Spanish Eyes, English Words

In the UK press, there's a lot of fuss about the so-called She-agra, which is basically viagra for women. Of course, there's the usual raft of articles on both sides of the argument, and I was wondering how I could possibly bring a Spanish connection into it, so I could write about it here. I'd just about come to the conclusion that I couldn't but I was going to write about it anyway, when I realised that maybe I could make connections after all. Sometimes a twisted mind like mine is a liability, but at other times - like now - it's a positive asset.

The 'No' camp are writing that chemical assistance with libido is no use when you're too stressed out to enjoy sex anyway. Life in Spain is so laid back that stress is not a problem. The weather's good, alcohol is cheap and plentiful, and there's the wonderful institution of the siesta. The more often you're horizontal, the more opportunities there are for taking advantage of that loving feeling, and a combination of cava and siesta time should do the trick.

One of the many advantages of being a woman is that alcohol doesn't really interfere with performance the way it does with some men. A good lunch in the sun, washed down with industrial quantities of cava and followed by siesta time should lead to a little afternoon delight, with a bit of luck.

If you're unfortunate enough not to drink, there's another free and non-chemical dependent aphrodisiac right there on the roads in Spain - or at least it works every time for me. Get out in the car, and get yourself behind a group of cyclists. I'm not talking ancient, mahogany-skinned expat cyclists here - I mean the real Spanish deal. After a couple of miles of following toned and taut lycra-clad bums and marvelling at the pulsating movements of those strong cycling thighs, I'm definitely 'in the mood.'

It doesn't matter that it would take acres of lycra to encase Tony's bum, or that his birthday suit needs a good ironing. My husband has the body of a god - unfortunately, it happens to be Buddha - but even that doesn't detract from the need to get down and dirty when I get back from following a group of Spanish cyclists at 15 - 20 miles per hour. Yes, I could overtake them, but I'm happy to admire the scenery.

Talking of ironing, one refrain that seems to run through the 'No' articles is 'How can I get in the mood for love when there's a pile of ironing to do?' It's easy - buy a Spanish washing machine. They're  notoriously bad at spinning moisture out of the weekly wash, but one of the bonuses of this is that hardly anything ever needs ironing. If, like me, you would rather poke red hot needles in your eyes than stand behind a steam iron for hours, you probably buy your clothes based on need for ironing rather than the latest fashions anyway, so an ironing pile is a rare sight in the casa.

She-agra is set for launch on the ladies of Europe in around three years time. I for one will not be parting with my Euros - what about you?

I belong to an expat and networking site called Costa Women, and I've connected with quite a few of the members on different levels. The site organises lots of get togethers, but as many of the members are based on the Costa Del Sol, most of these social and business occasions are out of bounds for me.

Lately, there's been an increase in members on the Costa Blanca, so I was quite hopeful that there may be a meeting organised in my own area before too long. And I was right. The meet up is going to happen right on my doorstep, at the La Finca Hotel and Spa, Algorfa, at the Homes, Gardens and Lifestyle Show on 29 and 30 May. That's wonderful - or it would be, if I wasn't in Bigbury Bay in Devon, with no prospect of returning to Spain for some time yet.

It's not the first time I've been on the receiving end of Sod's Law either. We used to belong to the Motor Caravanner's Club before we moved to Spain, and everyone told us that we simply must visit the National Rally. However, as we lived in Cornwall, and the National was usually held in Newark or Peterborough, it was out of the question. We were caravan site wardens at the time, and the National was always held at one of our busiest times of the year, so we just couldn't make it.

When we bought our property in Spain, we gave up the wardening job. Although we still maintained a UK base, we didn't want to be tied by UK commitments. We headed off for our first summer in Spain - and the Powers That Be at the Motorcaravanner's Club decided to take the National to the members, rather than expecting the members to come to the National. While we were signing on the dotted line and furnishing our Spanish garden apartment, our fellow motorcaravanners in Cornwall and Devon were enjoying the atmosphere of the National Rally in Newquay - just 15 miles from our Cornish base in the UK.

I could easily get bitter and twisted over the mysterious workings of Sod's Law, but being the pragmatic and generous person that I am, I've sent a message wishing the Costa Blanca Women who are attending a happy and productive meet up. There'll be other opportunities, I'm sure - unlike the National Rally, which is never likely to return to Cornwall.

I'm sure I'm not the only innocent victim of Sod's Law. Do you have a story to share?

