Long time no post!  But we’ve had a busy week…

We were looking forward to half term, because it felt like for both us and the children we had arrived then pitched directly into work/school, without much adjustment time – well, it’s not easy to be tourists in midwinter in any case.  We had plenty to look forward to as we did our best to get the house cleared up and rearranged in anticipation of our first houseguests.

Sunday morning I got up early and scooted down to Grenadella, looking forward to my first ‘proper’ walk, a free guided excursion organised by the local tourist board.   It was a 3 hour hike through beautiful countryside, initially well inland and steep hairpin bends that left me without sufficient breath to curse my lack of fitness and embarrassed at being the youngest and least fit person there apart from our guides (who were around my age but in far better shape for climbing I hasten to add).  Then we came out onto a slightly scary but incredibly beautiful ridge walk, from which we could see for miles in every direction, from Cap San Antonio in the north to Ifach at Calpe in the south.  It’s a shame it was a dull and gloomy day, the views were still quite incredible but I wondered if I would be able to find and follow the intermittently marked path again on a sunny day.  We passed down to “Grenadella castle”, the ruins of an 18^th Century defensive fortification, after which we appeared to be quite close to the beach.  The last part of the trail was extremely hairy however, at one point involving nothing I would describe as a pathway at all, just chains bolted to the rock to help you scramble round – not a little stroll up from the beach I would fancy attempting en familia, unfortunately.

Anyway later that day my sister, her husband, and 2 and a half kids arrived from the UK, and the girls were thrilled to be reunited.  Lara wore herself out completely, and spent most of the night awake with earache which was far from ideal as she ended up in our bed (so we had no sleep instead of the other kids), and next day was Cassie’s long awaited birthday party – deferred from her actual birthday the week we arrived.  Lara perked up magnificently though Richard was feeling unwell too after our rough night, but somehow I got all the food prepared and between us we shuttled up to Pinosol Park, a short distance up the road, where her friends from school all arrived.  The kids seemed to have a really fantastic afternoon, all mixing well including her cousins from England, and Lara’s best friend from nursery also came so there was a great spread of ages - although at one point we lost most of the older ones who seemed to set up a tribal camp on the opposite side of the park, only emerging to wave sticks at the grownups and shout a lot, before a quick cake raid.  A lot of the food, even the savoury stuff, got eaten, which is always a good sign.

The party ended abruptly when Lara, running on fumes by now but having a brilliant time, suddenly got to tired to hold on to the swing and dived headfirst to the floor instead.  Nina rushed the two of us home where I got her cleaned up and tried to calm and comfort her, but it was really scary as she cried for about 2 solid hours before drifting off to sleep, and her face was badly bruised and scratched.  As always when a small child is tired and  in pain, she regressed a good year or two in age and communication skills, and we had no way of knowing how badly she was hurt.  Eventually she seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and thank god woke up more cheerful and apparently with no lasting damage, but it was a horrible moment, and we were rushing round researching hospitals and clinics etc whilst trying to be jolly hosts and cope with post-party clear-up – not much fun.

The rest of the week went well though and the weather was kind – we spent most of the time at local beaches where it was paddling weather, certainly for fast-moving small people, and indeed emergency clothes changes were required on more than one occasion for those inclined to misjudge the incoming waves and suddenly find themselves doing rather more than paddling.  Picnics and sandy toes reminded me why we had uprooted our lives from the familiarity our guests represented, and I knew we’d done the right thing watching the children play so happily – all my childhood, beaches were a 2 week treat in Wales every summer, and I always promised myself I would live near the sea sometime, why had I we waited so long to give our children this lifestyle?  Well, lots of good practical reasons as it happened, but here we finally were, even though our guests kept saying how it wouldn’t suit them.  We checked out new beaches at Moraira, Cap Blanc and Denia, but the kids always loved the Arenal (with its climbing frames and golden sand) best of all.

On their last day we went into Jalon, just to explore a bit of the interior, and although our Nina and Mark didn’t enjoy the mountain roads as much as we had hoped – we took them the pretty way through Gata and Lliber -  they made it half way up the Coll de Rates where we stopped for a picnic in the pineforests with incredible views, across the whole of Jalon valley and out to the Montgo and the sea at Denia.  The weather was perfect – just right for picnics without worrying about sunburn – and the kids loved exploring the mountain trails.

At the weekend we were back to the valley for lunch at La Vall with the Montgo Vegetarians, lovely to see Brian and Cindy and everyone again and the food was very excellent – even Richard seemed to like it.  The journey back was interrupted by road closures in Gata as the local kids had their Carnavale parade, it appears our kids had theirs a week early due to half term timing, so we got to watch all the village children and their famililes parade past the car in their colourful costumes.  On the last day of the hols we went back to the Arenal again to meet Lara’s friend from school, and it has already reached the stage where we can go there anytime and both girls will be pretty much guaranteed to hook up with friends from school or last time.  I love it so much that we live 5 minutes away from this kind of fun and the sheer delight they take in dodging the surf… though I hope that as the season and temperature develops we may reduce our laundry load slightly, or simply learn to strip them off in anticipation of the inevitable soaking that seems to occur whatever the our plans/instructions/the weather.

On the final afternoon we drove out to the lighthouse at Cabo San Antonio, for amazing views of the bay, though it was very windy and none of us were dressed for a walk.  We drove back via the mirador at Els Molins, from where the views of Javea were simply incredible, and I longed to follow the path back down into the Port – with different footwear and no small children though, so another day.  We contented ourselves with a stroll around the pine forests at the top, and once again thanked our good fortune in living at such a beautiful and inspirational place.

Every now and then we find ourselves drifting along feeling like everything’s pretty normal now and we’re getting the hang of stuff, but then something pops up and slaps you in the face to say ‘hey remember EVERYTHING’S different now and don’t you forget it!’

Usually this is in really lovely amazing ways, such as waking up to see sunlight on next doors palm trees glowing orange through the bedroom window, an awesome dawn, or the kids first paddle on the beach… I hope I never stop getting those ‘OMG we’re here! We’re actually living by the sea, by the Med, like I dreamed..!’ moments… if it ever gets to that point I deserve to get sent home.

