Several times a day we remind ourselves: “This is where we live.” This place still feels like a holiday on which we carted all our stuff and have had to do some work. We still need to remind ourselves that we do not have to go home; we are home. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The familiarity of the objects around us is the main cause and yesterday was a typical example.

I spend most of my working day staring at the same computer.
I see little in my field of view that suggests I am anywhere special other than at my desk.
I need to drop an envelope in the postbox, just across the road.
Walking through the large entrance hall to the front door does not trigger anything.
Walking across the gravel drive feels unfamiliar.
But it is not until I reach the road that I register the quiet and that we now live in a peaceful, rural village.

It catches me out every time.

If you’re already sick of me gushing about living here, you’re just going to have to suck it up – there’s much more to come. But don’t worry, I suspect I’ll be cussing once the peak holiday season kicks in and we’re choked with temporary neighbours!

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I completely confused the guy at a local car repair and MOT garage this morning by telephoning to ask where they are located (there was a 10 mile conflict between two online sources). When I finally realised I should get to the point and book my MOT, the conversation switched to a more comfortable one, but also a great deal slower: ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

ME: “I’d like to book an MOT for my car”
GARAGE: “MOT? <long pause> When do you want that done, then?”
ME: “Sometime next week would be ideal.”
GARAGE: (exhale, likely at the urgent need to book within a few days, not weeks) “How about… <very long pause> next Wednesday?”
ME: “That will be fine.”
We exchange details of car and contact info.
GARAGE: “Will you leave the car with us?”
ME: (slightly puzzled as surely they need the car to MOT it) “Yes, no problem.”
GARAGE:  ”We can drop you back if you need it.”
ME: “It’s only 3 miles, good excuse to get the bicycle out.”
GARAGE:  ”Yes, lovely if the weather holds.” (in a bemused tone I can only assume was exasperation at the mention of those newfangled bicycle contraptions).

Cheerful, helpful

Such an unfamiliar experience to have people, strangers at that, engage you in cheerful, friendly conversation in shops. People wait rather than barge past in shop aisles. I don’t think I’ve heard a car horn used in frustration, anger, or anything other than followed by smiles and waving at someone the driver recognised nearby.

To a jaded South-Easterner, accustomed to the frenzied, tensioned lifestyle of the home counties, it comes as something of a puzzle to be greeted by several friendly welcomes and smiles from staff when entering a great little café in Launceston yesterday.

I hope I never get accustomed to this environment so I can always appreciate it.

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Petrol was my first concern. Even in our preliminary visits, we hunted out the nearest petrol station. Not using the car often, sometimes not for a week or two, I landed in the routine of not filling up unless absolutely necessary. After all, 24 hour petrol stations were no more than a mile or two away from home. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Here, the nearest 24 hour supply is 20 minutes’ drive away. Though the nearest physical petrol station is around three or four miles, I have yet to find any indication as to which brand of petrol it stocks!

Rural Rule #1: If the petrol tank falls below half-full, fill up!

The car is not the only fuel we must pay attention to here. With no gas supply in this area, we rely on Kerosene from our big, friendly, green storage tank, for heating fuel. If we allow it to run dry, we not only get rather cold, but, apparently, we ruin the entire heating system.

Researching into Kerosene supply proved more confusing than searching for car insurance. No-one wants to commit to a price estimate online. After quite some searching, I found somewhere that was prepared to quote just under 50 pence per litre, based on buying 500 litres. Now then, hands up who knows how much our big, friendly, green Kerosene tank holds? (I have no idea.)

Rural Rule #2: Keep a close eye on the fuel tank level monitor.

Cash. Remember that stuff? The general urban routine is to use plastic of one form or another and grab some cash only as required. You retrieve just enough cash for a purpose, after which you return to the plastic. But when your nearest cash machine is 20 minutes away by car and there is, shall we say, lower saturation of plastic acceptance, you are forced to dust off those forgotten cash-level monitoring skills.

Rural Rule #3: Maintain more cash in wallet than receipts.

