The problem with living in a rat infested hovel is that it is difficult to sleep at night and with the amount of physical work that I needed to do to get building materials down a near vertical slope to build a house meant that I [...]]]> Diary of a Downshifter – Part 15   Downshifting to Spain

The problem with living in a rat infested hovel is that it is difficult to sleep at night and with the amount of physical work that I needed to do to get building materials down a near vertical slope to build a house meant that I needed all of the sleep I could get.  Leaving wife and soon to be new daughter in Los Romanes, I travelled down each Monday to Castellar and set about the task of getting the building materials down the slope. With the help of a supermarket trolley on a steel cable I and a band of hippies who agreed to help in exchange for pay and beer we commenced what turned out to be one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever undertaken. The delivery lorry would drop the sand or cement bags or bricks etc next to the track. Then we would move this to a spot near the trolley and then load up the trolley. It could take 3 bags of cement or 6 breeze blocks or 15 roof tiles. The first three bags of cement which comprised our very first load rocketed off down the hill, hit a rock at the bottom near the house, exploded and shot over the cliff to the valley far below. Spectacular but expensive and we had to retrieve the very bent up trolley. Pulling the trolley back up the cliff was a killer in itself. Gradually we got the hang of it and over the next 3 months of blood, sweat and tears we moved an entire house down the cliff, brick by brick and tile by tile. Sand was the most difficult item and also the heaviest and there was never enough. My friend from Los Romanes, Jaques masterminded the building and within a couple of months a house emerged from the ruin. The views were spectacular and the place was fit for wife and daughter – and all the furniture, boxes and other heavy belongings that we had to manoevre down the cliff. The bees were very happy at their new location producing some of the best honey and honeydew that I have tasted. An old item of furniture left over from the recent hippy occupation of the place provided firewood for our first open fire and the presence of cannabis hidden in the knot holes of the wood provided us with our first and only trip leaving  me dreaming of small and vicious teddy bears. Heaven only knows what it did to our two month old daughter but we survived and the rest of the wood was thrown out, only to attract a group of the local hippies who diligently searched it for more knot holes. After this, a stiff drink in Mara’s bar in the castle was definitely called for and as this bar was the only cannabis free environment in the area it was doubly welcome. The castle boasted a village within the walls with narrow streets, scented bouganvillia, jasmine and dama de noche climbing the walls and trellises and flamenco music from Diego’s bar (which sold my honey) adding to the wonderful atmosphere a place which time forgot. There was even a tea room in one of the tiny little bars. Many of the hippies (who lived mainly outside the castle walls) were delightful people and it is easy to remember people like Jeff who was I believe the best guitarist I’ve ever met – his rendition of Pink Floyd and other artists was supreme, or Samantha who could make some of the best jewelry items around. Unfortunately it was a culture based on drugs, hard and soft for the most part and many of the hippies ended up caught by the police and ending up inside or wasting their huge talents on doing absolutely nothing – or even dying.

It was in the castle that I came second in an international cookery competition with my special curry. (International because the hippies came from all over the place). The first place had to be won by a female Spaniard which was entirely acceptable and so my second place was all the more pleasing and Annabel has laughed about it ever since. Even more pleasing was that because I packaged my honey in small hexagonal pots and put these in little wooden crates stamped with the words ‘Miel de Andalucia’ and placed a picture of the castle on the label and so on, my honey became the accepted honey of the area and earned me more pesetas (at the time) for less actual honey.  It was good business and everyone was happy.

When friends came out from the UK to see us we put them up in the Posada in the castle, a magnificent old place owned by Jenny Hoad (wife of Lew Hoad the Australian Wimbledon champion). The place was run by Dotty, an Englishwoman in her 60s who had previously wanted to run a high class brothel in the area and had even secured a bank loan for the purpose, but eventually this didn’t work out and so she ran the posada. Her foodwas excellent and her hospitality generous and she was loved by all. Unfortunately she eventually had to flee over some petty regulation or other and was a sad loss to the castle. Fortunately the authorities had warned her of her impending doom before actually doing anything so that she had time to flee the coup. The castle was populated by a wealth of such characters often living on the edge of things and even Philipe Gonzalez the bonzai loving, first post Franco prime minister had a house there and could often be seen cooking an evening meal. All in all, definitely the perfect background for a good book.

