Oct 99

This was the sight that greeted me 13 years ago.

We arrived in Santander after a 3 day ferry crossing, when we landed Roy gave me the map of Spain, pointed to were we where and said get us from here to Mil Palmeras, to our rented house. So NO satnav, just the map, 10 hours later we arrived.

The next day we met the agent and he brought us to the house that Roy had bought, without me seeing it, fortunately he took us to the show house first so I could get an idea of what I would be living in. Then he brought us to this (top left) this was our house!! We rented for 6 months watching our house being built, and on April 3rd 2000 we moved in (top right), the builders were still on site, it was June before they completely finished. I had nearly 3 months of living with a constant layer of dust.

12 years on, we are still here, the only difference to the exterior of the house is it is now a different colour. One of the first things we did was to chop the tree down, much to the consternation of the Germans, but as we tried to explain to them, all the pine cones and pine needles would keep falling into the swimming pool and clog the filters, costing money (the dreaded word) to fix.

It's surprising when you move to a hot country how many friends you suddenly acquire, wanting to come and have a cheap holiday. Over the years these visitors have been whittled down, except that last year we had 12 weeks of visitors, not all staying with us, and it was a costly year. This year, it's just Sarah, Corin and James, who always rent No. 11, maybe Chris and Faye and my Mum.

So tonight I will have a decent scotch to celebrate 12 years in my house.