Buying Off-Plan/ Battling Through "A" Levels in Spain.

Friday 31st August

Olivia

Hi,

Our close friends Liz and Russell, who are also godparents to Victor, made some substantial investments here on the Costa about 2 years ago. Whilst they are often out here and spend a lot of time in our bar restaurant with us; they live and work in England, but want to establish a foothold here, with a view to eventually moving down here and working from home via the Internet.

They waltzed into our bar about 2 years ago and announced that they’d just bought 2 lovely 3 bedroom apartments off-plan in Puerto de la Duquesa and a large plot of land East of Malaga, where land is still relatively cheap to buy. The 2 apartments are now ready and on the market, so they should have a nice return from them, as they chose 2 of the best ones off-plan, you know what I mean; one has an enormous terrace with a golf view and the other has a corner terrace with two great views, both apts. face south and are close to the communal bar restaurant. They have a poster of one of the apts up in the communal bar to rent, but the other one they are going to enjoy using themselves, whilst it is up for sale.

As far as the large plot is concerned they are going to build a beautiful villa there and they also have plans to build a bar in the same area and offer the lease for sale.

Victor:

Hi, A few days ago I was called along with my Dad to my international college for an interview with my Business Studies teacher. The main point of the meeting was to discus my A/S grades and my A2 options for my final year. We decided that I would drop Business, as I only just passed that and press-on with the 3 tough subjects; Maths, Physics and Chemistry, which are all subjects that I am both good at and interested in, as I will have quite a lot of free periods, my teacher wants me to do Spanish A/S or to use some of my time to help teachers with the younger kids, probably with their Maths. I was told that I have to work harder, which I accept is true, but on the other hand my friends want me to buy a X-Box 360 and spend more time linked-up to them on the Internet. They all flunked year 12, I wonder why????????????

My head teacher wants me to present my charity project to her and also talk to her about the Community Work I do, as she wants to introduce the concept of 6^th formers working in the community into the school.

I am going to meet her in our bar restaurant, as she wants to meet my friend Sergio who is in a wheel chair and he can drive his mobility scooter to our bar, no problem, as he lives very near. Whilst we are in the bar I can also show her the DVD (on the bars entertainment equipment) of the Street Children in Kathmandu that I raise money for. I guess that she is considering the “Buddha Memorial Children’s Home Trust” as one of her adopted charities for 2007-2008. Wow that would be a great boost and probably raise enough money to keep a least 2 Street Children in a boarding school for a whole year. I really hope that she makes the right choice!

Mr Meglomaniac Props-Up Bar for After Work Quicky!

Monday 27th August

Victor

Hi,

I have been really dreading today for ages. I have been overhearing my Mum and Dad talking in the bar to other parents about their children’s A level options and grades. In fact it’s almost the only tropic that’s been up there for discussion in the bar. Oh! Yeh, there has been another matter, two of our customers Fred and Kay have seen a bar offering a lease for sale in La Cala de Mijas and have been pumping my Mum for info. You know the sort of thing. How much should you pay for a bar restaurant lease? How much rent should you pay? Are you better off leasing a bar in Spain or buying a bar?

Well back to today. My Dad and I, were required to attend a meeting about my A/S results and my “A2” options at my school. I go to a private English International College. The reason I was dreading this meeting, is that my grades for Maths were OK, but I didn’t do so well in Chemistry or Physics. Basically I got C’s for both subjects, which actually is a good grade, but the school expected me to get A’s and B’s. The head of Technology who is a regular customer in our bar, was doing the interviewing and had turned from a pleasant mildly amusing bar fly into Mr Megalomaniac himself. My dad apart from being good at running bars, knows a lot about how to get through interviews and he had devoted an hour or so towards coaching me to have a defence ready for anything that Mr Megalomaniac might throw at me. We had already decided that I would talk about how I realized that I needed to be more organised and that I had realized that “A” levels are really tough and was dumping my PS2 so that I could work much harder this coming year. My strongest weapon however was to offer to do a charity collection within the school for street children in Nepal and then as a spin off create some really good PR to help build-up the schools image in the community. That was a waste of time, as Mr M just couldn’t see how valuable such an exercise could be to his school and how it would attract more new children. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The only place you’ll find Mr M drinking is at our bar. In fact we get loads of teachers stopping at our bar for a quick one after work, but I suppose it’s really understandable, that anyone who has spent a day teaching 20+ kids definitely needs something to distance them from the harshness of reality. Note to myself “Don’t become a teacher. Ever!”

