Nighttime stealth

Being old, getting a good night's sleep is a bit of a problem. We recently bought a new, expensive matress, one of those memory foam jobs or as they are call them here viscoelasticas. It was like a solid lump of earth with absolutely no give in it. A recipe for aches and pains. It seemed to be worse for Maggie than me but neither of us was happy.

Working has one big advantage over not working. I get paid. With this new found wealth I decided to buy another matress but Maggie had already made it clear that she wasn't happy with simply wasting the money we'd paid on the new viscoelastica. She was for toughing it out.

Cowardice and stealth seemed to be the order of the day. So I arranged with my old boss to buy another matress, a mix of springs and memory foam, at cost price. Delivery became a little complicated but I found someone with a van and I spirited the new matress into the house whilst Maggie was out. The new matress to our bed, the old but new matress to the guest bedroom and the now redundant guest matress to the garage - carefully stored should it need to be brought out of retirement.

Maggie didn't notice the change as she went to bed. This morning she complained of aching bones.

I suspect that the conclusion to this story will not be to my credit.

On the doorstep but new to me

There's a programme on the telly here called Cuéntame como pasó which has followed the story of a family through the Franco years and into the dawn of the new democracy. Two of the actors from the show have been eating their way around Spain on another TV programme. This week they were in Alicante our home province.

In Elda the screen brothers went to an, apparently, famous restaurant called La Sirena. I'd never heard of it but we checked it out today. There it was only a handful of metres from the bus station that Maggie and I used several times on our trips to and from Ciudad Rodrigo. It looks promising - crisp and modern, definitely worth a try.

The lads also popped into a chocolate shop called Torreblanca which (according to lots of web reviews) is the best chocolate shop in Spain. The bloke who owns it made the cake for the last big Royal Wedding. I'd never heard of it even though it's just 25 minutes from our front door. We bought a few cakey chocolatey things there this afternoon which I can still taste as I type this entry. I thought they were good without being exceptional. Maybe some of the 3€ a throw was because they came in a nice gold box with an interesting typeface!

Then there's the ice cream. Helado de Mantecado for which Santa Pola is, again apparently, famous. Now Maggie and I lived in Santa Pola for six or seven months. We never tried this ice cream. One of our pals has lived in the town for nearly eight years. I texted him today - "Where do you get this ice cream?" I asked - "New one on me," he said, "I'll investigate."

In the process of my Internet searches for information about restaurants, chocolates and ice cream I came across a review of a restaurant in the next village down the road, Chinorlet. We went to the Chinorlet Fiesta in August and we saw in the New Year in the village yet we didn't know this restaurant existed.

Do you reckon it's a product of being in a foreign land, is it hype or do we just go around with our ears and eyes closed?

A sort of Foxtrot

The Post Office sent me a text message to say that there was something I needed to sign for waiting in our PO Box. Usually this is good news, often something ordered from Amazon. But we weren't expecting anything and a letter or packet that needs to be signed for can be bad too - a traffic fine, a tax demand.

Over the counter it looked official, bad, but then I realised that it was for a friend who had used our PO box number as a temporary measure when he was between homes. I was relieved.

As far as I know when non residents, and our friend still maintains his UK residence, sell a house a percentage of the selling fee is held back to cover the tax payable on the sale by the notary who handles the transaction. The Land Registry people eventually arrive at the official figure and then either ask for more cash or pay back the difference. We guessed that was what the paperwork was about as well as formalising the land registry entry in the new names. It may have been something completely different though because without a dictionary to deal with the technical and archaic language used in official documents we couldn't be sure.

What I thought was interesting and so Spanish was that the couple involved "completed" on the house nearly four years ago. All that time to process the sale. Even more Spanish was that the couple had 10 days to appeal the ruling.

Slow, slow, quick quick, slow.

Bump

Someone bashed into Maggie's car whilst it was parked down in Cartagena. The damage wasn't significant in that we didn't spot it for a couple of days but there were dings and dents in the front wing and bonnet. The bumper was hanging loose too.

We talked to the insurance company and the claim process was simple enough but in the end it worked out cheaper to get the bumps fixed at the local bodyshop in Pinoso than lose the 210€ excess. Indeed the prices were so low that we asked the bodyshop to fix a couple of other dings and scrapes in the car.

Somehow I can't ever imagine that it would be cheaper in the UK to fix a car yourself than let the insurance take care of it.