Month: June 2024

We are quite well into the latest wee football tournament now. The real football season just finished, then about 20 minutes later the current one started. So far the little teams are proving to have far more heart than the bigger boys. The only one of the 4 home countries left in the thing is England, though if they carry on the way they’re going they’ll be on their way home very soon. So many memes now doing the rounds about the England team, so I won’t say any more except to state that I know the rules, including the offside rule, but despair at how much cheating goes on from almost every player. Poor old England, if the team turned out to be half as good as they think they are perhaps they might win more than one match. Only one more thing to say – their FIFA world ranking is 5th, Slovenia’s FIFA world ranking is 57th. I don’t think there’s much more to say. We have months of fabulous sport to look forward to now, with the football, tennis and I’m sure I heard a whisper about the Olympics being held this year? Suffice to say I’m happy to have both a house and a kindle full of books to while away the hours!

To get away from the dead and back to the living (sorry, England football team!) our pomegranate tree at the back of the house seems to have suddenly taken on a new lease of life and has sprung into action! All over the winter it looked as dead as the England team (okay, I’ll stop now!) and we had thought it was too late to save it. Well, one massive plop of sustained rain and it’s now covered in leaves! We don’t pay too much attention to the back of the house as it’s a kind of split level area and we haven’t planted anything there – however we think we might dig up the pomegranate and replant it in the lower walled garden to see if it fruits again.

I’ll admit it’s not the best photo, as I took it through the bedroom window, with the reja bars and the mosquito blind in the way, but you can clearly see the pomegranate in full leaf! The tube running to it is from the aircon unit – water from it will help to keep the tree from dying of thirst over the summer.

We went to the interactive Van Gogh exhibition in Alicante last week, and it was really, really good. His art style is not my favourite genre at all, but I learned a lot about the man himself, his family and his mental health struggles. We went there on a coach trip – yes, we’re officially old now! The joy of that is you get brought door to door, no hassle with city traffic and parking, so no stress.

We had the afternoon in Elche – famous for its shoe production and for its 200,000 palm trees. They must take a lot of looking after! As I said last time, we were given a guided tour of the city and gardens on the tourist train which was, indeed, like the Portrush Puffer, great fun!

I like doors, and cathedral doors are enormous, as well as being too heavy to move. I imagine the cathedrals and their doors are built that way to impress the population and remind us of how insignificant we all are, and of how important “the church” was to people living hundreds of years ago.

As well as seeking out doors, I make a point of looking up wherever we go – hence the photo of the cathedral dome. Across the square from the cathedral I happened to spot another little blue and white striped dome just peeping out from behind some tall buildings. Got no idea what it belonged to but I liked the look of it!

On the way back from Elche we could see the salt mounds near Torrevieja. The salt is extracted from the low lagoon waters and is left to dry as the water evaporates. The mounds are more like hills, massive! You can have a tour round to see how the salt is extracted and what they do with it, it’s fascinating. The lakes,or lagoons, also host something else…flamingos! The water is tinged pink, as are the birds.

It’s amazing what’s on our doorstep, the variety of nature is fantastic and there’s always something to see.

Now here’s a thing – I rarely drink alcohol, about one glass of wine every couple of months, but I do like a little of my own home-made limocello now and again. I have found another rather lovely liqueur, made from watermelon, it tastes gorgeous! Have it on its own or in a tall glass with lemonade and lots of ice. Comes from Mercadona supermarkets and is around €6 a bottle. Bargain!

Often when I’m in Mercadona now I buy a bag of fresh langoustines. They are great value and are absolutely HUGE! By the time I have them shelled and “de-veined” – a polite way of saying “gutted”! – I’m left with a big bowl of juicy fresh monsters. Happy to report that Peter isn’t a big fan, so since I do all the work prepping them it’s only fair I get to scoff most of them.

Now that the hotter weather is really starting to kick in here we’re always looking for ways to keep cool. The three best ways are, of course the pool, the fans and the aircon. It helps that the house has very thick walls to keep the heat out during the summer and in during the winter. As well as the usual tried and tested methods, it’s rather nice to have something to sip which is really cooling as well as tasty, and isn’t the usual fizzy drink stuff. We chop up melon, any kind you like, and liquidise it. Put it in a tall glass with ice, and top up with cava or ginger ale. Delicious and very refreshing.

