Sunday, 20th March, 2022
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| The family united on the day of the trial. |
Dear all.
How have you all been? I have lots to tell, so let me start. Because of the trial on 17th March to evict Felipe Turover, our unwanted squatter, I had envisaged an awful week, a week I would have preferred to be erased from my life. However it turned out a lot better than I had imagined, apart from Covid that has now hit us as you will read later. For sure I should have no complaints compared to other people (Ukrainians) but my pain is still valid. After all, it's my life and we have been going through hell as you will know if you follow this blog.
In Ukraine things are getting grimmer and grimmer and I do not see what sort of end we shall see or when that will be. I think there are 3 scenarios: 1) Russia will finally overpower its neighbour but by then the country will be in ruins. If that happened the post war will be very difficult for Putin as Ukrainians hate him now and will rebel under any puppet leader put there by Putin. 2) It might come to stalemate but then could drag on for years or just to a sort of patchy control of the areas that mean most to Putin. 3) Both sides give in, with Russia claiming it has won, even if its troops only overtake the capital and sea ports and claim the disputed areas. Only time will tell but meanwhile thousands are being killed; many, many of them being civilians.
Now back to my tales of the week which has been one of the most challenging of my life.
Last Sunday was a happy day for us. That day I took the family out for a slap up lunch to celebrate my very recent retirement. We wanted to go to Filandón but it was fully booked. Many Spaniards, it appears, go for family lunches on a Sunday. Thus we had to choose another restaurant. Our choice was "Quinto Sabor". It is included in the Michelin Guide but doesn't yet have any stars. It should as its cuisine is very creative and it has various tasting menus. We went for a middle of the road one which we loved. I should have taken more pictures of the food like this one of the opening starters.
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| Just some of the starters |
I love these sort of starters; all very creative and full of explosive taste. Eladio, my husband, is more of a bowl and soup type person but Sunday was my day. Thus we got to taste some amazing food in tiny bits. We had to have a photo also of the two of us celebrating and Oli obliged. I should have looked happier but of course the upcoming trial was in my head as it has been all week. We dared to leave the house that day with FT alone at home and no Lucy. We hardly ever do that but that day we did and we were lucky as he didn't get to know, nor did he leave the house that day. What would the outcome of Thursday's trial be I kept thinking? I had no idea and did not want to raise my hopes so as not to be too disappointed if things went south.
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| Eladio and I at the celebratory lunch last Sunday |
If we all loved the outing and food, Elliot was not impressed. He started off being interested in his surroundings but then began to behave badly making loud noises. He then wanted to breast feed which is becoming tiring for Oli and it was obvious he wasn't going to let us enjoy our meal. So I opted to take him for a walk in his stroller to calm him down. Miracle of miracles, he fell asleep and I came back to the restaurant with a triumphant look on my face. From then on we could eat in peace. Juliet slept throughout until we had finished. She really is no bother at all which is pretty unusual for a 6 month old baby. Here is Eladio having some quality time with her.
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| Eladio and Juliet after our meal at the restaurant last Sunday |
Spanish lunches are long and celebration ones even longer. We had arrived just after 1.30 and didn't leave till around 5 pm but a good time was had by all. But now as I look back I think this is where Covid was caught and finally hit our family.
We came home feeling full and flopped on the bed. I was aghast to hear that an American journalist and acclaimed film maker, 51 year old Brent Renaud was killed in action; i.e. filming the war - he was shot repeatedly by Russian forces who do not discriminate who they slay. His cameraman Juan Arredondo, who survived, said they had tried to cross a bridge to film refugees leaving when they were shot at by Russian forces at a checkpoint. They apparently continued shooting until Brent was dead from a neck gun shot. This happened in Irpin, a suburb of the capital, which has been under heavy fire. His press pass showed he was from The New York Times but in actual fact he was working free lance at the time of his death.
