Saturday, 28th July

Up and at ‘em fairly early with the intent to go to Barlovento for building materials, post birthday cards (one late, one early), pay bills etc. Opened the bedroom door and immediately shut it again. Calima. Thick hot air. This is when we get the desert heat from Morrocco and it isn’t nice. It is not good for anything, not for the land, the animals, us and not even the guests like it!By the time we got to Barlovento it was a stifling 29 degrees. And worse was, when we got back, David was keen to start the mixer up and do the next section to the base. Just then …. The guests came back (1 pm) … ah beloved guests.

There was nothing for it but to spend a very pleasant afternoon in the cool of the house although I have to admit that David braved most of it working outside in the shade, planning and plotting.

Even the chickens get very little attention, although I did pick them a few figs and strawberries as a way of saying, 'sorry guys, can't do anything about this heat.' (This will probably give them the sh**s and then we will all be sorry.

8pm still 27.5 degrees though feeling slightly cooler with a slight occasional wind.
8 to 9 pm watering the garden. Thanks to Julio, there is plenty of water in tank so they needn’t go thirsty.

9.05 David discovers we have no mains water. He resorts to outdoor shower using the COLD water from the tank. Cries of yargh emitting from cottage patio. At least the neighbouring village of El Tablado should enjoy the show.

Friday, 27th July

9.30am Luis arrives with delivery of gravel so we can start building the base for a new log store at the side of the container. The store will not only be practical and attractive, it will also conceal the container to a large extent. Plus we will be able to hide some of life’s essentials – such as scaffolding, cement mixer, etc. - behind the wall of it.

Luis is hopping around with happiness this morning as he has the bill for us. He always asks us to check the addition, which as usual proves difficult due to the fact that he figures are not in straight columns, his 4’s are like 7’s and visa versa. Anyway, between the 3 of us we manage. And it is less than half the price we were expecting. I ask you – £20 per hour for a JCB including operator – not bad!

The guests leave around 10.30 am with many promises to return as soon as possible/tell their friends/be our agent and so on. Now time to get the casita ready for the new guests due today, though they shouldn’t be arriving until after 4pm as per the instructions we give them.

They optimistically arrive 12.30 with cries of ‘what has happened to the weather’ (it is hot but cloudy) and ‘we seem to be in the middle of nowhere, what can you recommend we do?’ This, I am sorry to say, does not endear me to people. We recommend they go away again and come back after 4pm. Well, actually, the casita is nearly ready for them, so we let them drop off their luggage, use the bathroom etc. and generally try and be kind.

We then send them off to have lunch at a nearby restaurant, point out all the lovely walks in the area which the north is famous for, and the scenic and/or whacky villages around us that they should visit.
David and I then crack on with 14 mixes of concrete which we do in around an hour. That is seriously speedy going – ask any builder! And so the first base is done on our new project.
The guests find it difficult to stay away for too long and find themselves back here at just before 4pm. But we are finished with noisy work for the day so we disappear from view and they can relax on the patio.
The forecast is for a good few very hot days but there is no sign of it right now. Thick cloud begins to envelope us, seeping over from the west, and it feels like a smoggy night in London. I decide to give the vegetables a long watering session, intended to seep deep down into the roots. If it is going to be hot, then this cool night will give the water a chance to sink right down and help them over the next few days.

Thursday, 26th July

We have friends visiting this morning, Helen and Theresa who have recently moved to Franceses, so I really enjoy the change of tempo and chance to chat over coffee. David cracks on with making steps down towards the casita complete with rustic handrail.

Later, Luis arrives with the picon – fantastic! Really pleased with the colour of it and it is really easy to spread out. Luis is a very happy man – we are spending money. Just as we are finishing, the guests arrive back for the evening and they seem quite impressed to see the difference – at least there are no excavators or lorries this time.
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Knock on door at 9.30pm – fresh fish delivery from Ana and Pepe.

Wednesday, 25th

We are now left with a largish area of semi-flat semi-clay land. We just need to dig a little trench through it to let the water escape - 18” deep and 20 metres long - involving several long-handled hand tools, the hammer drill, angle grinder, David, me and about 4 hours of seriously hard work. My main job was to help remove the loose soil/clay/stone from the trench and whisk it off in the wheelbarrow (uphill of course) and tip it over the side. I would have liked to have complained but David’s job of hacking, digging and grinding it out of the begrudging land looked a good deal worse. This was after all where the excavator had pranced about all the previous day compacting it down quite efficiently. Ah Luis you scamp, what a shame you didn’t bring the little bucket to dig out the trench as we asked you to, but no worries, we love it really.
By 3 o’clock we had got it dug out, just time for some cold pasta from the night before and a collapse until 4pm. Now for the easier task of putting in the underground tube through which excess rain water can drain and concreting over. Trouble is we have no gravel to make the concrete so we have to be ‘resourceful’. 25 minutes later we are returning in the Land Rover with 20 buckets of gravel which we have liberated from an extremely large heap – can’t tell you where exactly as then you would know as much as us.

Thankfully, we get it almost completed as the guests return.

