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Have you ever fancied upping sticks and making a big life change, living the dream and maybe even building your own house in the sun?
Miniaturist, self builder and serial creative Angie, never did things quite the way anyone thought she should. This is the story of how challenging and also how rewarding life can be if you take an unconventional path and stick with it in spite of all indications that disaster is looming. Angie and her 'Computer Geek' husband Frank's exploits in England and Andalucía are unusual, maddening, cringe-worthy and sometimes very funny indeed. There are moments of triumph and moments of despair. And almost always a blind faith and a can do attitude. Woven through the whole story is her absolute passion for thinking up new creative ideas, sharing them and inspiring other people. This rags to rags autobiography is both a cautionary and joyful tale for anyone thinking of living a non-traditional creative life, or anyone contemplating making the big leap to another country in the belief that 'it will all work out'.
"Best book I have read in a very long time.You do not have to be into miniatures, dolls houses (which I am) have met Angie or seen her wonderful work to love this book. Her life in Spain the house they are building, everything is just the best read."
F. Barrett
Exerpt-
'Jose Muckyflicker'
As soon as we could afford it we employed a local guy to do our rendering. I just didn't feel up to it. All that flinging huge globs of cement from three feet away with the inevitable splash back. I knew how to do it in theory, I'd even successfully built a fully rendered raised bed in the garden and rendered the base of the greenhouse and even had a bit of a trial in the under stairs bathroom which was at this time still serving as a shed. When I looked at the huge expanse of house and felt my fifty-something back, my family heart and my just starting to ache knees. I knew that my "albanil" (brickie) days, if not over, were beginning to be reduced. So. Angeles' brother was called in.
Whenever we tried to explain who had done our rendering people looked blankly at us until they worked out we were talking about 'El Pollo'. No idea why Jose has this nickname but it seemed also to have attached itself to the bar he ran at one time. Or vice-versa.
On the first day, when Frank realised that Jose was a smoker he said we aren't having him smoking in the house. I tried to explain this to Jose, with little success and told Frank that he would have to cope with Jose's unintelligible Campurriano. Either because Frank had even less success than I did understanding, or making himself understood or because Jose was a chain smoker who didn't seem to be able to work without a fag hanging out of his mouth, that was the last ever said on the matter. Frank filled in as Jose's sidekick and mixed buckets of cement on Jose's command of "meha!" which double translated as mezcla... or mix. It was all but impossible to discern what Jose was asking for at any one time but first and fairest guess was always "mezcla". Just occasionally Frank turned up sweating and panting with a tub of freshly mixed cement to be greeted by a look of incomprehension, waving hands and a stream of consonant-free invective. Why could he not understand the difference between cubo Pronounced cu-o and cubito pronounced cu-o. The difference was of course whether Frank was to make a full or a half mix. Frank always made a full mix. Our name for Jose arrived very rapidly as the flinging of cement on to one wall invariably ended in the splattering of the opposite wall. The ceilings, and of course the floor where it became mixed in what appeared to be a 1:10 ratio with cigarette butts and we dutifully swept up the mounds of fag-filled cement splatter at the end of each of his days...
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