Arguing about all sorts: the third year of our Spanish adventure

I also had to protect and defend Dad from unwanted visitors. He didn't want people to come and have a 'social occasion' with him when he was writhing in agony.
One man from his 'Stammtisch' (a local German group which met in a social club) tried to gain an audience with him one day. I blocked him in the corridor.
'And who are you?' he asked, in a superior tone.
'I'm his daughter,' I replied. 'And he's too ill to see anyone at the moment. Sorry.'
'But I've come all this way.'
'Sorry.'
I'd never seen nor heard of this man and I knew most of my Dad's friends at the Stammtisch. Talking to me like that; asking me who I was.  I was the most important person in my father's life, that's who (my Dad's will which was due to be dug out soon stated: 'And to my daughter, Rebecca, who has supported me financially since she left home I leave everything. To the others I leave nothing, as they do not need it.' The last bit would have been suggested by the lawyer, to ease the blow to my siblings. Financially, I was better off than the three of them put together).
Another afternoon, the girlfriend of his German taxi driver friend, Rudolf, turned up. My Dad had often spoken about her: 'I can't stand dat vooman.'
Even Rudolf said this on-off girlfriend was unhinged. Before he'd started seeing her, Rudolf had used to pop in for chats with my Dad a few times a week. My Dad was like a surrogate father to him. But he couldn't abide Sylvia.
So when she tried to march onto the ward I stopped her in her tracks.
'Oh no,' I said. 'He's not dressed appropriately.' 
He was in a nightgown, often not done up properly at the back and it had a tendency to ride up in a revealing way. He also had what looked like white pop socks on, right up to his knees - dressed like a little girl; although somewhat incongruously with his brown, 'Continental' large-featured face and mop of wild, white hair (people used to say he resembled Inspector Morse).
'No,' I repeated. 'He has said he doesn't want any women to see him.' (as in: 'He can't stand you love, because you're bloody loopy and not a nice person and I'll fight you to the ground before he has to face the likes of you.')
'Well,' she puffed and spluttered, but she gave in.
I felt like a sentry on guard. Just as my Dad had been in 1942. He and his mate (they would have both been 17 at the time) had been guarding a building one night - he on the left and his mate 20 yards away on the right. At 1am they had changed positions. Some time after this a shell exploded/a bomb fell/something happened (I was never any good at paying attention to Dad's stories). Anyway, all that was left of his mate were the boots he'd been wearing, with his feet and lower legs inside them.

Some staff were nice; some were horrid. One day I was sitting next to Dad behind a screen when an officious nurse breezed in.
'You'll have to leave,' she said.
'Why?' I asked.
'Because I need to examine the patient,' she replied in a cold voice.
I walked onto the corridor. I'd been crying a lot anyway, whenever Dad was asleep and he couldn't see me I would be silently shaking and blowing my nose constantly. He was in so much pain. With the nasty way the nurse had spoken I found more tears were now flowing silently down my cheeks.
A male nurse was passing: 'Are you okay?' he asked.
'It's that nurse in there. She's so rude,' I said.
He nodded, knowingly.
By the time she came out I'd dried my tears and was ready.
'So what did you learn from your examination of my father?' I asked in a forthright tone.
'Oh. Uh. Um,' she floundered. 'Yes, he's okay.'
'And that is your professional assessment is it?'
'Yes.'
'And so now I can go back in?'
'Yes.'
I marched back in.
None of the other nurses had any problem with me staying and my father said he preferred me to.
Another night, the same sympathetic male nurse I'd met in the corridor, was examining Dad and he said:
'You can see with some of the patients how loved they are. We can tell that they are important people in their families. Some patients hardly see anyone. But your Dad - we never see him alone.'
'Yes, he might just look like an old man,' I replied (he was sleeping as we talked), 'but he used to jump out of 'planes. He was a German paratrooper in the war.'
'God. Really?'
'Yes.'
One day in 1939, my Dad was at the lake in the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia, where his Dad was a boatman. He was about to launch himself in from the diving board, when a voice on the radio tannoy declared that Germany was now at war with Great Britain. He simply dived in, thinking nothing of it. He was 14. A year later he enlisted, volunteering early, lying about his age, eager to get away from the boredom of rural life and see a bit of the world. In 1942, he was caught by the Americans and brought to Britain.
'Yes,' the nurse was saying, 'I could never jump out of 'planes. I'd be far too scared. They made that generation differently, didn't they?'
'Yes, they did,' I agreed. 'And he also brought us up when my mother ran off. So he was like a mother to me.'
There was also a lovely female staff nurse. One day around 6am she came in and found me dozing on a couple of cushions I'd pilfered from the settee in the visitors' room.
'I'm not supposed to do this, so don't tell anyone, but can I get you a tea or a coffee and some toast?' she asked.
'God, a cup of tea would be brilliant,' I said gratefully. I felt like death warmed up.
'And would you like white or brown toast?'
'White please.'
'And jam or marmalade?'
'Jam please.'
Five minutes later she brought it all in on a tray. She was a senior nurse but she was willing to wait on me. I was so impressed (she also did her share of the dirty work, I observed later, including dealing with commodes).
Chrisopher tried to make out the staff didn't like me and were even afraid of me.
'Rubbish,' I said. 'You don't get given tea and toast. Anyway, I'm as polite as anything to them. 
'Come on, you do order them about a bit.'
'I do not!' I said. 'Every time I ask them to come and see Dad, when he needs them, I always say: "Excuse me, but when you've got a minute, could you please come and see my Dad as he's in terrible pain."  What's wrong with that?' 
Dad needed an advocate who didn't pussy-foot around. (two years earlier, Adrian's Dad would have lived if there had been someone assertive to tell the hospital staff what they should be doing, but we were in Spain and with no-one in the family willing to do a bit of 'ordering' he was left to die on a trolley in the hospital corridor)
Pressing the 'emergency' button next to the bed served no purpose whatsoever, because it was never responded to. 
Most nights were spent with Dad in anguish and pain; he had trouble breathing, pains all over his body, a raging headache, was so thirsty I had to dab his lips every 15 minutes and the paracetamol and ibuprofen didn't touch him and they wouldn't give him anything stronger.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

