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Published: September 17th 2009
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I spend the night tossing and turning once again and at one point resort to sleeping on the floor only to have a nightmare that the hundreds of earwigs from the wood pile have invaded our room and are queuing up to take refuge in my ear.
Dawn breaks and I lie awake listening to the neighbours cockerel crow at 5.30am before dragging myself into the shower at 7.00am and trying to prepare myself for another day of toil. The shower is another minor annoyance in that it really is very compact, having been built into a cupboard in the stockroom. It’s small even for me and its just as well I’m not as muscled as I aspire to be since there would be the distinct possibility that I’d never be able to get out of it without the help of the local fire brigade. It’s also self limiting since the drainage leave something to be desired and so if you spend longer than about five minutes under the spray the shower tray fills up and overflows into the room, at least it’s warm, till the gas runs out that is….
We begin the day with a surprisingly tasty
muesli although the Spanish soya milk is taking some getting used to and it’s onto pool cleaning and planting the missing cauliflowers which have now been found. Kate accompanies us down to the veggie patch only to regale us in a slightly annoyed and accusatory tone about the fact that a whole tank of water has been lost over night since one of the pipe connections to one of the hoses which crisscross the track down hill have come undone. The connection was in place when we passed it yesterday and we didn’t touch it but it seems the blame falls on us.
After planting the cauliflowers we uproot a birch tree which has been planted amongst some roses near the pool and transplant it to a new location to the side of the track up the hill, to our mind a rather unsuitable location since it’s moved from shade to direct sunlight but we do as instructed.
Kate apparently paints the floors of the casitas before each guest and so I’m tasked with painting the floor of the property vacated by Michael and Chery who left this morning for their English teaching assignment in Madrid.
Now
I’m more than happy to do some painting and indeed it will prove a welcome break from digging holes, but the whole episode perfectly illustrates one of the major stumbling blocks to our time thus far at La Casa.
Kate is a generous, warm, welcoming and to all intents and purposes wonderful host but we have major differences in the way we approach life. In a word she is quite scatty and flits from one task to another without any sort of plan. La Casa is full of half finished projects and bodged jobs and this latest episode brings to the fore one of the most frustrating parts (for us) about our stay here.
La Casa has an amazing location, we have been unlucky with the weather but the views are spectacular and the Casitas themselves whilst small and fairly basic are extremely quaint, the place has so much potential and whilst we realise that Kate does not have a lot of money to spend on projects, if only she would organise things better and plan ahead she could run the place so much more efficiently and it would be a joy to work here instead of a
chore.
Painting the floor before each guest seems complete and utter madness, and is only necessary because the floors are painted with normal emulsion paint so get stained and dirty incredibly easily. If Kate would only tile it or paint the floors using proper floor paint then they could be simply washed and would require much less maintenance. It seems as if every task is made as difficult as it can be just for the sake of it and when we or other WOOFers suggest improvements or changes which would make every ones life easier and La Casa a nicer place to be they are just ignored.
The tool shed for some reason has been constructed half way down the hill so to fetch anything you need to trek up and down hill and even then, because not all the tools are kept in the shed you might get there only to find that what you want is actually somewhere else like under the bed or in the back garden. The paintbrushes are caked in paint and have never been washed out, there are a myriad of paint tins, half opened and congealed, bags of half opened and solidifying cement, bricks and blocks strewn all over the land and its not only the tools that are like this but the food stuffs cleaning utensils and towels and bedding etc, everything is scattered all over the place with no rhyme or reason to its location and no system.
Ok not everyone is as OCD about order and tidiness as I am but if only Kate had a plan things would be so much easier for her and us.
Still she is the boss and we did choose to come here, so once the floor is painted I move onto grape picking and spend a miserable and freezing cold afternoon picking and sorting grapes on the patio whilst Kate drives Dee mad in the kitchen.
Kate is concerned about our lack of sleep so suggests we may like to try changing our bed. We have discovered one of he reasons that makes our bed so uncomfortable is that it has a rather large bend in the frame. Kates suggestion to “fix” this is to lay a single bed frame over the middle of the double bed frame. Instead I ask if perhaps we can simply change the broken double for two singles and she agrees since she needs to put a double in one of the Casitas for a new client tomorrow and can use the one from our room suitably “fixed” using her method of course, so I spend the rest of the afternoon lugging bed frames up the hill from the tool shed. We break at 4pm and resume at 7pm to help prepare and serve dinner to the departing cyclists.
Dinner preparation is interesting since the electricity keeps going off, put down to Kate as probably something getting wet in the rain! Dinner itself is quite tasty with Dee’s nut roast and some nice roasted potatoes and vegetables but is marred by Ian the incredibly annoying and opinionated resident cycle guide who apparently hates all WOOFers (believe me the feeling is mutual!) who decides to do a war dance with a fly swatter during dinner and leaps madly around the room attacking any fly within reach.
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