by Parks, Alan
“Hi, it’s John with my cousin and sister. We are in Montoro and are ready to come to the house.”
“Erm, but you are not supposed to be arriving until Tuesday. I’m not ready.”
“Ah, sorry about that, we changed our plans. I must have forgotten to tell you. Can you take us?” he asked. As he seemed nice (and to be honest I didn’t want to lose the money for the booking) I reluctantly said yes.
“OK, John, I can still take you but I need to clean throughout and make the beds. If you can give me until about 3pm that should be OK.”
“Thanks Alan. Speak soon.”
So with that I had to drop everything and start cleaning like crazy. I swept and mopped all three bedrooms and the living areas, made the beds and was just starting to clean the kitchen at about 2pm, when the phone rang again.
“Alan, it’s John again. We’re ready now, we can’t really wait any more.”
What could I say?
“Right, do you remember the meeting point in the email? I can be there in half an hour.”
“Great.”
So I literally ran around finishing off, jumped in the car and drove like Fernando Alonso along the track. I parked on the designated roundabout, sighing with relief that I had got there before them. I waited. And waited some more. After another 45 minutes, the phone rang.
“Where are you? We’ve been waiting for ages.” I could hear an angry voice in the background.
“I’m here,” I said. “Waiting at the meeting point, the roundabout.”
“Well, we are parked under the bridge, I don’t know where you are.”
“Stay where you are I will come and find you.” I was starting to get a bad feeling about this.
As I drove back towards the motorway, I spotted a car with English number plates parked under the flyover bridge. I pulled up and introduced myself. The driver leaned over and just said with a grunt, “Can we just get going?”
“Okey dokey,” I replied, “follow me.”
So I turned around and we drove along the country road, followed by the track trying to avoid the worst of the pot holes. I was going slowly to avoid losing them.
On our arrival at the house, the driver got out and immediately his hackles were up. “You can’t expect people to drive on roads like this, it will ruin my car!”
I was a bit taken aback, but offered to help them in with their stuff. John, the American, introduced himself and his sister Tina, and also his cousin, the angry expat Dave, who had driven all the way from Alicante.
I showed the threesome into the apartment which is very rustic and traditional and explained about the solar power and the lack of air conditioning. The lady, who must have been in her 70s, sighed and put her hand to her forehead as if she had been told of a sudden death. I explained we had fans in the bedrooms.
“Do you want to come down for a drink?” I offered.
Tina retreated to her bed for a rest but the men came down and had a beer with me and I hoped I had been able to smooth over the rough start. I showed them the pool area but they did not want to see the animals, and at about 6pm went and shut themselves in the apartment and immediately switched on the TV. They were, apparently, not remotely interested in our beautiful slice of the world.
At about 11pm I headed to bed, but Arthur was outside barking. During the first night of guests’ stays he is often initially agitated until he gets used to them. He barked for an hour or two, but then settled down and slept through the night. In the morning I greeted Arthur with a fuss, telling him what a good boy he had been and how well-behaved he was. But, as I went through the gate, Dave was already leaning over the terrace wall with an angry look on his face.
“You have got to do something about those bloody dogs,” he said. “If they keep me up like that tonight, I’ll make sure you don’t get any sleep!”
Now, in hindsight, I can look back and laugh, but in reality, I am not really sure what he thought he was going to do. We are so rural and remote that I have control over the water and the electricity, so really threatening me is not worthwhile. At the time, though, I was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say.
“Dave, I’m really sorry if he kept you awake last night, but to be honest I didn’t hear him from about 1am; he was as good as gold.”
“You can’t expect people in their 70s to sleep in conditions like this, and without air conditioning. It’s just too hot for us.”
I gave him a few minutes to calm down, then I went and knocked on their door and offered to reimburse them for the following two nights if they left immediately and moved to a hotel. To be honest, it was not worth the hassle. I spoke to John and reiterated that I had explained everything in the emails, but obviously his cousin was expecting a luxurious hotel. John apologised, and on leaving Dave said to me “No hard feelings, mate.”
But I’m afraid there was a little resentment on my part. It is never necessary to be rude.
Chapter 7
Guests from Home
That same month we had a visit from one of my old football team-mates, Gary. Now, Gary is a larger-than-life character who is about as broad as he is tall and very much likes the sound of his own voice. Gary was the goalkeeper of our five-a-side team in the UK and, belying his build, was in fact a pretty nimble keeper (he was the victim of many a transfer rumour within five-a-side circles). Fees including crates of beer or unlimited kebabs were offered to tempt Gary away from our team. Well, I'd had an email from him asking to come and stay for a week with his girlfriend and their children.
Gary is one of those people who has an opinion about everything, and he will argue that black is white if it leads to a good debate. Football is his main topic of conversation and I was looking forward to a bit of the old banter again. I had missed my football buddies.
However, when he arrived I have never seen Gary so subdued. It was his first time driving abroad and he had been struggling to get to grips with the steering wheel being on the wrong side. Plus, of course, the three kids had been in the back saying, “Are we nearly there yet?” for about three hours.