The biggest problem for Dad was the fact that he'd been 'nill by mouth' since the stroke. The physiotherapist was supposed to have come and assessed him on the Friday, to see if he could swallow liquids.
'I vood luff a glass of cold milk,' Dad kept saying (he never drank milk). 
But the physiotherapist was too busy to see him on Friday and didn't work weekends. They said he had to wait until Monday morning. In fact she didn't turn up until Tuesday and tried him with a thimble-full of milk. It stayed a few seconds in his mouth before he swallowed it.
'It took rather a long time to go down,' she said. 'You may not be ready.'
'I am ready,' Dad protested. 'It took a vile, becoss I voss savourring it. I haffn't had a drrink for a veek!'
But she wouldn't authorise liquids and later that day he took a turn for the worse, having missed a chance for what would have been his last drink or drinks in this world.
We'd been planning for my mother to come and see him (the love of his life whom he hadn't seen for 30 years since she ran off with a man so inferior to my father in every respect). She'd agreed she'd come as long as we didn't say a word to her husband. And Dad had said he would see her, probably sensing that he might not come out of hospital. But he changed his mind when the pain kicked in again. It would be humiliating for  her see him when he was in that state.
A week had gone by and Andrea, Christopher and I were taking it in turns to spend the nights at the hospital. Adrian had by now flown back to Spain to check on the work on the casa. 
'We're paying them on a daily rate,' he said 'I want to make sure they're not twiddling their thumbs.'
In fact, he was pleasantly surprised at the progress they'd made. Benjamin was very concerned about my father and seemed to feel it was his duty to make sure we had no other worries. Being back gave Adrian the opportunity to give our friend Simon a poder over our bank account to enable him to draw out cash and pay the men every Friday night. He also gave further instructions and ordered supplies for the next month, as we didn't know how long Dad would be in hospital.
Simon was extremely helpful. Over the next few weeks, while we remained in the UK in addition to drawing cash out to pay the workers he even took it upon himself to do spot checks on the workers. 
We trusted Simon and Charlotte so implicitly that at the end of our first year in Adreimal, we had even given them the keys to our flat (when we wouldn't let any of the Adreimal lot near it - I suspected that the reason Vicky had tried to wangle the keys out of us was so that her waster of a sister could sneakily move in while we were back in Wales for the summer, but I refused). They also had keys to our cortijo (it was only later that I realised they never entrusted us with keys to their property...)
Simon and Charlotte then had stayed in our Adreimal flat while the village fiesta took place, as they found the constant noise of fireworks and then brass bands below their window at 8am after a relentlessly noisy night that ended at 6am, unbearable. 
The idea that I should have had such confidence in them and should have given them access to all of our private belongings (including my explosive diaries!) later filled me with horror…