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| The American journalist shot and killed by Russian forces in Ukraine last Sunday |
That day too a warning came to NATO as the Russian forces bombed a Ukrainian military base just 25 kilometres from the Polish border. The US authorities warned Russia that if they fired any neighbour of Ukraine by accident or deliberately Moscow would feel the full force of Nato. That, my friends, is akin to saying they are willing to fight a 3rd World War if any NATO country, like Poland, is attacked. Things really escalated last Sunday.
Later I turned to Outlander to watch the final two episodes of Season 5 which recently aired on Netflix in Spain. I am looking forward to Season 6. That night our dinner was a piece of fruit each after which we watched the news again.
Monday came and I was awake at the unearthly hour of 5.30 am. I couldn't sleep for thinking of everything that had to be done this week for the trial: get an updated medical certificate, an updated bank extract to prove FT has not paid since September, get my phone provider contract so as to get the whatsapps with "he who shall not be mentioned" certified by a notary in case they were rejected in court and they are my main evidence as well as get an appointment with the notary. We also had to go to the court again that day to see the clerk Luis to check all was on schedule for Thursday.
It was the wettest day in a long time and off we went again, Oli, Juliet and I, to see "Luis" the court clerk. We were worried that opposition from FT's lawyer would suspend the trial. We were very relieved to hear from Luis it wouldn't. As we walked out that day our hopes were lifted but I remained cautious as anything could go wrong. It all depended on the judge. We had had experience with 2 left wing women judges who dashed our hopes each time so we worried very much that it would be the same again. Wow what power they have. It was then panic stations to get all the documents needed for the notary to certify my whatsapp chat with "him" since he arrived on 7th January 2021 to now. The problem was getting a copy of my contract with Yoigo but I got it "in extremis". We were at the notary by 1 but unfortunately the notary himself wasn't there. I begged the clerk for the certificate to be issued before Thursday.
I didn't realise until lunchtime that Monday was 14th March and marked the second anniversary of the first state of alarm and lockdown in Spain because of Covid. I look back with horror at what we have lived through. Amazingly, none of us ever caught it (until now, ouch) or we don't think we did. At the time there were just under 6000 cases and 136 deaths in Spain. 2 years later the figures today are just over 11 million and 100 thousand dead. We could never have envisaged this. We could never have envisaged either that vaccines would come so soon. Without them, numbers worldwide would probably be similar to those of Spanish flu over a century ago. This doesn't mean to say that Covid has gone away and the pandemic is over. By no means, but at least we know how to deal with it better now. In most countries Covid is under control but funnily enough it is not in the country where it emerged from; China. It is on the rise there now and I wonder why? Well, because all their lockdowns just contained the virus and possibly because the Chinese vaccines are simply not as good as the likes of Pfizer, etc. We also know that we shall just have to live with Covid like we do with the common cold or flu but should still be very cautious.
Covid no longer dominates the news. Today it is Putin's war in Ukraine and the terrible economic consequences for the whole world. This is going to dominate our lives for a long time, even if Russia finally wins this terrible war because it will not win the post war. Ukrainians will not submit to Putin's dictatorship.
One woman was very brave this week in Russia. Marina Ovssyannikova, an editor for the state controlled Channel One TV station, waved a poster behind the presenter saying "No war, stop the war. Don't believe the propaganda. They lie to you here. Russians against war".
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| Marina Ovssyannikova waving an anti war and anti propaganda banner |
You can see the moment here which no doubt millions of Russians zombied into pro Putin followers by state controlled media such as Channel One, also saw it too. Previously she recorded a video explaining her action saying what is happening in Ukraine is a crime. She urged her fellow countrymen to go out and protest saying the police could not arrest them all. She was arrested of course and for 24 hours or so we knew nothing. On Tuesday she appeared after being given a small fine. However that doesn't mean she won't face jail. That's why I say she is terribly brave. I wish she could know that her action is now known about world wide. I bet Putin is furious. He cannot control all his people.
