Water, water

I turned on the tap nonchalantly, thoughts of preparing dinner and watering the plants on my mind. The tap spat, coughed, heaved and stopped. I turned it on and off again but still no water. Maybe it was just the kitchen, but no, it seemed every tap had ran out of water. We had in fact, ran out of water.

You see, our water lives in a tank under our new house. There are no mains anything up the mountain where we live, except electricity and even that's a bit hit and miss. Being new to the system of having a finite amount of water, I guess it was inevitable that we would run one day run out.

Carlos was called, the water would be with me tomorrow he said. Always tomorrow in Spain.

While waiting we pondered on our dilemma. No shower in the 35 degree heat, no washing of clothes or dishes, the plants began to wilt and the toilets began to smell. Faces and armpits were washed at the stables with a hose while the swimming pool dealt with rest of our grime.

We all decided to go out for dinner, feeling lucky we had that option at all. We cleaned our teeth in mineral water and hoped that Carlos would deliver to us first in the morning.

What a lesson to learn.

And as the rain crashed down this week in a rare summer storm, we delighted that our garden was having a soaking and the tank was refilling with liquid gold from the sky.

Tranquilo

 She looked at me intently.

"A las diez, si?"

Yes, I was absolutely sure that I would be at the stables for 10am, as the lady in the shop requested. It is not hard to be on time. Punctuality is a particular skill of mine. I had 10 bales of straw arriving for my horses, I sat on the mounting block from 09.59 - waiting.

"They won't come at 10 o'clock Mummy, " said the ever wise P, "This is Spain!"

We all waited patiently for an hour, unloaded the frigging straw and laughed at the tranquilo approach. No apologies for being late of course -  I have just learnt to be grateful that people turn up at all.

I *live* in Mallorca

We did it, we bought a house and moved again.

To write it in one sentence sounds trite - so easy to do, but actually so flipping hard to accomplish.

But we have done it. All those years of talking about living and working in Spain have finally been achieved and I'm not going to lie, it feels great. I belong here, amongst the olive and the carob trees, the screaming cicadas and infestations of ants. I like accidentally ordering food I didn't ask for in restaurants and recognising one word out of twenty and winging it. I absolutely love Spain and all she has to offer, which is a good thing because we are staying.

The move was sweaty. And stressful as moving house always is. I tried to persuade him him to get rid of some of his belongings, but the 2000 books and 400 LP's followed us to our new and permanent house. The horses got transported down the motorway at 130km/hour and arrived terrified, with their eyes rolling around in the backs of their heads as though they had been on a roller coaster without knowing it was ever going to end. Los pobres. They are now tranquilo as life should be on a Mediterranean island. The cats meow-ed a little on their journey to the south west of the island, taking it all in their little well-travelled cattie paws. They walked around the new house, hid for 30 minutes, sniffed the familiarity and went out for a quick kill - as you do.

Recovered from their transit

We have tortoises in the new garden, wild and wonderful. Our ears pop every time we come home - we live that far up a mountain. We can see the sea from the top of the house and the yucca plant has just flowered. Hibiscus reminds me that I am somewhere foreign and the sun is always there.

The annoyances and difficulties I will write of in the future, but just now I would like to sit back, amongst the unpacked boxes and take all in what has happened.

We live in Spain. Again. And I am so very, very glad indeed.