Occasionally though your face gets rubbed in it in a not nice at all way, such as last Thursday, when we both took time off work to try and register on the ‘padron’ like dutiful citizens -as well as making access to state healthcare more straightforward, the main reason one does this is for the benefit of the local town hall, it’s their electoral register and they receive funding on a per-head basis for local services. So we filed up with what we thought were the right bits of paper, only to be told our rental contract was no good – well, we could see her point as it was a bit scrappy and altered etc, we explained the landlord was out of the country so she said come back with a receipt for the deposit.

Bit despondent we headed home, pausing in Javea for a couple of shops, whereupon we saw the local plod pulling people over. Richard immediately got a bit paranoid, because the amount of regulations and things you have to carry etc, its very complicated. He was muttering away to himself as we got back in the car, ‘spare bulbs – in the glovebox – tools to change bulbs – passenger door – hi vis jackets…’ I told him to snap out of it and stop being silly. He even contemplated taking a longer way home to avoid their junction, but then we thought no that’s daft and turned left onto the clear and empty road as we had done many times before.

We were immediately waved over by a sweet young Policia, and politely informed that the extremely faded graphic in the centre of the road was in fact cross hatched and it was illegal to cross it, we mustn’t do it again. We haltingly thanked her and it was all going smoothly and swimmingly, until the point she established that we weren’t yet legally registered… at this point everything changed, and you saw Euro-signs ‘ker-ching’ in her eyes. “Then it’s a fine” – delivered from that point in patronisingly impeccable English, she relieved us of the seemingly random amount of 63 Euros… whilst we listened to her colleague pull over a Spanish driver alongside us, warn him for the same offence, and wave him on. Only non residents have to cough up on the spot, presumably such a minor violation is scarcely worth the paperwork to collect by post, but new arrivals are fair game. We just barely had enough cash between us – had we been a Euro short she had the power to frogmarch us to a cash point or impound the car if she took a fancy to it, we were utterly powerless and treated completely unfairly. We left shaking with rage. The actual ‘offence’ could have been questioned legally very easily given the state of the road markings, but the blatant way in which it was applied so unfairly was gobsmackingly outrageous…we felt completely powerless, given our limited language and status here… no one in Spain had before made us feel like that and we hope it’s a long time before it happens again.

The following day we were made aware of a big difference in another way, waking up to really weird weather – dull grey skies, high winds but WARM… it was very strange. Cassie came home from school insisting her teacher had said it was a tornado, we think she meant sirocco (we hoped!). Next day was Saturday and it was much brighter but seriously high winds – we watched the palms from the bedroom window bending to the ground, glad our villa was actually in quite a sheltered nook (certainly compared to some we’d viewed). It was quite fun to be cosily (well, draftily) inside, an uninvolved observer – until the power went off. Not so much fun! Panic over, all back on 20 minutes later… for around 5 minutes. Then it went off, and didn’t come back on.

Richard managed to get through eventually to someone at Iberdrola, the provider, and established something was indeed wrong and they were trying to fix it – soon it would be fixed. Well that’s ok then.

It wasn’t fixed on Saturday. Richard took the kids off to the Port to collect Cassie’s new school skirt from the tailors (about an inch and a half had to be taken from the side of it to make it fit), and when he got back they’d witnessed some serious devastation down at the beach – recycling bins overturned, hoardings down, etc. Most of the town did appear to have power, the outage was quite localised, so at least I knew internet cafés referred to as ‘Saros Office - Plan B’ were accessible – but we couldn’t imagine it’d still be a problem come Monday surely..?

Candlelight and torches were just about fun for one evening, as well as the interesting game of trying to eat the entire perishable contents of the fridge, but the kids were anxious going off to bed with the winds still howling and no landing light. We left their LED fairy lights on, and blew out all the candles, as we washed in the last tepid water from the tank.

In the morning still no power, and the interesting challenge was our first non-family guests expected for lunch! First things first and we hit Scallops for breakfast – hadn’t actually been there since Cassie’s birthday, but today required caffeine for a start. Without mains gas we were without so many basic things, and the electric company could only promise the problem was still being worked on and would hopefully be sorted ‘later’. We could see trees down in the roads nearby, and hopeful signs of men working on cables in the road… but cancelling lunch wasn’t an option not least as my phone battery was on its last legs and the house phone had run down completely!

Failing to turn up a camping gaz stove from anywhere open on a Sunday in Javea, we went back and improvised a cold lunch for Sam, Jim Charlie and Timmy, who had taken such lovely care of Merlin over Christmas (actually we got a brief 5 minutes of power – oh great its fixed, plug everything in – oh no its off again!) They were great company, everyone was polite about the salads and cheese, and as it was a bright sunny day and the actual gales subsiding we then lit the BBQ to boil water for tea and coffee after! Followed by a couple of pizzas and things that were mouldering in the large white box we normally used as a refrigerator.

The kids had a brilliant afternoon tearing around with their friends, and whilst it wasn’t quite how I’d envisaged our first Spanish BBQ experience it was fun improvising. And our lovely lunch-guests then invited us all back to their place, out in the campo with its own generator, to make free with their hot water and all get showered – friends indeed. They even finished off our grilling and plugged in all our portables, and offered desk space for morning if we needed it… we were so grateful.

When we got back we saw lights on! But by the time we got in the house they were off again. It transpired we could have lights – great – but the plug circuit was damaged somehow, every time we re-enabled it the whole lot tripped and we were back in the dark on a count of 3. Hours – seemingly – of switching, isolating, testing, tripping (and swearing) later we finally isolated the problem to the security light in the garage… so we switched that off, flipped the trip, and held our breaths…. Lights still on! Bit by bit we plugged everything else back in, and it worked.

Some things we’ll try not to take for granted in future. Keep full charge on all laptops and mobiles for a start…. Spain is indeed different!

Its funny isn’t it, how soon the totally new becomes normal and routine. Most especially, and surreally, when the wildly new is intertwined with deeply familiar elements. This week we have been back to school, and back to work, and it’s just like being at home… in our new home.

So what’s the same and what’s different? Well, getting kids up in the morning, making breakfast, and packed lunches, not so different… obviously making lunch for two now Lara is doing full days, to which she has adapted brilliantly – if tiredly – so far. Lunches we are keeping fairly close to what’s known, but Cassie has taken a slice of tortilla in a couple of days this week which the teachers are happy to microwave for her at lunchtime! Can’t imagine that in a UK school… But making packed lunch whilst the girls eat cereal has a reassuringly normal feel about it, and the range of nice fruit juices in little cartons is nicer than before.

