Rocking my World Sunday?

Yes, I am a couple of days late with my weekly post, but I am going to write it anyway. Apologies to my family, some of whom will be wondering where I was on Friday!

It has been a mega-busy, but very happy week, with plenty to be grateful for, so here goes. 

We'll start with last Saturday when my Life Group (my church based home group), met up for a lunch time meal. We went o a new place for us, on the edge of Vera, and the food was excellent, as was the company. So we had a very enjoyable time together.

The next day was our church's carol service and our choir was leading the singing. I do love the traditional carols, so it was a great service.

Tuesday was a big day for me as it was Cantante's last major concert. It was special for me because it was in my village and I was involved with the organising of it. We used the village Tercera Edad building, (Third age or pensioner's club), as it is really the only place with a large enough hall. Chris and I, and  our friend Tony, went up in the afternoon to clear away all the tables, stacking them outside, and putting out rows of chairs. We managed to squeeze 94 seats in the hall, with another thirty or so stacked ready to go in the entrance hall if needed. 

I was worried in case there were not enough people there, but every chair was filled, and sadly we had to turn a few folk away. I was pleased to see that our Alcadesa came, (The Spanish mayoress of the village), and there was a good mix of Spanish and English families too.

Here I am with my friend Cati, who runs the charity ASADIS that we raise funds for. Together with our choir leader Julie, I had helped her to teach a group of the village children to sing 'Away in a manger in Spanish'. We were starting from scratch as it is not a carol they were familiar with at all, but they sang it really well. They then sang three more of their own traditional Christmas songs, accompanied by an Andlucian guitarist.

Here are two more photos of the choir. One of us 'in action' and a lovely smiling one at the end of the concert, knowing it had all gone really well.

The feed back from both English and Spanish was very positive. Many were moved to tears, and some of the Spanish folk just couldn't get over it. One said "Thank you so much. We don't get concerts in Los Gallardos". It is nice to be appreciated.

While everyone was arriving, I couldn't resist taking a quick photo of this big yellow moon just rising out of a low cloud bank. It looked so lovely. At the end of the evening we had to quickly get the chairs cleared away, and tables brought back in, as the next day I was too busy to do it.

This time I was off to my Wednesday sewing group's Christmas party. We met in our usual room to give out cards to one another, and enjoy some snacks and mince-pies (guess who made them!), with a glass of wine - or even champagne. Here we are trying to sing, with the actions, the Twelve Days of Christmas. It looks as though we are all concentrating on getting the words in the right order, but there was much merriment as well!

We even had a visit from Santa, seen here with out group organiser, Selina. We were all given a gift and when everyone had theirs' we opened them together. They were very useful little shoulder bags, just right for an evening out, or on a flight.

Then we all walked down the street to a local bar/restaurant for a beautiful Christmas dinner.

The next morning I had a nice surprise when I went

out, as the gardeners had been round planting poinsettias under each of the trees on the pavements. Ours are looking lovely, and you can see the splashes of red all the way up the road. I hope they survive for a while. It is a bit chilly here and they don't like a cold wind, but so far, so good.

On Thursday we had another meal to go to, this time we were both going. It was the "Town Hall Pensionista Christmas Lunch". There were four coach loads of us left the village around 1.00 to go to a function room about twenty minutes drive away. It was a huge room, beautifully decorated, and filled with tables for ten people each. So we all filed in and found a seat, and we were given an excellent five-course meal. There was a free bar all the time we were there, and although I don't drink very much, it was nice to be able to chose whatever we wanted instead of being restricted to wine. Wine and I don't get on very well together!

After the meal we were entertained by a young girl who sang and danced in Flamenco style, and then there was disco music so anyone who wanted to could get up and dance.

It got quite hot with so many people in there, so just before we got back on the coaches, I slipped outside for some air, just in time to catch this beautiful sunset.

Friday morning was my last chance to get to Turre Friday market, so Chris and I went down early to get fresh fruit and vegetables, and then on to the supermarkets in Vera for our meat. Every thing in the market looked so fresh and inviting. I had to buy this bag of chilies for just 1€. Don't they look lovely? Goodness knows what I will do with them all, but I will try to get some dried for storing.

