The Art of Derek Dohren

Noise from the upstairs apartment continues unabated. Their inventiveness never wanes though it has to be said the old staples remain at the heart of things. The 'dropping millions and millions of tiny pieces of metal on the floor' game is still the most popular. By comparison the mindless 'dragging of chairs from A to B' remains clearly second rate entertainment and stays confined to the hours of 2am to 4am.

In fairness to them though, they're not averse to new ideas. Astonishing new games have appeared this last few days. Currently popular is the 'bouncing something hard and bouncy off the floor' game, and most intriguingly is a new game they only started a few days ago. I call it the 'scraping mud off the bottom of a frying pan with a blunt pencil' game. Obviously, they try and play it as noisily as they can but they only seem able to keep it up for a few hours at a time. Clearly it's not an easy game, not like the 'hammering' game or the relentless thump thump thump game they enjoy so much, particularly during siesta.

Erm, in other news: I watched Wigan v Liverpool tonight. Somebody shoot me now. Is this what it's come to?

I met a chap yesterday in Granada at one of my friends' house who, after half an hour or so of chat, thought I was Scottish.

We are due for below zero temperatures on Wednesday night.

I'll be getting a cat. My friend Chris's cat had four kittens yesterday and one of them has my name on it. I'm calling him Ramon. If he turns out to be a girl it'll have to be Ramona.

As everyone knows, your average one and a half inch anchovy contains more salt than is present in the whole of the Dead Sea. Eat more than six of the blighters in a single calendar month and you're likely to die horrifically from osmosis before your stomach can be pumped.

A more splendid footstuff then could not present itself to the tapas bar owner here in Andalucia. That 'free' tapas is handed out in this part of the world is a given, but clearly, bar owners have to make a living. The truth of it is a little extra is bunged onto the price of your booze and though it feels like that plate of delicious grub you get handed is free - well, you know in your own heart there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Which is rather where the anchovy comes in. It ain't no coincidence that many of the splendid tapas dishes that find their way to the gormless foreigner's table contain a dead one of these magnificent creatures. Eat one of those suckers and within 10 minutes you've a thirst on you that'd see the whole of the Dead Sea drunk dry. Order another drink, and what do you get? another plate of anchovy based tucker.

Comprende?

I don't blame the locals for doing it. And I love anchovies as much as the next punter, but if there's one thing we all know, an anchovy and beer based hangover is something to be avoided at all costs.

It's bad enough when the hangover is down purely to anchovies, but when beer's involved it somehow seems a tad worse. So it's with a certain regret I type these lines. I've had a quantity of beer and achovy vignettes this evening. I'm a bit scared to go to bed to be honest. I've lowered the Andalucian water table before retiring to the onion bag in a vain attempt to ward off severe salt poisoning but I fear it's too little too late. I feel I've already osmosed part of my upper digestive tract.

I've even attempted to compensate for the salt overload by downing a quantity of chocolate - but that's like going to watch Hamilton Accies because you know that tomorrow you have to go and watch Rangers. It's pointless and ineffective. You'd be better off just going to watch Motherwell and be done with it.

Here's the still life that got eaten.

It's not quite finished yet - there's still a surviving apple in the fruit bowl.

Anyway, just back in from another epic night out tramping the villages of Andalucia. Another missed bus, another 3 mile hike home through the foul weather. Still, one has to laugh.

I did catch 20 minutes or so of the France v Spain encounter. Not that I was ever any great lover of them but how sad is it now to see France? They are a bunch of crap has-beens.

A few quickies:

I got my NIE sorted last week and maybe forgot to let you know. It was only slightly painful and I got the distinct impression I was fast tracked a bit because as one of the clerks in the office said conspiratorially to me "you're one of us" (I assume he meant white European - oh dear).

Today's weather forecast cheerfully states Granada has a '100% chance of rain". I like the way they don't sit on the fence.

I set up a fantastic still life scene yesterday in the apartment. It was made up of a couple of apples, a pineapple, a hunk of bread, with some cheese and olives, and a bottle of beer. It looked so good I ate it before I had a chance to paint it. Happily I did take some photos beforehand and have produced something worthwhile. I will post up the painting when it's complete.

