Month: September 2024

We had decided that we’d quite like a few days away to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and we wanted to go somewhere not too far from home, but where we’d never been before. We decided on Albacete, the capital of Castilla La Mancha, which is about an hour and a half from us.

We’d seen it on the map, it’s on the way to Madrid, but we’d never been there and didn’t actually know anything about it. We booked accommodation, a little apartment right in the city, which looked grand and had great reviews, and set off for our trip which was to be from the Wednesday – our actual anniversary, to the Friday.

In case some of you don’t know, Castilla La Mancha is Don Quixote country. The famous 17th century book, by Miguel de Cervantes, tells of a lowly chap who reads too many chivalric romances and loses his mind, imagining himself to be a knight of the realm, fighting windmills which he believes are the enemies of the state. He is accompanied by his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, and the pair ride together through the whole area.

As we drove through the area en route to the capital, we saw quite a few original windmills, though many have fallen into various stages of disrepair. However, we DID see many, many huge wind turbines which set me thinking about a modern day Don Quixote maybe riding up to fight them on his trusty Harley Davidson, accompanied by Sancho Panza on a scooter!

Albacete turned out to be a delight. A beautiful city filled with the most relaxed and polite people ever! We even noticed that when in a queue at red traffic lights, those on motorbikes and scooters waited their turn back in the queue, instead of following the usual Spanish practice of shooting up either side of your car to get to the front and scare the bejaysus out of you by cutting across you.

Something else I didn’t know is that Albacete is famous for its knife production, from pre-historic times right up to today. They’re so proud of this that there’s a whole museum in a lovely old building, devoted to the production of knives in all shapes and forms, from tiny wee penknives to huge big machetes. We learned about the history of knife-making in the area and it was very interesting. Generally knives are also sold openly in Spain, they are various sizes and shapes, and you don’t need a licence. There doesn’t seem to be any knife crime as there is in the UK, or, particularly, in London. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

One of the places I was keen to see was the Pasaje de Lodares which, from the photos we’d seen, looked a bit like the beautiful colonnades of streets in Genoa, Italy, which we had loved. Well, I wouldn’t be rushing back to see the similar area in Albacete because although it was indeed, very pretty, you could walk from one end to the other in about 30 seconds, and most of the shop units were closed down! Rather lovely architecture though, and worth a wee peep.

We only had a few days in the city, but when there we learned that their feria, or big fiesta,was going to start on the Saturday, the day after we would be home. Spanish towns usually hold their fiestas over a three day weekend, but the bigger cities go on for longer. Albacete was expecting around four million people in and out of the city over the ten days of the feria. Yes, you read that right, FOUR MILLION PEOPLE! Long gone are the days when I’d have been right in the middle of that , enjoying the music, dancing and eating. Nowadays I can hardly think of much worse than being trapped surrounded by millions of people all having a great time! I think our escape was well-timed, a little bit of synchronicity for us!

Now here’s a thing to get you thinking! You all know that Peter and I both believe strongly in synchronicity rather than coincidence, and we look for, and find examples almost every day, a bit like having had a lovely time in Albacete but managing to escape before the hordes descended.

Well, prepare to be amazed, dumbfounded, astonished, delighted and blown away by the next thing I’m going to tell you!

I started at the University of Stirling, in Scotland, 50 years ago. Actually that in itself is shocking enough but there are two more BIG issues here. Ready?

I got an email from my friend Deirdre, who I still keep in touch with after all these years, talking about a reunion for six of us who’d shared a flat on campus. Because we’re all living all over the place it was felt that a zoom sort of thing might be the best way to go, to catch up and re-establish old friendships. It’s going to be happening next weekend.

In the meantime, I found an old photo of the six of us, all dressed up for a party in the flat. From the front, left to right is Hilary, Louise and Lin. Back row, left to right is me, Deirdre and Irene.

Now, never mind that Deirdre had been contacting the very ones in this photo, I need to amaze you even more…..I told them all by email that I remembered that Lin and I had swopped dresses for the night, she wore mine and I wore hers. I had loved my dress, I’d bought it in the White House in Portrush, having gone into my second geography A-level paper; I’d looked at the questions, I wrote my name and number, and left straightaway to go shopping without writing one more word. The dress that Lin is wearing is the one I bought that day, 50 years ago. When I laughingly added this wee bit of info to the group email Lin said she still had it!!!! WHAT?!!?!?!? She said she wasn’t usually in the habit of keeping clothes but since she’d moved south from Scotland the dress, along with some other things, were in a bag in a cupboard and HAD STAYED THERE ALL THAT TIME! She even sent me a photo of it!

Can you tell how excited I was to read that? So, the upshot of all this is that she’s going to post the dress to me, I can’t believe it! I don’t care what it looks like now, we’ve all aged a bit since those days – and then some!

I’ve only just found this out this morning and am leaping around with joy at thinking I have something lovely to look forward to in the post.

Even better, I’m now back in touch with some old friends after such a long time, which is is doing my soul good!

And on that note I’ll say ‘ta luego till the next time!

“When southern summers come the air falls fast like a blanket, smothers the breath and wraps itself round us. We long for the cool air of autumn or even the chill of winter’s fingers on our throats. We overheat like cars with faulty radiators.

To get to sleep we try lying still, but the air feels like a heavy quilt pressing down, turning breathing into gasping, and making skin shine like dawn dew.

We learn in school that most things expand and lengthen in the heat. There is always an exception, of course.

Tempers get shorter and tolerance diminishes as the hot days grow longer, generally it seems best to just stay out of everyone’s way where possible.

