Saturday, September 24, 2011

Filming

Hooray for some exciting news! On 27th July we had a Canadian film crew here to film our home for a TV show, called "Live Here, Buy This!" The show asks Canadian and American home owners where they fantasize about living, and about what kind of lifestyle they imagine themselves living in, in these places. The film producers chose our house as one of them :-) The crew also filmed in Cordoba as well as the surrounding areas near our home too, as part of the show. The program is aired in Canada in spring 2012, and then sold on to America and other countries after this.

The exciting day arrived, and an estate agent came along with her daughter who was to be discussing our home with the presenter of the show, the lovely Shantelle Canzanese, on camera, who was gorgeous in every way, I guess Canada's answer to Kirstie Alsop, although younger and prettier.... sorry Kirstie (I'm sure she does n't read my blog!) The morning began with a very quick hello, and the crew were shown all around, where they quickly made up their minds which parts they wanted to film in. The mornings filming got off to a quick start and filming began outside the casita, and far too close to the adolescent boy alpacas! As the camera started rolling they thought "action" was a sign for them to all start piggy backing around the field, orgling at the top of their voices. Ohhhhh the embarrassment, I had to put the hose on them, and luckily they soon calmed down.

The first part of the morning was taken up by discussing our home, whilst they walked around it, and the temperature just got hotter, and hotter, and hotter. The poor sound man had a touch of "man flu" when he arrived and would n't even shake our hands, and the poor guy felt worse and worse as the day went on, eventually he jumped in the pool and cooled down, and seemed to feel much better for it. I think it was possibly the hottest day of the year, certainly up to aproximatly 46 degrees!

Lunch was discussed prior to the day, and we were all going out for lunch together, until of course everyone realised on arriving that we are not a short walk to the nearest restaurant, so Alan and I drove into town and bought some lovely salad etc. and we made a lovely lunch for us all. It was too hot to eat outside, even in the shade, so we ate in the big kitchen with fans on us.

Of course the kitchen had been cleaned to within an inch of it's life, and had to be done again as there were still the "beauty shots" to be taken. We were told our house would look "beautiful and sexy" fantastic, so we all got stuck in. Shantelle tried to wash up but that was Alan's department, and then she wanted to mop the floor for us! In the end we both allowed Ken Seeback the director of the filming to mop the floor bless him. He has certainly been well trained! The filming recommenced after lunch, phew I did feel sorry for them as the temperature went up and up!

After lunch Alan and I were told they wanted us to do a 10 second piece to camera, stated why we liked living in Spain. If any of our friends asked us that, we would ramble on for hours, I'm sure, but the fact that we had to do it in front of the camera was a whole different story. It took about four takes and of course were encouraged to smile and look happy whilst talking to the camera. I'm pretty sure a lot of gobble-dee-goop came out of my mouth, and it sure was n't Spanish. However any of my dancey friends will be very pleased to hear that although I was only being filmed from the shoulders up, I was standing in an excellent third position.

It was a great day and the film crew were all lovely. Even the sound man gave us a big hug on leaving. In fact if any of you are on facebook you can "Like" the page of the show "Life here, buy this!


Lunch time!

Cassandra and her lady bits!

Having had the awful worry with Cassandra and flystrike, we are as you can imagine extra vigilant with all our animals at the moment. We were still putting cream on Cassandra and then noticed another swelling, the "ladybits" again, but on the other side, we did nt know what it was, so the first thought was to phone our vet. It was nearly 10pm on a Saturday evening, plus we knew he was very soon going on holiday, if he had not already left. Luckily he had not gone, but we suggested we took a photo, and emailed it to him, so he could have a look and see if he could diagnose the problem. He said sure no problem. We got there and him and his wife were all dressed up to go out, but as ever he was more than happy to help. He felt she could have been stung, or just had an inflamed area. Nothing too much to worry about. he gave us a prescription for a steroid cream. So off we trot to the out of hours pharmacy, As we turned into the main high Street, we were met with a policeman, blowing away at his whistle, directing the crowds away from the town centre, and the away from where we wanted to go. It must have been a religious festival that we did n't know about, and there was a beautiful effigy being carried out of the church, with the locals all in their finery watching . We followed the road round in the direction we were hastily pointed to, and found and got stuck in a wedding party,just as they were coming out of the church. Weddings are very often held during the late evening here as the temperature tends to reach at least 40 degrees most summer afternoons, so the locals enjoy the slightly balmy evenings. Nightmare upon nightmare we then had to take the tiny roads around the town. When we first moved here we had a little drive round some of the tiny streets, and after driving round for about half an hour, we were approached by a man on a motor bike and shown the way out... how embarrassing! We had actually had guests do the same thing and been guided out too! Well surprise surprise we came out at the first church and the effigy had hardly moved, so we decided to call it a night, and make our way home. Cassandra's cream could wait until the following morning. This we did and got caught up in a local cycle race, never a dull moment here hahaha!


Our lovely little town of Montoro

Rafas poorly foot returns, with avengeance :(

All our alpaca problems all seemed to happen within about a month, and seemed to flit from one problem to another so I am sorry if this part of the blog seems a little disjointed.

Well the grey boys had been moved and caused a mini orgy, but the other three boys Rafa, Galaxy and Santa missed the other boys so much, we moved them very soon afterwards. On reflection we should have given Rafa's foot a little more time to heal, however obviously we thought we had. So the boys all had access to a huge open space, basically three paddocks, where at least we thought they could have space. Not on your Nellie they are all still joined at the hip, and still as blooming frisky!

Of course we kept an eye on Rafa's foot. We made up a small pen to feed the boys in at dinner time, to we could keep an eye on it, and for a couple of days it seemed fine, it actually looked like it was healing nicely. He was n't limping, just bouncing along with all the others, usually first, when we came in through the gate, shaking our bucket to let them know it was dinner time. A few days past and we thought we should get hold of him and have a good look, when to our horror we saw a little maggott between his toes. FLYSTRIKE AGAIN! We were devastated!!!

Alan had watched Andres deal with Cassandra's flystrike problem, and was confident who could deal with it, and he did, extremely well. Poor Rafa was obviously in a lot of pain and discomfort whist Alan one by one removed the pesky little blighters! At one point Alan had gone to get fresh water and Rafa tried to jump a hurdle and I got a rather nasty bruise and scratch from his nail as I think I may have caught him, mid jump. Poor little fella. For days we checked it two or 3 times a day and treated it with antibiotic cream. A few days later you could tell it was feeling a lot better as he would let Alan lift his foot, and have a good look without him struggling. I was very proud of Alan, I'm not sure I could have dealt with it!

Rafa going for a walk one day!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Alpaca Orgy!

As you may have read, in my last blog, because of the fighting due to being a little frisky we decided we needed to move the boys, that have been in a rather small area since shearing, hence the fighting I'm sure, so we walked Marcus and Eduardo around on leads, having of course penned the girls in through the girls paddock, and another small paddock to a large area with some grass and weeds, and our plan was to give them a few days on their own then bring round the other three boys. So we did that and went shopping. A couple of hours later we drove up our little track and turned the corner where we can see the girls, usually sunbathing and we were faced with a bloody alpaca orgy!!! There were the three girls sitting in a row all facing the same way, the two outside girls Cassandra (typical) and Lily with a male on top and Bermuda sitting in the middle of them waiting for her turn. BLOODY HELL! So who knows, we may have babies next year. Never a dull moment here eh haha!