Our decision to move out to our Spanish home was made in November 2016.  In some ways we had become complacent and almost comfortable with the idea of Calle Jacaranda always being a holiday home.  By that time we had become grandparents and I was teaching four days a week, trying to grow a business and learn Spanish in the evenings and was  spending the fifth day with my daughter and her growing brood.  Suddenly I was beginning to feel my age, it was pretty knackering!  On top of this,  to continue keeping our  two homes would have meant having to work for many more years.  Walt had already worked for 44  and although I had had gaps where I taught part time and brought up the kids I  was feeling the strain being experienced by many in my profession by that time.  That’s putting it mildly.  I love teaching but things had changed so much and the pressure on teachers had taken me to the point where I was no longer enjoying my job nor feeling confident in my skills.  Ridiculous after 40 years of looking after and working with young people, never the less I felt less like a wise old owl with years of experience to share and more like a daft old bat whose skills were out of the ark.

We had had a great adventure that summer, flying to Seville and travelling by bus to Granada and then home to Calle Jacaranda. We then took our motor bike to Denia in the Valencia region and stayed at the most amazing hotel, Los Angeles right on the beach. It was bliss.  Then back to work!   The Scottish winter loomed long, grey and wet!  In November Walt came out to the house and picked up our Suzuki 1250.  Big blue Suze!  He rode up to Valencia for the Moto GP and had a fantastic weekend, then took the bike home and flew back to Edinburgh.  Arriving home feeling great, his mood quickly changed after a few days back at the dark satanic!  My job was stressful and hard but his had become monotonous and dangerously boring.  Nothing worse for the human psyche.  At lease I knew my job had a point and purpose, the kids.  Despite the box ticking  and nonsense piled on us from on high,  the pupils were still our top priority and made getting up in the morning just about bearable. For Walt, a skilled tradesman and perfectionist, there was no joy left in what he was doing.  He was living for the weekends and of course the holidays.   I know that probably 80% + of the developed world do this but is it really any way to live?  It just came out , I heard myself saying ‘ we have a home in Spain where winter is pleasant, we can walk and cycle all year round.  Christmas day is now traditionally a hike up Pico de Águila  with a picnic and mini Cavas at the top!  (We have done this for several years now , spending christmas holidays in Murcia and abandoning the shops and commercial version back in Britain.) We can welcome friends and family and spend quality time with them instead of always rushing and squeezing every thing in on weekends or holidays.  I will miss the bairns and grand bairns like mad but it’s only a 3 hour flight away and at the moment by the time I do see them, work has wrung me out and I don’t feel that I have the energy that I should have…. ‘   Blooming Nora … I was  a  tad long winded  but you get the gist…. let’s retire and move to Spain.  Let’s be brave and impulsive.  We were when we bought the house and made our original plans… abandon the  comfort zone and go for it!

We are not alone there are thousands of expats out there, I have retired friends here in Spain, in France, Bulgaria and Thailand.  You may be one of the trail blazers who has gone before us.   We are newbies! We handed in our retirement notices in the new year of 2017, Walt retired at the end of January and I said good bye to my pupils and colleagues at Ross High in August.

If you are an old hand, what made you jump?  Why did you take the leap and what have you learned, loved and wouldn’t change?   I have spoken to a few retirees on the coast near us and not one is running back to Blighty despite what the tabloid press would have you believe!   We decided that we wanted to get off the hamster wheel , ditch at least one of our mortgages,  pay off car and bank loans, improve our Spanish , maintain brain cells and find a simpler, healthier way of life.  After lots of phone calls and emails to our pension providers,  chats to estate agents and on line research about living permanently in Spain  we felt ready to go.  The adventure started in February 2017 with a fabulous road trip in our old Vauxhall – Victor the disco dashboard  was on the road!

Thank you for joining me.

Our journey began just over ten years ago , a year ago it accelerated and while life’s journey is not over by any manner of means, the destination that is now home, stopped being simply a holiday home and became our full time base for retirement.  We bought our little Spanish home ‘off plan’ at the peak of the Spanish housing boom and took ownership three years late in 2010 as the Spanish economy was on its knees and ‘ el crisis’ was destroying businesses and lives.  Our building company hung on for as long as possible and unlike some horror stories, our urbanisation was completed .  Sadly so many people took fright and pulled out that in 2011, the builder went under and even today our estate is probably only a third occupied.  In some ways, this is amazing.  We are on the edge of a regional park and only ten minutes from the city of Murcia.  We chose not to buy on the costas as we did not want to be in an area of expats.  We wanted to live in the real Spain.  Only having a few neighbours means that life here is very peaceful , we know the neighbours that are here, Spanish and holiday owners and we have made friends of both, locals and holiday home owners.  There are draw backs… the bus service that was promised has never materialised, not surprising given the lack of potential customers!  We are at the top of a very steep hill,  three miles from our local small town ,  a lovely walk downhill in the winter or spring… for me at least, impossible at the moment as it’s too damn hot!  We have a car and a motor bike ( it has figured large in the journey) but the question does flit across our minds ,occasionally , about what will happen when we are too old to drive?   The shops and services that were also planned, not surprisingly, didn’t happen either.  This means no gentle strolls to the bakers for our morning bread!  Having said that, our local Repsol garage has a bread oven and very often when buying fuel , I get given a free baguette!