Ok! It’s 4:30 pm and we’ve just arrived back at the bar and guess who’s supping his after work a pint?

A Leisurly Sunday with Victor and Sami the Yorkie.

Graham:

Hi,

I have spent today lazing around, apart from going with Victor and Sami for a walk along the “Paseo Maritimo” in San Pedro. Victor had just shampooed Sami our Yorkie, so she looked really lovely walking along the sea front. We stopped for a café con leche in a busy bar and Victor went next door for a while to talk to his friends in the Red Cross hut. Today was simply too hot for comfort, so we piled back in the jeep and went to a very pleasant ice cream bar on a shady corner in San Pedro town. I used my fold up bed and when we’d finished the ice cream, which in this particular bar was great, we gave the nearly empty cartons to Sami to lick clean.

Olivia has been lying on a sun lounger in front of her favourite bar restaurant “Hermanos Cano” in Marbella.

Olivia has just called to say that she's on her way back from the beach bar and will pick up a couple of good DVD's for us all to watch tonight from San Pedro.

Click Here! Bar Restaurant for Lease West-Marbella

How does a Bar to Lease work in Spain?

Friday 25th August

Olivia:

Hi,

I am always being asked how a 5-year bar lease works in Spain. (My ideas are based on speaking to other people who have a bar lease for sale, have recently bought a bar lease or who have spoken with a lyer about bar leasing). I certainly no lawyer, but I’ll give you an idea about the rudiments, as far as I understand them:

If you lease a bar you firstly do two things

• You buy all the machines, the fixtures and fittings and, good will and the right to rent and trade from that bar.
• You pay a monthly rent for the use of the freehold property.

The money you pay to buy the lease of the bar is only paid once, when the 5 year period is up, you can simply renew the lease with the freeholder or you can sell the lease to someone else (You have to give the freeholder first refusal if you do decide that you want to sell the bar restaurant lease)

So basically to summarize, you buy the equipment and the fixtures and fittings and the existing clientèle, but you don’t buy the freehold property. This is a cheap way to acquire an already successful business.

As I have said I am not a lawyer and so what I have said is only a rough guide and if you want exact information then of course you should ask a qualified Spanish lawyer who specialises in leasing bar restaurants.

Bar Lease For Sale-Sponsored Haircur-Maurice Boland.

Thursday 23rd August

Olivia:

Hi,

It’s really busy in the bar restaurant at the moment and it’s a time of year that I love, as I get to see people who I haven’t seen at the bar since last summer. There’s on guy for instance who loves our bar and keeps asking if our bar is for sale, he’s even offered to buy the lease of the bar from us and I am very tempted. The problem is that I have to find someone to lease the bar, who would be suitable. A bar restaurant requires a lot of planning if it is to run well and the quality of the bar snacks and the pizzas etc is very important if my bar which has been going strong for 20 years is to carry on running successfully.

Our bar restaurant is valued at about 120,000 Euros lease hold and in the wrong hands this value could diminish overnight. Of course it’s also true to say that the value or the bar and the lease could increase considerably in the hands of the right people. Since Graham had to leave the business following his back op. the bar side of the business has shrunk. I have offset that effect by working really hard on the fast food side of the business, but there is a limit to what I can achieve without a partner helping me run the bar side of things.

Graham:

Hi,

The sponsored haircut is definitely on now and I already have a few hundred Euros pledge for Deepana in Nepal through my bar. Today however, I decided to begin networking the charity collection. There is a bar near us in the Diana Centre called the Windmill and I had heard that they were into helping charities. Victor and myself spent the morning printing out a publicity/promo/info kit to give them and then I phoned Chas and asked him if he’d do me a favour and give me an intro to Bob and Sarah, the lease holders of the Windmill. I new that they also worked with second hand English books for charity, so Victor and I packed two boxes of second hand books from our flat and took them to give to Bob. We met up with Chas at Bob’s bar and Chas introduced us to Bob and Sarah. They were very interested in the idea of raising money to send street kids in Nepal to boarding school and in fact they went around their bar and started to collect donations straight away.

