2018 Year In Review - Gran Alacant!

Wow, what a year 2018 has been. If I look back to January, I would have never imagined I would be sat here in Britain, living with my Aunt, while Darrell is living in Australia caring for his Mother. I am still existing in a strange World, getting used to English customs and ways once again, as well as the busy life I now lead, so different from the one I left behind in Spain. In today's blog entry I wanted to talk about my final few months in Spain and just how my life changed so dramatically so quickly.

Up until January, Darrell and I were very content with our life on the Costa Blanca. Darrell's job was going well, better than either of us expected and although my employment wasn't giving me much satisfaction, I was at least bringing in some money to tide us over during the winter months. As a couple we were able to survive quite comfortably with what we earned but neither of us were ever going to be wealthy. Existing in Spain was always about lifestyle and keeping ones head above water, nothing more and by February the difficult Spanish system was beginning to bite.

Darrell had surrendered his British driving license in late 2017, necessary when resident in Spain and also to allow him to keep his driving job at Alicante Airport. We assumed there would be no problem with this simple procedure, but nothing could be further from the truth. In order to get his UK license, Darrell had already relinquished his West Australian driving card many years before to the British authorities and unknown to us at the time, he wouldn't be able to hand in this exchanged UK document for a Spanish one; however it wouldn't be too long before we found out. It was classed as a third party license and since he had never taken a driving test in Europe and Spain had no reciprocal agreement with Australia to transfer its driving permits, it would in all probability be rejected. We soon discovered he would have to undertake Spanish driving lessons and a test at great expense and they would have to be carried out in the native Spanish language. This would prove to be an impossible task given our limited understanding of the local dialect; once again our unconventional relationship was becoming a problem!

By March we had decided to leave Spain. We had both worked extremely hard to stay, followed the law, jumped through Spanish hoops and did everything to legitimise our life in Gran Alacant. Of course the driving license fiasco was an issue, but it was more than that; life in Spain for both of us was very lonely. We had very few real friends and didn't constantly drink in bars like others; we kept ourselves very much to ourselves, fed up with the constant back stabbing from certain elements in the Expat community and had become disillusioned with our life on the med. Although Darrell enjoyed his job, my position was very different, another reason for me to leave at least. I had discovered that I had been removed from my contract of employment without my knowledge. I hadn't seen a wage slip in over two months and my boss had become evasive and bitter towards the square in which his bar was situated. Constantly listening to the ramblings of someone who clearly had no idea how to run a bar let alone be civil to those who went to his establishment was becoming increasingly burdensome and I wasn't going to stand for it any longer!

During April and May Darrell and I pressed the rest button once again, beginning our journey leaving Spain, I would depart first and he would stay on for a while, to finish his contract at the airport. Our intentions were to eventually relocate to Australia, so we advertised everything we owned and sold it to fellow Expats in the community in which we resided. The hardest part was rehoming our two new cats Mollie and Wildling, who had become an important part of our life, but we were reassured by their new family that they would be well looked after. By April they were gone and we finally got to the end of selling our possessions. What little we had left was shipped on to Australia and we began the process of saying goodbye to those we still hold dear today.

I had become homeless with no goods and chattels, a complete contrast to my hoarding life before. With nothing left, I felt like a weight had been lifted and Darrell and I could finally leave Spain and restart our lives somewhere new, somewhere that we could finally regard as home and somewhere we could forget about the pressures of surviving in Europe without the support we so clearly needed. Both of us were beginning new chapters away from each other, as I made the decision to return to the UK immediately and live with my Aunty, where I could be close to loved ones. Little did I know at the time, but my relocation would be more important than ever and my life was about to change once again!

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