Last night I walked 6 miles to the wrong village, then another self correcting 3 miles to the right place to go and teach someone at short notice. Thankfully I had left in time to allow for such a situation. I missed the last bus home and had to walk back - 3 more miles. In short, I left the apartment at 18:40 and got home at 23:30, nearly 5 hours of which all but an hour and a half had been spent on foot. Still, I got 14 Euros so no pain, no gain.

I was pretty wasted by the time I got in. The best part of the day was hitting the sack though I foolishly finished off the remainder of the pineapple (from the earlier still life) before I retired and then immediately wished I hadn't.

Anyway, I have to practice my Beatles songs for tonight so farewell for now...

Oh, and I can confirm it's just started raining.

I live in the northernmost end of La Zubia - the bit nearest to Granada. The thing is, La Zubia sits on the slopes of the Sierras and north is at the bottom of the hill. This always seems counter intuitive to me. North should be 'up' and south 'down'. I had the same problem in Lanark. The South Vennel is at the top of the High Street and the North Vennel at the bottom. It's just not right and I never got my head round it.

It seems the good burghers of La Zubia agree with me. They have a few cast iron streetmaps welded onto lamposts dotted around the town and they all depict north at the bottom of the map and south at the top, as if to confirm that uphill and downhill are more relevant than north and south. It seems to make sense to sensible people though I admit to being thrown the first time I encountered one of these maps and thought I had got my own geographical bearings of exactly where I live all wrong.

Anyway.

Disillusioned with being permanently starving while the shops here always seem to be shut I went for a walk this evening. I turned left out of the flat, left again, right, then left, and then just decided to keep going up and up and up and up. South if you will. Within 15 minutes I emerged from the far end of town and into the 'Cumbres Verdes', our very own foothill mountain range. One of the peaks here (Trevenque) reaches a respectable 2,000 metres - a fair height - and within half an hour I had a magnificent vista of the Granada plain laid out below me. All I had done was go due south and 'up' (it still seems wrong) from leaving the flat. Impressively simple.

However, due to knackerdness (I'd already walked for two hours in Granada earlier in the day), impending darkness, and vague hopes that the shops might be open back in La Zubia, I turned back with much of these mountains still to be discovered. Forty minutes later I was back in town. The shops were still shut and I was forced back into a bar and the oppressive cerveza/tapas treadmill. It might sound great to you to but a) I can't afford to be going to the pub every night, and b) my body's not designed for heavy sustained periods of drinking.

But it was a great discovery, that I've got walkable mountains a walkable distance from my flat. Next time I hike up there I'll take the camera and let you see the sights. It's nice but seems to kind of lack something in terms of drama. I don't know what it is. The countryside here just seems... scruffy. That's the only word I can think of.

It's still not as good as Scotland.

Or the Lake District for that matter.

Or, let's be honest, Lanark Braes.

Here's a map I found. I reckon I reached between the number 2 and number 3 of the bottom scale. Height is in metres of course.

Having abstained from much frivolity over the weekend I ventured into Granada this afternoon to view the League Cup final and down a couple of sherbets.

Is there any sight more depressing to a Liverpool supporter than Mickey Owen in a Utd shirt? It was enough to make me want to vomit.

As it turned out, even more depressing was the sight of him in a Utd shirt and scoring in a cup final. The little twerp.

It was enough to make me buy a chocolate pastie on the way home (for those north of the border - a chocolate bridie). Still, 'twas a Euro well spent.

It dawned on me as I carb-overloaded on the homeward bus journey that the Scots have missed a trick with the choccy bridie.

Surely a deep fried version would fill that empty niche for the discerning drinker who, while still wanting his sugar, monosodium glutamate, E additive and saturated fat fix, is also wanting to cut down on his salt, sawdust, chemical fertiliser and remnant animal body parts quotient intake? It ticks the boxes.

It's a bit of a no brainer and if I was still in the UK I'd be sorting out my paperwork for an appearance on Dragon's Den.

