There is a sort of ‘aqua gritter’ which looks like a gritter lorry, but goes round the dirt roads spraying water on the tracks to keep down dust (we couldn’t work out when it had rained and why only on some roads!).
There is also a big water tank which goes round watering the municipal trees – a bit of a suprise as I assumed that the trees were chosen because they didn’t need watering – but perhaps there is limit to how long a tree should go without water (and might explain why we only had 3 lemons last year).
We got caught having tea at 8.30 yesterday. Someone came round and looked very bemused that we were eating at such a strange time, 11 is ‘normal’ for this time of year. We could just see ‘can not compute’ flashing across his expression. We have been eating earlier this year than last and getting a reasonably early night and starting early in the morning. It is now getting very hot though, and I think we will have to get back into continental hours. At this time of year people start work at 7 / 8, work through to 2 or 3 then siesta between 3 and 6 ish and then start work again 7ish, and social time seems to kick off around 11 when everyone appears to pull their chairs out on to the road.
Interestingly, we’ve been talking with someone who has been applying for jobs in Madrid and that it seems there is starting to be a change in working hours. With his new job he had the option of ‘intensive hours’ which is 9 – 6 with just an hour for lunch. ‘Normal’ hours are between 9 – 8 or 9 with 2 or 3 hours for siesta. I just cannot think of anything worse – here it is great because you probably don’t work far away and come home and siesta with the family – but imagine if you are in Madrid, or working too far from home to make going home for siesta worthwhile – you’d have 2 or 3 hours of just knocking around, and then not getting home till lateish in the night – and that is just a normal day.
I forgot to mention a traumatic episode. Dookems was sat on the roof of the barn watching the world go by – and all of a sudden he started to get bombarded by birds. Poor Dookes is not the roughest/toughest cat in the world, and he was rightly startled. So startled, in fact, that a bird flew into his open mouth. Dookes panicked and froze. The bird panicked and didn’t freeze, the rest of the birds carried on bombarding poor Dookes. So, Ian had to get the ladder, brave the bombarding birds and rescue Dookems and the bird. I’d not seen this before but the birds were really dive bombing Dookems. I don’t know what sort of birds they were either – they didn’t seem to be swallows.