the battle of the brambles

This was the week to start the battle of cleaning up the overgrowth around the finca. We have learnt that we live at Finca la ala Maida, the farm of the poplars. What a lovely address. Unfortunatley it has not been pruned in about 5 years so the undergrowth is massive. There are several trees that are completely enshrouded in brambles, as well as the whole front wall being invisible behind rose bushes, various other shoots and even more masses of brambles. The zarza, as they are called here, are not like Canadian or English blackberry which have a nice sedate thorn to them. Zarza have things that are about 1/4 to 1/2 inch long and they fester horribly if they stick in you, so we were really looking forward to the war! Simon set about pruning the walnut, loquat and olive trees in front of the house while Fran attacked the undergrowth. She discovered that cutting into the bases of the thorny stuff and then using an old broom to pull it back on itself, worked the whole lot into a giant ball that could then be rolled down onto the bottom terrace. After several days work, we had a beauiful view, a new rastrillo (rake), aching backs and could actually see the wall in front of the house.

Aracena weekend

Saturday dawned wet and windy. We trooped into Cortegana at about midday to have lunch with the rents and then set off to Aracena to play at the Casa Noble. This time it was both Simon and Fran. A Spanish audience is far far more interactive than a Canadian one! We were playing in front of the bar,that gave us about 3 feet clearance, which was filled with 3 rather drunk guys who were trying to chatup the group of women from Seville at the next table, and who were having a whale of a time. They clapped, they danced, they shouted, and at one point, one of them sang the most extraordinary fandango. What was really funny was that a little later on, a guy came in from one of the other rooms. He wanted to congratulte Simon on he fact that he sang an excellent fandango. He was amazed that as Simon seemed to speak very little Spanish, he had a wonderful grasp of the fandango. When we finally worked out what he was saying, everyone had a huge laugh at the fact that it was actually the other guy, who had sat down behind Simon. There was also a couple from Seville who kept phoning everyone they knew and telling them to come down to the bar to hear us play. It was Melanie's birthday on Saturday and so we all toasted her with hibiscus flower infused Veuve Cliquot, never to be turned down, and had a very merry evening. We wandered back to the Manley's though crowds of turistas standing about in the road and enjoying the 'ambiente' of rural life. Sunday morning was even more rainy and foggy. Mum and Dad Light picked us up at 1 to go and have lunch with Peter and MJ, a great couple who have a small holding in Alagar. They are very good cooks and have rebuilt their own house, so we are hoping to pick their brains on all things homestead. They have a magnificent garden that produces most of what they need for vegetables through the year and are very handy people. After a wonderful lunch of handmade ravioli and garden fresh soup and salad, we all trooped into Aracena for the night's gig. Obra was packed that evening and we got to meet a whole bunch of expats who are all living and working in this area. Thankfully they are all people who are in Spain to live the Spanish life, mostly teaching and farming, and are a really nice group. The couple from Seville also showed up again, Reyes and Alejandro, and we got their contact information for the city. Alejandro has a contact at a bar in Seville that he thinks we would be a hit at and would like to show us the city next time we are there. In all it was a very good networking weekend. We returned to Cortegana to discover that the key wouldn't open the front door, which rather put a damper on things. Mum went and asked various neighbors for help, and as we were waiting for the carpenter to finish his dinner, Simon had the bright idea of climbing up to the balcony and trying to see if he could get the sliding door of its rails. We solicited the help of Angela,who lives next door, and her step ladder, and with some scrambling Simon was up and over onto the balcony. This is not easy as the balcony is probably 13 ft off the ground. He managed to get the door of the rails and minutes later we were inside. Unfortunatley, we weren't able to get hold of the carpenter before he left home and he showed up minutes later with 3 old guys in tow. We thanked them profusely and promised to buy them a drink next time we were in the bar. One of the great things about life here is that people are always willing to help out and if they can't fix it they probably know someone who can. We packed up the bags, grabbed our keys and trudged over the hills back to the finca. A nice hot bath, a glass of vino tinto later and we were snuggled up warm in our own bed.

