Sandwiches in the Sun: The Extraordinary Truth about Life on a Spanish Island

by Chris Herman

Overview

Chris and Sue Herman make a life-altering decision in 2006. When an opportunity comes up for them to move to Lanzarote, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, Chris and Sue leave their work and family routines behind in England to pursue a new way of life. In this witty and warm-hearted memoir, Chris explores how he teams up with his wife to establish a future on this beautiful, quirky island.

Chris has been called to pursue a career in the church in Lanzarote, where he’ll serve as an assistant pastor. The opportunity is exciting, and their home may appear to be idyllic, but the couple soon discovers the downsides involved with such great change. Cowboy builders, unwanted guests taking advantage of their hospitality, and unreliable employers are just a few of the challenges they face.

In time, he finds himself single-handedly leading the church. He must also cope with a disastrous café project that tests his laid-back temperament. In spite of the difficulties of this transition, even as finances start to dwindle, Chris and Sue refuse to give up on their dream.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781475966091
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/31/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	186
File size:	3 MB

Read an Excerpt

SANDWICHES IN THE Sun

The Extraordinary Truth about Life on a Spanish Island

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By Chris Herman

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 Chris Herman
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-6611-4

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Chapter One

In the Beginning: Life in a Canarian Finca

At the beginning of March 2006, we started our life in Lanzarote in Spain. We had only visited the island on a few brief occasions, so we started as guests of Mark and Julie Austin at Betel, a beautiful old—in parts dilapidated—finca, or farmhouse, standing quietly on a high plane of lava at the epicentre of this volcanic island.

Its thick stone walls were built to keep out the blistering midday heat of the sun, which beats relentlessly down with the same strength as it does on the sandy wastes of the African continent, less than a day's flight to the east for the flocks of swallows that occasionally arrive here, blown off their yearly northward course toward our erstwhile home back in the United Kingdom. By day the harsh brightness of the sun bounces off the pristinely whitewashed walls, while at night the pitch-black sky spreads above it like a giant vacuous dome, sprinkled with myriads of sparkling pinpricks that multiply by the million as the human eye accustoms itself to the clear, deep darkness, untouched by the pollution of light from streetlamps.

We had arrived just in time for warm spring days that average twenty-four degrees Celsius right until the coming of summer in July. The warmth of the Lanzarote welcome was completed by our generous and genial hosts, who also complement one another superbly. Julie's quiet spirituality draws like a brightly flickering candle, while Mark effuses enthusiasm and boisterous banter. While Julie conjured up the most aromatic and succulent cooking, only Mark had the strength and skill to crank up the cantankerous old diesel-powered generator, which was the main source of the house's electricity.

Within the ancient walls of our temporary new residence, you could say we enjoyed all the modern conveniences, but not always in the desired quantity. On an average day there was usually enough electricity to power one load in the washing machine. We had water on tap as long as there was power to run the pump, and piping hot water would run as long as the temperamental gas cylinder allowed.

There was even 'central heating'! Central heating? Was that really necessary? Well, those thick stone walls that maintained a comfortable coolness during the peak of the summer turned the place into a fridge once the sun had gone down outside during the hottest months. The 'central' heating came courtesy of a freestanding gas fire, parked hopefully in the centre of the cavernous thirty-by-twenty-foot living room, or 'chapel', with its crumbling lofty ceiling, and whose supply would splutter disappointingly to exhaustion at all-too-frequent intervals.

In fact, I can honestly say I've never been so cold in my life before. I remember vividly, and with a shiver, the nights the heater failed. At first we would augment our jumpers and coats with a blanket, fetched hurriedly from our bedroom on the opposite side of the courtyard. Soon we'd return for a second, and not long after that we'd be wrapped up in bed. There was just nowhere else to go to escape the bitter, penetrating chill.

Despite its basic drawbacks, we still remember the old place with fondness. Along with the peace and quiet of its location, there was the beauty of the architecture, so typically Canarian, with carefully crafted black volcanic stone blocks picked out against the smooth white walls, the sprawling, feathery canopy of the pepper tree half filling the space where we parked our cars outside the solid rustic wooden front door, together with the bright red flowers and pea-green foliage of the crown of thorns shrubs that ran the length of the low white retaining wall, which separated the parking from the 'garden'.

The 'garden' was a small area of plants sitting proudly on a bed of picón, the black volcanic grit that's used everywhere here as a gravelly mulch to help retain the heavy dews upon which the local plant life relies. Beyond that stood a long row of netted, wood-framed housing, which reminded me of the constructions my dad used to grow gooseberries in when I was a child. However, the inhabitants of these particular constructions were good for neither a crumble pudding nor a vegetarian supper. Neither were they good for our sleep, because living no more than forty feet from the shutters and ironwork that constituted our creaky bedroom windows was a den of fighting cockerels that you could set your alarm clock by—that is, if you were a baker and wanted to rise early every morning, several hours before the sun had even thought of rising.

Although the barbaric practice of bullfighting has long been outlawed in the Canaries, the 'sport' of pitching one pugnacious cockerel against another is still en vigor, as they say here, still vigorously pursued. And one of its proudest proponents was the ageing, shambling, but still tall and strong, landlord of Betel, Don Arturo.

