The Pursuit of Happiness (1)
Saturday 26th September 2009 6pmRight this is it. Away we go, off to live the dream (don’t laugh). The car was all packed to within an inch of its life, the boat hitched up, passports in the glove box and concerned looks all round with eager waves attached. Only 1500 miles to go; Murcia here we come!
Let’s go back and start this story at the beginning where it belongs, with one too many parking tickets.
The 4 of us (me, the missus and our two little ones) hail from London; all born, lived and worked there most of our lives. We had a place in Spain for a few years and had been coming on holiday for a lot longer. My wife and I did live in Murcia for about 6 months before the children were born, but the experience ended in a haze of cheap vodka, even cheaper cigarettes, no work or money and eventually a plane ticket home and a tail firmly between each leg.
As most of you who are reading this know, life in the UK simply isn’t much good (was it ever?). Let us not delve too deeply as to why we are all here, because we all have different, but ultimately after a few drinks, the same reasons for being here (sun, food, drink, lifestyle, all the problems at home. “Too much immigration” is the cry on the urbanizations from the largest immigrant group in Europe! Sorry I mean ex-pat)
Me and the better-half had been discussing moving here for some time and for all the same reasons, not just the booze and cigarettes this time! With two small children and living in the Capita,l there seemed to be no real future, or at least not a good one. Then I found myself on the Internet most days looking at pictures of the beautiful Costa Cálida and then glanced out of my window at London and onto a very ‘grey’ street with ‘grey’ cars, ‘grey’ buildings and ‘grey’ people and asked myself why I was there and finding no valid answer, I wondered what life there was for my children in the UK.
Everyone has a final straw and reason for emigration. Mine came one morning when I walked out of my London home in the place I grew up and saw my car dangling 8 feet in the air being towed away by the lovely people at my local council for incorrectly parking. I sighed a very long sad sigh and eventually managed to convince the man to pity me and lower the car, mainly by turning my pockets out and waving my youngest offspring in his face. I collected the £50 ticket from the windscreen, went indoors and told my wife to start stocking up on sun cream; we’re off to Spain!
Saturday 26th September arrived and we were ferry booked and ready for the off. The plan was simple! Buy a small boat for transportation of our stuff (rather than pay for removals) and trailer, which we managed to acquire from a very firm handshaking and serious, serving Colonel in the Army. The main reason we bought this boat was because it had “unsinkable” written boldly down the sides, which the Colonel happily pointed out as a main selling feature. I then pointed out that they said the same thing about the Titanic and well, we all know the story there. I won’t say too much about the purchase from the Colonel, for national security issues, but all I’ll say is he had his price and we had ours! We then, after being stared down by a battalion of gunners, happily paid his!
We were to load up; my dad and I, our two ridiculous dogs (more later on them) and then take an over-night ferry from Portsmouth to Caen, or as my French friend calls it ‘kaaaw’. We then drove South non-stop to our place in Isla Plana, Mazarrón, where my wife and kids would fly in on Tuesday 29th to join us to start our happy new lives. Simple!
With kisses, waves and many tears all round I managed to pull myself together and started the slow and gentle trip out of the city towing our unsinkable bath tub carefully through the traffic. 30 yards down the road and my phone rang; it was my French friend who just waved us off. Now let me just say that he is very French with a very French accent; easy to talk to face to face with the power of lip reading, but not so easy on an old mobile phone. When I told him I was going to write a piece called the Pursuit of Happiness, he repeated it back to me and sounded as though he was in pursuit of something very different indeed (drop the “H”). I managed to get out of him that the trailer electrics had come undone and we had gone 10 feet successfully without hiccup; only 3 more countries left to drive through! After plugging it back in and sorting out the cable just at the end of our road off we went to the docks.
After the finest dinner of soggy, petrol station bought sandwiches we boarded our dreary ferry. Saying our goodbyes to the dogs, who we had to leave in the car below, I didn’t realize then how lucky they were. Foolishly I didn’t book a cabin on the boat and instead chose the cheaper “Sleeper Reclining Chairs” option. If there was ever a case for trade misrepresentation then “Sleeper Recliners” is top of the list. The ferry companies herd you into a room with 50 or so other people like cattle. Just as I got comfortable (I say this loosely), into my wooden upright, the two vacant chairs next to me were occupied by a French couple who could only be described as more Bison than human in size, smell and vocabulary. The gentleman’s stomach was so large I considered rolling up and trying to sleep in it for some time. They quickly passed out into an exhausted weighty slumber and for anyone who has heard a very large person sleep, will know the noise is a cross between a helicopter landing and very poor, but very noisy bag pipes. I spent the rest of the crossing on a cold and windy deck thinking about a warm cabin below and the best £40 I never spent.