’d get my permanent licence. Instead I got the permanent licence by post and now, finally, the place was to be checked. WHIRLWIND of activity! He was in fact very nice, very quick and efficient, and with us both using our phone translators I could show him not only the rooms but the laundry and the first aid facilities. However I couldn’t show him my Vivienda Rural signboard, because I didn’t have one, and I couldn’t show him official complaint forms, those had to be acquired. I’m still waiting for his official email re ‘deficiencies’ but it seems those are the only problems, phew. He did purse his lips at the low doorway to the sunroom but hey, it is an old house, that’s part of its eccentricities. Hope I don’t have to rebuild.

I do have contacts in Velez also newly in the holiday accommodation side who were agog for news about the inspection and the wife, oh thank you, speaks good Spanish after 17 years living here. We found a local guy licenced to issue our official signboards, and that was sorted in another flurry of Spanish.

Another requirement of Turismo  is that hosts keep records of every guest, and routinely register them on the police website as soon as they check in. I’ve kept scrupulous records but access to the website has been an ongoing frustration – it won’t let you in without a password, and the password can only be got in person from the policia.  The Policia Local said not them. I went through to the Policia Nacional  in Motril and they said not them. My efficient friend took me off to the Guardia Civil (I didn’t even know we had a branch in Velez) and translated like a whizz and the next day, Friday, I could nip back and pick up my certificado with official password.  

Velez municipality is once again off the lockdown list (when the lockdown trigger is 500 sick in a hundred thousand, and the population is under 3000 people, it only takes one or two either way) so I also shot through to Salobreña to stock up at Mercadona, as Motril is still closed off to the outside world. So there we were, Friday, time at last after school to take to my bed with those languid cups of tea but it all felt a bit pointless by then so I got up again to admire my lovely immaculate house. Life in Spain. Never dull.

For those who read the blogs because of my podenco Purdey, oops, I had to lock her away during the inspection as she’s a bit nippy around men. There’ll be a blog coming up about that as she (hopefully) responds to therapy but she remains in every other way a delight and a joy.

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Writers block … #iamwriting

As a general rule I think writers block isn’t a bad thing. It does dam up a steady trickle of tripe and when the tripe is from others, well, hallelujah, there’s absolutely no downside.  When I’m the one blocked, the world isn’t missing much. Those readers chewing their nails for the next EJ Lamprey, well, my last two novels sold a bit but enthusiasm was unexpressed. I’m as grateful because reviews would have been, at the least, puzzled.

(I wrapped up the ten book Lawns series at long and complicated length in 19 20, and Do-Over . . . well, Do-Over was written in one spectacular joyous evening when the dam, for once, broke. It then took TEN MONTHS to tease into a book and sank like a stone on publication which is a shame because it hung on to that lunatic rollercoaster feeling and I like it very much)

Do-Over was the exception that proved the rule in a long block and I do blame my new life. Three years ago on a week’s holiday in Spain, practically to the day, (tomorrow is the day) I saw this uniquely odd house. BAM.  It had stood empty for a couple of years, was so run down  the few viewers before me had stopped dead in the doorway – the sort of house agents start with, you know the pitch, the next one is a little above your budget but remember you do get what you pay for. 

Not me. I saw four more houses but beetled back to see this one again, walking around dazed with delight. I patched plaster-crumbling walls without even seeing them, completely overlooked sagging ceilings, furnished one particular room with my desk and bookshelves (a STUDY of my OWN for the first time EVER) and peopled it with ink-stained scribbling guests having a wonderful time. I flew back to Scotland still dazed and thanking Providence that I had just been made redundant and was free to sell up and dash out to start this new and dazzling life in my new and wonderful guesthouse.

Six months later I’d given up:  nothing had gone smoothly, my house simply wouldn’t sell, I was living on capital when every penny of it would have been needed in Spain, the dream wasn’t going to happen. Time to give up, take my house in Scotland off the market, look for another job where I was, behave like a normal not-far-off-retirement rational human being.

