We’re idiots, what are we? If you have helpful suggestions and hacks please add them in the comments because I’m in week 3 and it seems there are months to go before I can whirl my left arm like a windmill and in the meantime life has to go on. If you also live alone, you too may have struggled to find advice. We can combine what we’ve learned!
Sleeping – sitting up against a pile of pillows is definitely the easiest. We can – and I occasionally do – sleep lying on the sound side or on your back but the arm always hurts more when I sleep flat. Sleep comes in slabs of a couple of hours. Don’t fret it, and don’t take pills unless in real pain. Restack the pillows or change position and go back to sleep.
Getting dressed
Luckily I lost weight some time ago and hung on to some favourite blouses which are therefore suitably loose-fitting.
Button-up type – feed the sleeve onto your hand, rest your fingers on a window-ledge or counter at the comfortable height, and feed the blouse up your wincing arm. Getting the other arm in is just wriggling. It’s slow and a bit painful. Meh.
Quick dressing – sacrifice suitable pull-on shirts for super-quick dressing. Cut off the affected sleeve and the side hem to just below elbow level. The head and sound arm pull on as normal, the crock arm is fed through the seam, on with the sling and Bob’s your uncle. Your beautiful bruise is on view to impress all who see it (useful for hospital checkups) but the rest of you is decently covered. Well – I say decent – If you do have access to a second handy pair of hands, sew press studs into the side seam so you can be closed up. But your immobilised arm and sling will keep you basically covered up.
For online teaching I have to present a normal pair of shoulders to the webcam, so I unpicked the sleeve seam and side seam to just below elbow level of my red polo-collar teaching shirts. Sorted and I’ll be able to sew it up again when normal mobility has returned.
My sling is the strappy type that goes round the waist as well as up and over my shoulder. I never undo the waist, just step in and out. The end of the strap over my shoulder goes between my teeth until my arm is fed properly in the pre-shaped sling and I can then Velcro the strap to the right height.
A year or so back I bought a light knitted cape which I never wore very much but is turning out to be the most useful garment I possess now . . .
Elastic-waist slacks are our friends. Lean against the wall to put on knickers and pull on the slacks. Prevents overbalancing completely – after all, sudden hopping hurts, and falling over is probably not advisable.
Pets
If you have a dog which was formerly in a harness for walks, because it needs more control than a collar affords, your best option is a slip lead.
In the beginning leaning forward or bending down tugs at the shoulder quite painfully so I feed her on the stairs. A saucepan with long handle has become the new dog bowl.
If you have a cat litter tray – my cat is old, drinks vast amounts of water, and pisses like a horse. The soaked sand sets like cement and is a bugger to shift one handed. I moved his tray to a compromise height both he and I can reach (that’s really a benefit with old Spanish houses, lots of deep window ledges at various heights) and lined it with a sturdy heavy plastic shopping bag with the handles and corners protruding from the sand. It’s easy to tug at either handles or corners to shift the sand around and then scoop out the clumped bits. A long-handled soup ladle is proving ideal for fresh sand out of the sack to top up the tray.
My favourite purchase has been a long-handled dustpan which proved endlessly useful for picking stuff up off the floor while bending or crouching down was painful. I seemed to drop everything at a rate never known before, that’s not happening so much now but the dustpan is still my go-to little helper.
I’m no expert. Total newbie, in fact. There have been many dogs in my past and for a large chunk of that past they’ve been rescue dogs of the bullbreed type, mainly staffies. The last 8 years, for example, was spent with a bulldog / Frenchie cross with a will of iron who only went into rescue because her doting owners unexpectedly produced a baby and she refused pointblank to accept the interloper. To the end of her long life she wasn’t to be trusted near a crying baby. Difficult rescue dogs? Been there, done that. A podenco couldn’t be more different, and I hadn’t expected such a learning curve. So here’s what I’ve learned so far: some of it I looked up, some of it was passed on from others, and most of it from Purdey.
