Five Bestselling Travel Memoirs Box Set

by Twead, Victoria

  I didn’t find out until much later that many of the locals have nicknames for each other. Ramon’s nickname was ‘Zapatilla’. This translates as slippers, but when they refer to Ramon, it means ‘Little Shoes.’ It’s a tongue in cheek reference to his diminutive height.

  Miguel’s nickname is ‘Pollito’ – Little Chicken. There is even a family in Montoro whose nickname translates as ‘The Carrots’, although we have never managed to find out why they are called that.

  Ramon wound in his fishing line, and on the hook was a small, thin fish about twice the size of a stickleback. Ramon had a huge grin on his face. The fish was freed from the hook, and chucked, unceremoniously into a bucket of water. Over the next few hours, Ramon and Miguel got steadily more inebriated, and their discussions became increasingly animated, and often hilarious. At one stage, while reeling in one of the fish that afternoon, Ramon lost his balance, rocking the whole boat and almost coming a cropper in the water. If it hadn’t been for Miguel grabbing him by the trousers, he would have been a goner.

  By the end of the experience, having caught precisely twelve fish, enough for one of them to have for supper, maybe, and worth less than the cost of the beer they drank, I was punting us back towards the shore. I jumped down near the water’s edge and tried to pull it in. But the dinghy was heavy with both the sleepy men in it, so I had to rouse them from their slumbers to jump down from the boat. Miguel jumped down easily, but Ramon was wobbling. I offered him my hand for support. His balance went, and as I struggled to keep him upright, I stumbled forward, losing my footing in the mud, falling head first into the shallow, brown, murky water. Ramon, using my loss of balance, propelled himself gracefully to land. As I stood up, with my face covered in mud and my clothes saturated, my two companions couldn’t help but burst out in fits of laughter.

  Sometimes I try to imagine the conversations that must go on between the farmers about us. I’m sure they must think we mean well, but I’m pretty sure that in their eyes, we truly are the Loco Ingles.

  When I returned home, having been driven back along the track at a very slow pace by a tipsy Miguel, I walked into more laughter, this time from Lorna. She had a look on her face that said, “Do I even need to ask?”

  24 Pregnant? No, of course not!

  “I’m not pregnant, Mum. Don’t worry, we’re always careful. It must be something else.” Frankie’s voice was coming from the laptop.

  “Well, if you don’t feel better by the weekend you should check it out, Frankie,” Lorna said, with a telling raise of the eyebrows.

  For a couple of weeks Frankie had been complaining to her Mum about feeling unwell, and to Lorna, the symptoms sounded suspiciously like early pregnancy. Frankie and Chris had been together for three years and a baby certainly wasn’t planned.

  “Okay, I promise I will. I’m a bit busy for the next couple of days, but I can do it on Sunday, and then I’ll let you know. I’ll be phoning anyway, because it’s Mother’s Day!”

  “Okay,” Lorna said.

  Sunday came around and Lorna was on edge. Hours dragged by, and there was no phone call, and as time passed Lorna knew the result without even speaking to Frankie. The call came on Skype.

  “Hi darling, are you okay?”

  “Hi Mum. Happy Mother’s Day. Yeah I’m fine thanks, how are you?”

  All very pleasant.

  “I’m fine. Well, did you do it?”

  “Yes,” Frankie replied sheepishly, before bursting into tears and wailing, “I’m pregnant.”

  Lorna wasn’t totally surprised but as far as she was concerned grandchildren were not really on the horizon in the near future. She had hoped that maybe, with both her children working and settled they would be able to enjoy life a bit, take some nice holidays and then have children later on.

  Mark, who was staying with us for a few weeks helping us with some work, looked at me and said with a grin, “I don’t think my box of Ferrero Rocher is going to beat that.”

  “Hmm, I don’t think so, Mark.”

  After the dust settled, and everyone was used to the idea of Frankie becoming a mum, Mark was due to fly home.

  Lorna said to him, “Look, I know you want babies one day, but don’t rush into anything just because Frankie is pregnant. Enjoy yourself, go on holiday, don’t get too tied down.”

