When we first moved to Spain we thought we’d be different and original, clinging to the romantic vision of a small white-washed cottage somewhere in the wild beautiful Spanish countryside, surrounded by orange and lemon trees, almond and olive groves. Not for us the smart neat little houses of the urbanizacions with all mod cons like most of our fellow ex-pats. No. We were going to go back to basics and do it our way. So we bought our old Spanish finca, with its five acres of fruit trees, 2km from the nearest tarmac road, in the remote and pretty La Valle de Las Vinas high in the mountains near the 10th century ruined Moorish city of Bobastro.

Well we certainly got back to basics. Still in UK mindset we thought, in our own foolish way, that if the estate agents details said the property had water and electricity, then there would be taps with hot and cold running water and plugs for the kettle and hair dryer. That was our first mistake. The estate agent hadn’t exactly lied; he’d just been economical with the truth. There were taps and there was running water; just that the two weren’t linked. It was our assumption that was at fault. We fell back on the main English remedy for all ills and put the kettle on for a brew. Still in UK mindset we assumed that if there was an electric plug on the wall the kettle would work. Wrong again. That wasn’t connected either.

Necessity being the mother of invention, it’s amazing what delights of haute cuisine you can rustle up on a camping gas stove. All washed down with the excellent local vino, Cason Historico, at 60 cents a litre. Domestic goddesses, like Nigella Lawson, eat your heart out! In the balmy Spanish night with a huge pale moon hanging low in the sky, the cicadas working overtime and the bullfrogs down in the valley croaking for Spain, plus an endless supply of wine, who cared about the lack of a little finesse.

Next morning reality kicked in hard. Si! said the solar electricity engineer, inspecting our single panel, this will be enough to give you light. If the sun is out. Solar power does not work on cloudy days. If you want to heat a kettle you will need another panel. How much to run a washing machine I ventured nervously. Washing? He smiled at me indulgently, much as one might smile at a child who has asked a rather stupid question. Leading me outside he pointed to a sink with a white ceramic washboard. Wash clothes here, si! No, no. How many solar panels would we need to run a washing machine. Solar? No possible. Get a generator.

At this point our kitchen was still a donkey shed so the little luxury of a washing machine would have to wait. My spirits lifted with the arrival of the builders but they dropped again as the days passed and the layers of cement dust covering everything grew thicker. One morning I took a tray of coffee out onto the patio table as usual and brushed aside what looked like a piece of cellophane covering as I set it down.
‘Don’t you want your snake-skin then?’ said one of the builders cheerfully.
‘Snake-skin!’ I screamed.
Ignoring this he picked up his cup of coffee. “Must have shed it just before it slid into the wall. Won’t be needing it now. We’ve bricked it in!’
‘You’ve bricked up a live snake in my kitchen wall?’ I asked in horror. I can’t stand snakes. I have a ‘thing’ about them.
Nothing fazed this guy. ‘Well it won’t be alive for long’ he said. ‘No chance of finding the poor little sod either.’
‘Little?’ I said faintly.
“Yeah’. He was dismissive. ‘It would only be about two feet long!’
So now every time I use my lovely new tiled kitchen I keep thinking about the ‘poor little sod only two feet long’ bricked up in the walls and wondering if snakes that die tragic deaths are like people and can turn into ghosts which come back to haunt the place they died.

The Spanish don’t do postal deliveries in sparsely populated rural areas so we had to get ourselves a post box. Our first attempt in nearby El Chorro wasn’t too successful. The postmistress grabbed my husband’s arm and pulled him outside. Here she gesticulated wildly at the houses clinging to the mountainside. ‘Inglese!’ she yelled. ‘Inglese aqui y aqui y aqui!’ She was quite worked up by now and she turned on him and shouted ‘Inglese! No! No!’

We got the message and departed rapidly. The postmaster in our local town of Ardales was more accommodating. At least he was to me. He was a delightful man, all smiles, who took my details, gave me a postbox, a number and the key; completely ignoring my husband who was waved away with a curt ’No!’ The arrangement worked well until the post office moved to the fish market. Our post box is the bottom one and now I have to squat beneath a stall of wet fish to retrieve our mail.