The Spanish have a reputation for cruelty to animals – it must immediately be said I’ve had Spanish guests here at the Casa with their dogs and even, in two cases, their cats, and they were devoted to their pets and couldn’t bear to be separated from them. The town has a conventional complement of much-loved house pets, often met out on walks. Like many generalisations it is not true of the majority. But – podencos (it literally means hound), a group of Mediterranean hare-hunting sighthounds, differing slightly by region (eg Ibiza, Andalusia, Canary Islands, etc) aren’t often as lucky. They are quite literally considered tools.
A working pod will often be kept in a dark shed, and is generally half-starved during hunting season to make it keener for the hunt. When the season ends, many are turned out to fend for themselves, and the persistent are driven miles away to be dumped, or worse. Pods have been dealt a fairly crappy hand in life and many people, both in Spain and out, are stepping up to adopt rescued ones. They make marvellous pets but they are not like other dogs. They are not, by the way, a breed as such, more an unmistakable type, with enormous ears, jaunty tails, and strong wiry frames. They come in three sizes, small, medium, and large, and can be rough or smooth coat.
Purdey is a almost classic Andalusian medium-sized rough coat pod but has no tail – I don’t know whether it was deliberately docked, amputated after a mishap, or is a birth abnormality. She is around 3 years old, was found living alone in a tumble-down house in the campo, and handed over to me a fortnight ago. She looks dainty and rangy by turns, is immensely strong for her size, and uses her wonderful ears like semaphore flags.
So far she has proved charming, gentle, and increasingly affectionate. I was concerned that I’d not be able to give her marathon walks and runs, and that the household, especially during this covid year, is excessively quiet – me and an elderly cat. After all, research says that they like children, love a bustling household with a lot going on, and many have taken to agility training and enjoy it very much. Turns out, though, they don’t need to be galloped twice a day, or worn out before they can sleep, but they do need regular walking. Great for me – that’s why I wanted a dog.
Loving and affectionate, yes. Lapdogs, not so much. Purdey likes to be near me, or where she can see me, but far from having to be chased off the bed or sofa, she won’t even sleep on a thickly padded dog bed and prefers a knobbly old dog rug with no padding whatsoever. She’s used to alone-time and doesn’t nag for constant attention, although when I do reappear she is flatteringly delighted. She would probably stand rockstill to the end of time if I would just keep brushing her – it is one of her passions in life. When it stops she sighs, does a nose-poke thank you, and heads to the knobbly old rug. Great for me – I don’t like dogs that demand constant entertainment and playing. She has no concept of play at all, and looks oddly at me when I bounce a ball, or squeak a toy. The one exception is the kong, which she considers an admirable way of serving dog pâté. We’re working on play.
As dogs they are hardy, robust, and fend remarkably well for themselves when turned out, as so many are, after hunting season. The downside is that they are skilled scavengers, and she ransacked the rubbish bin the first time I left her alone. She’ll also pinch the cat’s food and anything left out, even when she’s just had a meal, and gives me a guilty grin when I scold. That’s improving already, with regular food, but I don’t think she’ll ever completely lose the habit.
I’m warned I may never be able to let her off the lead on a walk because however devoted they are to owners, they are insatiably curious explorers. Be aware, also, that a podenco puts Houdini to shame when it comes to wriggling out of collars and harnesses. A collar will likely not be enough and a harness must be fitted snugly. Purdey’s was adjusted by another half inch on each side after she showed me just how good she is. That was an exciting half hour through the streets of Velez, with her trotting anywhere between ten to fifty yards ahead, sublimely unaware of my cold dread that she would pop out in front of a car as I panted in pursuit.
