Just saying hello

As well as steak and kidney pudding I approve of all sorts of British customs. Stiff upper lip suits me very well. So when people in the UK suddenly started saying "Love you" as they said goodbye on the phone and began to hug people every time they met I felt a bit discomfited.

In Spain, when men greet, they shake hands. This I approve of; friendly but with an appropriate distance. With women it's cheek kissing. Now this I don't really like but at least there is a routine to it. Right cheek to right cheek first, left cheek to left cheek second. I do it clumsily, I fail to make the appropriate kissy kissy sound but I can just about manage it. Well most times.

Yesterday, we arrived in Ciudad Rodrigo after a couple of nights away from either home - stop overs in Toledo and Salamanca - where we were greeted by Maggie's landlady. I nearly knocked both of us out when something went wrong with the right cheek kissing business.

Carefully done

Just to add to the fun of the house being gutted a water pipe leading to our property sprang a leak. The hole was on the right side of the water meter (for us) so we rang up the team from the Town Hall who came and fixed it within a couple of hours. We no longer have a neat little "house" around our meter and there was quite a bit of rubble left behind but no leak.

Just a bit of moaning

The new roof is going on OK. The neighbour may have taken pity on us and hasn't been around to complain for nearly two weeks now though we decided against going to a village "bring food to share" event on Saturday coming just in case we bumped into him.

No it's just to moan about the state of what remains of the house. The Ecuadorian workmen, who work very much to Spanish "rules" are just so destructive. We have smashed doors, smashed tiles and lots of damage to incidental items like electrical wiring, hosepipes, wheelbarrows and in fact anything that gets in the way. They never cover anything or move it to one side. It just adds to the despair of living in filthy squalor.

The roof covering is nearly finished now, most of the tiles are in place though there is lots of cementing and plastering still to come. Today when we came home we found that they had stared to remove the old cement from the front of the house to put a different, and hopefully, better facing on the house. I was amazed what was underneath. I'd always presumed we lived in a stone shed but it looks as though the house is actually built from old bits of rubble!

There is no way that it will be complete before Maggie has to return to Ciudad Rodrigo ready to start work on 1 September.

Changing money - just say no!

I've recently been using an UK debit card to pull Euros from Spanish hole in the wall machines. The UK account is, obviously enough, in Sterling.

So I go through the process, push in the card, choose a language, what sort of transaction, how much etc. Eventually a screen message comes up that reads something like 300€ will cost you £245 in Sterling including commissions and fees. Do you wish to proceed? The obvious answer is "yes", of course I wish to proceed. If I were to say "no" the implication is that the transaction would be cancelled. Nonetheless the better answer is "no".

When you answer "no" the transaction continues anyway and the conversion between Pounds and Euros works in your favour because you buy rather than sell or is it the other way around? And we are not talking pennies here. The average rate offered on the screen is around £245 to buy 300€ but the actual cost has averaged out at around £237 when I have answered "no". That's eight quid a pop in the bank's favour.

If I didn't know that banks were honourable and upstanding institutions constantly striving to improve services for their customers I'd be ready to classify this as a bit of a dirty trick designed to confuse people exchanging money abroad.

Solar panels and vines

We were in Jumilla today. Now Jumilla is over the border into Murcia the next region along but what applies there almost certainly applies here.

Jumilla is in the middle of its fiesta to celebrate the grape harvest. On Saturday everyone will be drenched in red wine but not yet. Instead we saw a display of decorated floats.

I was expecting the usual carnival floats but these were quite different. Each trailer was being used for a display of some sort. One was about the narrow gauge railway (so ugly, slow and noisy it was named after the cicada or chicharra) others showed the processes related to the traditional main crops of the region - grapes for wine, olives for oil and wheat to give both grain and the grass used for weaving baskets, shoes etc. Most were a tribute to the "old ways" but two featured vineyards giving way to fields full of solar panels to generate electricity.

One display had a series of notices saying that the wine industry was under threat, that the only answer was to introduce new varieties (to compete with the Southern Hemisphere wines) by grafting on new strains but that the most profitable graft was to rip up the vines and plant solar panels.

Odd really, Maggie and I always think the solar panels are good, there are some going up just past our Bodega in Culebrón for instance, but it just shows there are two sides to every story.

Life goes on

The workmen didn't turn up yesterday so nothing happened roofwise. Today they were back and we now have complete cover over the whole house and the steel mesh that forms the key for the layer of cement that will go on next is also in place. They've also demolished some more internal walls. The neighbour dispute has settled down even if it hasn't gone away.

Considering all we have to do all day is sit around in the sun or go wherever we please life seems quite hard. We're camping in our own house, we're dirty most of the time, everything we own is covered in dust and a bit inaccessible so that jaunts into town or anywhere else come to that seem a bit pointless - as though we are killing time rather than doing anything positive. There are fiestas in nearly every nearby town, ther's the Expo in Zaragoza that we intended to go to but instead we're staying here and haemorrhaging cash. The idea of enjoying ourselves till 2am and then getting out of the way for the workmen at 8am doesn't hold much attraction somehow and just clearing off seems like a dereliction of duty.

It's lovely weather too we should be really enjoying ourselves, cool drinks on the terrace, a trip to the coast. But with the temperature hovering in the mid 30s (at 11am last night it was still 28 degrees and down in Murcia this afternoon the car thermometer read 41 degrees) it can be a bit enervating without easy access to shade and cool drinks.