As a sign of acceptance, a last nod to the dream and what might have been, I wrote a story about what I was calling the Elefante Blanco, a book for children with a 9 year old protagonist.  I knew my fading memories of the house weren’t entirely accurate, so I wrote it as it should be. Why not? I’d never live there. I peopled it with the writer guests I wanted, and gave it an owner who could have lived such a life since it wouldn’t, sniff, be me. There were a few all-nationalities neighbours and very little about the Spanish town and the lifestyle because I knew very little about the Spanish town and the lifestyle. The Kidnap Caper got as far as a few beta readers  (finding 9 year old readers isn’t as easy as you’d think, by the way) and then suddenly everything started happening and my house was sold and it was all go go GO and the Elefante Blanco story belonged to an alternative world.

It was to be the last story in a long long time to flow effortlessly. For years writing had come as naturally as breathing, something that fizzed and jiggled and bubbled endlessly, and I told myself it was because the refurbishment was so very much bigger than anticipated (it always is) and my new teaching job was draining my creativity and I was soaking up impressions and life was so very different.

I’m one of those writers who has to write, if not from life, from the life I know, and I knew very little. Not that I ever knew everything, all those whodunits, I’ve never really seen a murdered body, certainly never tripped over a fresh one. I’d more than once phoned Police Scotland direct on some procedural stuff and they’d been endlessly patient and helpful.  My Spanish was and is exceedingly pidgin. Phoning any branch of the policia here was never going to be an option. Writers block may be a boon to the writing world generally but it is a personal anguish, a mental constipation which becomes very painful. A year ticked by, and another, and 2020 dawned and I’d started and discarded at least nine book ideas, every one of them stilted and laboured and going nowhere.

When a story did finally start scrabbling for a foothold it was an Elefante Blanco one, picking up all the adult characters from the Kidnap Caper. Harriet Gant, who owns and runs the Elefante Blanco, which is not quite this house, has a life which is not my life, friends who do not exist in real life but are taken from life, and a murder or two to solve  in a country where she is still finding her feet.  Total fiction drawing on actual fact, familiar stuff, and writing is once again and at last, FUN. Whoop whoop!

Brace yourself, dear reader, because if this one gets past beta readers it may eventually be published, but right now I’m happy for me and oh wow it feels GREAT to have that dratted block gone.

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The autumn at last #livinginSpain

November already … it’s been ever so hot and only in the last few days has the temperature shifted grudgingly to the point where my summer duvet was retrieved from the storeroom, cat hairs brushed off, and returned to the bed. It’s still kicked to the floor by morning.  Duvet. Not cat.

It’s also been nicely busy, including lovely guests from the Shetlands who sold their holiday house here last year and have been back to Spain at least five times since but usually stay with friends, I got lucky getting them in August and again in September as they speak fluent Spanish and know everyone. They were slightly disapproving that my Spanish was so utterly poco and found out where and when the next local course was starting.  Most towns offer free Spanish classes to new residents and I have looked for them since I arrived: turns out the notices (and notices in Spain are never snappy brief things in large print, they are lengthy chatty communications and there are many) advertising the lessons had all been put up in, um, Spanish.  Anyway thanks to them I could join the new class starting in September: while my Pidgin Spanish has been handy, many of the words I chose to stress as being the closest to English (i.e. easiest to remember) are not going down well with Felipe, our maestro. NOT  alfabeto, he says sternly. Yes, it is a known word, but abecedario is more correct.

And yes we are doing verbs (los verbos), on Tuesdays. Sigh. On Thursdays we read tracts and translate them ourselves with dictionaries or smartphones, then take turns reading aloud and mangling Spanish in ways which have to be heard to be believed.  Last Thursday we covered Halloween, which was excellent: some words have come direct from English, as it is new to Spain, so a zombie is a zombie is a zombie.  A werewolf is either a werewolf or a hombre lobo. I mentioned that to a bearded friend of mine who said hang on, that’s my name in the village here! Fairies (fairies?) are fairies but witches on broomsticks are brujas en escobas. We are a very mixed bunch, between 10 and 20 turning up depending on the day. Many are English or Irish, but we have also an Italian couple, a Norwegian gent with the wonderful name of Thor, a Polish woman who has been going for years and helps out with translations ,  a gent from Algeria and my preferred study partner when we have to split into pairs, a Moroccan housewife who arrived in Spain a few months ago. As she otherwise speaks only Arabic we have no choice but to communicate in Spanish.  She’s doing private lessons and apps as well and is leaping ahead, and calls herself a casa mama rather than ama de casa  so I am not the only one rewriting the language.

