Ugh .....

An hour ago we landed.

Three hours before that we had been sat in 25C, cloudless and windless Spainish Mediterranean weather.

The owner of the iPad has already left to go skiing but not before she had cleaned, hoovered and restocked the fridge  with nice things. Tea and saffron cake ..... mmmmmmmmmm. Masymas didn't have that.

The box of post is daunting but the secretary will sort it. I have phone calls to make.The wifi is on and there are a few photos to copy and sort.

It's grey, cold, breezy and it's raining. Later it's going to get worse. Gmail will shut my accounts down as someone is attempting to access them from England. They have already told me that they had stopped someone accessing them from Alicante, Spain. That was last night in the hotel. Why do they keep telling me that they'll shut them down when they did that on 2nd January?

Once I've pressed "send" I shall log out of the iPad and sometime today, tomorrow, whenever I shall start emailing gmail to reset the mess they've made out of my accessing my accounts.

Without the iPad none of this blog could have happened. The iPad has been a revelation. For a PC person that's quite something to say.

Life is suddenly so much more complicated. And dull. And cold. And wet. And windy.

Back home then.

Last night

We are now exactly back where we started five weeks ago.
Not in the same room but only three floors lower.
Almost the same temperature, too, 15C but tonight we are wearing our fleeces then we were definitely not.
Then we were fairly ignorant of the ways of the Spanish although we thought otherwise.
Our experiences had been built up over weeks of package holidays over years and years.

Tonight we strolled the Tapas Bars, ate some amazing things, fortunately we have come to recognise some and are brave enough to try the others. Even the black stuff with orange sauce dribbling out from under it with added olives was a delight.

Down in the more fashionable parts we could have paid three or four times as much as we noted earlier in our perambulations through that more fashionable district. As it was a few "pints" and umpteen Tapas and we have dined and drunk for much less than the fish and chips we'll probably have tomorrow night.

Spanish Spain is a delight. And the locals love it when "inglaterras" try to adopt their ways and customs no matter how unsuccessfully. One bonus of being foreigners is that they bring the Tapas tray to you first when it's full so you get first choice. We learnt earlier to look at what goes first but to be honest I don't think there's anything you wouldn't try and I suspect that even the octopus doesn't look like an octopus! Thinking about it the black stuff may well have been squid fried in squid ink!

We still can't speak the language but we get by and would get by better if they would only speak slower but we intend to learn a bit more of it just like we meant to last year, the year before, too and thinking about it, every year before that for at least the last decade. Just as well so many of them speak brilliant English and the ones who don't can still speak English far better than I can speak Spanish.

This whole experience has been most excellent and I could quite easily do it all over again starting from now. However, we're booked on a flight tomorrow and if everything continues to happen as smoothly as it has thus far we'll be getting wet and blown about by mid afternoon.

Can't wait.

Travel is such sweet sorrow

1415 local and the trip to the hotel was magnificent. 22C when we left, 21C as we arrived but getting up to street level from underground supplied us with a shock.
Coats reapplied, senses readjusted.
I can report that Alicante is currently shrouded in fog. Right down to street level, eight stories up and we're in the clouds.
Last time we were here, exactly five weeks ago we were booked in and that was that.
Today we were offered extra keys and given two wifi user tickets and thanked for coming back. They were sorry that the room we had previously was unavailable but, hey, no worries.
So, get one's breath back and it's down and out.
Pizza, I think.

The bags are packed we're ready to go.

Albeit with something we could describe as a singular lack of enthusiasm and maybe just a little sadness. Howver, my ovewhelming emotion is one of gratitude for having had this experience. Now.

Emails this morning are all about the results of the weather. I am sitting on a balcony overlooking a palm fringed beach as drinkers and eaters idle their way through the cafe's offerings below.

It's 1130 local and I have been aware of the video clips of wind, rain and mayhem. I watched on the iPad out of the corner of an eye as I was really drinking in our last few moments of sun, sea, sand, palms, windless cloudless well over 20C weather. Even the surf is gently putting sand back from where it was taken last week.

This is a most gloriuos day and in an hour we'll be in a carriage heading slowly south and tomorrow we'll be blown home to all that awaits. I'm advised that it'll be best to carry the raincoats as we may need them when we land tomorrow. Rain? Cold wind? Grey skies? If it wasn't for that iPad I could easily have forgotten all about those.

Someone close has just looked on the laptop and noted that this apartment is not yet booked up until April .....

If the hotel we are overnighting at has free wifi that could be a temptation, although we probably need to get back even if it's just to stop blog writing.

This has been a wonderful place to stay and having to go is more of an ordeal than I expected, even the lady on the balcony next door asked if we'd be back el año que viene.

