Actually even as I write this title I cannot believe that so many things have happened in such a short space of time.
The first and worst thing that happened was actually more than two weeks ago, when my lovely older brother Tony sadly died. Although he had been ill with dementia for two years, being looked after in a care home, in the end it was still a shock as he had actually survived Covid during this time. I think we thought he would go on forever, although he was not himself he was at least there.
There was a comfort in picturing him sitting watching the tele with a cup of tea, and phoning him every now and again for increasingly difficult conversations as the dementia worsened.
I had hoped to go and visit him for some time, but Covid restictions put a stop to that. As they were lifting I was making vague plans to go next spring. My brother Tony was an incredible person, the life and soul of EVERY party with a machine-gun laugh you could hear a mile away. His nickname at work had been “laughing gas”.
His loves and “raison de ëtre” were his family, Manchester City and music. Dementia took all those away from him in the final year. A cruel, cruel disease.
I hummed and hawed whether to go back for the funeral, I had hoped to go back to cuddle him not to bury him. However really I knew that I had to go and be with my family. I had not seen any of my family in person for 6 years.
We are a very large family. I have two brothers and two sisters, and many nieces, nephews, cousins, great nieces great nephews. I am the “baby” of the family, my parents having a 10 year gap between having children, so I am closer in age to my nieces and nephews than maybe is usual.
Unfortunately my older sister Susan is also ill with dementia in a care home, the rest of us are getting a bit worried as my mother had dementia too. I am hoping that all these years of studying Spanish will save me- they say learning another language helps so get those Spanish books out!!!
One of her daughters Kimberly very kindly offered to put me up and so I booked my flight and was ready to go on Saturday the 23rd October to return Friday the 29th. On Saturday the 30th I had a “Conversation Saturday” booked.
On Friday the 22nd I was in class, half prepared for my trip the next day, but knowing I had the afternoon to finish off. I was flying at 10.30 the next morning so I knew it woild be an early start. At around 10 am it started to rain,- quite hard. 30 minutes later it was storming. I had one student in the classroom and one on Zoom, and another one arriving at 11.00 My Zoom student finished at 11 and the one arriving at 11 texted me to say she would come when the rain had abated a little.
Approx 10 minutes late my student in the classroom said “oh look, do you think we should go upstairs” and pointed to the door.
What seemed to be a mini-Tsunami was flooding in under the door.
Within 10 minutes it was up to our knees. I can honestly say we were both terrified. We were shaking and my heart was beating so fast I thought I would have a heart attack. It just happened so fast and there was this sense of total powerlessness at the force of the water coming in. In the 18 years I have been teaching in my basement this has NEVER happened before.
We grabbed what we could and came up the stairs to the living room. Water was coming in from above also as I leave the door open to the sun terrace for my dogs. The other student arrived and I thank God they were here to help me. The street was like a river, with chairs and tables floating down and cars submerged over their number plates.
It really was like a disaster movie. My students and I formed a chain gang, one of them actually wading through the water to get things and pass them up to the next girl, and then to me at the top, to salvage what we could. Again, luckily for me, they were much younger and fitter than me, otherwise I really don t know what I would have done.
The rain slowly subsided, the students went home as it was now safe. The garage was so full of water at one point my dog was swimming around in it like a little shark.
I so nearly decided not to go to the UK. There were supposed to be classes Monday with my other teacher but I did not have time to clear out the basement before leaving at 8 am the next morning. Not only that, physically I knew that I couldn´t. All my clothes I had packed were wet from the water coming from the roof, I dried what I could and took the rest damp to dry once I arrived.
My students messaged me and volunteered to come in on Monday to clean the classroom, I will always be forever grateful for how kind people are.
So I did go to Manchester the next morning.
I am a nervous flyer at the best of times. So many people on the flight not wearing masks did not help. The attitude from the Ryanair head steward was.”I ve been flying all through Covid and havent caught it yet”- Great.
Anyway, I arrived safely.
Although it was a sad occasion it was wonderful to see family and friends after all those years. Very emotional, laughing, crying, so many memories. Looking at photos, reading letters, a very intense time. I was so well looked after by my niece I cannot thank her enough.
The Monday after I arrived I received a text purportedly from NHS test and trace saying I had been in contact with someone with Covid and had to isolate for 10 days. Hmm. Obviously from that Ryanair flight where the steward had assured me I was safe. Maybe it was him that had tested positive?
Anyway I turned my phone off and did a test daily for the rest of my time there. I was always half expecting someone to turn up in a Hasmat suit and arrest me me, but to be quite honest I was not going to isolate for 10 days, miss the funeral and also in fact not be able to come back. I tested negative every day and that had to do I m afraid.
