May 2009 - New gadgets for my iPod.

I bought the latest iPod Shuffle.

I already have the two previous models of Shuffle and have always been mightily pleased with their performance, sound quality, battery life, and robustness. (Pictures here (c) Apple Inc)

Their main drawback has always been that without any display screen one could never easily choose items to listen to. The 3G version of the Shuffle has now changed all that by incorporating voice feedback so that one can find out the name and details of the track currently playing, and one can also flip between albums. Add to that the 4Gb capacity and it becomes a very nice piece of equipment.

The tiny device, about the size of the little finger, can hold days of sound files. Ordinary MP3s or the highly compressed files from Audible can be loaded to provide a huge amount of entertainment. I generally listen to Audio Books or Plays which I have downloaded or recorded from the radio. By grouping their files into playlists within iTunes, then loading them onto the 3G Shuffle, one may flip between albums, books, and plays. It must be wonderful for visually challenged people who now can have a device which allows them to choose more easily what they listen to.

Now when I bought the device I was aware that all the controls for it are incorporated into the Shuffle’s special earphones. Not a problem if you only use it on the move but such a great piece of kit should be available to use with your own earphones, connect in your car, to external speakers, or to your home hi-fi system. I searched the Web for a solution and although various manufacturers were promising adaptors etc. none had actually begun to manufacture anything.

I eventually came upon a company called Scosche, located in California, who had designed a cable which would sit between the Shuffle (by plugging in to the earphone socket) and whatever other device you choose. It may be viewed here on their website.

Just an aside here about ear/headphones. I have always loved great sounding hi-fi and have spent money on my home system to achieve this. With the advent of the Walkman then later the MP3 player, listeners who wanted a great sound from their portable equipment generally had to buy third-party earphones as the sound quality from the supplied ‘phones has been less than good quality. Tinny is generally the word that springs to mind. It is a different story with the Apple iPod as their earphones have always been of an acceptable quality for the purpose for which they were designed. There is a lot of guff talked in the forums about “the low quality of Apple earphones” by folk who do no more than sit on the bus, roller-skate, jog, or exercise in the gym, with them stuck in their ears. The Apple earphones are good quality and are supplied along with the iPod at a price people wish to pay. If Apple were to supply ‘phones of high quality then instead of 60 quid for the latest Shuffle, or 150 quid for a Classic, they would have to ask for an extra cost of anything between £20 and £150 and I bet 99% of people who buy iPods are perfectly happy with the ‘phones supplied. I say this as I do not wish to be mistaken for an “earphone snob”. I do own very high quality earphones, bought so that I can shut out the noise on Airplanes whilst listening to music or watching a film on the iPod. My reason for finding an adaptor to go with the 3G Shuffle was mainly to be able to use it with all items in my hi-fi set up.

(Steps down from the soap box).

I emailed Scosche in the USA and asked if they would supply me with the cable when it came available and they put me on to their UK arm (Scoschedirect) which up to that point had not appeared in my Web searches.

Eventually after some production delays the “tapLINE” cable was delivered and I also purchased another device called the “tapSTICK”. This is a very clever protective case which fits over the Shuffle and has all the necessary controls on the outside of the case. It also has another earphone socket built in so that the device may be plugged in to external equipment.

The pictures above are (c) Scosche Industries

Both items work perfectly and I would recommend them.

October 2008 - Eating Well on the Costa Blanca

There are so many restaurants along our coast that we are never short of places to eat well.

Many of them offer bargains, especially at lunch time, and one can have a 3 course meal from as little as 3.95 Euros. Stunning value as this offers 4 or 5 choices for each course and includes a glass of wine or a beer.

Our branch of the Banco Halifax is in a shopping centre near Playa Flemenca and within this small centre alone there are at least six restaurants.

One day after a visit to El Banco we popped in to a restaurant named “The Sunrise Cafe” for a coffee and late breakfast. We were so immensely impressed with the quality and standard of presentation that we decided to pay a return visit for an evening meal later in the week.

All the staff speak English and and at least one other language and are gathered from all over Europe. The Sunrise is in the La Mosca centre, sits above the N332, overlooking the Mediterranean, with great views all the way to La Manga. Great value for a Menu-Del-Dia, a long, refreshing cocktail or a beer and great for sundowners and delicious evening meals. The food is prepared freshly for each meal and the choice is tremendous. There is a good wine list and the House Wine is of quite a high quality.