This evening I popped into our bar and June the lady who started the sponsored haircut off, was there with Tony Reddin, a famous entertainer/ agent who brings a lot of good acts to the Costa del Sol. Tony slapped 50€ in the collection and then phoned Maurice Boland, who wants to talk with me Monday morning to discuss me appearing on his radio show on REM.FM. The plan is I will talk about street children in Nepal and try to get people to bring donations into my bar or to the Windmill bar. If can find a person to sponsor a child right through school, that would be really marvelous.

Tuesday 21st August

Graham:

Hi, The sponsored haircut is growing slowly in momentum with 200€ already pledged. Victor and I spent hours working on the computer together on Sunday to produce the wicked poster and flyer pictured above. Both of these documents are now in our bar. We have the sponsored hair cut posters up in four prominent locations: two outside just above the bars one on the outside door from the kitchen to the terrace and one of course on the toilet door. We only have one toilet in the bar restaurant because we have less than 100m2 inside area. We have instead by law to provide a unisex/invalid toilet.

Inside the bar near where the ladies work we have two piles of flyers, one in Spanish and One in English. When folk ask for further info about my sponsored hair cut or about Deepana the 13-year-old girl we are sponsoring in Nepal, they get given an info flyer plus an envelope to place their contribution in.

I will keep you informed as to how the scheme works out.

Yesterday after a few days down with a dickey stomach, I tentatively ventured out on my bike. I was thus inspired as a new cycling shirt has had arrived in the post, a real professionals cycling jersey. It was very hard to turn the pedals round after a 4 or 5 day lay-off, especially as the temperature was up around 100F and the heat coming up from the road was just incredible. I made sure to only do a 5km flat course, which I managed OK. As soon as I got back, I headed straight for the pool and floated around in absolute heaven.

Puppies Given Away at Just two Weeks!

Thursday 17^th August

Olivia

Hi,

A family, who live just down the road from the bar, have a Yorkshire terrier bitch, which escaped form their villa whilst in season and got itself impregnated by another small dog, possibly a Shih tzu. When the Yorkshire terrier gave birth to 3 lovely little puppies the family who didn’t want the dogs, instead of having them put down gave them away at just two weeks old. The time of the dogs being given away and Luna’s 11^th birthday fell at the same time, so one day Luna walked into the bar with a little black bundle of fur snuggled up in the corner of a shoe box. Her parents had bought her some powdered baby milk and a feeding bottle and she sat down and to our amazement, this tiny little puppy was able to take milk from a bottle. In fact it had a voracious appetite and swallowed at least a third of the bottles contents at a single sitting.

Two or three weeks have now passed since Luna received the puppy for her birthday and it now has its eyes open, has grown noticeably and its still shinny jet black fur has become longer and more wavy.

Graham

Hi, I took a taxi to Algeciras this morning in order to collect our jeep from the diesel specialists. It’s about 45 min to an hour from our bar, so normally would be an expensive taxi journey. However we have a taxi rank right outside the bar, so we get quite a few drivers in as customers, so when we do need to travel a long distance, we get a nice discount on the fare. To get to Algeciras you set off along the N-340 coast road in the direction of Gibraltar and Cadiz, pass Estepona and before you reach Manilva take the E-15 motorway, which takes you to Algeciras. It costs 2,75€ each way in tolls.

The taxi driver whose name was Manolo gave me permission to take our little dog Sami in the cab (The Yorkie pictured above.), which was really nice of him. However he didn’t know where the garage was, so we ended up doing an extra 10km circuit of Algeciras and the journey was made even more dramatic when I had a bad attack of stomach cramp and had to ask the taxi to pull up quickly, so that I could go into the nearest bar and use their facilities.

We arrived at Algediesel and the jeep had been fixed and was ready and waiting outsisde. Apparently the diesel pump had been sucking air into the system through a loose joint.

As soon as I got back to our bar Olivia was waiting for the jeep to do a supermarket trip, so after a couple of days rest the jeep was put straight back to work.

Next post: graham talks with 18 year old Victor about his recent trip to Paris, his A/S results and his plans for the future (Career, university or Gap year?)

A Level Results Are Out Today!

