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.”

Rocking Your World 2020:Week 27

Well we have hit the mid-point of this strange year, and are now counting back down to Christmas! I have two friends who regularly post on Facebook, how many weeks, Mondays, etc are left before Christmas. It can either be annoying or funny, but I do know that my son's birthday last Friday is the middle day between one Christmas day and the next, so we are certainly on the slippery slope downwards now! And what a year it has been so far. Probably not the one we might have predicted back in January.

Here summer has hit us like an oven door opening in our face. This was the thermometer on our Farmacía yesterday afternoon. (approx. 100ºF)

We never take its reading as gospel as we don't know how much protection there is around the sensor, but the thermometer on our porch which is always in the shade, has shown 35º some days, and by anyone's standards that is HOT!

So we are very grateful for our little pool which Chris keeps lovely and clean so it is always an inviting way to cool down. And one night this week I had my first after-dark dip of the season.

The water remains warm, around 27º this week, even at midnight, so it is easy to slip into. There is a bright light just under the surface of the water, which casts shadows from the ripples on the surface, and the street light behind Chris as he took this one, casts his shadow on the water, so it is quite strange.

After my swim I threw on an old kaftan that I bought in Thailand back in 2008, and relaxed on the porch with the dogs at my feet, as I sipped my favourite nightcap - a dark rum and coke. Who wouldn't be grateful for such a life!

Kim looks pretty relaxed there, but he is struggling with the heat. He does have an exceptionally thick coat, which makes him a very handsome fellow, but also makes him too hot in the summer. He sheds hair all the time but it never seems to get any thinner!

So we made an appointment for him to go to the groomer in Mojacar yesterday morning. They all find him very difficult to handle, and he had a very bad experience with one, and now hates to be groomed. They quite justifiably insist he wears a muzzle which he spends the whole time trying to get off. He is a gentle giant and never hurts anyone, but they don't know that. He lets me brush his back and sides, but touch the tail or below, and he says 'NO!'. So this was another groomer that was recommended to me and it was a very nice lady who greeted us. She was working in a very confined space which made it difficult with such a big dog, but she seemed to have his measure. I had agreed to get some calming tablets from my vet to give him first thing, as we have used them before. In fact our vet suggested using them after she called us from the groomers in her clinic because he was so worked up, she thought he might have a seizure. So he was not sure what was going on yesterday, and was a bit 'spaced out'. It took her 2½ hours, and by the time he was ready to go home, he was still rather wet because I had warned her he didn't like the hair-drier, and to be honest, he doesn't look a lot different from when we left him there, though she did have a good pile of hair from him. But at least he has had a bath and his rear end tidied up. When we got him home, he gave us a mournful look and crashed out on the settee. When I sent this photo to my son he said "Mum, if his medicines makes him feel like that, you could sell them on the black market"

Of course he is back to his old self today, but the bath has made him so fluffy that he looks even more 'hairy' than usual.

We knew she would be working on Kim for a while, but it was not worth driving home just to come back again, so we had our first coffee since the bars re-opened. The tables on the patio were well-spaced out, it was waiter service only, and we were expected to wear a mask except when we were drinking. But it was shady and pleasant to while away some time. When we called and found she still needed at least another hour, we browsed the local shops and I got a lovely fine cotton sundress and a pair of navy shoes , so it was a win, win for me.

I was impressed with the little lock-up shop where I bought the shoes. They had a box of plastic socks on the counter for anyone wanting to try on shoes, and any clothes that were touched/tried on, and not bought, were hung on a rack and a young girl was continuously steaming each one before it went back into circulation. For such a small place, they were doing really well to keep us safe.

Sadly, despite all the precautions, street cleaning, masks, hand sanitizer everywhere, and a smallish community, we were told this week that the first case of the virus to be positively tested in our village, occurred on Wednesday. We don't know which family is involved but I am sure they are being well contained, and hopefully there will be no more cases.

I have had a few small parcels this week but this is the one that pleases me. I think my eyesight is getting dimmer and I find I need a bright light for any sort of handwork, so I have one uplighter at my shoulder when I am crocheting, and one by my desk for computer and craft work. This one had been very efficient for some years, but recently the weight in its base started to crumble, so it kept falling over on me. So on Wednesday Chris ordered two of these rather stylish ones, one for me and one for his office, and they arrived the next day. It has a choice of cold, warm or neutral light, and a dimmer switch to choose what level of lighting is needed, so I am very happy with it.

(I haven't master how to wrap text around a tall thin photo like this in the new blogger, but I am working on it!)

Last week, Lynn, who links to Annie's Friday Smiles, showed a lovely photo of her market purchases, and it made me think that it is long time since I showed mine, so when I got home from the market on Tuesday, I arranged my lovely fruit and veg. to take this picture before finding it all homes in the fridge etc.

Isn't that just beautiful? We are so lucky to be able to buy such fresh items, many grown locally but a few imported - bananas don't grow around here for example, but as we mainly get them on market day, not from the local shops, I have to buy a week's supply and keep them chilled as they don't last more than a few days in the heat. The big golden peaches are not very interesting to eat raw, but lightly poached they are just like tinned ones, and we have already enjoyed some of those. Yesterday we attacked the pineapple so I think it will be some of those luscious cherries today.

And one more lovely picture - my desert rose as it looks now. Many of the buds have opened and it really is stunning.

So now it is time to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World.