Great to hear from you Gerbick, if you ever come back to Europe be sure to come to the cave. I don't expect to be seeing Big Al any time soon, but my old music partner still visits him so I'm sure we could arrange something.
I'll tell you a story about when my wife, Gelda, and I moved out to Spain. We'd been in our cave home in the village of Cortes de Baza for a few weeks, and every few days I'd go to the Correos - Post Office - to see if there was any post. The office is barely larger than a broom cupboard, and Pedro the Postman hands over a pile of letters for immigrants to look through. But one morning I walked in and he asked, in Spanish, 'Do you play guitar', I said I did and he said this must be for you and gave me a letter which, translated, was addressed to ‘The English man who wears brightly coloured shirts and plays guitar’. He was so pleased he'd delivered it he got a passer by to take a photo with his camera phone. I took the letter home and it was a Father's Day card from No. 3 son wanting to see how well we'd integrated into the village. The next morning someone shared the Spanish Correos Facebook page with me - there was the photo of Pedro and me and the story of how the mail had got through. The next day we'd made page 3 on the Andalusian newspaper Ideal, the next it was El Pais, the national paper, and then I got a phone call to go to the Correos as a TV crew were on their way - that night I sat outside one of the bars in the village with the locals watching Pedro and me on Spanish TV. It certainly helped me get integrated, not just because Pedro and me were on TV but because the village was. Here's the vid