Immaculate conception

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Paul

Today was a national religious holiday, and the second of this week. After ‘Constitution Day’ on Tuesday, today saw the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. In a week of holidays many schools and public offices are also taking tomorrow off as a ‘puente’, literally a bridge to the weekend. It all seems very convenient to have so many holidays around the time when everyone is expected to be out buying Christmas gifts.

I may be misunderstanding things a little, or vastly over-simplifying, but if the immaculate conception is celebrated today, and the birth of Christ on the 25th of December, then was the pregnancy just seventeen days long? I can’t be the first to ask.

After losing all of yesterday to car troubles I decided that I’d vent my frustration by spending the full day removing the old plaster and mud pointing inside the barn. Expecting a day of solitude, peace and quiet I’d charged my iPod to full and was all set for a mix of podcasts and music, until I arrived on site and found Vladimir already ensconced and putting in some overtime in the barn.

Miro paid a visit mid-morning for our usual chat, then we saw Carlos (asking me to move my car as I was blocking his egress from my garage), an old friend Julio showed up at lunchtime to see how works were progressing, and when Vladimir returned from lunch with Pepe in tow I knew that music and podcasts would have to wait for another day.

To complete our Galician interpretation of ‘Piccadilly Circus’ Carlos’s Mum put in an unusually chatty appearance, (mostly in incomprehensible Gallego)  as did another neighbour up from Madrid for the holidays, and finally Carlos asked me for some help loading an old wardrobe into his donkey cart. At least this final visitor enabled me to verify that Enrique is still alive and that my attempts to electrocute him a couple of weeks ago hadn’t caused any lasting damage.

With the roof being finished yesterday, while I was waiting patiently in various other parts of Galicia and Asturias, today was the first chance that I’ve had to take photos of the finished article, and mighty fine it looks too. To say I am delighted would be an understatement.

 

Interlocking ridge tiles and quartz stones (for decoration)

Chimney in full glory

From a distance

Posted in Barn Renovation | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Two knights

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Paul

Bad things always come in threes, and I’m dreading the third happening while frantically dredging my memory and trying to find an earlier ‘bad thing’ to mean that todays’ incident was the third.

Yesterday, the final day of Mothers two day fleeting visit, I was nearly wiped out by a freak wave as we walked around the harbour walls to the beautiful little fishing village of Cudillero to get some lunch. I was photographing the said wave when I realised that it was going to be a lot bigger than all the previous ones and in taking evasive action to protect my camera I missed a step and landed on my knees and elbows with all the grace of an drunken elephant dancing the tango. To add insult to injury the wave hit me anyway and I spent the next two hours trying to dry out my best (only) pair of jeans, and my best jumper!

The one that I didn't get away from...

Today was to be the day that I finished removing old plaster from the internal walls of the upstairs of the barn, but I needed to fill up with LPG ahead of tomorrows festival (national holiday) and fridays ‘puente’ (bridge to the weekend when few people work). I set off early for Vegadeo and onwards to the only LPG station in 50km at Ribadeo. Just as I got on the only long straight piece of road on the entire journey the front prop shaft on the Landy decided it had turned its last turn and let go with a horrendous metal clanking.

I called my first knight, my friend from Taramundi Neil the mechanic, builder, engineer, inventor, rescuer of stranded motorists. He rushed to my aid (a twenty minute drive) but when we discovered that drive was irreparably lost to all wheels I was left with Neils flashing orange light (my hazards had given up the ghost after 45 minutes) and the necessity to call on ‘international rescue’.

An 'unwell' Landy

Three hours and fifteen minutes after breaking down I was on the back of a low-loader and on my way to Castropol, although I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced that I’d not been kidnapped, along with my car, by some drive-by low-loading kidnapper.

Once unloaded the offending part was stripped quickly and followed by much sucking of teeth. It wasn’t going to be a quick fix.

I called my second knight, Stephen my friend from Ribadeo, and he came to my rescue and collected me from Castropol (10km) to start the quest for a hire car. A good lunch and a couple of coffees later and I was in a courtesy car from a local garage (thanks to Stephens friendly contact) and heading home, to await the quotation for the Landy repairs. Stephen even signed the paperwork, as I suggested to the loan cars owner than now was the time for me to go rallying!

Due to the holiday it will be Friday before I get the quotation (the parts in the UK are about £100). I am expecting a shock, and in the meantime I will try and find the earlier third ‘problem’ of my problem ‘hat-trick’.

Thank goodness for my knights!

 

 

Posted in Local Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Discovering the purpose of nose hair

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Paul

It’s finally dawned on me what nose hair is for, and believe me, it does have a use. I apologise in advance to the squeamish.

While in Galicia I have dispensed with the normal day-to-day regimen of gentlemen’s hair control. With Amanda back in England I’ve opted for an increasingly hirsute appearance and now sport a decent length half white – half black beard, a good growth of the ear hair which plagues 40+ year old blokes, and some nice straggling nose hairs (I did warn you!).

I’ve spent the day up at the house trying to save us a bit of money for phase II of the barn conversion by removing the plaster and old clay pointing from the internal walls ready for re-pointing, or in some cases for plastering and painting. It’s a hard and messy manual job and with the weather being too poor for roofing, I was there with just my iPod (on random shuffle) for company.

I was using a little hammer-like tool, whose name I don’t know, which resembles an ice-pick on one end and a horizontal axe at the other. It is designed specifically for this job and I saw the builders used it when raking out the joints between the stone on the outside of the barn. It looked easy enough to me so I invested in one at AKI (Lugo) a couple of weeks ago.

What you start with is a wall with 100 year old plaster on it (can anyone else see the shape of a fat rabbit walking on its hind feet in this picture? Or have I being drinking the 80 cents a bottle red wine for too long?).

