Today is Red Nose Day in UK, wear your nose with pride!

After spending I don’t know how many millions of euros on radar speed traps the Guardia Civil once again have red faces. It suddenly became common to see Guardia Civil standing by the side of the road pointing what look like hairdryers at passing cars. Shortly after it seemed as if everybody I knew had been issued with speeding tickets, in fact I felt quite left out for not having one. On today’s news they said anybody who had been issued a speeding ticket since Christmas didn’t have to pay it, and those who already have paid would get a refund. I stopped what I was doing and listened. So many people had appealed against their speeding fines that an investigation was set up. When a brick wall was found to travelling at forty kilometres an hour (we know this because the hairdryer said so), it was decided that humble pie was on the police menu once again. Back to the drawing board boys!

The other day I found a site which shows satellite images of this area. It’s a fascinating site, by clicking onto a map the image zooms in, and in, until it shows frighteningly detailed photographs. I zoomed in on my house, and saw that the photograph was taken before the renovation because it had no roof. I then looked up the area where we lived before coming here. We had a top floor apartment, so half of the roof was our terrace. I really was shocked to see a photograph of our block, complete with our day beds set out on the terrace! How scary is that! Thankfully we weren’t on the beds at the time the photograph was taken. I say “thankfully” because we thought our terrace was private and spent most of the time out there naked. Am I being naïve, or is this too “Big Brother” for comfort?

Badaunt set me a challenge. Well, in all honesty she asked me to answer some simple questions, and in my usual style I’ve drawn the whole thing out.Here goes...

1.    & nbsp; What were your first impressions of Spain?

This is a hard one to answer really because I’d been to Spain several times on holiday before I came here to live. If I can I’d like to change this to memorable moments in the early days.

We were collected from the airport by a representative from the car hire company, and we drove him back to the town we were going to live in. We arranged that he would come back the following day to sort out the paperwork, and the following morning we were woken up by heavy banging on the door. “Is my car” said Alejandro. We both looked at each other and slowly nodded. “What are you doing with my car last night” he asked, getting more animated. “Nothing, why?” we replied. “The man he come and take his wheels”. We all went outside to find the car exactly where we left it the night before, minus the wheels.

The school which had employed the other Andaloo sent us some contact phone numbers because we didn’t speak a word of Spanish. We thought it was a bit odd that all the names had numbers after them, mostly 2’s and 3’s, but with one 4. The name for help with accommodation was (insert first names) Barrbero Barrbero. I should point out here that Spanish people have two surnames, their mother’s followed by their father’s. This was a small town, so do the math. Anyway, we called the number and asked to speak to the person whose name we’d been given. After lots of shouting and pointless hand gestures a child was put on the phone. The contact names we’d been given were of children who attended the school, and the numbers corresponded to their year group! We weren’t quite that desperate to ask a three year old boy to find us somewhere to live.

We found a house to rent eventually, and had to go to the agent to pay the rent. I’d started Spanish lessons by this point, and was crap. My biggest hurdle at this time was a complete mental block between the words “name” (nombre), and “number” (numero). I went to the agent to pay the rent, and he asked me what my name was, but to my ears he asked me what my number was. The conversation went something like this;

Him: What is your name?

Me: (thinking) What does he mean, what is my number? Phone number, number of the house, foreigner’s identification number?

Him: Hello? Do you understand me?

Me: Yes. Which one do you want?

Him: How many do you have?

Me: (thinking) Oh shit, I’m getting out of my depth here.

Him: Just give me your real name please.

Me: I don’t have one. […]

Finally, another language cock-up. I’m not going to try to translate this because it would be too confusing, but anybody who has any Spanish will understand my ultimate mistake.

We had a gardener, a lovely man who was very patient with foreigners. I used to practice my Spanish on him. One day I went down to the garden for a chat;

Me: Hello, how was you?

Him: Fine thanks, and you?

Me: Equal thanks. You would have been doing a great job there in this garden, them look lovely!

Him: Thanks.

Me: Will you like a drink?

Him: Oh, yes please.

Me: I love you.

(I have to say that although he ran away he did come back, and years after we’re still friends and he still pulls my leg about that blunder.)