Strange times. Watch the skies.  Everything disrupted… Everyone pulling together, media dominated by it, everyone knows someone affected, and can talk of nothing else… sound familiar?

As international incidents go, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption and resulting ash cloud grounding flights across Europe, is actually quite a nice one.  Yes, I know its has cost recovering economies millions, clobbered already-struggling airlines that we all depend on, and had a hundreds of thousands of chaotic personal impacts around the world. However, let’s just remember, no one has died - at worst people have experienced extra travel costs and lost work time (when will everyone learn to work as flexibly as we do at www.sarosresearch.com?) 

People are united against common cause in the face of disaster, but this time there is no-one to hate or fear.  And no one to blame or sue.  This is the earth reminding us what it is capable of, all on its own.  Our latest aviation technology is just no match for a bit of dust in the upper atmosphere, so people are having to stay put, or find other ways to get from A to B.  Someone remarked on the radio last night that they had been vividly reminded of the sheer physical distance between their home in the UK and their holiday villa in Tuscany, that they flit to and from without a thought most of the time.  I believe it does us good to be reminded of this… of course the world is smaller today and that is a good thing, but now and again it needs to let us know that its curvature and bulk is still a present reality.

Of course we’ll be devastated if my Mum’s visit can’t go ahead next week as planned.  Our landlady is stranded here with grandkids due back at school, no internet access in her holiday villa, prescriptions running out - lots of complications.  Cassie’s LAMDA examiner hasn’t made it to school, and her karate grading may well be postponed as Sensei unlikely to be back from the UK, but all of these things are surmountable in time.  Frozen food rotting undelivered might just make people more aware of their dependence on air-freighted groceries, and certainly no one in the UK is going to hungry as a result.

Despite the election fever there seems, from this distant vantage point anyway, to have been relatively little political capital being made - I am sure the Daily Wail will blame the government for everything somehow, but amongst normal people the mood seems to be more one of collaboration and co-operation.  Twitter trends such as #getmehome and #ashtag are helping co-ordinate lifts across Europe, as is http://www.facebook.com/carpooleurope - of course there is some inevitable profiteering, and as much suspicion of, but is it too naive to think that there might be some long term learning from this… that you can preserve and not waste food, that cars travel as well full as empty, and that best laid plans can ALWAYS be challenged by things we’d never predict in a million years.

At last, the sun has come out on the Costa, just in time for Easter.  I’d guess that for the kids Easter break this year, we are enjoying similar weather to that we had February half term 2009.  We keep saying how lovely it is to see the sunshine, and it really truly is, but there’s still a chilly breeze to go with it.  Anyway the sun, along with the light evenings, are a joy.

It’s perfect weather for walking.  And here’s another area in which a year makes a huge difference - last year, before she was 4, Lara’s idea of a long walk was all the way down the beach to fill her watering can and bucket.  We felt we were actually taking quite a risk moving without the bulky pushchair, and her favourite word was ‘carry!’  (accompanied by outstretched arms, firmly planted feet, and a yearning expression.

Now however, she’s a true little hiker, and even slightly amenable to safety instructions and commonsense -  this opens up so many more possibilities for days out.  We had a fantastic walk to the Fort at Bernia, must have been at least 8km round trip (slightly longer for me doubling back for a dropped cardigan but she can’t be responsible about everything), both the girls took the whole thing in their stride without a hitch.  Well, apart from Lara’s close encounter with the track, face down, on the home strait (I did say slightly amenable to guidance and I obviously hadn’t repeated the ‘don’t run!!’ injunction quite frequently enough, as it turned out).  Thank goodness it was only a few hundred yards from the carpark as she needed piggybacking from that point on, but was still a brave little hiker - she’s just now a brave little hiker with a rather scabby nose and elbows.

Walking for pleasure is such a wonderful thing in this region, I am so glad we can now do more as a family, particularly as our one car status makes planning separate walks such a challenge.  Plenty more planned soon!

No, I am not talking about the wealth of incongruous paddywackery around the 17th, as in, bejaysus there’s a scarcely-needed excuse to go and drink a load of Guinness - though it’s very weird round here the market for everything from Burns night to St Georges.  Why can’t we be a bit more Spanish and just party cos we want to?

