Man Flu for Christmas

Posted on December 12, 2012 by Paul

The magical date of the 12th December 2012 (12/12/12) was the day that I caught a horrendous cold, perfectly timed to coincide with the yuletide festivities.

As yet, there are no visible portends of the snuffling hell that lies ahead, but after spending an hour this morning in close vehicular confines with a sneezing and wheezing Facundo (our builder), it is a certainty that it will shortly be manifesting itself in the region of my ears, nose and throat.

I got back to Spain yesterday and it was almost as though I’d not been away for a fortnight. Despite little external change the house now has first fix electrics which comprises the carcasses for the sockets and switches along with several tens of metres of plastic tubing embedded in the soon to be plastered walls.

roof20121212_01The other advancement is the porch which now has a roof, beautiful internal beams, and when I left to come home for my lunch, was starting to get its slates. We’ve ignored the architects plans for a single pitch and elected to build with three, and I am sure that it looks a lot better than it would have done. It’s a slightly larger roof area, and therefore slightly more expensive, but even half-done it looks great.

roof20121212_02The trip with Facundo was to Meira to look at some floor tiles for the kitchen, after I rejected the first option, which looked like something you’d have found in a 1970’s swimming pool changing room, out of hand. These were much better, and I’ve agreed to their purchase.

roof20121212_03The doors and windows, which I thought were scheduled for delivery yesterday, have not arrived and after a quick phone call it was established that we’d get them sometime ‘this year’. Not very confidence-inspiring. I am going to go up to the carpenters in La Roda in the morning and see exactly where they are up to, and indeed whether they have actually started to construct them. I’m not entirely sure that I believe their assurances that they just need staining and varnishing.

I turned down the option of free Christmas draw in the supermarket at lunchtime. All I had to do was leave my phone number on my receipt to be entered into the competition where the first prize is a pig. I didn’t enquire as to whether it was alive or dead as being a pescetarian who lives for most of the year in England, neither answer would have appealed.

Being a generous type I thought that I might as well share Facundos cold. So this afternoon I will begin preparation of the magnificent piece of chestnut, which I bought last visit, and will be used in the bathroom. This means decamping to Neils and taking full advantage of his hospitality by abusing his myriad of big boys woodworking toys (circular saw, electric plane and band sander). My Tung Oil arrived at Neils via mail order from Germany, of all places, although I had originally bought it from a company in Madrid.

Sorry Neil!

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Home for the holidays

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Paul

My week long silence has been due to me being back in the frozen north (of England) as I decided to take advantage of the Spanish public holidays and have a couple of weeks back home, rather than twiddling my thumbs in Galicia.

December 6th is the Day of the Constitution and the 8th is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. With the 6th falling on a Thursday, then the Friday is accepted as a ‘Puente’ (bridge to the weekend) with many public offices closing. As the 8th is a Saturday then the public holiday gets bumped to the following Monday, meaning that many Spaniards will have a five day break, at an ideal time to get the Christmas shopping done.

This year, however, is a less than satisfactory combination for the Spanish. They love it when the 6th is a Tuesday and the 8th a Thursday as this gives them a ‘puente’ on the Monday and Friday, a chance to throw a ‘sickie’ on the Wednesday for a nice nine day break.

On the way to the airport for the flight home Neil was kind enough to treat me to a tour of the DIY stores of Oviedo, one of the lesser trod tourists pilgrimages. We managed four stores within a couple of hours, while keeping our fingers crossed that a re-seated radiator expansion tank seal would avoid Neils’ car overheating again like it had on the road from Taramundi to Aviles earlier in the morning.

I spotted plenty to spend our money on. A nice Grohe double shower, with thermostatic control, for €200 less than I’d seen it elsewhere, a very cheap looking Husqvarna chainsaw, and some stainless steel double-skinned flue pipes for the wood burner.

We made the airport in good time, I consumed my last decent coffee for a fortnight, and the flight was on-time and without incident.

But then I seriously disgraced myself!

The plane landed just after 3pm (4pm CET) and I was starving. It was freezing and I fancied some warm food. My only option was Burger King.

In a moment of weakness I ordered a fish burger, fries and fizzy pop. It took just one bite to regret it and remember why I’d not been in any fast food joint for the last twenty plus years.

It will be at least another twenty before I make the mistake again.

I’ve not wasted my time in the UK. I’ve bought some door handles for the, as yet non-existent, internal doors, researched integrated ‘electrodomesticos’ (white goods) for the kitchen, and agreed to three more quotes for additional works (uprated electrical installation, the building of an outside housing for the water heater and a wood store, and more expensive flooring materials for the kitchen and living room).

I’m back to Spain early next tuesday morning, and Neil is collecting me from the airport and kindly taking me back to some of those DIY stores so that I can get the shower, and invest in my second (I bought an angle grinder last year) Spanish’ big boys toy’, a chain saw!

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Rural reminders

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Paul

Although you are surrounded by beautiful countryside in both places, it is often easy to forget that life in Galicia and Asturias is somewhat different to that in the Pennines, however rural we may think we are in Holmfirth.

I’ve had three stark reminders in the last couple of days about the nature of agrarian and hunter living.

Yesterday I went to the coast, near Rinlo, to get some treatment for the wood I have bought which will soon comprise the floor of the cabazo. This treatment smells like nail-varnish remover (pear drops) and it is very pleasant for the first few minutes, but after painting it for a couple of hours the novelty wears off and a feeling of mild intoxication takes over.

It costs 42 Euros for five litres and is intended to keep the woodworm and other wood loving creepy crawlies at bay for twenty years. Liberal application with an oversize paintbrush, the only one I had with me, saw plenty of the solution elsewhere than on the wood with a great deal of it landing on me. I suspect that my eyes won’t be getting any nasty infestations for twenty years.