One thing I really miss about my mornings is though the Today programme – how sad! And given how precious every inch of space in our loaded moving car was, I am irritated every time I look at the DAB radio alarm I carefully bubblewrapped… not only did I fail to check and establish there is NO DAB signal available in Spain, but I didn’t realise it has no manual clock setting either, so the thing is useless in a number of different ways. An expensive and ugly paperweight for the new office perhaps? Grr!! Of course there is internet radio, but I can’t face putting the laptop on in the dark, and so have to ration myself to the last 45 mins or so of Humph and co when I start work later on.

At the moment, this is after the school run – though I expect this will only take one of us soon. Parking/approach is chaos, the school is moving to a new purpose-built site next year but for now its anarchy in a too-narrow road. And nowhere safe to drop them nearby, even if it were only Cassie, further away – pavements are clearly one of those namby-pamby health and safety oddities we have left behind us, so we queue and jostle our way into the carpark with everyone else. The cars themselves aren’t so different from Surrey! Except some of these oversized 4×4s actually have mud on them and appear to be owned for good reason.

Lara we drop to her classroom, where she can now easily find her peg for her lunch bag and then run straight outside to the play area to embark on the task of ruining another pair of tights. I hope the school uniform shop restocks soon, because their own clothes don’t seem up to a full day of schooling. Cassie we deliver to the playground at the other end of school, and the teacher takes them down to class together as a group. The current school site has been temporary –for many years, it’s a good example of the best job being made of a far from ideal situation, a mishmash of buildings including a number of portakabins interlinked with narrow passageways, a variety of play areas, pleasant murals, sports zones, etc etc. Certainly it has character, but the new site will undoubtedly be a big improvement.

Then back home to the office, where it’s business as usual – everything is set up OK, and the pathetically low broadband speed doesn’t impact too badly on most applications (other than watching TV in the evening that is). I really like getting started almost an hour before UK business hours, I can get such a lot done and in the inbox cleared, my day planned, before the phone and IMs start going, I actually feel quite organised. It’s amazing how normal everything feels! Even down to the cat jumping on the desk and walking across the keyboard at the wrong moment. The phone works – and my number is still 020 8… - Still lots of admin outstanding re setting up of my new Spanish company – to consult to the UK one, its so complex – but we are chipping through it bit by bit and at least have a place to put the paperwork now! I need to locate an equivalent of Staples or Viking, that we can visit or deliver – what is the Spanish for bluetak anyway? (not that anything sticks very easily to our rough plastered walls, but for project planning I am going to need to get my UK postal area and boundary maps up soon… and that’s really going to mess with my head!) We bought a secondhand anglepoise lamp, but that blew up this morning (and tripped all the relays, fortunately no other damage, good new electrics in the villa). An of course it’s not just my office any more, I am sharing it with Richard, which is… interesting!! But we’ll give it time, haven’t killed one another in the first week, which I consider positive.

He normally goes to collect the girls, they finish at 4 here – initially Cassie thought this extremely unfair, as 35 minutes later than her friends at home, but they do get an additional break, AND we keep pointing out that when we collect her at 4, her pals back at Chandlers Field still have 25 minutes to wait for their bell! Also on Fridays they finish at 3, (though it looks like Cassie will be doing her karate class then), so she has the satisfaction of knowing school is out whilst it’s still barely the end of lunchtime in the UK.

Cassie seems to get homework most days, even if it’s just a quick worksheet – I am really pleased with that, it’s great that she has some rapid reinforcement that can be got out the way directly after school, In her old school homework was rare and erratic (weekends only and sometimes the teacher ‘forgot’ to give it out!) Even Lara gets ‘homework’! Well – this week, we had ‘mathematical development’ where she had to count and draw all the doors in her house. It’s a start! On Wednesdays we have enrolled Cass for an after school Spanish conversation class, to help her get up to speed rapidly, but so far that and karate is enough we think.

Weather is a little milder, far from blazing sun, but we are less freezing first thing now and sometimes go hours at a time without the blowers on in every room. Still light a fire most evenings but sometimes because its nice rather than essential!

The rest of the week at school seemed to go alright. Kids are just so amazingly adaptable… Cassie promptly latched on to a game involving the collection and swapping or trading of WWF gaming chips, which brought with it common ground and friends, in her class and elsewhere – it’s a small school and it seems to be easy to mix with other years in the playground and other areas. She seems to like her teacher too, and whilst most of her friends seem to be boys this is what we’re used to from home, and at least one of them appears to be Spanish. Lara too has been enthusiastic about getting to nursery every day, although by the time we pick her up at 4 she’s absolutely shattered. I think the daily routine is going to have to involve some seriously early nights… we are also really looking forward to getting up in daylight, hopefully soon. We really love the light evenings in Spain, it’s brilliant to be so far west in the CET timezone we have natural light at 6pm in January, but it does mean an alarm going off before 8 feels like night time!

Richard and I have had a busy week too, getting the office sorted for next week. Somewhat taken aback by the prices of both new and secondhand desks, we ultimately settled for the more cost-effective and easy-to-store option of a garden trestle table! A couple of hipermercado office chairs and rather a lot of gaffer tape later (the phone port is on the wrong side of the villa) and the Costa Del Saros is ready to open for business. My new ip phone seems to be working ok now despite the lack of an ‘ip fija’, and I can chat to colleagues and clients from my old 020 number! People only need to know I’m not there if they actually *need* to know…

On the technical front we’ve also got the hang of watching UK telly in the evenings, on the laptop via a UK proxy server (that convinces the likes of iplayer we are in a licence-paying location). At first it felt a bit weird huddling round a laptop but it’s good to catch up with the new series of Hustle and a couple Christmas specials we missed during the move! Actually it’s surprising how little I find I miss most of it, looking through the schedules it’s sometimes hard to find anything, having decided we’re in the mood to watch TV – mind you that’s not so different from home either. The girls are managing with a lot less TV too, though between DVDs and the PS2 their overall screen-time might not be that much reduced just yet. Hopefully time will bring us the more outdoor lifestyle we moved here to find, it’s still too cold here..! But Cassie has been learning to play chess, and Lara is bringing home Disney Princess books in Spanish from the school library, so there’s plenty to occupy everyone.