I was actually referring though to the weird yellowy-green dust that has fallen all over Javea from the pine trees, the thick pine pollen that is coating everything this week.  It’s really weird sticky stuff, very opaque, and the bit of rain we’ve had lately has mainly succeeded in glueing it together in clumps rather than successfully washing it away.  The pool has a layer of yellowy scum on it that will doubtless challenge the filters big time, and our car is a completely different colour (and an irresistable finger painting graffitti canvas for the kids).  Where it pools at the side of the road it has a strange unnatural chemically look to it, because its very pigment-dense and chalky, like someone spilled a load of ‘apple white with a hint of primrose’ by Dulux, all over the gutter.  Perfectly natural though apparently.

Luckily none of us suffer from much of an allergy to it - although everyone’s got itchy eyes lately.  Severe asthmatics and hay-fever sufferers with a reaction to this specific pollen are in big trouble.  Within a couple of weeks it will all be gone - but there are a few people round here actively wishing for more serious rain now to wash it all away… and with the amount of the wet stuff we have had to put up with over the past few months, we must be pretty desperate to consider wanting more of it!

We’re on the move again this week.  Seem to have done this far too often in recent years, and you think we’d have learned a lot from this.  Well, I hope we have.  Here’s some stuff we have picked up, generally the hard way…

•  If people offer to help, nail them down instantly to times and places, before they melt away.
• Don’t place anything, ever, in a black plastic binbag, that is NOT rubbish destined for the bin.  Do not be tempted to put bedding, laundry etc into bags that make them look like they need helpfully chucking out, especially when multiple journeys/helpers are involved.
• You can’t have in your possession too much bubblewrap, tape, boxes or marker pens
• Levels of dirt acceptable in your own home / your own dirt, eg inside fridge trays or bathroom drawers, are ‘eurgghhh!’ when you are moving somewhere new and they are someone else’s dirt you must get rid of first
• Labelling any box ‘misc’ because you just shoved any old crap into it instead of sorting as you packed, is just going to backfire on you when you are cursing through the unpacking later
• Do not label anything with post-it notes, they do NOT stick well to boxes, and leads to chaos.  ‘Does anyone know what this “FRAGILE!!!” relates to..?’
• When packing up clothes and day to day stuff, think about pulling out and putting aside the stuff you need for the last few days before you move BEFORE you start.  Even pack yourself as suitcase as though you were off on holiday - then shove the case under the bed and you can pack up everything else in the room for the movers.
• Removal firm advice leaflets recommend keeping an ‘emergency on arrival’ box at hand with you at all times, but think carefully about exactly what you need in YOUR box, for those first 5 minutes after getting to your new home.  Whether its firelighters, a screwdriver, a corkscrew or your mobile charger, what can you not live without/wish to avoid searching for at that moment?
• If you really were going to eBay it you’d have done it by now.  Go to charity shop, go directly to charity shop, do not pass go and do not move clutter from one house to another
• Same with anything you were going to alter, mend or repair.  Let it go.
• Finally, if someone kindly brings you a bottle of something bubbly to welcome you to your new home, don’t think you’ll just pop it in the freezer to chill down for half an hour.  Unless you *want* to spend your first morning in your new place clearing moet-et-broken-glass icecream out of your new freezer that is.

Half term this week - for English schools at least - but what a contrast to our fond memories of this time last year, when with visitors from the UK we went for picnics in the mountains and walks on the beach, kids playing and paddling, parties in the park… Today it was a welcome change to sit outside and have a coffee, for a scant hour or two before the sun retreated and coats went back on.  It’s slightly milder, and it’s good to have had a little taste of springtime to come, but sadly it isnt truly here yet.

It was a very pleasant morning though, first face to face get-together for our latest project, http://www.oldschoolgate.com… this site/forum is basically an attempt to create exactly I was looking for 2 years ago, when researching our relocation.  It’s such a challenge planning a move for a whole family from over a thousand miles away, with scant precious visiting time to check things out.  How on earth did people manage before the internet..?  Between google earth, agents websites, and expat forums, I was able to use our reccy time as wisely as possible and find out as much as we could before taking the plunge, but I still felt a gap for specifically kids-related things.  It was hard to find out information about schooling, kids activities, fiestas etc, and how to go about basic things such as registering for health care or buying PE kit.  It was fantastic to find some incredibly knowledgeable and supportive friends who helped so much with such things, and I wanted to try and channel that knowledge and make it more accessible for others in the future.