I completed this today. Not sure it's what I intended but I do know it's done and finished. It's a view of the Constitucion from high up in the Albaicin.

I don't think it's a secret that life's a struggle at present. Everyone speaks a different language, yet everyone seems to understand one another except me. Money continues to hemorrhage (correct spelling according to my dictionary but it looks so wrong) and work still lies thin on the ground, though I have doubled my private pupil total to two. So, if I were to double that again next week, then again the week after ...

I have to stay positive of course and with that in mind I can report that the painting juices are flowing again. Here's the cathedral, based on the photo I took the other day (just below this entry in fact). I felt 'in the zone' painting it and feel encouraged I can do more work like this that is hopefully commercial enough to bring in a few Euros. This is viewable in a bigger format in the gallery section ...

Also my Wednesday evening student is keen for us to sing Beatles songs next week. Yes the very thought would ordinarily fill me with horror, but being paid for it kind of softens the blow. She convinced me that singing is the best way she learns and having bought the line I suppose it's best to be singing half decent, grown up tunes, with no one looking at me. My task, should I accept (and I kind of already have) is to provide a translation into Spanish, just for the record so to speak, of whatever songs we sing. I'm thinking we won't be doing Oh-Bla-Di Oh-Bla-Da and I'm praying she doesn't read all about me and John, Paul, George and Ringo on a certain other page at this site else questions will be asked.

My other pupil lives in the Sierras, in a place called Monachil, a stone's throw from yer real proper mountain ranges. It's a few thousand feet up and a distinct degree or two cooler up there. One thing that struck me on my first visit was just how rubbish the whole Spanish rural/wilderness scenery is compared to what you get in the good old UK. Scotland's relatively tiny little glens and lochs knock spots off this place and all Scots should take comfort from the confirmed proof that size isn't everything. They may have the big mountains here but you have all the style.

I spent much of the weekend, camera in hand, wandering around the city centre taking some photographs. Here are a few.

The Cathedral as seen from the Gran Via Colon.

The Jardines de Triunfo

Puerta de Elvira

Looking down Constitucion from the Albaicin

Loren, Sara and Dylan

Efforts to get myself a NIE number (Numero de Identidad de Extranjero) are progressing, though progressing only in the same way that continental drift is. The NIE is the obligatory identity card cum national insurance registration all of us EU immigrants have to have. I'm told I need to carry it with me at all times (my passport too) and should I get stopped in the street by a pair of bored policemen initiating a routine check failure to have one or other of these items about my person may result in several hours down at the nick. It happens apparently.

As my plans here include the notion of trying to flog some paintings on street corners I figure getting myself fixed up with all the right documentation is probably prudent. At least then, as they confiscate my stuff I can wave my ID card at them before I get the time honoured kicking for good measure.

Of course this being Spain it's already taken me two trips into town to get as far as I have - which is merely to get myself a copy of the correct form. Not bad going I'd say considering on the first trip I made to the police comisaria office I got told I was in the wrong place (naturally) and I'd need to go and visit the nearest British Embassy. They thought there was possibly one in Sevilla, but failing that 'there's definitely one in Madrid'. Ok, well thanks for that. Helpful, not.

I found an official who was willing to listen to what I actually wanted and she informed me that though the comisaria used to be the correct place to visit for getting this sort of thing done it no longer was. I was indeed in the wrong place. More promisingly though the place I needed to go visit was conveniently at the other end of town. She gave me an address but no map or helpful tips on how to get there. I went home and left it for the next day as I was already too depressed to continue on. Anectdotal evidence from those who had gone through this procedure already told of 5 or 6 hour long waits, over several days, in sweaty offices and I wasn't in the mood.

Name: Dohren, Derek

Nationality: British

Distinguishing features: irritated, bemused, befuddled, top of head missing.

So, next day, in probably the most violent and sustained period of rain here to date, I walked 2 miles across the city looking for the right place, a place I was fully expecting to turn out to actually be another wrong place.