My husband, Tony, has cirrhosis of the liver. He's not supposed to drink at all, but he does. However, every now and then, he feels a bit rough and he'll go alcohol free for a while. Now he's been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, so he's on warfarin for the rest of his life. He can drink a very limited amount, but anything more than two units a day will mess around with the warfarin.

Unlike me, Tony can't just have one or two drinks and leave it at that. He either doesn't drink at all, or he goes through industrial quantities of Guinness, wine and whisky, so he's decided his best option is not to drink at all. He may be 79, but he's in no hurry to leave this life behind, and if he doesn't take the warfarin, he's at greatly increased risk of suffering a stroke, which isn't a good idea at his age.

When Tony has his 'dry runs,' he substitutes alcohol free beer for the regular stuff, as he's not keen on soft drinks and fruit juices. In Spain, there's an alcohol free version for every beer you see in the supermarkets and bodegas. They're also the same price, or even cheaper than the real stuff. However, in the UK, the choice is limited. There's Kaliber, which has a vile aftertaste, Becks Blue, Cobra, Bavaria - and that's about it. Erdinger also do wheat beer in an alcohol free version, but it's not the sort of thing you can drink lots of.

There are also Kopparberg alcohol free ciders, which taste nothing like the real thing and are quite expensive. I remember some years ago, Tesco produced an alcohol free cider, which tasted pretty much like regular cider, but that seems  to have vanished now.

Another thing Tony finds is that alcohol free beers over here seem to give him a headache if he has more than a couple a day. That never happens with the stuff we buy in Spain, so maybe it's something to do with the brewing process. I think it's a great idea to have alcohol free versions of a range of beers, and I can't see why it doesn't happen over here. It means drivers and others who can't drink alcohol for one reason or another can enjoy the beer taste without the alcohol units. What do you think?

As my regular readers will know, I love Spain, and although I enjoy visiting the UK, I wouldn't want to live there again. However, right now I'm glad to be here. My daughter had a serious stroke three weeks ago, and now my husband has been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. He'll need to be on warfarin for the rest of his life, and it will probably take a while to get the balance right. The doctor says some people are easy to regulate but Tony has spent 79 years being awkward, so I can't see him changing now.

Fortunately, we've never needed to call on the services of the Spanish health service, but I know from visiting friends and hearing of their experiences that both Tony and Elizabeth would have received exemplary care in Spain. However, there are two problems with being ill in Spain - the language difficulty and the isolation from friends and family members.

I speak Spanish quite well, although I'm a fair way from being fluent. The thing is, my Spanish is conversational, so it's not up to in-depth technical stuff, which is what I need to know about my daughter and my husband right now. I need answers to all my 'What ifs?' and I need to have the worst case scenarios explained to me, so I can come to terms with that. I couldn't get that in Spanish, and it's a necessary part of my coping mechanism.

Some people prefer not to know what may happen, but I need to know that, so that when setbacks arise - as they are bound to during the course of any serious illness - I can recognise that it's part of the process, and not a complication specific to Elizabeth. Expect the worst and hope for the best has been my mantra for the last three weeks, and it's taken some of the sting out of the roller coaster ride of emotions we've all been experiencing.

The other thing that makes me glad to be in England is that all the family can be here within hours if they need to be. That happened twice during the first week following the stroke, and it's amazing how much strength you can draw from each other in the dark days following a major illness. We're all in contact with each other on a daily basis, and those of us who live close to the hospital are working out a rota so that nobody has to spend hours sitting by her bedside alone. That would be more or less impossible to organise in Spain.

Of course, I'm missing my friends and the Spanish lifestyle, but here is where I need to be right now, for as long as it takes. And I'm being reminded of just how good the National Health Service is. Like any big organisation, it has its problems, but the care my daughter and my husband are receiving is the best it can be. Several medical professionals have told us that if they had to suffer a stroke, they'd want it to happen in Plymouth, because the Stroke Team there is the best in the country. On the evidence so far, I have to agree.

I hope I'm a fair person, so in the interests of balance, this post is about the things that are actually cheaper in the UK than in Spain. As Eggcup commented yesterday, potatoes and apples are certainly cheaper, and in the case of apples, English apples are the best there is. We've basically given up on trying to find a decent apple in Spain - we tend to stick with  oranges, soft fruits such as peaches and nectarines, and melons and berries.

I do like Spanish potatoes, although they are more expensive, but what really annoys me is that they don't carry the brands on the packaging like they do in the UK. Last week I bought some Maris Pipers for chips, but it's a job to find a decent chipping potato in Spain. Even those marked 'para frier' don't always work well. Still, it's a good excuse to keep my husband away from the frying pan - he'd have chips every day if I allowed it.

