My name is Tim Coakley.

I have lived on the Costa del Sol for about six years.

During that time I have enjoyed being a member of the Marbella U3A Writers Group

and am including here a sample of my writing.

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THIS END OF THE STREET
                                                           
There is a tree in my garden. Among the branches of the tree, the birds call to one another, and like the birds, the neighbours call, over the wall, from house to house, and from window to window. They are always invisibly in touch in this way. If one person calls out, another will answer, because they are always listening out for one another. And if you want to broadcast what you are feeling, all you have to do is raise your voice slightly knowing that everybody will take in what you are saying. If you want to air your family arguments, all you have to do is open the window. It is a telephone system without wires. An old woman from a window above sometimes calls out: What time is it?
and one of the neighbours tells her.
- Why don't you get her a clock, I asked.
- She has a clock they said. It's just that she can't read the numbers.
But maybe it's not just the time she needs to keep in touch with.
                                                                                                  
On a warm afternoon like this one the most logical thing to do is to snooze in the garden.
After all, it is siesta time and we are in Spain. A stray cat, which, like the neighbours, is deciding to what extent he should accept me, occupies the other sunlounger.
He looks fiercely at the birds in the tree. They are an affront. He would love to catch them but has finally realised there is nothing he can do about it. These days he has settled for just moving his head in a dignified manner as they fly around.

My neighbour Carmen is putting out her washing and singing a song she appears to be making up as she goes along.
- Isabella, she says suddenly,
- What, says Isabella from three houses away.
- The foreigner is sleeping again.
- He never does anything, says Isabella.
- He must be a millionaire.
- They all are, says Carmen.
- No doubt, says Isabella,
and Carmen continues singing.
                                                                                                                        
Carmen rules this end of the street. Recently turned seventy, her powers are undiminished, and she is still firmly in command. She easily sees off the rough boys who peer over her wall looking for mischief. There is nothing they can do, as she knows all their parents. When the foreigner left out his bag of rubbish in the street overnight and the bottom split so that the dustmen could not collect it, she was there first thing next morning to tell him off in front of everybody and make him pick it all up.

There are two corner shops. One is always crowded and one is always empty. Why this should be, one does not like to ask. The crowded one is always full of middle-aged housewives, who are there as much as anything to have a chat. The empty one is run by Carlos, who was born ten yards away and who has been there forty years. If I pop in to buy a loaf of bread, he always greets me like an old friend.
-         More things, he says, Buy more things.
Once I went there to buy a biro.
-         I do not sell biros, he said. Then he gave me his.

Further down the road, Maite sits on her step in her dressing gown. Her husband used to sit there. He died a few weeks ago. For a day or two the neighbours sat in her house with her. Now she sits in his place on the step alone. Nobody talks to her much. Maybe they don't need to. Maybe they all just understand, and know there is nothing to be done and nothing to be said.

Bald Man is reading his paper at the door so that he can say hello to passers by.
Bald man might be something to do with Blonde Lady who sometimes beams down from the balcony opposite. Blonde lady's daughter who is also, from time to time, blonde, sits in their front room with her well-fed cat, her posters of pop stars, and her collection of teddy bears. Occasionally she zooms off on the back of a motorcycle. Somehow, during all the time I have lived here she has managed to avoid looking at me even once.

On the other side of the road is Manolo's Bar. The bar is always open and Manolo is always there, behind the shiny steel counter that he has wiped a million times. He has no other life and does not seem to want one. He has no wife, no child and does not seem to miss any of that either. He seems to have no spare time, no outside interests, no vices, no other function in life, nor any need of those things. For six days a week, year in year out, Manolo stands there. He always looks you straight in the eyes and you find yourself looking back into the wide eyes of a person has never had an evil thought in his life. If you meet him in the street he is exactly the same. Every day the TV blares and the customers shout. The customers are all middle-aged men. If you are not a middle-aged man you will be tolerated, but you may feel that your rightful place to shrink politely into in a corner chair while the regular customers set the world to rights. The din produced
even by Manolo and one customer is so tremendous that an outsider might think
a fight is about to break out or at the very least an argument. But there are never any arguments. Not ever. Not once. Instead, every event of the news, of the football, of the neighbourhood is dissected and discussed and ultimately digested. Manolo Senior, after whom the bar is named, is often seen helping out in the background and keeping an eye on things. Gossip says that it took him years to train his son to take over and even today Manolo Junior counts the bill aloud several times before deciding what it comes to. Today Francisco, who sprays cars for a living, and Mario, who is a self-appointed traffic warden, are claiming that the ham that Manolo is raffling only cost him fifty euros, whereas the total value of the tickets he is selling amounts to a hundred euros. This is swiftly rebutted by Manolo, who points out that included with the ham is a handsome set of spoons.

Every morning the old man opposite goes for a walk with his zimmerframe.
It is a very slow walk and only he knows what it costs him to do it. Every morning he wishes me Good Day in the friendliest way possible.
-         If I can be of any help, he tells me, Please let me know.

Things have gone on in this way in this street for decades if not for longer. But the community is under threat. Down the road whenever a house falls empty, a foreigner buys it for an inflated price and prettifies it according to their own ideas.
This prettification is creeping up the road and does not bode well for the future.
But for now the children continue to play football in the street as maybe their fathers did before them, Pablo the hairdresser sits in his shop and does embroidery while waiting for his next customer, the housewives gossip at the corner shop, the Bar debates Isobel Pantoja, Bald Man continues to read his newspaper, and the new widow continues to stare into space.

When March comes, the tree in my garden, which is a medlar, bears fruit. Then the neighbours come with ladders and baskets and help me collect the fruit and distribute it along the street. It has never been stated, but it goes without saying that the tree belongs to everybody.