Red sky at night - shepherds' delight ..

... or in this case, three kings delight. Around teatime on Wednesday I noticed that my room was taking on a rosy hue and looking out the window I saw a beautiful sunset. By the time I had found my camera and got outside, the sky had changed from a lovely golden peachy colour to fiery reds and oranges, and a few minutes later, it was all gone. It's ages since we had a sky like that. It was the night of the arrival of the Three Kings, so I hoped the lovely sunset was heralding good weather for the next day, when our village has a little fiesta.

On Wednesday night we walked up to the village square to watch the kings arrive at the plazza, and to see the children being given their gifts. It's not so different from our children visiting Father Christmas except there is no entrance fee, and the gifts have been provided in advance by the parents. Many of the children will have had a stocking from Santa with small gifts in it, on Christmas night, but this would be their main present from the kings. Some Spanish families are adopting our ways now. When we walked up the road on Christmas morning we saw a little Spanish toddler riding on a new battery-driven tractor, but many stick to their old traditions, which, to me, make a lot more sense anyway. (They came bearing gifts etc!). The giving of the presents takes place in a big marquee erected for the fiesta, and then there is music and dancing throughout the night. Out on the street there was a medieval market and lots of food stalls. The word fiesta is synonimous with food and music out here, and they do it very well. Just look at this circular barbeque. I took this picture just before we went home to bed, but the man assured us it would all be eaten that night! And see the pile of bread he has prepared to go with it. You got one of those huge, doorstep slices with four fat sausages on it, or half a rack of ribs. It looked lovely but we weren't tempted to try at that time of night.

The next day we headed into the village again for the fiesta. I won't go into too much detail here as the emphasis is on Tradition so each fiesta is very similar to the one last year. But there were a few changes. Apparently in order to save money, the kings arrived on horses instead of the usual camels, which wasn't quite so dramatic, but they looked very fine all the same. The market had more stalls than usual, and someone said they thought Turre had joined with us instead of having one of their own. There were several craftsmen working. I was particularly taken with this man who was using old spoons to make bracelets. We also had a mini zoo with a tent full of reptiles etc. We didn't pay the euro to go in, but I did spend time talking to the lovely falcon perched at the entrance. There were also small pens of chickens, ducks, geese and guinea fowl, and a huge turkey who obviously escaped the fate of becoming someone's Christmas dinner! But my favourite animal was a very young donkey, seen here with his mother. He was so soft to touch. Wouldn't mum have just loved him? After the usual play about Herod's meeting with the Kings at his palace, there was a children's theatre session run by one man. He was fantastic with the children coersing them into taking part in his play, whipping costumes on and off them, and all the time keeping up a running commentary in Spanish and broken English, and, yes, that really is a live rat sitting on his head throughout the whole thing. He had us all in stitches - not just the children.

At around 2.00 there is always free food for everyone and this year, instead of paella or migas, it was a huge tortilla. They had to break a fair few eggs to make that didn't they? I was impressed at the way they managed to get it cooked through just right, without any of it getting burned, and that's over a wood fire, not a hob with heat control knobs! When it was ready they cut it into thick slices and put it in a big, fresh bread roll. I couldn't manage to eat all of mine, and I hadn't been sampling all the other foods on sale throughout the morning. Most of the stalls had been very busy but everyone still tucked into their tortilla with relish. Even little children were given the same huge portions. Things slowed down after that but it still kept going until mid evening. Then the market packed up and by next day everything was gone, so we are back to normal now until the next fiesta which is the Andalucia day carnival mid-February! I'll put the rest of my pictures in a folder on my gallery, so feel free to have a browse on www.picasaweb.com/kayempea1947

Happy New Year

Yes, here we are in 2011, and how many of you, like me, are only just getting used to writing 2010? There is certainly truth in the saying that the older you get the faster the time goes. There was general agreement with this in church this morning, and most of us are well into the 'older' group!

I decided to start my new year by making a second blog. This is primarily for my crafting friends, as a place to display some of my 'makes', and share the materials and techniques I used. I have called it "Manualidades por mi" which is simply spanish for "My handicrafts", and you can find it at manualidades-mamapez5.blogspot.com . (Just click on the link to see it). The Banner across the top took a while to make. It is a selection of craft materials and equipment, photographed and then cropped and resized to fit across the page. There are only three posts at the minute which are mostly repeats of previous posts in here or on Facebook, but in future I will only post them in the new blog and put a link on here. So if you are interested in crafts, do have a peek, and I'd love to have you as a follower.

I wonder whether you did anything interesting on New Year's Eve. I was quite surprised to learn that most of our boys spent it at home, but it sounds as though that was the case for a lot of folk in UK, except perhaps in the major cities. I guess no-one has the money left after Christmas to celebrate again, or they were saving what they do have for the sales. We did go out, to our little local bar just down the road. It is so close to home that getting back at the end of the evening is no problem, and after a very quiet Christmas, it was nice to go out and meet with friends. Here is Ali, the owner of the bar, preparing my jug of sangria which kept me going for the night! We had a couple running a karaoke and/or just playing background music, and they are used to our crowd so they bring out all the old songs. I have sat through some pretty aweful karaokes on holiday sometimes, but we have actually got several men and a couple of women who are regulars at the bar, who can sing really well, and they were very entertaining. These two sing the Banana boat song, every time, and it has become quite a joke, but everyone joins in and enjoys it. At midnight, 11.00 your time, we greeted the new year spanish style, with cava and grapes. You are supposed to eat one grape for each toll of the bell, but the ones they provided us with were huge, and it's a wonder we didn't all choke. We had the spanish TV on for it, showing a clock that I expect was in Madrid, but instead of counting down from ten to one like we do, they counted up from one to twelve, so that confused us all! Then at 1.00, midnight in UK, we did it all again with party poppers and Auld lang syne. We watched the fireworks in London on the TV. They were pretty fantastic weren't they, but you couldn't help but wonder how many thousands of pounds were going up in smoke in these difficult times! About ten minutes later, a big crowd of spanish people came in. They all celebrate in big family gatherings at home, and then they come out. Some of the spanish bars would have opened at around 12.30! This group were mostly neighbours of Mick and Ali and some of them come to the regular Friday evening karaoke sessions. (We don't normally go to these, but in the summer we can hear them from our garden). They got up in groups of half a dozen or so and belted out the favourite spanish songs. Then we did the ones that are a mixture of spanish and english words like 'Viva España', and 'Amigos para siempre', and everyone joined in and then we were all up dancing in the tiny bit of space between the tables. It was a really enjoyable night.

And now a little bit aimed mainly at the family. On 28th December, Jim and Jo invited all our boys and their families to their house for a 'gathering of the clan', and Tom took some photos for me. As it is so long since any of you have seen them, I asked Tom if I could paste a couple of them here. So here are our lads, from the right, Ben, Tom, Jonathan, Mike and Jim, and here are their respective partners, again from the right, Ben's partner Dave, Pippa, Jon's girlfriend Ella, Jessie and Jo. And finally here is the whole group showing our grandchildren Finlay, Amias and Hannah, Marcus at the back with the mop of curls like his dad, and Oliver, who is being held by Mike, and who unfortunately chose that moment to duck down behind Ella! It's a shame that Emma and Michael aren't in it too. I would have loved to have been there with them, but it is nice to know that they are keeping in touch with one another, and at least I get to speak with them regularly, and now I have an up-to-date photo as well.