Delicious lamb served on the bone

The pictures here show Leg of Lamb on the bone, and their speciality pudding (for two I hasten to add) all served to perfection in the balmy evening air.

Pudding for Two

We will need to be careful or we will end up like Michelin Men!!

June 2008 - Growing Old Disgracefully

In 2007 I felt the need to own a sports car.

Between us we have had open-top cars since 1987 with 3 Ford Escort XR3is, a Renault 19, and 2 Renault Meganes, but apart from a short time when I borrowed an MX5 from our son Michael, we had never owned a sports car.

It was all decided one weekend and within a few days we swapped our Renault Clio for a ten year old Mazda MX5.

We did many miles in this old car including the 700 mile round trip to Cornwall mentioned in my previous post.

In my opinion the MX5 is the best of the affordable sports cars. It may not be the fastest off the mark or on top speed but it cannot be beaten for price and fun to drive. The only problem is that a ten year old car brings problems that any old car can have. Bits wear out and rust is a concern on our roads which are always salted in winter.

The engine is good for about 200,000 miles though and if you can keep the body going the car will remain mechanically sound for quite a long time.

Come 2008 and we decided that we should change the car for a newer model and cut out the added costs of keeping the older car in a road-worthy state.

A friend at work had recently changed her MX5 and had bought her latest one from an importer who brings in cars from Japan. I visited his warehouse and he showed me a beautiful car which was ready for sale.

Needless to say we bought it and to date still own it. (No, it’s not a personalised plate but we don’t want any cloning do we?) It will be coming to Spain with us.

This model features all the things that the true sports car lovers detest such as air-conditioning, electric windows, ABS, a hood which folds down in one easy motion, six-speed box etc. Me not being such a stick-in-the-mud, I love all the features and hope to keep the car for a long time.

I have been accused of exhibiting the stereo-typical mid-life crisis but heh, if it’s this much fun, what the hell ??!!

August 2007 - The Eden Project, Cornwall

With our new home in Spain finally sorted we can begin to plan for retirement. We feel the need to visit one or two places which we have always said we would go to but have never got around to.

One of these is the Eden Project in Cornwall.

Now I am firmly of the belief that (to misquote a famous person) Cornwall is a great place to visit, but not for the whole day. This not withstanding I suggested that we visit the Project as we kept seeing it on TV, agreeing that it would be a great place to go, but never getting around to it.

We knew that the whole place had been built within a clay-pit and we had seen the famous biomes often enough but knew little else. Kathie therefore did some research and picked us a lovely guest house just around the corner from the Project and we made plans.

The official website is here http://www.edenproject.com/index.php and this will tell most of the story. When we arrived at our guest house we were invited to their evening "bar" for drinks and we met some of the folk who had actually worked in the clay-pit before it became The Eden Project. They had allegedly been sacked when the land was sold off to make way for the Eden Project. The popular myth we were told is that the Project was built in a "reclaimed" quarry but that is not the case. Whether this is true or not I cannot verify but even so there are probably more people employed there now than were there before it began.

It is a fabulous place to visit but quite surprising in its size and layout. See the aerial picture below. On this you can see that the biomes form but a small part of the site whereas one draws the impression from TV etc. that they form the main part of the Project. Most of the site is garden with many varieties of plants including huge banks of Lavender. The whole theme is the environment and its protection and improvement. It is set in the lower levels of the old quarry and the entrance to the biomes is about 20 metres below the entry/exit buildings. There is transport via a mini train for those with dicky pins so all can visit.

By staying in a guest house so close to the Project we were able to walk there and so received an environmental discount. The day before we had driven 340 miles from home but it seems that if you walk the last half mile you get a discount for protecting the environment. Add to that my concessionary ticket and so we only paid about 60% of the normal entry fee. If you agree to class your entry fee as "gift aid" the Project gets the tax back from your fee and this entitles you to a whole year's entry free of charge. Very handy if you live within striking distance.

Inside the Tropical Biome

The main attraction for us was the Tropical biome. Once inside you feel the temperature and humidity rise as the atmosphere is that of a tropical rain forest.