These, of course, are minor disadvantages and nothing a little attitude adjustment will not cure. Nevertheless, I have an emergency petrol canister on my shopping list for the weekend…

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I remember many years ago toying with the notion of moving to a more rural location; Exmoor in that case. Having experienced a rural childhood, it seemed natural to live in such an environment. Now, we have actually done it: we live in Cornwall. To be precise, the spectacular North coast of Cornwall. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

This is an area in which I have vacationed several times. An area rich in character, both natural and man-made. A mecca for surfers and walkers, and, it seems now, cyclists. It’s a place many can only conceive of as a holiday destination. Yet, here we now live, within sight of the sea, and within walking distance of the shore and the spectacular South West Coastal footpath. Little more than fields and sheep out the back, and an infrequently travelled road out the front.

It feels strange living in this new environment but with the familiar chattels of the previous ones. Familiar objects are in new locations. It will take me months to re-learn where everything lives in the kitchen.

We talk a lot about how things feel here, but that is the key to this move. The timing feels right, the location feels right, the house feels right. But there are equally significant practical elements to this move. More space, better organised space, more efficient space; in surroundings that both relax and inspire.

Are we just lucky?

Here’s how I see it: we have decided to live our lives in a particular way that has offered the opportunity to do this. Our jobs are geographically independent – the most important factor in our case – and we are comfortable being more isolated. We no longer need to be near London, and we have certainly become worn down by the frenzied lifestyle of near-London living. Simply, we want a better quality of life.

Moving here comes as a result of the recent life decisions we have made and, most critically, the drive to kick complacency firmly in the rear and make the move. In a few weeks the stress and disruption of the move itself will be long forgotten and we can settle in to complaining about the noise of the seagulls.

Back to the old routine

Today, it is back to work after just over a week off making the move happen. Back to emails and discussions, to bug reports, technical solutions, and organising the same old stuff. Nothing will have changed there, yet it will all take place in these new surroundings. We will just have to see what the week brings.

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This was to be a hernia repair. Possibly the result of lugging a humongous 32-inch Sony CRT television set up two flights of stairs a couple of years ago (as at least two people who will read this will no doubt remember). On the other hand, who knows? ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

The hernia is nothing serious, spotted early, and highly treatable. From the surgeon’s perspective, entirely routine. Ah, Consultant Surgeons, those well spoken individuals who have graduated from being titled “Doctor” to “Mr”.

I have undergone two (more accurately, one, twice, thanks to inept tree climbing) surgeries during my teens and have no harrowing memories of either event beyond having to eat a bowl of prunes for breakfast. Thankfully, they had evolved to suppository laxatives by the second of that pair.

There was one significant difference now: in my first experiences, I remained in hospital for several days, but here, I was scheduled as a day-patient, arriving at the hospital at midday, then being released during the evening of that same day, probably “around five-thirty”, they explained.

I sat in my allotted chair at my allotted bed – number 9 – awaiting the string of admittance staff. The bed was fully loaded with oxygen and all manner of we-can-deal-with-anything paraphernalia.

First a nurse to check my details. Then the ward doctor to re-check the same details. An anaesthetist to cover additional details (plus the previous ones). The surgeon’s assistant to discuss the procedure’s details (and check some of the initial details), and… well, you get the picture by now, I’m sure.

The underlying theme of all the activity in this pre-op ward is clearly to ensure you are who they think you are. It gets a little tedious, but instills confidence you’re not going to wake up missing the wrong limb.

Between these repetitive exchanges I pretended to snooze – sometimes slipping into the real thing just to fool anyone ‘s suspicions – in order to avoid inadvertently encouraging those kindred day-patients about me to engage me in conversation. I was particularly trying to avoid Mr. “I’ve got the heart of a 25 year old woman” opposite.

Fun in the pre-theatre anaesthesia room consisted of manipulating the bleeping of the pulse monitor.

Once the surgical team arrived to make the final preparations, I will admit to being anxious. No attempts to slow the beeping worked as they jabbed in the necessary pipework. As I started to drift off, I can remember my vision blurring and the beeping accelerating.

I never expect to remember absolutely nothing while under anaesthetic. While coming round, I am convinced I have simply dozed off and am still awaiting the procedure. But, gratefully perhaps, there is simply nothing. If you have never experienced it, it’s quite disconcerting.

Once awake, it was back to the day ward for some toast and a cuppa (that’s when you know you haven’t been whisked out of the country while asleep), and a couple of hours of close monitoring to ensure you are recovered enough to head home.

Unfortunately, I was not. Whether a reaction to the anaesthetic, or a dose of pain-killing morphine, I turned the day ward into a scene from ER television. Doctor and nurses buzzed around me when my blood pressure dropped and I leaked sweat out of pretty much every pore. The result was saline drip, oxygen, and the decision that I would have to remain in overnight for observation.