They are gently stubborn – once they have decided a course of action, it is hard to convince them otherwise. Purdey learned instantly, when I squawked, that peeing in the middle of the atrium was not going to be popular. Her home loo became the terrace, which is near the hosepipe and easily washed down. It has also become her only loo. She loves walks, she is fascinated by what other dogs have left on the street and in the rough grass, but no matter how long we stay out, she pops up to the terrace with a sigh of relief when we get back. After the first week with me she did start peeing occasionally when out, and seemed embarrassed by my lavish praise. I’d welcome any advice on getting her preferring outdoors to indoors.
They are sighthounds, those huge ears are like radar antenna, and they have hunter reflexes. Introductions to cats must be handled carefully. There was no problem introducing them, but my cat is furtive around dogs, and likes to make quick dashes from hiding, especially outside at night. With a bulldog, no problem, he was out of range before she had her legs sorted out. With a sighthound, a couple of heart-stopping dashes until Purdey finally accepted his resemblance to a rabbit was purely coincidental. Me shouting NO devastated her: telling her she was a Bad Dog, the second time, reduced her to quivering jelly. Sprinting after small animals is what she was bred to do. In this pic (I’m a rubbish photographer) the cat looks nearly her size but is merely nearer the camera. They’re not friends, not yet, but settling down together.
Pods may be hunters, but they are unexpectedly timid. I’m used to imposing my will on difficult stubborn dogs – hence the shout NO. Purdey is highly intelligent and desperate to please, and that’s characteristic of the type too. If danger beckons they will remove themselves and expect you to have the sense to do the same. Your pod will not be challenging visitors, or bringing up the rear barking defiantly while you get to safety. On the bright side, they won’t pick fights with other dogs, and will go out of their way to avoid confrontation. This is proving immensely restful after all those years of bull breeds.
She was so timid at first that I tried her in a thunderjacket – she didn’t object, but then she never does. It could help for high-stress outings like vet visits. I might need to change to a female vet as she is definitely afraid of men.
If you want a roly-poly bundle of lively fun which will chase after balls and bring them back, be delighted by toys, and protect you to its dying breath, a pod won’t suit. My friend has had his eight years and Purdey is newly moved in, but in these things they are the same – very traditional dogs, bred to work for their keep, self-effacing, independent, needing only food and exercise, gratefully returning kindness and a place in your home with affection and the desire to fit in. His dog barks at the approach of cars (but then that’s out in the campo, so it usually means a visitor) and both dogs literally dance with delight at moments of high excitement.
My phone takes awful photos which don’t do her justice. She’s utterly lovely.
I’ve kicked around the world a fair bit, one way and another, thought I knew what Christmas was about but it’s so different here in Spain. Take today – 28th – that’s the Day Of The Innocents, aka prank day. April Fool in December, if you like: a few years ago one of the national newspapers set the bar high with a headline that the King of Spain had married Madonna . . . on the whole the foreigners are left in peace, since we can’t be expected to know, but generally take every unexpected or unlikely comment with a pinch of salt, eh?
The Spanish take Christmas at a steady pace and they need to – it lasts nearly a month. Cava flows like water throughout and it all kicks off with celebrating the Immaculate Conception on December 8th, which is a feast day and when street lights and commercial decorations in shops generally switch on. I must have picked up some kind of subconscious trigger because I never decorate before the 16th (that being a public holiday in the country where I grew up, very handy) but was hauling out the dusty box of decorations in good time and finding new places for old favourites – fun!
Street decorations can be oddly avante garde, and not traditionally Christmas at all. The town sees to the main streets – side streets can do their own. This one was decorated by a local school, very effectively.
(BTW, No pooing man or poo stick traditions for Andalucia, that is Catalan.)
Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, is a family dinner, taken very seriously, with much solid food and luxurious side dishes. The devout go on to midnight Mass, the sociable take to the bars to meet friends while they digest the enormous meal.
Sometime overnight there will be a silent visitor: not usually Santa Claus. Depending where you are in the country he is known as Papa Noel, or Olentzero, or Tió de Nadal. He’s not lavish – the main gifts come with the Kings in January, so it is usually one gift apiece. This does of course mean no Boxing Day sales! Festive shopping continues briskly up to the day of the Kings.
