No me lo puedo creer!

We have had ‘drain problems’ again.

After the local plumber ‘did his magic’ with his rods and various foul smelling chemicals, life got back to normal for a while…

But then, about a month ago, I was in the shower whilst our washing machine was on. The washing machine emptied… and my feet were suddenly engulfed in soap suds! Obviously the ‘drains fix’ had not been a permanent one.

Well, we could have called the plumber back, but were loath to do so. He had not been cheap and he had not completely fixed the problem. Haggling in Spanish to try to get him to come back and fix it for free was not something we felt would achieve a satisfactory outcome.

When we had had potential problems with our Saluki and had spoken to the ‘translator man’, my husband had also mentioned our ‘drains problem’ and the man said he would help if necessary. So my husband rang him again and the guy rang the local council for us and got us a visit from the sanitations department (or whatever they are called).

But, as these things happen, by the time the sanitations man arrived, the problem had gone away again. The engineer decided that this looked like an outside drains problem rather than one inside our house. We breathed a sigh of relief as this would entail no more cost for us. So, the man and his team had a look down the street drain… and declared ‘no problema’.

Hmmm, what to do now? We just crossed our fingers and hoped ‘el problema’ would not return. Of course it did.

A few days later, the weather turned bad. Torrential rain and high winds buffetted our village. Because of a strange planning arrangement when our house was built, we collect rain water from surrounding houses. It passes along their gutters into a pipe which meets up with our house drains.

In the early hours of the morning, I was doing my night time shift on the computer, when I heard the dreaded bubbling and gurgling noises again. I look in the bathroom with trepidation… and found our bath filled with rain water.

The rain eventually stopped and the water slowly drained away, but we were left with a very blocked drainage system. Time to call out the council engineers again. The next morning, my husband drove down to the local council and asked for their help.

An hour or so later, two engineers arrived, armed with rods and hoses…and a pneumatic drill. One of them proceeded to drill a large hole outside our front door. My husband tried to tell him that it was very unlikely the drains came out there, as the outgoing pipe under our house was about 10 metres to the left of this spot, but the engineer declared that “esta aqui” because that was the spot under the water meter. He carried on drilling.

Pieces of concrete and earth flew everywhere as the guy got into his stride. Our whole house shook and, I guess, so did all the other houses in the street. However, when he was stood almost shoulder deep in the now very wide hole, the engineer admitted defeated. The drain “no esta aqui”. My husband gently pointed to the spot 10 metres away for the second time and the engineer shrugged and said “vale” and moved his drill to the required spot.

About two seconds later, he found the drains access. it was a couple of inches below the road surface. Now the two engineers could begin inspecting and working on the drain with their rods and hose.

To cut a long (and very messy) story short, they managed to fix ‘el problema’. It was internal to our house, but they fixed it for us at no cost. After clearing the drain completely (the previous plumber had just ‘made a hole’ in the blockage), they showed us what had caused the problem in the first place.

When our house was renovated, we had assumed that new pipework would be installed throughout. There had been nothing much wrong with the original pipe running under our living room floor, but it was old and a different circumference to new pipes, so joining the pipes from the new extension would have presented a problem.

However, it appears that ‘new pipework throughout’ had not been the rule when the project was under way. The old pipe had been left and the new drainage pipe from the extension had been joined to it, by placing the smaller (new) pipe some way inside the older one. This had left a ridge where the new pipework ended and this ridge had, over the months, caught stray pieces of toilet paper. These had become wedged, making a larger ridge for more to catch on. You get my drift…

The engineer told us it was “muy mal” that our builders had installed pipes this way. He said we were going to be faced with the same problem again in a few months time, unless we had the old pipe replaced.

To do this would mean digging up our living room floor, not to mention the cost of more building work.

I wonder if you still read this blog Mr Project Manager? If you do, then perhaps you would like to come and install the new pipe work for free? It must have been your decision to install the drainage system like this in the first place. There again, perhaps not, we could well do without further stress.

We still have a very large hole outside our front door. The engineers said they, or someone else, would be back ‘mañana’ to fill it in and lay new concrete. We have learned, however, that ‘mañana’ does not necessarily mean ‘the next day’ so we’ll wait and if no one turns up in another week or so my husband will go to the council and ask them to call again.