My other favourite with melons is to cut them into big chunks, add a lolly stick and freeze. Hey presto you have the most delicious ice lollies and far better than the manufactured kind. It works with any kind of melon or other fruit. For me, the most flavoursome is the Sapo de Piel melons….translates as “toad skin” and tastes considerably better than it sounds! Very naturally sweet and juicy, yum!

Here’s who I’m listening to at the minute….Sierra Hull. Nope, I’d never heard of her either but she is well known in bluegrass circles and is just fantastic! Here’s her rendition of Mad World (Tear for Fears). Wonderful stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFIQgPAms88&list=RDsFIQgPAms88&start_radio=1

I have so many unread books stored on my kindle and I keep finding more, it’d just as well I’m a very, very fast reader and usually finish a book in about two days. The one I’m reading at the minute is going to take a little longer, and is one of those ones where every now and again you have to put it down and have a little think, and maybe read a bit of something else less challenging before going back to it. It’s called “The God Effect: Quantum Entanglement, Science’s Strangest Phenomenon” and is by Brian Clegg. It’s basically about understanding the universe and how it works. It’s a very interesting read and a bit different from my usual choice, but every now and again you need to push yourself to different choices if you ever want to learn anything new.

I’m looking forward to getting into the time travel stuff!

It’s tax time here again in Spain, the tax year runs from 1st January to 31st December. We use a good firm of tax specialist accountants and got all the paperwork in on time thank goodness. If you’re late with your returns some hefty fines can be imposed by the Hacienda, the tax office. So, we have paid our tax for another year while complaining about the miserable personal allowances here. Our joint allowance pre-tax, in Spain, is €12,000. In the UK it would be £25,500. We’re now actively looking at way of becoming tax-resident again in Northern Ireland in the future – the money is better in our bank than in the government’s coffers!

We were over at a neighbour’s house this week and had them back to us two days later – we needed a day in between to recover! Alfredo and Laura live in Murcia, but have a holiday home here in our village which they’ve been renovating. It’s a great house, part cave, with lots of rooms leading off one another, absolutely lovely! They built a pool just off the terrace which is necessary for the hot weather here. Alfredo’s long-time friends from Galicia were staying with them this week on holiday; it was such a pleasure to meet them. We ate and drank freely, spent most of the time practising our Spanish, and then, at our house, woke up the whole neighbourhood from their afternoon siesta with a few hours of karaoke – brilliant afternoon! Laura had made a big paella at their house,then we cooked a pork and Pedro Ximinez casserole at ours a couple of days later. It is so lovely to make new friends – Alfredo and Laura’s house is just down the road from us 100m or so – we can wave at each other from our terraces!

This one was the party at Alfredo’s house, (the paella didn’t last long!) the photo below was at our house, just before they all arrived, including bringing the big karaoke machine!

I would say there might be a few more afternoons like that before the summer’s over! Just the best way to spend your days, in the company of good friends, with good food, celebrating being alive and counting our blessings. We are so lucky in the friends and neighbours we have here, and we always appreciate it!

Oh, one more thing before I go….I know I said no more football chat but I gather the husband wants to go to a bar tomorrow to watch the England vs Slovakia game. Well, according to my DNA results I have no English DNA but am about 5% Eastern European, which includes Slovakia. I might take their advice so I’m now threatening to come to the bar with Peter to cheer on Slovakia…or I might just stay at home and relax in the pool instead! I think discretion might really be the better part of valour this time!

Well, allegedly, that is! We’ve so far had some lovely hot and sunny days but it then descended into a wet and wild experience. We’ve had tormentas, storms so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves speak, with phenomenal thunder and lightning, and torrential rain. The garden is sighing with relief, all those plants and trees have had the watering of their lives, including a bit of a battering from which they will soon recover. I’m happy to say that even with very, very strong winds our newest little additions, the blood orange tree and lemon tree are still upright, if a bit shell-shocked. And the best news is that we know the roof doesn’t leak! I bless the rains down in Murcia…I bet you sang that, didn’t you?!

