Spanish cars in the UK

The British police are having a clampdown on Brits taking Spanish registered cars back to the UK for more than 6 months in a year, they have records of sightings of foriegn registered vehicles and are impounding vehicles that appear to have been in the the UK over the allowed time without being reregistered. People who do this are evading UK road tax and possibly an MOT test on the vehicle, if you do intend to use your Spanish car in the UK on a regular basis, it is probably a good idea to keep some Spanish invoices and reciepts for petrol, repairs, carparking etc, for the vehicle as proof of periods it was in Spain.
So if you use your Spanish car in The UK for more than 6 months is is probably more feasable to have a British car and and use it in Spain.....

Healthcare scheme

After the Valencian governmement announced last year that free healthcare for early retired expats was being withdrawn, it was announced that the government were working on a new scheme where monthly payments for health care would be provided. This scheme is still being worked on although it was hoped it would be in place in January.
Untill it is in place the free health care for early retirees will be available.

Don't Worry Be happy

After a number of days of rain the weather seems to be turning. A real feeling of spring, again. Well we did hear a cuckoo the other day, just waiting for the hoopoe to start its spring time antics now. Our spring flowers, in the tubs, have not done to well which is disappointing. We will leave them and see if they improve next year. Lots of visitors out though. The front row facing the fields is full and our Calle is filling up too. The local farmer was harvesting his broccoli today and kindly gave a few "locals" a bag full. Its so hard for these guys to make a crust and still they are generous. A lesson to be learn'nt there I think.
So what else has been going on. One family on holiday had a bit of a health scare, well its something that could happen to anyone. Made us think a timely reminder to everyone would not go a miss, even some Brits who live here do not seem to know that you should dial 112 to emergency help in english. That's 112.
The householders in the block in Los Palacios facing the metal fence are trying to discover what is causing the flooding under there homes. Also who is responsible. Lets all keep our fingers crossed for them and hope they find a easy solution.
The Brit market in Formentera is now open on a saturday and has an auction on friday from 12 noon.
House prices continue to fall here and repossessions continue, really is a time to buy and not sell. Those the bank have taken do not seem to be attracting much interest,maybe the bank is better off sitting on them. The EU is getting tough with Spain over building practices here, and we have also seen hoards of Brits arrested for providing false documents. The arm of the law may extend slowly here but it extends a long way. More pirate TV people arrested to.
Still we don't want to think about all that the days are stretching out the birds are sing in the trees. don't worry be happy.Eat chocolate its nearly Easter.

Zero Gravity

This morning our local radio presenter from TKO has been telling us how a prominent astrologer has informed, that at precisely 09:47 in Spain. Jupiter will go behind Pluto, and cause a once ever gravitational alignment on the earth, so if you jump up in the air at that precise time you will probably float.
A warning has been put out by the siesmology institute,that if a large amount of people DO jump up in the air at the same time -Like at 09:47 - when they land it is liable to cause movement of the Teutonic plates and cause spasmodic earthquakes in strategic places in the Northern hemisphere.

Yum Yum Caballa

We just love caballa, that's mackerel in english. We used to eat loads when John was commercial fishing out of Newlyn in Cornwall. Sometimes it was better to eat the fish than to sell them the prices where so low! Despite the amount we eat we still love them. They are plentiful here at this time of year, and well priced at around 2 euros a kilo, cannot help thinking there are some poor Spanish Pescadores getting the same bad deal John and his shipmates used to get though.
I like to cook them in the oven on the barbeque or in the electric pan. Just a bit of olive oil local salt and fresh ground pepper and a good squeeze of fresh lemon.
If we want something a bit special I have a recipe I used all those years ago in Cornwall, and crumbs now I think about it its over 30 years ago. if you want to give it a go here are the instructions.
Citrus stuffed Baked Mackerel
One Mackerel per person ( we are greedy so like quite large fish)
To stuff two fish you need:
three oranges.
2 apples.
1 small onion
2 cups of brown breadcrumbs.
a generous tablespoon of Brown sugar
butter or olive oil

Method:
Gut and clean fish, if they do this at the shop ask for the row this time of year you can saute it lightly and eat on toast.
Grate the zest from two of the oranges, peel then and chop the flesh. Squeeze the juice from third oranges.
Peel core and chop the apples.
peel and chop the onion finely
Now saute the onion, when its soft add apple then orange flesh and zest keep cooking on low heat add sugar then bread crumbs then juice, season to taste. You then remove from heat and use to stuff the fish. Wrap in foil and bake in moderate oven for around 20 minutes depending on size of fish, Open foil for last 10 minutes.
lovely hot or cold, the citrus counteracts the oiliness of the Mackerel