Phewey, it is so hot at the moment. It’s difficult to know what to do. Last week I was getting up at 5 in the morning to work, as during the afternoon it is really too hot to do anything. However, where it is so hot it’s difficult to sleep in the night, the coolest time is about 5! So I ended up getting up and falling asleep in my chair!
There don’t really seem to be any rules about when people work during August. Many companies close for the month, which is why the villages fill up with families that have moved away and come back to visit during the month. Builders seem to start around 6.30 and finish at 2 ish. The banks open in the morning, but not after siesta. On the other hand, the dustbins get emptied at 1 (at night), we’ve seen the butchers shop open at midnight and I am pretty certain that some of the farmers work through the night.
Our house is relatively cool though, and we can see why they are built the way they are. My workshop gets hot, but there is no insulation against heat or cold.
The streets will be full of people sat out enjoying the night’s activities. I’ve not been out this year, but last year we saw two families who’d taken their sofa outside – one on each side of the road. And the village is deathly quiet during siesta which can go on to 7 ish during August.
The pillar is drying up, there is a trickle of water, but it takes a long time to fill the water bottle. Thankfully Ian is not using his sock to filter the water as this slows the process down even more.
It rained last week for the first time in months. Although it did spot with rain the other week when we were out for a walk, this was the first time it rained enough to get the ground wet. It also reminded us that we need to remind Manuel that he needs to come back and repair the roof. We are very lax at making arrangements with the builders about things – I don’t know why. You’d think that given the potential for mis-communication we’d check and double check everything. If we write things down then at least they know what we think we’ve understood and it is a reference document. In fact, that is a good idea and I am going to buy a notebook for that very purpose. Our written Spanish isn’t ‘that’ bad and is certainly good enough to write down the basics of what we’ve agreed. I think we’ve been sat here waiting for the doors to arrive, whereas we were supposed to be telling the carpenter when the decorators had finished. We heard ‘they’ll come after the painters have finished’ and they probably said something along the lines of ‘tell us when the painters have finished’. If we’d written it down then hopefully we’d have picked this up.
Right, I’m off to buy a note book!