He knows he is not yet winning the war so he intensified the bombardments this week mostly on civilians. It is sickening to watch. It is sickening to see old and infirm people being lifted out of bombed apartment blocks or to know that the pregnant woman whose image was broadcast everywhere after the bombing of the maternity hospital in Mariupol, died, as did her baby.
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| This poor pregnant woman being carried out after the bomb on the maternity unit in Mariupol has since died as has her baby. |
That was you Putin. You are as bad as Stalin and Hitler. I sincerely hope one day you will be put away for crimes of genocide. Meanwhile you are bombarding an innocent nation in the same way you did in Syria. I hate you for what you are doing. I don't know what is going on in your head but it's not good. But one thing is for sure, the Ukrainians will hate Russia forever now and Russia will become a pariah state thanks to you. I am disgusted and furious.
On Monday I had a Facetime call with our dear friends Kathy and Phil. Of course I gave them updates on the trial and of course we spoke about the war. Thankfully we had a few laughs too. I need a reason to smile these days. This week has been especially tough.
Again that night I slept badly mostly because of thoughts of the trial. I was awake early on Tuesday morning and had two appointments that day. At 11, I had to be at the bank and at 12.40 at the health centre. That took up most of the morning and it was not easy to get the two documents I needed for the trial; an updated medical certificate of the status of my health after suffering our horrible squatter and a bank extract of income since he arrived to prove he hasn't paid since September. I felt quite a champion when I came home with the coveted documents. But then I got an email from our lawyers that sent a chill down my spine. It was basically to tell me that the court case will be nothing like those we see on TV. She was really telling me that it was going to be a horrible experience. I didn't know it then but she would be wrong. Since that moment I became terrified and was not able to concentrate on anything. All I wanted was for this week to be erased from my life and for the trial to be over. I was petrified of it.
On a different note something really strange happened that day with the weather. Red dust from the sand of the Sahara desert blew all across Africa to Spain and it even reached Paris and Geneva. I've been told too that it is already in the UK. That morning there was a brownish red coat of sand dust on everything around us. I had never seen anything like it in Madrid. It is a phenomenon seen a lot in the Canary Islands but hardly ever in Madrid. In Spain they call it "calima" (calima comes from the Spanish word "haze" and causes dust and sand brought on from high winds from Africa aka a sand storm). I didn't really know the term for this type of weather and the best I could find when I googled it was "blood weather" - literally dust coming from the sky brought on I suppose by a sand storm. The colour is reddish brown so I suppose that's why it's sometimes called "blood weather". It was certainly bloody weather in the colloquial sense. Everything looked ghastly, especially the sky which was completely clouded. I've only really ever seen sky like that in India and that is from persistent pollution there. It is said that the "calima" is also pollution. In some areas of Spain it was so bad people were told to stay indoors or wear masks if they had to go out. Calima can cause eye irritation and give you a cough. Eladio who has particularly sensitive eyes felt that more than me. The lawyer of red sand dust made everything so dirty I mused that only normal rain could wash it away. For the record I took these two pictures of our car that day just as we left the house.
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| What our car looked like on Tuesday morning thanks to the dust from the Saharan dessert |
The car is so covered in the dust you can't see Eladio at the wheel. I think that horrible weather put even more of a damper on my mood that day and I cannot envisage living somewhere with grey or polluted skies, so used I am to Spanish sunshine and clear skies.