Si.

Deo Volente.

Now 1150 local.
The view from the balcony, where I've spent many, many hours!

EC was here .... and here .... and here ....

If you turn right at our front door, then keep right and walk up a slope you will arrive at El Castell. This is a marvellous edifice in tiled marble, three viewpoints, kid’s playground, notice boards telling the story of the town’s history in four languages. It stretches all along the old town that hangs, literally hangs over the river. To describe the water running below as a river may be stretching the imagination a bit but it is a steady, if small stream. Each side is paved some parts tiled, steps to nowhere in particular ascend with rhythmic style and sinuous curves. On both the north and south side you will eventually ascend flights of precise steps to meet a rather high and stately bridge.

Immediately before the bridge is met you cannot fail to notice the huge Euro Boards declaring how much this development has cost the EC, which means, us, me, you, emphatically not them. Started in 2007 it has only just been completed. 

Totally wrecked by 2013/14. 

You would not want to wander about El Castell out of pleasure, it doesn’t really go anywhere you can’t get to easier, you can’t see anything more worthy of your gaze than by turning to the east and seeing the sea. Apartment blocks don’t capture the imagination, nor does an overgrown stream with so little volume it is unable to wash the rubbish into the sea. Thankfully.

You really wouldn’t want to go there at all. It is foul with dog’s mess, everywhere. Every wall, even the stone walls are covered with the most hideous graffiti. You wouldn’t want to go there after dark either because if you go there in the daylight you will see that the smart retro streetlights have been filled and smashed with rocks wrested from the walls. Up at the castle lookout itself there are lights let into the floors, walls and parapets but what do you think they illumine? Yup, indeed and it’s not pretty, indeed I suspect it allows the dogs a degree of luxury as they do what they do after dark, with the owners looking on. At least the EU has allowed them to see the mess their dogs are making.

Until recently I worked and was taxed by HMG to pay for this folly. And so were you, or you are still.

Along the tram we’ve seen three if not brand new hospitals then three fairly recently built ones within 25 miles. Tell me, Blair, Brown, Cameron where in the UK will you find three new(ish) hospitals served by a modern tram within 25 miles. OK, forget the tram. Currently the tram stops at Voldemort and you travel five miles or so by coach to connect with the rest of the service. The Euro Boards inform me that Spanish are pleased to tell you that the initial 50,000,000€ investment for improving and upgrading to all electric is being met by EC. Actually, I apologise it’s only 49,800,800€.

As the cafe owner explained, half the cost will go to Eurocrats, half will got to politicians national and local then there will be a 50% overspend that will actually see the project started. That will be met by EU, naturally.

EC Blue Boards and flags are everywhere and the finished products are treated as dog toilets and graffiti opportunities.

The EC is totally unappreciated by anyone apart from corrupt politicians, even the Royal Family is being done for corruption, the news is full of bankers and beaurocrats in handcuffs, rightly so. The corruption is immense, the money from me, you and the rest of northern Europe is astronomical and in the end wasted. Utterly wasted.

Yesterday the news was full of Santander, San Sebastian and much of the north coast being damaged by storms but who did they interview, not local councillors complaining that central government cuts would mean it can’t be mended, no, they cut to Brussels and EC money men who smiled like a grandparent spoiling their grandchildren, there, there, of course we’ll pay, don’t you worry about a thing.

They won’t pay, you will. If you’re in work you will pay and if you’re not you’ll pay because your old hospital isn’t served to the door by a modern electric subsidised tram system. Even if we could have a blue board and a euro flag telling us that the cost of parking in every hospital in UK was paid for by EC it would be so little comparatively and it would be valued, I’m sure. It just seems to me that we get zero, and higher taxes. I won’t mention the price of wine in a supermarket. Nor the fish. I promised I wouldn’t mention the fish. Small, though. Very, very small. Lots too.

They have the weather and I’ll pay to share it, I’ll even accept being ripped off because it’s sunny. I love it here, I really do but we have to pay our way and when we do we try to look after what we’ve spent our money on. But if we’re given it and have it maintained by someone else then we’ll treat it as a dog’s toilet and spray paint randomly everywhere because we don’t value that which hasn’t cost us anything.

The sooner we get out of EC the better. Nothing else matters. Nothing. 

If this comes over as a rant, that’s probably because it is. But someone needs to and I don’t see our government of whatever colour fighting our cause in Brussels, do you?

I still don’t want to go home to windy, rainy, cold, grey days, though. 

And I have appreciated the escalators in the park. 

The EC funded that, too. And the free car park under the prom. The new schools and the police station have euro flags on them and the police, both varieties drive by very frequently. We used to see police at home occasionally, many moons ago.