Similarly now we’ve been here for over a year, we still find things we havent a clue about because we havent had to deal with them yet, and being in the international school system it’s harder still to hook up with other parents  - the catchment zones cover huge areas, and many children arrive by bus anyway.  The ‘Old School Gate’ is symbolic of the ultimate hob of gossip and news that has sustained generations of Mums around the world, the folk wisdom that gets passed on to those in need of it, ready to pay forward and help out the next person who asks for help.

If you, or anyone you know, has kids anywhere near the Costa Blanca… or if you’re researching or considering a move to the area - please check out http://www.oldschoolgate.com. We’re a new community of international, diverse, friendly and interesting parents, and we’d love to chat.  More meet-ups planned soon… as soon as the weather gets better anyway!

And if you’re not in the area but like the idea of an Old School Gate for your own community, give me a shout about that too.

A friend of a friend of ours has this thing of coming out with little sayings, one which stuck in my mind from way back was “Spain is a cold country, that happens to have hot sun”. 

At the time I didn’t really know what that meant, but now I do.  Most of the year Spain is warm and sunny, spring and autumn are sheer delight.  The hot summer you can survive, between the beach and the pool and not trying to do too much.  But the brief and brutal winter is HORRIBLE… in homes built to stay as cool as possible in summer heat, every icy breeze penetrates, and the lack of sun in our chilly north-facing villa adds to the frozen misery with damp and mould.  Between us we have never had more colds and respiratory infections, since moving to this ‘healthiest climate in the world’!

Our big mistake was viewing this beautiful villa in the early summer, when it was glorious, spacious and luxurious.  We paid no attention to the lack of radiators, curtains, interior doors, or even a woodburner… and we have spent the winter trying to heat the bits we are living in through a combination of inverting air conditioners (which produce astronomical electricity bills), and a calor gas heater which produces such damp the condensation runs down the windows, creating more black mildew and rot everywhere.  The girls rooms have little oil-filled radiators, that work OK in the smallest bedrooms (and in the office if you actually put your feet on them).  We have also become big fans of the good old hot water bottle!  Basically the strategy is focus on warming up the immediate area you are occupying, rather than the whole house or even room.  Lots of layers, hot drinks.  Warming soups…

So we are OFF.  In just two weeks, to a smaller, warmer place, with friendly helpful landlords, a proper long term lease, and that most wondrous of inventions… central heating!!!  Bring it on.

Apparently airport security staff, before they are kitted up with their new x-ray specs, are trained to look out for people who are anxious, sweaty, and distracted.  These people could be potential terrorists and bombers I guess…. however, they could also be passengers with the lovely Ryanair.  Wearing as much of their luggage as humanly possible, stressing about the threat of having their bags measured or god forbid weighed, wondering if the costcutting and profit squeezing is one day going to hit safety and fuelling margins, and fuming with resentment at the endless scratchcard and merchandise pushing.  Not to mention the self-congratulatory announcements about ‘yet another on-time flight’ just because they describe Alicante to London as taking 2 hrs 45 minutes when it always takes less than 2 hrs 20…

But before you even get to peel off the layers at security, you have to find the airport in the first place.  Of course we’ve done this a few times now and it’s getting easier, but it’s strange how one of the largest portals in Europe can be so invisible on approach.   It’s in a kind of dip in the landscape, and a lot of flight paths are over the sea, so you are practically on top of it before you notice the airport at all.  Driving from the North as we do, you go right past Alicante city to reach it, and there is sod-all signage, so you pass all signs to Alicante and see the city going by off on your left long before you see a sign saying ‘aeropuerto’ (which is also helpfully right next to the sign ‘Murcia’, which happens to be in the same direction, but also has an airport.  Not the one you are booked to fly from though, which adds to the fun).  Even when you’ve driven it many times its weird how there’s always this moment of doubt - have we missed the exit?  WTF has the airport gone this time?