On the 28th, today, it is the prank-filled el Día de los Santos Inocentes and when I got a nice booking for January I did wonder if it was a tease but nope, it has been paid. Yay!
On the 31st there’s another enormous traditional dinner (if life was fair, all Spanish would be waddling, food is taken very seriously here) and a handful of grapes for midnight – bring luck for the coming year by eating 12 grapes in the last 12 seconds of the year, which is slightly harder than it sounds and requires some giggling gobbling. Some prefer a more sedate grape for every stroke of midnight. It is considered lucky on this night to wear red underwear, so Papa Noel often brings that as a gift …
All this is merely the prelude, the build-up, for 12th night and the overnight arrival of the Tres Reyes Magos on what I always called Epiphany, the 6th of January. Ladders are propped against balconies and effigies of the kings are often added, scrambling up to deliver their gifts.
Every city and large town has a parade with at least one float on the 5th of January to welcome the Kings, who arrive by land, sea or air, throw sweets into the crowds, and are greeted with almost hysterical delight. I’ve linked in an internet pic from last year on my Facebook page –
Children have been writing to them explaining how very well behaved they have been all year, and what they would like as a reward. At bedtime, shoes are polished and set ready, one pair for everyone in the home so the Kings can see how many people there are needing gifts. On the 6th January, there’s an excited scramble to the shoes to check the booty – this is THE lavish gift day.
There is, almost inevitably, traditionally a last gigantic feast for lunch, followed by the roscon de la reyes, and then the decorations come down and school starts the next day.
I’ll probably do a patch-on blog with pics of the parade, I didn’t even know about it last year and missed it completely, so I am as fidgety as a child for this one!
The rain in Spain falls mainly – so far as I can gather – at the top end of the town. It then roars down towards the older part of the town as a raging torrent, foams its way along the narrow streets and hits the t-junction at the bottom of my road at a speed of about sixty kilometres an hour. There’s some serious turmoil as many thousands of litres of water try to battle it out at the t-junction. Spanish plumbing, especially in very old bits of old towns, consists of grids in the street that scoop water into the storm drains. Most houses have patios and terraces open to the elements, and they have grids too, and underground drains which are linked directly to the stormwater drains.
The other day we had a heavy storm rumbling in from the east and a thunderstorm charging in from the west and they met pretty much overhead. It was bucketing down, soak-you-to-the-skin-in-seconds rain with crashing thunder and crackling lightning and I was really rather enjoying it when suddenly, and without any warning, every drain in the house gurgled and erupted.
My downstairs bath and loo became brief fountains, the drains in the atrium and terrace burped up deliciously muddy storm water, and although I was lucky enough to have enough towels to jam into doorways to stop my downstairs apartment being flooded, other neighbours were complaining bitterly afterwards of being ankle-deep throughout their downstairs areas. I watched glumly from my towel barricade as my heavy-duty doormat floated sluggishly away and the smaller pot-plants in the atrium started shifting restlessly and still it rained. Poured.
Finally, after nearly two hours, the heavens closed again and the drains reversed themselves and started behaving normally, sucking away the flood from everywhere and leaving an attractive thin film of mud in its wake.
The Ayuntamiento (Council) had, so far as we could see, several options. Do nothing, and get lynched by several very angry householders. Put a big grid in the road at the intersection above us, and divert future floods along side streets where the water couldn’t pick up such speed. Fit every affected house with non-return valves. Or – their choice – dig up the entire road. No idea why, but it has been noisy.
By purest luck I didn’t have guests at the time -although nearly every guest I’ve had so far has been absolutely fab, it would take a saint to take that in their stride.
I do have guests at the moment but they’ve been wonderful about the roadworks, which started on their third day. They are a pair of Estonian blondes and the workmen stop work reverently the minute they step out of the house to go anywhere, and watch them wistfully out of sight.