We have rearranged the living room this week, so we can huddle closer to the woodburner as well as the laptop. The villa has a huge open plan living room which will be gorgeously cool and airy in the summer no doubt, but is currently a challenge to heat cosily. Being close to the flame is warming to all the senses, and getting a fire going in the first place is viscerally satisfying in a very primal way – it’s also my personal specialist subject, and I have now reached the stage of considering the chemical firelighters a bit of a cop out (the exception being when the wood is very damp due to lack of forward planning). I expect to move on shortly and evolve beyond the need for matches, sparking flames from rubbing bits of wood together or something (or maybe not). But the woodburner has a blower incorporated to waft hot air into the room (only took us a week to locate this, maybe I am not such a Fire Goddess after all…) which is quite effective, especially when the damper underneath is open and you get a strong air current blasting through. Sometimes it’s nearly as strong as the icy drafts that seem to come through from all corners of the house and outside… we are experiencing a very cold snap presently, the same one as the UK I believe.

This weekend we decided to visit the slightly-inland town of Jalón, which is somewhere we are actually quite interested in living in – trouble is it’s a bit far from the primary school in Javea (although quite near to the senior school so longer term we will see). Jalón has excellent ‘rastro’ Saturday mornings, which translates somewhere between a boot fair and antique market. Kinda anything goes – just a long line of stalls in the riverbed, where you can buy things from clothes, food, junk, crafts, furniture… you name it. We came back with some tall glasses for the kitchen, a big bag of oranges, some pick and mix sweets, joss sticks, plus the girls bought some secondhand toys with the ‘Spanish Gold’ Santa brought them, so you get the idea.

We followed that with the slightly more conventional retail experience of the La Marina shopping mall in Ondara, where we finally bought Cassie’s birthday bike! Unfortunately we couldn’t get a helmet in her size that met with her approval (well she is a bit mature for tweety pie or winnie the pooh). We’ll have to get to the expensive bike shop in the port next week instead.

On Sunday we had a quieter day, we’d actually walked for miles yesterday with all our shopping and were all pretty tired. Later on Cassie and I walked down to the Arenal, but it was very cold and blustery. She was watching a kite surfer, but had better not get any ideas! Looks very difficult and dangerous. It was really too cold to watch her on the climbing frames for long, and we soon retired to a coffee shop where Richard and Lara met us, and we introduced girls to the Spanish tradition of churros y chocolate - which was received very positively. It was great to look out at the worsening weather from the indoor comfort of the café – watching the headland of San Antonio in the distant sunlight one minute, then disappearing altogether as a shower moved in, finally bathed in a watery rainbow. Once the rain had moved on we ran back to the car, and home to get another fire started – brrr.

Well, Tuesday was 3 Kings day, and all the Spanish kids got their shoes filled with toys – ours didn’t, as we reminded them, they had had the small benefit of a visit from Santa less than a fortnight ago, not to mention Cassie’s birthday… turned out they had both done alright on the parade sweets yesterday too.

Everything was shut (including the school uniform shop in Lliber), but at least Mum and Stephen had an easy run through to the airport, and Richard was pleased to show them a bit of the countryside on the way back as they hadn’t really been out of Javea since their arrival at the weekend – definitely need visitors to get a car in future or it’s really limiting (unless there is just one of them with a relatively small rear end and prepared to squash in between the kids’ booster seats!) It really is so beautiful round here and varies hugely in the different areas, with the landscape changing around every bend. Not that there would have been a lot worth seeing on Tuesday as it just got colder and duller as the day wore on.

Wednesday we got up in the dark again! Our plan being to arrive at the school half an hour early to buy the girls new gear. However when we got there we found there was a problem with the uniform supply chain and there wasn’t going to be any available that week, so they’d remain in mufti, and there were a couple of other new kids also in the same boat. First we went down to Lara’s nursery class where we met her teacher Mrs Middleton and colleagues, they had already prepared a peg with her name on, it was a small bright and friendly room, and there was a little girl called Meg who was waiting to be the new girls’ friend. Lara went off cheerfully to join in the day’s activities.

Then we went back to the office to meet Mrs Brewer, Cassie’s new teacher. She seemed lovely too, everyone had been very friendly, and Cassie was taken down to meet her new classmates whilst we did some paperwork in the office.

We met Sam outside, and she said that a load of the mums generally went for a quick coffee on Wednesday mornings, so we met up with them all in Javea for a quick americano. Everyone was kind, and they seem welcoming and open to new arrivals. My mind kept drifting back to the girls, especially my Cass who had been so anxious about changing schools and friends and countries… I just hoped she was finding a similar welcome.

We wanted to stick around Javea for the day, and had a good look around the Port area shops. We went into the Vodafone shop, who could do me a good sim-only deal for my Blackberry, BUT could do nothing without details of our not-quite-ready Spanish bank account. We did find some cheap rugs for the bedroom floors though and various interesting shops.

We ended up popping in to the local tourist supermarket for a few bits, including a tomato pasty for my lunch, which I had a big fat bite of back at the house before realising it had tuna in it as well! Eurrgghh. I spent the rest of the day fighting nausea even after cleaning my teeth, I never, ever want dead things in my mouth again! But soon it was time to go and get the girls, and to our great relief good times had been had for first day of school. Lara had made it through till 4pm without losing her better nature, both had eaten their packed lunches, and had good things to say about classmates and teachers. Phew! Back home a near disaster – a close encounter between my Blackberry and a hard tiled floor, left it not recognising the battery and basically not working at all. A lot of frantic googling and forum-bashing ensued before we found a way to reboot and reset it… so another great relief (having seen the prices to replace it locally this morning). By then the day had simply evaporated on us, the later end to school day is something we’ll just have to get used to…

Some days start waaay too early – and some are technically still actually the middle of the night. Alarms ringing before 5 are most definitely in this category. The girls barely seemed to wake as we bundled them into the car in their pyjamas, and then found all the entrances and gates locked at Mum and Stephen’s hotel. Eventually we got in, hopefully without waking the entire building, and deposited the girls with them (Mum thought they might all go back to sleep – yeah right!), then the two of us headed off to Alicante.