I eventually found it, some sort of local government office, went in through the security body scanner, and was confronted by a waiting throng of about 50 people, all of them clearly of various nationalities. I informed Mr. Security what I was requiring and he asked me where I was from. 'Liverpool, England' I said and handed him my passport. He gave me a form, which I subsequently learned was the official NIE application form. I was then given a ticket with a number on, told to sit down, and then informed that when my ticket number appeared on the big screen on the wall (he pointed at the big screen on the wall to emphasise this point) I should proceed through those doors there (he pointed again at those doors there) and go and sit at that desk there, the one with 'number 11' above it (he lengthened his arm to full capacity to indicate desk number 11).

I sat down and prepared myself for a wasted day. Bizzarely, I'd only been sat for 3 seconds when my number popped up on the screen. Clearly it was a trap and I looked around to see if anyone else moved. No one did so I got up and went in through the doors to go and sit at desk number 11 like I'd been told. Obviously it can't have been my turn already but I thought I'd plead ignorance - my number was up on the board after all.

No one was behind the desk 'serving' but several people were being seen to at other desks. One of the female Vogons at one of the desks, a hatchet faced harridan clearly having a bad day, shouted something over to me. I deduced from the tone (though I couldn't understand a word she said) that she was asking 'oi, what the feck do you think you're playing at?' I ignored her. Within a few more seconds another fembot appeared and sat down at my desk. I showed her the NIE form and she laughed. 'No, no, no' she said, shaking her head. I didn't have the will or the vocabulary to argue with her and waited to see what city she was going to send me to next. Obviously the downturn in events was my own fault for being lucky enough to be seen to so quickly.

As it happened though it wasn't so bad. She got out a calendar instead and told me to come back on February 23rd, at 10 o'clock. It was a 2010 calendar too. There was nothing else to be said on the matter and that was that. I felt quietly pleased that steady, if unspectacular progress, is relentlessly being made. My tectonic plate may well be another half centimetre nearer to colliding with the Spanish NIE shelf by next Tuesday. Who knows?

I'll keep you posted on how that goes then. I'm assuming I fill out the form before I return though doubtless the office will be closed all day of the 23rd owing to some saint's day or other.

La Zubia has a character who gets on the number 174 bus and talks to everyone and to no one in particular. It also has another man who wees in the bushes in the small park in the town centre, while kids are running round playing. At least, I think he's weeing.

In fact, come to think of it, I hope he's weeing.

La Zubia has cafes that don't serve food and others that appear to shut at lunchtime. I can't work out the local siesta rituals, either the exact times and who does and who doesn't take part in it.

It seems to rain a lot, except for last Friday when it snowed a lot. All the buildings in La Zubia are designed to drop massive gobbits of collected rain water on your head.

It has a barber who deliberately misunderstands what you ask for and cuts off all your hair. But he's cheap.

It has an enormous amount of dog poo on the pavement.

La Zubia has three language schools, one of which appears to operate with no staff.

A longaniza is a long thin pork sausage. I saw a news item tonight about them.

I like it here but sometimes I pine for Lanark.

Updates:

I've cut my thumb with some scissors;

I kicked a bucket of water all over the floor;

I bought three large mugs in a tourist shop but was ironically unable to find a shop that sold tea-towels;

I got my door knocked on by Jehovah's Witnesses;

I've slung a washing line across my living room using four shoelaces ties together;

I bought a printer/photocopier/scanner;

I'm using my Seville bobble hat as a tea cosy for a jug I'm using as a teapot (sorry Al);

I bought salt for the first time in my life;

The woman in the upstairs apartment likes tap dancing;

I've still not eaten that pineapple I bought;

It hasn't snowed since Friday;

In the bars of La Zubia, not only is the tapas free, they give you a menu and ask you what you'd like;

In La Zubia they even close the gates of the park during siesta time;

My washing machine is eccentric;

In Spanish the word 'bordillo' means 'kerb' in English English but 'curb' in American English. Go figure that one.

They have a Humphrey Bogart season on in Granada. There is an advert doing the rounds with Humph, as Rick in Casablanca, with the Alhambra behind him and the slogan - "We'll always have Granada".

A splendid evening's entertainment was had at the Estadio Nuevo Los Carmenes where Granada hammered league rivals AD Ceuta 2-1 (courtesy of a dodgy penalty). Official attendance, 'approximately 9,000'.

