The stuff of life

As I remarked to Dan about an hour ago, bricks and mortar are NOT the stuff of life. However, just a little excursion into the progress of getting 'quince' closer to how we want it to be may be of interest to some of our probably very tiny club of readers.

This is what our 'archway area' looked like before. When we first shook hands with Miguel, the previous owner of our house, this is partly what we fell in love with. Very Spanish - very cute. 'Una casa muy bonita', as Rosa, our cleaner was heard to remark on her first visit. But when you sit in it and look at it and really see how it was put together, you discover over time that it's crap. So work began, as you see.

We had been inspired and did not know where from. Uncanny this - we went away so the 'constructores' could do their work. We went to Granada - The Alhambra. You have to see it before you die, by the way.

This is what we saw:
















While we were in exile, we met a very famous Portuguese bullfighter:














I digress. This is what we now have. On a modest scale, yes, but we have our own version of the Alhambra.






















Remember that floor in the Alhambra? How did we know?

Maybe it's an ancestral memory or something.


And just in case you're getting bored with the bricks and mortar of life - here is the stuff of it - taken today:




















Post lunch drinks on our closest beach just one minute's cycle ride away and . . .














. . . tonight's sunset - a bit of a trek, 3 minutes' ride away.

As someone was overheard to say, describing this day: 'puta madre', which roughly translated, according to my friend Helen, is 'the dogs bollocks'!