We reached the airport just after 7:30, where we met Lynn and Jo from ‘NIE in 1 day’ – a firm specialising in getting you that all important ‘Numero de Identidad de Extranjero’, which is similar to a National Insurance number for foreigners, but far more widely required – for example, we can’t get a mobile phone, put utilities in our own names, set up a business, open a bank account, register as residents etc etc etc without it. The cash cost is actually quite low but the grief costs we have heard about are shocking – hours of queueing, waiting for numbers, coming back tomorrow or next week or next year etc etc… we had had this service recommended to us and decided this was one occasion to throw money at a problem to make it go away.

And the early start would have been required whatever! Essentially we sat in a café for nearly an hour whilst Jo stood in the cold to be first in line for when the police station opened at 9. Between them they got all our forms filled in and signed and checked and checked over etc, and hustled us through to the front of the queue when the doors opened. Sure enough we got the first 3 numbers, but when called to the desk we learned (through our agents) that the procedure had changed and we had to first go to the bank and pay the tax charge before the forms would be stamped (apparently exact opposite of last 3 years), and the price had gone up – just as of that morning, no advance notice etc. Never mind! Our lovely ladies whipped us over the road to be first in the bank queue too, and took care of that business, then we were back in the Oficina at the nick getting things stamped and sealed and accepted. Then it was done! As it’s a bank holiday tomorrow they planned to collect our numbers on Wednesday, email them asap, then post on the final documents. By now the sun had risen over Alicante (which we’d only ever really seen from the airport or bypass, seemed a nice lively city), and we had accomplished a really major ‘ to do’ off our list, or so we hoped. I am sure we could have figured it out and sorted it ourselves, eventually, but god knows how long it would have taken.

On the way back to Javea we made a quick detour… the big electrodomesticos shop in Benissa DID sell (a limited range of highly priced) kettles! They didn’t have bags for our vacuum cleaner, but at least we can now make a quick cup of coffee.

Richard picked up the hotel team, turned out no one had had any more sleep, but it appears good value had been made by our girls when it came to the hotel breakfast buffet. It was actually a lovely day, and I sat on the roof terrace for a while watching the rooftops and palm trees, and wondering at our luck in simply being here!

Having been disappointed and frustrated by the weather on her birthday, Cassie could not be denied any longer the opportunity to test out the swimming pool. Undeterred by feeble arguments such as ‘its January you nutter’, she hoiked on her wetsuit, hurried to the water’s edge…and then stopped, with one foot in, when she suddenly realised it was a tiny bit freezing. I told her the clock was now running, she would be in a warm shower in 5 minutes come what may, and it was up to her – she sat on the side for a minute or two, finally jumped in, swam about 2 strokes out to the other side then clambered out gasping. I bundled her into her birthday ‘Bob Esponja’ beachtowel and quickly inside to get warm and dry. Hopefully that is now out of her system until spring and more suitable weather! But that’s my Cass, the thought of living with a swimming pool outside and NOT plunging in was just too, too much to bear…

Leaving Lara napping, Mum Stephen and I set off to walk into Javea again – this time continuing on past the Arenal and all the way down towards the Port, a good long hike, in beautiful weather. Sunglasses on and coats off as our stroll picked up speed, the bay looked beautiful, and I had another ‘can’t believe we’re really here’ moment as we made our way along the shingle.

Once we reached the port, we found the restaurant Stephen had spotted in a guidebook closed – a lot of places close Mondays round here, and tomorrow is a fiesta bank holiday anyway. We walked along the Esplanade and found a café on the end that had tables still in the sunshine, and Richard met us there with the girls and we ordered a load of tapas. Cassie climbed over the wall to the beach and threw pebbles in the sea, but before the food arrived the sun went in behind the row of buildings and suddenly it was January cold again – so we moved inside to eat. Outside we watched the preparations going on for the ‘Three Kings’ parade, but staff in the restaurant were unsure when the parade would reach them, so once we were all done we walked down to the harbour itself where crowds were gathering. Sitting on the chilly wall we watched groups of costumed revellers convening – Kings attendants, marching bands, Nativity characters, angels with a star, and donkeys pulling carts laden with presents. Finally the ‘Kings’ arrived, via a big motor yacht in the harbour, and climbed ashore and onto large horses, from which they joined the parade and waved regally to all the children. The attendants threw sweets, and Cassie didn’t do badly at elbowing to the front and grabbing her share. It was all enthusiastic and happy, and being taken quite seriously/done thoroughly, despite the smallish crowd (which seemed to be mainly Spanish families rather than expats or tourists) and the cold evening weather.

After the parade Richard drove Lara and her grandparents back to the house, and Cassie and I started walking back – mainly to keep warm, though we did turn and watch the fireworks on the square when they started going off as darkness fell. Richard made it back to get us by the time we reached the Parador and we all headed back to the house. I couldn’t understand why I felt so tired, then I remembered the 4:45 alarm, the miles of walking and getting chilled through! Girls were off to bed nice and early, whilst grownups didn’t seem to want much to eat – does over-ordering on tapas pass with experience or is it part of the culture I wonder? So we had a quite last evening with M+S before an overdue early night.

At last the day my babies come home!

Lot to do first though. Once again back off to the shops. We managed to find some overpriced plastic drawers for Lara’s room, 2 small oil-filled radiators, a clothes airer… but STILL no kettle (we do however have a lead on a place in Benissa that might sell them, if we can somehow contrive to pass by said shop when actually open – siesta hours still catch us out especially when on childfree lie-in time)

Also in Benissa we briefly visited Iceland, a very odd out-of-Spain experience, packed with incredibly expensive British brands. I limited myself to a few quorn products and a rip-off Guardian International, but saw people cheerfully piling trollies full of Heinz beans for 1.30E – what credit crunch..?

Home again and sorted Lara’s room out, both now looked lovely with all their toys out and new bedding and fairy lights etc. Mum texted to say they were taking off on time – felt so odd my babies flying without us, I really really hoped their ears were OK now. Eventually Richard set off to go get them, and I carried on tidying up and making dinner. The house looked really pretty and homelike at last (even if a lot of unsorted bags were temporarily stuffed in cupboards), in candlelight it even looked clean..! With all the blowers blasting and the fire blazing it was also warm and cozy, at least as much as we could make it.

