La Chanca Life: Revival

Well it’s been a while!

I’ve been puzzling over why I haven’t posted in such a long time, when people have regularly urged me to, and now I think I have the answer.

Familiarity.

You know when something is an adventure, all new and exciting, and more than a little nerve wracking, then gradually you get used to it until you hardly see it for what it is anymore. It’s just life – not ‘La Chanca Life’.

However I’m pleased to inform you that La Chanca Life does still exist, and it’s even more colourful these days, since Jeanne had the house painted to reflect the amazing community project she runs from it.

So yes, back to the subject of familiarity. It’s been five years now since I set out on my midlife adventure (crisis?), and on Monday I will be completing 54 years of my life, as the Spanish would put it, so almost certainly past the mid point! 

Every week I spend half the week in La Chanca. I walk to my office down the narrow streets, with the view of the port and the castle, through the gypsy market and out into the Parque, with its ancient trees and maritime buildings. 

It’s my way of life, and I am often guilty of taking it for granted. Either that or not taking it in at all, with my head full of the problems I need to solve for clients, the frustrations of the administrative systems, and generally the highs and lows of La Working Life.

So my blog fell by the wayside, as my La Chanca Life changed from new to normal.

However, normal does not have to mean dull, and there have been plenty of goings on to report.

Street life is never boring – only a couple of weeks ago my family were visiting, and walking back from the castle we suddenly saw a pig running around, until a young lad cornered it and put it back in its makeshift pen on the corner of the street. My young nephews thought it was very funny, but as I’m writing this I’m thinking maybe you had to be there!

Every week our house is filled with children for Jeanne’s classes. She’s had a great team of volunteers teaching art, jewellery and even a university environmental law professor from Madrid taking the boys in hand with classes on various cultural topics.

In return the Moroccan mothers bring us cakes and homemade honey sweets, and we no longer appear to be a novelty on the street. Familiarity once again.

I can’t take any credit for this integration, because as I have so much work these days, I spend all my time in the office! That’s a different kind of integration, in the Spanish legal system.

The reward for a hard day’s work – office or kids – is an evening spent in one of Almeria’s many bars and restaurants, sitting at a pavement table sipping a great Rioja or enjoying a fish tapa next to the port. And there are always new places to be discovered – a great little wine bar off Puerta Purchena, and a local tavern tucked away behind the cathedral being two of my recent finds.

Much as I enjoy my time in the city, it turns out however that I’m still a split personality when it comes to a place to live.

We finally sold our big family house in the country a year ago, which was a very stressful event but the right thing after all these years.

Before it happened I had all sorts of ideas about what I might do, live in Almeria full time, get an investment flat somewhere, live by the sea….as it turns out, I am now happily dividing my time once again between city and countryside, still up a mountain, just a different one outside Bédar rather than Sorbas!

Sometimes it turns out that the things we think we want to change are not what need changing at all.

I love the contrast between my life in La Chanca, on the margins in every respect but a stones throw away from city life, and my life in the country, able to walk straight out with my dog into the middle of nowhere, with the mountains framing the vast sky.

So at the end of the day, although La Chanca Life is now La Normal Life (or at least part of it) there are plenty of reasons not to take it for granted, and plenty of adventures still to be had.

From time to time I will bring you a few glimpses into that life – and I’ll try to make them a bit more interesting than the pig anecdote!