At last a cooler patch. Most years we’ve been here summer has been hot but without too much in the way of heat waves.

But with our super-el niño year(opens in new tab), this year has been a year hopefully not to remember.

There are rather a lot of ‘years’ in that last sentence…

This year has seemed to be one long heat wave since June, with warning after warning from AEMET(opens in new tab), the Spanish meteorological office.

The ultimate was earlier this week, where we had 36°C temperatures, high humidity, and no air movement to speak of. It was like being suffocated.

It’s certainly not cool cool today but it is an improvement when the temperature hasn’t exceeded 30°C in one day.

Hooray!

The forecast on my phone is reasonably encouraging. While the maximum continues to bounce around 28 to 30°C, it is at least going to get cooler in the night.

And when you’ve been putting up with waking up with the temperature in the bedroom being around 29°C, this could be very, very welcome.

This afternoon I did a toy briefly with opening the vents in my office and in the lounge. And despite the outside temperature being cooler than the inside temperature, the temperature inside continued to creep up and I closed the vents as a bad job.

Not strictly true, I closed the one in the office, the one in the lounge is still open.

At last a cooler patch.

Although my dictation software did insist on writing it as a Timber punch, I didn’t think I was that bad at pronunciation…

One of these days I’m going to get to the bottom of why it understands 90% of what I say and completely fouls up the other 10%.

But not this week because I accidentally lost an hour this afternoon by getting deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole of my own making.

Oh yes. Now it can be told!

One of the experiences of the last few weeks I’ve been keeping under wraps on the off chance that it might get dealt with and in a positive fashion.

Nothing complicated, just the sending of some money from the UK to our bank account in Spain.

Firstly the situation with the money breaker has changed slightly and we can no longer use the former system because we no longer live in the UK.

To be honest they fudged the process for the last couple of years, for which I thank them very much.

However in for a penny, in for a pound, we’ve got to use the new system because the old system is going to be switched off without warning at some point.

The old system involved sending money from our UK bank account to a bank account in the UK, which then sends Euros to our Spanish bank account.

But…

Because we don’t live in the UK, even though we have a bank account in the UK, we now have to pass the sterling through a bank in Belgium.

And if we don’t want to have to wait three days for the funds to get there, we get charged a fee by our bank.

I’m given to understand this is all a consequence of Brexit or new banking regulations, all of which are designed to make life difficult for the customer. At last a cooler patch.

Now because our broker is a very nice chap, they bear the cost of our bank fee. And we still get a better rate than any of the commercial organisations I’ve come across on the internet.

We almost tried doing this a few months ago but sending sterling from a UK bank account to a Belgian bank account without our bank changing it into euros seemed to be incredibly complicated.

This time we must bite the bullet and get it sorted. Which we do and the money duly leaves the UK and the same amount arrives in Belgium and in the correct currency, ie. the one it was when it started from our UK bank.

I then get an email saying it’s been passed to our Spanish bank.

But scrutiny of our online Spanish bank account shows it hasn’t arrived.

Apparently the only thing that has changed is this new intermediate operation into and out of Belgium. So I contact our broker and our broker gets in contact with the relevant people and they get in contact with the bank that actually transacted the funds.

Meanwhile this is taking several days.

And the thought that this money may have vanished into nowhere is a touch concerning.

Coincidentally I’m talking to our broker and he suggests I contact our Spanish bank. I am having reason to contact our Spanish bank anyway regarding a form they want me to fill in.

Which I do and it comes to light the money is in our Spanish bank. It’s just not showing in our bank account.

This is all down to a missing declaration that shows effectively I have a legitimate source for the funds.

I remarked that it would have been useful had they told me and a copy of a couple of letters was forwarded to me.

Which had been sent to the UK address we haven’t had for six years! This of course could explain why I hadn’t heard about it.

As I have no interaction with the Spanish equivalent of HMRC, getting this sorted was slightly more complicated than it could have been.

And I began to get quite impressed with the AI capabilities of a certain well-known search engine, which managed to point me in the right direction of what the UK equivalent(opens in new tab) would be of a Spanish form.

Which I download as a PDF from my HMRC account and forward to my contact at the bank.

And lo and behold – the money suddenly appears. Thinking about it, I neglected to ask whether it had enjoyed its holiday. Sits here with tongue firmly in cheek.

What a sense of relief!

Since our former contact of the bank had left a few years ago I thought it useful to reach out and see our new contact face to face.

Lorraine made a little card saying gracias and we trotted down there earlier this week.

To meet the delightful Aida.

Lorraine is convinced I’m going to be making excuses to go see her on a regular basis. I’m probably not going to disillusion her either.

And the lovely little response when she opened the card was delightful to see.

After visiting Correos and having lunch, we returned home and I celebrated. By buying myself a beer advent calendar from the US via the Netherlands.

You got to get your priorities right. That’s what I say.

At last a cooler patch.

I can at least look back and smile now. Given the size and frequency of the transactions, I’m either the laziest money launderer in Estepona or the most incompetent. Takes your pick.

Or the regulations are just made to make it look like they’re doing something rather than actually doing something. Something that will work.

What’s happening at the moment is it gives headaches to legit people and the criminals still get around it anyway.

I think that better be enough for the day. It’s making my brain hurt just thinking about it.

Oh a pre-warning: the blog will be probably a day earlier next week because my PA is going on vacation. When she gets back it may coincide with us going away. So there may be a gap of three or four weeks. Let you know next week if I know any more.

But in the meantime hasta la semana que viene.