Don’t worry I’m not writing the book!

After almost 30 years living and working as a translator on the island of Tenerife, I am now (July 2021) retiring. Many people have commented in the past, usually during our excursions to this official office or that, “you should write a book”. Don’t worry I’m not doing that just yet, however I do find my self with time on my hands so have decided to write this blog.

The first thing I want to do is to thank so many people for their kind words and good wishes and also wish my successor Emma Swain all the best for the future.

Whilst I will no longer be dealing with officialdom on a day to day basis, I expect I will still have my “twopennyworth” to comment on issues that concern us here in the Canary Islands, but the intention is to mix this up with some lighter and more personal articles and topics. Hopefully you will be interested in the reflections of a young at heart Granny

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Grandparents Day and when is your Grandad not your Grandad?

World Grandparent’s Day it is a relatively recent innovation, if we compare it with the celebration of other special days, which is why few people (me included) know what its origin is or why it was established. The celebration was introduced to the UK in 1990 by the charity Age Concern. It has been celebrated on the first Sunday in October since 2008, although it has not been as successful commercially as Mother’s and Father’s Day. Very recently Pope Francis declared World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, to take place annually on the fourth Sunday of July but here in Spain, Grandparents’ Day ( Día de los abuelos y las abuelas) is celebrated on July 26, the feast day of Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, parents of Mary, the mother of Jesus. This factoid popped up on my social media today and got me thinking about my own family history. As the child of older parents who had both been married before, three of my grandparents had passed away before I was even born, but my mother’s mothe

Balkans or Brompton?

So here we are more than 6 months into my retirement and it turns out the answer to the title question of this blog is “not a lot to write home about really” I’ve been dabbling in watercolour painting a bit, but my retirement, for us, was always going to be about having the time to travel, to do the bucket list trips. It hasn’t turned out like that – well yet anyway. Covid restrictions haven’t helped, although we did manage a trip to the UK to see our new Granddaughter in October which was lovely. With all the bureaucracy involved I found travelling a stressful experience, but thank goodness it seems that the world (well the 1st world anyway) is now in a position where that side of things is easing a little – just in time to start worrying about an actual war in Europe; Thanks Vladimir! Don’t get me wrong, we are lucky people, we live 365 in a place where some people pay thousands of euros to come to for a couple of weeks a year, but you do feel like you need to get off the rock som

This week mostly I have been shredding

This week mostly I have been shredding: sacks and sacks of paperwork and other memorabilia going back years and all of it my own! If you have been following events so far you will know that I was an administrator/ translator of other people’s paperwork for years, which, even if I say so myself, was always carefully kept and catalogued and returned or weeded out as and when required – my own documents – not so much. On the basis that I would get around to it at “some point”, my personal filing system consisted of shoving everything into huge plastic boxes (the giant kind that are intended for bedding) and never throwing anything away of course- this is Spain after all! Well now I have the time and “some point” has arrived and what a voyage of discovery it has turned out to be. Box one was the most recent, old tax returns, vida laborals, old passports – wow did I really travel around with THAT photo for ten years? By box two we are further down the strata of the archaeological dig of my

What Shall We Do Now Then?

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