Rocking Your World 2016:Week 33

Hi everyone. Here is my smile for today. Isn't he gorgeous? This is Buddy and he belongs to the folk at our local bar. When we moved into the village he was an adorable little puppy, but now he is huge, and the most gentle dog I know. He was obviously feeling worn out by the heat when we popped in for a 'quick one' tonight, and he sort of melted into the floor. I wish I could be as relaxed as that.

He's not as sad as he looks. He just has that sort of face!

Well, as I said a couple of weeks ago, however upbeat we try to be in our lives, we still get thrown the odd curved ball, and this week we all had some very sad news.  Our dear friend Jean, who we celebrated her 89th birthday with, just three weeks ago, sadly passed away in hospital while on holiday in UK last week. Now you may be thinking what is that sort of news doing on what is supposed to be a positive post, but I have to say, that even as we are all devastated by the loss of such a lovely lady, we know she would not want us to be sad. Jean's life was one of joy. She took delight in everything she did, from sharing a cuppa with a friend, to dancing at midnight, and oh, how she loved to dance and sing.

Here she is in all her finery, at our church's Ascot Ladies Day. She had travelled to UK with her daughter and son-in-law who she lived with out here, for a four week long holiday, and in those first weeks, she had seen all her children, grand-children and great-grand-children, and attended two family weddings. What a wonderful way to spend your last days on this earth. Sometimes God's timing is spot-on!. It also means that they can arrange her funeral in UK with all her family present, and when Chris and Phil return home, we will hold a lovely memorial service for her, which will be as full of joy as she was herself. I am sure my life is richer for having known her.

And now to move on to some of my own news. We had some fun on Sunday when the village celebrated the end of Theatre Week. During the week there had been some dramatic presentations from groups of all ages in the village, as well as a play by a professional group. We did not actually attend any of these as my Spanish is not really up to understanding 'at speed', and Chris does not speak it at all. But the week always ends with something fun on the streets, and this year it was a group of street performers who took the forms of large, illuminated people and 'dragons'!

There was great excitement as they emerged out onto the street (This was around 11.00 at night!), and started to walk around in the crowd of spectators.

Their costumes were very simple but very effective. They were sort of puppets, each one being worked by a person dressed all in black. If you look closely at this picture, you can see they are a plastic frame with a thin material liner, lit from inside, their arms and legs are translucent tubing also lit from inside, and fixed to the controllers feet, and to long poles held in their hands. Their faces are simply painted onto white umbrellas. You can see the umbrella handle sticking out behind them.

The dragons had a partly closed umbrella for their face, and 'wings' made of shiny fabric attached to the poles.

And, of course there was music. Very loud music! It came from speakers on this strange vehicle that followed the puppets as they wound their way around the village. The man standing on the platform at the front was somehow steering it, and he was also shouting encouragement to the crowd, to get involved.

When they came to a more open crossroads, they all stopped and the puppets were turning themselves round and dipping and dancing in front of the people. Then the music got even louder, and the man shouted to all the children to go to the front and the puppets started dancing with them.

It was all good fun. I must say the children out here are very resilient. I think my boys might have been quite intimidated by this when they were as small as some of the children that were there.

The rest of the week has been somewhat quieter, but the highlight was when our son Tom arrived for a fortnight's break, on Tuesday. The weather has been a bit disappointing for him, being up to ten degrees cooler that was at it hottest last month, but it is due to go up again next week. As Tom has spent most of his waking hours over the last few weeks, working in his office in Denmark, where he lives, when he comes to us, all he wants to do is sit around and unwind, so he has been relaxing outside, where it is still a good deal hotter than in Denmark, making the most of the sun when it breaks through the clouds, and dipping in and out of the pool.

It has been lovely to sit with him just chatting, and relaxing, and catching up on all the news.

But you probably know me well enough by now, to know that I can't sit idle, so I have also been working on another little crochet project. Here is what I have done so far.

I am making a shawl to go round my shoulders when I am sitting at the computer in the Winter. The pattern is called mystical lanterns, and it is a nice easy little motif that I can work on while I am talking. The motifs are joined up into strips as I go along, and then the strips will all be crocheted together at the end. (Tango is looking after the finished ones for me!).

