There are but a few problems here that haven’t been tackled with a neighbour and a step ladder. Roof tiles blow off: Juan is up the ladder into the small attic of the tiny tower; boiler installation: out comes the ladder; street lights go out: here comes the ladder. The two street lights on the east and south side of the my house have blown, making the approaching path dark and shadowy. I asked a workman fixing lights on a nearby street how to report this online, but Juan shrugs this off and gets his step ladder. One light is dismantled and a bulb the size of a swan’s egg is extracted. I go to the lighting shop close to Marin town centre and 16 euros later we have one street light and no waiting time or council website to navigate.
The tower comprises 3 floors, around 9 square meters per floor. It is tiny and wedge shaped; 2 metres wide at one end and 3 metres at the other. The kitchen and bathroom are both downstairs with a thin curtain separating the two. This was never going to be a permanent arrangement, but its taken me a few years and the thoughts of my neighbour to decide that the bathroom really should be on the top floor, leaving the second floor as the main bedroom and giving a welcome 2 extra square metres to the kitchen. Every little helps.
I left Estribela a month ago with Juan agreeing to do the work in September. Juan’s wife sold me a lovely blue toilet that someone had gifted her, and the vanity unit and shower tray I bought from Brico Centro in Pontevedra, but not before I had a good look around the Rastro Reto, which sells house clearance goods. The Rastro is a charity that gives work opportunities to addicts in recovery, and from a warehouse just outside Pontevedra sells everything from second hand cupboards to beds to kitchen sinks. There’s a quite bit of bricabrac if you’re in the mood, and the man at the till is generous with his pricing when you roll up with an armful of another person’s cast-offs. I bought the bathroom tiles there, azuelos. They were delivered to my door for 20 euros.
Public transport doesn’t get you to the Rastro, the bus passes infrequently. The two times I’ve been on my own I’ve taken a taxi there and after buying what I need, loitered outside to ask another shopper for a lift back to the centre. This is a little irregular for a woman in her 50s, the shop assistants inside stared at me curiously whilst I asked anyone getting into a car for a lift. Not my proudest moments, but both times its worked out rather well. A man and his wife gave me a lift back to Pontevedra telling me their favourite beach, Playa de Rodas, near the town of Cangas, which I’ve still to visit. On my second visit I spoke to a woman with her mother in the short queue and asked for a lift. It turned out that they are also from Estribela, (the chances of that!) and took me all the way home. Vanessa has turned out to be another lovely friend met in an unlikely place and we meet up for coffee and a catch up whenever I’m here.