Tuesday 24th

Luis cunningly avoided being on time as is his wont and arrived at just after1pm. We were pleasantly surprised to see him at all actually after weeks of waiting, although it wasn’t really Luis but one of his side kicks plus Luis’ son. The nameless sidekick looked a bit of a tough nut with a sizeable scar rising up from the corner of his lip. Added to which he was shoeless which is slightly strange for someone in the construction, or destruction industry. It was the first time we have seen Luis’ son working without his dad. We have known the lad for about 3 or 4 years. In fact, when we had the ‘big hole’ (6m x 4m) dug out for the bbq room, Louis’ son, who is only ever referred to as ‘boy’ jumped into the Bobcat and gave us a demonstration of his remarkable abilities of swirling it around in a tight space immediately adjacent to a precipice. That was when he was 10 years old. Now he is 13 he has obviously moved onto larger things such as manoeuvring a 5 tonne truck in a small space next to what was the precipice and is now our bbq room. Plus an excavator. Our excavator.
Man and ‘boy’ worked hard all afternoon patiently digging, clearing and levelling an L-shaped space next to and in front of the sea container. Four times, man went off with the lorry to empty the rubble, rock and soil they had cleared, while boy continued to dexterously craft and clear. A lot more to clear than we had thought and we are in something of dread of how much it is going to cost.

Monday, 23rd July

David made me ring Luis. Oh, how I hate ringing Louis, I tell him, which he already knows. Eventually though, when I have been totally cornered with not an excuse left, I do ring him. ‘There is no point,’ I am still muttering, ‘he will just promise to come any old time and he never does. It doesn’t mean anything. And anyway, what can I say to him this time that I didn’t say on Friday, or Wednesday before that or Monday before that.’ But I ring him anyway.
‘Hello Luis, how are you?’
‘I’m fine thanks, how are you?’
‘Fine. Erm, Luis, when do you think you are coming?’ There is no point in thinking up some long lead in which I will then have to mentally translate.
‘I’m here actually, on the drive, I have just arrived.’
Shock horror and he is as well, just like the Genie of the Lamp, and Louis would just about fit into a lamp at around 5ft tall. And he promises to be back this afternoon (tomorrow at latest) now he has seen what is required and start the latest round of works on the drive.

Go up to farm above us as we haven’t seen them to talk to for a couple of weeks now. We need to do our good neighbour bit which in our case is mainly just making the effort to have a chat. We meet Justo walking along with a wheelbarrow full of huge calabazas (pumpkins) and he offers us one. Oh, he’s got loads, he says so we take up one that is something like the size of a small child, well, baby at least. Would we like some onions… no we say, we are still OK for onions from the last time …. potatoes maybe …… no, still OK for potatoes, we tell him. Well, he says, as soon as we need any, all we need to do is ask. ‘You know that,’ he says, which makes me feel so looked after.
But it is a lovely hot day today with an impeccably blue sky forming the most amazing backdrop for the mountains and we cannot but help discuss the weather. Almost too late, we remember that hot days for a farmer are not usually so great. Working outside in the relentless heat is so tiring and we move into the shade to talk. He takes a puff from the large cigar jammed in between his only slightly brown teeth and we try to focus on just his left eye, as he is blind in the right.

Most of our conversations seem completely disjointed and Justo quickly leaps onto the subject of forest fires which are a constant threat. He tells us that 28 years ago there was a fire so immense that the whole of the north was ablaze. ‘There was just no greenery for months to come and we had to buy sacks of grain for the animals,’ he tells us. We are fairly amazed by this as it was something we had never considered that this panoramic vista of mountain greenery could ever have been totally destroyed. Although we were here when there was a fairly large fire 2 years ago and we watched the helicopters in the distance dropping water bombs over it. That lasted 5 days and there have been many other small ones since.
We tell Justo that we are going to say Hello to Carmen who, he tells us, is in the orchard. At this, Carmen emerges, blue floppy cloth hat pulled down over her ears and her dyed red hair poking out. ‘Café?’ she wants to know. Carmen never uses 5 words when she can use one. ‘Papas?’ No, sorry we don’t really want a coffee or potatoes just now. But she is keen to discuss how well her grandchild, Claudia, is doing at sailing. She has probably been doing it for nearly 2 years now and is starting to get a good collection of trophies already. ‘1st prize, 2nd and a 3rd’ Carmen tells us, and then a little sadly that she doesn’t get to see so much of her these days.
As we return down the donkey track to the house, we see the meter reader man. He is new and doesn’t know where it is, or rather they are as we have two meters for water and two for electricity now that we have had the supply split up for the two houses. Where does this path go? He wants to know, is it to another house. We laugh a little and say that it doesn’t go anywhere else, it is just our own little cobbled street. We direct him up the donkey track to where Julio lives, in between us and Carmen and Justo at the farm.

10.00 pm. Louis rang to say he couldn’t come today after all, which we had sort of guessed. Should hopefully be around 11 or 12 tomorrow when he comes.

Sunday 22nd July

Thought I heard voices from above while I was watering in the garden. Turns out that Pepe and his 3 nephews had brought round yet more freshly caught fish for us. Just 3 this time, so hopefully we can manage them in one meal. Yesterday they brought us a big tub of Gaspachio soup, a ham and vegetable casserole and 7 large mackerel so we shan’t starve while they are here..

Pepe and Ana are just so kind though, as are all our neighbours, few though they are. They have the house directly below us although actually they live on a different island and their house here is a holiday home for them. Our guests to the cottage think that it is quite bizarre that people should live on the next door island and yet come to this island for a holiday. But that is the entire point, the contrast is immense. Pepe works in an office – insurance - and Ana in the bank where, she tells us, she is glued to a computer screen all day long. Pepe says that there have been building works just to the rear of their apartment for 2 years – ‘2 YEARS!’ he exclaims – and they only get some peace for a few hours per night. Can you imagine then the tranquillity they feel when they come here where the silence can be tangible, the stillness audible and the peace all-enveloping? And fishing is an obsession!