Last week we were toying with the idea of taking off the pool winter cover and doing a bit of hoovering and topping up. I’m very glad we decided to leave it for another week as goodness knows what might have ended up in the water. It looks like normal service should be resumed by Friday with temperatures around the low 30s so I think that really will be summer rolling in.They do say here in Spain that summer doesn’t start until the 40th of May (think about it!) and we’re about there now so hopefully the rains we have had will make a difference to the reservoirs and we can start to enjoy a bit more of the blue skies, sunshine and pool we like so much. In the meantime, I took a photo of how dense this evening’s fog is – we can’t see as far as the bottom of our driveway, nor can we even see down into the walled garden. It’s like being in “The Langoliers”!

I have no doubt that in another month we’ll be complaining about the heat! I just hope that the temperatures this year are lower than last year so they don’t get near the 44C we had last July and August. Our Spanish friends were all complaining that it was far too hot, and if it was too hot for them imagine what it was like for us.

We were out last weekend at one of our favourite places to eat, La Taberna de Encebras, near Pinoso. I’ve mentioned this restaurant before in the blog, it’s where the lovely Ann serves her whale and chips – cunningly disguised as fish and chips! Honestly, the biggest portions you’ve ever seen! Ann has started a “Tapas Saturday” and we rolled up last weekend to give it a go. Well, good grief, I have not had such delicious, authentic tapas since coming to Spain more than 16 years ago! Everything is beautifully and freshly cooked, with very generous-sized portions, and served with a smile by Jo! Now listen to this – you get to choose 5 tapas for €10 from this list:

magra (pork pieces in a spicy tomato sauce), albondigas (meatballs in sauce), tortilla, serrano jamon (ham from Seron, far tastier than parma ham!), croquettes, spicy chicken breast, chicken wings, salt and pepper squid, spring rolls, onion bhaji, spicy samosas, Russian salad, prawn and crab salad, fresh crusty bread and allioli, chorizo, fries, fried morcilla (black pudding), fresh homemade cod goujons, and last, but far from least, mozarella sticks. Phew!

Gorgeous food, beautifully cooked and no need to eat again until the next day. You can see the portion sizes and the quality…and we’ve booked again for next Saturday. Seriously, five of those big boys for only €10?! Best value in town!

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the work on the house is still dragging on. Dragging, that is, mainly because we’d rather be out lunching at great places like La Taberna de Encebras than foutering around rubbing down and painting woodwork, sewing fabric panels for behind glass doors for cupboards…well you get the picture.

We reckon the only way to get on with it is to decide what day we’ll be doing what job, and simply do it. Every now and then we get a great burst of energy and miracles occur – then we can’t get out of bed as we’re stiff and exhausted…the perils of getting older!

Okay, a very BIG subject that can be a very BIG problem in Spain….barking dogs. On-line forums are continually littered with posts complaining about dogs barking at all hours of the day and night, and, while it may not seem a major issue, it can be very disruptive to sleep and to normal life in general. Spain has introduced some very tough new laws concerning the keeping of dogs as pets, in that they should receive a high standard of care. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to apply to working or hunting dogs who often just get treated like, well, dogs. Those who keep hunting dogs are not emotional about their animals and they certainly don’t see them as pets. The are there to do a job, and when they can no longer do it they are simply disposed of. Or not so simply disposed of. One way or another the dogs are eliminated when they reach the end of their useful working life.