Lessons are not the only sociable outings, I went to the last fiesta of the summer which is held annually in Los Tablones, a small village in the mountains, usual population about 200, fiesta population about 2000. Most guests start arriving for the evening shindig in the village square around 10 pm and spend a couple of hours catching up with neighbours and friends while laying the necessary foundations of beer or wine and tapas to provide essential energy for the night ahead. Around midnight the first band starts up so explosively the entire village vibrates.  The music is a complete mix of pasa doble and current hits in both Spanish and English, and when that band starts to flag cakes and doughnuts are served at all tables (free of charge) while the next, louder, band takes up the fallen instruments. We left at 4 am and my  ears were still buzzing three days later –

Los Tablones fiesta 2019 off web

I’ve also been through to an English evening in Granada where a very cosmopolitan bunch gather on Tuesdays to practice English, mainly business types but a fair mix from students up to jubilados. There must have been a  hundred of us there, lots of Spanish but also Japanese, Czech, French, German, Canadian, quite a few English, even a South African. As the Czech guy had worked in South Africa for several years we three broke the English-speaking rule briefly to exchange what fractured Afrikaans we could remember – as one does on a rooftop terrace in the middle of beautiful Granada.

Granada at night off web

The South African invited me along to his writing group, also in Granada, which was fun, but Granada is over 50 kms away, I won’t be going as often as I’d otherwise like.  October is also my birthday month – I tried to get out of my new Spanish tradition (well, 2017 and 2018)   of going out to lunch and should have stuck to my guns, from now on I shall absolutely stonily ignore the horrible things and if necessary avoid all human contact. I only cheered up two days later when I met up with friends-of-friends travelling through Europe in a motorhome, the exact pick-me-up I needed. I did drool a bit over their motorhome – two years has been long enough for me to remember my weeks living in my converted camper as heaven and forget all the less ideal aspects, and what a beauty this one was by comparison!  Restless? Moi?

campervan Peter and Gill

 

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Pull up a chair, grab a beer from the fridge, chill #hotinSpaintoo

Tourists shift like shoals of fish and many are currently aiming at Turkey and Egypt, despite pan-European strenuous efforts to offset the stronger euro by offering incredible deals on flights, car rentals, and accommodation. The braver traveller is also whizzing off to Vietnam and Cambodia for something completely different: even within Spain itself some coasts are booming and some are having a quieter year than usual, and who knows why? I swap notes with a friend in Tenerife who says his boutique hotel has been ludicrously quiet.  So I’m grateful to have had a few scattered bookings . . .  guest income is earmarked for ongoing spiffication, so every little helps.

I’m now firmly and officially addicted to cycling guests, the last of the cooler weather brought a German cyclist who had booked a cycling tour and, not wanting to stay in a hostel or risk his bike (which he drove down) in communal parking, booked here for a week. Actually those priorities might be the other way round.  He’d return late afternoon, do any running maintenance required on his cherished steed, then spruce up and re-join the group for an convivial evening on the town. He had an absolute ball, loved every minute of the gruelling daily outings, and will, he said, be back after summer when cycling tours start again.