Before them, and before the flood, I had an older Polish man and woman, friends who had taken the entire G suite, i.e. both bedrooms and the shared living room. The woman was very dramatic, and had a bracing personality. She said on her second day that the suite was lovely but I really shouldn’t advertise that it included a kitchen.
Um, I don’t. I’m in fact pretty clear on that.
She recovered quickly and said sternly ‘you don’t say it doesn’t have a kitchen.’ Guilty as charged but in my defence, there are over 30 photos on the listing, the ones of the living room do show quite clearly the fridge, kettle, table, no kitchen sink or oven … anyway her main beef was the lack of a sink, and as I had a cancellation after them, and therefore an empty week, it now does have a sink.
What else – oh yes, Nineteen Twenty My Plate Is Empty is now up and running. Right now it is on a pre-publication price as it only officially hits your Kindle on October 6th. Click on the name here, or the pic in the sidebar and you shall be whisked to the Amazon nearest to you. I am not making much fuss about it today but will be issuing a flurry of tweets tomorrow because I am hoping to get a tiny surge of purchases around 6 pm GMT – well, we’ll see. It is, goes without saying, an absolutely brilliant book and fiendishly difficult to solve, even though I have checked and double-checked that every clue is in place and in plain sight. It is also the last in this particular series and I shall miss my Lawns friends very much, I think.
Payhip for writers wanting to sell books is pretty simple. I want to load my books on this website (under the Shop tab) (haven’t done it yet, gies a break) so I could keep all that lovely filthy lucre to myself (apart from the chunk Paypal takes) but also to eventually have all sorts of other interesting options.
Payhip is linked to Paypal for sales of anything that can be downloaded. It records sales, keeps track of tax, and other useful things, and there are dozens of blogs and vlogs and experts out there to tell you in tortuous detail why you should use it and how to use it. The only thing you really need to remember is that your Paypal account shows your writing or publishing name, not your non-writer name. Link a business option to your existing account, if necessary, because you do want your writer name to show on the purchase.
That sorted, go into Payhip, and link your account to the writer version of your Paypal account. Follow screen directions. I have all my books in mobi format. Some enthusiasts are very thorough and load the books in mobi, epub, pdf, and who knows what all else. Many formats are accepted.
Load your first book and then you should probably buy it to check all is well. You’ll pay for it on your private Paypal, not the one you just linked to Payhip.
If all goes well, there will be a positive flurry of emails on your respectively linked email accounts congratulating you on both buying and selling a book. You can download the book from Payhip itself, or from the email confirming your purchase.
Payhip for readers who bought a book and want to read it on a Kindle. This is the entire reason for this blog, because I refuse to believe I am the only person left in the world who uses a desktop computer rather than a neat little device small enough to be tucked into an evening handbag. Unless you want to read on your computer, rather than tucked up comfortably somewhere in the best place to read a good book, you need to get it to your Kindle. Do you know your Kindle address? It is listed on the Kindle, under Settings, and will usually be your name @kindle.com.
Create a new email to send to your Kindle, go find your Payhip download (in Downloads) and attach it. Send. The book will download into your Kindle.
Dutch P couldn’t really be more unlike Danish J. Wiry, quick-moving, mid-fifties and fit as a butcher’s dog, he drove here from The Hague with one overnight stop in Bordeaux (2200 km), stacked all his wind-surfing kit in the hall (that’s a lot of kit, by the way) and we had a midnight beer on the terrace while he brought me up to speed.
His wife, although not Spanish, is from a Spanish-speaking country and has been pining for some of the sun Spanish-speaking countries have in such generous quantities. She has a sister in Motril – and a job, an ideal job, came up in Malaga. Only problem – could he start Monday? Of course he could. He’s obviously a very can-do sort of man. It was the work of a moment for him to book in the Cameron for 4 days, drive a couple of thousand kilometres, and start apartment-hunting.