New signing Collantes (10) challenges for the ball.

Well here's my first effort from my new home. What else could I paint other than the Alhambra? I had no references to hand so merely used an image on the cover of a streetmap as a vague reference to shapes and so on. I pretty much abstracted the rest but wanted to see if I could produce a quick yet acceptable smallish image (A4) good enough to sell to tourists. The result is ok and the spontanaiety is there but I'll hopefully get better. It will be good for my painting to produce smaller and quicker images.

Well I finally moved into the new place late last night. By the time I'd handed over the requisite two months worth of rental cash, signed the contract and decided upon which room I was sleeping in it was already way past midnight. The apartment seemed freezing despite the alleged efforts of the wall hanging air conditioner thingie and a rather lame electric heater which was sat, Andalucian style, under a coffee table which in turn had a heavy velvet cloth draped over it and reached down to the floor (the idea is you sit around the table and pull up the velvet cloth over your knees, thus exposing your legs to the warmth under the table). It sort of works but screams fire hazard to me, or at least, badly burned legs hazard.

Anyway I turned in and suffered a night of unbroken misery. I was going to sleep in the second room and leave the master bedroom alone but at the last minute decided to switch. That was when I discovered the master bed to have unwashed bedding. No thanks.

So I camped down in the smaller room with the single bed. When I woke, confused and in pitch darkness, I was frozen to the core. I got up, switched on another electric heater I'd found and tried to bed down again. Still frozen. So I got up and put a third layer of clothing on. I was then just about warm enough to get some kip but far from comfortably.

I left the apartment this morning with a big shopping list. I had absolutely no food in and lacked most basic consumables. I got as far as the cafe on the corner (about 20 yards) and decided to detour in and have breakfast - as many others seemed to be doing. So that was pleasant enough. The telly in the cafe showed scenes of snowbound Bilbao and temperatures in some Madrid area mountain range of -7. A small item of news then followed showing some CCTV footage of a group of youths kicking another one senseless in some Spanish town somewhere during the eary hours of some night (presumably recent). It felt more like home by the minute.

I then found an excellent Chinese store where I was able to buy some light bulbs, an iron, a kettle and a spanner. I needed the spanner to take two of the legs off the table with the velvet cloth. I needed to take the legs off the table with the velvet cloth so I could move it into another room. I've decided to move the table with the velvet cloth into the room I'm going to use as an art studio. I'm moving the table (without the velvet cloth) into the room I've decided to use as an art studio so I can use it to paint on and to rest my stuff on. I have removed the velvet cloth as it's nasty and fairly useless but now I'll need to buy something cheap and nasty to throw over table so I don't get paint on it.

Well then, blah blah, I made two trips to the Chinese shop, none to the food shops and within the hour was in the Wallace with Chris who'd shown up with some lame excuse but had freely admitted he wanted a hamburguesa.

When we came out of the Wallace it was snowing and it was freezing. All the shops were shut because it was siesta time so I decided to walk to the mini shopping mall (it's pretty rubbish) about a mile or so out of town. I knew they had a Vodafone shop there and .... Is this boring?

I'm bored typing it.

When I came out of the mall the snow had reached blizzard proportions.

Cars with snow on them.

I got back to the flat looking like a snowman. I dumped my food bags and checked on the washing. The machine had finished so I opened the door and was greeted, rather disappointingly I felt, by a massive tidal wave of water that gushed all over the kitchen floor, a drowned sock left hanging limply over the lip of the opened hatch.

So that's a malfunctioning washing machine and dodgy electrics already discovered (the electrics all tripped out this morning - reason unknown).

All in all an odd day. There are many things I'm not happy about with my apartment but I suspect many of them are down to simple unfamiliarity with things. The cushions will have to go and if the weather doesn't pick up serious consideration will have to be given to purchasing one of those industrial gas burners that shoot massive flames out the back.

pero jamás nos quitarán la libertad!

I spent the day in La Zubia prior to moving my stuff into the new apartment. I wanted to get a feel for the place, have a wander about, and suss out the bus routes etc. Inevitably I went into the William Wallace for a bit of lunchtime tapas.