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

So my Dad's condition didn't seem life-threatening, and the next morning Adrian dropped us off at the hospital and went off to buy supplies for maintenance work at the rental houses. As I walked onto the ward, I realised it had been a mistake to bring the children. Dad's face was contorted in pain.
'I can't stand it,' he was saying, 'I feels terrible. I don't know vot to do. I had a terrible night. I didn't sleep all night. I've been in agony viz pain.'
Avril started crying. 'Opa's in pain!' And Tom's face went grey. 
'Right, you two, out onto the corridor now!' I ordered. 'Opa will be fine.'
As I took them out, Dad called out to them, 'You can have ten pounds each!'
'Ten pounds!' they both clapped their hands.
I rang Adrian. He was already in B & Q about half an hour's drive from the hospital.
'You have to fetch the kids now. My Dad's gone really bad and the kids can't stay.'
'Okay, I'll be as quick as I can,' he replied.
In the meantime, I kept them in the corridor and popped in to reassure him every few minutes, desperate for Adrian to arrive and take the children.
Thus began a difficult ten days. The doctors declared it unsafe for him to drink and he literally felt like he was dying of thirst. I was allowed to dab water on his tongue with a swab, but his throat was permanently dry.
The day after I arrived, my brother Michael came from Brighton. My sister couldn't get a flight from Germany until the following day, Friday, but my brother who lived in Scotland was dragging his heels. In the end, I had to get the consultant to say loudly, from his position by the nurse's station, while I was on the 'phone to Christopher, 'Yes, tell your brother he must come now as it's very urgent.' This was the Friday morning and even then Christopher rang again at 3pm asking if he should still definitely get the night train.
'Well you've only got one father and he's seriously ill, so yes,' I said, exasperated with my favourite brother (one of the unquestionably 'good' people in my family).
Adrian and I had had a meeting with the consultant on the Friday morning. I was about to rip into him as we'd had a meeting arranged the day before and Adrian had rushed to the hospital specifically for it only to be told the man was too busy to see us.
'He's no more important than the rest of us,' Adrian fumed. He didn't have a high opinion of consultants having had a run-in with one when his mother had been in hospital (a nurse had pointed out the consultant on the other side of the ward and suggested it would be a good time to ask him about his mother. Adrian had therefore gone up to him only for him to say in a superior tone, 'Well I'll have to see her first, won't I, before I can say how she's doing!' Adrian had responded, with an equally outraged tone: 'What? She's been here for days, and you haven't seen her yet?'). So we were on red alert to deal with an arrogant, obnoxious toff. 
'The thing is,' he said, 'it is important that we know what your wishes are. If your father's heart were to stop, which is quite possible, it wouldn't be like you see on "Casualty." It's a very aggressive procedure to get it going again and there's a high likelihood of severe brain damage. This would mean your father could survive with a truly abysmal quality of life and high dependency. Would you or he want this?'
'I'd have to ask him that,' I replied. 'My father isn't one of those people who say they'd hate to be dependent on others. He wouldn't necessarily care. He's quite thick-skinned. And he loves life. He'll want to cling on to it.'
So the consultant, Adrian and I went to Dad's bedside and the consultant explained the situation.
'Rebecca and Christopher can make the decision,' Dad said.
'Oh thanks Dad,' I said, and I actually laughed.
Michael was standing silently a few metres away the whole time. He knew he didn't have a say (he'd been rotten to Dad over the years; in his late teens he'd even threatened him with a machete Christopher had brought back from Africa). But he did take some pride in the way he'd been wetting Dad's forehead with a flannel (he had the most terrific headache and felt like his head was on fire). But then he'd go and spoil it by saying, 'Hey, Dad, I'm off to the Pendragon tonight. I'll have a few ice-cold beers for you.' I thought that was mental cruelty. 
Of course he had been a terrible bully to me as well during my childhood, so it wasn't easy being in the same room as him; my sister had been his deputy bully. 
Neither of them had any power over me now. 
'Thank God there's no money to fight over,' I said to Adrian. 'Can you imagine that?' 
The only money Dad had he was leaving to me; this was the remains of the few thousand I'd given him over the previous year and my siblings didn't know he had it. I thought of King Lear. Had Dad had any money, my sister would have made a good Goneril-Regan combo to my Cordelia and lied and charmed and wormed her way into his affections (she'd always been good at that). But luckily she didn't know there was any money (and it wouldn't have been enough to tempt her anyway).

