Spanish lessons - Derek Lambert

Tired of his life as a globe-trotting journalist, and desperate to finish his latest novel, writer Derek Lambert decides to settle with his new wife and young son in a mouldering casita nestled among citrus groves inland of the Costa Blanca.

As he sets about restoring his house and learning to live the ordinary life of a Spanish villager, Lambert introduces us to a Spain far removed from the tourist traps and thumping discos of the Costas, and soon discovers that adapting to this new life is not as easy as he imagined. He employs a roofer who's afraid of heights, a plumber confounded by a blocked pipe and bumbles through Spanish lessons with a mocking classmate who challenges him to a public arm-wresting contest. Then just when it seems that nothing more could go wrong, the Lamberts face Spain's first snowstorm in many years.

Written in the jaunty, anecdotal style of Peter Mayle and Bill Bryson, this is a warm, affectionate and often hilarious portrait of life as a foreigner in rural Spain.