Wednesday 16^th August

Olivia:

Hi,

I am so happy; I can’t describe how I feel inside. My son Victor after being away on his own in Paris for 16 days is coming home tonight. My sister will collect him from the airport and I am expecting them at the bar at about 10:30pm and as if that wasn’t enough in itself, he received his A/S level (Advanced Subsidiary) results as well today. I don’t think he will mind me telling you that he did very well, considering the difficulty of the subjects he has chosen, so without any further ado:

Maths: Paper-1 grade “B”, Paper-11 grade “B”, Paper-111 grade “B”.

Physics: Paper-1 grade “C”, Paper-11 grade “C”, Paper-111 grade “C”,

Chemistry: Paper-1 grade “C”, Paper-11 grade “E”, Paper-111 grade “C”,

(He also passed Business, but will not be continuing it.)

So all in all, that means he has passed the first year in the three main “A/S” levels he needs to go to university next year. He just has the one re-sit to do in Chemistry. Both Graham and I are very proud of him.

Graham:

Hi,

I have made a few phone calls to people with experience of both the A/S,A2 system and of university entrance procedures and they have all indicated that Victor’s grades are very respectable, when one considers that he is doing 3 particularly tough subjects, so with just the 1 re-sit he is looking in great shape for his second year leading to A2.

The sick jeep: I parked it on a hill last night and managed to get it started at 7am this morning. Chas had very kindly offered to accompany me to “Algediesel” in Algeciras. He met me outside our bar dead on time. We arrived there in good time, explained to the chief mechanic that the car was refusing to start etc and then headed off to get some breakfast. We stopped at a motorway service station which had a bar and had breakfasts alongside crowds of Moroccains who were travelling in heavily loaded vehicles, going back to Morocco for a month to be with their families. Most of these people work in factories in northern Europe and only see their extended families once a year. Their life is a far cry from the luxurious one that we lead.

Through our bar we help street children in Nepal.

Tuesday 14^th August

Graham:

Hi, I had hoped in a way that May’s suggestion of me being the subject of a sponsored haircut would fade with the passage of time, but no way May was at the bar today with Margot to form a reception party, when I returned from my daily cycle rise to Benahavis. May has enlisted the services of Pepe also a customer in the bar. Pepe has his own hair and beauty salon in the Diana centre and is a very fine hairdresser.

The idea of course is that I have my shoulder length Bohemian styled hair cut to a short and respectable length. I will definitely miss my long hair, but if it raises a few hundred Euros towards the target amount we hope to raise in order to help street children in Nepal, then what’s a bit of hair when you look at it in that light?

Through our bar we help street children in Nepal to be fed, clothed, housed and educated. The Founder of the British registered charity “The Buddha Memorial Children’s Home Trust” Layla Patterson lives in Andalucia and recently went to Nepal and made a film of the general plight of the street kids of Kathmandu and the work that is being done to help them. This film has proved itself very useful when raising funds to help these poor children.

Anybody reading our Graham’s bar blog who would like to either sponsor a street child in Nepal or simply make a donation, is invited to contact me by email for more information:

Graham.bullock2@gmail.com

The registered charity number is: 1115273.

We have a lot of clubs and schools who either sponsor children or make donations.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The jeep is sick and getting sicker by the day. It is booked to go into the garage tomorrow. I know in the UK that 4 by4’s are increasingly becoming considered, as environmentally unfriendly, most of them seem to have massive gas guzzling engines kicking out around 200-300 bhp and are only used on normal roads. We have a Mitsubishi with a much smaller 100 bhp engine. Here in Andalucia we quite often climb up unmade mountain roads, cross-rivers and drive on sand. Take all that into consideration and add to that that to run a bar you need at least a medium sized van, 100 bhp, then I feel that we are actually driving the vehicle that we need. I do however share the opinion that a lot of the world’s resources are wasted when a great big 4 by 4 is produced to do the school run and little else.

Dealing with a Heatwave and Really Missing my Son.

Monday 13^th August

Olivia:

Hi; the weather this weekend has been incredibly hot, most of the time during the day it’s been around 40-42oC (96-100oF). Now if you’re lying under a sunshade beside a pool, that is beautiful, but when it comes to working in a bar or restaurant, it’s not so convenient. Fortunately we only get a few days like this a year when the wind blows up to the Costa del Sol from Northern Africa. As we don’t open our bar on Sundays I only had to deal with the exceptional heat of Saturday.