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

On the 6th of December we were experiencing some luxury at the Parador de Gibralfaro in Malaga. It felt wonderful to get away from the basic facilities of the cortijo with only lanterns for light as there was no mains electricity. We had to lug big bottles of water for cooking and drinking and big bombonas for the cooker and hot water as well. I had a long soak in the hotel bath tub before wandering around the beautiful building and gazing down at Malaga from the gardens. Adrian was catching a flight to Cardiff on a business trip the following day and I would drive the car back to La Gloria with the children. 
We had used our tarjeta de cinco noches to book the parador. This was a deal run by the Paradores de Turismo de España. It was a bit of a con in fact, despite being run by a respected national organisation. You paid 350 euros for five nights in a parador. But whenever you rang, they'd say there were no rooms available under the deal the night, week or month that you wanted. For example, you might think, 'Oh, we'll get away for two days in June,' and find out that the only possible place to go was in Northern Spain. Or you'd fancy a trip to Carmona and the tarjeta would only be valid there in November and December. 
Although we'd bought it in the spring, we hadn't managed to use it until November, when we'd stayed in Ubeda for two nights.  We had now spent the one night in Malaga before Adrian was due to fly out. We had also managed (finally) to find a parador that would let us stay for the two last nights just after Christmas. During the earlier months we'd repeatedly been told it was impossible. We'd got so exasperated that we'd say:
'Instead of telling us when we can't stay, what about telling us when we can?'
In addition to the prepaid 70 euros a night for the basic accommodation, each time we had to spend 70 euros on top for the use of two little beds for the children and for breakfast (NB. in our rentals we never dream of asking for extra just to use a bed or a cot or a high chair).
Anyway, we were having dinner in a Chinese restaurant in the old town, when I received the call from my Dad's best mate Tony.
'I think your Dad's had a stroke,' he said. 
We quickly paid the bill, rushed back to the hotel, got  on the internet and booked three more 'plane tickets for the following day. 
The next morning Adrian got up at 5am and drove back to La Gloria (a three hour round trip) to pick up our passports. It was a race against time; while he went back (missing the expensive breakfast, which he was gutted about), the children and I ate ours and then caught a taxi to the airport. Adrian would meet us there.
We also made a few calls to get Benjamin to take over all the building work - the old part of the house as well as the new part. We were pretty confident he'd just crack on with it, despite being on a daily rate. 
By 5pm the day after the call, we were walking onto Dad's hospital ward in Cardiff. 
I didn't know what to expect, but there was Daddy, sitting up in bed:
'Look!' he slurred to the couple of nurses nearby, 'Diss is my daughter. She hass come all de way frrom Spain!'
Although the side of his face was down and his speech was affected, it looked like one of those strokes people recover from quickly. We spent a couple of hours with him but when he started to look tired we left, promising to return the next day.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

After the showdown at the bar with Ricardo, I kind of forgot about the whole thing and indeed congratulated myself on getting some work done for nothing. It made a change us owing someone else money rather than the other way around.
Patrick, who lived near Ricardo and had the occasional drink with him later filled us in on a few facts about Ricky, notably that he had joked with Patrick that he saw it as his job to part the guiris from their money. To help him in this quest he would fawn around every British person he came into contact with, playing the part of the local peasant and buying them beers in the hope of winning their trust, so that he could later fleece them. Before I knew this, I would occasionally be found propping up the bar with him. 
A month after we'd seen him with his son and Sid, we arrived at the casa after dropping the children off at school only for Benjamin to say that the sand delivery hadn't come at eight that morning. He offered to ring the suppliers.
'Que pasa? It was ordered for today,' he was saying.
'Que? It was cancelled? Who cancelled it? Ah...'
Ricardo had offered to arrange sand deliveries for us; he would order the sand and then wait at the bar at 8am, get the receipt and give it to us. We would then arrange payment. I assume now that this was some kind of scam, whereby he got back-handers. And now he had cancelled it to try and disrupt our work. 
'No te preocupes,' Benjamin said. 'Don't worry. We'll get on with something else today and I've arranged for them to bring it tomorrow. I've told them I'm in charge of ordering it from now on and not to listen to anything Ricardo says.'
By now, Ricardo's cousin had told us that the whole procedure of taking the stone to our piece of land so that it could then be brought back in via dumper truck was a ploy by Ricardo to make more money out of us. People in the know would be thinking we were fools.
He clarified:
'Why would you get it delivered outside the village? It's just loco! As long as you get it taken straight down of course it can be left in the street above the house.'
So we arranged for the next delivery at a designated spot where it would get in nobody's way and from where we could get the Romanians to wheel-barrow it down. We met the lorry driver on the main road, paid the 140 euros and the labourers started shifting it. A quarter of an hour later, there was a knock on the door. The village policia local Juan, was standing there. 
'I understand you've had a load of stones left on the road. That's not allowed and you'll have to move them immediately,' he said.
'Que casualidad!' I said to him. 'What a coincidence! That's the first time we've ever done anything like that and you know about it immediately! But don't worry, because it's being brought straight down to us as we speak.'
'Christ,' I said to Adrian when Juan had gone. 'Isn't it amazing that you can never find that guy when you need him, he never has time to do anything you ask him to do - in fact, he's flipping useless, but the minute we do something slightly dodgy he's on us like a ton of bricks?'
When we bumped into Patrick later that day, he said:
'Ah, I wondered what  Ricardo was up to this morning. He was standing at the entrance to the village, like he was meeting someone there, which I thought was strange. And then I saw him talking to Juan the copper and pointing. You know Juan's one of Ricardo's cousins, don't you? He must have been telling on you!'
The final straw came when, one day around 11am we came out of the casa to find Ricardo, his son and Sid had parked their van to block in our car. They were standing there like a bunch of mafiosi.
'Get out of the way!' Adrian said and they sniggered.
'Hey, you think you're the big guy, do you?' I said to the son, as he wagged his finger at me and demanded that we pay his father a thousand euros. 
'There's no way we're paying it,' I said. We were on a slope, which made his six foot something seem even bigger, so I moved my five foot three to be above him and said, 'Look! I'm taller than you now!'
'Come on Adrian,' I said then, 'let's get in the car, before they try anything.' 
We climbed in and Adrian beeped a few times, but they wouldn't move the van. In the end he put his hand on the horn and kept it there. A few neighbours came out to see the fun. in the end Ricardo and the other two got in the van and drove off.
(A year later they nearly killed the lot of us. We were performing a three-point turn to get onto the track to our cortijo which was the only way to do it, when their larger work van came right up behind us, and if Adrian hadn't quickly manoeuvred they would have smashed into the four of us, hitting the back of the car first, where our five and six-year olds were.)