I was concerned for Jen. Myself, I knew I was safe in good hands. But also knew she would be forced to head home and leave me unexpectedly at the hospital.

The day ward is just that: day, no night shift. So I was carted off to Ward 4 for my overnight observation. One of the day ward nurses stuck with me until she was absolutely sure I was stationed and my new keepers fully in the picture as to what had happened and what was required of them.

A long, troublesome night followed. A typical shared ward with snoring, calls, buzzers, wandering staff and patients, but the a most comfortable bed. What little sleep I managed was disturbed by the regular blood pressure, pulse and temperature monitoring.

The following day was uneventful. The food delivery guy and I had a little exchange about not wanting lunch. “I’ll be gone by then” I insisted. He offered me a good natured, knowing nod as I was still sat in my bedside chair as he wheeled past with his lunch delivery trolley. I was let out soon after.

Throughout the process, even through the weeks of the consultation process and initial tests, I cannot fault the way I was treated by the staff at two hospitals. Thoroughly communicative, friendly, patient, and understanding. I felt as if each one cared, about me, about what I was going through, how I was feeling. I felt they genuinely wanted to make me comfortable, well and to have me feel safe and secure.

I went through a relatively minor procedure, with a hiccup. But I have come away from the experience with a respect and trust for the staff. I would have no concerns about putting myself in the hands of these people again in the future.

Of course, I’d much prefer to not need them!

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Insomnia frequently lurks nearby and rarely do I find a night’s sleep properly restful. Elements such as stress, food, or inappropriate light levels, can cause my sleep patters to stumble. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

For example: particularly during grey winter months I use a bright daylight lamp in my office to help in maintaining concentration all day. But should I lose track of time and stay under such light too late into the evening, I can find myself still awake at 2 am in the morning – tired, certainly, but sleepless.

Having tried, and learned from, various forms of sleep diaries, a very clever use of accelerometer technology in the iphone, might give me a level of understanding about my sleep that I never thought possible.

Accelerometers (movement sensors) are appearing in all kinds of devices in recent times. Unfortunately for devices such as the iphone, they are to often used for ineffective reasons, such as clearing content of a screen or throwing some dice, where a button would provide a more effective user interface.

Sleep Cycle has taken the accelerometer technology – which is quite sensitive – into a new area: to monitor your sleep.

Its primary intent is to act as an intelligent alarm clock. You set the alarm to your desired time, and the application monitors your sleep in an attempt to wake you during a period of light sleep, rather than deep sleep. If at some point up to 30 minutes before your alarm time, it sense a lighter sleep phase, the alarm will sound.

The instructions show how to place the iphone face down in the corner of your mattress near (but not under) your pillow. The application must run continuously, so connection to a power cable is essential. It is also placed under the mattress sheet to prevent it falling off.

As you move around at night, it senses movement in the mattress using the iphone’s accelerometer, and continuously records your sleep state based on those movements. Once the alarm sounds, it will store that data and provide a visual representation of your night’s sleep.

Of course, this is not as accurate as having electrodes stuck to your head (and presumably also attached to an appropriate monitoring device), but provides a genuinely useful understanding of one’s sleep patterns throughout the night.

This is my chart from the first night I used the application:

Sleep statistics for 03 – 04 Feb (Thu).
Went to bed / woke up: 00:00 / 06:00
Total time: 5h 59m

I have no way of confirming it’s accuracy throughout the night, but I do remember waking up at a sniff after 3 a.m. to look at the bedside clock. And as you can see, the chart registered that I was in an awakened state around that time.

Here’s is a chart from the third, and significantly more disturbed and less restful night:

Sleep statistics for 05 – 06 Feb (Sat).
Went to bed / woke up: 21:29 / 07:01
Total time: 9h 31m

A marked difference in the sleep pattern, and clearly reduced very deep sleep. (The cause of the poor sleep described in this chart was the result of staying overnight away from home, in a strange bed and strange environment, and after many hours of driving.)

The application allows direct posting of the graph and data that you see above to your facebook account, or export and send to an email address.

I would like to see one more thing added to this application: the ability to attach notes to a particular night’s data. This way I could record anything that might have affected the sleep pattern.

What will I get out of this?

