Driving over Lemons

Zusatztext "Take half a cup of Bill Bryson! mix with three tablespoons of Peter Mayle! then add just a pinch of Monty Python! and what you get is Driving Over Lemons."- Chicago Tribune A wonderful antidote tomodern electronic life. I love this book.Peter Mayle! author of A Year in Provence "This funny book is required reading for anyone who has ever dreamed of taking up the pastoral life in a foreign country."- Travel & Leisure "The ability to write hilarious travelogues... may well be a national characteristic [of the English]. It's certainly possessed by Chris Stewart."- The New York Times Book Review Informationen zum Autor CHRIS STEWART lives in Spain with his wife, Ana, and daughter, Chloë. Klappentext Driving Over Lemons" is the contagiously entertaining account of one couple's beginning a new life as they turn a rundown peasant farm in southern Spain into a home. When Chris Stewart first sees El Valero! he's willing to overlook its lack of electricity! running water! or access road. Assured that he's bought "a paradise for pennies!" he phones his wife! Ana! still in England! whose enthusiasm is a little more tempered. Together they embark on an undertaking that includes rebuilding the house! feeding and housing a former owner reluctant to leave! the threat of drought (and flood)! a cultural misunderstanding! and the creation of a whole new! fulfilling! enviable life Chapter 1 El Valero 'Well, this is no good, I don't want to live here!' I said as we drove along yet another tarmac road behind a row of whitewashed houses. 'I want to live in the mountains, for heaven's sake, not in the suburbs of some town in a valley.' 'Shut up and keep driving,' ordered Georgina, the woman sitting beside me. She lit another cigarette of strong black tobacco and bathed me in a cloud of smoke. I'd only met Georgina that afternoon but it hadn't taken her long to put me in my place. She was a confident young Englishwoman with a peculiarly Mediterranean way of seeming at ease with her surroundings. For the last ten years she had been living in the Alpujarras, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, south of Granada, and she had carved out a niche for herself acting as an intermediary between the farmers who wanted to sell their cortijos in the hills and move to town, and the foreigners who wanted to buy them. It was a tough job but no one who saw her ironing out deals with the coarsest peasant or arguing water rights with the most stubborn bureaucrat could doubt she was the woman for it. If she had a weakness at all it was in her refusal to suffer fools and ditherers. 'Do you bully all your clients like this?' I protested. 'No, just you. Left here.' Obediently I turned the wheel and we shrugged off the last houses of Ãrgiva, the market town where I'd been adopted by my agent. We bumped onto a dirt track and headed downhill towards the river. 'Where are the mountains?' I whined. Georgina ignored me and looked at the groves of oranges and olives on either side of the track. There were white houses covered in the scrags of last year's vines and decked with bright geraniums and bougainvillea; mules were ploughing; boiler-suited growers were bent bum-up amid perfect lines of vegetables; a palm tree shaded the road where hens were swimming in the dust. Dogs slept in the road in the shade; cats slept in the road in the sun. The creature with lowest priority on the road was the car. I stopped and backed up a bit to go round a lemon. 'Drive over lemons,' ordered Georgina. There were, it was true, a hell of a lot of lemons. They hurtled past, borne on a stream of water that bubbled nearby; in places the road was a mat of mashed fruit, and the earth beneath the trees was bright with fallen yellow orbs. I remembered a half-forgotten snatch of son...

  "Take half a cup of Bill Bryson, mix with three tablespoons of Peter Mayle, then add just a pinch of Monty Python, and what you get is Driving Over Lemons."- Chicago Tribune 

“A wonderful antidote to…modern electronic life. I love this book.”–Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence

"This funny book is required reading for anyone who has ever dreamed of taking up the pastoral life in a foreign country."- *Travel & Leisure

"The ability to write hilarious travelogues... may well be a national characteristic [of the English].  It's certainly possessed by Chris Stewart."- *The New York Times Book Review

Autorentext

CHRIS STEWART lives in Spain with his wife, Ana, and daughter, Chloë.

Klappentext

Driving Over Lemons" is the contagiously entertaining account of one couple's beginning a new life as they turn a rundown peasant farm in southern Spain into a home.
When Chris Stewart first sees El Valero, he's willing to overlook its lack of electricity, running water, or access road. Assured that he's bought "a paradise for pennies," he phones his wife, Ana, still in England, whose enthusiasm is a little more tempered. Together they embark on an undertaking that includes rebuilding the house, feeding and housing a former owner reluctant to leave, the threat of drought (and flood), a cultural misunderstanding, and the creation of a whole new, fulfilling, enviable life

Zusammenfassung
  No sooner had Chris Stewart set eyes on El Valero than he handed over a check.  Now all he had to do was explain to Ana, his wife that they were the proud owners of an isolated sheep farm in the Alpujarra Mountains in Southern Spain.  That was the easy part.

Lush with olive, lemon, and almond groves, the farm lacks a few essentials—running water, electricity, an access road.  And then there's the problem of rapacious Pedro Romero, the previous owner who refuses to leave.  A perpetual optimist, whose skill as a sheepshearer provides an ideal entrée into his new community, Stewart also possesses an unflappable spirit that, we soon learn, nothing can diminish.  Wholly enchanted by the rugged terrain of the hillside and the people they meet along the way—among them farmers, including the ever-resourceful Domingo, other expatriates and artists—Chris and Ana Stewart build an enviable life, complete with a child and dogs, in a country far from home.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

El Valero

'Well, this is no good, I don't want to live here!' I

said as we drove along yet another tarmac road behind a row

of whitewashed houses. 'I want to live in the mountains, for heaven's sake, not in the suburbs of some town in a valley.'

'Shut up and keep driving,' ordered Georgina, the woman sitting beside me. She lit another cigarette of strong black tobacco and bathed me in a cloud of smoke.

I'd only met Georgina that afternoon but it hadn't taken her long to put me in my place. She was a confident young Englishwoman with a peculiarly Mediterranean way of seeming at ease with her surroundings. For the last ten years she had been living in the Alpujarras, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, south of Granada, and she had carved out a niche for herself acting as an intermediary between the farmers who wanted to sell their cortijos in the hills and move to town, and the foreigners who wanted to buy them. It was a tough job but no one who saw her ironing out deals with the coarsest peasant or arguing water rights with the most stubborn bureaucrat could doubt she was the woman for it. If she had a weakness at all it was in her refusal to suffer fools and ditherers.

'Do you bully all your clients like this?' I protested.

'No, just you. Left here.'

Obediently I turned the wheel and we shrugged off the last houses of Órgiva, the market town where I'd been adopted by my agent. We bumped onto a dirt track and headed downhill towards the river.

'Where are the mountains?' I whined.

Georgina ignored me and looked at the groves of oranges and olives on eit…