There is no particular arrangement for them. The idea is to have around a dozen colours of yarn in a bag, and as you start each round you pick a ball at random, without looking at the colour, and when you have finished the round, you put that ball into a second bag and draw out another one. When all the balls have moved into the second bag, you start the process over again. These are my colours.

I am using a four ply cotton yarn which makes a change for me, as I didn't like the motif much when I made one in wool. It seemed too chunky. So when the place I normally buy my wool from had a sale of their cotton yarns, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to try it. I don't find the random colour choice easy. Sometimes a colour come out that I don't really want to use next to the last one, but I make myself do it, and on the whole it is working out quite well.

I have another little smile because I had a long chat with son number four who is celebrating his thirty-first birthday this week. He is actually celebrating it out here in Spain, but he and his partner are staying in Barcelona, so they are too far away for us to visit them. So we had a long phone call before he went, and no doubt there will be another long call when he gets back so he can tell me all about it. He is a drummer, so here he is giving it all he's got, playing in a gig in Belgium on his European tour earlier this year.

And finally I have one sky photo to show you. There have been no sunsets lately but there was a nice sunrise one day, when we  were out on our morning walk with the dogs. This photo doesn't do it justice, but there was a break in the clouds and rays of sunshine came down on the houses. The low bungalow in the centre is our house. We are on the far side of the green zone at the back of us.

I am not hugely into sport, but I have enjoyed watching some of the Olympics this week. I especially like the gymnastics, and some of the athletics, but Chris and Tom have enjoyed the rugby sevens and the cycling. There have been some good results haven't there?. Hopefully there will be some more this week.

And now I will get this linked up to Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World at Celtic House, and then I can go and see a round up of today's events before I go to bed.

Rocking Your World 2016; Week 32

I hope this will start you off with a Smile. When the temperature is around 40º and you are enclosed in the sitting room, with the aircon on, just trying not to melt, you really don't need a furry blanket on your lap.

Kim doesn't agree!!

He still believes he is a lap-dog, and although he is just too big to fit up on my chair, he keeps his hind legs on the floor and heaves as much of himself as he can, onto me. He is so heavy! So he doesn't get to stay there for very long, but we have a bit of a cuddle before I have to turf him off. This week Tango decided he wanted some fuss too, so he is just waiting for Kim to get down so that he can jump on me!

And when I say it has been hot, I do mean HOT! Last Sunday our outside thermometer, that never gets direct sun on it, was showing 42º at lunch time. That is extra hot, even for here. And that night it was still 30º when I went out for my midnight swim. It has been a bit more bearable for the rest of the week, though we did have another very hot day yesterday. Sunday was particularly bad because as well as being super-hot, it was also very windy, but as the air that was moving around us was hot, the wind brought no relief. In fact, all it did bring was a lot of dust and debris. Chris works so hard keeping the pool sparkling clean all summer, so it is a real pleasure to get into, but when the wind blows like that, the pool is soon covered in dead flower heads and leaves.

The lovely oleander at the back of us, is dying off now, so there are a lot of brown flower heads on it, and it doesn't take much to bring them down. On Sunday they were sticking all over the fly-free net, and collecting in drifts against the sides of it.

Round the other side of the house, the bougainvillea is just as bad, if not worse. You only have to touch it to get showered with brown, papery flower heads. I had collected up several sacks of them at the end of last week, because it is where I feed the dogs, and I like to be able to hose it down regularly. But after Sunday I wondered why I had bothered. 

However, the hot weather is not all doom and gloom as it means we spend more time sitting together in the sitting room, so I get to catch up on my reading, and get my knitting etc done. This is a project I have been working on. I didn't think I would get it done so I took this photo to tease you with. I wonder if you can guess what it is? 

My husband had his own idea of what it looked like - needless to say he was wrong! I did actually manage to finish it after I took this, so if you stick with me to the end of this post, all will be revealed.

Over the past few months we have all been watching a building project further up our road, which I had heard was to be a new Farmacia (Chemist shop). We are regular visitors to the existing one, for our monthly prescriptions, and it is opposite our house, just a few meters up the road. It is a tiny little place which carries a load of stock, but there is little floor space, and if they get more than three or four customers at any one time, then it is crowded. 