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

Adrian had always referred to the cortijo and the land that went with it as a 'flawed paradise.' Some people 'got it' and loved the way you could escape from the daily distractions of life there, stroll on the terrace, gaze at the mountain range, pick a lemon, an avodado or a loquat off a tree; others somehow wanted all of this, but also all their usual big city amenities. So they wanted no light pollution and the sound of the toads and crickets, but they also wanted a tarmacked, lit road leading to this paradise.
We had rented the house out over two summers and received mixed reviews. The second summer, our friend Yvonne looked after it – she would put wild flowers in vases, pick seasonal produce from the garden and place it in a bowl – she was great at the detail and little touches. She was also a notch up from Johnny, who'd looked after it the previous year. I'd worried all summer that he would cock it up (he didn't; he managed to get the bare minimum done). 
But there were issues at the cortijo and it was a constant struggle to keep on top of them. 
For example, lighting was a problem for some. When we'd bought the cortijo the only form of lighting had been the gas lantern that the previous owners had left.  The light on this was quite dim and not good enough for reading. It also made a worrying hissing noise. So before the second season I had run about in the UK looking for rechargeable lanterns and torches that could be plugged in, because the first year we'd spent a fortune leaving stacks of batteries. Then, when the generator was on each morning to operate the pool pump, the lanterns and torches could be charged up to be used in the evenings. We also left a stack of candles (in the summer it didn't get dark until 10 o'clock, so this didn't have to be a big deal).
But it turned out that although some guests loved this ‘romantic’ set-up, others didn't like it at all. I’d seen holiday lets advertised in the Sunday papers, stating that you got a few hours of light in the evening, provided by the solar energy stored during the day – you read or played cards and drank your wine until it ran out and then you went to bed. It was considered to be 'eco-tourism' and therefore quite trendy. But we found that some people were extremely annoyed that they couldn’t plug something in whenever they wanted to. 
One day in October the previous year an American student had rung in a terrible flap, having arrived with his friends for a month-long stay.
'I have to be able to plug in my lap-top,' he insisted. 'I have to be able to work on my Masters (my friend Helen commented: 'Uh, what about using a pen and paper?). 
I had to drop everything that Saturday morning and race down to the cortijo, as we were still living in Adreimal at the time. I then had to show him how to use the generator (and hope that he didn't break it and/or blow himself up). It would use a fortune in petrol and be very noisy, but the customer is always right. 
I did suggest it would be easier if he went for a coffee or beer in the local bar, and charged it up while he was there (they wouldn't mind at all), but he wasn't happy with that idea. (In fact, after his initial panic he decided not to bother to work and he spent the month swimming, sunbathing and mountain-climbing. By the end of the month he was the picture of relaxation, with his bandana and sun-tan.) 
We had to deal with people's panics and demands that we respond immediately to anything that was bothering them.
One thing which I thought would be controversial, but didn't raise an eyebrow, was that we asked people to put their toilet paper in the bin next to the toilet, so that it didn’t block the fosa séptica. I found that a bit yucky, but I'd seen similar requests down at the chiringuitos (beach bars). God knew if anyone complied.  We'd only know at the cortijo if the thing got clogged up.

