A good day for a list

It’s a while since I’ve done a list and today it feels right to do so for it has been quite a frustrating day.

I was awoken by the shrill tones of my Spanish mobile phone, for which I have still to find the volume adjustment, at the unearthly hour of 8:05. It was Facundo, with some problem regarding the bathroom tiles I’ve ordered, but at such an ungodly hour and still wiping the sleep from my eyes, I was at a loss as to what. We agreed to meet at the building supplies place an hour hence. But he didn’t show, even after I waited for the best part of an hour past our scheduled rendezvous.

I then went to site to find it deserted except for a few upturned wheelbarrows so I did what you should always do in such a situation, I tried to salvage the day by going to buy some wood from the timber merchant for whom Neil had kindly e-mailed me the co-ordinates.

I followed the satellite navigation instructions and drove past an immaculately clean lumber yard with the system still telling me that I had three kilometres to drive.

Then, exactly where Neil had said it would be, was a ramshackle merchants with cut, and uncut, wood wherever they could squeeze it, knee deep mud, and not even a simple doff of  the cap to health a safety. What a brilliant place!

I found the boss, Jose, explained my requirements and placed my order. When I asked if I should pay now or on collection he looked at me like I had gone mad (which I interpreted as ‘on collection’), before helping me plot a safe route through the mud back to my car (which I’d sensibly left by the roadside).

So, onto the list;

1. An Englishwoman with a leaky roof trumps an Englishman with a porch to construct in the Facundo division of labour calculations.
2. I’m none-the-wiser as to Facundo’s no-show, but after talking to the guy at the merchants I have sorted the issue and he will now tell my builder.
3. We have two choices to get Internet at the barn, neither are perfect or fast, but at least we appear to have a choice.
4. Our neighbours from Madrid are lovely, but struggle to understand my Spanish. Perhaps everyone else is just being nice, and they are being honest.
5. When agreeing to take a coffee with neighbours Miro and Elena there is only one permissible answer to the question ‘would you like some chupito (the local home-brewed fire-water) in it’, and that answer doesn’t begin with an ‘N’.
6. Miro and Elena have a water supply from a spring in the hills, which runs through our property, and which had I not known about it would have seen us cutting them off at some point in the next couple of weeks as we dug the channel for our septic tank.
7. You don’t have to have a manly handshake to own and run a timber yard.
8. Enrique, the donkey, now definitely associates me with apples and I feared for my life as he cantered towards me when I was in his field earlier today.
9. Everyone is keen to know when Amanda is next coming out to Galicia. Not that I am developing a complex about it.
10. Cascade taps are four times the price in Spain that they are in England.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a day of work. After bumping into Angel at the house at 5:30 tonight he assures me that they will be there tomorrow, mob-handed.