  Mark was in a new relationship, but Lorna knew he yearned for a baby. The advice went in one ear and out of the other.

  A few weeks later, Mark phoned to say that his girlfriend, Callie, was pregnant. Frankie was due to give birth in November and Callie in March. Again the question had to be asked now there were grandchildren on the way.

  “Do you want to go home? Move back to England for the kids?”

  “No,” she assured me. “They’ve got their own lives, they have made their decision to get pregnant. I can still visit, I just have to make sure it’s quality time over quantity.”

  In a way it was lucky it happened as it did: if the babies had come along before we left the UK, Lorna would never have been able to leave

  25 A Small World

  Animal count: Four dogs, three feral cats, three new feral kittens (We decided now was a good time to start naming the cats. They had grown in number, and the mother was looking thin. We started to feed them a little, especially when she was feeding the new kittens. She also fed the previous year’s kittens, too, and we felt this was too much for her, so we tried to help. We named the group after the TV show, The Royal Family, so the Mum was Barb, last year’s kittens were Jim and Dave, and the three little babies were R Denise, Twiggy and Baby David). Plus one pot-bellied pig, two chickens and four alpacas.

  “We’ve had an email from a guy called Michael Heath. “He wants to visit us, well everybody here who has alpacas. He’s organising a big alpaca conference in Madrid. He wants to come and see us with his partner Ciano.”

  “Okay,” I said, “We’ll email him back and tell him he’s more than welcome to pop by.”

  A few weeks later I went out to meet the couple at our regular rendezvous point. I was greeted by two, very well-groomed gentlemen, one Spanish and one English. Coming from Brighton, and having now been in a relationship with Lorna for a number of years, I had become used to meeting gay men. One of her best friends in Brighton was gay, and in the dance world it is very common. However, in Spain, we very rarely see overtly gay men, especially in the small village where we live. In Brighton, it is practically normal to see over-the-top campness on every corner, but Spain is still a very macho country.

  We invited Michael and Ciano in for a drink, and became completely engrossed in talking about alpacas and the conference that Michael was proposing to host in a large hotel in Madrid, all very sensible and business like.

  “Why are you holding a conference about alpacas? You don’t own any, do you?” I asked Michael.

  “Well, I’m by trade, a dealer in animal skins. In fact I used to keep ostriches to breed for the skins, but now I buy, and import and export them all over the world. At the moment alpaca fleece is one of the big markets. I have experience in putting on big conferences, and thought I could make this a success.” He paused, and then asked, “What about you two? How did you get into alpacas?”

  Normally, at this point, Lorna takes over the story, and starts from the beginning.

  “To cut a very long story short, I was a dance teacher for 30 years and I had a few health problems, which started to make things difficult. We decided to change our life, so we headed to Spain, bought this house and decided to breed alpacas.”

  “Wow,” Michael replied. “A dance teacher? I don’t believe it.” His voice rose excitedly. “Where did you teach? I used to teach dancing too!”

  “Noooo, really? Wow, it really is a small world! I used to have a dance school in Brighton.”

  “Oh my God!” his hands went up to his face. “I used to teach in Brighton too,” he said. “Lorna…Lorna,” Michael seemed as though he was trying to recall a name. “Lorna Roff. I
used to teach for Lorna Roff.”

  “But that’s me! That was my maiden name. I don’t believe this, I came to Spain to get away from dancing.”

  Well, the arms flew in the air and full camp mode was assumed.

  “Don’t you remember? Michael Heath? I used to teach Latin American dancing for you.”

  Slowly Lorna began to recall this man who had only taught for her for a few months. They were both about 25 years older and slightly rounder in shape. Of course, when we had received the email, Lorna had never cottoned on, because it was alpaca-related and this man lived in Spain. Of all the places, in all the world, to run into someone you worked with 25 years before, in a remote Olive Mill in rural Andalucía, talking about alpacas. The odds on that must be astronomical.

