July 2022

Work started on Esperanza 9. For those of you who have no idea what Esperanza 9 is, it is our new little restoration project in the village - a former garage that we are converting into a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom holiday rental house. The first couple of weeks of work were remarkable in that the structural metalwork was put in, the old roof removed and a brand new roof put on. Such a dramatic start, and work has progressed steadily since then. The house will be available for holidays from 1st April 2023, and we are very excited about it!

We were in summer mode, punctuated every now and again by lovely guests at Casa Higueras. Friends from the UK, Sam, Daisy, Tania and Sarah, came over for a couple of days and then we all trotted off to Seville. We stayed in one of the beautiful properties that have been restored by Nicky of HolaSeville, and who took part in our #MyTravelPledge campaign during the early months of the pandemic. If you go to Seville, stay in one of Nicky’s places (she has a third in the pipeline); her taste is exquisite and the properties are beautiful and very central. Seville was hot, but we had such a lovely time. My knees were still playing up, so cycling around the city was the answer, as opposed to foot-slogging.

Later in the month, we had the daughter of a friend come to stay for a week to practice her Spanish. Maisie is studying Spanish A-level and so it was considered a good idea to come and talk like a local. Together, we had a great week - gigs in the square in Moclín and on the terrace of Casa Rubio in neighbouring Olivares. Will we ever forget Billie Eyelash and her rendition of Amy Winehouse’s ‘Back to Black’? Maisie even got to act as a translator to two of our guests from Holland who wanted to visit Moclín Castle accompanied by the Spanish guide.

We are in the process of forming a Tourism Association with the neighbouring villages of Íllora and Montefrio and one of our fellow committee members, Épona, has a large cortijo in a magical location just outside Montefrio. Épona does a lot for local tourism, and her land includes a very historic collection of Megalithic dolmenes (tombs): Las Peñas de los Gitanos. One balmy evening, we went to a concert in her grounds, and that one evening was the perfect summation of everything we love about living here. It was all slightly haphazard, set in the most glorious and mysterious setting, lit by little battery-operated candles. The performers were a hugely talented group of musicians, the Al-Andalus Clarinet Quartet from Sevilla, and they did very well to deliver a fantastic programme in the dark! There was no stage lighting and Andrew and I ended up providing illumination with our mobile phones as the evening grew ever darker. It was such a fun night, in a magical setting, surrounded by very appreciative people and an evening we will remember.

In the heat of the month, we discovered another of the secrets in Alcalá la Real - the open-air swimming pool. This had been recommended to us on a number of occasions, but we normally hot-foot it to the coast if we want to cool off. However, this year we just wanted somewhere nearby and what a joy it was! The added advantage is that there are no jelly fish!

August 2022

My son James and his fiancee Hannah got married! We had a week in the UK and it was a week of the very best of a British summer. The wedding was near Tunbridge Wells, and we stayed in a hotel on the Pantiles where bunting fluttered beneath cloudless skies, and the annual Jazz Festival provided entertainment for the pre-wedding dinner outside. It was a week of family reunion, and meeting adults who remembered coming to our house when they were mere teenagers. There is something strange about meeting the children you knew and heard of when your own children were growing up, but who are now adults! There is also something heartwarming that both my children have so many friends from their childhood, in just the same way that Andrew does. Having gone to boarding school in Belfast when I was 9, I lost all trace of anyone I knew before then, and then when I left school to return to the mainland when I was nearly 18, I lost contact with almost everyone there. The wedding was a day of unbridled happiness and pride; we are very lucky.

After the wedding, we had family time for a few days in Rye, and the sun shone and everywhere could not have looked prettier.

On our return home, Granada Province was in its August languid state where everything seems to happen in slow motion until late at night when everything comes back to life. We loved fiestas in nearby Colomera where our Flamenco course singing teacher was performing with his group, and we had a night of many laughs and lots of dancing in the patio of our friend Mamen here in the village. August is a time to escape from real life for a bit, because the heat makes it all too exhausting to be serious. We nipped down to Torremolinos for a couple of nights, too, to lie zombie-like on the beach and drink Tinto de Verano before falling asleep under the weight of a book.