Another source of contention was the track leading to the house. Some holiday-makers felt we should have told them that a four-wheel drive was necessary to traverse it (Spaniards went up there every day in their little ford fiestas). We received some very vociferous complaints about this (which are in the appendix, for those who like to read complaints).
The cleanliness of the pool was also a recurrent theme. I wanted to think that the holiday-makers were just too fussy, should 'get a life' etc. But after the second summer of renting it out, we realised it was a problem that only two skimmers had been put in the main part of what was a very large pool and none had been put in the little children's section - just three small holes between the two sections which were insufficient to get the water moving. Of course the builder had ignored my request to insert 'pillars' with gaps between the two sections of the pool, preferring his idea of three small holes inserted into a concrete wall between the two parts.
We also gradually realised that there was an additional problem with the way the pool had been plumbed. We had relied on a recommendation by Marita, the previous owner, of a company on the coast. We assumed she knew best, as she had had several pools built. This firm sent someone who allegedly knew all about how to plumb pools (Installing the pump had been outside our builders’ expertise and remit). 
But it turned out that this specialist hadn't had a clue. From September onwards, since we'd been living at the cortijo Adrian had plenty of time to observe first-hand how the pool was operating. He would be vacuuming the pool and it would get clearer, but later an inexplicable murkiness would return. 
'I can't understand it,' he said. 
Every day he spent a couple of hours on it, but there was no improvement.
'I've got it, but you're not going to believe it,' he finally declared. 'Look at this pipe here that takes the dirty water out,' and he pointed. 'Now look where the pipe leads. Look at the direction it's going. Where do you think it's going?'
The man had arranged the pipes so that they were in a kind of circuit. He had plumbed it so that the dirty water came out and then went into another pipe which then led straight back into the pool! (Neither of the 'pool men' we had employed to look after it over the two summers had had the intelligence to spot this, by the way.)
The only solution was to get someone to reroute the pipes and Steve (this was before his disastrous employment at the casa) said he could sort it. There was no point getting the original guy back as we had no confidence in him. While Steve was at it we hired a pneumatic drill so that he could also take up tiles only laid the previous year, cut through concrete and steel and put an additional skimmer into the children's section of the pool. It cost more than a thousand euros to sort out both the builder's and plumber's errors, but at last we would have a clean pool.
In addition to these issues, there were additional problems which came up from time to time over the first two years of renting out the cortijo. One day, a lovely mother of four, 'Sally' reported that both toilets were out of action. The one had blocked up, and so they had been only using the second one and now the flush had broken on the second.
'Don't worry,' she reassured us during an international call, 'Richard, my husband, is a plumber, and he's enjoying watching someone else sort it out. In the meantime we're flushing with a bucket. It's not the end of the world. We absolutely love it here!'
But it got so that we dreaded Saturdays (the change-over day), in case we received a complaint or a moan when visitors arrived. 