  26 The Lost Goats

  The weather started to warm as our second Andalucían summer approached, and we began to receive a few visitors, family and friends wanting to come and experience our new life. Normally we arrange to meet them, and on getting out of the car the first question they tend to ask is, “How did you find this place?” followed by, “Now we understand why you insisted on meeting us!”

  Two of our first guests were Karen and Nick, and they were seasoned travellers, having spent two years travelling and working their way around the world. We were waiting for the phone call, as we always do, when suddenly the phone buzzed.

  “Hi Karen,” Lorna answered.

  “Hiya Lorna. We’ve got a little problem, we are slightly lost.”

  “Okay, where are you?” she said, thinking they had missed the turning on the motorway or gone wrong at Cordoba.

  “Well, we turned off the motorway at your exit, and we thought we would be able to find you. We had seen the pictures on Facebook and there can’t be many alpacas around. But we went down a track, and now we have come to a gate that we thought might be yours. There are lots of olive trees around!”

  “I’ll send Alan out to check, but I don’t think you are outside, the dogs normally go mad.”

  Of course they weren’t outside. As they were friends of Lorna, she decided she would go out with the phone and try to find them. After an hour of searching, she managed to get them to retrace their steps and find their way out and stay there for her to find. To this day, we don’t really know where they went, or which gate they were sitting outside.

  One morning, when Karen and Nick were outside feeding the alpacas and drinking coffee, Karen came running in. “Lorna, Lorna,” she rested her hands on her knees to catch her breath. “There are four goats outside looking at the alpacas.”

  “Oh no, where have they come from?”

  The last thing we needed was to adopt some stray goats.

  Lorna went out to investigate, and sure enough, there they were, four shy and nervous goats. A little family. We had never seen or heard goats before so Lorna was perplexed.

  The next thing she knew was the rattling of an old pick-up truck and the screaming of brakes as Ramon came hurtling around the corner. Ramon jumped out of the passenger side of the car and his son, who was driving, disappeared again back up the track, to open the gate apparently. Ramon encouraged Lorna, and of course Karen and Nick to herd the goats down the track to the river bed and then along in the direction of his house.

  “Errr where are we going, Lorna?” Karen whispered, unnecessarily of course as Ramon speaks no English.

  “I think he wants us to help him get them back to his house. I think it’s only round the corner, it won’t take long.”

  As she was talking, Ramon shouted at her to stop the goats going up the hill, and to keep them moving in the right direction.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky, so did the temperature, and the gang of four were sweating. Far from being just around the corner, although the entrance to his Finca was, the house and animal pens were a further three or four kilometres over rough and stony terrain. As they neared the buildings in the distance, a chorus of dogs barking and howling broke out, welcoming their master home. Four small, rough-looking dogs came running out barking and yapping and jumping at Ramon, followed by a great lump of a canine, strolling casually behind.

  As the house got thankfully closer, there were more dogs, tied to trees to stop them escaping, fighting or breeding, I guess. One part of Spanish rural life we find difficult to deal with is the treatment of dogs, but we are happy that at least they get fed and watered daily at Ramon’s, we hear of worse stories elsewhere.

  As they approached, Ramon could obviously see Lorna looking sadly at his collection of mutts, and seizing his opportunity, he tried to offer her the pick of the bunch, any one she wanted. Knowing I would not be happy with another addition to our brood, she had to be strong and decline the offer.

  The goats were ushered into a pen fashioned from a selection of old wooden pallets, held together by wire and pieces of baling twine. Ramon disappeared into the ramshackle old building adjacent to the pen. He emerged with a beautiful, tiny white rabbit and presented it to Lorna. She took it in her arms, instantly falling in love, but knowing we had nowhere to keep it. Reluctantly, she handed it back, hoping and praying that one day it didn’t end up skinned and presented to us for dinner!

  Lorna was ushering the group out of the house as they were in a hurry to get back so Karen and Nick could get on the road; they had a plane to catch. Ramon’s son, Ramon, offered them a lift. We see him go past most days in his (surprise, surprise) battered old pick-up truck, and he drives at a considerable rate of knots. Lorna was holding on tight as he rounded the bends and even drove through an uneven, rocky river, where the occupants were thrown about like ping-pong balls in a bingo machine. Karen and Nick made their flight by the skin of their teeth.

