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!

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!

In response to a few emails about the planning/run up to our relocation, I have finally finished an account /brief diary of 2008 and the run up to the journey at the start of the blog.  Enjoy!

I am finding the gallery with this site a bit too annoying to use and have posted a load of snaps at http://www.photobox.co.uk/album/90915633

The password is the same as for Cassie’s page, email me if you need it!

We’ll consider that the journey began when we actually set off, from Wales, on our journey to Spain. No one wants to read about the joys of living out of a few suitcases for Christmas with two young children, trying to finish up major projects at work through a killer virus, going from one relatives’ sofa bed to another, wondering if you have put the right stuff in the right box in the right place, holding a sick child who’s crying ‘I want to go home…’ as she throws up over someone else’s sofa. Nor does anyone want to hear about the sheer thrill of a gearbox seizing up and dying, nor the excitement and expense of finding a replacement, couriering it over Christmas, and the hard work of a team of heroic Welshmen in fitting it in one endless day’s work. We’ll gloss over all that and start from day we actually began the final journey down here.

It was touch and go from the start, whether we’d make the trip on the day planned. Richard and Mark went returned from collecting the car, complete with new gear box, around 1am! ‘There’s a few bits and bobs he hasn’t finished putting back’ I was told – and after all these amazing guys had done a 3 -4 day job in one very long one - but I wasn’t prepared for the state of the car the next morning… It was absolutely filthy, no front fascia, looked more like the tractors they are accustomed to working on. But it was too late to turn back, and it was driveable – so Richard put the bits back together (mostly – a few minor details like a gear selector plate, connecting the speedo or reversing lights were simply too complex to address in the time we had) whilst I sorted out all our clothes and Christmas stuff etc, and tried to find cleanish places to load it all in the car.

A final Wales breakfast saw us on our way around 11am. It was hard saying goodbye to the family especially the girls, but with all the uncertainties over the car it was good just too be finally on the road. The weather was clear and we made good time on the M4 back to what we used to call home – well actually Nina and Mark’s house. We found the satnav had a setting that displayed a full digital speedo, so who needs dials? Once we’d gathered up our bits and bobs from there, my Dad met us and followed us down to the lock up to help us load up the car. For some reason the pile in the lockup had expanded over Christmas, and the tarpaulin seemed to have shrank, it was also freezing cold and rapidly darkening, but between the 3 of us we got a whole load of stuff hauled up and secured on the chilly roof. Had to tuck a plastic sheet over the back foot or so of it as the tarp just wouldn’t fit, but we knew a similar arrangement had held up on the trip from Newcastle so we were sure it would be OK.

At last we were off towards Folkestone – for the only Eurotunnel crossing of the day that could take roofracked cars. We were a bit dismayed by the state of our roof load – the tarp just seemed to be disintegrating probably just from the sheer cold – but a nice guy in WHSmiths gave us a load of stuff they strap newspapers up with. At last we were on the train and going over to France, eating service station sandwiches and enjoying the glamorous side of international travel.

We rolled out of the train into a very cold and snowy Calais, and finally put the French Tomtom maps to the test in reaching our prebooked motel. The maps worked fine and took us to the door, but we were a bit dismayed to find how very not secured the parking was. Had to hope the landy with its shredded load looked like a heap of junk no one would touch! With fingers barely unfrozen enough to operate the automated check in we found out way to our room which was tiny, warm, clean and basic. We found the bottle of wine we had brought, and I think I was pretty much asleep before my head hit the thin hard pillow!