He was on the terrace with coffee and his first cigar of the day at 7.30 on Thursday morning and gone by 9, to return at midnight for another beer and update on the terrace. Success! Sister-in-law had set up 4 places to view, he’d signed the lease on the 3rd, been given the keys, and could now relax and have a holiday.
Friday morning found him in shorts on the terrace after a long lie-in (8.30) and then he was gone again, back to Motril. The new place has a pool in the apartment block and temperatures here now are over 30 degrees, so on Saturday, a day early, he repacked the car, hugged me goodbye like an old friend, and was gone.
I don’t know how much of his early departure was to do with the pool and wanting to get settled in the furnished apartment, or with the fact there was briefly no hot water on Saturday morning – eep.
I was, oh so luckily, up earlier than usual, and when I tried to shower there was no fwoop from the gas cylinder outside. CRAP. I have several gas cylinders and it was the work of but a moment to switch cylinders – even as the cap clicked into place, water started through the anti-scale filter and the heater said fwoop. Fortuitous timing, or had P been trying for a while? When I asked over coffee later, he insisted there had been no problem.
The replacement cylinder was from my winter heater and I had no idea how much gas it still had, so there was a hasty dash down the road to the garage to get a full one.
By the way, and I mention this only in passing, the new guy at the garage looks like Jeff Goldblum. I mean exactly like Jeff Goldblum, around his Jurassic Park period. Doesn’t speak a word of English. I really must start those Spanish lessons.
Back home, heaved the new cylinder out of the car and inside the front door, then drove off to find parking – when I returned, two minutes later, the cylinder was gone. P had spotted it, carried it through and then helpfully switched the cylinders for me, you have to admit that’s a handy guest to have! He was even dressed to match the house, in vivid green, and laughingly posed for a photograph before we packed the windsurfing kit into his Alfa-Romeo and he shot on his way.
The neighbours are definitely intrigued by the variety of men through my door. My next guest is not only a woman but an old friend and entirely in keeping with the casa’s ambience, so the penny should drop soon but I’m enjoying my shady reputation while I can.
1st of July and although at one stage it looked like we’d never get here, the Casa Excentrico is in business, the G suite is up and running, and there be guests!
Oliver, the front room overlooking the street, has J, a Danish writer / translator, who has been in for a week and is booked for four. We occasionally put the world to rights over summer wine (tinto de verano) on the terrace, since between us we cover most demographics (he’s male, mid-thirties, and being Danish, EEA rather than EU). Now to get the governments of the world to listen to our brilliant solutions, eh?
He’s keen on politics, but his passion is football, and the World Cup is on at the moment. He has become the house’s roving reporter, advising which pavement cafes have TV and, importantly, their allegiances (Barcelona or Real Madrid), as that affects which international game they will be showing. Of course every Spanish game is shown at them all, and then the place to be is the Futball Café.
As it happened I was there with local friends W and E on the night of the kick-off between Spain and Portugal. We’d gone because TripAdvisor gives the place great reviews for its tapas and its fish dishes, just the 3 of us as our mutual friend Nick doesn’t care for fish and doesn’t live in Velez anyway. As they aren’t footie types either, we were a little puzzled when TV screens started appearing on the plaza next to the café, and stacks of chairs were carried out, followed by scores of tables. The gathering buzz, as the extra tables were briskly set up, and equally briskly claimed, was palpable. We ordered a third round of drinks, received a third included-in-the-price plate of tapas (the first had been mushrooms in a delectable dressing, the other two fish-based) and can report that the quality, despite the excitement, held up nicely. It’s sunny on the plaza until about 9 p.m., it was a good game, and the atmosphere was absolutely brilliant.