wet wednesday

We discovered that it is rather unsettling to sleep in a place that is absolutley quiet. We both woke up a couple of times in the night to discover that it was the other one who was making the noise and there was no noise what so ever to be heard. No generator, no cars, no people, no animals, absolute silence. Very nice but also quite unnerving to begin with. We made toast in a frying pan, actually works quite well, had coffee and then set about turning dead olive trees into kindeling. There is a large quantity of dead fall all over the property that we are working on collecting all together and breaking down, as it makes the property look rather sad. After a couple of hours of this we decided it was time to have a bath and hike into town to get water and supplies, read vino tinto and veggies. We haven't had a chance to get the water from the borehole tested yet, so we have to carry drinking water in from the Coretgana fuenta. Unfortunatley by the time we reached town and had had lunch with the rents, it had started to rain. We hung out for a couple of hours and headed back to the finca at about 7pm, by which time it was pouring, yes you Vancouverites we are no longer lapping up the sunshine. By the time we had got over the camino real we were soaked to the skin and rather cold. Simon started a roaring fire downstairs, and got the lovely little wood stove in the kitchen going and in no time flat, after a good meal, we were toasty and warm. We had found what we thought was a drying rack in the 'shed' (the spare room that houses the generator) but it turned out that it was actually a wine rack. After some ingeneous reworking, we had a very unique drying rack tacked up on the ceiling over the wooden stove which holds all our clothes quite nicely. We set up a table in front of the fire, played some more crib and had a very pleasant evening in our own front room. Thursday flew by in a haze of cloud, rain, warm baths and good reading. It is very easy to get into the flow of late nights, lots of food, hot baths, reading and little else. Aah what a hard life. On Friday we made the pilgramage into town again for supplies and some shopping. We realised that living out in the campo with no neighbors in sight or shout is not a good thing when we are hefting axes and working on a huge slope, so it was time to give in and buy the dreaded cell phone, or movil, as they are here. We collected Mum and headed out to Todomestico to the Vodaphone desk. We bought our very first phone from an Angel. Yes really, his name was Angel and he got a hug kick out of the fact that he was selling us our first phone at 36 years old.We hope that is a good sign. The fact that the phone cost 35 euros, and we got 22 and then 7 euros in free credits, means that in all we paid 6 euros for the phone. Not a bad deal. It is an emergence phone, so no calls unless it is important text messages like 'Do you need anything from the grocery store?'. Well as we are in a pretty remote location we shouldn't run out of credits too soon, and as long as we occasinally run th generatorwe will be able to call for help if we need it.

