Spring is in the air.

I am glad to say the storms are over, for now anyway. There was quite a lot of damage. I know people whose garden wall was broken through, and several instances of cars washed down streets and into the ramblas. The Los Gallardos mobile home park where I go for my Spanish lessons, was under water. All the occupants went to the bar/restaurant and Paco (My teacher who also works in the bar) told us he was serving meals with plastic bags tied over his feet because the kitchen and restaurant has several inches of water on the floor! But today the sky was blue and the sun had his hat on. It was chilly at first, but I sat outside all afternoon and it was lovely. We both sat out on the bench at the back to drink our 'elevenses' this morning and the little birds were singing their heads off. The almond blossom has suddenly appeared. This tree is in the green zone just below us. The sun was shining through the orange trees next door and it looked so beautiful.

The dogs always come and sit with us, just in case there is something in it for them. Whenever the cats are outside as well, Chico still appoints himself as their protector or tormentor, depending on how you look at it. They go over the fence and he runs up and down checking where they are. Destino stays on the other side. Here she is peeping through one of the holes the dogs have made pushing their heads through the railings to see what's going on below us. Paco, who is a good size cat now, sits on top of the fence until he deems it's safe to jump across to us. Chico doesn't give him much peace, but he is quite capable of defending himself if he needs to. Miki likes to sit beside me on the bench. They all stand on it as well to talk to me through the window when I am in my craft room. But lately they have all caught their feet between the slats on the benches, so they are a bit wary now. However Miki has discovered the rickety plastic table between the benches and she sits there now. We never feed them when we are eating, but she lives in hope! Foxy is a bit scatty, and never stays still for long, but she did settle down for a while so I managed a photo of her. She will be a year old in a couple of weeks which doesn't seem possible. The other two dogs and Paco are one the following month, and Destino at Easter. Destino is a funny little thing. She has a problem with her intestines and after many tests at the vets, and samples sent off to the lab, no real cause has been found. She couldn't tolerate any of the standard cat foods, so she now has a very exspensive hyperallogenic diet, but the prescribed portions are very small and the bag lasts all month so I don't mind paying for it. She seems happy enough and is quite playful, and very affectionate most of the time but she is very small and is not hardly gaining any weight. Sometimes I have to bath her and then she spits and growls and becomes a very angry little ball of fluff!

Another nice thing about the better weather is that the workmen are back, and today they paved the section of road outside our house. They have done a lovely job so far. There will still be a few dusty days while they cut the bricks to fill in all the gaps up to the wall and round the drains etc, but it really is nearly done at last. There is about 100 metres still to do down to where it joins with the older section of road. This runs right down to the edge of the village and it also had a trench dug down the centre of it for the new drainage. It was filled in with sand but much of this has washed away, so they will have to resurface that stretch as well sometime.

I also have one little bit of news from home to share today. Jonathan is in a band in Brighton that is starting to get recognition. They are called Blackstorm, and they are signed to a very small record label, and have released a demo EP. They have also nearly finished their first full album and will be releasing that soon.They have played several gigs in Brighton as well as some elsewhere, the most notable being at Nottingham Rock City last October. Anyway, this week they are featured in Kerrang magazine. There is a big photo of them and a nice write up. The magazine is read by a huge number of youngsters who have an interest in a 'heavier' style of music, (Our Michael says he has been reading it for the past twenty years!), so it will give the band some nationwide recognition. It is good to see him in print. He is sending me a copy of the magazine, but for now I have a scan of it. I am about to try and edit it and if I can I will post the photo here. so look again in a little while and it might be here.

Well here it is. The original was much better quality, but this is the best I could do. Jonathan is, of course, the one on the left, in the red-tinted shirt.

Down came the rain !!

I now know what Noah felt like on the first day of the flood, as he watched the land slowly disappearing under the water! I think there must have been lots of people praying for rain in Spain this week, because today it came with a vengence. We woke to the sound of it pouring off our roof and it had obviously been raining for several hours by then. Sometimes it stops at daybreak, but today it just got heavier and heavier. There was continuous thunder and lightening right above us. I had poor Miki in my room and she was quaking. We had to turn the computers off for a while to protect them, but it has eased a bit now so we have turned them back on. Chris took some very reluctant animals outside for five minutes and he was soaked to the skin, and had to get changed. Then I braved the elements to take a few quick photos, and I also got soaked. Our swimming pool almost overflowed. The water was right up to the top of the rim. Our little patch of garden at the front, and next door's orange grove were completely under water, and the road was a river. It would have been a raging torrent but as the top half of the street is now complete, some of the new flood drains came into use, and carried a lot of the water away. Our bit still has the new drains standing several centimeters proud of the road, so until it is paved, they are not very useful. (They have started the stretch of paving outside our neighbour's house, so had the weather been better, we might have got our bit done today!) Anyway, it is now 4.00 and the rain has finally stopped. I expect the floods will go down as fast as they came up, but the sky is still very dark so there could be more tonight. At least we are warm and dry in the house. I used the time to prepare the last of my seville oranges to make one more batch of marmalade. It is a shame to let them go to waste, and they won't keep for long. The fruit is cooked and I'm just about to go and boil it up now.

This morning I also sat under a bright light in my craft room and finished my fourth lace project - the square. It was much more difficult this time, and for ages I was stuck at a corner and couldn't see what to do. I spent two days undoing and redoing it, and I was getting really cross with it, then the penny suddenly dropped and I was able to carry on and eventually finish it. I didn't know I had so much patience, but perhaps it wasn't patience - more grim determination. Chris said I should leave it until I see my teacher again tomorrow, but I refused to be beaten by a few bobbins of thread, and in the end I got it, which was very satisfying.

I looked at my calendar at lunch time and realised that it is today I should have gone on another coach trip with my sewing group. This one was to a tiny village up in the hills to see local craftmen (and women), making lace, grass weaving, making pottery and cooking. It was a 'watch and have-a-go' day and we were all really looking forward to it, but it was cancelled at the last minute. Wasn't that fortunate? We couldn't have done much walking around a village in this weather. We are now going in a couple of months time when it should be much warmer and drier!