Now I can easily understand why people might want dogs to hunt with – many, many years ago my father and his friends went hunting with their gun dogs. What most people find difficult to tolerate is how the dogs are treated at home. Sometimes they are kept in order to warn off other predators who might seek to snack on someone’s chickens or geese – a good bark usually scares off most predators. However, a dog kept permanently in a cage outside, or permanently chained up isn’t really going to frighten anybody. As for the barking, well again I simply don’t understand why, if your dog is barking endlessly, you don’t go outside to see what’s going on. One of our neighbours, about 150m across the “sheugh” on the other side of our wee hamlet currently has 11 dogs and my god the sound of them all kicking off after dark is horrendous. It can go on literally for hours. Sometimes it might stop around 2 or 3am, for a while, then it all starts up again. I’m so glad we have very good double glazing, but it means we rarely have the windows open in summer, so we can’t enjoy much of a breeze. As for being woken up 4 or 5 times a night with the noise – why doesn’t the owner go out and shut them up?! We were chatting with four of our closest neighbours the other evening – everyone in this hamlet is Spanish – and they all said the racket was dreadful. One of our neighbours starts work at 6.30am every day and can’t get any decent sleep due to the noise. Here’s the issue – why don’t our Spanish neighbours go and tell the chap to shut his dogs up? Are they afraid of insulting him? Are they all related to each other? Is it easier to complain to us that to deal with it head on? It’s a real dilemma. One branch of the Guardia Civil here, Seprona, deals with environmental issues and animal welfare, so when a complaint is made to them they take swift and effective action. That would include the dogs who are permanently chained up, as well as the dog in the big cage who has never been out of it in the more than 5 years we have lived here. We’re hoping that our neighbour who has to start work very early will maybe have a quiet word with the offender and get a bit of peace here! It won’t solve the problem of the chained and caged dogs but the minute I know we’re leaving here for good, whenever that might be, I will be making a complaint to Seprona!

It’s really not good to have barking all through the night, all year round. Sleep deprivation is a known form of torture but at least we can stay in bed all day if we want, we don’t have to go out to work! We do expect a certain level of disruption out here in the campo but this is ridiculous! In the meantime, we have a megaphone, and now and again Peter practises his loudest roar…it seems to work!

Better news now, not Spanish but essential to my wellbeing out here….our wee grandson Marshall and his football team won the tournament they were playing in recently, the Moyola cup.

We’re just so proud of him! Thank goodness he is the goalie – when the others are all charging around wearing the same blue and white striped outfits I find it hard to tell who’s who….at least I know where to find Marshall, and his strip is bright orange!

Well done the team, well done indeed!

  Back to the weather again and I’m sure you’ll all have seen on the news recently the reports of the horrendous weather we’ve been having in some parts of Spain and the Balearic islands. This photo is from “Murcia Today”.

We’ve had another couple of tormentas – big storms with torrential rain and hailstones. A few parts of our region of Murcia have been badly affected but we were very lucky to remain warm and dry, with no flooding near us. Also our electricity only went off once, for less than 3 minutes, so that was a real bonus. A phenomenal amount of rain can fall in a very short space of time, and gullies and drains in Spain, can’t really cope with it – if they exist at all. Also, because the gound is usually baked hard, the water doesn’t just naturally sink into the soil, as there isn’t time, so it just runs off and out to wherever it can. It usually only happens a couple of times a year, and everything dries up very quickly due to the heat. It’s just something to put up with, and to remember if you want to buy a house in Spain don’t buy one at the bottom of a hill!

This photo of the mountain behind us on fire is what we all desperately try to avoid, so you can see why the rain is so important. It’s to help prevent the devastation that fire brings, as well as to assist the agriculture industry here by ensuring good crops like olives for oil, almonds and so on.

As I said, above, for hours after the rain our house was shrouded in fog, really, really wet air, with very limited visibility. We couldn’t see as far as the bottom of our driveway, and looking over the wall along the side of the house we couldn’t see the lower walled garden at all. Very weird indeed. We’re not so used to being in the middle of fog or cloud, we’re more used to being above the heavy clouds.

Oh, I don’t know why that photo turned out so small…I’m not very technically minded, forgive me! Anyhow, for now the rain has gone, and we don’t expect to see any more until winter.

I’ve been doing bits and pieces on the computer for the last couple of days and I just looked up what our current speeds are. Today, while writing this, the ping is 16, (whatever that means?!) the download speed is 908mbps, and the upload speed is 939mbps. I’m very happy with that result! Our television service runs via internet so with these excellent speeds we never get any buffering or other issues.

In truth we don’t watch a huge amount of television here because we’re either too busy with jobs around the house, or we’re out enjoying ourselves with friends. This wee box is magic! We have access to all the terrestrial channels as well as all the Sky ones amongst hundreds of others. It actually doesn’t mean we watch more, but it does mean we’re a lot more selective in what we choose to watch. All those channels of entertainment, sport, films as well as stored films, box sets and so on gives us a huge amount of choice for when we do actually want to watch something. I can’t believe how good our internet service is – when we moved here to Murcia in 2019 there was only one internet provider and our speeds were between 6 and 12 mbps, if we were lucky. Another little something to be grateful for.

