When we first announced our intention to retire early and move to Spain, some of our friends and family suggested we might become bored. What were we going to do with ourselves? We recently had reason to draw breath, as it were, and review the many areas we are involved in now and thought it might be interesting to list some of them.
Regular visitors to this website will know that we joined an amatuer dramatic group called Careline Theatre soon after arriving here and have appeared in three of their pantomimes so far. Our activities are detailed on a separate page elsewhere on this site.
Celia attends weekly tap-dancing classes, partly in order to perform in the chorus line at panto time but also for her own enjoyment. She has passed her bronze exam. and will shortly be taking her silver.
We have organised two very successful professional music shows, “Music Showcase” and “Aspects of Musicals”, which we have previously reported on, both of which have been sell-outs and which between them have raised over €3000 for the local cancer support charity MABS. Vernon designed a special website for the second show for which he received praise in the local press.
Vernon’s radio presenting activites have continued and he is still involved with Hospital Radio Basingstoke (HRB), presenting a regular, weekly, hour-long programme called Postcard from Spain, which has its own web page which he maintains. Over the past 2 months, he has been preparing a new series which from 30th April will be broadcast between 12-2pm each weekday called The Lunchbox. The programme includes a half-hour of short stories and this has involved him researching and contacting local writers and reading and recording their work. HRB is now broadcasting on the internet so you can now listen to his programmes, even if you are not in the NHH hospital, by visiting HRB’s website and clicking on the ‘listen live’ button.
Vernon also joined the local U3A Vall de Pop, which has a large following here in Spain and he is one of the group leaders teaching IT skills to members on a Wednesday morning. He designed and maintains a special website for this group, known as Switched-on Surfers!
Both of us have become involved with Guardian Angels, a local charity providing support for single-parent families. We act as mentors for several families and help organise social events and other activities. In addition, Vernon maintains the events section of their website and edits the monthly newsletter. Celia has gained herself a reputation for running a very successful cake stall at fundraising events and is also pictured with her recently-earned wings and halo!
Vernon has also found time to write two books since retiring – one about his ancestry and another detailing his life story, both of which have been self-published.
In additon to these ‘extra-curricular’ activities, we still have to find time to maintain our garden (requiring a considerable amount of pruning each winter), our villa (requiring regular painting) and to explore the wonderful mountainous countryside in which we live, reports of which we post here from time to time and photos of which can be found in the website’s photo gallery. We have a busy social life, have visitors come to stay, eat out, read a great deal and enjoy listening to the many live bands and singers who frequent the bars and restaurants locally.
Following the success of our Music Showcase last year, we organised another show on 30th November entitled Aspects of Musicals. It was an evening of music from the shows and starred one of the singers we featured in last year’s Music Showcase, Rob Sweeney, who we believe has a great voice and deserves to be heard singing on stage, rather than in the bars and restaurants around here.
The show was a huge success and sold out 3 weeks before the evening! To see more photos and read some of the reviews in the local newspapers, go to the special 