He was as white as sheet and in need of a beer. He sat down, taking in his new surroundings for the next week.
“That’s it,” he exclaimed. “We’re not going out again. I can’t drive that car again; it’s a terrible car.”
However, they needed supplies, so the following morning I managed to convince him to get back in the hire car for the short trip to town so they could do some shopping.
Again, on his return, Gary was ashen-faced and not in a good mood. The kids were already driving him mad: it was all he could do not to kill one of them. It was only the first full day of the holiday.
Day 2 was the start of the World Cup so we planned to watch some football together and slipped right back into the old routine of mickey-taking and football gossip. Just as we were settling down to watch the game, our solar electricity system started going crazy. Beeeep, beeeep! Then everything, including the television, went off.
“Noooo!” shouted Gary. “Get it back on, Alan. Now!”
I ran to the control panel and realised it had shut down. Apparently, just as we had switched on the TV, Stacey had plugged in her hair straighteners: it was just too much. We always have a discussion at the start of holidays and try to explain that our electric power is limited and it is better not to use devices like hairdryers or straighteners. Most guests think it is too hot anyway and don’t bother but Stacey had forgotten. I managed to get the electricity back on a few minutes later, but a bit of time at the Olive Mill can help you realise what you take for granted in your ‘normal’ life.
During the football Gary knocked back beer after beer. After the game ended at about 11pm, Lorna and I headed off for bed. Our bedroom is immediately below the outside terrace that guests use so we can hear quite clearly if there is anything going on up there. After about an hour, music started playing, not too loud, but loud enough for us to hear. Obviously more alcohol was being consumed by an
increasingly-relaxed Gary. The kids were still up and we could hear them all playing games moving the chairs about on the terrace. We tried to drift off to sleep when all of a sudden, we thought there was an earthquake. (There are earthquakes in Spain.) Our ceiling was thundering and it sounded as though pieces of cement were falling down. We didn’t know what was going on but prayed that the ceiling would remain intact.
The following morning the family did not emerge till late. When they were poolside I decided to raise the subject.
“Gary, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but would you be able to be a little bit more ‘restrained’ on the terrace in the evenings? It was a bit worrying last night.”
“Really? Sorry, we were only playing charades. Oh, I know. It must have been my Chariots of Fire, I’m afraid I got a bit carried away.”
That was not the end of Gary’s shenanigans. During the midday heat and before the daily football games started on TV, Gary and the family would spend time at the pool, relaxing in the sun. When families are by the pool we can often hear shouting and people having fun, so we try not to interrupt.
One day, however, Gary's son, Ben, appeared from around the corner, running and shouting, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” through the door and out the other side of the summer kitchen. The next thing we saw was Gary storming through the door, red as a beetroot and steam (almost literally) coming out of his ears.
“Little bugger,” he yelled. “I’m going to kill him. This is my holiday and he is not going to ruin it for me!” His hair and clothes were wet as Ben had thrown water over him. Gary now smelt blood and was bent on revenge.
Round and round they went while Lorna and I watched from a safe distance. After a few minutes, we saw Gary come to a halt in the middle of the large courtyard. At the top of his voice, he shouted, “This is my holidayyyyyyyyyyy!” and retraced his steps to the pool.
By the end of their week’s holiday with us, I truly believe that Gary had a bit more respect for the way we live. I don’t think people can really understand how rural we are, or how reliant on our solar panels we are until they come here to stay, and of course get to experience me stressing over every light left on or fridge left open. During our first years of having people to stay on holiday I used to make Lorna take a bath using only the light from a torch to save the electricity for the people upstairs.
Chapter 8
Gol, Gol, Gooooool!
When we moved to Spain in 2008, the current World Cup holders were Italy and, during that summer, there was a lot of excitement about Spain’s chances of winning their first major football championship. As an avid football player and fan, these biannual celebrations of football are an exciting time for me: I camp myself in front of the TV for two or three matches every day. In 1994, when the World Cup was in the US and I was 16 doing my GCSE’s, I had to (and I do mean HAD TO) stay up until about 3am to watch the games.
Anyway, in 2008 we hadn’t been in Spain long. I watched the tournament at home, very much enjoying Spain’s triumph and despairing at England’s disaster. But, of course, we Brits are used to that. The whole excitement of what this victory meant for Spain and the locals pretty much passed us by. At the time we were lacking confidence in terms of going out: things had been going wrong so we locked ourselves away a bit.
By the time 2010 rolled round, however, we had made some good friends. The World Cup in South Africa was upon us and this time Spain was the hot favourite, playing the best football in a generation and blowing all opposition away in the build-up to the tournament.
After watching the group games at home with Gary, and gradually noticing more flags appearing in shop windows and on cars and people shopping wearing full replica kits, right down to the socks, Lorna and I decided we would go into town for the quarter finals. Spain were playing Paraguay who were proving very difficult to break down. The ideal place to watch the game would be in the central park. There is a bar there, next to the municipal swimming pool, and they usually have football on a big screen in a shady area. Perfect. They also do some very good, but very cheap, food. There were loads of people in the park: families with small children in the play area; mothers standing around chatting; and dads watching the game animatedly with one eye on the kids.
