Winter 2006
November
I hope you are all keeping warm now that winter is coming, although
those in the southern hemisphere are apparently recovering from a very dry
winter with a hot summer still to come. Here
in Spain our five month drought finally ended in a deluge.
It has rained fairly solidly for the last four days.
Now the sun is peeping through, the clouds over the sea are lifting and
everything in the garden is gently steaming.
I’m now happily planning what plants I need to fill the gaps while the
soil is soft enough to dig. Planting
cacti is a tricky business as they can give you nasty rashes.
You have to take care too when you walk out in the countryside.
David goes on long walks with ‘the lads’ over the campo, so wild
you have to turn left at the second gorse bush.
We have one or two nasty creatures too, scorpions, (although fortunately
I’ve never come across one of those), centipedes, which can give a nasty nip
and run very fast on all those legs, adder, vipers too high up in the mountains,
and vicious little spiders which are best avoided.
On the plus side we have the most beautiful birds which I’ve written
about many timese. Last week we saw
what we think was a Griffin vulture. He
swooped low over the house and dropped on some poor prey or other nearby.
Magnificent!
This month the Spanish have been celebrating All Saints.
They don’t do Hallowe’en with witches or trick-a-treat, as we do.
They believe All Saints is the night the dead walk, so they take food to
the cemetario and have a sort of graveside midnight picnic in case grandma
decides to take a stroll.
On a more cheerful note we had a lovely visitor come to
stay. Carole Matthews who writes
wonderfully funny chic lit. She
very kindly gave me a signed copy of her latest: Welcome
to the Real World, a delightful feel-good read which I’m already
devouring. You can check her out at
www.carolematthews.com
We sometimes go over to eat at a favourite little
restaurant in El Marchal, the next village to us.
It’s lovely to eat lunch there in the square beneath an old fig tree.
We went just last week, before the rains came, as there was to be live
music from Clive Sarstedt. Clive
lives locally and often plays at bars or restaurants, although he spends quite a
few months each winter in India, I believe, where he was born.
I’m sure you’ll remember the Sarstedt brothers who had a skiffle
group in the sixties. Clive’s hit
was My Resistance is Low, although he used the name Robin Sarstedt then, perhaps
considered more fashionable. His
brother Peter’s big hit was Where Do You Go To My Lovely.
Peter now lives near Fowey in Cornwall,. And Richard Sarstedt was, I believe, Eden Kane in the
sixties. I must say Clive can still
rock. It was a great afternoon.
I’ve had a busy month finishing off number 4 in the Champion
Street Market Series. This
one is called Candy Kisses and is the story of Lizzie Pringle who runs the
chocolate and sweet stall on the market. It
is also about the problems of illegitimacy and child abuse in the fifties. More about this later.
December
We've just enjoyed our second olive harvest, not quite as bumper a crop as last
year but still providing enough olive oil to keep us happy for the year and
plenty for our volunteer pickers too.
Here they are hard at work in the winter sunshine. Once the olives are picked we load the sacks on to the trailer and take them to the cooperativa for pressing. To achieve extra virgin oil they must be pressed the same day and the quality of the olives be at a certain level of acidity.
Here you can see the conveyor belt which carries the olives
to the press.
And a small visitor who thought he
might join in
the fun on our terrace.
He's a
praying mantis.
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