yay

He was followed, also in April, by my first real published writer, ooh! and her husband – they were mid-honeymoon, which was (a little unusually) a sponsored charity walk along the 500 mile Camino de Santiago trail. I’m nowhere near the Camino de Santiago, but Nan sprained her ankle and was ordered to rest it for 10 days before continuing. They turned misfortune into exploration and spent 4 of the 10 days checking out Granada province and the Costa Tropical from the front bedroom, in between writing writing writing – she’s doing a book about the honeymoon and has promised me a good write up. Even better, it seems back in the US she’s a well-known medium so it’s nice to know that old as this house is, there are no restless souls hanging about. There were times, during the renovations, when tools vanished from where they had been left, and doors and shutters banged back and forth in very little wind, that I did wonder . . .

crazy

May, a year from the end of the main refurbishments (how quickly that went!), saw a little refurbishment and sprucing, to have the house at its slightly ramshackle best in time for a family visit.  It was wonderful taking a few days off to be a tourist!

That was followed by a fab French-Canadian couple for a week, my first guests to really, and finally, put the cooking facilities to the test. Wonderful mouth-watering smells drifted downstairs either side of their outings to the beaches and Granada, they appeared in the atrium waving pink wine and a spare glass of an evening, and even brought back the occasional goodie I had to try from various bakeries they’d found.  French-Canadians, in my hotchpotch experience of Spanish, French, Belgian, Croation, Irish, Rumanian, Danish, Dutch, American, English and Polish guests, rank high, I find I adore being spoiled by guests.

grin

My first Italians arrive next week, and it will also be my first full house since last year, both rooms booked at the same time, so things are kicking off again for the summer . . .  I think the other guests are Spanish. The websites handle everything and merely tell me when to be ready, and for how long, and this time there were no clues to nationality in the surname. Handy if they too were Italian, eh? Watch this space.

playball

Truly glad not to have guests during the current little heat wave, the Costa Tropical is sizzling gently but not record-breaking (we got off lightly) and it’s a luxury to be in the atrium with an icy glass of lemonade (or shandy) without having to be presentably dressed  for visitors

cool

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Do you review? Products, books, holidays, services – if you don’t, do you read #reviews? Millions do.

Some people review as a matter of course. The Starbucks coffee shop, you had a good blether with your mates, yay, 5 stars! The new coffee shop struggling to get established, the coffee was better, the cakes excellent, but you were miffed because the person you were supposed to meet said it was too far away and stood you up. You crossly gave 1 star on location.

Was that entirely fair? You just hurt, perhaps broke, a potentially great little coffee shop, especially if yours was one of the first reviews.

the cynic

The book you just read was okay, and does have over a hundred 5* reviews supplied by the publisher, so what the hell, give it 4*. The indie one you just read was actually unexpectedly good, you really enjoyed it, but eek you don’t want to be the only person reviewing it!  No review.  Which is, by the way, why there are several hundred reviews within minutes of any traditionally published book being released, publishers know that readers love to be seen as being part of the crowd around a success.  Of course you may have hated it, and crossly gave a 1* review and said why, and oh yes reviews are vital!

I review a LOT, all products, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve given 5 stars. I’m a tough crowd and whatever the product, it has to be above expectations to get the 5th. However I can also count on one hand the number of times I’ve given a blistering 1 star. The service had to be abysmal, the product description totally misleading, and the quality shocking.

Reviews only work if you are fair. If you were thrilled, 5 stars, yay.  If you got what you expected, 4 stars = valued feedback. If you were underwhelmed, 3 stars and say why. Keep the 2 and 1 stars for real disappointment, for incorrect advertising and false promises.

Puff reviews are paid, much of the time, and written up to the daily limit allowed. This is the best coffee, restaurant, book, hotel, product, I have EVER encountered while using this fake email address!! Some aren’t paid but look as if they are, even when they are well-meant – ‘(my friend / relative) has the best coffee, restaurant, book, hotel, product, I have ever found!’  but troll reviews are also scattered far and wide, with even more fake email addresses.

On behalf of those of us who live or die by your review – use your fifth star sparingly, really think twice before slashing with one star, and bless you for your explanatory comments whatever the final star tally – reviews that show thought are the nuggets of gold in a sea of dross.

