Why the UK media is a real pain to expats in Spain

I KNOW first-hand how unscrupulous newspapers can distort reality to stir up controversy. Those of us who tuned in last Thursday to Trouble Abroad, ITV1’s look at the struggles of expatriot life, discovered that television cameras can twist facts even more glaringly. In fact, a canny director can do just about anything to distort reality. Even make a spacious tree-lined development of upmarket villas look like Beirut after a civil war. Well, perhaps not quite that grotty – but certainly scally-in-the-alley territory.According to series director Deborah Lovett, the intention was to focus on bubbly Essex girl Claire Tyson’s struggle to make a success of running a Costa Blanca bar in a bleak ­economic climate.Unfortunately filming at Rayz Bar in El Raso, Guardamar, ended some weeks before the most dramatic event of last summer, Ms Tyson’s sudden return to the UK. Until then, she had been a popular figure in the El Raso community – but it rankled with some when she left without saying goodbye to her staff, who tell me she’s never been in touch to this day.Claire insists the emotion of  saying farewell to her friends would have distressed her too much. Make your own judgement on that one – I prefer to remember the effervescent personality whose infectious laugh was always, you might say, a Rayz of Sunshine.

CLAIRE TYSON

 Unfortunately, those Rayz clouded over when one of Claire’s waitresses announced on camera that El Raso was like ‘a council estate in the sun’. Cameras panned across empty streets, focused on a lone torn canopy – and in a few seconds of primetime TV probably  lost the Spanish property market half its annual sales. to Brits. Millions of ITV1 viewers were told by Claire that the once-buzzing El Raso urbanisation had been abandoned en masse by the geriatric British community.We residents know that wasn’t true - and it is even less so today. Estate agents Property Choice, whose office is next door to Rayz Bar, say El Raso is so popular with buyers of all nationalities that there’s virtually nothing left for sale on the urbanisation. The social scene is also thriving, with two new bar/restaurants having opened since Claire left. OK, things were less salubrious when the cameras were making Trouble Abroad a year ago. But when researchers started touting for potential participants in the two-part documentary, there was no mention of the series title. Indeed, the emphasis was on this being a POSITIVE look at expat life.I know little about the company that made the series for ITV, apart from the fact they are either short of money or unbelievably mean. A year ago, I helped them to find a suitable local subject for the series and was happy to give them editorial space in the weekly newspaper I edit. Yet they claimed they couldn’t afford even 15 euros for an advert (advertising being this newspaper’s only meaningful source of income).. I also understand Claire was not paid for the nine exhausting days the cameras followed her around, intruding into every aspect of her life. With so many people all too eager for those fabled 15 minutes of fame, I’m not surprised the programme makers kept their hands in their pockets.But you can bet ITV were left counting the Costa their bill – bigtime.Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) January 18, 2013

DUMPY OLD GRAN'S SPONSORED DIET FOR CROHN'S CHILDREN - END OF WEEK ONE

I’M not quite ready for the catwalk, but I’m strutting around like a peacock (or should that be a peahen?) after the first week of my sponsored diet.