We checked what was needed in the bar at 9am and then went to San Pedro early to buy stock, before it started to get hot. We have a good air-con system in the jeep, so it’s always comfortable even when it gets up to 100oF+ outside and when we arrived at the bar, we put on the air-con in the lounge end of the bar. The kitchen has windows to the north and to the west, which open upwards, so it’s pretty well ventilated. We only switch on all the cooking equipment between 1pm-4pm and then between 7:30pm-11pm this way we have a nice cool environment between 4pm and 7:30pm. The staff and myself eat our lunch at 4pm in the air-conned lounge area and our evening meal late at about 11:30pm.

Sunday was also very hot, so I went with Graham to spend the whole day on the beach directly opposite our bar, which is called Isdabe. The warm wind blew off the sea all day and the water was beautifully warm. Isdabe beach has two hotels, which let onto it, but there is plenty of isolated beach between the two hotels for those who want to pass a more peaceful day. The two hotels are the Atalaya Park which has a bar and restaurant open to the public, the other hotel is the Marriott, which also has a bar and restaurant available and then finally at the west end of the beach, there is a “chiringito” or beach bar. All three facilities have beach beds and provide waiter service, so it’s not difficult to enjoy yourself.

The weekend then was great, but I am really missing Victor. Graham had a long chat with Victor on Saturday and Victor told him that he was really enjoying being in Paris and that Graham’s fiend Saman was doing a good job of looking after him and taking him out to eat at specialist restaurants and try out fine wines at his favourite bars. All this made me feel so happy for Victor as he is having such a great experience in Paris, but as we are such a close family and have always done almost every thing together, I am finding it really hard to be without him. I am looking forward to him coming home on Thursday evening; full of stories of what he’s done and descriptions of places he’s visited. I am counting the days

Shave Off my Locks to Help Street Children in Nepal?

Friday 10^th August

Olivia:

Hi,

Victor called me at the bar yesterday from Paris and we had a quick chat. He’s happy there! He goes out every day exploring new places, well actually they are usually very old places, but you know what I mean. I was busy in the bar, in the middle of a pizza order when he called, so I had to pass the order over to Eli, so I could have a proper chat with my son. I miss him so much, although I have to recognise that I moan at him a lot when he’s here, I must make a mental note to moan less, anyway after he called I was so much more relaxed than I had been and so happy.

We had a really difficult lady to deal with in the bar last night. We were really busy and I misread her order, she was sitting with a man and a child and they had ordered three pizzas, but under pressure I had miss read the order and made just two. The lady complained to the waitress who came and told me about the mistake. The next thing I hear is the lady really throwing a wobbler, she was shouting at Eli loud enough for the whole bar to hear. Comments like. “You make me wait on purpose because you don’t like me.” And you are a racist because I’ South American and no’ Spanish.” Well there is a simple rule in any retailing business, that says that no employee has to accept personal abuse. I tell my girls to accept the first comment, but reply by saying.” Sir/Madam you are being personal and I must warn you that if you do not control your comments, you will be asked to pay your bill and leave.” That is exactly what Eli told her and in fact she did pay the bill and leave saying that she would not be coming back. I really hope that is true. As soon as she left, I went to the far end of the bar grabbed a bottle of champagne, stuck Sophie Ellis-Bextor on at full whack and invited all the girls to have a glass of Champers and we all had a good laugh about the silliness of the lady. Often customers who throw a wobbler in the bar come back a few days later and apologize asking if they will still be allowed to patronize the bar.

Graham:

Hi,

The cycling is improving and I have fewer problems with my back because of it. Yesterday I went out on my old GT Avalanche (No suspension and 15 years old.), after fitting special bar ends and pumping up the deflated tyres, also I spent about an hour adjusting the Derailleur gears. The bike has 24 gears, so perfect adjustment is absolutely necessary. The other bike a, full suspension Marin Mount Vision, which cost 1,500 GBP I find less enjoyable to ride on the road than the old rigid GT. Today I made a big decision took the Marin to the “Trastero” storeroom.