I am proud to say that I did my fellow Scots proud and ordered a rather ambitious sounding Harmburguesas William Wallace to go with my second glass of wine. It felt good to play my own small part in reinforcing the globally held view that us Scots are brought up on a diet of lard, fat, lard, alcohol, sugar, ciggies and fat.

When it arrived the layering of the burger appeared as follows:

(from the bottom up)

cheese

tomato

lettuce

some kind of mayo

beefburger

ham

lettuce

tomato

bacon

a fried egg

mayo

Obviously, taking on so much lettuce at lunchtime was a struggle but in true Wallace style I just got on with it. The two rather fey yet delicious free tapas I had downed beforehand slightly took the edge off proceedings and somehow made this magnificent culinary gut fest taste not quite as good as it ought. I put it down to being out of practice and to being too exposed to all this foreign muck.

Still, when I had finished the gourmet dish and made my first attempt at bipedal movement I discovered with much satisfaction that a layer of  congealed saturated fats had set into concrete from my legs upwards. A job well done then.

To appease my Scouse and English leanings I rounded things off with a nice pot of tea and gave consideration to doing a runner. The genius of the Hamburguesa however was to render any sudden movements impossible. A magnificent tribute to the great man. And some say he died in vain.

What greater legacy could he have hoped for as Longshanks prepared to rip his belly out on the scaffold all those years ago?

Mel Gibson my ass.

There's little point in me trying to persuade anyone I'm a fount of knowledge on the subject but having given my first real life teaching lesson tonight I feel I learned a couple of interesting lessons myself.

Of course it's way too soon for me to be expecting to have all the technical aspects of preparing, planning and delivering a lesson nailed and running on auto-pilot. That's not going to happen for years, and further assumes I stick at it long enough, but there are plenty of other facets to becoming a good teacher that deserve equal attention.

I got to my student's address promptly and thankfully didn't feel too many nerves. I had planned a decent enough lesson and as an introduction was giving this one free. So, how could any reasonable person complain? That said, a lot did hinge on how well this hour and a half went, not least the prospect of payed lessons springing from this tutorial, so I was glad I was not feeling crippled with tension.

Once inside the house though the old nerves took over and I thought it was an awkward first 10 minutes. The lesson felt clunky and a little misjudged - and I remembered the exact same situation occuring on the training course where what you had planned and expected to happen somehow didn't actually pan out. I ploughed on, and my trainee gamely battled on too. We seemed to reach what I thought was the nadir about 50 minutes in. There had been no real flow or rapport, the lesson hadn't really caught fire, and I was meandering worryingly to a part of the plan I had low confidence in.

That brings me to the second lesson I took away - but I'll leave that for the moment.

The final 10 minutes were as different from the first as it was possible to be. I had relaxed, and more importantly so had my student, and she was speaking English as best she could in a seemingly inhindered fashion. I stopped her to point this out. Her stated aim at the start of our meeting was to become a better conversationalist and here she was, albeit it with some severe pronunciation issues and a limited vocabulary (but that's the teccie stuff I have to deal with for her), doing just what she thought she couldn't do! She was delighted with herself and from that moment on the labouring that had gone before all felt worth it.

For me the lesson was clear. Once the student had relaxed and had begun to feel confidence, in both me and in herself, she got really stuck into things and was far more willing to chance her arm. That skill of being able to make someone feel comfortable and confident is as important as all the technical knowledge you may learn to use. It reinforced what I had learned on the course, but had temporarily forgotten, when I had seen the same thing demonstrated in our training classes. Win the hearts and minds first and you are nearly there.

That second lesson? Well, when we got to the cringe-making part of the lesson I hadn't been looking forward to my student rose easily to the challenge. Far from finding the section difficult she excelled - the main reason why she ended up feeling much more relaxed. The section required her to write some poetry, then read it out, something I'd have found incredibly tough to do in my own language never mind a foreign one. Not so my student. Clear evidence of something I'd have understood as perfectly obvious if someone had tried to tell me beforehand, that the things we may find difficult aren't necessarily going to be the same things the students struggle with - and vice versa. Sometimes you don't see the wood for the trees though do you?