I told Adrian all about the incident and we heard nothing from Ricardo until he suddenly appeared one morning at the bottom of some land we'd bought at the edge of the village. Adrian was sitting in Pepe's dumper truck. He'd finished working for the Dutchman, so could do a few jobs for us.
One trick that Ricardo had pulled was advising us that we had to have the stone delivered to this land at the edge of the village. It had cost us 70 euros for each lorry load of stone and 70 euros for each load to be delivered to the land (I now suspect Ricardo was getting a cut of this hefty delivery charge). We would then have to pay Ricardo to bring it down in small loads to the village house in his dumper truck, where he would deposit it outside the garden and the Romanians would then wheelbarrow it down through the garden and tip the load next to the retaining wall. For each 70 euros of stone we were paying twice as much again to get it where it needed to be.
This particular day Adrian and Pepe were fetching the last of the stone from the land, when Ricardo, his son and 'Sid' (yet another British 'builder,' who was a pal of Ricardo's) accosted him.
'We need to talk,' Ricardo said.
'Okay, I'll meet you outside the bar when I've taken this to the casa,' Adrian said.
Just ten minutes before this I had been driving out of the other end of the village on the way back to the cortijo. I'd had to pick up Avril from school because she had a fever. And Ricardo had passed me in his van going in the other direction. 
'I wonder what he's up to,' I'd thought. There had been a man in the passenger seat and another one behind them. I continued to drive, but just as I got to the cortijo I had a funny feeling about what I'd seen. On a whim, I turned the Suzuki around and drove back down our track and onto the main road. I arrived at the bar five minutes later to see Adrian sitting, totally outnumbered, at a table, with Ricardo, the burly son and Sid.
I got straight out of the car, with Avril sleeping by now in the back, and strode up to the table.
'What's happening here?' I asked Adrian.
'We're talking about the bill,' he replied.
'I did the work and you have to pay for it,' Ricardo was saying. 
'But the bill doesn't make any sense,' Adrian said.
I was so glad I'd turned back. I could see my presence unnerved them (they all have that primeval fear of women).
Especially as the conversation was rapidly deteriorating.
'What are you doing here, anyway, Sid?' I asked. 'Are you the heavy?'
'Hey, leave me out of it. I don't even understand what's going on.'
'Well, you're here for a purpose,' I carried on, accusingly.
'No. I swear to God I didn't know you were going to have a big fight. They just asked if I needed a lift. I'm not getting involved,' the big, tattooed, earringed Essex boy said and he didn't utter another word, but concentrated on making another rolly and knocking back his mid-morning brandy.
Personally, I didn't believe him. It was too much of a coincidence and Ricardo had obviously thought that with two big blokes to intimidate him, Adrian would capitulate. We'd heard a few things about Sid; people can have quite murky pasts in Spain and I suspected he might be one of them. He was pals with Denise, our 10-day builder whom we'd recently sacked.
Since then we had found out that Denise was a wanted man. The Guardia Civil from Alhaurin el Grande had been up asking his whereabouts and Tracy, an Engish expat had told them exactly where to find him! Apparently a generator had gone missing at the last building site he'd worked. (It wouldn't have surprised me if he'd been mates with the notorious English rapist and murderer of young Spanish women, Tony King, who had been active around the time Denise lived there.) 
Sid wasn't that type though, as far as I could make out. Everyone reckoned he and his wife Shirley were fiddling the UK benefits system. He was registered disabled it was said, and apart from his obvious alcohol problem, he seemed as able as anyone else. His disability didn't stop him doing building work at any rate. He'd taken a roof off a friend's house, and then hadn't known how to put a new one on and had completely screwed up. Before he'd managed to get on the new one, moreover, there had been heavy rains and the first floor got ruined. Our friends then had to pay to get all the damage put right, as well as having paid Sid.
Our friend Patrick completely detested Sid and was always ranting about him. The story was that Patrick and Yvonne had helped Sid and Shirley, by cooking them meals, letting them bath in their house and so on, at a point when they'd had a 'cash flow problem' and couldn't get their house finished. Then, when they no longer needed them they practically ignored Patrick and Yvonne, which infuriated Patrick. 
'If that man was alight and he was burning to death in front of my very eyes, and I was absolutely dying for a piss, I was in agony dying for a piss, I would not piss on that man.'
We also caught Sid out lying one day. He was going on about how they'd managed to legalise their house. 
'Yes, we got this really good arquitecta,' he told us, 'and we've got permission for a two-storey even though the house isn't in the urban zone.'
'God, that's incredible,' I said, 'because I was told that's completely impossible to do, legally. Can you give me her number as we want to get our cortijo legalised?'
'Uh, I haven't got it on me at the moment. I'll ask Shirley.'
The next time we asked Shirley for the number:
'Uh, Sid is the one who deals with all that. You'll have to ask him.'
Their house was in fact too close to the road and there was apparently some law about it then being impossible to turn it into a vivienda rather than a nave.
So we usually gave Sid a wide berth. Anyway, back to the present action and the stand-off at the bar. By now I had turned my attention to Ricardo.
'You're a liar and a cheat,' I found myself saying. 'But it's not going to work with us.' 
I thought his son would explode at this, maybe get up and shake his fists a bit, perhaps go red in the face in outrage. But no, he was as tranquilo as anything; presumably used to his father being called a cheat and thinking nothing of it.
I then used a favourite phrase a Spanish friend had taught me:
'Extranjeros, si; tontos no' (we might be foreigners, but we're not idiots. Apparently it sounds better than what we used to say: 'No somos idiotas'). 
I pulled out the bill from my handbag and proceeded to dissect it.
'Take this one for instance: "17th November: 5 loads, 40 euros." I remember for a fact that on that day it was raining and no work was done at the house. Nada. And then this other one: 19th November: 4 pallets of thermal bricks delivered. We hadn't even started using thermal bricks by then. To charge us a thousand euros for work done over three weeks, you'd have to be working for us every day, all day long. The total should be closer to 300 euros, and that's what we'll give you.'
I then stood up, walked down to the bank, drew the money out, put it in an envelope and handed it to him. 
'Come on, Adrian,' I said, 'Let's get out of here.'
Adrian hadn't said much, letting me take over and that had taken the bunch of macho men by surprise. We got into the car. Avril wasn't well and I wanted to get her to bed. We were about to drive off when Ricardo walked up to the open window and flung the envelope of money into the car.
'Gracias,' I said. And off we drove (I think he had some strange idea we would now go  and get more money and put that in an envelope - in a kind of negotiation).
This was not, of course, going to be the end of it.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271