In the meantime, he has filled in the hole as best he can and covered the earth with some left over tiles. The neighbours are not particularly impressed as this does tend to ruin the look of the street a little. I guess that council visit should be made sooner rather than later…

But we are not complaining about the engineers’ work. They did it all for free and unblocking internal drains was not their job. We are just so glad they were willing to help.

Of course, at some time soon we will have to think about getting replacement pipes fitted in our house. This is more expense we hadn’t envisaged and certainly cannot afford right now.

Did you hear me say “no me lo puedo creer”? No, I’m afraid not. Having had so many problems with the renovation work before, I can believe that this particular problema has happened only too well…

This post isn’t full of pictures because, basically, it’s serious.  However, it still has elements of ‘no me lo puedo creer’, but then it would, wouldn’t it…?

As regular readers know, we have three dogs, all hounds.  Two we brought with us from the UK and the other (our little ‘Scavenger’) adopted us back last year.  Our two ‘Brit dogs’ are large hounds - a Greyhound and a Saluki.  Up until very recently, although Savenger had been widely ignored (or verbally abused…) by the villagers, our two ‘Brit hounds’ had been well-regarded, with comments ranging from ‘muy bonitas’ to ’son muy rapido, no? Me gustan mucho!’  But things have changed, we hope not for long, but who knows?

A few days ago, our little Scavenger got into a fight outside our house with another village dog (who, I have to say, had been antagonising her for weeks).  I was upstairs and this all happened rather quickly, but my husband rushed outside to get her in, but, in his haste, left the door ajar … and our Saluki decided to investigate.  It appears that he decided that Scavenger needed a helping hand…

By this time, the gentleman who owns the other village dog was trying to kick Scavenger away, while my husband was trying to grab her, whilst shooing our Saluki back into the house.  Our Greyhound, at this point, decided to amble out to investigate, only to get a kick for her troubles from the gentleman.

At this point, the gentleman panicked (understandably, considering the noise now ensuing - mainly from his own dog, still trying to take a piece out of Scavenger).  He put his hand down among the two scrapping dogs to ‘rescue’ his perro.  It is never a good idea to put your hand amongst fighting dogs.  The gentleman received a bite.

In all the furore, my husband had grabbed Scavenger and shood our other two hounds back inside.  He didn’t notice that the gentleman had been bitten (and neither did I, watching from the upstairs window), but my husband had received a nip himself, from the gentleman’s dog.  In any case, by this time the gentleman was rapidly walking away, carrying his still snapping and barking dog, and cursing loudly.

As soon as my husband had ‘had a word’ with our three hounds, and I had washed his hand and ensured the dog nip wasn’t deep, he rushed up to the gentleman’s house to apologise and to check if everything was ok.  But he received no reply.  Neither did he receive a reply when he tried again the following morning.

However, the following evening there was a knock on the door.  It was the gentleman from up the street, speaking very rapidly in spanish, while gesticulating wildly and waving a heavily bandaged thumb in the air.  We invited the gentleman in and were (secretly) relieved that our Saluki and Scavenger bore him no ill will for the day before’s kicking and welcomed the gentleman warmly.  Our Greyhound (having a slightly larger brain and thus a better memory), was less pleased to see him, but restrained herself to a rumbling growl now and again at said gentleman (after all, she must have felt a sense of injustice here…).  After much deliberation, trying to be friendly, diplomatic and apologetic all at the same time as attempting to translate, we ascertained that we were to meet up with the gentleman in two day’s time at the village medico, and to bring our dogs’ papers with us.  The gentleman then pointed to our Saluki and said it was most important that his papers were in order, as he was the one who had bitten him…

I asked the gentleman if he was absolutely sure that this was el perro who had bitten him, but he was adamant.

Now I am not at all sure about this.  From my viewpoint, it was not our Saluki who did the damage and from the position of the dogs, it was much more likely to have been the man’s own dog, or Scavenger.  Plus, we know our hounds.  Yes, they have sharp teeth and rapid instincts, but it is those instincts which make me sure they would not knowingly bite a human.  They can withdraw just as fast as they can bite if the object they are aimed at isn’t the correct one.  But, the man did put his hand down among fighting dogs, so I can never prove that it wasn’t our Saluki who did this.