  27 The Happiest Dog in the World

  The final addition to our dog pack came at the end of our second summer in the Olive Mill.

  “Bloody hell, Arthur’s going ballistic out there, Alan!”

  Taking that as my cue, I went to check it out. “Okay, I’ll have a look.”

  I looked out of the window, expecting to see a cat or another animal tormenting him just by being there, but I couldn’t see anything. Arthur was still carrying on as though something was wrong, so I went and looked out of the gate.

  “Uh-oh!” I thought to myself and went back in to Lorna.

  “Erm, it’s a puppy,” I grimaced. “It’s only small, I’m going to try to put him back out, under the gate, see if goes home or off somewhere else. Don’t come out,” I added, knowing that if she did, and she saw the pup, she would want to keep him.

  I ushered him back under the gate and blocked it with some wood we had lying around, and went back in, hoping that he would find a different place to live. It can’t have been more than 30 seconds later when Arthur started again. I knew he had got back in.

  “I’ll come out with you this time,” Lorna said.

  “Are you sure?” I checked. “You know we can’t have any more dogs, we don’t really cope with the ones we already have.”

  “I know,” Lorna replied dismissively.

  As we neared the gate, a little bundle of brown energy came running over to us, shaking his bum, and looking at us with love in his eyes. He had big floppy ears, far too big for his head, and he was about the size of a small cat. It was hot, so we gave him a drink and a little food.

  “Well, I guess we could keep him in the stable for a couple of days, see if anyone comes looking for him, and then go from there.” I suggested, knowing in my head that this one could be a keeper. So that’s what we did. Over a few days we noticed that the puppy didn’t move well; he walked with a limp. One of his back legs was particularly weak, and although he didn’t seem to be in pain, it definitely wasn’t normal.

  We took him to see Manuel, to ask about the leg and to check if there could be a microchip with details of an owner on it. Of course there wasn’t. Manuel examined the dog, and explained that he thought, possibly, that he had been hit by a car or something large, causing his hip to becom
e dislocated and causing a few minor abrasions on his body. “I think it will need an operation,” he said apologetically.

  I looked at Lorna. Lorna looked back at me.

  Lorna said, “No one is going to pay for an operation for him, maybe we could get that sorted for him.”

  I sighed. “If we are going to pay for the operation, we may as well keep him.”

  Lorna smiled.

  “Why don’t you see how he gets on for a while,” Manuel said. “He will need his vaccinations in a few weeks, we can talk about the operation later.”

  So off we went, and one less stray dog roamed the campo in Andalucía.

  A year had gone since we acquired Blue and Arthur, and to be honest we hadn’t really got to grips with them. They were not very good on leads, either far too strong for us, or refusing to move and just lying in the road. We were also scared of Geri getting hurt by their sheer size, so we had separated them into pairs: Geri with Carlos, Blue with Arthur. It wasn’t ideal, but we didn’t really know how to deal with such strong dogs.

  Gradually we began to introduce the puppy to the other dogs, firstly Blue and Arthur. Blue went crazy, playing like a giant puppy, paws on the ground, head down and bottom in the air, with her small, stumpy tail wagging to and fro. We were worried the puppy would get hurt, and a few times he got trod on, or bashed too hard and he whimpered a little, but then he was quickly back up and in the faces of his new friends once again. They were like three little children who had just found each other.

  We then tried to take him through to meet the smaller dogs.

  “I’ll hold the big two, while you open the gate and take him through,” I suggested.

  The picture I had in my head went much smoother than the reality.

  Pandemonium ensued. The two big dogs pulled me to the ground, but I tried to hold on.

  “Quickly close the gate!” I called from my now horizontal position. Lorna turned to see why I was in distress, and that was all they needed; Blue and Arthur pulled away from me, and the puppy jumped from Lorna’s arms. The puppy was in the faces of all the dogs, Geri was barking, and Carlos, normally so quiet, joined in too.