While all the nonsense with our British 'builders' was transpiring, another situation had developed and reached its denouement with a local old Fascist. 'Ricardo' was a wrinkly, scrawny, scruffy, little wide-boy who unfortunately we engaged because the dumper-man we knew was busy doing up the house of a local Dutchman and wasn't going to be available for months. Of course, no bugger warned us about Ricardo (instead, after we had a big falling-out with him, people said, 'Oh yes, he's no good. He always does that kind of thing,' even if they were the ones who'd recommended him. This is the Spanish way). 
Anyway, over a period of three weeks in November we had got him and his little dumper truck to take away rubble from the demolished part of the old house and also to bring down bricks and cement, because the street was inaccessible to lorries. In fact the whole transportation thing added greatly to the cost of the works. It was only with hindsight that we worked out that old Ricardo had engineered some of the complications in order to get more work for himself an get kickbacks from others.
Over the three weeks, he would do the odd job - maybe take two loads of rubbish away on a Monday, bring three loads of bricks down on a Wednesday - each trip might take twenty minutes. But he would hang around for hours, like he had all the time in the world, watching the men work and chatting to them.
I just assumed he didn't have much work on.
Pepe, our first choice whom we'd used before, charged six euros per load, so Ricardo wasn't going to get a lot for the work he did for us, but he seemed unperturbed and in no rush to be paid. Apparently he dabbled in various enterprises including mule-trading (mule-traders had a similar reputation to our second-hand car dealers) and didn't seem short of money, several times offering to buy me a beer if he saw me passing the bar. 
Each Friday (pay day), we'd draw a few thousand euros out of the bank and settle up with the workers. Ricardo would invariably be there as I handed out the notes.
'Ricardo, cuanto te debo?' I'd ask. I preferred to pay bills straight away so that I could write up the payments in my 'Lord of the Rings' notepad and know I was up-to-date.
'No, no hay prisa, there's no hurry,' he'd say and wave away any idea of payment. Since I couldn't force him I just assumed he'd bill us for the few euros whenever. 
One rainy day, he offered to take me to a nearby village where there was a stone quarry. Benjamin and the Romanians together with an alcoholic man, by the name of Fernando (he would drink about five litres of his home-brew wine out of a little leather bottle every single day - pouring it from above his head, not touching the spout with his mouth) had spent a couple of weeks rebuilding and improving a 40 metre by 4 metre retaining stone wall, with steel reinforcement. This was to prevent the house and pool we had planned for the garden from slipping onto our neigbour. After a week or so they started to run out of stone, having recycled what had been there before; we would now need some lorryloads of extra stone in a similar size and colour (although it was the neighbour below who would get the aesthetic benefit; we couldn't see it as it was below the house and garden).
The day after going on the stone trip I had been speaking to Ricardo's cousin, whom I knew fairly well and I mentioned how Ricardo was in no rush to be paid.
'Pues, eso puede ser un problema,' he warned. 'You need to insist he gives you a bill now. I don't like the sound of it. He's dodgy and might try and overcharge you.'
Crikey, if his own cousin said that, I had to take action. I decided to write down all the deliveries I could remember that he had done and also to make a note of days when he had done nothing. For instance, the day we went to the quarry it had been raining and no work had been done at the house and no deliveries had been made and he'd presented taking me to the quarry as a little (presumably unpaid) excursion. 
Adrian was working in the UK when a few days later I insisted yet again that I wanted the bill. I was so adamant, as I flagged him down in his van outside the bar, that he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a little invoice, casually, as though it had been there all the time. I scanned it quickly - it was a list of various dates and the number of deliveries. The total came to a thousand euros.
'Que es eso?' I asked. 
'La cuenta,' he replied.
'Uh, there is no way this is the right bill,' I said.
'Yes, it is,' he answered.
'No, es ridiculo,' I continued.
'Look. This is the bill and you'd better pay it.'
'I'm not paying it,' I said. 'I can't believe you're trying to charge us a thousand euros for a few deliveries. There's no way on earth it could come to this.'
'You had better pay it,' he said, 'if you don't, we will never drink together again.'
'Good. I wouldn't want to drink with you!' I nearly shouted, and I threw the bill back at him, as several locals at the bar stared.
'That's the end of their little cosy beers together,' I could imagine them saying.

To see the end result of all the work on the casa, take a look at the house now: 

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p86636

And also another of our completed projects:

http://www.homeaway.co.uk/p475271