Once we had moved to live in Switzerland and Spain, we hoped to continue dancing salsa, however we were shocked and could not believe how extremely late at night any dancing begins in both countries. Before midnight, not much happens, and it can be nearer two in the morning when the dancing really becomes popular. Much too late for us.

For a while we found some Spanish classes that began much earlier, so we went quite a few times, but our Spanish was not good enough and we kept getting things wrong. Before dancing as couples there was usually a warm-up, rather like line dancing, to learn new steps, and now and then a spin turn was involved, but not always a complete spin turn, sometimes it was only a half turn. So many times, Trudy and I found ourselves looking at everyone else, as they surprised us by only doing a half turn!

Later, we joined a class in Estepona that was also amusing, and we were made so welcome, (we were the oldest and the only non-Spanish there) and having been a few times, we were amazed at how friendly they were towards us, even with our language problems.


Jive

We found a jive dancing group in Spain, and they held more frequent classes as well as dancing dinner party events, so we joined them as they started so much earlier.

It was much easier than salsa, but not as exciting! However, we liked the organisers Colin and Natalie, and we did have some fun times with them. Sadly, Covid-19, plus a few minor ailments, due to the aging process, have put a stop to our dancing.


Improving Our Apartment

Having spent much more time at La Alcazaba than usual, because of Covid-19, we have managed to make a number of improvements this year. We changed our decor in the lounge with; fresh painted walls and ceiling, new curtains, all our chairs were upholstered with new fabrics, and we have new cushions for our settees. We also changed our guest bedroom with; new bedspreads, curtains, the antique armchair was re-upholstered, and we had a new toilet installed in the bathroom. We decided to keep some of the original patterns in our guest bedroom, so to find new fabrics and designs that would work well was quite difficult, but we are now happy with the choices we made.

I painted and repaired the balcony walls, I also spent a lot of time grouting our marble floors, as quite a few areas had lost the original grout, so water could seep down under the marble, every week when our cleaning lady mopped all the floors often with quite a lot of water!

I also managed to get the plumber, who fixed our new toilet, to change the outflow from our trough on our balcony. The problem had been that whenever we watered the plants, dirty brown water would flow onto our marble floor and form a puddle that left a nasty brown stain on our grey marble floor. The outflow was always very dirty looking too! About two meters away there was an internal drain for all the flats above us and I suggested that it would be much better, if within our balcony walls, a pipe could be connected from the trough to that drain. This was done and has proved to be such a great improvement.

Lastly, I purchased a large flat pack cupboard, to put in our garage space, this I assembled on my own which I considered to be quite an achievement, as I never imagined how many ridiculously small items would be involved, it turned out to be complicated as the instructions, I eventually realised were not even correct! Once completed and fixed, it has been worth doing and provides us with useful storage space for tools, paint and various odd items not easily stored in our flat.