Pruning and Huelva

After getting back fairly late on Sunday night we didn't manage to crawl out of bed until just after 11 a.m. Not sure when the last time we achieved this was, probably last week as the Light house runs on a quite a different time scale as school happens at night. It felt great but also that half the day had been wasted. So after rushed daily ablutions we scrambled over the hill to the finca. Simon was eager to get going with some tree work on the property, as he had recently bought himself a rather swish pruning saw. Unfortunately the some 80 odd trees have not seen a saw blade for over 5 yrs. This could keep Simon employed for most of the winter trying to thin out and coax all the fruit bearers back to life.On the positive side we will not be lacking in firewood or for that matter something to do. Fran also got into the swing of things by tackling one of the many bramble bushes that are choking out the trees. Spanish brambles are unlike their English or North American counterparts. They look similar, but the barbs on them are unrelenting. If they get a hold of you, watch out! We have since invested in really thick, arm length, suede gardening gloves. Fortunately in this area most of the Ferreterias (hardware stores) are geared to either agriculture or hunting, so our needs are fairly well taken care of cheaply. On our way back into Cortegana we once again stopped in at El Trueco for a wee bottle 'o' wine and got to meet Christine's Mum, who also lives in Cortegana. Very nice lady. We were heading out of town at an ungodly hour of the morning on Tuesday so as we could register in Heulva as 'Extranjeros'. Ahh yet another immigration building we had to line up outside of for hours on end. In order for us to live and work in Spain we needed to register as Spanish 'residente'. Tuesday morning we were up very very early as we had to go into Huelva, the main political center for the province. Seville is the largest city, at about 2 million people, but everything important to do with government happens in Huelva. We had to go and stand in an alley just off to the side of Christopher Columbus' house. It was a rather drafty morning but thankfully there was no rain. It was the usual immigration line of desperate, rather seedy looking folk who all jump everytime the security guy does anything. We decided that they keep you in these lines purely to make you look desperate and seedy. Finally after an hour and a half, we got to go inside and talk to the information guy at the desk.'Diga me' was rather abruptly hurled at us. Mum launched into her spiel as to who we were and what we needed. This is not what we needor what we get . Unfortunately it turns out that we get work and then register, as this would expidiate our claim (things are beginning to ring bells again). The journey was not wasted as we now have an appointment in-get this-April, to apply to register. We figure this means we get to stand in the other queue labelled 'Con Cista' for about half of the time we did, and get envious glances thrown our way, so that's not so bad. We were also told that as Fran is a really really foreign foreigner, we have to get our marriage registered with the Huelva Civil records office. We gladly fled the packed immigration room and went and had most excellent tostada and cafe con leche at a wine bar round the corner. Duely fortified, we set out to find the local judiciary building. After a couple of sets of directions from obliging security guys, wefound the right place round the back of the police station. There was a huge crowd out front, who we think were demonstrating about being stuck on the highway for hours after an accident, who all had pages stuck to their shirt fronts and were waving Andalusian flags. We love the fact that if people here don't like things they will stand up and shout about it. The Spanish are generally a very very vocal people anyway, so any ordinary conversation is generally loud and voluble, and when they have a beef, there is no stopping them. We navigated them to go through the security gates with 3 security guards, who after laughing at Fran's inability to get through the gate properly, sent us off to find the recors office. We joind another line, this time with 3 rather agrivated ladies who were complaining, very loudly,about the fact that the office was open to the public from 9-12.30, yet they were not letting the public in. When we finally got in, another hour and a half later, Mum explained to the woman at the desk what we needed to do. She just looked at us as though we were mad and said she had never heard of such a crazy thing. We have been married for 15 years. Why on earth would we need to reregister our marriage? Who was this crazy immigration man who told us this crazy thing? She finally decided that Juan, the more senior clerk would have to deal with this as she had no clue. We stood to one side till He was finished with his client, and then Mum launched into the whole thing again. Juan shook his head, took our passports and marriage certificate and left the room, came back and went into another room, came back again and said that nobody had ever heard of doing this kind of crazy thing. He would have to get hold of the judge, who was in court with the guy we had seen in handcuffs coming down the hall an hour before, and then maybe they could tell us what to do. Mum got his phone number and has to call him next week. Aaah ith that finally done, we set off to find the english book shop to buy us a spanish workbook. Got to laugh at that one. We then had to go find a music shop as Simon broke 4 strings in 3 songs on Sunday night and you can't buy acoustic strings in the home of flamenco. Turns out that was a bust too.He will have to go online or get Shaun to ship some out ( hint hint if you are reading this, they are DR acoustic RPM12 12 16 24 32 42 54 medium phosphor bronze rare) We were absolutley famished so asked a nice old guy in a wheelchair outside a cafe if they were open for lunch. It was a tiny place called La Graviota. We ordered sandwiches and vino tinto and all of a sudden the place was filled with Policia Local. Seems that it is the local police hangout, which always bodes well for the food and prices. We had very nice bocadillo and watched the news about the fact that half of northern Spain is buried under snow and has no power or heat. Everyone is finding this to be a very cold November, which we are quite pleased about as after Calgary it is nothing! It was then time to set out back to Cortegana as Mum had to teach at 4pm. Unlucky her, as we were both very tired,and couldn't imagine having to get through 6 hours of noisy kids after our day long adventure. We packed up some clothes from the house, grabbed some food from Dia and set off across the hills back to the finca. After nice game of crib and some pasta and sauce in front of our own fire, we gratefully hit the sack for the first time in our own(ish) bed in the finca.

Turning Cirle's Initiation

Saturday was gig day. Simon spent the morning worrying about playing at La Casa Noble, while Mum and Fran went and did the weekly grocery shop together for the first time in years, most fun! At about 4pm we set off for Aracena. After the ironing of the clothes,we walked into town for the first official gig in years. There was a group of people in the main room of the Obra (hotel bar)when we arrived, which boded well for at least having some kind of audience. The entire affair was very informal much to Simon's delight. Some of the crowd were part of the Aracena Chorus and did great things for Simon's ego by telling him he sang 'muy claro'. Things went well and he was asked to perform on the Sunday also. Sunday morning came all to soon as it seems to be getting harder and harder to get out of bed these days. After a quick breakfast we headed to Los Marines to visit the Fiesta de Mostos. Mostos as far as we can gather is an immature wine, kinda cloudy and very potent, check your license at the door. Unfortunately as with most Spanish festivals, there never seems to be any sort of organised time and we arrived a little to early as most of the stalls were just beginning to set up. We did a quick tour of the village and then headed back to the Manley residence to prepare for the second gig. This was also recieved well and promise of future payment was made by the owner :)) Since then a deal has been struck and 4 more nights of playing have been booked. These will be our first earned euros, which all being said and done is none to shabby. So conludes the weekend.