Seriously Mum, What's an Alpaca?: An Adventure in the Frying Pan of Spain

I bought this book thinking, based on the title, that it would have to be funny. There were some funny moments in it, of course, but there were also some sad ones and a lot that must have been embarrassing.Alan and Lorna are an older British couple who, for health reasons among other things wanted to try a different occupation. They fell in love with alpacas and decided to move to Spain to breed them. Silly me, I had expected that the story would take place somewhere in South America. Anyway, they find a house with a renovated olive mill in a remote area of Andalucía and get to work. They have taken a brief course in Spanish, but, of course, this was proper Spanish which bore little resemblance to the language actually spoken in this poor rural area. This contributes to some of the mix-ups they encounter.In part because of the language issue, they wind up doing possibly too much of their business with other British ex-patriots there in Andalucía. Even the people from whom they are getting their Alpacas are British. This leads to some funny situations, and also to some not-so-funny episodes.Alpacas are supposed to be easy to breed and not suffer much from disease. But Alan and Lorna seem to have rather bad luck in this area and lose several of their valuable alpacas, including several of the new babies. This is particularly upsetting for them, as they are serious animal lovers.Over the course of a couple of years, however, things slowly get better – sort of. The alpaca herd begins to grow, and they become good friends with several of their Spanish neighbors. They acquire an interesting collection of other animals as well. Their solar-powered house mostly works ok when the sun shines – which it does quite a lot in this area. And the leaky roof is only a problem when it sets in to really rain….The thing that most seriously disappointed me, however, was that I had been expecting the family to have at least two, possibly more children around ten years of age or so to get into funny situations with the animals. As it turned out, the children were something like eighteen and twenty-four. One of them didn’t even go to Andalucía, and the other one returned to England after the first year. They were very helpful in getting the alpaca business going but didn’t have any funny adventures at all.

I have a soft spot for animal stories -- the tales of country vet James Herriot, books such as  Dewey the Library Cat: A True Story  and  Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog , and others. Animal stories are a topic rich in humor and heart, and told well, they can be just as entertaining and deep as stories about people. So when I came across this book as a free e-book, I figured I would give it a shot. Alpacas are an underappreciated creature, and a story about them would at least be entertaining, right?While Alan and Lorna's misadventures are interesting, they're also rather dull in places, and Alan's writing skills leave something to be desired.Alan and Lorna Parks are just another couple living in Great Britain, looking for a change of pace after their children move out and Lorna's health forces her to retire from the dance studio where she teaches. On a whim, Alan researches the supposedly lucrative business of raising alpacas, and he convinces Lorna to go along with the scheme. The two of them uproot and move to Spain, where they proceed to find a fixer-upper home (emphasis on "fixer-upper"), acquire the beginnings of their herd, and try to get settled in. But their new life is rife with obstacles -- heat, floods, car breakdowns, animal antics (alpacas, dogs, pigs, and other creatures who call the farm their home), shady real-estate agents and other businessmen, cultural barriers, and a cast of eccentric characters who wonder just what these two Brits are doing so far from home.I wasn't expecting Alan Parks' writing to rival James Herriot's, but I was at least hoping for an entertaining read. And there are parts of his and Lorna's tale that are quite funny. But he also gets caught up in descriptions and events that just aren't that entertaining, and make me wonder why he included them. His prose is also rather flat, which makes for a dull read at times. Clever writing can occasionally make even the dull and mundane seem hilarious, but that isn't to be found here.Also, there are occasional sections written from the point of view of the various animals on the farm. These do little more than repeat events and information from earlier in the chapter, and add pretty much nothing to the book. The book could have done without these sections, I feel -- they feel more like a cheap gimmick than anything else.That's not to say this isn't an informative or entertaining story. There are some genuinely funny moments, as well as some genuine moments of heartbreak, and I learned quite a bit about alpacas and Spain in reading this. But it's definitely not the best animal-related book I've read, and feels more like someone's blog posts made into a book than anything else.Worth a read if you're interested in alpacas or living in Spain, but I recommend anything by James Herriot if you want well-written funny and heartfelt stories about animals and the people who raise them. If you want a good humor book about a foreigner trying to work with animals in an entirely new country, I recommend  That Bear Ate My Pants! Adventures of a real Idiot Abroad  instead.