Another stall had about seven different types of sweet peppers all for 2€ a kilo, so I had one of each just because I think they are so beautiful! The little prickly cucumbers were thrown in for free!

By the time I had put everything away, I had just enough time left to make my last batch of mince-pies (I made 50 dozen this year and there are just enough left for us!). Then we were off on the drive to Murcia airport to pick up our son Ben and his partner. What happened after that you will have to wait until next Friday to find out.

I am just going to link this up to Celtic House, even if it is rather late, and then I shall switch off and go and enjoy their company. They have to fly home again on Boxing day as Ben has to work. So I should be back again next Friday. 

A Very Happy Christmas to you all!! Hasta Luego!

Rocking My World Friday

Well here we are at Friday again. Only one more of these posts before the big day. I have had a great week, though there haven't been many chances to draw breath. And apart from one piece of rather sad news, which I won't dwell on here, it has been a very positive week.

It started with our first Cantante concert at the beautiful Convento in Vera. We sang to a full house. In fact I learned afterwards that quite a few people were turned away, which is a shame, but I guess even out here, health and safety rules do kick in eventually. Although Julie is our leader, she now shares the work of the technical side of coaching us, and some of the conducting with one of our musicians, Dave Sharp. Here we are singing one that he leads us for.

In this close up you can see the altos and basses. I am the third in from the right on the middle row, (with a flower in my hair!) and my husband Chris is just behind the friend next to me, singing his little heart out! It is nice that we can share this interest. 

Julie is the lady on the end of my row with a green scarf on. She is an excellent soprano, but it was easier for her to move to our side while Dave was conducting. We always wear black with either pink or green scarves, and this year it was suggested that we also wore a flower, so I did. Not many joined in for the first concert, but gradually more have appeared at the later concerts. We had some lovely feed-back from the audience which was very encouraging.

When we came out from the Convento, the streets of Vera all had their Christmas lights on. The shops are not normally decorated, except sometimes for a tree inside, but the street lights are very bright and pretty. Each road had a different design. I just took these ones.

We have done two further concerts this week which have both gone very well. On Sunday we are singing at my church carol service, and then we have the concert in this village on Tuesday.

On Monday evening  I went with a couple of friends, to a dramatic reading of A Christmas Carol. It was a man who spends half the year paraphrasing a well known story, and then he, and his wife dress in costume and read it to a small audience invited to their home.

There were between forty and fifty of us squeezed into his sitting room, from where a couple of shallow steps led up to a small dining area and the stairs. They read from two platforms at the bottom of the stairs and the top of the first flight. It was very good, and a bit different from the usual.

Then on Thursday morning we had more entertainment at a concert put on by two friends of ours, again in their own home, to raise money for their grand-daughter who hopes to spend her gap year with Tear Fund, working with AIDs victims in Malawi. There was a wide variety of acts including some bad jokes, the bad telling of which was often funnier than the punch lines! Three folk singers gave us a good mix of songs, and then there was this...

... Yes. Bagpipes! Not what you expect in Spain, but why not!? He played us some rousing jigs, and we all sang along to The Skye Boat Song.

The final act was a spoof pianist who was very funny.

It was a bit strange going to a concert in the morning, but everyone is very busy at this time of year, so they fitted it in when they could. There was a good turn-out so I think they must have raised quite a bit for their fund. (Look at that blue sky behind him. We have had some lovely days this week).

Whenever I had an afternoon at home I made some more mince-pies. This afternoon's batch took my total to 35 dozen, so I think one more lot, (42 dozen) should be the end of it. They are all sold, or ordered except for 2 dozen for the carol service on Sunday, and hopefully a few left over for us. I may still need to make one more lot, as I have promised my son he can take some back for a get together with his four brothers as soon as he gets home.

I even found enough time to put my decorations up. It is not a Spanish custom to decorate the house much, and a lot of the English folk don't bother either, but I love it, and I still get most of ours out. 

