Tale of arabic tiles

Wednesday 22 November

Another beautiful sunrise. After breakfast, went to house via camino road, and met with Tommy. Main job today is to cement the first floor veranda, sloping it towards the patio, so that all rain from the main roof terrace flows to the patio and down the drain.

We asked about one of the patio walls being tiled at the top, to act as coping stones, and Tommy suggested the old Arabic tiles that had come off the front of the house. Apparently, they are “shitehauzen” to lay, as they are irregular half cylindrical in shape, with the concave tiles forming the gullies of a typical old Moorish/Spanish roof, with the convex tiles forming the ridges. Difficult to explain !

Tommy also told us their history, which is also difficult to believe……which is that the clay tiles used to be shaped by moulding each one on the thighs of a virgin, giving them their distinctive and irregular shape…. He insisted this was true, although it is difficult to see how there would be a continuing supply of virgins, working with virile young tile-makers moulding clay on their thighs, to produce sufficient tiles for roof building locally.………remember the pottery scene in the film “Ghost”…….!!

On to the tile shop to choose tiles, and spent an hour or so choosing floor tiles and matching edge tiles with the white wall tiles. Took loads of pics , as very difficult to make a choice, and the options we chose 3 weeks ago are no longer attractive. We decided to buy one definite downstairs border tile to check in situ and show Tommy, but they didn’t have one in stock, so let us take the shop’s reference tile, asking us to bring it back a manyana…..tomorrow.

Then back to town for an hour at the Locutorio……mainly e mails. J managed to identify the bird we have seen several times on the camino road, which is the Hoopoe. Click Hoopoe if interested in seeing this distinctive bird.

Reviewed progress with Tommy at the house at 4 pm, and show him the edge tile for the downstairs bathroom, which he didn’t like much. Sergio was drilling out channels for the lights on the ceiling, and took down the front light , asking where he should put it. J said upstairs, as he probably had his eye on it………..

Back home along the camino road, and saw a Hoopoe on the road, but unable to get a picture of it before it flew off into an orange grove.

Spent an hour looking at tile pictures on the laptop, and J put them all together in 1 folder to show Tommy tomorrow. After dinner, we went for a walk and had a few wines in our favourite bar run by a mother and daughter, as we prefer this to the bar we had been introduced to.