Spain spent much of the game pressing the Paraguayans but could not find a breakthrough. Finally, in the last 10 minutes, David Villa scored a goal and the park exploded in relief. Spain clung on for a nervy period until the final whistle and the whole place erupted in cheers. There was much handshaking and back-slapping. People started to drive past tooting their horns, and the kids were being whipped up into even more of a frenzy. We stayed for about another hour, finishing our food and lapping up the atmosphere.
Up next was Germany, who had beaten England 4-1.
For this semi-final, we were invited to go and watch with Jorge and his family at the casino, which is not a casino in the sense that we understand it, but more of a gentlemen’s club. There are two in Montoro, on either side of the road: one for the poorer locals and one for the richer. We went to the latter. It comprised an opulent courtyard surrounded by beautiful mahogany woodwork. Situated around the sides of the courtyard were luxurious rooms with large leather chairs and old men watching bull fighting, smoking cigars and drinking expensive sherry. We were disappointed. There was only a handful of people in there to watch the game and we were worried the atmosphere would not be as good as at the park.
As kick-off approached, however, the casino started to fill up but it was still a more reserved atmosphere. The semi-final was another tense affair (that was the day I learnt the meaning of the word mierda, or shit!). We were just nearing the last 15 minutes when Spain won a corner. Carlos Puyol leapt highest and got his head on the ball! The excitement was palpable; chairs skidded along the floor and tables were moved. Kids started running around the outside of the courtyard, and adults began hugging and kissing. More drinks were ordered as there were a long 15 minutes to endure amid heavy German pressure, but the Spanish defence held firm. On the final whistle, once again the place erupted.
A few minutes later Jorge and Maria wanted to take the kids home, so we went with them to collect their car from the garage. As we came back out there were cars everywhere and people had come out of their houses and were celebrating in the street. World Cup fever had certainly hit Montoro! In my lifetime, I have never been involved with supporting a team in a World Cup final. The nearest I came would have been 1990 when England lost to Germany on penalties. But finally, I could support a team in the final. In the car on the way back, the children sang, “Campeones, campeones.” The normal 30-second journey around Montoro took us over half an hour.
The final was to be against Holland, probably the other strongest team in the competition. We decided we liked the atmosphere of the park so much we wanted to go there and invited Ricardo and Rita. The game was very tense and even: the most notable thing in the first half was the lack of control from the English referee when one of the Spain players was karate-kicked in the chest by one of the Dutch and got away with it scot-free. The teams played a nervous 90 minutes and it was still 0-0. Extra time. Another tense 30 minutes… Well into the second half of extra time and the game looked as though it was going to end up as a draw, with the dreaded penalty kicks. Then Torres came on for Spain and injected some life to the tired legs. All of a sudden, little Andres Iniesta popped up in the box with only four minutes left on the clock. The park held its collective breath…
“Gol, gol, goooooooooooooooool!” the commentator screamed as Iniesta peeled off his shirt and sprinted to the fans. Everyone went crazy. Ricardo grabbed and hugged me, and all around spectators were jumping and singing. The road was at a standstill while people pulled up to see the screen. Un-believe-able! I have never known anything like it. Ricardo, a man in his 60s, ran off and jumped in the fountain fully clothed with a bunch of teenagers. Soon they were joined by more and more people, with a mass of flags, horns tooting and locals jumping in unison i
n the middle of the park. It is hard to imagine this scenario if it happened to England; I’m sure it would end in drunken fighting. But this was pure celebration and was set to go on all night.
Chapter 9
Like a Child at a Party
After a relatively smooth time health-wise with the alpacas since the birth of Santa, summer had began to move on, and with the evenings cooling down we started being a little bit more active.
We were thinking about moving Santa away from his mum, Bermuda, to give her a break from feeding him as he was becoming a bit of a pickle pushing through fences and going over the top or even underneath them. Bermuda didn’t seem to be too bothered about him anymore, although she did still allow him to feed from her.
One day, Lorna and I went to check on the alpacas only to find Santa running up and down on the wrong side of the fence, humming to his mum as if in distress. We undid the wire and let him back in with the girls, but he was visibly upset and bringing up green slime. In a panic we began to look around, searching for signs of something poisonous he could have inadvertently eaten.
“What about the figs?” asked Lorna.
We have two very fertile trees that produce about a bucketful of ripe figs per day for about two months at the end of the summer. Inevitably some of the fruit ends up on the ground.
“Could be. I’m sure there was a load of figs on the ground this morning,” I replied. “He must have hoovered them up. That can’t be good for him.”
I was swiftly despatched to Montoro to speak to Manuel and return with some medicine while Lorna kept her eye on little Santa. I drove as fast as I could along the track. The deaths of Black Dancer and Lily’s cria came flooding back to me. I had a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I screeched to a halt outside Manuel’s and ran in. Luckily, no one other than Manuel was there.