The more caring days of autumn are still some time away so for now we rise early, rest when we can, and wait for the heat to lose its sting, and for the relief that cooler air brings.”

Like the vast majority of people here I just can’t wait until this latest little “ola de calor”, or heatwave, does its thing and clears off until next year. It is really, really difficult to get anything done in such searing temperatures, and here in inland Murcia we have seen the mercury rise to around 40C or more. It will be such a relief when the sting of the heat leaves us and we get back to lovely warm days and cooler nights.

Meanwhile, until then, there’s always this…

and this…

When you’re in the pool there’s a lovely cool breeze that is bliss on wet skin, then it’s a race up the steps out of the courtyard onto the terrace and into the shade of the verandah where the same cool breeze is always there all day, no matter what the air temperature reads.

Peter has nearly finished the plastering part of the pool courtyard. We’ve agreed that really only the one very higgeldy-piggeldy wall needed plastering, it was far too rough to even be described as rustic! The other walls are grand, so within the next few days the whole area will be painted white, and the solar lights will be up all over the place. It is really difficult to do manual workoutside in these temperatures, but we should have had the courtyard done before the end of June – just another reminder that you should never put off till tomorrow something you really should have done last year!

There is one wall, where we built the seating area, which is made of very jagged layers of rocks. It looks rather interesting and we wanted to keep it,but if you were sitting there and leaned back you would have a rather painful set of lacerations. So we thought we’d try to get an enormous piece of clear perspex and bolt it onto the rough part of the wall. Then we can dangle down a load of solar lights behind the perspex which will look rather pretty when the sun goes down. I’m currently looking at where to buy a big sheet of perspex so we can get it on the wall as soon as possible.

The floor of the courtyard will be sprayed with white paint, then I have a lovely big thick cotton rug to put down, much easier on the feet!

We’ve recently had just the best time ever, when Laurie and the grandchildren were here for just over a week. I had been counting down the days with growing excitement and it was so, so good to have them here.

We took them to the waterpark in Torrevieja and they absolutely loved it. For me it was just proof that purgatory really does exist – too many people, too hot, too noisy, too everything, in fact! However, it didn’t matter a jot as the children had a ball. Laurie and Peter went in the different water areas with them – I sat in the shade with my book and a big bottle of half frozen water, guarding our belongings – I’m not entirely daft!

I think most of all they enjoyed just being with us at home – as they could be in the pool as much as they wanted! The best time was their “midnight” swim. Well it was about half past nine but it was dark and that was what we needed to bring on the LED and solar lights. They really loved the floating lotus flowers and thought it was great fun to dive down for the little colour-changing lights we scattered along the floor of the pool.

The boys saw a little dragonfly had got bogged down in the pool – we have a couple of them who visit every day, one red and one blue – and Scott lifted it out of the water. Marshall let it rest on his arm until it was able to fly away again, something else to tell their friends! Incidentally, the Spanish word for dragonfly is “libelula”, isn’t that lovely? Those wee beauties can each eat around 100 mosquitos a day, so they’re well worth having in the garden.

All too soon the holiday was over and I had to take our wee family back to the airport. We had had such a great time and of course we are now looking up flights to get over to see them again in November/December. Always a good excuse to do a bit of Christmas shopping and catch up with friends.

Meanwhile, the day they went home I went into their bedrooms to strip the beds and in the boys’ room they had left me their wee sliders, until next time. Tissues required to stop my eyes leaking!

We have a fabulous little pasteleria now in Fortuna, called Dulce Sueño by Sara. She and her husband are Polish, so Peter is always happy to call in! Sara makes the most delicious little cakes, very different from your average “buns”, each one is truly a work of art. They are indescribably delicious and such a treat! Sara has a Facebook page, it’s here so you can look it up and see what she creates. https://www.facebook.com/dulce.sueno.by.sara

Well? Are you jealous yet? Gorgeous cakes! She is a real artist and the flavours are simply sublime. Any of you who come to stay with us will be marched down the town and into the pasteleria with great anticipation!

And here’s another wee sneaky one of Laurie and the children enjoying a treat there too!

We got up the other morning and as I looked down the driveway I could see something unusual – a big cactus had flowered overnight.

Now I’m not a fan of those spiky things and wouldn’t ever want to plant them, but we inherited this one with the house and this is the first time I’ve ever seen a flower on it in the five plus years we’ve lived in this house! It looked rather lovely but….by the next day all the flowers had vanished!

This garden and the local wildlife continue to astonish and amaze me. I took this photo of a bee collecting nectar from our big bougainvillea – it looks for all the world like a butterfly or hummingbird but is actually a bee. Nice wee thing!

I was lucky to get a photo of this cicada on a tree in the garden – they are masters of disguise and you can just about make it out in the middle of the photo, with its wings folded down along its back. They are about a couple of inches long, and they make a sound like electrical charge flowing, designed to attract a mate.

Apparently their eggs are laid underground, where they stay or up to 7 years before hatching and making their way to the surface to find a mate. They don’t live very long, the females then lay their eggs underground and the whole cycle begins again.

I had a couple of great finds recently, while shopping. Our brilliant supermarket chain, Mercadona, has come up with a fabulous perfume that smells like Mediterranean lemons, my all-time favourite scent, along with neroli, or orange blossom. It’s only €6.50 a bottle and is just divine.

And for my neroli scent, Zara has nailed it with this one – wonderful!

I’m currently smelling gorgeous!

One final word about the heat, before it starts to cool down in the run through autumn and into winter….

That just about sums it up!

Right, I’m away now to finish off the last of the dulse that Laurie brought over for us, if Peter hasn’t beaten me to it!