At long last the door opened and in came the family – I couldn’t stop hugging Cassie and Lara, it was just so brilliant to hold them and see them. Everyone seemed tired but relieved to have arrived safe and sound, and they did love their rooms. Lara was specially delighted to be reunited with the Christmas presents they had played with briefly before we packed them all up to bring - knowing they were flying out with cabin bags only we’d been the anti-santa and snatched all their favourite toys away when we left! Everyone liked the house, and we managed a brief glimpse outside (in darkness of course but I’m sure they got the general idea). I think Mum and Stephen were relieved to see we’d fetched up somewhere civilised and warm etc

We had cava (both girls liked that too actually) and then enjoyed the pasta – first real meal I had cooked in our new kitchen come to think of it. For pud we had a donut-shaped cakey thing that seemed to be related to the forthcoming 3 Kings fiesta, as out fell a paper crown, a tiny king figurine, and what appeared to be a dried broad bean.

After that we finished off the wine, and Richard drove M+S back to their hotel. The girls were finally bedded down in their new rooms, very late, but definitely in the right place.

If we had hoped the late night would prompt a late morning, we had reckoned without the excitement of waking up in a new house, new country, AND it’s being ones 9th birthday! Cassie was up long before her sister. Shame it was a wet and rainy start to life in Spain.

We ate chocolate brioche for breakfast, and she opened her gifts – not too much to unwrap as it happened as she’ll need to come with us to choose her bike next weekend. Then Richard picked up Nana and Stephen, who had bought her karate mitts and a ‘voucher’ for a gi for her new karate club, which she was delighted with. We were then able to show everyone round outside, as the rain had stopped, and it was good for the girls to see the pool and the view from the roof etc.

 
Cassie had chosen to have her birthday meal out at Scallops in Javea, and as we hadn’t been able to get hold of Sam about whether she was bringing the kids over later, we thought we’d go out for lunch.  I walked down through Javea with Mum and Stephen, the rain had stopped but it was quite cold and blowy.  Also muddy, as I found out by slipping over at the side of the road!  Even for Scallops I looked a bit of state, but the wind was so strong at least the mud was nearly dry when we reached the front.  Very little seemed to be open – Sunday afternoon and mid-fiestas – but Scallops didn’t let us down.  Richard turned up with the girls (and my clean jeans) in the car, and joined us at the table.  With the menus del dia ranging from 5.95E to 10.95E everyone was able to find something they wanted (including a pizza for Lara that would have fed most of the table), even if M+S did wince slightly at the ‘vino inclusivo’.  Cassie seemed to have a brilliant time which was all that mattered.

It wasn’t really weather for a beachside paseo, so we came home for coffee, and in the afternoon Cassie explored her new PS2 games and we all chilled out.  We managed to connect the printer and sort out our documents for tomorrow, and I was quite pleased to get a fire going from wood that had been out in the rain all morning (quite a lot of paper and bought firelighters were admittedly employed).  Then later we had  birthday cake (more of a tarte but it went down well, even though barely hours ago we’d all vowed never to eat again when we left the table at Scallops), and we got the girls off for an early-ish night.

Cassie did get a tiny bit of blogging done, and if you’d like to wish her happy birthday via the link on the left she’d love to hear from you (email me - mail@mayamiddlemiss.com - if you don’t have a password).  I’d also love to know what you think of my more extensive ramblings!  Also have uploaded a few more photos, if you check the ‘gallery’ link above.

Waking up in our new house was lovely.  As the 4^th night we had spent in a different place to the night before, it was wonderful to think ‘here we can stay’ (for at least 6 months anyway), and to know that at last we were somewhere to call home.

In the decidedly cold light of day, we realised how much there was to do.  We are in a private let, but I had still anticipated a professional clean would have been done… wrong assumption, so plenty to do before we could unpack.  Nothing filthy dirty, but it wasn’t our dirt… if you know what I mean.  And some bits were worse than others… how on earth do you get hairs in a fridge anyway?  Eurghh!!

I cleaned the larder and fridge (despite a general lack of any kind of products except for random car cleaning things) and we got most of the fridge shelves into the dishwasher, before setting off for breakfast in Javea – well call it brunch as it was after midday, but Scallops was open for one of their ridiculously cheap fry-ups, so a cholesterol-and-caffeine fix later we were ready to hit the supermarket.  We cleaned out Mercadona, really should have got a second trolley, and it cost a fortune as it was all the stuff you never have to buy all in one go (cleaning products seemed really pricey actually, but other stuff like wine was cheap so fair enough!).  Then we came home and put it all away as best we could, swapping another load of greasy plates etc into the dishwasher.  We couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the Spanish sunshine, but at least it was mild and dry.

After that it was time to be reunited with one member of the Middlemiss family, the first of us to emigrate to Spain.  After stopping by a pet shop at the Marina centre for litter, we found our way to Woofers and Co where Sam and Jim and their lovely kids had been taking care of Merlin for Christmas.  He seemed pleased to see us, although he had clearly been very comfortable - he was evidently far less traumatised at being abandoned at a cargo depot in Gatwick back on the 12^th Dec than I had been leaving him there!  It was lovely to see Sam and Jim too, and they had lots of practical advice about everything from secondhand furniture to getting UK TV – they’ve been here and been doing it for a couple of years, so it’s great to have the benefit of other people’s experiences.

Merlin protested loudly at the car journey, but soon made himself at home in the villa – running round howling at everything, trying to hide in cupboards and boxes, and endlessly swiping and pawing at us if we forgot to pay enough attention for a moment.  We had a quick skype chat with the family back in Wales, as well as Fiona, and Merlin joined in with that – seemed like the kids had actually missed him far more than they missed us!  But they were clearly well and happy, undoubtedly being spoiled rotten by all the grownups plus Adam and Rebecca, and though I missed them even more afterwards I knew it wasn’t going to be long before we all were reunited at the weekend.  And not long in terms of making a habitable home for them either.