Be that as it may, we still had the distinct possiblity of a major crisis on our hands.  Our Saluki was being accused of biting a human and he was also (according to our rough translation of the man’s rapid spanish) being depicted as ‘a dangerous dog’.

Very recently, the Government of Andalucia has toughened up its laws on ‘Dangerous Dogs’.  It has now defined 15 ‘dangerous breeds’, plus given other catch-all criteria for dogs considered dangerous which do not fall among these breeds.  They have also instigated a wide scale advertising campaign to publicise these changes.

Owning a ‘dangerous dog’ now entails cripplingly high insurance fees, strict regulations about where the hound can be kept, rules on when it can leave your house, when it can be walked, muzzled of course and with no other dog present, and who is allowed to walk it (a person considered strong enough to control it).  Plus immediate castration.  If all of these measures are not carried out immediately the dog is defined as dangerous (or if you know it is covered already by the ‘dangerous dog’ criteria), it will be removed from your property by the policia and destroyed.

None of our hounds come under the ’specified breeds’ of dangerous dog, but our Saluki, and our Greyhound, could, if the local authorities deemed, come under a couple of the other ‘catch-alls’; our Saluki by height and weight (only just though), and our Greyhound by height.  There are many catch-all items on the list and no vet (or anyone else we have checked with) seems to know whether a dog has to fit all these criteria, some of them, or whether only one item from the list can be used to define them as ‘dangerous’ if the person doing the defining so chooses.  We are, of course, also hindered by the fact that we speak little ‘legal spanish’ and would be hard put to debate the issue in front of any authority in the area.

This was turning into what could be a nightmare situation, which could involve not only our Saluki, but our Greyhound too.

Our two ‘Brit Hounds’ have been through a lot during our move to Spain.  The long ferry journey, travelling thousands of miles in a motor home, waking up each morning for a while and being somewhere completely new (often with dogs in the area who were not friendly to strangers), living for months on end in our motorhome when we were stranded on the campsite waiting for our house to be completed, witnessing our stress as so many things went wrong, finally settling in to a new home, but in a strange country with strange (and sometimes uncomfortable and even frightening) weather, plus many more situations they have had to face.  And throughout all of this they have remained stoic, good natured and incredibly loyal.  Yet now it seemed they could be victims of something which was not their fault (it was Scavenger, after all, who had started the fight) and we, with our poor language skills and ‘outsider’ status, would be hard pressed to prevent things turning out badly for them.  What on earth could we do about this?

Well, after a tearful (on my part) discussion, we got down to considering our options.  We could get in touch with the local ‘hound rescue’ centre and ask for their help, but the owner of this (very good) operation is the wife of our errant ‘project manager’, so we did not know just what the reaction would be to our pleas for help.  Although, I have to say here that, when it comes to hounds, I think they would have helped all they could.  But that option would probably mean letting them have our dogs, which we didn’t want: more stress for our hounds and, selfishly, for us.

In my distress, I even considered booking a quick flight back to the UK, taking our two hounds with me, but where I would stay with them when I got there was another question (although there would be Greyhound and/or Saluki Rescue if all else failed).  But that would leave my husband on his own in Spain with no one (apart from Scavenger, of course, who he was not particularly happy with at that moment) to keep him company and me in the UK, far away from home.  Not a great option either.

So what else was there?

My husband went on the net and contacted various ‘ex pat’ forums, who have members who are able to answer and give advice on issues like this.  We waited for the reply.

The next day there were several replies to my husband’s cry for help.  The general consensus was ‘front up at the medico’s tomorrow and hope for the best’ and get back to them if there were any problems … oh yes, ‘and take a translator with you’.

Finding a translator was going to be a problem.  However, there is one couple in our village where the husband is a Brit and the wife is Spanish.  We contacted them.  To our relief, the wife agreed to come with us to the medico’s the next morning, to help translate between us all, but her English isn’t much better than our Spanish, so her husband gave us the telephone number of an Englishman in the next village who speaks fluent Spanish and who helps people out in emergencies like this.  My husband rang him.

