Life in Culebrón

Despite knowing that there are a bunch of men knocking things down and building things up outside our living room window it's amazing how many times we've gone to open the door to a building that no longer exists to get the vacuum cleaner! We're a bit unsettled and, probably because of that, things seem to be coming in clumps. The demolition denied us hot water and laundry facilities but, thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, we can now shower and launder. We also had a problem with Maggie's car and it's off the road. There again, someone stepped up and loaned us a motor for a bit. In amongst the general upheaval the heating in our house packed up. It turned out to be a blocked chimney starving the burner of air which is what Maggie had suggested it might be right from the get go! Once the fitter had the burner working again we needed to get a chimney sweep. The bloke who came didn't sound like Dick Van Dyke nor did he have any small boys to s...

When I came home that May afternoon back in May 2008 a bit of the roof had fallen in. The immediate cause was a combination of heavy rain and the heavy boots of Iberdrola workmen walking on our roof. The underlying, and uninsured, cause was rotten cedar wood beams. The roof couldn't be patched and, at one point, the house was no more than four scarred and unsteady walls with the floor piled high with debris. When we first moved in to the Culebrón house back in 2005 we had some serious work done. The sort that knocks down walls, digs trenches in the floor and leaves bundles of electrical cables sprouting flower like from the gouged walls.  On the other side of an interior patio we have a bedroom separate from the main part of the house. Two or three years ago we had the roof on that replaced and we had a serious remodelling of the interior space done at the same time. Paying for work and living in dust seems to have been one of the hallmarks of our time in Culebrón...

The stories of huge water bills in Spain are legion. Not for the cost of the water, which is usually very reasonable, but for undiscovered leaks. Everyone in Spain has a water meter. Leaks on the supply side, before the water meter, are the problem of the supplier but, once past the meter, the problem is yours. The water supply to our house is not sophiticated. A plastic tube is buried in a shallow trench under the dirt road that passes the house and a spur brings water to our meter. Our supply is no more than a thick plastic hose buried only inches under the garden. When it gets cold we often lose water for a while until the pipes unfreeze. Because of this I check the water meter regularly to make sure that the consumption seems reasonable and normal. The past couple of times the reading has been a bit high. Six or seven cubic metres instead of the usual three or four. I didn't worry too much. We've run the irrigation system on the garden a couple of times and there is a...