We were both so knackered from the endless travelling, followed by a day of hard grafting scrubbing and sorting, that once we finally got the fire going with the damp wood, we took the decision that our first childfree New Years Eve this millennium would be celebrated… at home!!  Oh yes we know how to party.  But between the kitchen scrubbing, trying to get the fire going, writing up the journey blog and calming down a mental cat, the evening passed very easily and pleasantly.  When midnight came we watched the fireworks from the roof of the villa, and ate the 12 traditional grapes – you’re apparently supposed to eat one for each bong of the clock, and each brings you luck for a month of the year ahead… well we couldn’t hear a clock up there and didn’t want to drop our cava so we just ate them, and enjoyed the view.  It was almost as though the new year held so much promise and excitement and opportunity, we didn’t need a big or public ceremony to mark it – just the two of us and our grapes!  The fireworks were pretty too, and not so close as to completely freak Merlin out (any more than he was already).

Next day we knew nothing would be open, so we celebrated the big Spanish fiesta that is new year’s day by - carrying on with the cleaning!  The kitchen finally under control, we cleaned all the bathrooms, sorted out Cassie’s bedroom, and at last our own bedroom – everything put away, no more suitcase living, hurrah!  It was so good to see it starting to look like home, the boxes gradually emptying and places being found for things. Considering it had all fitted in or on a single landrover we seemed to have a phenomenal amount of STUFF to find homes for… but it began to seem it was getting there.

In the evening we walked in to Javea, which really wasn’t too bad – to the Arenal at least, about 20 minutes.  It was a very quiet evening down there, lots of places closed, but it was nice just to hang out and have a drink and a meal.  We found a pleasant scruffy friendly bar, where a detailed discussion about language ensued with the multilingual server – he said he found English simpler to learn but much harder to master than most latin languages, that Spanish was far more precise and less open to interpretation.  To convey meaning in Spanish you can describe something exactly, and it can only mean one thing, the thing you want it to mean – whereas to describe the same concept in English would be a lot quicker but understanding would depend on context/experience/interpolation by the person receiving the communication.  He seemed to be saying that English was a lot less precise and expressive, but actually on reflection it made sense, in the light of our limited experience of learning Spanish.  For example the verbs to have, to be and to know each have at least two Spanish equivalents – so depending on which you use, you convey different information, that in English  you’d have to work out as the listener/reader.  I hope this is a theme I can return to as our studies continue!  For now, it’s just also worth noting that they served a very nice Rioja, and also that the walk home was a lot further than the walk in due to the hill we live up.  Hopefully once I finally shake this chest thing I’ll be able to do it without coughing and nearly collapsing.  Or if not we need to investigate cabs…

The next day we woke up in a room that looked like a bedroom, and headed in to Javea Port to check out secondhand furniture, for the office and Lara’s bedroom.  But it was quite disappointing, overpriced and limited.  We popped in to see Bev, who had nearly rented us a villa, and she suggested we check out a company that go to Ikea in Murcia for you, as it would be cheaper and new… 

After enjoying a bocadillo on the harbour we drove back to the shopping centre in Ondara – very unSpanishly open all afternoon – where we strolled round the shops trying to find different things on our list.  At least we managed to get a car booster seat for Cassie and a cafetiere, but we’ve now resolved to open a shop in Spain selling only kettles to  beverage-deprived Brits – surely we’ll clean up?!  Entire aisles of hipermercados were devoted to coffee preparation in myriad forms, but could we find something in which to simply boil water..?  But we managed to get some stuff for Cassie’s birthday, and various household bits and bobs that were missing.

We also managed to pick up a scart lead and adaptor, and once we were home we managed to connect our DVD player to the incredibly ancient TV in the villa – square goldfish bowl, Richard is seriously in mourning for our widescreen packed away in storage, but there was just no way that was fitting in the car with everything else that had to go.  Bev had given us a number for someone who may be able to do something with the dish on our roof – apparently too small for Sky but maybe some free channels – but at least for now we could watch a film and try and get an early night.  Tomorrow the girls come home, and that can’t come quickly enough.

Waking up in the Hotel du Merde like Alain de Partridge it was at least easy to think ‘lets get out of here fast’.  Actually doing so was a different story however, there didn’t seem to have been too much more snow during the night, however it had maybe thawed slightly, then frozen solid.  Never mind skis, to get to the car we practically needed ice skates – it was literally hard to brace to get the door open.  We slid gently down to the garage, where we found the air pressure machine out of order, and the staff – presumably now debarred legally from smoking in their workplace indoors – having a fag break on the forecourt!  We then couldn’t leave due to a transporter lorry cautiously negotiating the black ice on the slip road – we were NOT going to get too close, as we were sliding around enough ourselves.  We kept reassuring each other that surely the motorway must be gritted/de-iced, and when we finally inched our way to it we found that to be the case.

Driving was slow and mysterious through the icy landscape.  It was very beautiful, but scary as well, to see snow ploughs in operation and watch the altitude markers getting higher.  .  But the roads were very quiet, and weren’t actually iced over, so we took it steady and carried on through, glad we could see where we were going - we were very glad we hadn’t attempted it the night before

For one thing we’d have missed the incredible Millau Viaduct – none of my photos did it justice  so google it, if you want to see ‘the motorway through the clouds’.  It also represented a bit of a turning point after which the road mainly seemed to descend – as my blocked ears kept witnessing – and gradually the snow gave way to dull grey skies.  Eventually late morning we passed the place we were supposed to have stayed the night before… poor planning / time to shoot the navigator I guess.  But who’d have believed how fast things can change.  (Yes OK I knew / should have paid more attention to the bloody great mountain range we had to cross en route.  Live and learn, it’s what I do).

Finally we reached the End of France…or the end of the A75 anyway, where it finally joins the coastal route, and we got signs for Barcelona!  Now even the sun came out – we could almost have missed the unusuable aircon, and would never have believed that a couple of hours ago.  A fleeting glimpse of the Med around Narbonne and we suddenly felt like an end of some sort was in sight – rolling the window down for some fresh but no longer freezing air.  Of course we knew it was as much to do with altitude as latitude, but still felt like we’d passed a turning point.

On nice fast dual carriageway now we ate up the miles towards the border.  The final dramatic end of the Pyrenees looked stunning in the sunlight.

Baz still faithfully sat on the windscreen - although we now knew the route was pretty much straight on till the Javea turning, we needed the speedo.  As we’d been unable to fit a Europe-wide map on our memory card we had the French and Spanish maps separately, and as we finally approached the border we had the weird sensation of driving off the edge of the world…  as we were waved through the ‘douane’ and at last we were in Spain. Seemed to have taken us a long time to get here – the planning has been at least 2 years – but finally we were in our new country.  I reloaded the Spanish Tomtom map with all our old bookmarks, and there was some feeling of coming home.

