Casa Pilar Alto, Illora Newsletter 1st April 2007

Illora Weekly News
Dateline 01.04.07

First Bedroom Unveiled !! Now Booking Online !!

"Well, I suppose it's okay if you want the distressed look". It took me a moment to register that Dave, our near neighbour, some time painter and part time Santa Claus, was talking about the walls and not the worry on my face. "Distressed" turns out to be the jargon for that effect Cathy had been seeking where the paint you put on the walls 3 minutes ago looks as though it has been there for 3 centuries, faded in parts. In honesty, I had achieved this through rushing the job rather than by any skill in painting.

Friday evening brought a huge change - the end of squatting in our own home. We had spent the week painting, and buying light fittings and other items to fit out the first of our bedrooms to be finished. The bed and Andalucian rustic furniture arrived around 8.00p.m. accompanied by "muy, muy bonita" and elaborate hand kiss gestures to which we have become accustomed. Friday night was our first night in a proper double bed, with our own en suite bathroom since we arrived a little more than a month ago. Photographs of what our future guests can expect from their rooms at Casa Pilar Alto, Illora now sit on our web site at last - www.casaillora.com !

On the same day, our kitchen cum lounge area was also largely finished, raising the prospect of being able to eat cooked food without having to go to a restaurant. The kitchen cum lounge is built in the first of our "stables" rooms - the future bedrooms that sit high on the terraces with the views shown on our website. A lovely sight that more than compensates for the much reduced private space from our last house.

Friday had also, thanks to my very good friends at Intuitive, brought secure online booking to www.casaillora.com - go to the site and you can book your stay on line right now! This enables me to start promoting the site far more actively and, helped by the new bedroom photographs and the fresh Illora photographs still to come, hold out much better hopes for reservations from our opening in mid-May. In this, I have the unquestioning help of Javier, our neighbour upstairs and a real whiz with Photoshop. Javier and his wife Cecilia, son Fransisco Javier and daughter Maria Cecilia have been very good friends to us in many ways since we arrived, humouring even my pathetic attempts at speaking Spanish.

I am still challenged by having to use internet "cafes" but Telefonica have promised me ADSL this week - you will know from earlier editions that this may mean next month or in a couple of hours of now, but it is a good sign. The end of that stage of work that entails making unbelievable levels of dust is in sight, so I will be able to get the PC out of its box, should Telefonica live up to their promise.

Do you know that invisibility feeling when you are out with your wife, girlfriend, partner - and I am probably speaking to the male readers here ? That time when you are a party to a conversation and yet it's almost as if you are not there ? Sometimes it's a very good thing, a way out. I experience it here unerringly when Cathy is with me. "Hola Cathy !" rings out when we enter the bank together and my presence is not acknowledged. Yet if I go alone, I am everyone's best friend. Conversely, on Friday evening, I went to the furniture store to pay for the bed about to be delivered. "Is Catherine in the house ?" I confirmed and was shooed back home - getting the cash was far less important than getting it from Catherine. This evening, we stood chatting to No-no - previously mentioned, owner of a store just down the road selling everything from saucepans to necklaces and guns. No-no stood almost nose to nose with Catherine and invited us both to drinks tomorrow as though I were some absent friend.

On Saturday evening we set out to shop for much of the week ahead, as Semana Santa (Holy Week) is upon us. It is a mistake we have made every Saturday since we have been here. I think our minds, in this respect, are still set in our London ways - the mindset that there is always a supermarket open. Here, it is simply not true. Most close on Saturday around 2pm for the remainder of the weekend. After a tour of town we found the main local panaderia (bakery) open - like most shops here, it is much less specialised than the title suggests, so we did at least manage to stock up for the weekend.

We spent last Semana Santa in Granada - definitely a sight to see and one that will make any aetheist admire the devout beliefs expressed. We are looking forward to this week of parades through the streets of Illora - a very similar process to that in Granada but on a smaller scale, of course. Sunday and the week following, is a time for fiestas locally that attract good local and tourist followings.

Casa Pilar Alto, Illora, meanwhile, is taking shape in many other respects. The suspended ceiling across the café is almost complete but now delayed whilst the electrician completes the re-wiring by the end of this week and the plumber punches holes in the remaining areas - such as the room we occupied up until 2 days ago - to run drainage and water to bathrooms that did not exist before. We keep occupied with such things as stripping the paint off the beams in the roof of our kitchen cum lounge so that we can stain them to some natural wood colour. Distressed ? Not at all - exciting times for us both !

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Hasta luego !

Matthew and Cathy Brooks

Casa Pilar Alto
4,6 Cuesta Pilar Alto
18260 Illora
Granada
Spain

Email: stay@casaillora.com

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