There were no clear skies in Ukraine that day nor have there been since Putin invaded on that terrible day, 24th February. That day the number of refugees went up to 3 million. That day the PMs of the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland - don't ask me to tell you their names - got on a train to Kiev to bravely meet up with Zelensky to show their or EU support. We all support him but we cannot intervene; just watch as Putin bombs civilians. All we can do is send military support and humanitarian aid and take in refugees as well as impose the most draconian sanctions ever seen on Russia. It is so frustrating. There were more so called peace talks that day between Russia and Ukraine and that day, sadly, Zelensky announced Ukraine would never join NATO - one of Russia's main conditions. That is so unfair. All through the peace talks, fierce bombing continued. Two more journalists died (from Fox News) and so far we heard 97 Ukrainian children have been killed. The Russians even went as far as kidnapping a whole hospital in poor Mariupol. Why??? They are doing pretty much the same in Chernobyl which is even more frightening. A 36 hour curfew was imposed on Kyiv which braced itself for more bombing. But those left in the capital are not safe in their homes. How terrible to wake up in the middle of the night and find the block of flats you live in has been bombed. So far Russia's main objectives have been the East of Ukraine and the capital as well as sea ports - not yet Odessa - but now they are bombing areas near Lviv in the west. Lviv was once called Lemberg and is apparently a beautiful city. Lviv until that day had been a safe haven for refugees. Not so much anymore. Is there no limit to Putin's war and his ambitions of expansion and making Ukraine fall to its knees. Even if they don't win, they will never give in to his tyranny and they shouldn't. How brave they are. Again I say "Slava Ukraini".
Tuesday was not a good day but could never be as bad as Thursday. If I had been busy in the morning on my paper chase, I rested in the afternoon watching a very addictive British series (a whodunnit) called Liar. I highly recommend it. The only drawback is that it was so addictive I had to binge watch it till the end and didn't go to sleep until past 2 in the morning. The plot was great but also the locations; ones I had never seen. Forever in the background are the salt marshes at the Blackwater Estuary near Tollesbury in Essex. I read somewhere that from the sky they resemble the patterns of the human brain. Whoever chose the location for the series did a great job.
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| Marsh land near Tollesbury in Essex, a great setting for the thriller series Liar |
Wednesday dawned and the sky was still orange and the dust of sand was still everywhere. That morning I had to go to the notary to get the whatsapps messages with "him" certified. That was not easy. In the end I went 3 times. What I did not expect was that it would cost 314 euros!!! At least though finally my paper chase was over. Eladio wonders now what I am going to do with my time now that it is over. Meanwhile our lawyer was negotiating with his lawyer who had rung to make an out of court settlement. We would not agree to any settlement with a proven liar I'm afraid. He also wanted a new set of keys but we refused. He obviously did not want to appear in court but we wanted to see him there.
I was on edge the whole day and shattered from so little sleep. I had and have the time to sleep but just can't manage to get the amount I need. I told my dear friend Amanda how I was feeling in our Skype call that afternoon which I think helped to calm me down. At least I got everything off my chest. Our conversation of course turned to world events and we remarked just how awful these last few years have been; Covid, the war in Ukraine and on a personal side, our damned squatter.
That day as peace talks were held between the two sides, with Zelensky giving in to becoming a neutral state, Biden called Putin a "war criminal". Too right. That day, the Russians bombed a theatre with hundreds sheltering there and to top it all they bombed a queue of people, killing ten, in a bread queue!!! It could hardly get worse. It was clearly a civilian building and the Ukrainians for precaution had written the word children in big white letters all around it. The word for children in Russian and I suppose Ukrainian is "dieti"; a word I am familiar with from whenever my mother talked about George and I when we were children. Putin didn't care and then Russian state TV said it was the work of the Ukrainians. How dare they? There were up to 2000 refugees inside and so far only 150 people have been pulled out alive. Thankfully it seems few have died but I call that an attempted massacre and that means that Putin is not only a war criminal but a mass murderer!
But our day brightened up when Suzy arrived from Alicante. We hadn't seen her since November when my father died. She had come to give us morale support at the trial and for Fathers' Day yesterday. We had a lovely meal together prepared by Lucy and went to bed early. For once I fell asleep early but woke up twice. In the end I got up at 4.45 am!!!!