The ‘translator man’ was helpfulness itself.  However, he was offering a helping hand to another English couple, so could not go to the medico’s with us the next day, but suggested that we get our ‘translator’ to ask that the meeting be held the next day, when he would be able to be present.  So, we had to initially front up and face the consequencies with our Spanish translator and hope for the best,

The next morning, we and our translator turned up bright and early at the village medico’s, us with severe trepidation, her with her typical friendly, laid back attidude.  “Esta bien”, she told us, “No es problema”.  We were not so sure…

Eventually the gentleman arrived and hesitantly stood next to us in the queue (the medico was late), but our translator soon put him at his ease and even got him smiling.  She then told his tale to other waiting patients, who commiserated with him, but told him it was his own fault for putting his hand down among fighting dogs.  The man mellowed a little, and by the time we got into the medico’s office, he was agreeing that it was an accident.  He was still insisting, however, that  it was our Saluki who had bitten him, so his papers had to be checked, if only to ensure that his rabies jabs were up to date (they are).

The medico filled in the mandatory health forms, checked our Saluki’s papers (asking us what on earth a Saluki was), rang the Area Health Authority to give them her findings, and then told us that everything was in order, and ‘no problema’.  Our very helpful translator repeated this to us in her halting English, emphasising that ,”esta bien.  No problema”.  Outside again, we thanked her profusely and she again repeated “no problema” and went on her way.  We gave the gentleman a lift back to his house and he was laughing and joking too (probably at our expense, we can’t be sure..) and when we got indoors, we both gave a long sigh of relief and a long hug to our hounds.

But it wasn’t over.

The next morning we received a telephone call from the local health authority.  My husband was to go to what we translated as ‘la vetinaria’  that morning, bringing our Saluki with him and all his papers.  Again, we feared the worst.

Off went my husband with our Saluki, leaving me at home very tearful, with our other two hounds, who also looked very dejected (one of their number leaving the house on their own is never good…).  He turned up at ‘la vetinaria’, very concerned about what he intended to do to our Saluki, only to be told that he had got the telphone message wrong.  The business in question was about ‘la vetinaria’, but it was actually being dealt with by the local health authority offices, so off he went again.

Outside the local authority offices another medico was waiting.  She looked at our Saluki’s papers, filled in some data on her laptop and came over to see the culprit.  Of course, he was putting on his ‘I am a beautiful, appealling Saluki’ look, and the medico made a huge fuss of him and declared him ‘muy bonito’.  She told my husband  “esta bien - no problema”,  but if our Saluki showed any signs of bad health in the next 21 days to contact them immediately, and then bid him and our Saluki farewell as she left her office for the day, her day’s work done.

So I guess all the authority issues were about ensuring the gentleman remains in good health and has not contracted rabies from our Saluki, and I hope that this will be the end of the matter.

But of course we now have a dog on a local authority list, noted as having bitten a human.  We must be vigilant in ensuring that he doesn’t commit any other misdemeanor, or be seen as dangerous in any way within our village.  We are now worried every time we take our dogs for a walk, in case they are confronted by another village dog.

It’ll be a long while (if ever) before we rest easy over this ….

Nowadays I work online. I still have problems with some aspects of the Spanish language (mainly that most people here talk too fast for me!), so getting a job in this area, which is 99.9% all Spanish speaking is difficult, if not impossible.

My online work is progressing slowly. It now helps to pay the bills and provide some badly needed ‘extras’, but, as the ‘products’ I sell are very much whim based, getting those sales involves much hard work and many hours online. As I am a bit of a pc addict, those factors are not a problen (apart from severe lack of sleep…). However, one factor which is a major hindrance to getting the job done is the Spanish electricity System.

Generally, Spanish power cables are not placed underground. Instead they are looped from the sub station to the nearest house, and then run from house to house, just below roof level. The cables cross streets and wind their way through our village in a rather haphazard fashion, which apears to be based more on who had their electricity installed first, second, and so on, than any more structured system. The cables also hang down fairly loosely. This means that the cables sway in the wind…

March and April in this region are the months of tormentas (storms - a very appropriate name I think) and high winds. When the wind reaches gale force (a frequent occurrence), the cables swing so badly that electricity to our house ebbs and flows. Sometimes something comes unattached at a vital point …

(Don’t think he can really help much here …)

Today, I logged onto my pc to get some work done …. only to be forcefully logged off by a power cut a few minutes later. The same thing happened at least 6 or 7 times (I lost count…). The power cuts were between ten and thirty minutes long, and each time the electricity came back on and I switched on my pc, it had to do a system check. And that takes a long time…

I have given up at the moment on getting any work done and have logged in here instead. You never know, I may even get this entry finished before another power cut ……

In true ‘no me lo puedo creer’ style, we have had another ‘little emergency’ which could have turned into a catastrophe if not for the help of a spanish plumber!