He was a loveable old rogue really, our dueño. Always friendly with a gentle smile and a gruff chuckle, his customary reply to the Spanish greeting, 'Hola, Don Arturo, ¿cómo estás?' was that he was struggling on in the batalla de la vida—the battle of life, as he called it. I wonder if that was a subliminal reference to his battling livestock.

The only time he reprimanded me, he was straightforward and not in the least disrespectful. The problem was, since Betel was situated bang in the middle of nowhere, access by motorised vehicle was, to put it bluntly, extremely bumpy. The unmade 'driveway' had somehow become rutted into a regular pattern, reminiscent of the rivulets that form in the sand on Bournemouth beach when the tide recedes. My mind wanders back to those warm afternoons in the late summer and the knobbly feeling underfoot as I used to paddle along the seashore over the compact sodden mass of sand.

In order to reduce the cacophony of rattling bones, chassis, and exhaust and cut down the anxiety that any of these might disintegrate at any moment, the driver had two options: take it really, really slowly or get up some steam and try to skim over the top of the bone-shaking bumps. I usually took the first option, counselling myself philosophically that it was a simple reminder of the general slow pace of life in Lanzarote. However, one day, when time was unusually pressing, I boldly went for the speedy approach. Unfortunately, the dry, dusty hardness of Lanzarote dirt tracks contrasts markedly with the damp, forgiving nature of Bournemouth sand. Accordingly I arrived with extraordinary rapidity at the gateway of Betel and was startled to see Don Arturo, consternated but still calm. As I complied with his simple request to turn round and behold the cloud of dust that accompanied my trail, it was enough to shame me into future obedience to the request to take it more gently.

Toward the end of our stay, Mark and Julie had an appliance fitted that made all the difference to their living quarters on the first floor of the southern wing: a wood-burning stove! Wood is in short supply here since the cedar forests that once covered the island were all used up about five hundred years ago to build fine houses and sturdy boats. Nevertheless, Mark's son, Ben, being a carpenter, they were blessed with a sufficient supply of off-cuts to feed the nightly flames.

Our hosts being ever open and welcoming, we never felt we were intruding when we would sneak upstairs to find refuge in their cosy living room with their sleeping quarters off to the right and those of their four-year-old daughter, Naomi, off to the left. On occasion we'd be invited up for a special evening revolving around a nice bottle of red wine and a DVD chosen carefully from the nearest hire place, a ten-minute drive through the bumpy lava fields and into the local town of San Bartolomé, with its narrow streets and quaint shops masquerading as ordinary Lanzarote homes behind their whitewashed walls and plain green doors and shutters.

We always had fun on those evenings together, comparing amusing notes about life on the island and in the church. Somehow, though, the choice of DVD was always a bit unconventional. I remember one particular offering that reminded me of some of the French films we'd watched back in England. Of these, the one that has stayed with me above all was where the story came to a sudden end with the main character turning up unexpectedly at the home of the family to whose children she'd been the nanny, and gunning them all down, leaving the impression that the makers were either trying to make some rather dark philosophical point or had abruptly run out of budget.

But back to Betel and a cosy evening with the lights down low sitting around the wood burner in front of the flickering TV screen. It was a 'blockbuster' starring the great comic actor Bill Murray, whose performances we had relished over and again in films such as Groundhog Day. It turned out that this role was meant to be rather more serious, and with it, somewhat more strange. As the whole bizarre plot unfolded, I was tickled constantly by the ridiculous script and random sequence of events with the result that the rest of the company confessed to finding the general delirium engendered by my series of hysterical outbursts the real entertainment of the evening.

Our stay at Betel was a difficult time for my wife Sue, as she was experiencing a feeling of total helplessness. She had left her home and job behind and found herself unable to speak the language or even drive anywhere. Her sadness came to a head one day. Mark and Julie noticed that Sue was not her usual bubbly self. The simple inquiry, 'Are you okay?' opened the floodgates. We quickly ascended the stone stairway to their comfy sitting room, as they brought Sue consolation, talking sympathetically through her distraught emotions.

But the oddest occurrence in the short history of our occupation of the remote finca was reserved for the final weeks, when Mark had taken his family on holiday to France and left us in charge. This was the stimulus for us to move out for the week and enjoy a break on the sunny south side of the island that would later become our home. About halfway through the period, a report reached us that Bella the rabbit, the family's one and only pet and furry focus of little Naomi's affection, had been found dead as the result of a single mysterious and bloody bite to the back of the neck. Thankfully it was Ben who had found the poor creature and duly disposed of its lifeless form. But the problem remained, how would we explain this to its unfortunate owners?

As we returned to resume our residence, the series of strange events turned even more bizarre. We were greeted by the phlegmatic Don Arturo with a new example of the local wildlife in tow: a very sweet-looking kitten that danced around in a manner reminiscent of the young Cassius Clay. 'I don't know, but it looks like it could do with some food to me', was Arturo's comment as he foisted the kitten upon us. Thus, Bella the rabbit was replaced by the new little scrap of life. In the words of the Old Testament character Job, the most extreme example of changing fortunes, 'The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away'.

