Christmas 2019
The last seven days have been hectic. Last-minute Christmas shopping in Palma, Christmas Day dinner at home with eleven adults and six grandchildren and then on Boxing day Sandy and I flew to the UK for our niece Liann’s wedding on December 28. I have written 47 stories since I started this storytelling exercise. So far I haven’t missed a week. However, this week I have cheated a little so as not to miss my Friday deadline. Each year I write a Christmas letter that I send out instead of a card to family and friends. It’s a very brief round-up of our year and some news about Mallorca, and it’s never more than one side of A4. So this week I am substituting that letter instead of the story, ‘My First Christmas at Sea’, that I was writing but never finished.
Sorry for the repeat to those who already received the letter, but I have added an interesting little snippet at the end that wasn’t in the original. So here is the modified letter.
Christmas letter 2019:
A constant theme in our old journals from 1986, when we first arrived in Mallorca was. ‘Have we done the right thing, is this a mistake, will this end badly’. Well, after all that anxiety, here we are 33 years later, and on Tuesday, November 12, our new grandson Logan Butler Adrover was born, right on schedule at 05:28 hrs. Now Rohan and Silvia have two boys and two girls, and with Tayrne and Javi’s two boys we have a total of six grandchildren.
No way could we have foreseen that when we were novice pioneers all those years ago. However, marvellous as this is. Sandy and I built the Wild Olive to enjoy when we were younger and as our pension fund to sell to downsize when we were too old to look after such a large place. When we started the project, there was no sign of grandchildren, and we certainly weren’t expecting six (to date). One of the reasons we came to Mallorca was so that our children could grow up on this Mediterranean island with all the magic, freedom and memories that entailed. Now we find we are in a bit of a quandary. Some people tell us we should sell our house, buy something smaller, take it easy, do a bit of travelling and let the kids take care of themselves. There is merit in that line of reasoning, but it’s not really the Spanish way. Also, if we did sell up and downsize, then there’s no going back. As pensioners, we wouldn’t purchase another 340 square metre house in the Mallorcan countryside. And, we don’t have the energy for another building project, well maybe a small one is not out of the question. At the moment, except for a few months in the winter, most weekends we have a full house with all the family staying over, plus any friends that might happen by. We eat outside on a large table, on a terrace in the shade of a bougainvillaea canopy. It’s not unusual to have twenty family, friends and an assortment of kids sitting down for lunch or an evening meal. With an oak and pinewood with a treehouse, a wild olive ‘jungle’ with secret trails and hiding places and their own pool, it’s a mystical place for the kids to play in. However, there is a price to pay for this children’s Shangri-La. Whenever I want to do a job, I have to scour the land for spades, hammers, saws and anything else that they find useful at the time. The other night, when they had all gone to bed while driving out to dump the rubbish, there was an almighty bang. I stopped to find I had driven over the handle of my pickax, which had sprung up and hit the side of the car. Walking around to inspect the vehicle, close to the ‘jungle’, I almost fell into a large hole that had been dug for what appeared to be an elephant trap. However, even with these little inconveniences, we are still living the Mediterranean dream. Never-the-less we are getting older, and we will soon have to make a decision about what to do with this place.
Now to Mallorca: This island has changed a great deal since we first landed here in 1986. Mallorca has been invaded so many times, the island absorbs all newcomers and carries on as usual. We were accepted here from the start, but not being fluent in Catalan and its Mallorcan derivative, it was always challenging to navigate the system. Now we can do most things over the internet. We pay our rates and taxes, book medical appointments, carry out online banking. We purchase flight tickets from the low-cost airlines that fly on and off the island daily as Palma airport is now an international hub. We can even pay our parking and speeding fines over the internet. Yes, now we also have traffic wardens and speed cameras. Still, we do get significant discounts to encourage us to pay up.
Another big advantage is we now have the Citizens Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. As residence, we can do anything within the law. We can stand for public office and vote in local municipal elections, stand for and vote for European Members of Parliament. The only thing we can’t do is vote in Spanish national elections.
The Greening of Mallorca: The Balearic islands are going Green, the plan is to phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. By 2025 all-new diesel cars will be taken off the market and tourist driving diesel cars will be banned from the island. The same will go for petrol cars in 2035. All street and road lighting will be replaced by LEDs. Solar panels will be installed on all buildings with roof areas greater than 1,000 mtr² and on car parks, hospitals, supermarkets and sports stadiums. By 2035 fossil fuel power plants will be phased out, and all car hire fleets on the islands will be electrified. The plan is that by 2050, the energy consumed by the four Balearic Islands will be 100% renewable.
In addition to this, Loryc, which was the only car manufacturing company in Mallorca, founded in 1920, has been reopened by the German inventor Charly Bosch. It is now manufacturing cars again in a factory at Son Bugadelles Calvia. The vehicles are all aluminium, hand-built and are made in the style of a 1920s Speedster. However, these cars are powered by the newest electric technology. The company is offering tours to Port Andratx and Esporles by mountain roads through pine forests and centuries-old olive groves in the old Mediterranean touring tradition. We hope this keeps us in the good books of Greta Thunberg.
Back to Christmas: As I said, we had seventeen at The Wild Olive for Christmas dinner. One of our guests was our very good friend Phillip Witcomb, who is a great artist
(http://www.phillipwitcomb.co.uk/)
That is not Phillip’s only claim to fame, but that’s to complex a story for me to tell here, for that you will have to wait for his book and the film about him ‘Firstborn son of Escobar’.
Well, that’s it, out of space again. However, if you would like to follow our adventures in Mallorca and other things we get up to, you can find us on http://the-wild-olive.com
Almost forgot, I was 70 in January. Sandy decided to have a surprise party in July, some chance with social media! Well, it went off great, just like a gathering of the United Nations. No space to write more now.
And so we hope you all had a very Happy Christmas and wish you a wonderful New Year. With all our Love, the ever-growing family Butler in Mallorca.
Sandy, Oscar, Connor, Hector, Danna, Alisha, Logan, Javi, Tayrne, Silvia, Rohan and Bernie.