On the first day of Lorna’s absence, two strangers arrived, hollering outside the front gate. They were ‘Romanos’, Romanian workers here for the olive harvest. Through over-exaggerated gestures, I managed to understand they had a problem with their car and wanted me to tow them up the hill. So I jumped in trusty old Frank (the car had got the nickname Frank from his FNK number plate, and he had been trusty for over a year now), and drove to their car. I then understood the problem. They had got stuck, halfway up the hill, on the wet mud caused by the first of the winter rains. Their tyres couldn’t get a grip, so I dragged them, slipping and sliding up to the top of the hill, and sent them off. With a gracious wave and a smile they leaned out of the window “Adioooo, Mucha Graciaaaa!”
The following night, I was happily ensconced in our small apartment with all the dogs settled on various settees and chairs around the room. Everything was silent and I was reading under the dim glow of an energy saving light bulb. All of a sudden the dogs were barking and clawing at the windows and doors desperate to be let out. In this situation, whoever you are, your instinct is that someone is outside. So I tried to shut the dogs up, and listened carefully. There was a scratching coming from outside the window, so my first thought was, “Oh no, we’ve got rats”, but, as I looked out of the window, a little face pulled itself up. There was one of this year’s little feral kittens staring up at me. Thinking that they should know better than to come in to the dogs’ area, I opened the door of the apartment to scare the cat away and to teach it a lesson. The dogs are never quick enough to get close to the cats anyway.
But this cat was different, it shot off in the wrong direction, scrambling up a brickwork pillar and fell headfirst into our water deposit. There were, in fact, two kittens, the other one huddled down flat on top of the wall, out of the reach of the dogs. I managed to drag the baying dogs back into the apartment, grabbed the kittens and threw them through the iron gates at the end of the terrace.
I then let the dogs out again and went to investigate. These cats were not our own, although they looked remarkably similar to two of our kittens. They were a little smaller and a little more nervous. Someone had obviously dumped them here on the gullible English. I was fuming, there were already six feral cats living here and I had always had a fear of becoming overrun by wild cats as we cannot get close enough to the female to get her spayed. So I made the regrettable and horrible decision to take the kittens, under cover of darkness, and let them go at the top of the track. I very much hope they survived, and I am not proud of doing it, but we have come to realise that as much as we would like to, we just cannot save every animal out there.
People always say these things happen in threes. The next night, after weeks of excitement, I was due to play my first game of football in two years, in the town of Montoro. My friend had asked me to play for his team, and I was excited. Although it was raining hard, I got myself ready and headed out, but by the time I got to the top of the track David called me to say that because it was raining, he wouldn’t be going. No-one plays in the rain apparently. So I turned the car around and, driving back down the track, the headlights started to dim and flash. I was a bit worried and crawled Frank back to the house, turned the key and tried to switch him back on again. Nothing. Dead. The battery had gone. I managed to get Good Samaritan Keith to come out and change the battery, but the alternator was kaput and the car could only be used during daylight without the lights. At least now I could relax, my three things had all happened, surely nothing else could go wrong during this trip?
On the 15th November, late at night, the mobile phone beeped into life and there was a text message from Lorna to say that Frankie had started her labour but it had been very slow, and she would keep me updated when she had any news.
I woke up early the following morning, anxious to find out if everything was okay, but there were no text messages or missed calls, so I was in the dark about how things were going. I gazed out of the window, wondering what to do with myself now I was up and about so early, and to my surprise Lily was sitting down casually eating, next to a little fawn cria.
“Oh bloody hell.”
We were not expecting her baby to come until around Christmas, so I rushed out to see if everything was okay. I dried the baby off, checked the sex, a girl, and sprayed the umbilical cord. I weighed her and she seemed to be a decent weight. I stepped back and watched and waited, hoping for that much needed first feed to occur. The new arrival seemed strong and was making a gallant attempt at her first steps. While I was out attending to mother and baby, the mobile phone rang.
“Hi,” I answered, knowing it was Lorna.
“Hiya. Guess what? I’m a Nanny! Frankie had a little girl, early this morning. She had a really tough time, but everything is okay. I’m so proud of her.”
“Wow,” I said, “congratulations! I’m so pleased, I was a little worried when I hadn’t heard anything for a long time. You will never guess what though...Lily has had her baby!”
“Oh my God, she shouldn’t have had it until Christmas. They must have been born about the same time. How amazing! Is it alright?”
“It seems to be. It’s a little girl, fawn colour, she is beautiful. I’m just out now watching her to make sure she feeds, then I’ll go in,” I said. “And by the way, I think we are going to have to call this little one Frankie, don’t you?”
“Sounds good,” said Lorna. And we hung up.
For the next three days, all seemed to be progressing well. I had seen the baby feeding and, although she hadn’t gained much weight, they often lose on the first day and she was still the same as the first time I weighed her so I wasn’t overly worried. On her fourth day, however, I looked out of the window and saw the cria sitting on the ground; her Mum was up and about feeding, so it didn’t quite seem right. I went outside and found that she was shivering, took her temperature and found it to be dangerously low. I got on the phone immediately.