Before (with rabbit)

You then remove the plaster and rake out all the joints, extracting small stones as you go and making sure that there is enough space around each stone to get some mortar. This often involves smashing away at slate to remove touching surfaces. This is the result of several hours hard labour.

The fruits of my labours

Eventually I will step aside and let the experts do the pointing (mainly because I don’t have a cement mixer) so that it looks fantastic, a bit like this.

After the experts get pointing

Back to the nose hair. After a hard days work I dusted myself down and got back in the Landy. Checking the rear view mirror I noticed a fungus like growth in both nostrils. Alarmed I quickly went to remove the alien attached to my primary breathing apparatus, to find that my nose hair had formed a natural barrier to 100 year old plaster and clay pointing.

My forest of nose hair had done it’s job and protected my throat from all the nastiness. Perhaps tomorrow a respirator would be a better idea?

Posted in Barn Renovation | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Oh, the irony!

Posted on December 1, 2011 by Paul

Just over twelve hours after nearly being run off the road by a maniacal Galician driver I got pulled over by the Guardia Civil.

I’d decided last night that a lack of LPG, money and food meant that it would not be possible to postpone my trip to Ribadeo until Saturday morning as I had originally intended so I plugged the iPod into the Landys stereo and set off in the hope, rather than expectation, that nothing new would go wrong with my fragile chariot.

Business in Ribadeo included the aforementioned LPG (the automatic pump eventually agreeing to accept my Spanish charge card), a quick visit to my solicitors to collect any post (read bills), and a trip to the bank to see Jesus who kindly gave me two Ferrari baseball caps (can you guess our Spanish bank) and explained that the reason I couldn’t withdraw any cash was because I was pressing the wrong buttons on the ATM. In my defence they are a lot more complicated than our ATMs, and in Spanish.

Then I set off back to Casa Ramon for a spot of lunch before an afternoon at the house. Half way home I pass through Vegadeo, the first and last town between Ribadeo and Taramundi, and as I entered the town an officer of the law stepped out into the road and indicated for me to pull in.

I knew I’d not been drinking, but being pulled is never a nice thing. I thought about asking where he was last night when some maniac in a white van tried to kill me, but decided that it was way too long a sentence for me to compose on the fly, and that it might not go down too well. I decided to play my trump card. ‘Buenas dias, lo siento, no habla Español‘ (Good day, I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish) I said. He didn’t look impressed.

He asked me for my drivers license, I opened my rucksack and gave him my Landys V5, with a quizzical look.  He took about a minute looking at the totally alien form and then said ‘For you, not the car’. I showed him my old style driving license, one of the ones without a photo. ‘No photo’ he said. ‘Passaporte‘ I volunteered and he nodded. I could tell he was losing the will to live and regretting pulling a British registered ancient Land Rover.

I handed him my passport and he opened it at the photograph, me with a couple of days stubble, rather that the muslim fundamentalist type beard I am currently sporting. ‘Sin barba‘ (without beard) I said, and laughed. He didn’t, but handed me my documents and ushered me on my way. He didn’t even get as far as asking me whether I was carrying my spare spectacles or fluorescent jacket (I was).

It’s a good job that it isn’t illegal in Spain to; leak brake fluid, drop a little oil, stink of leaking LPG, or drive a car that is ludicrously uneconomical.

I’d survived my first brush with the Spanish law with a smile and ignorance.

Posted in Local Life | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Tonight I cheated death

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Paul

I feel like I’ve put in a full day today, despite arriving after my workmen and leaving just before them. I stayed especially late as Pepe was putting the final touches to the first of two chimneys and I wanted to be around to see the capping stone fitted.

Pepe finishing the first chimney

I left around 6:45pm, by which time it was pretty close to dark and the weak street lights of Liñeiras were struggling to excite moths, let alone cast enough light to work by.

I’ve just finished reading the excellent ‘Everything but the Squeal‘ by John Barlow, about his quest to eat all parts of the pig during one year in Galicia. I mention this so as to quote him, and put my as titled ‘near death experience’ in some context.

In his book John observes;

‘Like Mexicans can’t make good wine, and the French can’t be modest, the Galicians can’t drive. Imagine a place populated  entirely by giddy, egocentric children, each one of whom has been given a supercharged tractor for Christmas, without training or guidance.

Galicians often say that the worse drivers in Galicia are from the province of Lugo (where the house is). Broadly speaking this is true, although it’s a bit like Jack the Ripper calling Sweeny Todd a nasty piece of work.’

This evening, on the wildly curving road from Pontenova to Taramundi, in the pitch black, a white van decided to round a blind bend on the wrong side of the road, right in my path. What was startling was that he wasn’t even overtaking, he was simply on the wrong side of the road.

In the dark I couldn’t tell if the driver was eating, on their phone, half-asleep, or wearing the demented grin of a madman.

I swerved left and at the last minute he swerved right and we missed exchanging front wings by millimetres. The near vertical hundred foot drop to my right was a little too close to comfort, and I didn’t fancy the flimsy barriers chances of stopping three tonnes of Land Rover. Two wheels left the tarmac but I managed to get them back on it pretty quickly. I was too shocked to hit the horn (not where you’d expect it to be on a Landy) or flash my lights, but I did manage a quick swear word.

I’m sure that the white van driver thought nothing of it, and he’ll probably do it again tomorrow night. Me, I’ll be travelling home at a different time, to avoid another encounter.

Talking of near death experiences, I think that after a months of afternoon conversations I have now truly bonded with my next-door-but-one neighbour, Miro. At seventy-five he’s fighting fit despite apparently having a tumour removed last year. Today he showed me his surgery scar… and you don’t just show your surgery scars to anyone!

Posted in Local Life | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment