Rocking Your World 2020: Week 28

Well here we go again, looking for those little things that have made us feel happy and grateful this week. I think some people are finding the continuing state of virus alarm quite difficult, and they struggle to find those 'happy moments' as each day drags on much the same as the one before, but I am amazed that I still manage to ramble on week after week! So dig deep folks. There is always something to make you smile, and you will feel better for finding it.

My main 'smile' this week is one that may have some of you running the other way, but, as you know, I love all things pertaining to Wildlife in Spain so I was delighted when we got a knock on our door one morning, and a very pleasant young man informed us that a very long snake was hiding behind a pot on our front porch. It was nice of him to tell us, but I think he expected me to scream or throw my hands up in horror! Instead, as I didn't want it to cross the threshold into the house,  I gently moved the pot an inch and as this beauty shot out, I shot indoors to fetch my camera. They move at lightening speed so I was too late to get a good motion shot. It went along the front wall and proceeded to tie itself in knots in the space behind another empty pot. The young man offered to remove it for me and seemed surprised when I said "No thank you. It's fine". Snakes are only aggressive if you attack them and I knew it wanted to find its own escape route. Sure enough, he did come half way out for a good look around, and then went back in and down into an agricultural water drain. These are the best photos I managed, and from them I was able to identify it as a Horseshoe Whip Snake, which is quite harmless and only bites when really annoyed. So left in peace he slithered away and we haven't seen him again.

We heard some workmen outside our house one day, and when we looked we found that our street lamps were being replaced. We have excellent lighting in the village and it stays on all night so it feels very safe to walk about after dark. The lamps were upgraded a few years ago and we had an 'old-fashioned' designed that I rather liked. (Left  hand photo). Unfortunately the glass panels in each side were constantly being broken, and the bulbs seemed to need replacing rather often. So now we have these much more modern ones (Right hand photo), which have no glass to break, and possibly LED lights as no lamp bulbs are visible. They make the actual street and pavements surprisingly bright, with no wasted light going up into the sky, so they seem like a real improvement. Unfortunately, after two nights of a well lit street, all the lamps on our side of the road have stopped working. I expected one of the Spanish residents to report the fault straight away, and usually they are quick to deal with any reported problems, so if they are still not working by Monday I will go up to the town hall and report it myself.

Last week I showed a baby photo for my eldest son along with a recent one taken on his forty-ninth birthday. His wife commented that she loved that in the baby photo he was still surrounded in crochet work. Most of that was done by my mother. She died twenty-six years ago, but I still have some of her blankets in constant use.

Well, once in every decade our son shaves off his long hair for a charitable cause, and although he wasn't due his next crop for a year or two, he decided there was a great need in his area right now, so this week his wife 'did the honours'. She made a collage of the process. He is very shy of social media, but as he allowed this to go on Facebook I am sure he won't object to my small group of blog friends seeing it too.

I love the last one where he is holding his pony tail. Now it is all tidied up it actually looks quite good and he is hoping he will raise a good sum for a local project supplying food parcels and other much needed items to poor families in his parish.

At least he knows it is not permanent and will soon grow again.

Now I am going to share a few photos that are not mine. The first is from a local news group and shows the very popular tourist destination of Benedorm, where the beach was prepared and ready for the first influx of foreign holiday makers. They certainly laid out how it should be, but I doubt whether the social distancing was very closely adhered to. They do regularly patrol the beaches and disperse any large groups. Last weekend, several beaches were closed again because people were not keeping to the rules. I hope they continue to be as strict so that everyone understands that they mean business.

There have been a few small new outbreaks of the virus this week, but they have been instantly contained and kept under control, so we are hoping that opening the borders won't be the cause of too many more.

Next, I stand corrected. I couldn't believe it, when the day after I posted that bananas don't grow over here, a friend posted this picture of the banana tree in their neighbour's garden! From the comments, some others were surprised too, while others said they also had one. I still don't think they are grown commercially here on the mainland, as any I buy are either from Colombia or the Canary Islands. It has a very impressive flower doesn't it?

And finally, my Spanish friend Cati is a keen photographer and says she "loves clouds". Every day she posts at least one photo on her facebook and I thought this one was so beautiful, I just had to share it. It is taken in the early evening from the railings at the top of the village.

The new Blogger was so uncooperative today that in the end I reverted to the legacy version. It is also being a bit troublesome but I think I am winning with it for now. So I shall link this up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and get it published before anything else goes wrong.
I don't often add 'funnies' to my posts as they are long enough anyway! But this week I saw a list of puns which always make me smile, so I saves a few of them to share with you below. If puns are your thing, do read and enjoy.

1. Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The Ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent.

2. A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says: “A beer please, and one for the road.”

3. Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: “Does this taste funny to you?”

4. A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

5. Two cows are standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.” “I don’t believe you,” says Dolly. “It’s true, no bull!” exclaims Daisy.

6. An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either

7. “Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home.'” “That sounds like Tom Jones Syndrome.” “Is it common?” Well, “It’s Not Unusual.”

8. I went to a seafood disco last week… and pulled a mussel.

9. I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn’t find any.

10. Deja Moo: The feeling that you’ve heard this bull before.

11. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him. (Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good…) A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

12. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. “But why,” they asked, as they moved off. “Because,” he said, “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”