We still have tea though so it's not all bad.

Step 7: I hate to be right

The tiles that form the platform started to go on today. There is now a weatherproof covering over about three quarters of the house. Good news eh? But now for the bad.

Following the problem with the neighbour yesterday our architect came to have a look. Basically he said that the neighbour had no room for complaint and that we should just keep going. But when the neighbour came to his house this evening it got nasty. I managed not to raise my voice or swear but I did walk away. The neighbour said he would prefer to talk to Maggie as I was unreasonable. A few minutes later Maggie walked away; she too is unreasonable. We couldn't get him to say what he wanted us to do. We left it that he was going to go to the planning authorities on Monday morning and get the work stopped.

Maggie and I were in the slough of despair. I went into town to buy cigars. Nothing like inhaling smoke to make me cough and feel better. Whilst I was there I decided that I had to try again. If the man did go to complain all I could foresee was extra expense and potentially months of trying to live in the shell of the house.

By the end of the conversation we had a truce, we shook hands, I even managed a feeble joke that he laughed at. He wants a column building to support the beam - stupid and unnecessary but doable - and, of course he wants his interior decoration sorting out.

I was quite proud of myself.

Step 6: Forwards and backwards

We are still living in dust and grime but this was probably the moment when things started to go the right way. The big red thing is one of two 5 tonne steel beams being lifted into place by a crane that extended 25 metres over our garden. The beams will form the apex of the roof.

The edging that will support the concrete beams that form the ribs to this steel backbone are loosely in place. We are rebuilding rather than demolishing.

Yesterday, when the old beam had been removed, the builder said he was concerned that he had knocked a hole through into the neighbours bedroom! The neighbour came to complain about that today and we apologised and said we would repair the damage. But when the bloke said that the beam should not be supported by the adjoining wall ("What if I choose to take that wall out?" he asked) I pointed out that the old beam had been in the same position for some 100 years or more and that it was as much our wall as his. I foresee trouble though.

Better and Better

The house is now reduced to a shell. The devastation is complete. Maggie is really down about it and it takes some doing for me to stay calm. I keep telling myself that it will all be alright on the night. There is rubble everywhere, the paintwork inside the house is covered in dust, everything is covered in dust. We are reduced to wandering the streets or sitting out on the deckchairs amidst the piles of rubbish and tools. The house is just four filthy walls. We are sleeping in the back bedroom but we have to clamber over rubble to get in. We're as dirty as the house.

Bit of a blow when the architect came by and said we couldn't use the old, attractive wooden central beam or replace it with concrete beams. It has to be an RSJ, a steel beam, another little cost of 1,100e.

And we no longer have a working phone line so I'm doing this in a local Ukranian Internet cafe. Difficult to upload photos so just text for the moment.

A touch of extra joy too. Yesterday we went to a country bar to sit by their pool. I left the Mini in the more or less empty car park but that didn't stop someone bumping into it. They clobbered the driver's door which now has several small dents and scratches. I asked at the bodyshop today and we're only talking a couple of hundred euros (less than the excess). Thank heaven for Spanish prices. An expensive drink though and sad to see my 'new' motor bashed up.

Step 5:Terrorfication

Maggie tells me that the noun from terrify is terror but I was looking for something stronger!

We basically now have no roof. The foreman tells us that several of the wooden beams are completely rotten - one collapsed when one of the workmen stood on it.

There remains some semblance of order because our suspended ceiling is still in place so we don´t have views of open skies but the house is stripped. Nearly all the furniture gone, piled high in the garage or in the corridor to the utility room. It really is quite terrifying looking at the place - dust and rubble everywhere, the ribs of the house laid bare, cables hanging loose from tattered masonry. It has to be a matter of faith that it will all go back together again and hopefully look even better.

We´ll be camping out in the bunkhouse at the back for the next couple of weeks. We still have access to the kettle though and that´s all we Brits need to sustain us in troubled times. Or that´s what Violet Carson maintained.

Step4: Demolition

"What's that noise?" "It must be the bin men". It was 8.35am, and, being as we are both on holiday, we were still in bed.

It wasn't the bin men. Our builders had turned up. They have started to demolish the roof. We are on our way.

A bit of a damp squib?

Each year, from the 1st of August, for ten days, Pinoso celebrates its "Fiestas Patronales" - the fiesta in honour of its patron saint.

There are three basic elements to Fiesta: the church based ones: masses and religious processions; the official programme ranging from firework displays, theatre, live music to free paella in the streets and the fair which includes a funfair, market stalls and barracas featuring DJs and modern dance music.

Normally the streets of Pinoso are awash with people out for a good time. We went along for the opening ceremony last night and we were surprised how few people there were outside the Town Hall to listen, we thought the streets were decorated a little more sparsely than usual too. We went on to the stalls where lots of the stall holders looked bored, they were so quiet. For the firework display we were as far forward as anyone could get and there was nobody within 3 metres of us so thin on the ground was the crowd and in the Municipal Gardens we were able to get a chair easily to watch the dancers. We didn't even have a any problem getting a beer.

Maybe it's the financial crisis, maybe people are getting too sophisticated for the local fiesta or maybe it's just my perception of the crowds.

P.S. We were back on Saturday night to see a singer called Soraya (tight frock and songs from the 80s) and there were lots more people out and about.