In the past, my sleep diaries consisted of timing notes, activities and food from the previous day, and how I felt when waking in the morning. With this application I hope to gain some deeper understanding of the differences between good and bad nights of sleep.

Precisely how much this will help in day to day life, I am not sure. But having some grasp of that mysterious unconscious period between going to bed and waking will, I am sure, provide some comfort through understanding.

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The past week was more than just a vacation, it was a scouting trip. For the first few days we scoured towns in the Valcencia region of Spain, with the aim of appreciating the area more and establishing whether Dénia is indeed the place for us to plan a future home. ---- All rights reserved. nd.com Read on...

Once you get yourself right inside a typical Spanish rural town, they all pretty much look the same: narrow streets, tall town houses, clusters of cafés and bars. Understanding the character of a Spanish town lies beneath its architecture, hidden in less tangible impressions.

In and around Dénia

Having fallen for Dénia on our first visit in October 2008, we were driven to return to confirm that our immediate attachment was not simply the result of holiday sun, sea and sangria. Gladly, our initial feelings for the town had not changed, and returning felt very comfortable.

Dénia is not one of the cheapest locations to buy property on the Costa Blanca, so with similar properties apparently up to tens of thousands of Euros cheaper in surrounding inland town, we felt the need to explore those options.

Few towns stood out to us as possible places for relocation. Travelling south, one heads closer to the Costa Del Sol and the land of the great British ex-pat invasion. This is tourist land at its most intensively exploited, which begins to become clearly apparent at Calpe, then degrades rapidly into the monstrous Benidorm – which, we read this week, has recently received approval for a further 22 skyscrapers and 4,000 new homes.

There are great locations still further south in the regions of Murcia and Andalucia, but something continues to draw us back to the Costa Blanca and the borders of the Alicante and Valencia provinces.

Inland from Dénia lies Pego, a town that promised cheaper properties. But it seems to struggle with establishing a distinct personality, being a town that feels its only reason to exist is as somewhere to live. It’s not that we feel the need for attractions or other trappings, but a sense of identity and purpose greatly enlivens a town.

Other towns, more and less rural passed us by, most in being a little too rural and remote for our tastes. Living more than about an hour from an airport with direct flights to London is less attractive when considering our future career plans and hopes.

Looking over Xátiva

Xátiva, on the other hand, stood out. The town is directly overlooked by a steep hill on which is perched one of the most extensively preserved castles we have yet seen on our travels. The town at first appeared like any other Spanish town, but driving around we became aware of a distinct identity. There was something a subtly different about the architecture and layout and gave us the feeling of a lingering Moorish influence, something that has become diluted with many more tourist orientated towns. 

Back to base

After many miles had passed under our wheels, we returned to Dénia and the assurance that despite the added expense, this was to be our target. Dénia most certainly has a distinct personality, if a split one.  

To the north of the town lies the seemingly endless beach and the expected tourist area. Here, hotels, apartment blocks and beach-side restaurants cater for the fleeting sun-seekers. Building regulations enforce a limited number of floors on these blocks, resulting a much more pleasant experience than Benidorm, for example.

The north section of the central town itself is the most traditionally Spanish, with older town houses and small squares reached via narrow passages and streets. Nearer the port, buildings become more modern, with apartment blocks and and the main shopping high street. 

Dénia’s port services the needs of fishermen – it’s regular fish market is well known, if, in our experience, a little on the expensive side – and is a ferry terminal for sea access to the Balearic Islands such as Ibiza, Mallorca and Menorca.

To the south-west sits the mountain of Montgó, the foothills of which have become the main villa style residential area. Here a tangle of small roads lead to all manner of properties from small, simple holiday homes, to extensive, multi-bedroom villas with surrounding land. Some have simple gardens, while others small orange groves. Most, of course, have pools.

Back home

The holiday over, it is time for action, our hearts remain most certainly in Dénia: the character of the town, its lively and energetic centre, but peaceful, secluded residential suburbs, a mountain at its back, and an ocean at its front. All these feel right for us, as does the vastly improved quality of life available in such a place. (I even prefer driving out there compared to the UK.)

It will likely take us a couple of years to achieve, but we are setting out with purpose and the promise of a great adventure ahead, one that more than compensates for the hard graft ahead. 

Expect me (and Jen) to write more about Dénia and Spain as we learn the language, understand more of the country, and work towards a home in another country, between a mountain and the sea.

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Running time: 27 minutes.

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