Well, wouldn’t you be if you’d got rid of 2.4 kilos of greasy blubber? That’s 5.3lbs less than I weighed at the start of my battle to shed at least 35lbs.
Exactly one week later, on Wednesday January 17, I stepped on the scales at my local Beauty and Wellness Centre near Guardamar del Segura on - quietly confident that I’d shed at least a couple of kilos.
OK, I admit I had nipped onto my very unreliable  bathroom scales at home to get an inkling of where I was up (or down) to. And they had told me much the same thing.
Privately, I had been hoping to lose  3lb in those first seven days. In reality, I lost 5.4lbs. The joy of that achievement was countered by finding out later that I was still marginally over that horrendous 200lbs landmark...albeit by just a couple of ounces.
So, how did I change my eating habits during the first week? Well, basically I just ate less. I have never been a big fan of weight-loading carbs like chips, pasta, bread and fried rice but if I like something, I will happily have a second helping. And it’s rare for me not to clear the plate.
I also love chocolate and biscuits...but the only sweet thing to pass between my lips now is me whistling the Welsh national anthem. Well, trying to anyway!
Anyway, despite the joy of Week One, I’m not getting carried away. (‘That’s because it would take four men to lift her’, did I hear someone say?’)
I still have a mountain to climb to get myself back into some sort of human shape (yes, I feel like a cross between Mrs Blobby and the Michelin Gran). But nothing will stop me now - not least because I have an extra motivation.
My 13-year-old granddaughter Daisy, who suffers from Crohn’s Disease, spent last week on six-hourly doses of  morphine in  Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool after being admitted the previous weekend in severe pain. The hospital's top Crohn's specialist has now indicated that she requires surgery to remove the part of her bowel that is causing the pain - and it is likely to be carried out next week.
The surgery is the latest setback in a chronicle of suffering and lost childhood as Daisy enters her third month off school. While Crohn’s is currently incurable, researchers are working to find an antidote - and I want to help them to help kids like poor Daisy.
Those 2.4 lost kilos have provided a new platform from which to continue my Up and Down Campaign, as I think of it. The Down is where I want my  weight to go and the Up is to raise at least £500 for CICRA, the Crohn’s in Children Research Association, through the JustGiving.com
To sponsor me, just go to https://www.justgiving.com/Donna-Gee
Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) January 18, 2013

Crohns and groans: The New Year weight battle I MUST win

NOW that I’ve made it to the New Year, I’m about to get a huge weight off my mind. And off my chest. And off the equine girth that used to be my waist.
Because this fat filly has had a ’mare of a festive season trying to prove that she really can eat a horse.
I would NOT normally reveal my weight under any circumstances. But even allowing for the fact that I am, to use a colloquial expression, ‘big boned’, I’m ashamed to admit that in the last 12 months or so, my weight has mushroomed by some 16 kilos. Or around two-and-a-half stone in old money.
In mid-2011 I tipped the scales at a bit over 12st, still far too much for a 5ft 5in woman and considerably more than I weighed five years ago. Now I am well over 14 stone…and that is way, way heavier than I have ever been.
Many expanding expats in their 60s would put the increasing corpulence down to the good life and do nothing about it. Which has been my strategy until now.
I also have too many friends who enjoy the occasional Indian or Chinese banquet at least eight nights a week – and who refuse to take my incessant screams of ‘no, no, NO’ for an answer. (OK, that’s a little weight lie).
Anyway, I have devised an ingenious plan (well, I  think it’s ingenious) which will encourage me to lose weight and also raise money for a charity that means a lot to me.
I’ve been in the UK over Christmas and the New Year, but when I return to Spain next Tuesday (January 8) I plan to get myself weighed professionally and then launch the official Dumpy Old Gran Diet 2013 on this page next Friday.
If you want to join in the fun (not that I’ll be having any!) I’m looking for sponsors from 10 cents per pound, which amounts to just 3.5 euros if I reach my 35lb weight loss target. If I don’t make it, I’ll put in an equivalent amount myself to compensate. All the sponsorship money will go to CICRA, a charity dedicated to creating a wider understanding of Crohn’s Disease in childhood.
Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease - and incurable. The choice was easy for me because two of my granddaughters have Crohn’s.
For my own health’s sake I simply MUST lose weight – and what better way to do it? I already have three stents keeping my coronary arteries open while my leg muscles and joints are becoming increasingly weaker as Parkinson’s Disease begins to  its toll. Great fun, this life.
Never mind a Prima Donna, I want to be a Leaner Donna…and the quicker the better.
Because, to paraphrase the old Hollies hit…She Ain’t Heavy, She’s All Blubber.

IF you would like to sponsor my Dumpy Old Gran eight loss campaign, please go to https://www.justgiving.com/Donna-Gee

Published in The Courier, January 4, 2013