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.

What's the time?

When only the rich had pocket watches and lots of people worked in the fields having a chiming public clock was an important asset for any town.

Last week we bumped into a chap called Manolo Telegrafista who is the custodian for Pinoso's clocktower, La Torre del Reloj. It's one of Pinoso's few "monuments" and Manolo asked us if we'd like to have a look. He suggested a group of about four or five so Maggie, a couple of pals and myself met Manolo today at 11.30 the idea being that we'd get the maximum number of chimes.

It was a good visit. Manolo told us all about the builders, how bits had been salvaged from earlier clocks and he included lots of little human touches such as the notches carved in the metalwork to help the innumerate builders put things together in the right sequence for instance. In fact he was keen to tell us about anything that he could think as we gazed over the townscape and countryside beyond from our vantage point 26metres higher than the highest spot in the town.

I forgot to take a picture of the outside of the tower when we were there which is why the time is wrong.

We should have known

Electric prices in Spain have just gone up. The overnight, low tarrif has been abolished. Bad news, but no, good news. Poor people with limited electricity supply no longer have to pay the standing charge.

Electricity supply in the countryside in Spain is a bit hit and miss. Pinoso, the town, didn't get electric till 1974 and the supply was very limited. Most houses had supplies of just 1.1kw - enough for the lights but not for much more. Over the years of course the situation improved and the standard now is to have a supply of 5.5kw - still low by UK standards but useable enough.

The cable that supplies power to our house isn't thick enough to carry 5.5kw and our contract is for just 2.2kw. The standing charge for the supply is based on the contracted power so we pay less for our 2.2kw than someone who has a contract for more.

One of the changes with the new increased charges was that people who contracted less than 3.3kw would no longer have any standing charge at all. It looked like the increases were actually going to benefit us. There's a catch though. When we had the house rewired the electricians put in a fuse board that allowed us to draw more power than we were actually contracted for. Effectively we had a beefier power supply than we were paying for. And Iberdrola, our power supplier, isn't stupid. They know there are lots of people like us so one of the conditions of the "no standing charge" is that there has to be a circuit breaker fitted that would limit the amount of power we could draw. As we like tea, and need to boil the water, we wont be getting the circuit breaker fitted. So we'll continue to have to pay the standing charge. Phooey!

Step 3: The materials

We still haven't got the permission to go ahead with our roof repair but everyone seems certain that we can start without it! Anyway our builder, my employer, Charlie, has ordered the bulk of the materials and a chap with a lorry came by and dropped them off this afternoon.

It can't be long now before they start to rip the roof off. Lucky we bought that tent to go to Benicassim.

Pestilence

I've always thought that the thing that sold me our house here in Culebrón was the tree lined driveway. A gentle arch of trees. But the pines are going brown and dropping needles and Maggie and I are worried that they have some sort of disease and will have to be cut down.

We've just had some people from the environmental department at the Town Hall out to have a look and they have taken some samples away. Let's hope it's something fixable.

Just like the olden days

I'm not the organiser, I'm a facilitator. What we are looking for is your ideas. At this stage we won't be judgemental about those ideas. Those were the sort of phrases that Carolina, the woman who was looking after the session used as she set things going. It was like a time warp. I have been involved in stuff like that for more than half of my life.

I'd gone back, with Maggie this time, to the next meeting about implementing Local Agenda 21. We were asked to wear stickers with our names on. We had an agenda and a time-scale. We were asked to write our ideas on bits of paper and as we read them out they were stuck onto the wall beneath an appropriate heading like Education, Environment etc.

To be fair it was a good do. There were another couple of Brits there and though our Spanish had it's dodgy moments we all contributed something. Maggie mentioned drains and street lights and educational opportunity, Laurie did abandoned animals and institutional racism whilst Manolo wanted a museum and Jesús wanted to introduce a community bank and workshops in traditional local crafts. And Carolina kept the whole thing in order and to time.

We felt we'd earned the drinks and tapas we went for afterwards.