“Hi Penny, it’s Alan,” I said nervously. “Sorry to be a pain, but Lily had her baby four days ago, but now the baby is very weak and really cold, I don’t really know what to do.”
“You need to get her warmed up Alan, use warm water and a hot water bottle, you need to get her core temperature up as soon as possible.”
I rushed about in real panic mode, grabbing the things I needed and then gently picking up the cria and taking her inside, into the warm. Lily was distraught, humming loudly at me, while I took her baby away. I wrapped the baby in a towel, and started running her a warm bath and heating up some water for a bottle. I called Keith yet again, asking a big favour to see if he could bring the vet to my house because I didn’t want to leave the cria. Yet again he came through.
When Manuel arrived he looked nervous; he felt it was important to try and get some fluid into her, but the problem we have with alpacas is that the veins can be notoriously difficult to locate for the vet, especially one with very little alpaca experience. Eventually a vein was located and we managed to get some fluid and a shot of antibiotics into her. Then we had to wait. Manuel said he would get his wife to bring him back later in the day to check on her. In the meantime, I was to keep her warm and keep the fluid going. After a few hours, and when Manuel returned, we found she had gone downhill. Again I phoned Penny to get some more advice.
“Alan it’s up to you. You could try taking her to Cordoba Veterinary Hospital and we could meet you there with some alpaca blood plasma, which could be her only chance, otherwise I think you will lose her. Or you could let her go quietly.”
I was distraught, on my own, with Lorna in England. I didn’t know what to do but made the decision to go for it; if there was a chance of saving her, I wanted her to have it, so I loaded her into the car and arranged to meet Peter and Penny at the hospital. Again they put themselves out for us, and again I was truly grateful.
In the car, driving on the track, it was all I could do to stop myself from bursting in to tears. My stomach was churning and I had a horrib
le sickly feeling. Everything that we had dreamed of seemed to be going wrong, we didn’t seem to be able to get anything right.
On my arrival at the hospital, I was hurried in to a horse treatment area and vets started attending to the cria. As I watched them I knew it was a lost cause: there was a sense of panic and Penny was yet to arrive with the plasma. After a few minutes, and a last little bit of fight, the little cria gave up and she was gone.
We will never know if she had got the plasma if it would have made a difference, or if it was just not meant to be. But whenever I think about it, I always have ‘what ifs’ in my mind. Was it something I did wrong? Ten minutes later Peter and Penny arrived but I had to tell them it was too late. They were devastated.
“I’m really very sorry Alan, it’s not meant to be like this.” Penny said as she hugged me.
“Okay, no more hugs, I don’t think I can cope with it,” I had to say.
On my return home, I went to feed the girls and Lily ran up to me with an almost pleading look in her eyes, and humming loudly, “Where is my baby?” For days and weeks she came up to me with the same look and it broke my heart every time.
Over the next few days, I felt a growing sense of regret at our hasty decision to move to Andalucia, and as the winter rain started to set in, discovered our problems were only just beginning. The kitchen that Neil had fitted and repaired, plus the newly-built living space both started to leak profusely. When it rains here, it really does rain, big heavy drops of rain, that bounce off surfaces and settle, then seep through any gaps or cracks it can find. Our floors were covered in water and I had to wear wellington boots inside.
I tried to speak to Neil but his phone number wasn’t working and his e-mail had gone dead. His Facebook page had been deleted, and I had no way of getting in touch with him. I did manage to get hold of Caroline, and she told me he had gone to England to work for a few weeks but she would get him to call us when he returned.
So, our alpaca ideas were not exactly going well, and now, all the money we had poured into the work on the Olive Mill, looked to have been given away to a cowboy. I was fuming, upset and dreading Lorna’s return to Spain when I would have to tell her all about it. Of course I kept her up to date with the basics, but I knew I would need to relive everything again on her return. Whilst I know Lorna was having a lovely time in England with Frankie and the new baby, I understood it must have been difficult for her, knowing I was here and struggling.
After nearly three weeks of being a grandmother Lorna finally returned. The rain had stopped for a while and I had managed to clean up the mess, but Lily was still distraught, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be here anymore. I burst into tears in Lorna’s arms, blaming myself for coming up with the idea of moving here and wondering if we had done the right thing.
“If you want to, we can sell up and go home. I don’t know what we will do if we do go home, but if that’s what you want to do, we will do it,” Lorna said to me.
“Well, maybe we should put the house on the market; we can always decide if we want to go home if we can sell it,” I replied.
Then we just stood, holding each other and crying for what seemed like hours.
31 The Wettest Winter
A lifetime of grey skies and rain could not have prepared us for what was to come next: the wettest Andalucían winter in living memory. One night we were woken during the night by the loudest clap of thunder I have ever experienced. The whole place shook, and the lightning bolts outside lit up the landscape in flashes of brilliance.
Then the rain started, and boy did it come down. We could hear it bouncing on the cobblestones in the courtyard and, as time went on, we could hear the water gushing from the tiles on the roof and running in torrents down the terraces. The dogs were nervous as the storm seemed to settle in between the hills and immerse us in its grip for the next 40 minutes. Eventually the storm moved away although we could still hear the rain coming down. We managed to get back to sleep until morning.
