Pepe and Gaynor (1)

We met Pepe and Gaynor some years ago.

She's Welsh but met Pepe when she was living in America. He's Hispano-American.

I've lost track of the number of houses they have bought - and sold - in the last five years. Usually through the local church club that arranges English lessons for unsuspecting new ex-pats.

Glad I took my English lessons over the fence with the Spanish neighbours.

Pepe and Gaynor are good company. We usually meet them in the street as we tend to dance round each other.

"I would so like to look inside your house" she said one day as though I invite every toerag off the street to look at my untidy home. "We were quite interested in buying it before you did but we never got to see inside." You didn't have enough money sweetheart.

Later.....

"We sold our house to some friends who had always admired our place". Hah! And what have the said friends been saying ever since about this house? And about you?

Recently, for some strange reason, Gaynor has had a bizarre urge to return to the (well-off) parts of the valleys. She has even bought a house there. And Pepe being such a dab hand at DIY has managed to restore it so that they made a fortune on it. Of course.

Now they just rent here in the winter. I'm sure the fact that they aren't buying (or so they say) is nothing to do with the fact that they want to avoid Spanish Capital Gains Tax for Non-Residents. Which they have avoided on most of their previous sales.

And having flogged the said place in the valleys, they are now upwardly mobile and looking at the south-east. "Only something modest of course".

Of course.

Funnily when we met them today and we got one of the many stories about their house-buying activities (and inquisitions about what we were doing), Pepe was silent. He tends to shut up when she is on a roll. And she normally goes bright red.

Anyway, we like them. For five or ten minutes chat in the street.