A few days ago I noticed strange ‘gurgling sounds’ emerging as the shower drained. Having heard these sounds before, when the plumbing in our RV backed up, I feared the worse. But my husband came to the rescue with the spanish version of ‘Mr Muscle’, liberally poured down the drain, and all seemed fine … for a day anyway.

The next day, however, the ‘gurgling’ was louder. The sinks were draining very slowly, but at least the toilet was flushing ok … that is until we realised that the drained water from the loo was backing up into the bath! We needed plumbing help, and quick!

Now, when this house was renovated, plans were supposed to have been drawn up. They were certainly approved on inspection, so we assumed anyway that they were in existence. As we had no idea where our trap (or rodding point for the drains) was, we needed those plans, so that we could tell a plumber where to put his rods, so to speak! There had been a trap before the house was renovated, but it appears that this has been covered up… and no other point installed. A bit of a problem when it comes to getting at the drains!

Since the work has never been officially completed on our house, we do not have the plans; they should still be in the hands of our project manager. Therefore, despite already guessing what kind of response we would get, my husband sent him a text.

As suspected, his response was not helpful. Just a suggestion that we would have to take out the toilet and call a plumber … oh yes, and he likes this blog! Well, thank you Mr Project Manager, I’m glad you like my little blog. It’s a shame, this being a blog about the ‘trials and tribulations’ of moving to Spain, that so many of the entries are related to you in some way. I would much rather write about something else!

Anyway, my husband’s second thought was to contact the guys who worked on the house. Some of them had remained in touch, and they should know the plumbing system. After all, they had installed it. But no reply, despite phone calls and texts requesting them to call us back urgently. Now, they could be away and unable to respond … makes me wonder though ….

My husband then called an English plumber who had worked on our house before (to help get it finished when the original builders left…), but he was unavailable until Monday. With overflowing sinks and a loo that worked … but not in a good way, we needed help sooner than that.

As luck would have it, the local ferreteria gave us a card for a plumber who lives in a nearby village. He was only too willing to come out right then. But by this time it was getting late, and we guessed that there would be little he could do that evening.

A few minutes later the guy arrived, complete with all kinds of dastardly things to put down the pipes to attack the blockage (he had already been told that there was no easy access point for rods). Added to the fact that we needed boiling water to flush the stuff away, our kitchen took on the image of ‘hell’s kitchen’, with bubbling cauldrons and the pungent aroma of sulpher. But nothing worked… except that we now had an acrid bubbling mixture arising out of the plughole in the bath. The toilet had to come out! But not that night.

So we got by, aided by frequent visits to the neighbours to use their loo and washing facilities… and the washing up bowl in the kitchen was filled with used plates and greasy water and no where to drain it. So any more cooking was out of the question too. We just hoped the guy could work his magic in the morning!

True to his promise, the plumber turned up bright and early, with his teenage daughter in tow (she is learning the business - a lucrative one too it seems …). Taking out the loo was a bit of a problem for him . The builders had not bolted the loo to the floor - they had stuck it hard with sealant (I guess they hadn’t realised what the bolt holes were for…. ). But he struggled gainly and sweated profusely and at last the loo came out, and, surprise, surprise, he was so good he managed to get the loo out without breaking it or ruining any of the tiles it was stuck to. I’m not sure many others would have managed that …

With lots of use of rods and water and goodness knows what else plumbers use (I kept out of the way at that point) and a constant supply of Cokes for his thirst, the guy fixed the problem. We can now shower again and flush the loo without warily looking at the bath…. It’s surprising how much these ‘little things’ matter.

He wasn’t cheap, and he may have overcharged us. Although, from the hard work he put in and the speed he carried it out, including clearing up after his work so well that the bathroom was almost spotless, we considered it a fair deal.

The moral of this story, well, see the title… and use a Spanish workman to put things right when it does!