Extract from Chapter 1

Shortly after we arrived back in England  an e mail arrived from Katarina to let me know that the asking price of the convent was around £85,000. It was difficult to get an exact figure as the prices in this part of Spain were still quoted in pesetas. The pesetas have to be converted to euros and from euros into pounds. It was a reasonable price considering the uniqueness of the convent.

Returning to England and going back to my normal day to day routine I began to think that finding a place in Spain might be impossible at this time I my life. I could not keep popping out to Spain. For a start I couldn’t afford it, and, as a self-employed yoga teacher, it meant I had to keep canceling my classes. Canceled classes meant no income. Maybe I had set myself an impossible dream?

A few days later I started to think about the convent again. I hadn’t even seen half of it. I didn’t know exactly how big it was. I wondered how much of the layout I could remember? I picked up a pen and paper and started sketching a floor plan. I started by drawing the entrance hall with the two rooms on the right. Then I tried to work out where the courtyard fitted in. As soon as I put pen to paper I noticed the bells ringing at the church down the road. There was a Catholic church about two hundred yards from my house. That was strange. The bells could not have been striking the hour because it had just passed the hour. I noted on my digital watch that it was exactly 11 11am. I thought that there must have been a wedding, or maybe a funeral? Then I remembered how the bells had tolled midday when Pedro had put the key in the lock at the old convent. Moments after noticing the tolling of the church bells, my telephone rang. It was the estate agent here in England. I was selling a small one roomed studio flat that I had bought just after my divorce a few years ago. It had been on the market for quite a while but I had not had an offer. I answered the phone.

“We have some good news for you". said the agent. "We have just had an offer on your studio. They have made an offer of the full asking price.”

I accepted immediately of course. That was the first offer I had had and it was for the full price! £90,000, enough to buy the convent and pay the solicitors fees. That would have been perfect if I had wanted to go ahead and make an offer on the convent. I had not even thought about the convent for days and as soon as I focussed my mind on it, things had started to happen. I take notice of coincidences. To my way of thinking, coincidences are signs. I thought about the signs around this convent. There were the tolling bells in at noon as the key was put in the lock. The bells on my local church were ringing at 11 11am. The timing of that phone call with the offer. And then there was the amount of the offer on my flat. Not just one coincidence but a few.

I decided I could not ignore the signs and I emailed Katarina to ask her if she knew of any builders in Spain who might be able to give me an idea of the cost of renovations on the convent. She replied at 11:11am the following day. I was stunned when I saw what time her reply had come through.  That was too much to ignore. The bells had rung at 11 11 then the e-mail came through at 11 11.  Something was going on but I didn't know what. I knew I would have to take action because of the coincidence, so I rang Katarina to ask whether the vendors would drop the price to 100,000euros. I was not committing myself to anything at this stage, simply collecting information. I could raise a maximum of £100,000 and I would need some money left over to renovate the property. A few days later I was sitting at the computer writing when Katarina rang with the reply.

“Hilary, I have spoken with the owners and now we have a new price.”

“Did they agree to drop to 100,000euros?”

“No. They are giving the price in pesetas. This part of Spain you know is very slow, very backward. They do not like to work in euros. So the price they give me is in pesetas. I convert this price to pounds it is £77,500.”

“Okay thanks Katarina, I’ll think about it and get back to you.”

That would leave me about £20,000 to renovate the place. No way would that be enough. It was in such a state that I reckon £50,000 would be a more realistic figure. That’s a relief, because I didn’t like the old convent. I was only pursuing it because of the coincidences.

 Deepak Chopra calls coincidences ‘signs’ and in his book ‘Synchrodestiny’ he suggests that signs are the language of our higher consciousness. However, I knew I could not afford to follow this particular sign and I was pleased about that. Maybe if they’d dropped to 100,000 euros I could have just about managed to afford to buy it and perhaps renovate part of it. I wondered how far off my offer of 100,000euros £77,500 was? I typed 77,500GBP into the currency converter on the internet. I wish I hadn’t.

Because the conversion came up as 111100euros.