I am not doing the category three climb to Benahavis at the moment, I prefer the easier first stretch of the climb, which is a gentle rise. The beginning of the climb starts with a roundabout, just off the N-340 coast road. I ride about three km to the second roundabout and then come back and do another loop. When I return to the bar, I have a marvelous “Café Con Leche” and then go and throw myself in the pool to gradually soak away all the pain from the cycling.

As you know the “Friend’s of Graham’s Pizzeria Bar”, collect money to keep a 13-year-old girl in boarding school in Nepal. We pay for her to live and study in the Buddha Memorial Children’s Home. A very nice customer called May as part of the fund raiser has suggested that she could perhaps get a group of her friends together to sponsor me to cut off my shoulder length hair. The proceeds would go to Deepana in Nepal.

I am thinking about the proposition seriously.

"Les Jardins de Versialles"

Thursday 9th August

Graham:

Hi,

Victor’s having a great time exploring Paris; Just like ET he doesn’t bother to phone home much, but we’ve had sufficient contact with him to know at least the outline of what he’s been up to. Apart from getting to know loads of lovely little bars and tucked away restaurants He has been to “Notre Dame”, “le Tour de Eiffel”, Le Place du Concorde”, “Les Jardins de Tuileries” etc. Tuesday night he went to “le Quartier Latin” to “hang” with crowds of students. He had a great time, met students from every corner of the world, got a real chance to practise his French and still somehow made it home after checking out a few bars, to his apartment in Curbevoire.

Yesterday he went with my friend Saman to visit the Louver museum. It’s a massive place and would take days to see, so they had to pick a certain area and do a sort of micro visit.

Today he is going to take the train some 20km to Versailles, where I lived when I was working for Citroen, in their design dept. His plan is to visit the gardens of the “Le Chateau de Versailles”, perhaps have a bit of a picnic there and a sleep beneath the shade of a tree and then at about 8pm head for the market square, which is the epicentre of Versailles. There are many restaurants and bars with terraces in the square and many of them are inexpensive, as Versailles is a student town. (It has three lycees (6^th form colleges.)).

I used to live at 7 rue de la Poivererie, Victor is going to install himself in a bar restaurant very near to there and have a few nice cold beers, whilst he waits for Sanam who is planning to met him there. They are going to have diner together and enjoy the atmosphere. It real is most wonderful to have a nice meal in an ancient cobbled market place and be entertained by musicians who pass amongst the tables playing “”La Vie en Rose” and other great songs from the marvellous “ Musique François catalogue.

Tomorrow he plans to go to “”Montematre” which is the student/artist quarter and has more bars than shops, where he plans just to chill and meet other students.

How I wish I were 18 again!

I've been mislead about Victor's trip to Paris.

Wednesday 8th August

Olivia:

Hi,

I am not a happy puppy! Information has been purposefully withheld from me by Victor and Graham. I distinctly remember us all sitting together in the bar when they told me that they’d booked Victor on a holiday to Paris for two weeks. He was to be leaving on 31st July and returning on the 13th August. Today Graham casually tells me that Victor’s not coming home until the 16th. I am really missing him and now I have to wait longer before I will see him. I do not feel good about this. I feel a little bit angry because I have been mislead and I feel sad and disappointed because now I’ll have to wait another 3 days before I see my son again.

When you’ve had a bar on the Costa del Sol for a while, you know that the first two weeks of August are just completely loony. All the hire cars are out, there are traffic jams all over the place, there’s nowhere to park and the supermarkets are just out of control, trying to cope with 5 times their normal flow of customers. What do you do? well after 20 years of fighting my way through August madness, I am now walking on the wild side. I just adopt a completely chilled out attitude to the high density of people, the non-existence of supermarket trolleys etc. I once heard a Doctor talking about depression and here’s what he said. “I always tell my patients that an attack of depression has a beginning a middle and an end and one must simple tranquillise oneself accepting that one must pass through all these stages and then in a flash, the world will suddenly appear beautiful again.” What a very wise man. So what do I do about August? Well I go to my bar every day and act just like I would during any other month of the year. I remain relaxed. I calm my bar staff down and if people have to wait a long tome for their food, well that’s just how life is during August and if one can accept that simple fact instead of fighting against it, it is possible to stay both calm and happy. Oh! And counting great piles of notes flowing into the till also has a Zen like tranquillising effect on one’s spirit.