Back to guest #1, J, he’s definitely one of the most laidback guests any host could ever want. He doesn’t mind being woken by the dawn chorus as every bird choir in Spain gathers outside the window to sing the sun into the sky: he goes straight back to sleep and doesn’t even hear the bread van when it stops at the door and hoots around ten a.m. He’s usually first spotted around noon, coffee in hand, as he heads up to the sun patio. If he hadn’t seen me the evening before to give me the football results, he will stick his head in the study window to update me gravely on the state of play. The guest living-room fridge is crammed with interesting food-stuffs and summer wine and he says he’s loving the place, and finding it beautifully cool after Granada, where he was staying before.
Note to self – avoid Granada for the summer, since the temps here are nudging 32 degrees most days. ‘Beautifully cool’ is the very last description I would have used.
Cameron, the room overlooking the atrium, has had its first guest too, and is gearing up for the next on Wednesday. I’m not sure I’d be doing blogs for every guest, just the more excentrico ones, but P does qualify and his blog follows shortly.
Okay sure that’s one meaning and covers a lot of behaviour. Irrational anger, yup, lost the plot. Dithered helplessly instead of following a clear course of action – also lost the plot.
There is the literal meaning. Your plot of land, your home. Losing that, losing everything.
There’s a third meaning for writers, a little more up close and personal, when the characters hang around listlessly and shrug at words thrown hopefully at them instead of charging off joyfully in new directions with the writer scrambling to keep up.
I gave up trying to direct my characters around book four and just followed their lead, admittedly sometimes with my eyes popping. Now, poke or suggest or wheedle as I may, the final plot simply won’t string together. The quartet know they’re on their last book, about to be made redundant, and you could cut the atmosphere with a blunt axe. Damn it. The series has picked up a small but loyal following waiting with interest to see how the quartet disentangle themselves and work out who done it for the tenth and last time, me as much as anyone, and I’ve given them the plot and will they come to life and play with it? They will not. Not so much lost, in this particular case, as being stonily ignored. I’d give up and try to think up another but I like this one and I surely have some say?
I know, that was whiny.
Funny how one informal phrase can resonate on so many different levels. Well, funny isn’t the motjuste, really. Not laugh out loud funny. Not even funny peculiar. But now I’ve picked the phrase to pieces it no longer even makes sense. I’ve lost the plot.
Oh, dinnae fash you won’t get a daily log but this was the first real test – the animals chose to stay in the emptied house as they still had their beds, good, I could fumble around without tripping over them.
Making the bed was ridiculously challenging but my handmade blackout curtains came up trumps – not things of beauty, but definitely a joy forever, complete blackout when I switched off, yay! Of course the more my eyes adjusted the more light there was creeping past the curtain edges – even the door had a rim of light – but after packing until 4 in the morning to be ready for the movers nothing was going to keep me awake for long.
I woke at 1, went back to sleep, woke at 3.30 and thought oh crap I’ll never get back to sle…zzzzzzzzz and then at 6.30 needing the loo urgently so I’ve bolted back indoors because using the camper’s portapotty is awful. You have to sidle in sideways, go on tiptoe to perch, and I am going to have to work on some kind of sturdy box (which will of course be another storage spot, so not a Bad Thing) for the long term because peeing almost straight-legged feels extremely odd.
So, learnings, find the knack of making the bed easily because a double bed enclosed on 3 sides is a bit of a bugger. Find a step for the loo. And although I had calculated the big steps would wedge in the gap at the side door, between the foot of the bed and the shelves, Muggins here then mounted the fire extinguisher there so they don’t.
I bought the stairs for the dog – getting in and out of the van when you are an ageing and portly bulldog is challenging – but they haven’t really worked out. I thought they’d be brilliant and while we were on the road I could put her bed at the foot of mine so she could nip up onto the bed to sleep, down for her water or to use the patch of fake grass (on rubber matting) just inside the back door if in dire need. Not so much – not only because they won’t fit until I move the fire extinguisher, but because she’s convinced there are trolls lurking under them and hates them.
