Life between the mountains and the sea
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I walk past this bench most days. It sits on the side of the road, just above my house. Sometimes it has a collection of old folk on it passing the time of day and resting on their peregrinations. Other times, like today, it sits alone, dappled in sunlight, inviting rest and contemplation, […]
As an expat; exiled from family and life-long friends, forever barred from the spontaneous ‘pop-round for a cup of tea and a chat’ or the casual catch-up in the street; Skype takes on a different level of importance. It’s not that the occasional buffering, freezing or simple malfunctioning becomes less annoying; if anything, it’s more so. […]
Autumn is my favourite season in Asturias. The weather is stable and warm and the air and light have a clarity that is lacking in the hazy days of summer. The mountain peaks emerge crisply into view in my daily backdrop. In the foreground, the hillsides are awash with vivid russets, golds and browns as the […]
Packing up your entire life to go and live in another country can feel daunting (go figure!) As a self-proclaimed packing phobic it was always going to be particularly tough for me. My preferred style of packing is usually ignore, ignore, ignore until the last possible minute then spend the last 15 minutes before I […]
We are coming up to our 9 year anniversary of living in Spain. Nearly a decade. A lot has happened in that time. We’ve bought three houses and renovated them. We’ve set up a couple of businesses. My other half has written and published a sport climbing guide book to the region. I’ve gained a titanium […]
I’ve been largely absent from this blog for quite some time, happily wrapped up in family life over the lengthy summer holidays, so it seems appropriate that this week’s Gallery theme of ‘Family’ should be the jumping off point to draw me back into the blogging fold. This summer was the first time that my […]
The pace of country life can be a little slow. I’m not complaining, I’m just trying to explain why our local Carnaval celebrations took place last Saturday instead of on Shrove Tuesday, some weeks ago. Better late than never though, and mistiming your celebrations can have some advantages. Not being in competition with the larger […]
We’ve just had a four day weekend here in Spain. I’ll be honest, I was slightly dreading it as I was going to be on my own with my four year old son for the whole time. That makes me sound terrible, doesn’t it? Possibly accurately. But really it was just a sense that 4×24 […]
It was always going to be a difficult conversation. Sensitive negotiation would be vital. Careful preparation would have been nice but when he rang out of the blue on a Saturday afternoon he put R on the spot. Unsurprisingly, R fumbled the first contact. It took a moment to figure out who the Spanish speaking […]
We’re already two weeks in to the school summer holidays in Spain. Yes, the holidays here are loooong, stretching on until around the 10th of September. So far we’ve been to the beach, a river swim spot, the park down the road (lots!), a mini music festival in the mountains and spent hours eating picking […]