Of course we were still a long way from home yet, but it was only lunch time, and we now had a full route proposal and knew it was ‘only’ 385 miles to Javea.  That’s only Newcastle to Wales plus a little bit… but, reluctant to commit after yesterday’s best laid plans, we decide to just push on and see what happened.  The Autovia del Mediterranea was fast, empty and easy.  We rolled on through the beautiful Catalonian countryside, stopping for a quick bite of lunch (trying not to speak French to staff in the café), and passed the ring road round Barcelona, after which at last we started to get signs for Valencia, which really did feel like home was in sight. 

We had one more comedy CD in the car – all Ricky Gervais podcasts exhausted  -so Dara O’Briain helped us get a few miles down the road, and all stuff we could never listen to with the girls on board.  We talked about whether we should stop, for the night or even just a coffee – Richard had been driving since before 9, again I had contributed nothing, but he seemed to have a new burst of energy as we started to get to familiar places.  Darkness fell – but hurrah not till after 6!  -as we passed by Valencia, Cullera, Gandia, and Baz ticked the miles away.  Nearly home.  Finally, finally, the Javea turnoff came up.  Follow the road, down through Gata, my eyes were now so tired I didn’t dare think about what Richard’s might be like.  Only once did I have to politely remind him ‘other side’. (“ ‘Other side’ what?”  “Other side of the *********** road!!!!!!  Darling.”)

At last we were in the right bit of Javea, and set Baz for his final task, finding our house in Adsubia.  Of course being Baz he promptly took us up a winding too-narrow street, with other cars coming towards us, and finally into the wrong road altogether, but at last Richard found a bit that looked familiar and between that and the map we made our way to our house.

After declining to carry me over the threshold – more asterisks  -Richard eventually sorted through a million and one keys, and at last, there we were, in our villa.  Rincon del Paz, ‘Corner of Peace’. I thought of all the places  we had looked at in our search, and realised how lucky we were – it was everything:  in Javea, older style, pool, 4^th bedroom… was this really ours?  Of course it was freezing cold, pretty grubby, and we had to get all our stuff in including off the roofrack… but we were finally HERE, having made it under our own steam, home at last.

Even the phone line was working.  I got a fire going whilst Richard phoned through an order to the curry house round the corner (our ‘arrival day’  box contained a torch, keys, firelighters and the menu!)  I texted my mum our new phone number, then minutes later the phone rang – it works!  But no it was Richard, outside the house furious unable to find the takeaway.  So we both set off,  brought our cold curry home, washed the grease of a couple of plates, and ate our re-pinged takeaway in front of our homely blaze. 

Both doubles failed on the Tolerable Mattress test, but we went for the flattest one and stuck on the memory foam topper I had found cheap on eBay just before Christmas, which made it ok.  Our woodsmoke-aired bedding was quickly on top of it, as well as some spare mattresses in the chilly bedroom.  I took my toothbrush out of my bag and for the first time in weeks thought about where I might keep it, rather than putting it back in the bag.  We were home!

It was still dark when the alarm went off, but we didn’t take long to get ourselves up and look busy, we knew we had a long day ahead of us. As soon as I was dressed I ran out to check on the car, which was still there, so that was good. Breakfast was, like everything else at that place, basic, functional and sufficient.

Before we set off we lashed the roof stuff over again with the newsagent’s stringy stuff and tried to secure the useless plastic sheeting at the back. It was so cold that even if I didn’t have the residue of a chest infection it would have still, I’m sure, have hurt to breathe. The car made a scary whistling noise when we started it up, but that seemed to stop soon.

We set off toward the autoroute, watching the sun rise over a deserted landscape. It was clear as anything and the sun was blazing down, but when we looked at the shaded verge it was still thick with frost - the screenwash nozzles didn’t defrost until we pulled over and squirted deicer into them. We put on some music and our shades, and relaxed into having the motorway to ourselves. I was even thinking about trying some of the driving, even though I had never driven on the left and it was apparently really hard to get into gear… thankfully Richard seemed relaxed enough about it as the road droned endlessly on.

Suddenly a stench of burning rubber had us pulling over – oh god this is it, I thought, but Richard calmly complied with all European traffic regulations by popping his hi-vis vest on, unfolding a warning triangle and poking around under the bonnet to reveal the shredded remains of the aircon drive belt. Well we weren’t likely to need that on a day where there was still ice on the bonnet an hour after setting off. So we got going again quickly.

Circumnavigating Paris was fun but Basil (Fawlty, soundalike) the satnav did a good job in difficult times, despite our distraction by a badly-timed listen to the Now Show CD someone had thoughtfully placed in our family secret santa stocking (thanks, whoever that was!). After Paris France seemed pretty boring – flat, cold, sunny and with endless pylons marching across the unchanging landscape. We stopped for lunch at a service station somewhere – and bought new bungees and straps to replace the ones that appeared to have simply perished in the cold. Tyres seemed to be holding up despite the load, but diesel was very pricey.

Later that afternoon, as the road began to climb and the light to fade, we took back all we said about the boring flat landscape. As the snow began to fall so did our journey speed, and we realised our planned overnight stop in Bezier was becoming less and less likely to happen. Very annoyingly, we were unable to connect on the premium rate number to cancel the booking before being charged, but eventually stopping for the night became the highest priority – the road ahead through the Pyrenees was almost certainly closed anyway (trying to interpret French radio bulletins was a challenge but we got the gist), and we were going more and more slowly, becoming seriously concerned about safety. Richard had been driving for more than 9 hours, we were now averaging less than 40mph according to Baz, and we had to call it a night. So we ended up in a seriously grotty Travelodge-equivalent in the Auvergne somewhere. Room stank of a mixture of French fags and air freshener, no internet, and not even any soap in the dispensers. It also didn’t have anything remotely pretending to be secured parking, and we couldn’t see the car from the main building. We weren’t about to go any further though, and we figured any opportunist thieves – with skiis – would have to be pretty determined, to be bothered to risk hypothermia to nick our stuff. We had a dispirited meal in the services café downstairs then gave up. We had started so well, made such good time, but the weather had won this round.

The road goes ever onwards…