I found what I needed in a most bizarre shop, as recommended by Neil, which was one third agricultural wholesaler, one third DIY centre, and one third supermarket.

I emerged with solution (Corpol Metacarcoma) and 3kg of 70mm galvanised nails to find that the most agrarian form of transport, the tractor, was behind me in the parking lot.

Deciding to make full use of my last Sunday before a two week trip home I set off for the house just after nine. A couple of miles from Taramundi, in a small village called Mousende, the locals had just slaughtered a pig by the roadside and were burning off its stubble with a blowtorch. Not a typical Sunday morning sight in Holmfirth.

When I finally got started on the cabazo, admittedly making a bit of a noise banging 70mm galvanised nails through rock-hard chestnut, I was visited by a stranger. Although he spoke mostly in Gallego I think I was being reprimanded for working on a Sunday as a couple of words I did pick out were domingo (Sunday) and Iglesia (church).

Perhaps it was the ‘God police’ trying to dissuade me from working on the holy day, or perhaps he was just a nosey neighbour. I was pleasant enough, smiled a lot, and he seemed to like my cabazo. Once he got back in his car and drove off, I carried on my hammering.

Finally, on returning back to Taramundi mid-afternoon I was confronted by one of the local pub landlords running down the street carrying a shotgun. In England I would have been running as fast as I could in the other direction, but here it’s pretty much the norm and it appeared that a boar hunting party had just got back after an early morning start.

It is very, very different here. But I do love it…although I could have done without seeing the dead pig.

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That’s what I call service

Posted on November 22, 2012 by Paul

After receiving a phone call from José at the timber yard to tell me that the wood for my cabazo was ready for collection, Neil agreed to act as transport and his aged 4×4 was pressed into service.

Collecting the pre-ordered timber was straightforward, but then I put the cat amongst the pigeons by asking whether they had a nice thick piece of 2m x 0.6m chestnut, preferably with bark down one edge, that I could buy and then work on to use as the worktop in the bathroom.

What unfolded over the next couple of hours will have one of our English friends, who is responsible for Health & Safety in a large Leeds-based company, hiding behind the sofa and clutching a cushion to her face while humming and rocking gently forwards and backwards.

José scratched his head at my request, consulted one of his workers, and then took Neil and I half way across the yard to a pile of rough cut boards. We had a good look through but none really fitted my criteria.

José was not at all put out, I’d given him a challenge and he was going to rise to it.

His second option was to have us climb over a massive and anarchic pile of ankle breaking wet logs looking for something large enough, and which had been left to dry for long enough to not be ‘green’.

I eventually spotted one, and the man with the tape measure agreed that it had potential. Now we needed to extract it from deep in a pile and this is where Jose’s 1950’s Dodge flat-bed came into play. He attached the wimpiest looking hook and cable to the log, and with the smallest hydraulic winch you have ever seen he plucked the log from the pile, onto his truck and then drove it the ten metres into the saw mill

In the wood yard Jose’s eighty year old father was keeping an open fire going….yes in a saw mill, and the crane swung the three tonne log into the machinery. Seven or eight slices into the log we were at the correct width and length, the grain was good, and they cut my timber.

By this time, with the intensive labour and me having brought the saw mill to a near standstill for over an hour, I was dreading the price, but it turned out to be just 40 Euros (£32).

It took four of us to lift it onto the roof of Neils 4×4, but fortunately Neil decided to use the JCB to move it from its mode of transport into his garage, where I will use his tools and expertise to turn it into something very beautiful for our bathroom.

I’ll remove the bark but leave one edge ‘rustic’, sand it to glass smooth and then wax the living daylights out of it. It is a gorgeous bit of timber and should be a pleasure to work on. Once finished it will be incredibly tactile and should look fabulous.

I’m just not looking forward to lifting it.

It’s quite a bit larger than we need and I am already thinking about options to use the offcuts. Perhaps a fitted computer desk, or some shelves.

On several occasions this morning Neil and I looked at one another and laughed. We both knew why. Imagine service and working practices like that in England.

Not a chance.

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How to make your bathroom a tiny bit bigger

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Paul

Last year, when we were doing the initial works on the barn, one of Facundos’ men was the singularly most miserable person that I’d come across in Galicia. Roma, a migrant worker from the Ukraine, was always leaden-faced, uncommunicative and on occasions downright intimidating.

He was back on site today for the first time, preparing cement for the walls in anticipation of the impending plastering and while he looks the same, he appears to have undergone a personality transplant. He was chatty, friendly, happy and after lunch even broke into ‘a capella’ singing about his work, life and drinking beer. In Spanish.

Whatever he’s on, I’d like some please.

I had a meeting with the builder and plumber this morning. The latter a man so slender that I expect he could pass through one of his 15mm diameter plastic ‘tubos’ without touching the sides.

He will be ideal for getting into the smallest corners of the bathroom.

While he was with us he pointed out that there might be a problem with the smallest room in the house, in that it isn’t square. This means that the shower, which can only be mounted on the out-of-square wall, will be angled into the bathroom.

Facundos’s solution was typically industrial. Demolish some of the wall where the shower will be installed and make it square to the rest of the room. This is what Alessandro, a native of Romania, has spent the rest of the day doing.

It was tough work, and he didn’t join Roma in the singing.

I’m now sat in the dark in Ramons’ flat as during our many conversations this afternoon I let it slip to Roma that I like the odd drop of Rum (Ron in Spanish) and that I’d found a very nice little tipple at the Lidl in Ribadeo for 4.99 Euros a bottle. He promptly invited himself to a party at mine.

Mercifully I didn’t go into any details as to exactly where in Taramundi I am ensconced.

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