So that was the first night. I did think at 3.30 am that it was awful and I hated it and we’d never cope for any period of time but I’m slightly more cheerful this morning, apart from trying to make that dratted bed.
Of course re-reading this I’m thinking the obvious thing to do, and what the original guy probably had, is a single sturdy step to get in, which he would otherwise have kept in the loo to boost the user up to normal height for the throne. Or, being a bloke, just stood anyway, the male sex is definitely better designed for camping.
Today I have to transport about twenty bags of debris to the recycling plant, then do the final pack into the van. Learn how to disconnect the gas cylinder and replace it for a full one, hopefully slightly bigger. Clean the house, drop the keys off with the new owner, and head towards the sun …
Okay, via the Borders, where I’m stopping overnight at my niece’s, since my sister is over on holiday. Then via Berkshire because my daughter has a birthday to get through. Then off towards the sun. With any luck at some point the dog will either accept there are no trolls under the giant steps, or I will be able to exchange them for a nice neat little step (with storage facility would be ACE), and harmony will reign.
Just call me Ms Demographic, Demi for short. I’m a babyboomer, for starters. Born between 1946 and 1964, and a little fed up that my retirement age moved from nicely handy to six years further down the line.
I’m a writer of breezy novellas who, thanks to the ebook and POD revolution, could publish myself. That’s a bigger demographic than you might realize. Last time I checked there were over 13 million books out there, and I checked Amazon.com right now, as I’m typing this – in my main category, Mystery Thriller and Suspense, there were 6829 new releases in the last 30 days. (One of them is mine, 17 18, woohoo). There are over half a million in that category alone. I do get pretty excited about occasionally popping into the top twenty thousand writers, but the reality is that only authors consistently in the top thousand enjoy the dizzying excitement of being able to support themselves with their writing. Still. My books pay for my holidays, and I do take a lot of those.
I’m a mature single – that’s an absolutely huge demographic – and have been on a singles website for a few years now. Research, of course, but I take my research seriously, been there, done that, got my heart broken (okay, dented) and wrote the book(s). (Being the mature single is the demographic, writing On Meeting Mr Will Do Nicely and a couple of novels was a bit more niche.)
I was made redundant recently, that’s a growing demographic, and for the second time. With all those extra years to fill in before I can start living off the fat of the land with a (partial) British pension, I’m part of that other demographic, the one that thinks oi, life the way it is hasn’t really ticked all my boxes or rung all my bells, is it time to try something else?
There’s the demographic of the many, many Brits who bolt to the sun to try that something else in a warmer climate. A staggering percentage of them chose Spain. Never one to buck a trend, I found a dilapidated (i.e. affordable) townhouse in a fairly perfect white village, and decided that was it, future sorted. Sell the house in Scotland, buy the house in Spain, which is way big enough to run a couple of Airbnb options (another growing demographic) and Bob’s your uncle.
Okay, working in Spain would be challenging, since my Spanish so far consists of knowing how to order coffee, and increasingly talented in the areas of point-and-or-mime, and that’s after seven holidays in rapid succession in Spanish-speaking territories. All I can reasonably ask of the house is that it will earn enough to pay for its own maintenance and upkeep.
No problem. Teach the Spanish to speak English. So I did a TEFL course and am currently busily gaining vital experience as a teacher through an international online agency. That’s a smaller demographic, I’ll grant you that, but it too is growing.
Demographically, I am in so many Venn diagrams that Windmills Of Your Mind is becoming my theme song. I’m a human fidget spinner.
Surely I can turn this wealth of overlapping demographics into cash terms somehow? Brexit and the dratted General Election are playing merry havoc with the pound / euro exchange rate, and I do need that rate strong to do the house-and-fix-up thing. Scotland’s will-we, won’t-we rumblings about independence has slowed the house-sales market to a crawl. Tchah!
Ideas on cashing in on my demographic potential ? Anyone? Ta.
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Quite Contrary 