Rocking Your World 2019: Week 22

So, looking back across the past week, it has been a very pleasant one for me, and I'll start with a couple of photos that have made me smile.

First up, this one popped up on my Facebook page as a memory of last year. Our second son Mike was visiting, but whenever he sat on the lounger to relax, an animal climbed up to join him. I guess he is quite well padded! Our little campo cat Paco got there first, and made himself comfy, but Kim decided to join him. He still thinks he is a lap-dog. He is more like a fur blanket in the middle of summer, but he was not very pleased to be told to get down.

This one also turned up on facebook, and it gave me quite a start to see Chris and I on a photo on the Town Hall page.  This was taken on the day of the Ruta de Tiendas (the route of shops), which was an initiative to encourage folk to explore the little shops in our own village. We had just been talking to the couple who are the main focus of the photo, outside their Kitchen and Bathroom shop. They are the company who installed my new kitchen a year ago, and we are thinking about having our bathroom done by them soon.

And then there are these two taken this week, as our youngest son Ben marched with the Railway group of his co-workers, in Birmingham Pride parade.

Ben is the one in the grey shorts. He has worked for West Midlands Trains for 16 years now, and is very happy there. He has worked his way through the ranks, and I am so pleased that he has been able to lead his chosen lifestyle with no fear of discrimination or bias against him. They are a colourful bunch anyway.

And now for my week. Summer has arrived and it is getting quite warm. I try to get my work done in the morning so I can relax in the afternoon, but it is not often with my crochet now as it is too warm on my lap. I can still do a row or two in the evenings, but I think the fan will have to come out soon.

We went over to the school to cast our votes in the local election on Sunday morning. There was an air of excitement and quite a crowd of folk just standing around chatting. It is the first time in many years that there has been any real opposition against our Mayor Maria. Well the 'unthinkable' happened and she was deposed, and Fran is now our new Mayor with a considerable majority. We don't think it will make a huge difference to the way the village is run, but we will have to wait and see whether he does a good job.

I had a busy day on Tuesday as it was my turn to host our house group. My friend Margie led a very interesting discussion on the book of Revalations which has always been a bit of a mystery to me. After that my friend Chris stayed to have a bit of lunch here, and then we went over to Albox for an extra choir practice just with the altos. We have a concert coming up in a couple of weeks.

By the time I got back, my Chris knew I wouldn't want to cook a dinner and neither of us were very hungry, so he suggested we went somewhere for a few tapas. We decided on Garrucha. There is a good wide, marble promenade there which is popular for evening strollers.

Garrucha has a good beach, and at the end it curves round to the new marina and docks. We were in the shadow of the tall buildings across the road from us, but the sun was still shining round on the port.

We found a bar that was new to us, and had some generous tapas and drinks for 'silly money', - two big tapas each, two beers for Chris and two martinis plus mixers for me and the bill was 8€. You can't go wrong for that really. Then we walked round to the marina and I bought us both a frozen yoghurt icecream. I chose strawberry and white chocolate and we watched as the young man put a few fresh strawberries on a freezer plate and poured over some thin yoghurt. (the photos aren't very good because there reflections in the glass).

He squashed the fruit and added melted white chocolate, and with a pair of spatulas he soon had it all mixed together and spread over the plate.

Then he scraped it off into curls and piled them in a cup. Chris had banana added to his and darker chocolate.

We found a bench to sit and eat them and they were delicious.

We watched the big barge loading up and leaving the port. There is a constant stream of them coming and going to the port, and a constant convoy of lorries take the gravel there to load onto them.

The marina was full that night and I like to read all the names on the boats. It passed a very pleasant evening, and made a change for us.

On Wednesday I  went to my sewing group as usual and then I drove back down to Mojacar as I wanted to post a birthday card at the post office there. It is getting busy with holiday folk now, and I had to drive along the front a bit to find a parking space. I guess it did me good to have to walk back to the post office anyway. It was lovely down there. There was just enough breeze to make rows of white breakers splashing on the rocks, but not windy enough to make it too rough. The sky was blue so the sea was too. I always marvel at the plants that survive there. I know cacti are used to growing in the sand, but they only have very salty water, which they have obviously adapted to.

I took a second picture because Garrucha is the next beach along, and I spotted another of the barges leaving the port. I believe there is another one coming in behind it too.

And now, much closer to home, here is a beautiful jacaranda tree in full bloom at the end of our road. They are such a beautiful colour, and always have their flowers before the leaves appear.

When I zoom out, you can see there is a whole row of these trees along the slip road that runs along the front of the village. It is like a haze of blue when they first come out. They have been flowering for a couple of weeks now and soon the floor under them will be carpeted with blue petals, and then pretty fern-like leaves will open up in their place.

Finally, a new photo posted by our son Michael today. He had met up with two of his brothers, Jim on the right from Wolverhampton, and Jonathan in the centre from Manchester, and Mike's young son Fin, all to watch their team Arsenal in  the Europa League final on Wednesday night. My whole family have faithfully followed the same team all their lives, and although they lost on the night, they were still happy to have a brotherly meet up.

Mike's caption on the photo was "I've had 15 addresses, 5 serious girlfriends plus 2 wives, 2 schools, run 2 pubs, had 12 jobs and god knows how many paper rounds; But I've only ever had ONE club and ONE family"

And with that I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World.

