The rain has stopped over the last couple of days and it has got warmer. I think it is noticeably warmer in the house too, although my feet are still suffering from loss of slippers (wish Henry would own up to where he has hidden them). However ‘we needed it’ and the water deposits and reservoirs throughout the south of Spain will have benefit from the down pours.
We forgot that the clocks changed at the weekend so our early start on Sunday to get on with things was not as early as we would have liked.
Poor Tinks is in season. This means that Henry follows her round trying to knock her over with a head-butt and then sits on her growling at any one who walks past. Needless to say that Tinks gets a bit fed up with this and she has been hiding away with me in the workshop. We should have got her and Petal neutered before we moved but the timing wasn’t right. The vets will only do it on mature dogs half way between seasons. Perhaps when our Spanish is better we’ll be able to get it done here.
We also need to get them trimmed as they are looking a bit wooly. We’ve noticed that there are a lot of small woolly dogs around here, so I am keeping an eye open for if they get trimmed. There may be someone in the village that we could use which would be great.
We’ve started going out for walks again, we definitely notice that Basil is better behaved if he is given a long-ish walk every other day or so. We have found a picnic spot complete with barbecues just outside of the village which we didn’t know about before. Some things are just so different here. In the middle of this picnic area there is an open well. Really open, you could climb in! Two things struck us, firstly the fact it was open and without warning signs etc, and secondly the fact that it was clean inside and not filled with rubbish or shopping trolleys. We will treat ourselves at some point to some super-magnifying binoculars, there are a lot of birds and things around and it would be good to be able to identify them. Ian pointed out a rare hawk yesterday, which later transpired to be a pidgeon. Hmmm, he assures me he was a young ornithologist. We’ve also been watching the storks, I don’t know when we’d expect to see their young, but I imagine it would be soon.
This promanading in the afternoon is very Spanish. There are lots of people who we meet whilst they take a turn round the field. We were wondering today if the afternoon walks would get later as the weather gets hotter.
Today was market day in the village and we went down to stock up on vegetables. We were greated with a ‘hello’ from the lady on the stall, who also wished us ‘good bye’, she either remembered we were english or else we must have looked foreign. We came back with four carrier bags full of veg including some huge radishes. Unfortately the man on the spice stall isn’t so good with faces and yet again he started into his sales spiel about the different herbs and spices whilst we stand there looking dim.
Work-wise things are coming along. Ian has nearly finished inextremadura.com which is a message board for english speakers in the area. Although why we can’t just talk to each other like normal couples I don’t know! There are a few english speakers in Extremadura so this is a way we can all communicate. The book is coming along. I have most of the step by steps done, and just need to do some finishing off of different things. I’m starting to think about what to do next, I have an idea for a wedding jewellery book and have been drawing up some designs, as it might be useful to get this done now as it will fit in well with getting the first book finished before I start on something different.