When I came to Spain some 18 years ago, supermarkets were not what they are today, at least outside of the main cities. My first year was spent in gorgeous but wetter-and-rainier-than-the-UK Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.
The largest supermarket was called Simago, there were no ready-made meals, fresh pastas, sauces, salads or dips, and certainly […]

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Now that we are nearly into April and the weather is beginning to really warm up, Altea is coming alive and opening its doors for the fiesta season.The town is known for being the cultural centre of the Costa Blanca.
For starters we have The Palau Centre d’Arts, which provides a vast variety of entertainment and […]

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How I swapped the delights of Bolton fish market for life as a bar owner in Tenerife …
It was while holding aloft a not altogether pleasant-smelling mackerel that the decision was made. Blood dripping from a rabbit dangling overhead tinted the cold water from the fish and rolled down a white sleeve.
The March rain hammered […]

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Village infrastucture can be ropey in Spain, though I guess I can really only speak for Andalucía.
Bus services run at an absolute minimum, if at all, and on a national level some 6,500 villages have no access to ADSL, as broadband is called here.
On the other hand, perhaps precisely because communications are poor, the pueblos […]

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Is dentistry an art? Well, I know finding a good one in this area has definitely proved to be! The last time my daughters were out here in Spain, I was forced to go to Iceland - no, not the country, the food store. It’s conveniently located in Benissa, which is close to where I live - […]

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I seem to be getting quite a few emails from people in the UK recently asking how you go about becoming a writer. Funny how things like this come in batches.
My first thoughts when I get two or three enquiries a day is that it’s a friend winding me up. I spend time on answering […]

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Dos bautizos y un funeral. Sort of. More like two christenings and an ash-scattering with a memorial mass thrown in.
No disrespect intended whatsoever to my dear departed mother-in-law, Amelia, who I’m sure was listening in and laughing as 11 of her 14 children (10 boys, 4 girls) argued over whether her ashes should go in […]

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A couple of days ago, I received an email from Claire Cobb, who had come by a painting that she thought had been painted by one of my artists and she asked me if I could help. I told her to send me an image of the painting, which she kindly did, and she also […]

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