I’ve always reviewed, long before it became personal.  When I became a supplier, I was meticulous about how I worded what I offer. Obviously, per the side margin, I’m a writer (whodunits, mainly, armchair detective style).  I’m now also, for nearly a year, a host offering holiday accommodation. The rooms are cheap, clean, cheap, comfortable, cheap, with multiple normal lens photographs, cheap, and the gumph about what you get is oh so carefully worded. I describe myself as that useful relative you don’t have in Spain. Come stay at Auntie Biff’s in your separate private suite in her funny old house in a funny little town near the Costa Tropical. It’s not, don’t know if I mentioned, very expensive, either, for those strapped for cash who love to explore

To be fair, most of my book reviews have been lovely, and the holiday reviews ditto, telling future readers and guests what to expect. Exactly what reviews should be. But oh my sometimes guests are odd cattle. 1* for location, for not being near Malaga. Um? Malaga is one of the most popular airports in Spain and I am also in Spain, but Spain is huge.  The Costa Tropical may be next along from the Costa del Sol, but those coasts stretch for miles . . . it is about 85 kilometres from A to B. Always check map distances, when planning your holiday trip in Spain – or ask your host. Like one sensible potential guest who asked if I was walking distance from the centre of Granada. Thank heavens she did. Granada city is in Granada province, as am I, and there’s a coach service from here to the centre of that lovely city, but she’d have to be a very keen walker.  The coach really belts it along the motorway, but allow half an hour . . .

Cyclists love me to bits, they can bring their bikes inside, the house is cool after the heat of the ride, their shower has tons of hot water under good pressure, and the beds are good.  Some holiday guests, though, forget they paid not very much to stay with faux-relative Auntie Biff, especially those who paid months earlier. Street parking for their car? Where’s the swimming pool? I have to drive to the beach? I expected a hotel? One said there’s not a lot of nightclubs (in a small town? Ya think?) and one said there’s not a lot to do, you have to expect to go out a lot (which is why it is described as an ideal base for exploring) and to those I can only say thank you for the comments, you have helped future travellers. Perhaps with us both saying the same thing, the point will carry . . . biggest thanks of all to those who remember to say it is fantastic value for money. Love you long time!

 

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Costa Tropical in winter – guests from barely-20 to 70-something #CasaExcentrico

I haven’t done a blog about guests for a while since all was quiet from mid-November to January. Well, not quiet.  Some fairly hectic winter-proofing in the guest rooms was required. Thing was, when I first listed the rooms on Airbnb and HomeAway in May last year my first (and for a while only) response was from a Belgian couple who wanted the front room for 3 months starting February. That was, frankly, terrifying. The guest rooms, like most older Spanish houses, had shuttered windows, but no sissy namby-pamby modernities like glass,  what for you need glass,  is a bedroom, you only need shutters? The newly created guest living room boasted a kettle and open toaster and not a lot else.

My wanting-to-self-cater Belgians lit a bit of a rocket: having not thought about winter bookings at all, I had to refocus towards the can’t-afford-to-turn-down 3 month booking. Turned out, purest luck. Radiators were snapped up all summer whenever I saw a bargain, a sink was plumbed into the living room during a gap between bookings, a two-plate electric hob, pots and pans, were added to the tiny guest oven in the pantry cupboard. My local wand-waving DIY friend Nick, who performs miracles as standard, worked out a way of adding glass to the original shutters in the front room just in time for me to accept a January booking from a young American lass on her way to a 5 month teaching post on the coast. She chose to stay here for a week while looking for an apartment near the school because I spoke English, and she could therefore ask endless questions, some of which I could answer, and vent hilariously about the frustrations of Spain vs America. Like the day she was to report at her new school – she caught the Velez coach into Motril, then hopped on the coast bus to her destination. The driver either forgot, or hadn’t understood, where she wanted to get off. She was swept past and to the next stop, 8 km further. He shrugged, and told her to catch the next bus back. There aren’t many buses on the coastal road . . . the next was due in an hour and a half. The taxi company she phoned refused to travel so far. Almost in tears she tried to flag down drivers heading that way but (oh how times have changed) has never hitched in her life, so instead of sticking out her thumb she waved. Drivers waved back, and kept going.