After 18 happy months in Finca Granadero we decide to move on. There was no rational explanation for this other than the fact that we had got itchy feet and I wanted to live nearer Gibraltar and in better bee country. We looked for many properties [...]]]> Diary of a Downshifter – Part 14 Downshifting to Spain

After 18 happy months in Finca Granadero we decide to move on. There was no rational explanation for this other than the fact that we had got itchy feet and I wanted to live nearer Gibraltar and in better bee country. We looked for many properties in an area stretching from Rhonda down to Gib and finally found a small hut situated down a steep, near vertical slope. The views were amazing. From the sitting room we could see Gibraltar and over the Straits we could see the African shore dominated by the other pillar of Hercules, Jebel Musa or Musa’s mountain. (Gibraltar is a corruption of Jebel Tarik or Tarik’s Mountain. Musa and Tarik were the Muslim generals that first invaded Spain under the Caliph and brought Islam to Spain for over 700 years).  Below us was a huge valley populated with cork oak trees and cattle through which ran the Victorian rail line put in by the British in the 1800s from Algeciras to Rhonda, and to our left we could view the Rhonda mountains dotted with small white villages all with Arabic names. At night, these same villages looked like small jewels sparkling in the dark mountains.  To our extreme right we saw the brooding presence of Castellar itself, a Moorish castle which housed the main part of the village and which also housed an exceptional bar.

However, we first had to sell Finca Granadero and arrange to stay in it until the birth of our daughter. We used the original etate agent but also went about this by placing an ad in a German newspaper to see if there was any foreign interest. Knowing no German we asked a neighbour to write the ad for us stating that we wanted the Deutchmark equivalent of 6 million pesetas (we had bought the house for 4 million). Due to a mix up in numbers the ad put it at 8 million and that’s what we got. A very nice couple came to see it and fell in love with it immediately. They did not intend to live in it permanently or immediately and so we were able to stay in it until March 1995 when our duaghter was two weeks old.

In the meamntime I had gone down to our proposed new place to assess it for alteration and to get some ideas from a French friend of mine (a builder) and an English friend about altering the new hovel to make it fit for a family to live in. After a very successful day out we returned to find that our houses had been evacuated due to the approach forest and scrub fires. When my wife and others had phoned the fire brigade, they were unable to respond quickly due to most of them being in bars watching on televisions Spain playing in a world cup match. Eventually they turned up however and the house and surrounds was saved.

We had been in Spain for 18 months and for some reason we had itchy feet. The small house called Finca Granadero that we had bought was now a beautiful Andalucin cottage with beams and nooks and crannies that the previous owner had blocked up and [...]]]> Diary of a Downshifter – Part 13 Downshifting to Spain

We had been in Spain for 18 months and for some reason we had itchy feet. The small house called Finca Granadero that we had bought was now a beautiful Andalucin cottage with beams and nooks and crannies that the previous owner had blocked up and that we had opened up and revealed. The plumbing was good and worked (by this stage I was a master plumber) and even the electricity worked as well as could be expected. We installed a brilliant little wood burning stove and built a chimney, which kept us warm and generally we were becoming comfortable.  The authorities offered each house a radio phone and we quickly took advantage of this and so were finally contactable. This communications ‘improvement’ in our lives actually turned out to be one of those brilliant, modern ideas that can end up destroying the closely knit fabric of communities. Now we had our own phone we didn’t have to go to the ‘telephone man’s house anymore. Going there was like going to a form of social club. We met others waiting to make their calls and chatted and got to know them, and we caught a glimpse of real Spanish life as we became part of the telephone man’s family life. We were there for their meals, their rest periods, their arguments, their television (which was always on) and they would tell us of their triumphs and disasters. Because there was no instant communication we learned to wait; we learned patience and we learned about the rest of our community. They were all interested in us of late because Annabel had become pregnant and this news caused quite a stir. 

The bees were now established in two apiaries and having got over the problems of varroa – which was in Spain but not in the UK at that time and so caught me by surprise – we were able to plan our next business moves. We survived the swarming season – just. The first swarm hung up in a tree just below the house and I went up a ladder with my box to collect it. I banged the branch with my hand and the bees dropped into the box. Holding the branch with my right hand and the box in my left, I was about to descend when the ladder fell away and I was left hanging. I called Annabel who arrived centuries too late and by this stage I had hit the ground nd was covered in bees. Even swarm bees get angry if you mess around with them enough and these got angry. As usual I hadn’t put any protective clothing on so the pair of us fled. A small gang of them got up my trouser leg and were moving rapidly upwards In this circumstance it is important to stop them at the knee, and as I hopped around holding my trouser leg Annabel rushed inside the house and locked the door citing unborn child and so on. I’m still not sure how I survived.