We rose early, expecting to see the clear blue skies once more, but the rain was still sheeting down. On opening the front door, it was clear that the storm had done some damage. Outside we had a nectarine tree we had planted on our arrival at the house, and we had just started to collect fruit from it that last summer. The tree, however, had been a casualty of the high winds whipped up by the storm.
The dogs went out to investigate and started to bark. It was then we noticed that there was a tree on fire. At the edge of our boundary was a large pine tree, sitting serenely on the top of the hill overlooking the landscape. Obviously, during the night, it had been struck by lightning and was ablaze despite the heavy rain that continued to fall. The tree smouldered for a week, even in the rain.
There was a loud noise, coming from the bottom of our land where we have a meandering little stream which dries up in summer, but does give us the sound of running water for most of the year. That morning, I climbed onto the high walls surrounding the courtyard to see where the noise was coming from. To my surprise, what was a small stream had, overnight, become what can only be described as a fast flowing river. Until this time, we had only seen the stream, at its highest, about two metres wide and only a matter of inches deep. That morning, the river had swelled to about five metres wide and about a metre deep, and was flowing rapidly. The noise was similar to that of a white-water rafting river.
For the next few weeks, the weather persisted: steady rain and occasional storms, daily mopping up from the leaking roof and yet, still no news from Neil or Caroline about fixing the damage. We were living in rubber boots and always seemed to be wearing damp clothes. The alpacas were miserable, always wet, and the dogs hated it as much as we did.
We lay in bed at night listening to the rain continuing to fall. Some nights storms would settle in the hills again, and the next morning the river would have swelled slightly higher. By this time, the water had nearly reached the height of the little bridge that we had to cross to reach the house. The water in the river must have been between nine and ten metres wide, and at least four metres deep in places. The volume of water was incredible.
The local farmers were having a terrible olive season as the storms had dislodged much of the fruit from the trees, thus reducing the harvest by a massive percentage. As we neared the week before Christmas, we had a let-up for a day when the sun managed to break through again. The farmers took immediate advantage of this and started to pick what crops they could, as quickly as possible. Tractors were out and about, people chatting and whacking the trees, and the hills were a hive of activity. Large metal containers were strewn about to collect the tons of olives they were hoping to collect.
Well, two days later, it proved to be a false dawn as, once again, we were deluged by one of the huge storms. This time, however, was different: as one storm passed, another would roll in to take its place. We battened down the hatches, shut ourselves in and waited it out. I was gazing out of the window, watching the rising water level in the river as this time it breached the top of the bridge and started flowing over the road and washing away the stone and mud holding it in place.
The next thing I knew, one of the large metal containers, half full of olives, was picked up and carried along by the water before lodging itself in the bridge gap, pushing the water around it. The road was impassable, and the mass of water was causing huge amounts of damage. After about ten minutes, slowly, ever so slowly, the corrugated metal tube that makes up the bridge started to lift, and seconds later was being washed down river.
“Oh my God, the bridge has just washed away,” I called out to Lorna.
“What do you mean?”
“Come and look, the bridge has gone.”
It meant we couldn’t get out. How long would it be before it was fixed? It was Christmas week after all, and we would need to get out sooner or later.
Within an hour there was a delegation of farmers congregating where the bridge should be, obviously deciding on a course of actio
n. Some had animals to look after, and some had extra people in their houses, for the olive picking season. After much to-ing and fro-ing, it looked like a decision had been reached, as a man marched back to his truck.
“There is a man with a chainsaw now, I’m not sure what’s happening.” I was giving a commentary. “Okay, it looks like they are cutting down a eucalyptus tree. Yep, definitely.”
“Why?” said Lorna.
“I’m not really sure. It’s fallen across the river, and now there is a man cutting off small parts of the top, to flatten it. I think it’s to walk across.”
“Really? I don’t like the sound of that.”
An older farmer crossed the log on his bottom, but most walked across with no problems.
“Well, we’ve enough food for a couple of days, I’m sure they’ll fix it pretty soon,” I said hopefully.
We reached Christmas Eve and no one had yet come out to fix the bridge, and we had run out of food, so we arranged to borrow a friend’s car. I set out to cross the makeshift bridge and walk the three kilometres of track, mostly up a steep hill, to meet our friend. I was nervous stepping onto the fallen tree, with the water passing rapidly beneath my feet, but I held my nerve and set off on my mission.
After meeting our friend and getting the car, I managed to pick up some shopping, and head back home. At least we now had a means of getting out, should we need to. No-one was going to be coming out over Christmas and, as the rain eased slightly, the water level in the river started to gradually drop - so much so that by Boxing Day, farmers were beginning to risk driving through the river.
We didn’t yet feel ready to risk driving through the river so, the day after Boxing Day, Lorna and I set out to cross the makeshift bridge and spend the day in Cordoba. We were fed up with the weather and the lack of solar electricity; we needed some time out. I had already been across the tree twice so I went across first, and then Lorna started her journey, stepping out nervously, initially, before getting more confident, perhaps a little too confident.
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