Animal Magic: The nutty world of Grace Quirrel and Samantha Fox

Working for peanuts...Grace Quirrel on my patio

THE garden of my villa in the Costa Blanca coastal town of Guardamar is not short of wild life - particularly in the summer.
OK, I can do without the eerie twilight flapping of bats around the turrets of neighbouring houses. And I wasn’t best prepared for the three baby hedgehogs my grandson rescued from the hedgerow as they tried vainly to suckle milk from their lifeless mother.
But the suction-padded lizards that scurry up and down the walls fascinate me. So does the incessant chatter of the crickets or whatever they are (I wonder if they ever play Test matches with the bats?)
Back in September, I felt I was in the Garden of Eden when a litter of tiny feral kittens took temporary tenancy of the bamboo gazebo in my garden.
Nevertheless, I have yet to see anything in Guardamar to compare with the urban beauty of my furry friends Grace and Samantha back in Manchester.
Grace Quirrel and Samantha Fox (cringe cringe) have taken up semi-residency at my UK home - and while I see precious little of them thse days, I adore them.
The hunting fraternity would no doubt dismiss both species as vermin...and happily rearrange Samantha’s fur into a natty Manc coat.  But urban foxes and grey squirrels have become as much a part of life in the northern ferretlands as flatcaps and black puddings.
Even four miles from Manchester city centre.
They get an unintentional  helping hand from local councils, too. None of those slick nightly refuse collections we all marvel at in Spain -- it’s once a fortnight if you’re lucky. And if the lid is not tightly shut on the garbage bags, it won't be emptied, presumably by order of a council terrorist called Bin Over-Laden.

Anyway, the council's inaction means that Grace and Samantha will have bags and bags of goodies for Christmas...courtesy of a garbage-emptying cycle which leaves enough overflowing bins to fill the bellies of an entire colony of foxes.

My only fear is that Grace will become too fat to chase cats (yes, I have seen her in action). She's already a bit of a pudding, legacy of the unending supply of peanuts  chucked out to her through the patio doors by the grandkids.

But did you ever see a more beautiful specimen of vermin?

Year of the miracle: Buddy's first birthday grin and tonic

IT’S exactly one year since my sixth grandchild came into this world – and went perilously close to leaving it at the same time.
Buddy John Harry Holmes was born by Caesarian section, three months early and just 28 weeks into my daughter Hayley’s pregnancy.
He had no heartbeat, wasn’t breathing and weighed less than one kilo.
For the next few days, it was touch and go whether our Buddy would survive.

We all hoped and prayed he’d make it and that the lack of oxygen in those first few minutes had not caused any permanent damage.
For the answer, look at the picture above, taken at his first birthday party in Burscough, Lanc-ashire.
Apart from his model looks (I would say that, wouldn’t I?), our Buddy is as good as gold. He rarely cries, sleeps virtually to order - and always has a beaming smile.

Hardly the frail, emaciated, under-weight specimen you'd expect of a pitiful child who was born half-dead.

No, my Buddy miracle is just Buddy gorgeous!

Will the strain of pain in Spain drive me back to the rain?

I’VE always been mystified when elderly expats, who clearly love the Spanish life, up sticks and return to the rain and pollution of over-populated Britain.
I know at least half a dozen couples who have turned their backs on the Iberian sunshine, always reluctantly, citing fears of deteriorating health and/or losing their partner.
“Why worry about healthcare?”, I’d ask. “The Spanish system is generally regarded as superior to the NHS in Britain. And as for being on your own, the expat community is awash with widows, widowers and never-weds all in the same boat.’’
I certainly don’t mind being on my own.  It’s been fun going solo for the last couple of years and I couldn’t be happier. Apart, that is, from the fact I’m too old to dismiss my  ever-growing waistline as a ready-to-drop papoose.
I certainly have more friends in Spain than I ever had in the UK, many of them, like myself, without partners. And I am never lost for something to do on the odd occasion my eyes aren’t glued to a computer screen.
However, during my current visit to spend Christmas with my family in Manchester, I’ve begun to see the idea of repatriation in a different light…or darkness even.
Yes, I am beginning to question how I would manage on my own in Spain if, as I fear, I become wheelchair bound and reliant on the assistance of carers.
Regular readers of my column (if there are any) will know that humour is the weapon I use to fight adversity. I dismiss the intermittent trembling of my left hand by admitting I have Parkinson’s Disease and adding: ‘If the shaking gets any worse, they’re giving me my own chat show.’’
As for my blocked cardiac arteries, I joke about my visits to  the stentist, an Irish lady called Angie O’Plasty.
No one wants to hear this, but I have so many health problems that I’ll soon have an entry of my own in the official  medical dictionary. I can see it now.
Donnagitis: A multitude of different complaints. A person who craves the invention of oral stental floss.  (Give me a break from those damned angioplasties!)
But seriously, my mobility has deteriorated alarmingly this last few months and I know my problems will become progressively worse. Here in Manchester I have an amazing team of carers who are, quite simply, the best.
With two daughters and six grandkids here among the flatcaps and ferrets, I am beginning to ask questions of myself. I already struggle to get up from armchairs and sofas and get out of cars – so I’ve no hope of coping in Spain when I perpetually need winching up. The price of hiring a crane is outrageous as it is.
I never believed I would say this, but I am slowly resigning myself the fact I will one day return to the land of my birth. Still breathing, too..
Returning to the UK sounds so unlikely when I tell you I love every minute of living in Spain.
I live the dream – waking each morning to the accompaniment of bright sunshine and that indescribable atmosphere of ‘foreignness’. Just as I did 30 years ago, when family holidays in Spain were the highlight of my year.
I’d wake on the final morning of our stay and think to myself, ‘Hell, it’s so wonderful here and I’ve got to head back to England and work. I don’t want to go!’
This past couple of years  I’ve been waking   every morning and bursting (very badly) into song – my favourite being   ‘’Every day’s a holiday in my house’’ (to no particular tune). It was going to be my anthem until that weird morning when I wake up dead.
Now I’m beginning to think I’d quite like to spend my final days ferreting for flat caps, if you get my drift (yes, even in the snow).
If I freeze to death, I’ve got to go sometime anyway.  But at least  my daughters will be there to wrap me up warm, look after me, and earn that inheritance they think I'm going to leave them...

Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) December 14, 2012