All in all, I can only conclude, one should never leave the Costa Blanca at all, it’s way too stressful, and I am all for staying put.

It’s a bit ironic having moved to Spain in search of, amongst other things, a simpler life… to be so utterly dependent on the car these days.

The villa we live in currently - NOT for much longer, thank goodness - is very typical, in that it’s stuck up on a hill miles from anywhere, and you cannot get anywhere at all except by car.  Every time you realise you need bread or water or milk etc, you have to get the car out… and of course the school run, up the mountain to the beautiful new building, guzzles gallons of petrol every month.

The alternative is living in an apartment or townhouse in a much more urban area, which we haven’t ruled out one day, but for now we enjoy the peace of a villa whilst we havent yet spent a full summer here.  Our new place is at least walking distance to a shop and a few cafes, which will help.

Of course you don’t realise your auto-dependence so much when you take it for granted - 0nly when it lets you down!  Which it did this week, when we found coolant leaking all over the show.  Luckily R has managed to get it fixed, we hope - airport run tomorrow, so really really really hope it IS fixed!

It’s funny how you learn the Spanish that you need as well.  I am getting quite good at ordering a vegetarian meal anywhere, whilst R has a load of specialist vocabulary about thermostats and radiators that I hope I will never require…

Yes its been a long time!  But if anyone’s still following, I am trying to get motivated enough to start blogging again.  The last few months in a nutshell… still in Spain, in a cold damp house, hopefully about to move to a smaller warmer one, and looking forward to the summer!

Well, with Summer Time officially commenced, I have faced facts and joined a gym.  Had to be done - between the wonderful food and cheap wine, Spain is officially bad for my health.  Combined with the typical homeworker tendency to sit on one’s backside all day, it’s a great recipe for said backside to spread indefinitely.

It’s not helped by the difficulties in walking around here.  It’s funny, because going for an evening stroll, a ‘paseo’, is very much a part of Spanish culture.  However where we live it’s just not easy - streets are narrow and without pavements, hills are steep, and every other house has a loud and aggressive-sounding guard dog to freak at you (and make you leap off the non-existent pavement into the path of the car struggling up the steep hill in the middle of the narrow road).  I do try and walk when I can, eg down to the mailboxes centre a couple of times a week, but the local leg of the journey in our urb is dangerous and weird… and so not done, people slow their cars down to stare at you, or ask if you’re ok or have broken down!

I do have to say that if you don’t mind driving somewhere first, there are numerous beautiful walks and strolls to be had - whether up in the hills, or along the beach, or whatever.  I just do find it weird that I cant start my walk on the doorstep easily.

Anyway, the gym.  I have to drive to it, naturally, but its only 10 minutes or so up the hill in Balcon al Mar.  Run by a very friendly Dutch couple, and has lots of scary equipment… in fact the only thing it hasnt got is a big room empty of equipment for general aerobic leaping about in, which is the kind of class I usually go for at a gym.  But they have lots of complicated looking gear to make you fit with.  I enquired about doing pilates once a week, and was told in a very blunt but polite way that there was no point doing any toning until I had done several weeks worth of fat burning!  So that’s what I have signed up for initially.

Fat burning class is 1 hour long, the first half of which is ’spinning’ - like cycling, only without the dogshit and lorries - and then half an hour of circuit on the ‘Easy Line’ equipment - a minute of step, then a machine, then step, and so on round about 8 stations.  Its quite fun, and a very friendly and supportive group of people.  They also have a power plate machine, which is a kind of migraine-generator that you stand on, and it’s supposed to vibrate your cellulite away.  They play cool and funky music, which helps a lot - I couldnt stand the mixes used at gyms in the UK.  They are very scientific about measuring your heart rate, and I need to get a proper monitor.  They’ve given me a cheststrap transmitter, but often when you’re in the bikes room there are too many people close together, and the monitor on the handlebars in front of me is probably picking up the triatheletes on either side instead of foretelling my imminent infarct as I try like mad to make it register in my predicted ‘fatburning zone’.

Anyway I am trying to find the space in the week to pop along and do 3 classes a week - that’s what I’ve paid for but so far averaging 2.  Watch this space, beautiful beach body here I come.  Maybe…