Blogs | Features | Homepage - Dorset Echo

In August 2007, Allan Davies and his wife Rose, having lived most of their lives in their beloved Dorset, gave up their careers, left behind friends, family, acquaintances and all that was familiar to start a new life in Southern Spain.

Signing out in the sun

Happy New Year to you one and all, and did anyone make a New Year resolution they broke the next day? Well I did! Needless to say that I promised myself a physical workout first thing followed by a bowl of muesli before starting the day with a song and a skip. Sigh, didn’t happen, because due to catching my first heavy cold in a long time.

Looking to the future

'Tis the season to be jolly, ooohhh, don’t know about that! Seems to me that every channel on the one eyed goggle box shows little but despair and despondency for Christmas. Never mind, only 374 days until the next one and perhaps that may bring good cheer to one and all.

¡Si usted mira hacia atrás con demasiada frecuencia, usted no jamás puede adelantarse!

What a strange time of the year it appears to be! We’re experiencing one of the earliest cold spells we’ve had here in Andalucia, with ‘nieve’ (snow) all over the Sierra’s right behind us.

¡Sólo cuatro semanas y Papá Noel estarán aquí con todos mis juguetes!

'What's that you say? There's Hurriphoons and Tornacains causing havoc all along the Spanish Coast!!!'

Es el Lunes por la mañana, yo me desayuno en la terraza y el sol brill, qué

How time flies when you’re enjoying yourself, or so the saying goes. The last four or five weeks have been a blur of work and getting the jobs done for the winter, or at least the more temperate part of the year. But now I find myself lounging around again with time on my hands until the next flurry of jobs, if any, come in. it’s nice to have the luxury of choice when picking the work that most suits my mood though as they say, money is money and though the majority of the jobs I’m taking on at the moment are far removed from anything connected with my career of the last thirty five years or so, they’re certainly more enjoyable and interesting and they pay well.

Para que no olvidamos!

This morning saw us pick the first orange of winter off one of our trees. Although we only have a few fruit bushes, it usually produces a small harvest which will last until the spring's second crop. Add to this the extremely long summer this year which has thrown a number of fruit and veg harvests out of sync and you have an unexpected bounty of all things summery in the form of the exotic foodstuffs expected to flood the Christmas markets, now that is a good sign!

That’s it, time to move further south!

A week of rain and I’m not a happy bunny, though everyone says I’m ungrateful as we need the rain to rejuvenate the land and refill the reservoirs after the extremely long hot summer we have just had. Well, okay, I’ll give it another year then, though today being Saturday usually means local market shopping, hustle and bustle in the town, doing those little jobs for people only available at weekends, but not today.

!Algunas cosas son enviados a tratarnos, aun el tiempo puede devolver aqui!

Well, first off apologies for last weeks late feature entry, I hope no one was too upset? But hey, these things are sent to try us, and it wasn’t my fault, honest! It was actually an act of the elements that caused the break in transmission of my editorially based sunshine memoir, or should I say a whopping great thunder storm!

¡Aún jubilados necesitan para trabajar a veces, pero sólo por elección!

Someone asked us on our recent visit to Blighty how we were enjoying our early retirement, whereby I replied, ‘don’t know, too busy!!’

Es siempre bueno volver en casa!

And what a week that was! First of all, a big thank you goes to my friend and web feature editor Alan Lambert at the Dorset Echo offices on the Granby Estate for the personal tour he gave me during my brief visit to Blighty last week. It was certainly an eye opener as to the inner workings of a landmark whose only aspect I had previously noticed was that of a great huge grey building!