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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A passport doesn’t make you who or what you are

I read a Spanish news piece today about an Ex Director of a Russian Chocolate Company, who is one of the forces behind the Adeje based Oberig association which supports the nearly 2,000 Ukrainians living in Tenerife. He seems like a good guy. His grandmother was one of the “niñ@s de Moscú” : the 2,895 children evacuated to the Soviet Union by the Republican authorities during the Spanish Civil war. He told the Diario de Avisos newspaper, (who were at pains to point out that he is a Russian passport holder), “all Russian speakers in Tenerife are against the invasion ( of Ukraine ) decreed by Putin” I also deplore the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but in this particular article I was struck by the reporter’s use of the phrase “Russian passport holder” – not Russian national, or just Russian, but emphasising the (one quarter Spanish) man’s passport. Passports have been with us for a long while! A type of passport was first issued in the reign of Henry V of England in 1540. By 1920 the Leag...

How to Claim Your Pension if you are a British person who has retired in Spain

Obviously this is a subject dear to my heart now! Despite having helped countless people to claim their UK and Spanish pensions over the years, it was with some trepidation that I started my own claims, because of, you guessed it, BREXIT I was told that I would still get my UK Pension under the European Community Agreement on Social Security between the UK and Spain and that it will be uprated annually the same as for someone living in the UK, but you will forgive me for not believing them until the confirmation letter actually arrived. If you have previously worked in Tenerife as I have, you will find it has an effect on the way you claim your UK pension entitlement when you come to retirement age. You should be sent a EC rules claim form 4 months before you reach your UK State Pension age , but I telephoned them 3 months and 5 days before not trusting to the sometimes erratic Tenerife Postal system To claim the UK part of your pension, you can either: contact ...

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...

What Shall We Do Now Then?

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