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

inspected Joe’s handiwork, eyed the mound of grit and rubble on Joe’s feet and roared with laughter.
    “English! What are you doing?”
    “I’m putting up a mailbox. I’m drilling out four screw-holes.”
    A fist would have fitted comfortably inside each hole.
    “You are not doing a good job!” Paco said, when he’d stopped laughing.
    “I can’t help it if these walls are impossible,” said Joe, scratching himself irritably.
    “Pah! Yeso will fix that.”
    So I was instructed to go and make up some yeso to fill the holes.
    Yeso . For those who are contemplating a move to Spain and have DIY in mind, be warned. Yeso will become very familiar to you, but it’s not for the faint-hearted.
    I don’t believe there is an exact equivalent to yeso in the UK and we’d never heard of it before we moved. The Spanish building trade use it for everything: plastering, fixing door or window frames, filling holes, whatever. Wonderful stuff, yeso, but only if you handle it with the utmost care and respect.

6. Babysitting
    Egg and Anchovy Toast Tapas
     
    I cut open the brown paper sack of yeso we had bought and tipped a generous amount of the fine white powder into a metal bucket. Then I added water and mixed enthusiastically with a trowel. It didn’t take long for it to attain a smooth consistency, like thick custard. I stirred a few seconds more, ensuring there were no lumps. Satisfied, I lifted the bucket and brought it through the house and presented it to Joe.
    “Okay,” said Joe, grabbing the trowel, “let’s mend these holes.”
    But the trowel didn’t move. It was stuck fast into the yeso. Trowel, yeso and bucket were one united, solid lump, as hard as rock.
    “WHAT THE...”
    “It can’t have set already!” I said.
    But it had.
    Paco laughed so hard he had to take his cap off to rub his eyes.
    “You English!” he gasped. “You must have used yeso rapido! You need the regular yeso! ”
    We didn’t know there were two types of yeso .
    Paco stamped off to get some more yeso , while Joe and I struggled to rescue the bucket and trowel from the granite grip of the yeso . Paco returned and deftly filled the holes in the wall for us. It soon set and Joe drilled the screw-holes again, then mounted the mailbox on the wall, almost perfectly straight.
    “There! That’s done,” he said, standing back to admire his work. “The postman shouldn’t have any trouble with that.”
    We had to throw the bucket and trowel away and we needn’t have bothered with the mailbox at all. There it hung, waiting to be fed with post that never came.
    I suppose the fact that our house had three doors, opening onto three different streets didn’t help. I imagine any postman would find that confusing. Our house wasn’t huge, but decidedly quirky.
    “Any post?” I asked hopefully, as Joe unlocked the box daily.
    “Nope, just moths,” was the usual reply.
    Our mail arrived in a variety of ways. Usually, it arrived on the fish van, smelling strongly of sardines and calamari. Sometimes it came on the bread van and smelled much sweeter. At other times the phone rang and Marcia from the village shop informed us that she had letters for us.
    “There’s a small packet from your daughter in Australia, an electricity bill, a postcard from your English friends, they’re on holiday in Lanzarote by the way and a letter from the taxman.” Marcia may have been well over 80, but nothing escaped her eagle eye.
    We’d discovered that UPS and DHL drivers flatly refused to drive up to El Hoyo and devised all manner of excuses to avoid the twisting, winding road to our village. When the phone rang in the morning, we knew it would be a driver, needing to deliver a parcel.
    “Señora Twead?”
    “Yes, speaking...”
    “My van is broken, can you meet me in the next village?”
    Or,
    “Señor Twead?”
    “Yes, speaking...”
    “I cannot drive to your village. Your village does not show up on my navigation equipment.”
    Joe and I knew how