Getting back to Loubar after a significant trip away always means putting the camp back together; kitchen, toilets, ter supply and of course tents and sleeping arrangements. Which also means a while in the world of not quite ready yet…though a night sleeping under the stars in Loubar was more than welcome after UK and USA.

Now of course on leaving for the states, there were all sorts of balls in the air, fingers crossed, ships coming in….or not, and that was what I had uppermost in my mind, would it, could it, please let it, be there….The Roxa! Phone calls from Fez informed me that all the appropriate documents had been sent and received and that this elusive piece of paper, should be waiting for me in Bab Taza….SHOULD!

And so off I went, first day back…forget the tent, just get the paper. And up in Bab Taza I suddenly found myself sat in front of the right man, who had the right papers and who, by all rights, should have been ready to hand over the holy grail… But he couldn’t!

But why? Is there anything missing? Does something need signing? Are we short of an official stamp? Is it suddenly the weekend? Or a national holiday?

No, it was none of these… we were just waiting,

For the penny to drop.

And then it did!

BANG…Crash…Smash!

And so, infront of the whole baladiers office, as loud as I am prone to speak…especially when I’m….excited… I told the guy that this was, or so I thought, the new Morocco, that the Ancien Regime was passed, that we were, all of us, trying to move Morocco forward, “Nishan”, by being straight, and that if anyone needed a coffee, or anything else for me to

further invest my time and money in to this country, they had best come up and ask me face to face…man to man…

At which point there was a short phone call, and the document was signed, and I paid what I had to, but with an official receipt.

I’ve been going off to offices with high hopes and returning to the team empty handed for years now. Each time I leave all optimistic and each time they nod knowingly and make discurraging remarks about officialdom. But this was it, we finally had the Roxa and finally we

could move from work on the land, to work on the house….

Which is a good thing as those funds were diminishing and I really needed to get this started and finished this year.

And so finally I was able to say … lets move on… though I’m impressed with what we’ve done now, on the land, in the gardens, for the pool, the grey water system and now the lower entry to the land from the piste!

And then suddenly we were back in the world of a building site and finding masons and labourers and checking what we did and didn’t have. I’m glad to say we do have many things that will now save time and money.

Old French windows will be used as doors from rooms on to gardens and big old doors will be fitted to the front and back of the house, as well as to enter the land.

But most importantly, and finally, two years after we received notice to stop, we set our sites on laying rocks on to walls and finishing the house.

At last I can dream again and believe that this dream will become a reality.

Hallelujah!