| Part two of `My Life as an Ex-Pat`
 By Olive Braman
Twelve years
ago Olive and Geoff Braman
spent £37,000 on an old terraced house in one of southern Spain’s prettiest white
villages. Recently in laterlife, Olive wrote a
feature called Snowbirds, in which she described the annual migration south to escape the
British winter. We asked Olive to write a
diary about her life as an ex-pat in Spain…
It’s 8 am and to avoid the later
heat I take the longish walk up to Colin’s
house in the campo to water his plants as he is away. It’s
what ex-Pat neighbours do for each other. Can’t get the system to work, or maybe the water is off so I
just empty the water-filled bottles he has left on
the plant pots.
I am relieved to find that our own water problem is
sorting itself out. The water flowing down the wall is decreasing. Spot Damian, our dishy local plumber, who says he does
not know where the water is coming from but it may be an underground spring which has
changed route. That seems to make sense as , so hopefully it will soon stop completely.
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Catch the bus to meet Carol, another bridge enthusiast. We are going to her splendid house in the Rio Seco area.
She and her husband moved here six months ago and are thrilled with their good fortune at
being able to live in such a marvellous location. En route we see flocks of wonderful
scarlet and blue kingfishers.
We swim and talk, wallowing in the luxury of it all. The water temperature in her pool is 30 degrees! In the
evening several of her friends who are holidaying here come round and we have a splendid
curry on her large patio with superb views over the sea and across the country side to the
mountains. This is the life!
But we get rain sometimes too.
Tuesday I wake to grey skies and wet streets and for a short while it’s much cooler
so rush around cleaning and tidying up, then promptly at 10.30 cross the road to David and
Anna’s house for my promised lift into town. They have lived here for nearly 20
years, Anna teaching yoga and David working as a successful painter. This year a calendar
of his paintings is being produced.
Eleven o’clock comes with no sign of David. He turns up ten minutes later. Seems he had popped up the road to deliver
some prints of his for exhibition in a new wine shop, and had been unable to get away
earlier because the priest was there blessing the shop and he thought it seemed rude to
leave when holy water and prayers were being splashed around.
 In consequence, when I get to the café, none of
my friends are in their accustomed place so I miss my coffee. Trail round the market looking for them
but no joy nor do I see anything of interest to
buy. Deliver some odds and ends to the church charity shop then cross the road to the
German shop and buy myself yet another cotton sun hat and a long blue elephant pattered
dress with a boat neckline. You never have enough thin cotton clothes for this climate. They get limp and grubby pretty quickly, and my London
clothes seem to heavy or too tailored.
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