Month: July 2023

The temperatures have been soaring recently, and there’s been lots of frightening stories bandied around by the media about climate change making each year hotter than the one before. All accompanied by the sensational stories of wildfires consuming the whole of Europe. Well that’s what they intend us to think at any rate.

I’ve checked out the temperatures from the previous years here and actually it was mostly hotter in years gone by. Having said that, we had a bad storm recently and a lightning strike caused a fire just up the mountain a bit from our house. While we know that one was due to lightning, I do wonder at the number of fires around the Mediterranean, are there arsonists/pyromaniacs at work here? Happily the local bomberos were quickly on site here and worked very hard into the night to stop ithe fire spreading and get it extinguished. And yes, that’s one of our chimney flue things on the roof, that’s how close it was!

Another word of praise for the health service here in Spain. I had an appointment with our GP, Laura, two weeks ago. She got me an appointment for an MRI at a private clinic in the city – Murcia Salud, the health service here also uses private clinics to ensure prompt patient attention. Had the MRI last week and collected the results today. I think it’s just an excellent service, and seems to be so much better than many are experiencing in the UK at the minute. Oh, and I’m sure you’ll be glad to know I’m still on the right side of the patio!

For the good of our health, and general wellbeing, we’ve started going to meditation sessions held and guided by my lovely friend, Sarah Dawkins. I’ve been practising meditation for some time but it is lovely to have guided sessions with someone you can trust. Sarah has written an Amazon best seller book called “Heal Yourself” and it is truly excellent.

It focuses on how our lifestyles affect our wellbeing, and what we can all do to help ourselves. Sarah is an expert on natural nutrition and healing, and is also a wonderfully warm and encouraging person. Buy the book, it’s brilliant!

You all know by now that one of the joys of living in Spain is how many fabulous places there are to eat out – no wonder we indulge so often! We are starting to make our way round some of the great restaurants in Murcia city, and so far there’s one which is a clear favourite, but I’ll write about it next time!

For now, we are eating less than usual, like most people, due to the heat. One meal a day is about all we need, and actually nothing much in the way of snacking other than fruit. Between the horrendous bout of food poisoning I had, and the lack of appetite due to the heat, I have now lost a total of 18lbs in just over 7 weeks. If I keep this up nobody will recognise me when we go back to Norn Iron for a wee holiday in November!

Salads are the order of the day, and it has to be said that Peter can be very creative in the kitchen!

We always keep bottles half filled with water, in the freezer, so when we fill them up ready to use the ice melts slowly and the water is always lovely and cold.

The husband really likes a home-made mix of muesli and other very suspect-looking things added to it, but I found a way for me to really enjoy a very healthy and filling breakfast as a change from big bowls of fresh fruit – banana and porridge muffins.

Here’s the recipe;

You put into a blender 1½ cups of porridge oats, a small pot of plain Greek yoghurt, 2 eggs, a big plop of honey (about a tablespoon), 1½ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoom bicarb soda (baking soda), 2 large ripe bananas cut into chunks, frozen raspberries, blueberries etc. Blend the whole lot till fairly smooth. Spoon a bit into each wee bit of a muffin tray – but just use 10 out of the 12 holes – you don’t need paper cases. Plop a couple of frozen berries in and top up with the porridge/banana mixture. You can sprinkle some weee sugar nibs/pearls on top if you want to. Bake at 200C for about 20 to 25 minutes. Try not to eat them all at once!

That’s it for now, try to stay cool, and look after each other!

I’m sure that title has grabbed your attention, so I’ll explain! Something a little different… At the beginning of June we went to Granada for a weekend, for my birthday. We’ve been before, a few times, so we didn’t plan to go round the Alhambra again – though if you’ve never been then please make a point of seeing it, utterly fabulous! We just wanted a bit of R&R and lots of shopping in the fabulous little Moroccan shops that are everywhere.

The King and Queen of Spain visited the city on the Saturday, complete with massive military airshow, most exciting! I did think this was a very different way to celebrate my birthday but more was to come.

Somewhere along the weekend we both picked up food poisoning, no idea where, as we ate in so many different places. His was milder, mine was severe.

Managed to drive the 3-ish hours home on the Monday morning, straight into bed feeling like I’d been disembowelled by a 15th century torturer. Into the bathroom approximately every 15 minutes, morning, noon and night. Not actually funny at all, and at one point I genuinely thought I was dying, this was backed up by later reading about two women with the same problem who actually DID die. No joke.

About 2 hours after we got home I was actually asleep when the husband raced into the bedroom and shouted “Get up! There’s a snake in the bedroom!”

Indeed there was. About three feet long, looked like a ladder snake, usually harmless but still…

It shot across the room. We had to pull out, strip and dismantle the bed, lift all three pairs of the full length curtains up, pull out bedside cabinets, pull out the big chest of drawers…then suddenly the husband spotted it under a bag where I’d put the winter duvet when changing it over to the summer one. He put his size 12 foot on it and yelled at me to “Get it!” Get it? Get it?! Good grief, I was suffering the pains of hell from the food poisoning, and needed to be within a few steps of the bathroom, and he wanted me to “get it”?! Well, I ran downstairs to the kitchen, lifted the long tongs and ran upstairs again, grabbed the thing near its head, but not near enough. Had to make sure the husband didn’t move his foot, grabbed it again, right on its head and lifted it. It wasn’t happy. It wriggled and writhed, trying to wind itself round my arm while I tried not to be sick from one end or worse from the other. Got it into the bathroom, up with the blind, out through the rejas (security bars) and flung the thing as hard as I could, where it bounced off one of the lower roofs and disappeared.

So there you are, how to catch a snake! And…we found where it had got in, through the extractor fan vent in the kitchen which we’d been intending to properly seal off outside, and which is now well covered with very fine mosquito netting. Never put off till tomorrow what you really should have done weeks ago, that’s what I say!

P.S. I’m still not quite over the fact that the husband shouted “Get it!” to me….