To go back to the start of the journey…. before the recession or crisis.  We planned to move to Spain in 2011 when my youngest son left school and followed his older siblings to university.  Ours is a merged family although my amazing husband has no children from his first marriage,he has therefore taken on my crazy brood with no previous experience!   The move would be made easier by this however, as the father of my children would still be in Scotland and as I had parented consistently for 28 years and the kids were all now living away from home,  I would not need to feel too guilty!  Plus, what’s not to like about Mum and step Dad having a home in the sun,  free holidays for ever!  I completed a TEFL course in 2010 with the intention of  teaching English and Walt, having a good grasp of Spanish and being very practical was confident that he would find work.  Even if the recession hadn’t happened and brought unemployment in Spain to levels that meant we didn’t stand a chance of getting work here,  family stuff did happen that meant we had to postpone our plan…. the journey slowed down and our little home was used purely for holidays until 2017.   We had wonderful holidays, using Calle Jacaranda as often as possible.  As the family grew, they and their partners used it as well.  Sadly it was the failing health and passing of our parents that meant the original plan had to be postponed.  From 2011 onwards, we were on hospital and caring duty and in four short years both sets of parents died.  None of them managed to visit us here or sit on our sun roof enjoying the views of the forest and hills to one side and the city in the distance to the other.  It is one part of the journey that we had no control over and which still saddens us.  We had flights booked for them all in 2011 and 2012 but had to cancel them  due to their failing health.  I know my mum would have loved our little city of Murcia.  It is very European, with cafes to sit and people watch from … all day if you want to.  At the moment, it is deserted… Murcianos are all ‘de vacaciones’ ,  it is a little gem in the cooler months.

This blog therefore is partly the story of the journey and our adventures in getting here and settling to live here full time.  It is also a reflection on the getting older process and how to make the best of it.  Perhaps a little morbid but having lost all our parents so quickly, we are now the oldies in the family!  At 60 and 61, not really old but some of the adventures in our journey have made us realise that life is not finite and what should and could we be doing to have a satisfying and meaningful retirement?   I would love to hear of the experiences and views from you, the readers on this.   I will alternate between the physical journey to where we are today,  and the challenges of moving abroad ( Brexit included)  and the emotional journey which I hinted at when I described the original plan and ‘ not feeling guilty ‘at leaving my kids in Scotland.  We are hugely lucky , we have small pensions and little debt. Our home is small but   our back garden is a regional park. Apart from July and August we can cycle, walk our dogs in the hills and forest , plan picnics and barbecues  and know we will have blue skies and sunshine for them.  In July and August, we are becoming like the Spaniards, we tend to hide from the sun and go to the pool in the evening or our favourite beaches which are only over thirty minutes drive away. A big mention and praise here for my grandchildren who came for a holiday this August with Mum and Dad.  I was really concerned about the heat , they are pure blond, pail skinned, northern Europeans!  They were amazing and coped so well. Perhaps a little tetchy at the end of the day but with temperatures reaching 37 degrees C, who wouldn’t be? Lots of pool, beach and waterpark fun! We are healthy and active, most of the time but every now and then we feel just a little bit homesick and I start reflecting on  what is the way forward for our generation of  ‘baby boomers’ ?   What should we be doing?  Should we be doing anything or nothing?  Should we still be working? ( Walt will fall about laughing at that, he adores being retired and after 44 years of working, he deserves every minute of it.) Should I be a more ‘normal ‘ granny?  What is a ‘normal ‘ granny?  Should I still go pillion on our motor bike?   Our first year living now as residents, we have the tiny scrap of card to prove it, has been incredible with lots of  visitors, home improvements, activity, accidents , excitement  and quiet times.  August is traditionally a quiet time here, I now know why.  I feel chuffed if I  achieve a couple of things before 2pm when it becomes too hot to do anything other than lie under the fan and read something that doesn’t require too much brain power!  The heat melts my brain.  Walt thinks this is nonsense but honestly, it’s true.   In each of my ramblings, I will reflect on the questions above and hope to hear from you , your experiences, thoughts and opinions .  You don’t need to be over 60!  One of my biggest motivations for taking the leap and the road less travelled with Walt began when my own parents were forced to retire and the , possibly skewed , view I had of the way they coped with their latter years.  Younger readers, watching your own parents, will have opinions too and I would love to hear and discuss them.  As a retired history teacher, I am great at sitting on fences,  every side of an argument and discussion is valid!  (most of the time!)