September 2022

I was 60 on 2nd September and I was not keen. Andrew is a mere stripling so he still has a long time to go until he catches me up, but his day will come soon enough.

He whisked me off to Mallorca for my birthday, for a break in Palma. We love Mallorca but have only ever really visited the capital city for a day during our previous holidays, so haven’t had time to delve. Summer still raged on and Palma was humid, but hiring e-Bikes and whizzing along the coastal cycle paths from our hotel in the very chic neighbourhood of Portixol was a dream. That was a very memorable few days, and our last evening was accompanied by that sense of melancholy you get after a long and wonderful summer’s day anywhere in the world; the sort of day you never want to end.

Back in Moclín, work on Esperanza 9 picked up again after the August holidays and we optimistically thought that the house may even be finished by Christmas.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable Cookery course, with a great group of guests who were as committed to food and cooking as we are. Our new chef, Carlos Sánchez, proved to be a real gem and he had a natural way of involving every guest in some activity and with passion and a sense of fun. The end of this course is marked by a wine tasting for the villagers, and the course guests prepare and serve their favourite tapas. We had over 55 guests for the wine event, filling the courtyard of our venue with lively chat, and everyone enjoyed delicious food and equally delicious wines from our favourite vineyard, Bodegas Calvente.

The last evening of this week was spent with the guests on our Playwriting course, in the castle having a picnic and listening to the playwrights reading sections of their work, as the sun set over the historic landscape and a soft dusk descended. The magic of Moclín can never be underestimated.

October 2022

We were surprised and delighted, once again, to be recognised by the Mayor and Town Hall for our contribution to the Cristo del Paño celebrations. Las Fiestas en Honor del Santísimo Cristo del Paño is one of the most important classical religious festivals in Spain and draws an average of 15,000 people into the village.

This year was the first festival in 2 years due to Covid, and so there was a sense of anticipation, The actual day of the religious festival is the 5th October, which fell on a Wednesday this year, and so it was expected that visitor numbers would be lower than normal. The town hall, therefore, wanted lots of activities on the weekend beforehand, and Andrew and I were asked if we’d organise something with the other non-Spanish people in the village, as a sort of ‘International’ fringe. Our Great British Fête was born, and took place shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. There were a few hiccups along the way, but we had a fabulous and exhausting morning of traditional summer fête sports events, tombola and games that seemed to be very much enjoyed by all who came.

The day before the fête, Andrew and I had been asked to act as translators for an event to be held in the marquee that evening. As part of the celebrations, the town hall were giving prizes to various members of the community under the guise of Mr and Mrs Moclín, and as the village now has a handful of non-Spanish residents, they needed someone to act as English comperes. It transpired that this was all a bit of a ruse to make sure we were there on the night and on the stage, as we received our award at the end of the proceedings. We both were rather overcome, as it was very unexpected but very much appreciated.

On 5th, we opened a pop-up bar in our friend Steve’s garage, right next to the main square in Moclín. Thanks to the amazing support of Breaking Bar La Plaza and Carlos’ shop, both of which provided drinks on a sale or return basis, and fridges and ice, we had a really good day. We were at the very heart of proceedings, and a steady stream of our neighbours and friends came in during the day to show their support. Would we ever open a bar? Never!

We had a packed week of Botanical Watercolour Painting and we think almost everyone had some mysterious symptom or another. I had a niggling cough but nothing else. Andrew had a temperature and certainly felt off-colour, but neither of us tested positive for Covid. Guests for the course came with various coughs and tickles, but nothing detracted from the success of the week, and much lovely work was produced for the end-of-week exhibition in Bodega Doral.

We had a flying visit back to Scotland to celebrate Andrew’s Dad’s 90th Birthday, marred slightly by the almost 11 hour wait we had to endure at Málaga Airport on the way out, due to a cancelled flight.

We returned to Spain to have all the children come and stay, and it was during this week that we managed to build our bond with granddaughter Georgie, now running around and chatting nonsense, but enough to boss Andrew around. It was Hallowe’en, so on one evening we ended up in the bar in fancy dress and Andrew danced with Georgie. The relationship was cemented and thereafter it was “Andoo, sit”, “Andoo, away!”, “Andoo, step” - this latter command meant that Andrew had to sit on the bottom step of our staircase and read Georgie a book before she got bored and gave another order. We had such a lovely week and immediately made plans for our next trip so we all had something to look forward to. The lessons of last Christmas had been learned, and we are off to Scotland for a week from 5th January to be joined by the entire family - both Rutters and Watsons.