It is run by a lovely couple who can't do enough for you, even opening up out of hours if you need medicine in a hurry, and letting me have my tablets in advance when I am going to be away in UK on their due date.

They have now moved into their new shop and it opened this week. It has a black, polished stone front and looks very modern compared with most of the buildings in our little village.

Inside there is so much more light and space. Everything is well arranged, and labelled in Spanish and English - though I don't think they should feel that the English is necessary! It must be lovely for them to work in. 

There is a huge underbuild or basement area, presumably for storage, and up above it there is a large flat. The white doors to the right of the shop, open on to stairs up to the next floor. I think eventually the owners will live there, but it is not fitted out yet, and for now they are concentrating on getting the shop how they want it. (There is some extra printing on these two pictures because they were taken from their promotional site).

Just above the front door there is a lit up green cross, the sign for anything medical out here, and the new one has moving lights in the centre that alternately show the date, time and temperature. We see this when we go out with the dogs in the mornings. Usually it is 24 or 25º at half past seven in the morning, which is hot enough for walking in, but when we get back home about 45 minutes later, it has always gone up by a few degrees.

This morning it was 28º, but it was extra hot in the day yesterday, so I guess it didn't cool down as much in the night.

And the Farmacia isn't the only new thing in the village this week. As we were driving out this morning, we stopped to withdraw some money at the bank, and that is right on the corner of the plaza. We got quite a surprise to see a fountain on, in the centre of the plaza. In all of the eight and a half years we have lived here, we have never seen it working before. I did know it was there because some men were working on it just before the fiesta, but usually it is covered with boards. It was nice to see it flowing, and we could imagine a good few village children running in and out of it when word gets around that it is on. I don't know if it was switched on because of the heat wave, or just the idea of someone up at the Town Hall, but either way, I hope they keep it going for the rest of the summer.

There have been a few other positives this week too:

I had my first physio appointment at the hospital this week, so I didn't have to wait too long after I saw the consultant about my shoulders and arms. My translator was unable to come with me, but I managed. The lady I saw was so nice. She only said a few words of English, but she was very understanding, and we got along fine. It was only a preliminary assessment, but she has arranged for me to have fifteen sessions of physio at a more local medical centre, and then she will see me again.

Chris took me out to lunch today which is always a nice treat. Anything that means I don't have to cook in my hot kitchen, is a bonus for me.

After a good couple of months, the cats have finally sussed out how the cat-flap works. Surprisingly it was Luna, our little campo cat who is very independent, and who really only come in for food and a bed at night, was the first to use it properly. The other two mastered going out but aren't keen on coming in. It is a bit of a step up for them outside, so I have put a couple of bricks there to make it easier. They will still sit there and call for me to open the door, but if I refuse, and shake their food box a few times, they will now come in through the flap. So that is progress!! 

I am grateful that Kim and Foxy have settled down so well together, and don't seem to be missing Miki unduly.

I am grateful that we have got aircon in the main room and our bedroom. We don't use it all the time as it is very drying, but this week it has been wonderful.

I am grateful for our pool which is the perfect way to chill out before bed. Not many houses in the actual village have their own pool, so we know we are very lucky.

The hot humid days, often bring a few storm clouds towards evening, which in turn, can give a nice glow to the sky at dusk. I just happened to see this in time to take a photo. It only lasts for a few minutes, so blink and you miss it.

I sometimes try to recreate a sky like that when I am making cards, and it can look very artificial, but it really does look like that sometimes, so I am not that far out!

Now I shall link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your Word At Virginia's blog, and I'll see you all next week.

I bet you thought I had forgotton. But 'No', I hadn't . So here he is. Let me introduce you to Max the Bulldog.

I think he's lovely. All made from the African Flower motifs - triangles, squares, pentagons, hexagons, heptagons and octagons! - he is another design by Heidi of Heidi Bears, and her patterns can be found on Ravelry. You may remember that I made her Happypotomus and the pony Fatty Lumpkin, a few years ago. I do think Max needs some black button eyes, but I couldn't get any this week. But I will keep looking and alter them when I find some.