If it is cold outside ones camera and spectacle lenses immediately steam up. From the entrance the paths rise quite steeply so pushchair and wheelchair users need be aware. I don't think you could wheel yourself about unless you were of wheelchair-athlete status. It is best to visit early morning as this biome becomes very popular. On our first day we arrived at about 10:00am and we virtually had the place to ourselves and it was very pleasant. We visited on our second day at about 4:00pm and it was like being inside an extremely hot and crowded lift. It was completely shoulder to shoulder so we had to leave.

The other main biome is called the Mediterranean Zone and whilst it has some lovely flowers and plants and is beautifully laid out, it is less impressive than the Tropical Zone.

The following pictures give a taste of the Project.

The above is the WEEE Man. The WEEE man, designed by Paul Bonomini, is a huge robotic figure made of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment. It weighs 3.3 tonnes and stands seven meters tall – representing the average amount of e-products every single one of us throws away over a lifetime. Makes you think! If you look carefully you can see that it is constructed from everything from an old cell phone through to washing machines and lawn mowers.

The Guest House we stayed in provided us with what used to be a Granny Flat so we were almost self contained. Each evening the garden was visited by about five badgers so we sat and watched them for half an hour or so whilst they ate the food laid out by the owner. Photography was a problem due to the low light but here are a couple of pics which are not too out-of-focus.

The digital camera I was using employed an auto-focus system and as there was little light and so no contrast it could not resolve a sharp image.

We really enjoyed the visit to both the Project and the Guest House and would recommend them both to anybody who can get there.

Easter Holiday, April 2007

Oranges at market and Orange Blossom

April is a beautiful time of year in our area of the Costa Blanca. Within a five minute drive we are into the lemon and orange planting areas and in springtime the smell from the blossoms is stunning. We quite often turn off the air conditioning in the car and open the windows whilst driving through the groves in order to enjoy the perfume.

Spain produces over 2 million tonnes of oranges per year and the Valencia or Murcia orange is one of the sweet oranges used for both juice extraction and for fresh-fruit. It is a strange plant in that the blossom which produces next year's fruit can be on the tree at the same time as this year's fruit making for both colour and perfume.

Oranges in the local street markets are quite cheap and one can buy a large bag of say 5kg for just a few Euros. People can be seen packing them into their bags to be taken home for producing fresh orange juice.

Having taken delivery of the apartment we are now anxious to visit as often as possible.

Kathie was determined to concentrate on home-building and so we started to improve the home we had recently acquired. Extra furniture was carefully chosen, security grills were installed, and we called in a manufacturer of awnings to quote us for the installation of an awning to shade the balcony in the height of summer.

It was amazing to see the service we received from two of these companies.

The security grills were fitted by an English company who first of all promised to have the work done within two weeks and to post our keys back home as we were only visiting for the Easter holiday. As it turned out he fitted them within two days as he wanted us to see them installed properly before we left.

The representative of the awning company called and quoted us for the fitting but then advised us that we should wait until El Presidente (the president of the Community Committee) had agreed what colour scheme should be adopted within the whole block. He could easily have sold us the awning but was honest enough to give us this advice and leave without an order.

It is good to see such good service.

Moving In, Christmas 2006.

Enjoying Christmas Day on the beach

(The apartments may be seen in the background)

Enough of the banging on about the terrible service we received from our agent and the uncertainty of dealing with Spanish builders (see previous blog). On to happier times..........

In December 2006 we eventually received news that the builder had relinquished control of his Company to his daughter, and that we could finally move in to the property. We travelled to Spain, collected our keys, and were living there within 24 hours. Atlas had as part of our purchase package installed the furniture and cleaned the apartment (after a fashion) so things were more or less ready for us.

Now the enjoyable part of buying a home in Spain could begin. Trips were made to the stores where we had been previously only window-shopping, and this time we were able to buy the things we wanted. We filled up the car with crockery, cutlery, glasses, patio furniture, and other household items. We visited a store where we had previously ordered a quality bed and twice had to cancel it and this time we actually took delivery of it.

It felt so strange to be driving in the same areas where we had been previously wishing and hoping for good news and now to realise that we had a home to return to each day.