The tree is my favourite bit. I don't have a colour

theme. It gets anything and everything hung on it, and most of the decorations hold special significance for me. There is the ballerina from when my grand-daughter was a little dancer, a red treble clef for my musical son Ben, a wooden millennium bear chosen by son Tom, snowmen that I made with the boys when they were small, a little silver wreath brought back from our holiday in Ireland etc. etc. So as I hang each one, it is an evening of reminiscing for me. 

I love it all lit too. I stand it by the window so passers by can see it. They are probably thinking "Strange English people" but I don't mind.

I have a couple of other favourite bits too. This little nativity set is something I made about thirty-five years ago. It is decidedly sad now and I should probably throw it away, but I can't bring myself to do it. I know I made it when my first son was very small from a pattern in the Woman's Weekly magazine, but neither my hands nor eyes would let me do it again, so until it has completely fallen apart, it stays!

Out in the hall I have this display. The white Mary and Joseph are formed around wine bottles with cotton fabric dipped in poly-filler. It was a messy job at the time but it has stayed fairly white, and it stores away very well. Again it must be fifteen years at least since I made it, after I saw a lady making very elaborate elegant ladies by the same method, at a the craft show at the NEC. It was always my intention to make the rest of the nativity, a bit each year, but it didn't happen.

Beside them is my native American crib scene that we bought from a gift shop in the tiniest church I have ever been in, set into a hill side at Sedona in Arizona. Memories of another wonderful holiday.

We don't decorate the front of the house but I do usually have a poinsettia in the porch. They don't like it if the wind is too cold, but tucked in there it is fairly sheltered. They looked so good in the market this week that we bought two of them this year, so there is one on each side of the door. They make such a lovely splash of colour.

Last year we tried hanging a string of multi-coloured lights around our new fly-free porch, but they weren't very satisfactory. Lots of them failed very quickly, and then some were blown down and broken so we threw them away. So this year we bought some LED icicles which do look rather nice, but they are very bright! They cast an eerie blue glow all down the street. I haven't seen any other house lit on the outside in the village, so at least we have given the neighbours something to talk about. I like the way they are reflected in the pool, giving a double effect for our money!

The dogs mainly live in the porch during the winter, though they are free to go in and out to the yard whenever they want to. They don't seem fazed by their new lights, which is just as well as they will be lit every evening until twelfth night.

Yesterday morning I heard a lorry outside and the

dogs all started barking like mad, so I went out to see what was going on, and there was a man in a lift-up truck, fitting a Christmas light to the pole outside our house. We have an angel with a star this year. We always have one, I guess the electricity contact is on that pole, but it is different every year. We assume they are rented so they do the rounds of all the villages. We are later lighting ours than most places, because we are the only village in this area that has a fiesta for Three Kings Day, so they will stay on until then. I am hoping they will come on at the weekend, so they are lit for our concert next week. It was a grey day but it cheered me to see the lights going up, and the sky soon cleared to give us another sunny, if somewhat chilly, day.

This has been a long, rather photo-heavy post this week, but I will end with one more photo taken over the fence to next door's garden. Although our own little orange tree is very poor this year, with just four fruit on it, most places seem to have an abundant harvest of citrus fruits. Our tree is in a big pot, so we will have to feed it more, and try to build it up next year. We do have a baby lemon tree out by the back door which has fruit for the first time, and it has six big lemons on it, so I am pleased about that. 

The house next door stands empty for most of the year, but the owner does have some men to come in and tend her land occasionally. Her trees are looking a bit leafless, and some have been cut down this year and replaced with new little ones, but they are still dripping with fruit, and now they have turned in colour it looks lovely. 

She always tells us to go in and pick them, but the main gate is locked so we would need to go to the helpers to ask for a key, and usually we can reach all we can use, over the fence.

Well I think that just about wraps it up for this week. I will just link this up with Virginia's blog at Celtic House. And I think the bagpipes and pianist are funny enough to link them over at Annie's Friday Smiles too. They certainly gave us a laugh. (Sorry I didn't put them at the top of the post this time Annie). As I said at the beginning, it has been a busy, happy week, and we have another similar one to come I think. So I'll see you all again next Friday.