She also had expected Spain to be hot hot hot all the time so her only warm piece of clothing was her jacket and the radiators and heaters I’d bought were pressed into urgent service. It is sunny nearly all the time but temperatures drop sharply overnight in mid-winter and can hover just above zero.  However her general attitude was incredibly positive, she was a fun guest to have, and we bundled up well and traipsed off to the tiny local evening parade of the Kings on January 6th. (The third king was caught up in a photoshoot off to the side in this snap)

Sara and 2 of 3 kings

There was enough of a gap after her stay to get the back room’s windows glazed, in time for my first actual English guest (I’ve had guests who live in England, but they were Polish) who was scoping out the Granada area for his 50th birthday celebrations next year. He and his friends are into golf and ski-ing so he was out and about every day testing golf-courses in one direction or shooting up into the Sierra Nevada in the other so I only ever saw him as a fleeting shadow past the study window on his way out or back upstairs to recover from the day’s exertions.

The day after he left it was, finally, time for my game-changing Belgians to arrive. Over the months since their original booking the 3 months had changed to 6 weeks, then shrunk finally down to 10 days, and I had begun to wonder if the booking would ever happen at all. I had extra blankets, a heater in each room and two in the living room, and of course everything they could need to self-cater. Guess what, they never cooked a single meal at home, they too were out and about every day.

laugh

They’ve bought off plan along the coast and said they’d had a wonderful time and would be back so they can monitor progress on their apartment. He came down the first night to ask how much I charged for anything they took from the fridge or pantry (no no, on the house) and then a little later to say the lights had blown, he had now unplugged two of the four heaters they had taken into the bedroom and could I show him the fusebox? He was wearing only a string vest (in February) so it obviously wasn’t exactly freezing. However they said in their review (according to Google translate) that the “electrics weren’t clean”, (without mentioning they had overloaded them, grrr), and had a general whinge. Wish they had done that the other way round. People are odd. And what on earth do I (politely) say if they meant it about wanting to come back??

Georges et Colette 2 March 2019

Some guests want to chat, some are completely self-sufficient. The original plan was to attract writers but apart from my first guest, working on his thesis, the majority have been, oddly enough, teachers (including the Belgians) and all have been out and about most of the time, none more so than the Dublin cyclist who appeared next. He was extraordinary, not only cycling merrily up to villages like Trevélez (1476m above sea-level up a road so steep I had been hyperventilating in a car) but bringing back fistfuls of beach-stones for the atrium when he did coastal rides. He’d also bring one of the local wines down to the atrium of an evening to chat about the day. In a week he learned way more about every village, vineyard and smokery in a 40 kilometre radius than I have learned in 15 months, which is a little embarrassing.

Will March 8 2019

This area is big with cyclists, one is forever dodging them on the hills or having heart attacks rounding sharp bends to find groups of them taking up most of the road. My next booking, after the refurbishment break, is a couple of German cyclists, at this rate I may need to plan in a neat cycle rack for the hallway.

I booked myself off teaching for 2 days, planning a lazy weekend which turned instead into a rush for a last minute booking from a Madrid couple for the weekend, but they aren’t exactly intrusive – up at 11 am and off to explore Velez, and I know they plan to explore the Lecrin valley and Alpujarras while they’re here. He speaks about as much English as I do Spanish, she has no English at all, so we limp along in bilingual confusion – they did appall me en route by asking via whatsapp, in Spanish, for directions, Google Translate don’t let me down now! My spellcheck was a curse, trying firmly to change every word as I hastily typed but they made it and sent a polite whatsapp from outside  – “estamos en la puerta”, we are at the door. The  equivalent of chapping at a door in Spain is usually to lean on the doorbell while simultaneously hammering on the door itself so I’m guessing they didn’t want to rouse the house so late at night in case it was the wrong place. Note to self – get a sign for the front door.

