Your Laird’s back!

Yes, your Laird is back.  Corinne can be a very persuasive lady and appealed to my conscience – evidently yes I do have one!  Additionally, a number of regular visitors to our barren rock have accosted me in any one of my various haunts and said how much they missed reading about the DD’s of E&F, the Au Pairs, Joey’s diet and why I’m not on George Bush’s Christmas card list!

I’ll try hard to update on a monthly basis – but we’ve all heard that one before!  To be perfectly honest I have missed expounding my varied political opinions to a much wider audience – most people I talk to seem to switch off and drift away!  It’s about 13 months since I last tapped the keyboard for this mighty organ – so a general update might be in order.

First of all, for the benefit of any new readers, who the hell am I?  Born in Coronation year, I spent 14 years growing up in London before returning to my native Scotland to finish my education.  I believe I was living in Amsterdam for a considerable time round about 1971/2 and then entered the real world by way of two years as Organising Secretary of the Scottish Anti-Vivisection Society based in Glasgow.

This was followed by fighting fires in Edinburgh for 26 years before moving here six years ago, where I now help people to make themselves better with an amazing rebalancing therapy.  During this time I have been blessed with 4 wonderful children Vikki, Josi, Kat(ie) and Jack and 3 delightful granddaughters (so far) Eilidh (5) and Mairi (3) are Vikki’s girls while  the youngest, Teegan, is Kat’s daughter and will be one in December.  Now I live with my French mademoiselle the lovely Farida, ex-partner of my best mate Eric, and their kids – the Demon Daughters aka Melody (9) and Shana (8).  I’ve been a serial dad for over 31 years!

What’s been happening on the rock in all this time?  Like anywhere, there have been quite a few changes and quite a few things remaining exactly the same.  One of the most obvious changes has been the closing of one of my daytime watering-holes - The Waterside, Barry and Sarah are now running 5^th Avenue – a nice restaurant and bar just off the main street.  Hoplaco itself has changed beyond recognition with La Sirena’s refurbishment and expansion, by way of stepped terraces, almost to the beach itself.  Your Laird first met Gustavo, the proprietor, over ten years ago while on holiday and he spoke then of his dream to do exactly what he has now achieved.

Two of the rock’s most popular tourist magazines have changed hands this year.  Mate Maitland, together with the Mansion’s very good friends John & Lynn (recently relocated here after years of scaring caravan owners in remote west Wales), have taken over Whereabouts from John & Paul, while Dud has replaced Simon as The Grapevine’s man in the hot seat.  Talking hot, Radio Hot FM is now more closely associated with this mighty organ due to its recent acquisition by Corinne, Al and Val.  Good luck, everyone, with your new ventures.

Life in Imagine continues as usual, with Mr Punch (Eric) keeping his audiences hugely entertained with his enormous repertoire, variously assisted by such guests as Ronnie (Mondays), José Luis (Tuesdays), Chris (Fridays), Fernando (Saturdays) and my own lovely Farida (Sundays).  The Goons are taking a lengthy holiday away from the baying fans, disguised as Albanian goat-herders – although Goonish humour still erupts frequently to and from the stage.  The latest love of Eric’s life, Claudia, has recently left her home in Germany to move in with him – once again his wings will be somewhat clipped!

Joey is still packing them in at Rock Island (Tuesdays) and Finnegan’s (Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays).  He and long-suffering girlfriend, Lori, are planning on tying the knot sometime soon.  Fari and I had a great time recently, acting as their interpreters for their separate interviews at the Ayuntamiento’s Registry Office.  They’re still squatting in the crowded cattery they call home.

Mansioning Joey’s menagerie reminds me that occupancy of the Mansion has increased 50% since last I wrote.  In December we started taking care of Mollie – the mad mutt of Patrick and Sweep.  It was to be a temporary arrangement to start with, but all too soon Fari and the girls had fallen in love with her . . .  Suffice it to say, we now have a dog.  Then about six weeks ago, a very tiny, injured kitten took refuge under the sofa on our terrace.  Although only now about ten weeks, she’s already been called Nicola (she’s missing part of her tail, cola is Spanish for tail, so ‘Ni cola’) and Carmen before Shana has finally settled on Emma.

Ex-Au Pair news.  Pia, the lovely Swedish ex-Au Pair to the Mansion, has finally married her dashing Chilean beau Eduardo.  Your Laird was privileged to be one of the testigos (witnesses) and it was an occasion to dig out the kilt.  Pia looked absolutely fantastic on her special day, as this accompanying photo shows.  Andie, the lovely Czech ex-Au Pair to the Mansion has abandoned the rock for Barcelona – she felt it was time to learn proper Spanish instead of the mumbled, mangled form that is prevalent here.  Her brother, Lucas, is still with us and still working in Gibson’s Restaurant up the road from Rock Island.

The Mansion is still offline – we’re waiting for Maitland’s long-promised WiFi antenna to be installed atop the Whereabouts building – meantime my e-mail addresses have almost certainly lapsed and I’ll need to open new accounts when we do finally get reconnected with the worldwide web!  In the meantime, e-mails sent via bruce@fuertenews.com will reach me sooner or later via Corinne.

Same old nonsense going on in the world as usual, hundreds are being killed every week in Iraq – although the British news media have effectively stopped reporting it.  Bliar’s finally given way to the man who should have been PM in 1997.  His reward for blindly supporting Bush in his illegal acts of terrorism against Iraq and Afghanistan – to be appointed Peace Envoy to the Middle East by his neo-conservative puppet-masters.  Does anyone seriously think that any Arabs are going to have any respect for Bush’s puppy?

The terrible British summer brought a few more tourists this year, but local businesses suffered their worst summer takings ever.  The reason for this, of course, the growing numbers of ‘all-inclusive’ tourist beds.  It isn’t rocket science to see how damaging this type of holiday is to our economy – particularly when so many of these resorts are owned by large Spanish mainland companies – the monies paid never even get to the island.  We need to mount a major publicity campaign throughout Europe to educate holiday-makers about the detrimental effects that their holiday booking decision can have on local economies.

Well, that’s probably enough for this month – the DD’s (demon daughters Melody and Shana – for new readers) will be wanting to retake control of the computer soon, so my time is necessarily limited.  In next month’s exciting new Mansion, Ming Campbell – did he jump or was he pushed?  Barfly Mel – life on the wrong side of the bar?  The lovely Farida – how many more bloody shelves does she think the walls will hold?  All this and much, much more – if I do it!

I used to ask for snippets of gossip, local news, forthcoming events etc. but I never, ever received one.  In light of that, the Keep A Laird A Lert paragraph will be dropped from future Mansions, although my phone number is still (0034) 649 214 773