Blogs 2013 | Homepage - Kidderminster Shuttle

My name is Denise Watson and I am an ‘expat’. In February 2006, Hubby and I decided to up sticks: I’m talking lock, stock and barrel and, well, that meant no going back. The grass always seems greener on the other side, doesn’t it but there are certain things that a ‘Brit’ can’t find elsewhere but on home ground. There’s the tourist Spain you know and then there’s the Spain we are living in, twelve hours north by car! As a qualified counsellor (I now supply my service by phone (www.counsellorbyphone.com)), I had to give myself a right listening to, to get my head round this new lifestyle. The result ….. ‘did Hubby and I do the right thing?’
If you’d like to know more, please call in for a virtual cuppa at www.scrapbook-of-life.com and learn that your British grass may just be the greenest!

Sometimes it's the smallest of things

Sometimes it’s the smallest of things that mean so much but we don’t realise this until they’ve gone. Now being a UK expat, the things I miss most of all (after giant boxes of tea bags!) are carpets and instant heat.

Redundancy can have the strangest of effects

When we think of the word ‘redundancy’, we think of shortage of money and a difficult future, yet there are other forms of redundancy which have a completely different effect. I have never lost my job because of redundancy but I have felt the pain of those other forms.

Sunday opening

Having now lived in the outback of Spain for seven years has confirmed something that I always suspected.

The importance of manners

I’d like to call myself old stock and, by that, I mean that I come from a world that began before satellite connections, mobile phones, Xbox 360 games and need I go on .... I thought that everything about my world had sadly gone but, last week, I had need to do some research about manners and etiquette in Britain and that, in itself, cast me back into my childhood, when such codes of conduct were an integral part of life and society.

Christmas the world over.

We’ve just pulled round from a bout of ‘festivitis’ – that’s my word for spreading ourselves too thinly over the festive period. Being expats, the question every December is ‘are we staying here or going there’? For Christmas, my heart will always be in England, not only because that is where my family is but also because other countries do Christmas so differently.

An ‘Outsider’ looking in

The strangest thing happened today.

Roots: That's what life is about

After almost seven years in another country, after making Spanish friends, adapting to Spanish culture (not an easy task!) and making our house in Spain have some English comforts (I’m talking curtains and, hopefully, soon, a massive rug on the tiled floor of our living room), we have to admit that we will almost be English.

The art of technical communication

Communication is so important and it’s moved on a long way since I was a youngster.  At that time, in the fifties, I used to wait for the postman to see if he had any letters from my pen friends and our family was very popular in our little colliery street, as we were the first to get a telephone.  Instead of walking about a half a mile to use the nearest public telephone, any neighbour who had a need to make a call could use our state of the art black phone with dial feature but only if they paid for the call.

Just where do I belong?

Changing country quite often means changing lifestyle as well but what about the changes that take place, inside the individual? Will you become a different person, or should you fight it?

The importance of understanding the lingo

When you live in a country that uses a different language than the one you know, well, it can make life ‘different’.  Okay, we live in Spain and, as all Brits know, it’s difficult to practise for that GCSE in Spanish while you’re on a package tour because all the Spanish waiters and receptionists in holiday Spain can speak English.  There again (and I’ve done it), you could talk to the cleaner of your apartment, as these ladies don’t often come into contact with the key holders and so don’t get much chance to understand another language.