Domino

well put Jacky, is it all your own work or did you get some help from one of your gardeners ??

megmet

Well I can't pass comment on the rest of them but James Young the Chinese man near the end that you see on his two million pound yacht is a personal friend of ours!

James and his wife Lynne are two of the nicest people you could ever wish to know, he came from nothing and worked very hard to build his business, he absolutely deserves his wealth and lifestyle now.
Both he and his wife despite all the wealthy trappings are as ordinary as the rest of use, they are equally at home having a BBQ at our small house as they make us feel at their huge villa in the Marbella hills.

They are just a lovely couple who happen to have money but have enough class not to push it in peoples faces, you really should not judge a book by it's cover!

steviedeluxe

Fair comment.
Just seems strange to me that people choose to pay extra to live among others they perceive as rich. Although the views (like many places in Spain) certainly seem spectacular.

Mercedes

Hi Jacki. All year around different veggies/fruits are grown, so it's always fresh stuff, no chemicals are used. I just have the fruit trees, my neighbour has a bigger plot of a few acres so he's into all the natural stuff, I just get invited around alot to eat it I didn't buy the house/property to be a farmer I just have the fruit trees, good job as I don't have green fingers.. I live amongst the natives, who are down to earth, and I'm not far from the hub of things.

As for the water, I've got mountains directly behind me and state forests, not a farmer in sight for about 20 miles where my water source comes from, so my water isn't contaminated, in 9 years never had a problem. Plus my neighbours son works as a tester for the water board and we have great water here....maybe the odd frog may have peed in it somewhere.

Domino

I thought such terms went out with the colonies, what would your nice neighbours think if they knew what you were saying.?

how do you pay them for all their largesse - with beads and shiny baubles ??

HBG

Due to my lack of gardening skills I've managed to kill off two apricot trees, two pear trees, and a palm tree over the years despite using different Spanish gardeners to help me.

I'm great at growing Mimosa bushes that grow like wildfire and most of my gardening time is spent cutting them down. A neighbour behind me complains when they grow too high and take his light away, yet the cheeky sod has got a three-metre satellite dish for me to admire when I go round the back, which I don't often do.

The neighbour has got a funny aerial on his roof as well, I'm sure he's a spy of sorts. And he's got a Korean car.

Domino

how "funny", what does it look like ?

viewed a house a few weeks ago with an aerial on the roof, thought I could discuss it with the seller - turned out it was there when he bought house 7 years ago, thought he knew where the down lead was but that was it.

<<edit>> how sure are you it is yuo killing off those trees ? If they are causing "wooding" for his satellite dish it may be him

HBG

The funny aerial looks like a periscope with a microwave thing at the end, which swivels around, albeit very slowly.

Come to think of it, my trees started dying at around the same time the giant satellite dish was installed, I can't use a wireless modem either, my anti-virus programme detects a million threats a second if I try.

Oh, and the satellite dish is a motorised one, God knows what programmes he is able to receive, I would imagine thousands of them. And strangely enough the Mimosa bushes are clustered around the nearest point to the dish and boy, do they grow.

Domino

outstation for the CIA and GCHQ ?

that aerial "sounds like" a telephone, except they are usually fixed

funny the mimosas being closest grow when the others die, although if the dish isnt actually pointing at them because they are on the side could be a reason.
you would need to note the positions the dish is at rest to work out the sat location and its duty.

the wireless modem problem may be because he is transmitting on the dish, but you can only tell by the difference in the LNB shape and size.

HBG

Funnily enough when I last spoke to the guy around ten years ago, he told me his son worked for GCHQ, I had forgotten about that. I've just been round the back to have a look at the LNB but the dish is now facing away from me. Maybe he's on this forum?

Mercedes

Depends on how you view it, I also refer to the Brits as natives when I live in UK so anyone who knows me wouldn't think anything of it. People refer to themselves a being a native of a country or a city. I think of my neighbours as friends and adopted family and vise versa. So they would know I didn't mean any offence. I also jokingly call myself a bloody foreigner here, for most of my adult life outside UK I'm considered a foreigner and immigrant in any country I've lived in. Many natives of countries tend to consider themselve more superior than the immigrants who go there. .So bottom line is all of of us Brits living in Spain are immigrants and bloody foreigners, lol.

Domino

That only applies with Brits - who are superior to any and all in their own land or when abroad. Shouting and stamping their little feet when Johnnie Foreigner can't understand "simple English",

Mercedes

Well with the amount of organised criminals etc over here, maybe they're monitoring all the expats

HBG

You're not that far out. I remember a gang of Albanians who targeted rich people on the Costa Blanca. I knew one of their targets vaguely, a Spanish developer who built half the place, a whole town was named after him.

He was driven around by a chauffeur in a white Bentley and lived in a mansion. They got him, broke in and tied up the chauffeur/bodyguard, then tortured the man and his wife until they opened the safe.

The police found the gang eventually and recovered an unbelievable amount of cash and jewellery which was in the process of being shipped back to the Balkans.

Mercedes

Well I was told years ago that Marbella awas one of the worlds hubs of organised crime and it wouldn't surprise me. Probably why I keep away from all nationalities of expats, and prefer the Spanish villages, I know what is around me more. If people show their wealth and are flashy with it, they are going to be a target. Why some millionires aren't so showy and drive around in old bangers lol. One of my team used to work at GCHQ in comms, interesting guy, amazing what you can do with a mobile phone etc.