How a poor, befuddled Englishman has begun to build a new life in Spain.
By Glenn Stuart.
Routines? Well, I’ve never been a routines person, a fact that has often got me into a lot of bother. I’m very envious of those people who are organised, have everything ‘just so’. They have ways of working which are beyond me. Perhaps that’s why I like the idea of the Spanish way of life. That ‘mañana’ attitude that is so, dare I say it, endearing? Well, it suits me. The plan, you see, was that the removal van was to follow us, then the pets. Like a sort of convoy. Except that we arrived, and the removal van didn’t follow. It was held up at customs. Not for any illegal reasons, you understand – no smuggling here! No, just routine. And the pets…well, the pets were proving a little troublesome. Fifteen mice, an ancient hamster, a rat and one dog can not be the easiest cargo to drive across the continent of Europe. We’d opted for the overland route,chiefly because our dog is a little old and very, very nervous. Less stressful we felt. For the dog, that is. But most definately not for us.
They’d asked us, the removal people, if our village had streets which were broad enough to accomodate a typically sized removal van. Naturally, I’d confirmed that it had…without ever having seen our village before. It was like this – we’d seen a property we’d liked on one of our many viewing trips. It was clean, part-furnished, in a lovely little place. The estate agent had reassured us that the travelling time between this village and my place of work was around forty minutes. When I got back to the UK and telephoned my prospective boss to tell her, she nearly had a fit! “My God!” she screamed, spitting so violently that I was spattered through the receiver. “That is about two hours away! You can’t stay there, you just can’t!” And she was right, of course. So we scrapped those plans and began yet another desperate search on the internet. When everything seemed about to fall apart, we came across the house we ultimately rented. Riogordo. Thirty minutes from work, nestling in a little valley amongst the mountains, white-washed and very, very Spanish. Perfect.
Except for the streets. We’d forgotten to check the streets.
But not the removal men.
Those first few days were idyllic. I had some free time before I began work and we spent it visiting the local shops, hiring a car and driving out into the mountains, breezing down to Torre Del Mar and swimming in the Med. It was wonderful.
Then the removal men arrived and our perfect existence was instantly shattered. They couldn’t get the van through the streets, so they would have to park in the square and bring our belongings up a little at a time. For this I had to pay…a lot. As the boxes were brought in our little Spanish home was transformed from adobe simplicity to something resembling a cluttered and crammed warehouse, stuffed to the rafters with boxes and bits of furniture. We went to bed, hoping the morning would cast a brighter and more forgiving light on our situation. But when the morning came, nothing had changed and the press of boxes seemed more enormous and more oppresive than ever.
Divorce proceedings were imminent.
One of the first people we’d actually spoken toin the village was a curious little chap. Short and balding, he was polite enough, if not a little strange. He was always to be found standing at the bottom of the street, bread roll in hand, watching the world go by. Not that much went by, the street being so quiet, but what there was he watched. He’d watched with growing curiosity as the men had struggled and sweated with the boxes, offering the occasional gutteral comment by way of advice. We saw him the next day and gave him our usual ‘holá’ to which, as always, he replied with a sort of deep, rumbling growl. But this day he added something else, his mouth spreading into a wide grin to reveal two blackened stumps, punctuated with pieces of partially eaten bread roll, and a declaration of his amusement at our predicament. We didn’t understand but we guessed a fairly accurate translation would be: ‘Cor, you English! You come all the way here with your worldly goods, paying far too much for the privilege and then you wonder why you ever bothered! Why don’t you just chuck it all in the bin and start again? You’re in Spain now, mate…why bother at all?’ Either that or, ‘Why didn’t you just stay at home?’ Both comments were wholey sensible. However, we cling to our roots we British and to those things that remind us of Blighty. So we go shopping for Heinz baked beans and have Sky installed, complain about Spanish bread and Spanish milk. We import little bits of our culture, possibly to bring us comfort, or perhaps to cushion us against the rigours of a new and different way of life. Who knows. I remember a holiday with my parents, many years ago, and the sweet sound of Dorris Day’s voice floating from the single television in the hotel lounge, of the scores of British holiday makers who suddenly flocked towards the screen hoping to hear the merest murmur of the English language. And how they had trooped away, faces down-cast, bitterly disappointed that it was only the title song to some obscure American programme, badly dubbed into Spanish. It seemed that everyone was desperate for even the tiniest snippet of Britain. How life has changed! Now we can be as British as we wish, with our televisions tuned to our regional channels and our newspapers readily available and up to date. It’s only when we step outside, are hit by the heat and hear those Spanish voices that we realize that we’re not ‘home’. It can be a shock that is often repeated, because some of us have cocooned ourselves from the fact that we’ve made the big move. But not all of us. There are, of course, those more resilient and adventurous types who have whole-heartedly embraced the Spanish culture, learned the language, and become valuable members of society. Oh to be classed as one of those! That’s the hope at least…
For the time being we had ‘our friend’ at the bottom of the street. That first morning of work, when I gingerly stepped out into the morning light, he was there. A small, stumpy hand was raised in welcome, and a fine spray of bread crumbs accompanied his rasping, “Holá, buenas dia’!” It was my turn to grumble a reply, feeling far too delicate and far too nervous to enter into any form of conversation that consisted of more than one word! I wondered if he had been ‘on patrol’ all night; perhaps he never slept. I know I hadn’t the night before, worried sick about starting my new job. And whilst he was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I felt that my eyes were full of grit and my head full of thick, condensed soup. How I longed to be back in bed, safe and warm. Instead I was about to begin another new journey and embark upon another new adventure. This one, at least, would pay the bills. Also, it is the job I love, the job that I had been doing for the past sixteen years of my life. It wasn’t this that was my concern. No, it was a single aspect of my job that was causing me such consternation. Being a teacher, children are the most important element of my profession. But these children were like no others I have ever encountered. There were twenty three of them…and they were all Spanish!