Rocking Your World 2019; Week 21

Well first of all, my apologies for not visiting anyone last week - not until last night anyway. I managed to comment on the hostesses of the two blogs I link up with, but completely forgot to return to visit everyone else. I will make sure I do better this week.

It has been a very quiet week except for one thing. On Sunday it is our local elections, and they are quite important. We have three or four parties to chose from and candidates are elected from them according to how many votes each party gets. And the leader of the one with the most votes becomes the next mayor. This is the one election that 'foreign' residents can vote in, so we will be going to the polling station early on Sunday morning before I go to church. This is the main plaza, with banners flapping in the breeze, and lovely flowers planted all around the platform area. You can just see two beautiful blue jacaranda trees in flower in the background.

They have a good system here, where no-one is allowed to canvass until three weeks before the election. Then, suddenly there are banners and posters on every lamp-posts, and loud speaker vans drive around the streets broadcasting their main aims. This week we have had visitors from each party at our door. We have been here long enough now to know the candidates, and they mostly brought us their manifesto in English. Yesterday they all had a big push and I could hear the main candidates addressing the crowd on the plaza.

This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago when there was a small parade including the village band, on the streets. The poster on the lamp-post is an interesting one. Maria has been our lady mayor for over twenty years and she stands for the PSOE  which is a socialist party. Fran, (pictured on the poster) has worked for her at the Town Hall ever since we came here, but this year he has changed his allegiance to the Ciudadanos  party, and is standing against her. Ciudadanos, meaning Citizens,  is a relatively new party that started in Catalunya, and leans slightly more to the right of PSOE, so the outcome on Sunday should be quite interesting.

However I am not greatly involved with politics, so I will leave it there, and let you know what happens next week.

Meanwhile here are two nice flower photos to brighten my post. The first is a lovely climbing rose that blooms each year on the corner of a house near us. The flowers are tiny and they bloom in huge numbers all at the same time. Every year I think how pretty it is.  

The second is the oleander that grows on the other side of our back railings, just outside my craft room window. It has variegated leaves and a double, double flower that is like a little rose or a camelia. It is covered in flowers already this year.

I had  a lovely afternoon on Wednesday. Unfortunately my English friends are spread over a huge area, so we don't have many opportunities to just meet up for a coffee and a chat. So one of our group offered her home for an English tea-party this week. There was quite a gang of us turned up. The sun shone without being hot enough to 'cook' us, so we sat in groups around her garden, enjoying copious pots of tea, cakes and scones, and dainty sandwiches. Just a few were brave enough to go in the pool while the rest of us looked on, but the water is still quite chilly. We had a lovely natter, and moved on to different groups so we got to chat to lots of folk. It was enjoyed by everyone and we are definitely going to organise something similar again. Unfortunately we were too busy talking to take any photos this time.

I was looking at the oleander through my window last night when I noticed two planes leaving vapour trails in the sky. I went out and watched them as they gradually broke up and melted into the clouds. It was so peaceful out there.

The only sound was the little birds making their way to a resting place for the night. Several chose the wires around a telegraph pole across the green zone, and I had to smile at them. They were constantly swapping places with one another, then settling down again, only to fly off somewhere else. Then back they came again.

A few weeks ago I showed you the beginning of my next crochet project - a blanket for our son Jonathan and his wife, Ella. Progress has been slow because my arthritic hand has been particularly painful this spring, but I try to do a couple of rows each night. This is all I am going to show you of it for now. I'll wait for the big reveal when it is finished but the days are getting much warmer, and I am thinking it will have to go away soon and be finished in the autumn.

Of course, Jonathan and Ella saw it when they were here last week and they loved it, so that is a good incentive to keep working on it while I can.

In the meantime here is a little look at another project I am working on as well. I wanted something more simple and more portable to take to my sewing group on Wednesdays, and also something smaller and lighter for me to handle when I can't manage the big blanket, so I started making some squares. The pattern is again for a large blanket but it is made of 53 different squares and rectangles, with two each of 26 designs, and one large one for the centre, and they are all in the same locking filet stitch I am working for the big blanket. I like the technique and it makes an almost double fabric so it is very warm and cosy for a blanket. I have about six bright colours and dark navy for the contrast on them all. Here are the first two finished pieces with one repeat half made.

They are nice little pieces of work , and quite straightforward after all my practice on the other one, so I should be able to keep working on them for a while yet.

And finally here are two photos of a rare stunning sunset that I spotted through the kitchen window one evening. The sky has been too clear most days for photos like this. Once it starts to get dark here, the light goes very quickly. We don't have twilight like we did in UK. It's either light or dark and you have to be quick to catch the little window between the two.

I prepared this post last night but I just had to come back and add one more photo. I spotted this little gecko as I returned from closing the gate on the dogs after their breakfast. He has chosen to rest on the back railings right by a branch of oleander which is really dead, but it escaped my shears when I was tidying up the bush, because it has another praying mantis nest on it. So I just tied it to the fence until the babies emerge and then I will prune it back. I like the geckos. They eat a lot of unwanted bugs, and just look at those wise eyes, and that dear little hand!

So now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles and Rocking Your World, and I really will try to visit everyone before the weekend is over.