Almost back to normal!

Well we have had another fun-filled week, spent with Ben and Dave, but they moved on to Benidorm for their second week on Friday morning. Now, apart from three more concerts with our choir Cantante, we are more or less back to normal. So here is a brief synopsis of last week, in a photo collage that I am hoping will fit across a page when I publish it.

 

The first thing they did on arrival was to jump into the pool. It was hot all week and they made good use of the pool every day, as did we. Ben likes to prove he can still do handstands and back flips into the water. All that gymnastics training hasn't gone completely! We had one nice morning on the beach. As usual we took them to Los Cocedores, as it is our favourite beach here. We swam in the sea which was as warm as our pool and beautifully clear. The boys came home very sunburnt despite using sun cream. Chris and I are more used to the Spanish sun now and we just went a bit pink. On the last night we met some friends at a bar up in Alfoquia, where they have an 'open mike' night on Thursdays, and Ben entertained us with his singing and playing.

We took them to the train station in Murcia on Friday morning, and when we got back we had a message that our new TV had arrived and was ready for collection. When we moved in we inherited a fairly old television which was big and bulky, with a  mediocre picture. Then our sat box failed so we couldn't record or play back any programmes that we had missed, so for the past year we have talked about renewing it. Chris decided he would like a better one before the Olympics, and the Euro-football, and as my eyesight is now so bad, I just wanted a screen that I can see! So we now have a flat, LCD screen, wall mounted, which makes a big difference to the space in our rather narrow sitting room. It can link up to a computer so we can listen to music and view photos etc on it. It is also capable of showing HD programmes, and the new 'box' allows us to record, as well as to watch both English and Spanish programmes, though we may need to renew the Spanish aerial first. Chris unpacked it and then had a huge task of sorting out a muddle of wires. We put it on it's stand for the first night, but this morning Chris fixed it to the wall, and this afternoon we enjoyed watching the Queen's diamond jubilee water pageant on the Thames. What an amazing spectacle. I would love to have been there to see it. I am looking forward to the big concert tomorrow as well.

And finally here are a few photos I took out in the garden this week. Last autumn we cut the bougainvillea down quite ruthlessly and it paid off, because it is now a solid mass of colour all down the side of the house. It is so pretty close up, with dainty off-white flowers in clusters of three amongst the purple bracts. The stephanotis has opened it's first cluster of flowers. It smells divine! The calla lilies I took from my friend's garden when she moved house, have got their first flowers. They were beautiful for one year, but very poor last year, so I am hoping this promising start will lead to another good year this year. We also have the first flowers out on our bright yellow hibiscus. This is confined to quite a small pot, and it always amazes me when it carries these big beautiful blooms each year. And lastly here is a little window box that has surprised us both. We decided not to renew the window boxes this year as we were waiting for the man to come to fit new mosquito screens to all the windows. Also we did not want to ask anyone to water them while we were away, so we took most of them down. But this one, tucked into a windowsill on the side of the garage, got forgotten, and totally ignored. I have just started watering it, and it has immediately woken up a dead looking geranium, and a succulent that has yellow daisy flowers. I shall now take proper care of it and hopefully it will continue to thrive.