From North Devon to South Spain in seven decades... Epilogue: ¡La carne de burro no es transparente! (You’re blocking the sunlight!)

Life quickly settled down in Montejaque where I was living with my German wife, Rita, who I sometimes refer to in these blogs as the Meter Maid. After a short spell at The Olive Press newspaper, during which time I also contributed articles to SUR in English, the Euro Weekly News and Olive Country Life magazine, the latter based in Alcalá La Real (Jaén), I became a blogger.

I got myself a website to promote my various activities, namely translating and interpreting, holiday rentals and house sales. The blog was a ruse to attract potential clients to the site.

In the meantime, after three years we left our little house in the village and moved to the campo just outside Ronda. I got a garden, Rita got a pool and we both got a house you could reach by car, which meant no more schlepping shopping up the hill to our house in Montejaque.

I was invited to write a blog for the online version of the Olive Press and for another local website, now defunct. As time went on I grew disillusioned with translating. It’s boring being cooped up indoors with a laptop and a dictionary. And interpreting at the hospital, at the bank, at the lawyer’s became a nightmare in that many clients didn’t really want an interpreter, they wanted someone to solve their medical, financial or legal problems. So I gave that all up. I continued to help out friends in exchange for a cup of coffee or a breakfast, but that’s a different kettle of fish. The house sales didn’t really work too well either – too much competition. Around the same time I got writer’s block. So I stopped blogging and my website lapsed.

Over the last four years I have acquired some grandchildren of my own to add to the six on the German side of the family. All boys, born in 2016, 2019 and 2020, two in Bow, East London and one in St Leonard’s on Sea near Hastings, East Sussex.

The coronavirus pandemic then arrived and ruined everything: the Confirmation of a grandson in Germany, my 70^th birthday celebration, an extended family knees-up in Germany, visits to the UK to see my children, grandchildren and brother and our annual tide of visitors from Germany and the UK to use our pool (sorry, I mean to see us!) were all cancelled.

However, the COVID-19 lockdown with its random fatalities and the death in a plane crash of a family member in Australia got me thinking about life and death – I was now 70 after all. It kick-started me into action: gardening, carpentry, mending garden furniture, painting, pressure-washing terraces and, after lockdown was eased, more socialising and eating out. Rita and I tidied up our affairs and sorted out new Wills. I bought new clothes and new furniture and we spent a tidy sum on sorting our water out and becoming a virtually chemical-free home. A descalzificador, a reverse osmosis unit, an ozone making machine, an industrial ozone vacuum cleaner and defumigator and an ozonised pool all mean no more limescale clogging up our pipes, boiler, radiators, taps, kettle and human digestive systems, no more bottled water and the contingent plastic waste, no more cleaning products and no more pool chemicals.

I decided I wanted to write again so approached Karl Smallman about contributing a blog to this Secret Serranía website and that’s where we are now … I hope you enjoy reading my somewhat random posts. Please feel free to give feedback by using the comments section at the end of each article.