Don’t get me wrong. It can be a lot of fun. Especially as the many stops we had to make, given that we had two dogs with us, were in wonderful places. Still, it’s tiring, and tiredness takes its toll.
We’re back in Valencia for a longer trial of life in Spain. I’ve even planned a couple of business trips away from the city, to see how well things go if I base myself here for work. And, of course, we have the dogs to see how well they take to life in Spain. They’d never been out of Britain before, so we’re keen to see how they cope with the change of culture. Environment. Language.
But the first failure of adaptation was my own. As I said, the trip, though fun, had been tiring. Then, on the morning after our arrival, we went out for a five or six kilometre long walk in the Turia park, that follows the bed of the river that formerly flowed through the city. At the end, Danielle sent me home with the dogs and the two loaves of bread we’d bought.
As I turned into our street, I saw a man fiddling with a street door lock. It’s been a while since the system that allows us to buzz people in from upstairs has failed, so I thought he might be working on that. I tried to ask him in my broken Spanish.
‘Someone broke the lock,’ he told me.
Now, I remembered having trouble with our front door lock before and having to call a locksmith out. I assumed the problem had returned. A bore, especially if it meant replacing keys, but it was good of this neighbour to be doing the work himself.
Getting into the building wasn’t straightforward, as he’d laid all his tools on one of the steps. Getting past with small dogs was a daunting task, but he kindly pushed things aside to let us through.
I climbed up the two floors and stood at the front door of the flat. It has two locks. But on going out, I’d deliberately locked only the lower one. I tried to insert the key. Imagine my bewilderment when I couldn’t even get the key into the lock.
There were several keys on the bunch and I tried them all. None fitted. I could get the key for the lower lock pretty well into the upper lock, but it wouldn’t turn. There was no way of getting into the flat.
I noticed that a towel I didn’t recognise was hanging over the bannisters behind me. Had someone turned up to return a towel for us and found the same problem? Or even, got in and changed the lock, leaving the towel outside?
I know that such an explanation made little sense but nothing was making sense to me any more.
Eventually, I gave up and went looking for Danielle at our local supermarket. I waited patiently outside, and the dogs waited impatiently, whimpering occasionally, until Danielle eventually appeared. I explained my predicament.
‘What? The key doesn’t work?’ she said. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Nor do I,’ I replied.
‘And what’s all this business about the towel?’
‘No idea. It’s just hanging there.’
‘I hope we haven’t been burgled.’
So did I.
But I had another cause for anxiety. I’d asked for some important papers to be sent out to us, to the address Danielle had given me for the flat (I keep forgetting it).
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘you told me we lived at number 6.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we do.’
‘No. It’s clearly marked 4 outside.’
‘What? All the papers for the purchase of the house must be wrong, then. The deeds. The whole lot.’
She stopped and gave me a long, hard look.
A terrible realisation was beginning to dawn on me.
On the way back, we stopped outside number 4.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘the door doesn’t even look the same. And surely you’ve noticed that we don’t have the same tiles along the corridor.’
I never did work out what the towel on the bannister was for, though. There wasn’t one at number 6.
 |
| Toffee and Luci on their new couch-from-home |
No comments:
Post a Comment