Thursday was going to be a horrible day. I had resigned myself to that but actually it turned out a lot better. The trial was scheduled for 9.40 and we arrived early at 8.45 or so. Eladio and I went with Suzy and Olivia would be there as soon as she had taken Elliot to day care. Already there were TV cameras. 4 of the 5 biggest nationwide stations came; TVE, Tele 5, Antena 3 and Telemadrid. Conspicuously absent was the left wing pro Government station, La Sexta. Well, they are on the side of squatters aren't they? That cheered me up but not our lawyer Cristina. Lawyers don't like the press and she had advised us against calling them saying the judge might not like it. She is wrong as it is precisely the Spanish media we have to thank for making this case a high profile one. All high profile cases generally go to the top of the queue as was our case. Without our media campaign I am convinced we would still be waiting for justice to move. We went for a coffee and went over all possible questions that would be fired mainly at me. But then something happened which I didn't expect; another offer of agreement from FT's lawyer; this time that he would leave on 30th March and would not demand keys. We still weren't sure so we let our lawyers meet with the judge while we waited outside. Waiting outside too was the culprit, FT looking sheepish to say the least. Oli caught him on camera.
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| FT at the courts on Thursday |
They then came out with an offer we couldn't refuse. In a nutshell it was this: we pardon the debt, he leaves on 30th March. If he doesn't he will get evicted on 4th April and if that happens he would have to pay the debt of over 6000 euros. The added bonus was that he would only be allowed to appeal once out of our house. It seemed for once we had been assigned a sensible and mature judge. He looked pretty senior too. This agreement would be written up by him giving it maximum legal status. That meant there would be no trial as such. We would have liked to see him tried and convicted but would have little satisfaction. Besides, it could go on for months and months if he appealed, declared himself "vulnerable", etc. Also, being a civil, not a penal trial, his misdemeanor would not even be included in his criminal records and we would never get the money anyway as he would be declared insolvent. Thus, grudgingly, we accepted. It wasn't the outcome we wanted as he has got off scot free and can continue to do so elsewhere as the law protects him. But at least it looked like we had a nearly watertight agreement with the blessing of a judge. Thus we agreed and then all went in this time. He sat on the same bench as me but we did not look at each other. The whole thing was very quick and was basically to see if we were all in agreement. As we all walked out Felipe Turover, in a sort of modern day Uriah Heep gestured, bowed his head to the judge and said something like "thank you your honour". I thought that very cynical.
Oli was not with us as she wasn't allowed in but used the time to update the journalists. Suzy, meanwhile, bless her, took care of Juliet. Once downstairs and outside I saw all the TV cameras following Felipe and his pro bono lawyer as they walked down the street. The lawyer told the press there was an agreement and "no comment". We had plenty of comments though. I had 4 interviews, 3 of them live and the one with TVE was over 10 minutes long.
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| On TV . what a battle worn face I have |
Everyone was saying congratulations as if we had won. We hadn't won as justice was not served but at least we had a pretty watertight agreement and high hopes he will finally go on 30th March. It felt a bitter sweet end to a horrible nightmare. There was relief but also anger that the law permits criminals like him to get off scot free and even provides them with free legal services while we, law abiding citizens, have to protect ourselves and pay steep legal fees and at the same time house them for free. It's not the money I am disappointed about as I know he will never be able to pay, just the fact that the law is completely in his favour. That's not fair is it? The Times correspondent who I spoke to that day said it was "outrageous". It was but at least it has given us peace. Finally he will go and we will have our lives back. PD truth is though I will only believe it and be able to sigh a breath of relief once I see him go. Until then I still have my worries.
Later in the day I heard of a case a neighbour is suffering. She has 2 flats which she rents and has had squatters in them for 2 years now with no sign of them going anytime soon. The system and justice in Spain sucks. On the other hand, we got a good judge. The court clerk told me in no uncertain terms that an agreement, however bad it was, was far better than a trial. It seems he is right. This was not the outcome I had ever envisaged but it gave us hope. As soon as I had finished the interviews, two of which were with my very eloquent daughter Olivia who I cannot stop thanking for all her support, I answered a call from Fernando, the journalist from El País, Spain's top newspaper. It was he who first wrote the article about our squatter if you remember. He had seen me on TVE and wanted to do a follow up story. I was happy for him to do so. This is it (in Spanish). The article will remain in the annals of internet forever, unlike TV coverage. I am eternally grateful to him for revealing the story. So many unjust stories never get to the press but ours did; mostly of course because of our connections and media know how. There Oli played a crucial role. So thank you Fernando again. The only bit I don't agree with you about in your article is when you say the PR campaign did not work. It did Fernando as without it our case would be lying in some pile collecting dust at the horrible courts in Móstoles, that nondescript suburb of Madrid. And you played your part; a very big part.