Chapter Two

Leaving the Stress Behind

Actually, life wasn't that bad in sometimes-sunny Bournemouth, my place of work for twenty-three years. I had just two jobs in that time, one long and happy marriage, and a brace of delightful children: a strapping son and a beautiful daughter. So we were well settled and privileged to enjoy the sort of stable family life that most people these days can only dream of.

There was really only one fly in the ointment of my life: work stress, and I mean with a capital S. Not that the two companies I had the variable pleasure of working for were bad employers—on the contrary, the first one, Abbey Life, had given me an excellent grounding in my chosen career of computer programming. They looked after their employees well and the location—a five-minute lunchtime jog from the long golden beaches that stretch from the Purbecks in the west all the way to Hengistbury Head in the east—was unbeatable.

My second job was more high-powered. I stepped up into the dizzy world of international finance in December 1989 when I climbed onboard with Chase Manhattan bank a few weeks before the start of the mildest winter in three centuries.

Its Bournemouth offices, situated in several acres of parkland on the eastern edge of the town, boasted all sorts of fantastic facilities for the benefit of its staff: tennis courts, squash courts, a well-equipped gym, a sports hall, a wonderful subsidised restaurant, as well as access to the public sports centre five minutes across the park.

I worked with characters much like me, who enjoyed working with figures, supported one another, and were essentially just pleasant to spend the working day with. I soon found my niche writing complicated mathematical programs for the bank's huge number-crunching machines.

Toward the end of 1994 I was working really hard to complete a particular project. It involved writing a number of new programs to produce figures for the bank's credit monitoring system. They had to be ready in just one week, so I applied myself with my customary enthusiasm, staying late every night. I remember the Friday especially well. We had invited some new friends, Steve and Jane from church, to dinner. I finally got home just in time to bid our guests good-night. I was so embarrassed!

The effect of bashing away at the keyboard relentlessly for so many hours was the beginning of aches and pains in my fingers and wrists. Being desperate to complete the task at hand, I kept going in spite of it. The pain naturally grew worse until finally I was forced to go sick. My initial week of absence turned into three months.

That time was spent seeing specialists and receiving physiotherapy. I went back to work eventually, mornings only to start with. It didn't help that my boss didn't have a sympathetic bone in his body. When I told him how it was a bit frustrating having only half a day to make progress on my current project, he could only ask why I didn't stay longer! I was now working with my wrists supported in metal splints, thus partly reducing the constant pain that was like somebody sticking a needle into them and manipulating it to produce the maximum discomfort possible.

I struggled on for eight difficult years. Exercising in the gym provided by the company helped my hands, and I managed to go without using splints; but the pain persisted. On the positive side, I was privileged to have some very good support from a rheumatologist, and I remember telling him once how the answer to my prayers would be redundancy. Only that would afford me the opportunity to escape my stressful working environment and retrain to do something completely different.

I could hardly dare hope that my dream would come true. Then at ten o'clock one morning late in June 2002, I was sitting at my desk when I received a phone call from my boss, asking me to come upstairs to see him in the conference room. I knew immediately what was happening; the recent merger between the bank and JP Morgan meant there would be redundancies in banking positions.

I bounded up the stairs and burst through the door wearing a huge grin from ear to ear. Now, I am known for having an unusually wide smile, but on this occasion it must have been an unbelievable sight. Toby was sitting quietly on the other side of a conference table, a smartly dressed girl from human resources next to him. They talked sombrely and in hushed tones about their regret at having to let me go. I tried to dispel their gloomy air and explain that I was delighted, as if they could not already see that from my extraordinary appearance. I failed miserably. I guess it would be hard for anybody to take on board the fact that an employee should receive such bad news so gladly.

The company gave us lots of help in order to determine what direction our careers would now take. There were all sorts of psychometric tests, interviews with experts, and so on. However, I felt I needed to go further. I'd had a sneaking suspicion for some little while that I might be dyslexic. Could this be the reason I had always struggled in my chosen career of computer programming? Sure enough, the test revealed that whereas my verbal intelligence was high enough, there was a big gap between that and my brain's processing speed. Furthermore, the results showed poor eye-to-hand coordination, which explains why I was always so slow working at the screen and keyboard. Having dyslexia had also made it difficult to retain all the detailed technical information I needed to do my job properly. It was amazing I had stuck with it so long!

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from SANDWICHES IN THE Sun by Chris Herman Copyright © 2013 by Chris Herman. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

Chapter 1. In the Beginning: Life in a Canarian Finca....................1
Chapter 2. Leaving the Stress Behind....................7
Chapter 3. Driving Me Crazy....................24
Chapter 4. An Englishman's Home Is His Castle....................36
Chapter 5. The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same....................60
Chapter 6. The Clouds, They Are a-Gathering....................77
Chapter 7. Hitting the Wall....................96
Chapter 8. We Get By with a Little Help from Our Friends....................119
Chapter 9. Sandwiches in the Sun....................128
Chapter 10. Mad Dogs and Englishmen....................141
Chapter 11. House for Sale: One Careful Owner....................175