Victor in Paris Alone, Fit of Panic and Depression.

Monday 6th August

Olivia:

Hi,

Victor my only child as you already know is away in Paris for TWO weeks on his OWN! Thursday I was panicking all day. I’m just simply not used to being separated from him. Friday morning I had breakfast with Graham in a bar in Cancelada, just 1km west of our own bar/restaurant and I have to admit I was horrible company. I told Graham that the whole idea of sending Victor to Paris on his own was a big mistake and that I thought he would be very lonely and feel very lost and of course I made sure to BLAME Graham for all this. Most of this negativity came from my video chat with Victor the night before and from the act that I am a woman and like most women, I am in the short term totally ruled y my emotions. Graham explained in a typically male rational way, that I had talked to Victor at midnight and that Saman had had to wake him up from a deep sleep to come to the computer and talk with me. Of course he seemed dull, distant and lacking in any semblance of excitement about his Parisian sojourn.

Last night Graham talked to him, this time by old-fashioned telephone. Victor told him that the day he’d talked with me, he had walked miles and miles al over Pairs and eventually got lost and then walked miles and miles again to get to the right place to get a bus to Courbevoire, consequently by the time he’d arrived back at his accommodation, he was dead on his feet. He had a quick meal and then went to bed with aches and pains in every part of his body, fallen into the deepest of sleeps and then he’d been woken up and dragged to the Skype system to talk to me, of course he sounded negative and down. We mothers with the best intentions in the world and wanting only to help and protect our children can at times be the most selfish and stupid breed on the planet.

Last night when I got home graham downloaded the product of his chat with Victor a few hours earlier. He’d had a great day out in Paris and was ecstatically happy with his holiday on his OWN.

What a difference a day makes. I feel a complete fool, all that negativity, giving Graham a hard time, feeling depressed for a day, all pointlessly. I wonder what it would be like to change places with Graham and be a man for a while, you know see everything rationally and sensibly. Except when it comes to buying a car for the family. A while ago he wanted to buy an Audi TT, great for doing a big shop and taking Victor and his friends to the Salsa bar. Not!

Spain for a Great Quality of Life! www.26intgheshade.com

Panic, panic, panic, Victor's going to Paris.

Wednesday 1^st August

Olivia:

Hi,

Oh my god! I have just arrived in my bar and Panic, panic and more panic. Months ago I agreed to Graham’s suggestion that we sent Victor to Paris for two weeks in August, to help him learn the language and to allow him to gain some life experience. Now I can only see everything black all the time I have visions of terrible things happening to him. All my friends in the bar say that I am just being hysterical and need to settle down.

At times it’s a terrible dilemma being a mother. I have just the one child after loosing a second, a little girl who we lost at just 12 weeks. I love my son so much and want him near me all the time, but deep down I know and Graham also keeps telling me that Victor needs to learn to become more independent. It is all absolutely true, Victor has done really well academically, but that will count for nothing unless he can build up some self-confidence, he’s done well helping out in the bar but, what better way to do that than go out on his OWN and get some life experience. He is going to learn to drive this summer, so that will give him a big lift and tonight he is flying on his own to Paris. Oh! My god I am starting to panic again. There are tons of horrible criminals who head for Paris in August, just to rip off, rob and con unsuspecting young people, but I must shut all that out of my mind and do as Graham is always saying, think only of the positive. “There is no point in looking for and dwelling on the negative.” That’s what Graham says.

So he flies directly to Paris Charles de Gaulle from Malaga and will be met by Saman at about 00:30h. Saman will then drive him to his apartment in Courbevoire. Saman is a good friend of Graham. He is a retired Maths teacher and although he is pretty busy, he will take Vincent around on his first day, show him the main bus and metro connexions and he may even spend a little time in the evenings, teaching Victors some 1^st year university level Maths.

I know that Victor will have a fantastic time in Paris, there’s so much to do and so much to see and more than anything, I hope that he meets a few new friends of his own age and you no what; I have to be in my bar here, As it’s my busiest time of year, but I wish I was going to Paris, I went there a few times when Graham was working for Citroen and I really. Really loved it!