Shopping is an experience as well. The rural Spanish don’t do custard powder, marmite, or English tea, and there isn’t much fresh milk, just the UHT varieties. Chocolate digestives cost 50 centimos (about 33 pence) for a packet. Fresh vegetables and fruit are ridiculously cheap, except for cherries. Wild asparagus is plentiful and very tasty; but I have yet to learn how to cook artichokes. Buying meat for dinner is not easy. It goes something like this.
‘I’d like two steaks please.’
‘It’s Tuesday today.’
Total bewilderment on my part. “I know it’s Tuesday but I’d like two steaks please.’
‘Tuesday is pork day. Thursday is steak day.’
Oh right! Well you just have to go with the flow.

Picking almonds and olives sounds very romantic but the reality can be a bit different. Spanish hills are serious affairs which is presumably the reason why Mediterranean farmers devised the method of terracing slopes so that they could farm their crops. The unknown Spanish lunatic who planted our almond trees either couldn’t be bothered or he had a very disturbed sense of humour. Our finca slopes are precipitous, dry and crumbly, with a one in two gradient. If it is hard for humans to stand on such a slope for more than a few milli-seconds, pity the poor tree which must do so for the whole of its life. Little wonder then that these trees grow into twisted tortured specimens which ensures that all the best pickings grow out of reach.

The Spanish have huge black nets which they spread beneath their trees. They use long poles to knock the nuts or olives off each tree down onto the net where they can be collected easily. Forget the ideology and the television advertisements for olives. This may be the theory but if you have ever tried this on a one in two slope which doesn’t boast even so much as a toe-hold, you will understand the problems. Never mind about getting yourself and all your equipment down to each tree. Weight, gravity and gathering speed as you slide steadily down the hill usually end up doing the job instead. In the end I had to admit a sort of grudging admiration for our unknown lunatic who had actually succeeded in planting these trees in the first place. Unbelievably we picked 320 kilos of almonds and 50 kilos of olives. When we took them to our local Co-operativa in Ardales they were astonished that we had picked all these alone or, as one grizzled octogenarian put it, ‘Solo! Loco!’

Along with preying mantis, clicking cicadas, singing bullfrogs and suicidal snakes, our valley is a haven for animal life. There are large flocks of sheep and herds of goats which graze the hillsides around us. The shepherds, goatherds and local farmers ride burros as often as they drive a car or motorbike. The burros are left to chew the cud during the day, their front legs tied together so that they cannot wander. One morning as I was hanging out the washing a large sow and several piglets ambled round the corner looking for breakfast. There are a number of wild boar in our hills although they must be full of cunning plans to avoid the hunters. Golden eagles, condors and kestrels soar over the finca most days. We are on the Malaga flight path and sometimes the eagles look as though they are playing games with the incoming planes

We have a semi-wild cat called Panchita who adopted us after she’d been abandoned by her mother. She got used to coming every day for food and though she would never let us touch her she liked to sit at a safe distance and watch us. After she gave birth to her five little kittens in a small shelter we’d made for her, we renamed her Hissing Sid. Hissing Sid fully expected breakfast, lunch and supper to be delivered to her punctually each day but she would put her ears back and hiss and spit furiously whenever we came within twenty feet of her kittens.

It’s five years now since we sat around the big polished table in the notary’s office in Malaga and wondered what on earth we had done as we signed the contracts for our finca on the campo. We still don’t have television or internet access or even a telephone; but we do have hot and cold running water through the taps and we do have a generator and, at long last, a washing machine. Our real pride and joy, however, is a large and highly effective calor gas powered fridge which means that we can at last have chilled beer and our meat keeps for longer than two hours. It took us three years to achieve ownership of this fridge and we held a party to celebrate.

We never did get an electric kettle. The best way to survive on the campo in rural Spain is not to try and drag it with you into the 21st century but to give in gracefully and go back with it to the 19th century. Hence my bright red Le Creuset kettle which sits on any naked flame and hums happily. All that remains now is for me to hope that the wretched unknown snake will rest in peace!