A phone line at last

It's amazing how much joy a phone line can bring! We've been waiting a few months now for a phone line to our house and we've finally got one installed today :) :)

But there is a trick to this...

I first phone Telefonica up about 4 months ago. They told me our road doesn't have the facility yet for ADSL. We put our order in under Susan's name.

I kept seeing the Telefonica technician around so I kept asking him if we could connect yet. He kept telling me that there were plenty of lines available.

I decided to phone up again and order it in my name and hey presto....two days later a phone line is installed!

The moto is "If at first you don't succeed try again with another name".

We'd been using the Vodafone 3G modem up until now but it's doesn't work great and can be expensive.

But today I'm very happy.

El Cobrador del Frac

I was reading this article in the The Independent online about a really interesting way the Spanish recover debts in Spain.

You basically employ the services of someone dressed in a top hat and tails and carries who carries a briefcase with the words "El Crobrador del Frac". This person then follows the debtor around causing him/her embarrassment by making their debt public. They don't use any strong-arm tactics, they just embarrass the debtor!

I have to admit, if that was me I'd certainly pay up quickly!

Has anybody ever seen one of these? One of my neighbours was telling me that he saw one down in Sabinillas recently.

I'm in Cordoba

Just realised I forgot to mention on the site this week that there would be no newsletter.  We're in Cordoba this week for a little city break.  Now and then it's good to go somewhere busy and check out some new sights.  Manilva can get a little boring at times.

If you've never been to Cordoba then I recommend you stay for just one night.  There are some really interesting places to visit here, such as the "mezquita", but you don't need more than a day to see it all.

It's a nice city, huge number of shops (if you're into that) and the people seem really friendly. It's very Spanish, people look at us really oddly when they hear us speaking English.  In fact, it's quite nice that we haven't yet heard any other English accents here (somewhat different to the Costa del Sol then).

We're staying at the Hotel Maimodines which is a 3 star right next to the mezquita, so a great location really.  The hotel's not brilliant but it's good enough.  The wi-fi wasn't working yesterday (disaster for me) and no one seemed particularly keen to get it sorted!  Very frustrating.  

Anyway, we've had a pleasant stay and feel like we've seen everything there is to see.  We're off in the morning to return to normal life....