It was cute, but a bit irritating on how they handled the Alpacas and living in Spain.It seemed like they were totally awash and helpless for the first two books. In 4 years of living there, they still didn't have a grasp of the language, their experience with the Alpacas only seemed minimally increased, too.There just seemed to me that there was not a lot of common sense used on their part in raising the animals or living in a new country. They had access to the internet to either take online classes to learn the language or order books , cassettes or discs for instruction, as well as networking with a larger group of others - not just the ones met in the parties they went to - to get more ideas on what it's like living in that part of the world as an ex-pat and for more information on coping. The same for caring for the animals and getting questions answered on several problems.My irritation probably arises from comparing our moving to a rural area from an urban area, starting with horses and building up to raising cattle, sheep, goats, pigs & chickens and how we coped the first couple of years with the 'city time vs country time' syndrome - it isn't just Spain, let me tell you! - with learning how to take care and do a lot of our own vet work, too. No language issues, but no internet either in 1984. We bought books, we talked with the vet and took all the classes we had access to at the local college (24 miles away). They didn't have a local college, but they did have internet.They were very courageous for stepping out of the box and going for the new life. Many kudos to them for that. I just wish they had taken more use of the resources available to them and made an effort to learn the language and more about the care and feeding of the livestock.

We have Alpacas in our village in Hungary and they are so endearing. I was curious to read this memoir as I saw Alan and Lorna on a BBC Ben Fogle programme - New Lives in the Wild, I was not disappointed! The memoir tells the story of Alan and his partner Lorna, a British couple who decide to sell up and move to Andalucia Spain, to farm and breed alpacas. They not only had to negotiate living in a new country but had to rapidly learn how to look after alpacas along with a menagerie of other animals. This was delightfully told with viewpoints included from the various animals in residence. There was humour and sadness scattered throughout the book, I felt for them enduring all their never-ending challenges. The book is easy to read and quite difficult to put down. I am keen to get onto the second and subsequent instalments to discover how they faired with their developing lives in Spain.

I picked up this as a Kindle Freebie, what good value!Alan Parks and his lovely wife Lorna embark on the biggest adventure of their life, packing up the whole kit and caboodle to go to Spain and breed alpacas! Their initial trials and tribulations, including an ever widening menagerie of strays are documented in this, the first of a series.I love a travel books and this is a really lovely one! The characters the Parks encounter in the remote area of Spain where they finally settle are vivid and amusing. Alan and Lorna themselves are exceptionally likeable folk and I was thoroughly engrossed by chapter three.I particularly enjoyed the little vignettes from the animals eye view... Amusing and sweet. A novel way to make this book a little bit different.There is enough local colour and culture to keep the Armchair traveller thoroughly satisfied too. I love to read about the cultural differences in rural Spain. The festivals and celebrations described, made me hungry to visit.Come Hell or (quite Literally ) High Water this couple battles the elements and language barriers, attending "Feria" until the early hours with Surly Spanish Farming Folk and being ripped off by expats.If I have any minor grumbles, it is that Alan does tend to repeat his exposition a tiny bit from the end of a chapter into the next, but this might just be because this is being written from diary entry as source material. It is a tiny gripe and if he wants to labour those points, who am I to argueAll in all I would strongly recommend this book and most particularly to fans of Gerald Durrell, whose Greek adventures are very evocative of this book. In fact once I have read the sequel I might just did out "My Family and other Animals" to read again. I can certainly do with the vicarious Sunshine. As I write the sky's are Grey and the air decidedly frigid!Light, well paced and thoroughly readable, I was only to pleased to realise there are two more books to devour as this one ended too soon!

