If You Were Sober, Would You?

Where did it all start?

You know, I just can’t remember!  I think I got redundancy, and we said that if I found a job in Spain, and if we sold our house in the UK, we’d go.

A big if, we thought.

But that’s exactly what we did. I wrote to several inmobiliaria-Spanish estate agents to you and me – and one invited me to an interview. As it turns out it was a German company looking to take a guy on with good sales experience, so Lynne (my beautiful wife) and I popped over to Moraira on the east coast for the interview. Lynne stayed on the beach sunbathing whilst I went in, and unbelievably was offered the job there and then on the spot! Little did we know that offer was to change our four lives forever, and in a way we never thought possible.

I remember joining Lynne on the beach telling her the good news and also telling her I was starting the following week. Fun and games were about to start.

Isn’t it strange how some memories stay strong whilst others dim and others disappear?

We often talked long into the night about what we would do if the time ever came when we actually moved to España. We were absolutely clueless about jobs, money, language, culture, friends, and relatives-everything, everything, everything-clueless, foolish and naïve. My good friend Robbo will argue that whatever decisions we make, even if they later prove to be crap, were the right thing to do at the time. Even now I can’t quite come to terms with his argument.

So, let the tale begin…

I made the move

Sunshine, sea, sand, and especially sangria, have a very strange effect on our British brains. Something takes over, little bronzed aliens get into our simple little heads, and we go all gooey-eyed and stupid. “I know,” Mrs Malmsteen once said whilst eating tuna butties in our kitchen in Lancashire, “let’s make sandwiches for everyone round our communal pool in Spain – we’ll make a fortune!”

“Course we will, darlin’, and I can see little white birdies coming flying out of what’s left of your grey matter. Yes, course we will, dearie! Just go and have a little lie down for a couple of hours or so.”

We didn’t have a clue. Who would? Thousands of us migrate to Spain every year with no idea of the language, money, and, more importantly, old age and possibly/probably occasional illness. Oh yes, all doctors and nurses speak perfect English, don’t they? Course they do, Malcolm, don’t they? I can just about see Cuckoo Land from here.

Sandwiches indeed! No idea about health and safety, food poisoning, having a licence to make them, et cetera.

Never mind, dearie, have a wee before you go to bed, and don’t forget to put your teeth in that little container in the cupboard.

Anyway, I duly accepted that job, packed some belongings and jetted over to my new life in glorious España, leaving wife, daughter Lissa and her boyfriend Neil in good old Blighty until we sold our  home, whenever that might be!

Looking back, I’ve often asked myself why we went to Spain in the first place. Certainly I’ve never had any wanderlust; trees, mountains and cities are pretty well exactly the same to me irrespective of what country they are in. Whilst it’s true I probably come from Viking stock, my father being a Norwegian, if I’d been around all those years ago when my predecessors were rampaging around the world, pillaging and raping, I probably would have been the one to ask my mates to “bring me a carry-out” if they had come across any beautiful young ladies that fitted my shopping list.