My life went the opposite way, hitting so low that I couldn’t work out why I was getting out of bed. I went from being a gregarious, professional woman in the UK, who was noted for never standing still for a single moment, to what is there to get up for in the outback of Spain and a ‘does it matter what I wear’ attitude, as I’m not going to see any other humans.
Arriving in Spain in February 2006, the first six months were so strange, as I didn’t need a diary. A year later, by default, I ended up teaching English over the phone to Spanish bankers in Madrid. I think that that work of twenty eight hours a week blinded me to the fact that there was nothing for me in North-West Spain, as I was speaking English those twenty hours every week and so was, in effect, still in England.
I finished the job in 2011 as, due to having a problem with my eyes, I decided I needed to get out and live, rather than sitting there at my desk.
And it was then it hit me.
There was nowhere to go, nobody to visit and no-one to talk to. We had to get in a car to find another English person and, though I spoke very good Spanish, our neighbours spoke what I refer to as Geordie Spanish – the rest of Spain don’t understand them. So we bought a house back in the north-east of England (where they speak proper Geordie, might I add) and we are currently between two houses.
I am back to being me and it is so wonderful to see that I didn’t lose the person I was, as I used to like me and seemed to have lost that feeling in the Spanish outback.