We were asked to examine the apartment and report any faults and we were happy to be able to report that no faults were to be found. The one thing we did find however was that, in the winter, the sun, being fairly low in the sky, reflects off the sea whilst we are eating breakfast on the balcony. This can be quite dazzling! Such is life however, J and somebody has to do it!

We met and became good friends with some of the other tenants and that first Christmas was spent visiting and comparing homes, swapping horror stories, and inviting one another for drinks and meals,

We were now able to begin planning properly and the future was often discussed during long walks along the cliff paths. The path which we like best runs some 10Km from the beach at the bottom of our road, going north towards Torrevieja. It was on one of these walks, whilst stopping at a convenient bar for cocktails, that we decided that we would both retire at the same time when Kathie reached her 60th birthday in 2010. That would mean a shortfall in pension but it was decided that we would manage one way or another and before long the date was agreed upon and plans were set accordingly.

Roll on February 2010!!

A long story. 2003 to 2006.

Breakfast on the Balcony

Kathie and I were Francophiles for over twenty years spending many happy holidays in the South of France, Burgundy and the Alps. Winter holidays were taken on the ski slopes of Switzerland or Austria.

In about 1997 we spent our first winter holiday in Spain and found out (a long time after most other people) what a super place it is and how much less expensive it is than France. In those days two coffees on the Riviera would cost about £4.50 whereas the same snack on the Costa Del Sol would cost less than £1.00. The cost however was a very small part of the "conversion". The speed of life, the climate, property prices etc all played their part.

As we spent more winter holidays in Spain we realized at long last how good it could be to wander about in December, January, or February in our English summer clothes. Bougainvillea, Coleus, and Poinsettia were growing outdoors in gardens and window boxes. A wish to live in this kind of environment began to grow but we had no plans or finances to enable this to happen.

We had always said that when we retired we would sell-up and "Bugger off to Burgundy" and this became our motto and target for retirement. Burgundy has a wonderfully soft and year-round pleasant climate, and property prices are such that we would have been able to afford a very nice place there. Add to that our reasonable command of the French language and it seemed an ideal solution. Our winter holidays in Spain however shifted our aiming point to the Costa Del Sol but finances decreed that it would be many years before either option was likely to happen.

Until circumstances changed that is......

In 2002 we had the opportunity to fund our dream by selling the family home and moving into our son's house whilst he was working abroad. This we did and by the end of the 2003 we had sold-up and arranged a Viewing Trip to Spain with the largest Selling Agent in Europe. During the previous months we had decided that we could afford a much better property on the Costa Blanca rather than the Costa Del Sol and so this is where we targeted our efforts.

Our dream place had now become an apartment overlooking the sea.

Just before Christmas 2003 we flew to Alicante to meet with Atlas International who were to show us the area and offer us various types of property within our budget. After the first day we had almost decided upon an apartment and on the second day we confirmed our decision and laid down a deposit. The agreed completion date for the apartment was September 2005 so we signed the papers, shook hands, and came home to wait.

Atlas International promised that we would receive regular updates on the progress of our new property by email and indeed for the first year we did. At the beginning of 2005 communications dried up from Atlas and I had to start asking for reports. The usual answer was that nothing was available, interspersed with the odd builder's report. Towards the contracted completion date reports dried up completely and Atlas reported that as the apartment block was multi-storey, their inspectors were forbidden access to the site so could not tell us anything. Presumably the builders were incommunicado and information of any kind was unavailable. The completion date passed and Atlas announced that the builder had opted to take up an obscure clause allowing him to extend the completion date by a further three months.

We eventually took possession of our apartment in December 2006, some 15 months late. Atlas International provided very little help as they have a clause in their contract which states that they are merely agents and are not responsible for any actions taken by the builder. Their fee was allegedly about 32,000 Euros for selling us our apartment so it would have been nice had they done more during what was a very traumatic year.

The lessons we learned were NEVER BUY OFF PLAN and DO NOT ALWAYS RELY ON THE SERVICES OF AN AGENT despite their size.

We always now recommend that people should consult a reputable Estate Agent, arrange a short viewing trip, and purchase a ready built property on a properly completed urbanization. Properties in Spain are almost always sold furnished, so on the day you exchange contracts you can move into your new home.