A flat life!

Another part of the dream slots into place as I type this; sitting on the balcony looking out over the swimming pool towards the beach and the sea. Admittedly, to be perfect, there should be flawless skies and a burning sun, but, alas the sun is intermittent and the people sunbathing are doing so defiantly rather than languorously. This however is Spain and not Britain, so there is a general expectation that the sun will appear it all its glory; unlike the (fully justified) pessimism that characterises the phlegmatic British approach which expects the solitary cloud in a British summer sky to block the sun throughout the time that one is on the beach. And, true to form, as I type the sun is now out and shining!

One preconception that has been destroyed is that of the peculiarly British obsession with the weather being something mystifying to the foreigner. This is clearly not so as, during my time in Spain so far, virtually everyone I’ve met at some time has said something about the heat. You see, it’s the same but different: we talk about the rain; they talk about the sun!

I have received various communications from my bank, BBVA, the first letters to the flat: how piquantly appropriate! One of them purports to be some sort of statement in which a thousand euros magically disappear into the coffers of the bank. It is my personal belief that BBVA were there in force in the early years of the first century and their activities probably prompted Jesus to start his campaign of cleansing the Temple. I look forward to my next brush with them when they have to change a cheque for pounds sterling into euros and deposit the results in my account in Spain. I shudder to think how much they are going to charge bearing in mind the massive risks that the bank runs in accepting a cheque from one of the major financial houses in Britain. It is at times like this that one has to remember the sage advice of Mr Meagles in ‘Little Dorrit’ to “count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram” to emphasise the quality of patience in those given to imprudence; but one should also remember the reaction of Tattycoram who, when pressed to the limit, “stopped short, looked me full in the face, and counted (as I made out) to eight. But she couldn't control herself to go any further. There she broke down, poor thing, and gave the other seventeen to the four winds. Then it all burst out. She detested us, she was miserable with us, she couldn't bear it, she wouldn't bear it.”

Now that sounds more like me and my relationship with my bank. Any day now I’ll only make it to three and then go for the jugular.

I am having to learn again how to live in a flat. This is nothing like the same thing as inhabiting a house. A flat is an exercise in communal living whether you like it or not.
The arrangement of balconies means that you are intimately involved with those to your right and left and below. To the right is a balcony at right angles to ours so their life is our life; to the left is a brick partition which separates us visually but not audibly. The flats below, which are on the ground floor, have (unfairly) large patio areas and are ostentatiously visible to us flaunting their own personal access to the pool!

There is a definite hierarchy of recognition in flats. It goes from ignore; look; stare; nod; grunt; speak - to eventual conversation. So far only the early stages have been reached but, as I am fond of pointing out to all and sundry, I am here for at least a year in my flat by the sea, so there is plenty of time to be sociable!

I have eaten very little since yesterday lunch time so I feel justified in a little more scientific exploration of the differences between British and Catalan food by going to a Japanese restaurant.

I will leave that conundrum to fester.

Bon appetite!