De Perros y Limones

So, I now have another new name to go along with the various ones that I have attracted in my life, including many that I am sure I am not exactly aware of but can guess from annoyed students, annoyed parents, my sisters, my wife, my mum, frustrated teammates and Spaniards who cannot believe just…

It has been an exciting and difficult month or so for the denizens of that ‘house with all the dogs’ in Fuente Tojar.  Other people keep tiny dogs in their houses but normally just the one.  You know the type, yappy rat-like things that you worry about stepping on.  Ours are somewhat unique in the…

Well, it has been a very exciting few weeks here in Fuente Tojar and no mistake.  Firstly, we have had lots of blessed rain.  Not the downpours of a Sri Lankan monsoon, which are always spectacular and not the cold rain of the UK that makes everything a bit depressing but much, much needed rain…

You’ll have to forgive me for this one; this is shaping up to be a rather narcissistic blog with me as the centrepiece and is something that I am not quite comfortable with as yet.  It may be somewhat stilted and awkward.  Yes, I know, no change there then… Anyway, we have mostly sorted out…

Well, we are at home now after an extremely long week of packing a hired Luton van that had definitely seen better days – it had a stereo with a cd player – and driving it down to a broiling Andalusia and then unpacking it into a house that was already full of furniture.  Sonalee…

Difficult one, this one.   Where to start, really?  These past few weeks have not been easy for either of us.  It kind of caps off what has not been a great time for us in Madrid – or rather a boring commuter town north of Madrid. To sum it all up; I have been made…

I hate January.  Hate it so much.  Always have, always will.  I hate it more now that we are in Europe where the dark mornings and evenings are more pronounced and more, well, dark.  The cold I can deal with; the dark less so.  I need sunshine and lots of it if I am to…

Well, that was a farce.  Sonalee offered to be one of the Three Kings for the parade around the village  –  the dark one of the three obviously.  She was entered into a draw for the honour of doing so but her name did not get pulled out of the hat (a metaphorical one, I…

Here in Spain we have a phenominoninom, a phenorem, a phinomoninoy, a thing called El Puente, the Bridge.   It is where a bank holiday will appear on a Tuesday, for example, but many people and many companies also just take the Monday off as well because, what’s the point?  Unlike the UK, bank holidays are…

Life in the exam factory continues to be difficult with moments of happiness and I think it would be fair to say that the difficult part is slowly diminishing  and the moments of happiness or at least not being unhappy are  increasing as we adjust to life north of Madrid. In terms of the day…