 

Being a time line, let’s keep this in order sort of person, I was planning on being chronologically correct in my musings and thoughts on the adventure that is moving abroad.   How ever my experiences with trying to speak the language and making new friends prompted me to write this blog.  Probably before the Brexit referendum and if you chose to move to the Costas, there was little really to assimilate.  There are urbanizations only forty minutes from our own where life is very much like Britain with sun.  You can retire to a place where your joints will never ache because of the 300+ days a year of sunshine without having to learn the language of the country you now live in.  Everything is there for you, in English. Shops, dentists, gyms and hair dressers.  You can use  your abogado ( lawyer) to do all the extensive paper work to assure that you are legal.  The Spanish love paper work.  Or at least you could….. none of us know what will happen after March 2019.  Que pena!  What a blooming mess.   However, let’s forget about Brexit for a few moments. There are whole communities in this country that survive without speaking the language.  Russian, Dutch , Belgian too… they use English as the central language and live where they know English will be spoken.  I am not being judgemental here, if this is what you want to do and brings you joy , go for it!

We chose however not to do that ….  we have moved to Spain and we will speak Spanish!   This seemed very doable when studying the language at evening classes in  Scotland.  Walt took it a step further and achieved an A in his SQA Higher Spanish several years before we moved.   We thought we had it nailed!  Then we bought a home in Murcia.  Murciano Spanish is similar to learning English then moving to Dorset or Durham or Leven or finding yourself working with a Doric speaker ……. it bears very little resemblance to the Madrid Spanish of the text books.  However we have persevered and our Spanish friends even when Murciano speakers to their loved ones, adapt for us and speak slightly more slowly, add in the missing consonants especially the S (who knew that España is actually Epaña ) and  help us when we are stuck.

I am a long way behind Walt but because I am a ‘blether’ and speak to every one , I have found myself making friends and students to teach English to and then found myself having conversations with them in Spanish.  Sometimes however things don’t just get lost in translation, they swirl around in the fog that is my brain and I have to cross my fingers that I have not insulted anyone, agreed to anything illegal, agreed to buy something or have volunteered to work in the local  prison. Not long after writing this my Russian friend emailed me details of a volunteer scheme in Murcia doing just this so you never know.  Examples of chats that I have  had popped in to my head this evening and that is why I am writing this blog.   It is , as I mentioned in previous blog, still very hot here.  As we are becoming more Spanish in our life style, this means keeping out of the sun until about six in the evening, when we go to our communal pool for a cool down before taking our dogs for a walk.  This evening one of our lovely and very educated neighbours began to talk to me about the insurance on our communal pool , about Italy and the beautiful cities we would see if we visited and when Walt joined us in the pool, politics and Brexit.  I think I understood most of it but really am not sure !  How ever it was fairly safe as I could not really commit to anything, apart from perhaps helping tidy up and do some gardening round the pool.  Did I say that?  Did I make that offer?  Only time will tell!  Earlier this week I  was introduced to a lovely family, Mum wanting me to give English lessons to her fourteen and twelve year old sons.  I was introduced by my Russian friend whom I met while waiting for the bus in to Murcia.  She was  a doctor in Bulgaria but is now a translator in the Murcian court.  She is full of life and incredibly generous.  Her Spanish is impeccable, she is married to a  Spaniard  and is making it her mission to help me improve my Spanish.  For an hour I spoke English to the two boys, the most polite teenagers I think I have ever met!  It was humbling, the older of the two spoke English so much better than I speak Spanish and he would only have been four when I started studying his language!  Note – study more, could do much, much better.  When our hour of conversation was over,  Mum came back and began in very fast Spanish to organise future classes, fees, venues etc.  I think I have a date and a place in my diary…… fingers crossed!  I am reading, watching television and listening.  I am hoping that one day it all falls in to place.  I am not convinced that the research about learning a foreign language can delay  dementia because after I have had long conversations with Spanish friends and neighbours, I feel as if my brain is close to melting or shutting down all together .  The synapsis only recover after a glass of something chilled!   There are times when all of this seems exhausting, times when I think of good friends back in Scotland and miss them, especially being able to chat over a coffee without worrying about what I might actually be saying, – is it insulting or rude,  what am I agreeing to-  times when I do wonder what on earth I am doing at my age, behaving like a graduate on a gap year…. and then I realise that being out of my comfort zone is exhausting but at the same time exciting and exhilarating .  Trying to put the laundry liquid in to my coffee maker yesterday instead of coffee grinds did make me wonder about those brain cells however……