It’s been a lively start to the year already with spring on its way, I’ve shed the fleece for dog-walking already and will shortly be packing away the radiators and hauling out the standing fans instead … two years ago I had just seen the house for the first time and was in a wistful wouldn’t-it-be-nice-don’t-be-silly reverie. Life stores up some very odd surprises.

cool

 

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Officially amazing, haha – and legal #livinginSpain

I was thrilled to be featured in January as an Amazing Over Fifty on the LovingTheFiftySomething website – all too often when I’ve idly searched online for ‘over fifty‘ the links that come up show groups of impressively-preserved people demurely sipping tea and talking about how nice it is to be in the still waters following the white-water rapids of life. The women have abundant silvery hair in perfect chignons and the men are smiling to show their remarkable teeth and you’d be proud, honestly, to have them as grandparents but they didn’t seem people who would like or welcome scatty disorganized erratic types like me.  LovingTheFiftySomething features – well, not necessarily erratic types! – but those still riding the rapids and refusing to be relegated to the sidelines. YES.

yay

Anyway, in my scatty disorganized erratic way I’ve been taking lots and lots of advice on this whole living-in-Spain thing. It really doesn’t help that the 3 professionals I’ve spoken to had strong opinions on my only sensible route, but were touting 3 separate routes. Chris, who had sorted the car out, said firmly my best option was to become autonoma – self employed.  I would file an annual tax return, I would go instantly onto the Social so be covered by the Health service, and residency would be guaranteed trouble-free, and rubber-stamped by the local policia without a murmur.  However, he was away when it came time to do my end-of-year tax payment as a home-owner, and sent me to Ana, in a town about 40 miles away, who specializes in all things tax and legal generally. Ana was absolutely wonderful, drew up my tax document promptly and patiently answered lots of questions, but she felt autonoma was an expensive option for me. The problem was that I would have to pay all my taxes in Spain, on my international income, and while in the UK tax only applies after the first 12K, or thereabouts, in Spain the tax-free window is not only 6K, but once you cross that, you pay tax on the entire amount. Plus the Social, although for new registrations is only 50 euros a month, goes up steadily over 2 years until you are paying the whole 275 euros a month, and that’s a lot of money for someone like me who will never reap the long-term benefits of a Spanish pension –  you have to have been paying in for 15 years. Better, she said, to go for Residency. I would need to prove a stable monthly income sufficient to support me, and take out a comprehensive medical aid, and then – Bob’s your uncle.

Comprehensive medical aids are surprisingly expensive once you are no longer in the first flush of youth. At a party I asked some friends what they did, and who they used, and they recommended Nina, right here in Motril. Since I knew I had to pay tax on my rental income from the house by the end of January, I went to Nina instead of trekking the 40 miles back to Ana.  She said firmly that until we know exactly what is happening with Brexit (anyone else sick of that word?) I should remain a non-resident home-owner, pay my taxes (19%) on my rental income 4 times a year, and if Brexit brings in visa requirements which mean I have to leave the country 2 or 4 times a year, well, then we look at other options.  So I have paid my taxes and have bought a little time to think through my options.

A surprising number of ex-pats are still unregistered, some scrambling a bit nervously now to become official residents, others waiting to see what will happen.

cool

My Spanish vocabulario grows by the day – I am busy on a book with the working title Pidgin Spanish (based on a family called Pidgin who moved to Spain) which includes all the TEFL tricks of learning a second language, mini situational stories with handy dialogue, numbers for counting / telephones / the date / making appointments:  the Spanish alphabet for spelling out your name and address: the rudimentary basics for linguistically-challenged types (ie me) to get by.  I’m truly rubbish at languages – I spent 12 years in school in South Africa without ever mastering Afrikaans, which back then was the country’s second official language – but little by little the Spanish I need is being nailed into place. I can read documents, make myself understood with less wild mime, and every encounter navigated successfully is a joyful little oooh. It may never be published – how many others are there who simply can’t conjugate verbs efficiently, after all? – but it’s helping me no end.  Roll on 2019, I’m braced for impact.

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