But as I said, we were getting itchy feet (all our lives we had moved every year or so due to military backgrounds and in my case a military childhood as well) and so we decided to move and we began looking around at suitable sites and locations that would be good for us and good for the bees. Little did we know that we would end up in the centre of a bunch of hippies in a hovel half way down a cliff with no water, no electricity and no approach to the ‘dwelling’ other than scrambling across a near vertical rock face with foot holds carved into it – with a two month old baby!  But more of that later.

My next move in the Sharam electricity saga was a visit to the company offices in Velez Malaga accompanied by grovelling explanations about misunderstandings, absences of mind, invalidism; genuine error of judgement and so on but all seemed to be of no avail. The electricity was [...]]]> Diary of a Downshifter – Part 12 Downshifting to Spain

My next move in the Sharam electricity saga was a visit to the company offices in Velez Malaga accompanied by grovelling explanations about misunderstandings, absences of mind, invalidism; genuine error of judgement and so on but all seemed to be of no avail. The electricity was to be cut off in two days and legal proceedings commenced. There appeared to be only one solution and that was to go nuclear. The next day, Sharam drove me down to Velez and after having generally scared me to death, parked on the yellow lines outside the glass windowed offices of the electricity company. He then emerged from the car, sticks akimbo and hobbled painfully into the office where he fell flat on his face. I hadn’t actually asked him to do that but it was very effective. Numerous staff members rushed over to help him to a chair and untangle his sticks and limbs. He grinned at me as he was solicitously sat down in a comfy chair and immediately we were at the head of the queue. I explained to a harassed supervisor that here was the criminal himself and that he was expecting the electricity to go off the next day and that if he fell over in the dark and broke his head open or disappeared down the gorge, he deserved it for being bad, but that it wouldn’t stop him suing the electric company for their inhuman practices in depriving a handicapped man of the essentials of life. Sharam nodded his head in agreement as I spoke. The Spanish are very particular about this sort of thing and would go a million miles out of their way to avoid impeding someone who is disabled and within minutes the by now horrified supervisor had organised for a new electric meter to be installed at the house, a new reading to be taken in two weeks time, the line paperwork to be regularised, apologised for any inconvenience and giving me a knowing smile said “obviously a paperwork error seňor. You can take the gentleman home now.” No mention of legal proceedings, fraud or nameless other charges. Sharam and I hurried out swiftly in case anyone changed their minds and just to be on the safe side, I drove home.

Sharam’s new home needed to be remote because of his continuing requirements for daily challenge and I knew that the small place down the track from us belonging to an English couple from Birmingham might well do the trick. They only frequented the place a once [...]]]> Diary of a Downshifter – Part 11 Downshifting to Spain

Sharam’s new home needed to be remote because of his continuing requirements for daily challenge and I knew that the small place down the track from us belonging to an English couple from Birmingham might well do the trick. They only frequented the place a once or twice a year and upon enquiry were delighted to have someone look after it in the meantime. It had electricity and more or less mains water and was perched on the side of a steep gorge. Having secured permission for Sharam’s move we negotiated a reasonable rent with a consideration for me, and Sharam happily moved in. Unfortunately, this coincided with one of those rare periods in Spanish country life when ‘the system’ decided to start being efficient and just after Sharam’s move, along came the authorities in the form of an electric meter reader, who noticed that the shack had no meter but it did have electricity because with Sharam in it, it had a light on. Rules and regulations in the countryside of Spain were often sidestepped and few people took much notice of them but every now and again failure to obey the rules did have consequences and the consequence of this particular sidestepping was the arrival of an electricity company inspector on my doorstep. He had with him proof that electricity was being siphoned off from a mains line and not being paid for and that as I was responsible for the building, I was responsible for the theft and fraud as well as Sharam and the owner of the property. He informed me that the electricity would be turned off in two days and that the owner, me and Sharam would all be prosecuted for fraud and other nameless charges which he would think about in the meantime. The fact that just about every other house in the area was doing the same and had been doing so ever since electricity reached the area was evidently of no importance. This was out first tricky time with the authorities since we arrived in Spain and it was case of learning fast how to deal with the bureaucracy. I immediately went up the track to the telephone man’s house where the local public phone was situated in the family sitting room and over the blast of the TV, I contacted the house owner. “Oh yes, David, we did fix up some electricity a few years back. Took it off the mains. Why, has the line broken?”  I explained the situation. “Oh well,” he exclaimed cheerfully, “I’m absolutely certain that a man of your calibre can sort it out. Keep in touch though; let us know what happens. Annabel can phone if you’re in prison.” When I had put the phone down, the telephone man’s daughter turned the TV down so that we could negotiate payment for the call and after paying and exchanging the usual niceties with the assembled family, I hurried off home.