Ok, so the apartment in downtown Ogijares fell through. All that speculation I posted in the last blog entry about being able to share an apartment with Ricardo never got off first base, so I carried on looking elsewhere.

I liked the look of La Zubia. It's a large village or small town (I don't know how you draw the distinction) pretty much adjacent to Ogijares but perhaps a mile or two nearer Granada. There were some nice looking apartments up for rent so Chris and I made appointments to see a few of them and took the opportunity to check out the nearby amenities.

We found it to be a nicely quaint yet unpretentious place. Plenty of shops, public spaces and good bus routes into Granada. We found a pub, astonishingly called The William Wallace. Is there no getting away from the man? If I'd stopped to think about it I'd not have put much faith in a Scottish themed pub in this part of Spain and as we walked in I was prepared to be faced with some ghastly faux plaid wearing bagpipe playing local, with a face covered in blue woad who would immediately detect my Englishness and run me out of town. Chris had no such reservations. Inexplicably 'Braveheart' is his favourite film and how delighted was he to discover a bar owner (very much an Andalucian) shared the same exhalted view of this Hollywood piece of tripe. His photograph, showing him resplendent in his tartan kilt, stood proudly behind the bar.

In all fairness it's a great boozer. Magnificent tapas, easy going atmosphere and encouragingly packed with locals on what was otherwise a quiet day in town. There's a huge downstairs nightclub area the manager was very proud of but it was shut and he was unable to show it to us.

Well, I really liked La Zubia and I quickly identified the apartment I wanted. A top floor 'piso' with amazing views over to Granada, three bedrooms, and some (admittedly dodgy) furniture. The asking price was within budget. In addition, I discovered an English language school at the bottom of the street so I felt incredibly upbeat about things.

So, all of that was on Saturday.

On Monday we returned to the town to view a final apartment. It was in the same street as my favoured one, in a similar block, but was on the ground floor. It was slightly bigger and had yard space out the back. The furniture was better and it had air con which I can imagine to be a life saver out here through July and August. The owner of the property is a real character. He is a joiner and told us proudly that he had 'built' the William Wallace. He then showed us his right hand which was missing a finger sawn off with a chainsaw during the WW construction.

Ok, the apartment's a tad more expensive than I'd have liked but I bit the bullet tonight and put an offer in via a crudely typed Spanish text message. I knocked 15 Euros a month off the asking price and my offer was accepted! In a couple of days time I'll be a La Zubian. How cool is that?

In other news I almost got my bank account sorted out today (you wouldn't believe the nonsense that has to be waded through) and I give my first private lesson tomorrow at 17:00. It's to a lady in Granada and I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes. I go from giving the lesson to going over the contract of the apartment. Should be a fun evening.

They say the more you know, the more you know you don't know. Ten days into my emigration and I'm beginning to catch glimpses of how vast the cultural chasm I've exposed myself to really is. 

I'm lucky. I have a few friends here to get me started, to help get me 'up and running'. Without friends I can see how pretty nigh on impossible it must be for anyone to settle themselves into a foreign country.

This morning I was entrusted into the hands of friends of my friends, people I didn't know at all. They are Dutch and are colleagues of my hosts Chris and Nicia. They in turn, know a local man Nacho, who has a friend who is an estate agent (also Spanish). There are apartments aplenty in Ogijares and the surrounding area but of course many of them do not appear of official estate agency lists, or on the relevant internet web sites (something to do with extortionate official fees that have to be paid). It's been pointed out to me on several occasions that information on the ground is ten times more valuable than anything else you might pick up via offical channels. I understand the sentiment that here in Spain, certainly in this neck of the woods, it's not what you know that's important, but who you know.

The Dutch couple I met, Martin and Nelliga know a young Brazilian family. Through unfortunate circumstances they have to travel back to Brazil and as they do not have all of the correct and appropriate documentation they will not get back into Spain. I was left to put two and two together over that scenario while in the meantime my Spanish and Dutch contacts showed me around some properties.