Bananas are another fruit that's cheaper over here - probably because they have to be imported. That said, a lot of the bananas on the Spanish markets only come from the Canary Islands, so they should really be cheaper.

Moving away from fruit and vegetables, one thing that's considerably cheaper here is milk. At the moment, Morrisons are selling a 4 pint carton of milk for just 97p - that's way cheaper than the 1.65 Euro I pay for 1.5 litres in Spain. For the mathematically challenged - which includes me - 4 pints is more than two litres, so milk is around half the price in the UK.

Another thing I've noticed is that you don't get the supermarket price wars in Spain - most of the stuff is the same price to within a few cents, wherever you shop. In the UK, you can save a lot by being a Supermarket Tart and taking the best of the offers from each establishment. There are also lots of BOGOF offers - again, you don't really get those in Spain. In Morrisons last week, tinned plum tomatoes were actually Buy 1, get 2 free, so I stocked up on those. In Spain, I always cook with fresh tomatoes, but they're too expensive to do that here.

One thing about being in the UK for an extended stay is that I need to do more shopping, so I'm getting a true picture of food and household costs. I'm one of those people who treats shopping as a necessary evil rather than a leisure pursuit, so I don't usually see so much of the insides of English supermarkets. It's certainly an eye opener.

Now that Elizabeth is more or less out of danger and we don't need to spend quite so much time at the hospital, I've decided to get back into the routine of cooking every day, rather than relying on hospital canteen meals, takeaways and the kindness of friends. It's going to be a marathon rather than a sprint, so we need to establish some sort of routine.

The supply of fruit and vegetables we brought over from Spain is now exhausted - as are we, in fact - so yesterday I went shopping for the ingredients for my legendary vegetable soup, and a chicken casserole for Sunday lunch. One of the many things I love about Spain is that fruit and vegetables are always sold in season, and are therefore very tasty and very cheap. I knew I was going to have to pay more for my 5 a Day here in Devon, but I didn't realise just how much more expensive it would be.

500 grams of peppers - an ingredient I can't manage without since moving to Spain - cost me £1.68, yet the last lot of peppers I bought at my favourite Spanish market worked out at less than 1 Euro a kilo. Maths isn't my strong point, but that's about half the price for double the quantity, so my feeble brain has calculated that I'm paying around 4 times the price for peppers here. To add insult to injury, they're very bland tasting and quite small - my bag of 500 grams contains five peppers, whereas the ones I buy in Spain are large enough to feed a family of 27, and have a wonderful flavour. Well, maybe 27's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get the picture.

We live among the orange groves on the Costa Blanca, so freshly squeezed orange juice each morning is a particular treat. We're so used to it that I was even prepared to buy oranges over here to continue the tradition, when our bargain bag of 6 kilos for 1.50 Euro ran out after ten days or so. I paid £1 for a bag of Valencian oranges on special offer, only to find that there was just enough juice for a glass each. Not only that, the exquisite signature flavour of the Valencian orange was missing completely.

I was telling this to a Spanish friend who sells her father's oranges on the markets, and asking her why Valencian oranges lose their flavour when they cross the English Channel. She said it's because they are kept in cold storage on the journey - oranges and lemons give up most juice and flavour at room temperature. Talking of lemons, I've had to pay 50p for 3. I can buy a kilo for less than that in Spain, but this was a real emergency. I can't drink my vodka and lemonade without ice and a slice, so needs must.

Basically, all the fruits and vegetables we know and love are far more expensive in the UK, and I really can't see why that should be. When things quieten down on the hospital front, I'll go in search of bargains. A friend told me that Aldi and Lidl have the best value fruit and vegetables of all, but there isn't one on the route into hospital, so for now, it looks like taking out a mortgage to ensure we get our 5 a Day. Rip Off Britain strikes again!

Well, maybe 'lady' is stretching it a bit, but I'm certainly of the female persuasion. And no, I haven't been mistaken for a man - I hope I look feminine enough to ensure that never happens. I'm referring to the custom of calling everyone guys - as in 'Are you guys okay?' and other variations of this appalling Americanism which seems to be ingrained into British cuture now.

Even the professional classes are at it. When we asked to see a doctor for a report on Elizabeth's progress - which is very slow, by the way - his first words were 'What can I do for you guys?' I felt like saying 'For a start, you can open your eyes - there are two males here and one female. That means your reference to  'you guys' is inaccurate.' However, as we wanted important information from him, I bit my tongue and ground my teeth. That happens a lot these days, because I seem to hear the loathesome expression at least once every day.