There’s a new, interactive exhibition of Van Gogh and his work showing in Alicante,and we have decided it will be worth going to see. I’m not the biggest fan of his but I want to see how they involve the “interactive” bit so it should be very interesting. Last time we were at an exhibition in Alicante it was to see the terracotta wwarriors, and it was fabulous. With this Van Gogh exhibition, we’re actually going on a coach trip, like bona fide old people…oh wait, that’s what we are now! We’ll get collected from a pick up point we know well (easy parking there too!), taken to the door for the exhibition, then off to Elche for a dander round and some lunch. We keep driving past Elche but have never yet actually had a look around the city. Apparently we are also having a trip round the city on the wee tourist train, I suspect it’s like the Portrush Puffer so we may need to wear wigs and dark glasses! Actually I’m really looking forward to it, I think we’ll have a great day out with no parking or city traffic to worry about. It really is one of the great things about living here,there’s always something on at museums and art galleries, and we’re within very handy range of everywhere.

I need to look up now and see what’s on in Murcia city over the summer – apart from the general inferno that is the weather here! Also, because Laurie and the children are coming over, I want to find out if there’s anything suitable for the little ones to see in the sity. We can go in and out again on the tram which I think they’ll enjoy too. There’s a very good museum of science and water which is mainly geared for families and children so I think they’d enjoy that. We’re taking them to the waterpark in Torrevieja for a day out as well, got the tickets now, I think it will be great fun.

We’re planning the next stage of the garden, getting another area cleared properly. It’s the vaguely terraced bit beyond the walled garden, and there’s quite a lot of it! There are a number of almond trees, and there’s even a little clementine tree there but the latter is being slowly strangled by an enormous fig tree. We need to work out a way of cutting the fig back to a manageable size – we do get lovely fresh figs from it but it definitely needs a bit of a hard pruning. Then we can lift the clementine and transplant it into the walled garden, and tidy up the terracing so we aren’t in danger of breaking our necks clambering down to clear the ground. Those stones in the photo are where a bit of the wall collapsed, so we will get them back and get everything looking shipshape again.

The little blood orange tree which Peter bought me is now safely planted and has lots of blossom buds on it as well as some teeny wee oranges, so it seems to be thriving.

My main lemon tree took a bit of a hammering with the storm and is looking as skinny as a supermodel but still has a couple of lemons attached so it’s hanging on! It won’t take long for it to come back and fill out. Plenty of sunshine and the right amount of water will put things right very quickly. The vines are looking strong and healthy, and the walled garden will be slowly filled up with more fruit trees. Oh, I’ve just realised, in the photo of the lemon tree you can see “buildings” across the “sheugh” from us. Sort of buildings, really a clatter of sheds held together by corrugated iron roofing. Must be like an inferno in there in the summer. Anyhow, that’s where the chap lives who has all the dogs….sound carries on still summer nights, and sound from 11 dogs carries even further.

We’ll be looking in the garden centres now for a couple more fruit trees. Meanwhile, our tomato plants are coming on a treat, thanks to Peter’s careful management! I think when I was in charge of them they nearly died, so I’m sort of glad he’s taken over now. Don’t judge me, I’m not great at gardening but I did manage to successfully raise two children! I was really annoyed that I didn’t manage to get very far with my apple pips, so I’m having another go. They’re in the fridge waiting to germinate, so we’ll see how they get on this time.

We were just talking the other night about how much we have to look forward to at the minute. The Van Gogh exhibition in Alicante, Laurie and the children coming over, the water park with them, the science and water museum with them, getting the pool cover off this weekend and the pool prepped for daily dips, our friends Edgar and Ariane coming to stay, Bryan Adams concert in Murcia and….a scoot over to the best wee country in the world, Norn Iron, for some pre-Christmas shopping. Also so many lunches out with friends for relaxing times. Add to that the last of the jobs done in the house, the art studio will be properly set up at last, everywhere painted and fresh, and all our pictures hung in the right places. Some work but plenty of lovely things happening, I’ll keep you informed!