On the move?
Have so many jobs to do and yet here I am sat with my laptop looking at houses in Tarragona and working out where they are on Google earth so I can whittle them down to those I want to view.
I have a detailed criteria after listening to advice from people living in the area. Some are perfect but too off grid for my liking, am keen on having solar but want to be connected to the grid so I can feed sunshine back in when there is oversupply and buy some from the grid when its cloudy. Some have all this land and fruit trees, chickens, goats and vegetable gardens but I have to remember I cant even keep a house plant alive and lets be honest my days of weeding and pruning are behind me. I’d quite like some habitable and legal buildings to let out but want to be close enough to civilisation to have at least a cleaner to give me a hand on changeovers. I have Darren to be gardener and pool boy. It must be on a road that is navigable twelve months of the year and not be in a flood area. I would like a view and it to be betwixt the mountains, the sea and Tortosa, twenty minutes in any direction and I hit one of the three. Oh and a view so slightly up hill. The search is ongoing and I have four potentials so far. We are taking a week to tour and view next month so have to have as many as possible to look at. Well it makes a change from shopping on Amazon although its a bit more expensive!
The decorating indoors and outdoors is ongoing, getting the house freshened up ready for selling. Darren has done a brilliant job repainting all the walls and ceilings, everything is white, not an easy task as it’s hard to see which bits have been done as you go along and until you stand back you really can’t see which bits you’ve missed but, apart from the hallway which is double height, all is bright and sparkling. He’s discovered he’s not so hot with woodwork and I’ve just spent half an hour scraping set paint out of the door mechanism so that I can actually open and close it. Hey ho we can’t be good at everything. He has now moved on to painting the rendering outside so is building a nice tan as he goes at it.
I then have the unenviable task of a good deep clean everywhere, borrrinnngggg! I also have a few repair jobs that need sorting, one is the flushing mechanism on the loo in our ensuite. We have two kinds of flush on our loos, the push button kind and the more traditional pull up knob kind. These are prone to gradually coming unscrewed leaving you with knob in one hand (not that kind) and an ever flushing loo down below. Time is of the essence so I dismantled it so we didnt have to resort to pulling the remaining screw bolt to give it a flush. It is really awkward putting it all back together requiring thin pliers, thin fingers and patience. All finished and a nice clean and sparkling bathroom again.
It also just so happens that summer has arrived and to get the season off to a good start we got the gardeners in to give the whole outdoor space a short back and sides. It has made a huge difference and makes it so much easier for Darren to keep on top of it. Heaven knows how we are going to cope if we go down the route of buying our next place with cultivated land! I see sit on mowers and mini tractors, it must be a boy thing, sorry is that sexist or gender bias or some such. Darren is fond of a gadget he has just bought himself a robot pool cleaner that motors up and down the floor and climbs the walls sucking up the mucky stuff and leaving a clean path in its wake. More successful than the Bex Bissell floor cleaner that just made the rugs smell of wet cat or the rowing machine that never worked or the Vacs steam cleaner that i struggle to get replacement pads for and is so cumbersome that it lives in the garage and never comes out to play – that was actually my request so fair play not all gadget choices are his. I also have a vac that lives under the stairs as a brush and pan and mop and bucket do the job more quickly and are easier to have around.
Summer has arrived early so I’m also heading off to the cabin mid week to do a bit of entertaining for my neighbour’s and finish some overdue jobs. Successfully altered the picket fence so it is all now hinged and can be opened up at one end enabling us to park the car at the front if the campsite gets busy and we can’t park under the trees.
My neighbours bought me a lovely pink hibiscus to say thank you for the paella I made for us, it is coming home with me to get planted as it won’t survive on its own at the chalet. I might just put it in a bigger pot so I can take it with me when we move.
Still on a floral note, Temps de Flor is over and I think this was my favourite courtyard display. They always do something quirky in this particular courtyard and this year is no exception.
Whilst over in L’Estartit I got my hair cut short for the summer, am completely au naturel now and it is such a relief not having to do my roots every 3 months! I love the colour its not that iron grey its quite a nice soft white, I just use a purple shampoo on it periodically to keep the brassy tones off it, am sure it will go whiter still in the sun.
Finally, I successfully managed to change my green residencia to a TIE card and can now move freely in and out of Spain, it took more than a few trips up and down to Lloret (couldn’t get an appointment for love or money in Girona) but one bonus is that we went to a very nice restaurant on the front overlooking the beach for lunch we even had a teeny glass of wine each!
….and a fishy lunch