November 2022

I had major knee surgery on 7th November. In July, I had got so fed up with knee joint pain that it was decided by my consultant that an osteotomy would solve the problems. I had no idea what this entailed, but just wanted to be able to walk without pain. The procedure was amazing, but neither of us really had considered the consequences and the post-op recovery time. I couldn’t drive for 6 weeks, so poor Andrew had to overcome his dislike of driving pretty quickly and get behind the wheel. I was immobile for weeks! That said, I did manage to get out and about for the filming of a section of ‘A Place in the Sun’ for Channel 4, but that was probably only because I was still plugged into an epidural, so any pain was obliterated at the press of a button. Once I’d decided to dispense with the epidural, reality hit and paracetamol and ibuprofen had as much effect as an M&M when it came to pain control so I had to hit the Tramadol.

My sister in law and niece were very excited that we had Laura Hamilton in our house.

Laura Hamilton and crew from A Place in the Sun.

Setting aside one or two days when the Black Dogs could not be contained, where I felt useless and incapable, November went by in a lovely haze of being looked after by Andrew. I think he started to enjoy his new-found freedom a little too much and was off to Mercadona, the ferreteria and into Granada on a whim! Recovering from this kind of surgery is a long and slow process, and I am still having to use one crutch to walk any distance, but it will be worth it in the end. Then the other leg has to have the same procedure.

Andrew has been amazing. It did cross my mind that he may regret having a 60 year old around with dodgy knees, but he is still here.

December 2022

Here we are at the end of another year.

We have, both of us, been back in the studio. Being immobile for weeks, I managed to devour another bundle of novels but have since managed to hobble to the studio to start painting again.

Andrew entered, and won, a 5 km road race in Puerto Lope so the mantelpiece in the dining room has another trophy on view.

Much of this month has been spent buying stuff for Esperanza 9: lighting, taps, appliances and stressing about the cost of everything. It hit us both the other day that we can still get stressed about stuff, and life still affects us. However, as Andrew rightly said, we have a fabulous life in the most amazing place and we should never forget that. It’s not always that easy. We have seen friends get upset about life’s challenges, and we have had a year with its own set of ups and downs. Fortunately, the ups have been more frequent than the downs, but the downs do still exist. The endless ‘benefits’ of Brexit still make themselves known, as we try to ship a painting to a client or deal with the aftermath of Barclays Bank closing my UK accounts because I no longer live there. We both get very saddened to read, daily, of the mess that the UK finds itself in but have to remember that we still have friends and family who live there.

We had planned to meet up with friends from the UK in Sevilla before Christmas, for some festive frolics, but my leg made that impossible. So, this year, we rather unromantically resorted to online shopping hoping that deliveries would make it to us in time. It was a quiet Christmas and we decided that next year we would be in the UK with family, in a hotel somewhere remote where we could wake up to a cooked breakfast everyday and see everyone we love on Christmas Day.

Tonight, New Year’s Eve, we’ll be with friends for a drink before heading to Bodega Doral shortly after midnight to spend time with our village friends and look forward to 2023. Tomorrow, we’ll have lunch on the beach before heading back home to get ready for our trip to Scotland, Alfie will be in the safe hands of my niece and her fiancé - they get married in August 2023, so another family wedding to look forward to.

Many of our Cultural and Creative courses for 2023 are fully booked, and we have bookings for Casa Higueras. We already have reservations for Esperanza 9, which is very encouraging, and we have a wedding anniversary party to help organise for friends. We look forward to every new year here, and casting our eyes over the photographs from 2022 we have many, many lovely memories shared with friends, family and neighbours. Nothing is perfect in this life. However, we do count ourselves as being incredibly fortunate to have what we have and what we can look forward to over the course of the next 12 months. Here’s to a fabulous 2023 and we genuinely hope we get to share lots of special moments with as many of you as we possibly can so we can look back again at the same time next year and remember how lucky we are.

Casa Higueras, Moclin.