We were home by 12, coffee time and it was wonderful for the four of us to be together again and spend quality time as a family. It's not often the four of us are together. Suzy was especially delighted to be reunited with Juliet as she would be with Elliot later in the week.
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| Suzy and Juliet - happy to be reunited |
But all we could talk about was the case and that will be so for some time now. FT returned and had the audacity to ring the gate bell and expect us to open it (he doesn't have keys - he lost them - to get out he has to climb over the gate). Of course we didn't answer. After climbing the gate he rang the door bell. We wanted him to fester outside in the cold but Eladio gave in. Oli opened the door though and had a few words to say to him. I won't repeat them as they are a bit too rude to write in this post haha. But she got her say. He didn't reply.
I decided we all deserved a slap up lunch and ordered food from a Moroccan restaurant we like, El Tuareg. The girls and I, including Juliet who slept throughout our ordeal - went to pick it up and as usual I had bought too much.
Oli left at around 4.30 to pick up Elliot and we all retired to rest. I was answering whatsapps most of the afternoon and spoke to my dear friends Sandra and Amanda. I also watched a bit of All creatures great and small which is so soothing and beautifully distracting. Eladio told me a parcel had arrived from Amazon just before dinner. I told him it was for him - highly unusual. I had bought him a pair of dark blue suede brogue shoes to replace a pair he had lost, we don't know how. It was supposed to be a fathers' day present and he was delighted. I hardly ever buy him anything and was happy to see him pleased. We had dinner together in peace and then I had some quality time with Suzy. There was time to watch the news. The story in the Ukraine continues and I am appalled as I watch all the destruction of civilian buildings and the massacre of the people.
You would have thought I would have slept better that night but there was little improvement despite taking 2 sleeping pills. I woke up at 6.15 on Friday morning, the first day of the beginning of the end of our nightmare. I spent the whole morning with Suzy. We went food shopping and on errands and had a coffee together at Alverán. I also went to the chemist to get a couple of lateral flow tests as Eladio had a cold and I wanted to rule out Covid. It was after lunch that we did the test. Here he is doing it.
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| Eladio doing the Covid test on Friday |
We had dinner together, Eladio insisting on sitting at the end of our very large dining room table. He didn't seem too unwell with only mild cold symptoms. Miguel though felt fatigue. Let's see how they develop. We shall all have to test ourselves frequently over the next few days.
Eladio thought it best we sleep in different rooms. I thus moved into Oli's room which she never uses and actually had a glorious night. I could watch what I wanted and sleeping on my own was beneficial. I got the best night's sleep in a long time.
Saturday was fathers' day. My thoughts turned to my dear father, Courtenay Lloyd, who died aged 102 on 8th November last. Here is a photo of us together which I posted a year ago on fathers' day. I think of him every day but of course I probably felt his loss more yesterday.
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| With my adored father |
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| Empty milk shelves at Carrefour yesterday |
I arrived at Suzy's friend's house in the rich town of Pozuelo. We had time for a coffee together before coming home for lunch. I had made stuffed shoulder of lamb which Eladio was supposed to monitor in the oven - it came out a bit dry but was delicious.
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| Lunch on Saturday |
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| Cooking again. |
This morning though I had an hour for breakfast on my own and Wordle of course. Elliot woke up at 8.30 and came downstairs with a big smile on his face. He did not remember we had both had a bad night I suppose. Now I have to give him his breakfast so will leave you now until next Sunday.
Let's see what next week brings - hopefully no more Covid. Cheers till then,
All the best Masha
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