I don't know if it's because I'm a writer or because I'm just plain old fashioned, but I cringe every time I hear this unoriginal expression, and I feel like lifting up my skirts just to prove that I'm not a 'guy.' In fact, if camera phones weren't so ubiquitous, and I wasn't wary of getting next week's washing and my wobbly thighs plastered all over the Internet, I would probably have done that ages ago. However, my kids and grandchildren have enough to put up with from me, without causing them terminal embarrassment, so I suppose I'll just have to suffer in silence.

What about you? Do you object to being a 'guy,' or are you comfortable with that, to borrow another Americanism? Maybe you'd care to share your own pet peeves regarding Americanisms that have found their way across the pond? Oh dear - 'care to share' and 'across the pond' crept into this without my noticing. I'd better stop this right here - I'm becoming Americanised - or should that be spelled with a 'zee?' It must be catching!

One week after suffering the stroke that very nearly claimed her life, Elizabeth is making a slow but sure recovery. Over the years, I've often cursed her stubborn nature, but it's coming in useful now, because it's enabled her to restore movement to her left side to an extent which has amazed the medical professionals. It's still early days, but she's thankfully on the mend now.

One thing that has really got to me over the last week is how expensive it is to park your car to visit your loved ones in hospital in the UK. Thankfully, we've never been hospitalised in Spain, but we have visited less fortunate friends in Torrevieja and Vega Baja Hospitals. Not only is the parking extensive, it's also completely free of charge.

In Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, however, we've been paying £8 a day so we can spend time with Elizabeth. Not only that, you have to use around a gallon of fuel looking for a free space, which is about as rare as rocking horse excrement. As a Blue Badge Holder, I could claim free parking - as long as I park in a designated disabled bay. Finding a vacant one is nigh on impossible, unless you visit in the middle of the night, which of course is forbidden unless the circumstances are exceptional, so we've just been stumping up grudgingly.

Yesterday, we found out that, as relatives of an Intensive Care patient, we're entitled to free parking, and I'm rather annoyed that nobody bothered to tell us this at the outset. The family have been coming from all over the country, and as well as the expense and strain of travelling long distances to see a critically ill and much loved relative, they're having to pay £8 a day on top of that. By the time they've found a parking space, their precious time with Elizabeth is curtailed, so it's all extra stress when you really don't need it.

According to the hospital website, the exorbitant charges - which also apply to hospital staff, although they pay a slightly lower rate - don't even cover the cost of providing the parking facilities. Maybe if they provided free parking, like the hospitals in Spain, they could save on enforcers, machines and CCTV cameras. Just a thought.

The wedding went really well, and we caught up with all our friends and family, some of whom we hadn't seen for a couple of years. When you have friends and family scattered all over England, it's difficult to visit them all within a five or six week visit.

On Monday, we arrived at our static caravan in Bigbury Bay. The sun was shining, and it was raining back at home in Algorfa, so we could look forward to a relaxing time spent in the sun. Or so we thought.

At around 1.30am in the early hours of Wednesday morning, I received the phone call no mother should ever have to experience. My 40 year old daughter Elizabeth, who looked so lovely in her red dress at the wedding, and who was due to visit us on Wednesday, bringing her German Shepherd so we could all take a walk across the cliffs to Burgh Island, was in intensive care at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth.

While she was cooking her evening meal, she'd suddenly felt tired, and  lay down to rest. Then she started vomiting, before passing into unconsciousness. Luckily, her son was at home, and he called an ambulance. She'd suffered a stroke, and it was one of the rarest and most dangerous ones there is. She was lucky to make it through the night, and even luckier that Dan was at home, because that meant she got treatment within the critical first four hours. She wouldn't have made it otherwise - her chances of surviving were rated at around 20%.

She had a procedure to drain the clot on Wednesday, and on Thursday, it looked as if she was coming around. She opened her eyes, and recognised the family, and she was moving around independently. Then on Friday morning, she went unresponsive, due to a build up of fluid and swelling on the brain, so it was back into theatre for emergency surgery.

As I'm writing this, we still have no guarantees that she will make a full recovery, or even that she will survive, so it's a terrible time for all of us. We're just thankful that she's alive, and also that we were here in England when it happened, so that we could be with her as soon as possible.

I'm afraid the blog's on hold for a while, along with everything else. I can't seem to concentrate on anything when I'm away from the hospital, and it's all very physically and emotionally exhausting. When we can see an improvement in her condition, normal service will be resumed. It's helped to write about it, and I hope it's not too depressing for you to read, but I did want to let you know why I've been a bit quiet this week.