Changing Places Week 162 W/C 29th March 2009

There are people you meet in your life that manage to achieve iconic status and give all something to aspire to.  That is how we felt whilst joining Elena Davis for her celebration in Soller last week.  Elena told her story in a book published last year `Witches, Oranges and Slingers' which tells of her arrival in Majorca 50 years ago and her life in the `hidden valley'.  She has done many things in a long, eventful life but we were gathered in the bar that was the home of her English library for many years. Each week the library would be open and books exchanged.  Of course the library became much more than that and was the place were friendships were made and broken and advice sought.  New settlers to the Soller region learnt much both from Elena and people they met over books and coffee.  Elena arrived here for a visit and is still here 50 years later.  These days she has exchanged her Fornalutz house for an apartment in the centre of Soller where from her eyrie (penthouse) she can keep a watchful eye on the goings on in our town.  The party was to mark the anniversary of her arrival and celebrate life in this beautiful place.

 Everyone has an `Elena' story and ours was that we arrived on holiday in Fornalutz thirty years ago with four young children and stayed in the house adjoining hers.  The quietness of her book laden home was rudely shattered by our noisy brood until one day we headed off in an old bone shaker jeep over the mountains to visit friends in Pollensa.
One child developed an ear infection and we ended up staying there for a few days until the antibiotics worked.  On our return we met a formidable Elena who had alerted both friends and police of our disappearance.  We had caused concern and the telephone lines between Fornalutz and North London were singing.  Her peace was soon shattered again by our return and we like to think that after all these years she has forgiven us - she did invite us to her party after all. I am sure in those days she didn't have us down as people who would, years later join her in making Soller our home.

Our communication system has been in disarray and our telephone connected itself to an automatic alarm system... Every few minutes the phone would ring and a voice would tell of an alarm going off in the casa of a Senor Navarro.  Telefonica were duly informed of the situation and told us that our problem would be dealt with within 48 hours and in the meantime - just take the phone off the hook.  Ten minutes later the engineer was knocking on the front door delighted to have some work to do.  The fact that he couldn't solve the problem was neither here or there - the prompt service was amazing.   There is a large telfonica building on the edge of town and now we have a picture of the engineers sitting there waiting for the phone to ring so that they can be the fastest engineers in the Spain.

Anyone For Tennis? - is the advert that Matthew (son in law) places in the paper each week.  Last week he was booked by a family that had booked their holiday around him and his availability to play tennis with them.  They found a wonderful villa with its own tennis court and to have their own coach was a holiday treat.  The coincidences of life meant that the people all came from North London and one had lived moments from Matthew's family home.  The conversations about relocation were long and detailed as they had their own North London lad playing tennis with them apparently `living the dream'.  The `dream' of course involves tennis, travel company representation, kitchen fitting, customer service on the Palma cruise ships and any other jobs that can be fitted into the day.  From the uncertain life in banking in London that they were returning to the flexibility of Matthew's Majorcan life seemed very appealing. He, on the other hand, is just very fit and rather tired...
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