I was reading another book when I came across this and bought it. Had a quick glance and intended to read it after my current book. I couldn't! It engaged me right from the outset so I just had to keep on going. The book is about Alan and Lorna who live in Brighton. Lorna is a dance teacher but she has been suffering with ill-health and finding it hard to continue with her tuition. They decide to totally change their life and move to Spain and breed Alpacas. They are relatively young to do this sort of thing-I think Alan was about thirty-five/thirty-six?-so it's not the normal expat story where people sell up to retire, hence the idea for a business breeding Alpacas. Not a common choice of animal either so this book is really different, a breath of fresh air. Very well-told it is too. Alan and Lorna come across as really likeable people. Alan has the patience of a saint! There are many tender moments in the book, unexpected happenings, heart-breaking moments, light humour, really makes you smile but doesn't try too hard to be funny, the humour isn't forced at all, just natural comedy flow. Contrast this with learning about the different ways of life with the locals and their customs and quirks and then some really 'tug-at your-heartstrings' moments with the animal episodes and you have a fantastic reading experience. I needed the tissues sometimes, it really got to my emotions, the sad bits about the animals, I could hardly bear to turn the pages near the end in case something had gone wrong again..... It is easy reading; nice short chapters. I like the chapter titles that give you an idea of the happenings to come, a very organised result, never rambling. Good descriptive detail, yet not longwinded . The descriptions of the landscape are beautiful. Throughout the book, Alan uses some good adjectives, different choice of words from the norm. The book strikes a chord with me because one of my mum's ex-neighbours' daughter keeps Alpacas in Wales. I'd never heard of anyone having them before that and certainly not in the UK anyway. Not in every chapter, but, there is an 'animal count' where he keeps track of how many bought and acquired animals so far and their names-THEIR NAMES!! What a gift this man has for naming his pets and livestock! Beyoncé and J-lo (for chickens), and the Royle family for cats- Jim, Barb, Dave, Baby David, Twiggy, R Denise-Hilarious! What is really sad and surprising to me is that when the couple are ripped off, it is by English people, not Spaniards. Disgusting. You would expect English in Spain to stick together. Alan seems so nice and so trusting. There are some really kind people in the book who bend over backwards to help as well as the 'rip-off merchants'. Lorna's daughter says in the book: 'Bloody Hell-what's an Alpaca?' on hearing news of their plans to move abroad etc. I had thought that would be the perfect title for this book. 'Seriously' I wasn't as sure about because that's not what Frankie said. I found out later, after browsing on the internet, that the book WAS originally called 'Bloody Hell What's an Alpaca?' but Alan either had to change the title or felt he had to because there were difficulties with some websites accepting it with this title. A shame really because this IS the perfect title. I really enjoyed this, it was a wonderful book. I wish Alan and Lorna all the luck in the world, they've certainly had their fair share of bad luck along the way, they deserve to be happy. You can check out pictures on Alan and Lorna's website and now he has brought out accompanying photo books to go with all his books-these are all free. With the writing, Alan's done such a great job, I could get an excellent picture in my mind of everything going on in the book. I never expected it to be SO GOOD.....and now I've bought his second book 'Seriously Mum-Where's That Donkey'.

Having moved to France with my family ten years ago, I enjoyed this tale of two people who packed up their belongings, sold their house and moved to Spain for a new life. Their experience was very different to mine, but I could empathise with the sheer joy and terror of starting out afresh in a new country. This is an enjoyable read, well written and with a wry sense of humour running through the (quite serious) problems faced by a couple who decide to start an alpaca business, with no previous experience. Recommended.

This is the second book I've read recently about a British couple moving from Britain to rural Spain and not knowing what they are letting themselves in for! 'Chapeau' once again for such a brave decision, and hey, the alpacas, I loved those! Plus the expanding menagerie which includes Mary Belle the huge Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, four sweaty goats, and Miliko, the happiest dog in the world. The writing is both easy and straightforward, and in addition to lots of cuddly alpacas there are some very dramatic events - notably Alan being shot by a "Bermuda Triangle" of not-so-cuddly alpaca spit-balls to the back, chest and face! Though there are some truly tragic bits later on in the book (don't want to give too much away) that had me snuffling into my soup, I'm a real softie when it comes to animals!I received a copy of this book as a competition prize, and would happily recommend it to anyone.