Wednesday, the day of the funeral arrived. We left early as I wanted to call into the care home where my brother had spent his final 2 years and thank the staff. Alexander Lodge. Highly recommended. I had not met them but I had spoken to various of them several times when I had called by telephone. Two lovely girls answered the door and they knew who I was straight away. One of them was Spanish-speaking, and a subscriber to my You Tube channel. Her name is Haymar- Both girls were so nice and had lovely things to say about my brother. That he had a beautiful soul. That was enough to start us off with tears and that´s more or less the tone for the whole day. It had been absolutely pointless to put on our make-up that morning.
Haymar told me that she had many times put on the YouTube videos for Tony to watch and he had known who I was. I will be eternally grateful to her.
Earlier that morning my teacher had messaged me to say they had cleaned the class Monday, but when they had come to class Weds to actually do classes the water had come in again. I could not deal with it that day, I just had to say I m sorry but I could not answer any more.
Then when we got into the car, my son messaged to say that his landlord, a very strange guy with some real issues, had rang the water board to have them cancel the contract and take the meter away. He had no water. This was the end result of a long saga that I cannot even begin to go into here, but which started with a behind the wall water leak in the property that this fool seemed to think in some way was my sons fault for some reason.
He has threatened, insulted, taken illegal photos and videos. He has forged documents, forged signatures, and I have realised he has some severe issues and it is just best not to engage with him but to let the police deal with it.
We have all his threats and insults recorded and a denuncia is pending.
An illegal landlord that has behaved illegally in every way.
I was miles away and on my way to my brothers funeral. However, my friend very kindly went to bring my son home as he could not live without water. Although this seemed a disaster at first this idiot actually did us an enormous favour. I could not have sorted everything when I returned without Jack´s help.
I believe in karma and sometimes things happen for a reason. This actually was the best thing that could have happened so I feel enormous gratitude- If you are reading this- thank you so much.
The other thing that happened was my emails disappeared. If you have a website and you are thinking of changing your domain to another company- my advice would be- don´t do it!! I was not happy with the company I was using so decided to transfer the domain to another company. My bad (though if they would have mentioned just once that this would mean losing my emails- I would not have done it. )
My emails are with the same company but are paid separately so I just thought they would stay. Apparently I should have read the small print on the website. They were immediately cancelled and those emails I have used for over 15 years for both personal and business use. I am currently trying my best to recover them, and my website. I have certainly learnt my lesson.
So finally I arrived home on the Friday to pretty much chaos, my son has a German Shepherd and I have 2 dogs and a cat (which I have now rehomed- Princess Tia does not like cats so that was an accident waiting to happen). Again the flight was a bit fraught as far as mask-wearing was concerned. Note to self- do not fly from Manchester to Alicante on a Friday. I was joined on that flight by members of the “Benidorm Brigade” who all seemed to be Covidiots. No wonder cases are so high in the UK.
The flight attendants seemed to be scared to tell them to put their masks on. The pilot made an announcement many times, even threatening arrest on arrival at the airport, but it made no difference
I was rewarded with some karma though, there and then. One charming (not) woman sitting directly behind me whose every other word began with “f” and ended with “k” knocked her full vodka and orange that had cost her eighteen pounds seventy five pence all over herself. I had not thought her language could be any more colourful but actually it could.
I got up at 6 the following morning and cleaned out the classroom so we could go ahead with the Saturday Conversation class- we made it. I think the students enjoyed it and that is all that matters. Gradually I am getting back to normal. whatever that is- Just dreading the next time it rains.
Thank you for reading.
May your God go with you, see you soon for another instalment- hopefully not so chaotic!!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elprincipecentre/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elprincipecentre/
Twitter: @PrincipeCentre
YouTube: https://youtu.be/fRH-q7OIGaU
PATREON CHANNEL
My Patreon channel has 3 tiers:
- Bronze Star student- 3 euros a month (plus VAT)
In this tier you can access all the extra videos and posts on my Patreon channel which are not on my normal YouTube channel. You can enter competitions, make suggestions, and enter polls.
- Silver Star student- 5 euros a month (plus VAT)
All of the above and also you can participate in the live question and answers/ group classes which will be starting within the next week or so. You can also make special requests for specific videos explaining anything that you are struggling with.
- Gold Star Student- 9 euros a month (plus VAT)
All of the above plus one private one to one Zoom class per month (normal cost 20 euros) to ask personally any doubts you may have, practice pronunciation, or in fact anything you like that you need to advance your Spanish learning.
If any of that appeals to you, please visit the Patreon channel and join up for an economic way of improving your Spanish.You can become a Patron here: ( and remember that you can cancel at any time if you decide that it is not for you- There is no minimum membership)
https://www.patreon.com/learnspanishandenglishwithvicki?fan_landing=true
CONFESSIONS OF A SPANISH TEACHER 