Estate agents - gotta love them have you not? I was assured at one small house that the vicious looking dog next door only barked at people he didn't know; at another apartment the disgraceful smell emanating from the kitchen was nothing more than still water in the kitchen sink pipes; and in a final apartment that the north facing window overlooking a busy road below ensured the living room would stay cooler in the summer. For a small one-off fee, reductions in monthly rent could be obtained. If I wanted to take a deal on the rather expensive but unfurnished new apartment I saw they could arrange for some nice curtains and maybe a tv to be put in - if I say yes to Nacho before Monday.

But I'm getting ahead of the story. Before the property viewing I took a car trip with Martin to the Brazilian family's apartment. We were to take Daniella (Brazilian lady) into Zaidin (an area of Granada) to try and get two of her propane gas bottles changed. The local gas bottle man who tours the area had irritatingly ignored repeated calls from the family to replace the empty bottles. Hmm.

On the way to Zaidin Martin pulled the car into a dealership to try and get a refund on a dodgy windscreen wiper blade they had sold him. Yesterday whilst driving in heavy rain the wiper had flown off. I stood and watched as Martin, a gentle and unassuming Northern European, button-holed a mechanic and launched into a passionate arm waving tirade using his best Spanish. Daniella, standing aside with me, translated the gist of the argument. Fifteen minutes later we returned to the car, now complete with a new wiper blade, handed over at half price, and continued the journey.

I noted the lesson. The Spanish like an argument. They like to see some passion, some 'cojones', and if it's not in your nature to stand up for yourself you'll be trampled on, particularly if you are foreign.

Part of the task was to convince the mechanic that not only was the wiper blade the wrong make but that it had been incorrectly fitted. The dealership in turn insisted it had been fitted properly but had probably been damaged in a car wash or by someone leaning against it (?). Martin's passionate argument won the day though he then cheerfully admitted to us in the car that he had fitted the original himself.

Back to Daniella and her apartment. If I was to be a potential beneficiary of the family's misfortune I was at least determined to remain emotionally detached and impassive over the situation. Not a bit of it. Her husband Ricardo was pleased to meet me and I saw immediately that they were the most charming and delightful couple. Their apartment, the cheapest of all the properties I saw, was easily the prettiest and best aspected too. We drank tea and ate chocolate muffins while Martin did his best to meld my Spanglish and their Engluese into some form of agreement (whatever happened to Esperanto?).

Things change rapidly. Now it seems Daniella and their young daughter will go home in a couple of weeks and Ricardo will stay to try and earn some more money over the summer months. At the end of the summer he will then go back to Brazil - but in the meantime it's now being floated that I could share the apartment with him for the summer then possibly take it on myself in six months time. It would certainly enable me to live cheaply and get a feel for things with someone who knows the ropes before taking sole possession myself. The only problem? This is Martin's idea and no one has run it past Ricardo.

I've discovered so much this past week, a fair chunk of it today. I know the importance of making contact with locals, of discovering the person Chris terms the 'local knowledge source'. Get in amongst the community and make an effort but don't make the mistake of expecting people to be openly friendly. You won't get invited to the house of a Spanish family until you are firm friends. Be respectful and make sure you too are respectable. What else? I'd already heard about the hard edge of racism that thrives in Spain and now I've heard first hand accounts of those at the wrong end. Not nice.

None of this fast track education would have been possible without knowing people beforehand. Though for the time being I remain on the outside of this strange world looking in I can at least see one or two paths through the maze. The more I'm learning the more complicated I see it all is.

A lot of this mirrors my experiences in looking for teaching work too. Who I know is proving far more invaluable than having a CV or a qualification. I have picked up a student through a contact and have four more potential clients through Nicia my hostess here in Ogijares. And did I mention too that Daniella is an English teacher? She'll be leaving Ogijares within a fortnight. Perhaps my arrival could not have been better timed?

A small set of snaps taken during the past 10 days.

This is the village of Gojar lying in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Gojar is the neighbouring village of Ogijares where I am staying.

A view of part of the Saromonte, Granada.

The Alhambra from the Sacromonte