Two Old Fools in Spain Again by Victoria Twead Read Free Book Online Page A

although by then, they were almost more well-travelled than we were.
    They left Bahrain but first holidayed for a while in neighbouring Doha. Then they returned to Bahrain. After that they spent a few weeks in a warehouse in Germany. From Germany they flew to northern Spain. Foolishly, we believed we’d soon be welcoming them home but, instead, they set off back to Germany.
    After a long weekend in Germany, they decided to visit Belgium. Obviously Belgium wasn’t to their liking, because, yet again, they returned for another week’s holiday in the warehouse in Germany.
    Every few days I typed in our tracking number, which by then I knew by heart: 1Z97840-V6-87906. I learned that our boxes had, at last, returned to Spain, this time Madrid. They obviously enjoyed the city, because they seemed rather reluctant to move from there.
    I wrote to the company, asking for news. Back came the reply, in English.
     
    ‘Please don’t worry Mrs Twead. The shipment is under my personal control. Now, we are showing the documentation to Customs Authorities. We think they will like your documentation and you will meet your boxes soon.’
     
    Finally, our boxes made their slow way down to us in the south. To be exact, they were delivered to a friend in the next village, as we didn’t trust the parcel company to be able to locate El Hoyo.
    It was a bit of an anticlimax when they finally arrived. We had to pay another 20 euros for ‘country tax’ or something and the boxes themselves were battered and had clearly been broken into.
    By now we could hardly remember what we’d packed and when we tore the boxes open, most of the stuff was of very little use. All those long trousers, shirts and ties for Joe, the long skirts and long-sleeved tops for me, when would we ever wear them again? They were essential for our teaching career in the Middle East, but here in Spain? I packed them all up again and instructed Joe to store them in the garage, where they remain, gathering dust.
    However, packing the stuff away gave me a good feeling of closure. That chapter in our lives, that year in Bahrain as the Arab revolution raged around us, was over, shelved out of sight but not quite out of mind. It had been a stressful experience, one that cannot easily be forgotten.

    Not so many decades ago, El Hoyo had been a mining village. The main road from below did not exist then and the village could only be approached along ancient and well trodden paths. In those days all provisions and mail arrived by mule.
    As the mine prospered, the village thrived and a better road was laid. Even today, when one drives down the mountain, one still sees the remnants of mule tracks and the buildings where travellers and mules stopped for the night.
    Receiving mail had always been rather a problem for us. When we moved in, our front door had no letterbox, so one of the first jobs was to buy a mailbox and fix it on the wall. There wasn’t much choice at the hardware shop. We could have a square black one, a square black one, or a square black one. Unsurprisingly, we chose a square black one. It wouldn’t be until much later that we realised we were wasting our time.

    Our mailbox
     
    Fixing anything to any wall of our house was a challenge. Old Spanish houses were constructed with rocks and rubble held together with dry, compacted sand. Joe’s drill bit would either sink without trace, or hit a flint and emit sparks without making the slightest impression. Joe did his best, but we invariably ended up with a vast, cavernous hole even if we were just attempting to hang a picture. He therefore had good reason to dread the task of putting up the mailbox.
    Valiantly, he drilled into the wall and, as usual, copious amounts of dry grit poured out until the drill bit hit a stone and skittered sideways. The mailbox required four holes, so he had to repeat the operation four times and each hole grew alarmingly in size.
    The vibrating drill had brought Paco out of his house. He