Rocking Your World 2018; Week 49

Well it has been a lovely week here this week, so there is plenty to smile about. The sun has shone all week, at least for most of the day, and there has been some real warmth in it, with little or no wind to make you feel chilly. So on Monday morning Chris and I went to a Christmas Fair at the camp site near us. There was a good turnout, and plenty of stalls to browse through. Some were trade stalls, but most were hand-crafted items with everything from soap to chocolates, jewelry and a variety of Christmas decorations.

I was very lucky because Chris bought me two presents and let me choose them. The first was a lovely crystal pendant, but the lady wrapped it up so beautifully, so I can't show that yet. The second was a very colourful pair of hand made leather shoes. They are light as a feather and will be very comfy I am sure. I managed to take a quick picture of them before they were tucked away in Chris' office until Christmas day. I don't normally have quite such vibrant footwear, but they are fun, and I shall enjoy wearing them. My son's comment was "There is nothing wrong with having an aging hippie for a mum"!

When we had finished at the market we decided to have our lunch out, but the first place we tried was closed. A lot of bars and restaurants around here close on Mondays. So we went on up the steep windy roads behind our village, to the little cluster of white buildings known as Bédar. It is a small village with narrow streets, and cramped houses, but there are now many new villas on the surrounding hills and they all command an impressive view. We went to the Mirador, a restaurant we used to visit quite often, but it is a few years since we were last up there. I wouldn't chose to drive up to it after dark, but it is a lovely place for a menu del día. We sat on the open roof terrace and it was really warm in the sun. And we had one of the best meals we have had in a long time.

I took this view from a little further up the hill, where we managed to find a parking space. You can see right down passed our village, passed Turre and Mojacar, to the sea. It is hard to tell where the sea ends and the sky starts.

Monday was a busy day as we also went out in the evening, to the traditional festival of nine lessons and carols in the big, ancient church in Mojacar Pueblo. This is one of my favourite celebrations. It is a joint venture between the Spanish catholic church and our Anglican chaplaincy. Our two priests lead the service together, readings are alternately read one in English and one in Spanish, and the carols are also alternately Spanish and English. And at the end we sing Silent Night each in our own language at the same time, and it works surprisingly well. The English carols are sung as congregational hymns with everyone joining in, but two of the Spanish ones are sung by the church choir and two by the local gypsy choir. This is the highlight for me, and in case you have never heard a gypsy choir singing carols (and I'm betting most of you haven't), click HERE for a short video of one of their songs. This is singing in the Flemenco style, and it is never as gentle as some of our carols are, but there were only four men and eight ladies in this choir, and they sure filled the church with their joyous voices.

This is a nice photo of our two priests. On the left is father Miguel who oversees four Spanish churches in this area, including the one in our village and this big one in Mojacar. On the right is our vicar, Rev. Vincent, who oversees the three little churches in our Chaplaincy. It is great to have such a good rapport between these two groups. Of course the Catholic churches are not exclusively Spanish and we welcome Spanish folk at our services, but it is mainly split in that way, due to language as much as anything.

For the rest of the week I have been mostly wrestling with a craft project I promised to do for our carol service at our church, later in the month. I am glad to say it is done now, and yesterday I took it to a meeting with a few other people to try and inspire them to have a go too. I won't show it here until after the service though.

We were very surprised to find that the village Christmas lights were turned on this week. Usually they wait until the week before Christmas. I always assumed this was because they stay on until 7th January, after our Three Kings celebration.  So I now have a little white angel at my gate each night, with golden hair and a golden star. They are different from the angels we had on a previous year, as they were blue when lit. She is very pretty isn't she?

I had to laugh at Arwen this week. She has her full winter coat now, and has just adopted my low step stool as her 'perch' for a while. From on top she is almost a perfect circle.

I called her to try and get her to look up for a photo, so we could see her big yellow/green eyes, but she hates having her picture taken, and if look could kill...

On Wednesday I did a little shopping after my sewing group, while I was in Turre, and I noticed that the little garden centre in the middle of the town, had a new display of poinsettias in, so I thought I would buy a couple while they were fresh and I could take my pick. In the end I bought this beautiful peachy yellow one. Most of the yellow ones were a hard acid yellow, but this one was a warm shade with pink tinges to the petal edges, and it had a light spray of fine glitter on it. It is now on a low stand on our front porch, and it is a real beauty.

Of course you can't really beat a true red poinsettia so I have two smaller red ones on either side of the yellow one. And I also bought a small red one to sit on our dining table.

I forgot to take a photo of these today so these two were taken after dark, with just the porch light on, so they are a bit darker than they should be. I may take a better one tomorrow.

And lastly, here is a picture of my little lemon tree. We planted it as just a small thin stick, several years ago. They have to be four years old before they bear any fruit, but this usually manages to have four to six good lemons on it. But this year it has nearer twenty-six, and I have had to use straps to support the thinner branches now the fruit are quite big. I have just looked up a recipe for lemon curd, and I think there will be a lemon meringue pie and maybe a lemon drizzle cake making an appearance very soon. Any other ideas for using them are very welcome.

At lunch time today our choir sang a programme of music from our London concert, some Christmas songs and some carols, for a private function at Arboleas gardening club. The theatre was full and they all seemed to enjoy it. They keep asking us back each year so they must like what we do! We have our own concert for "Family & Friends" next Friday evening. It is a very popular concert and we always get a good crowd there.

And that just about wraps it up for this week, so feel free to stop reading there if you want to.

But now I am going to show a few pictures from my visit to son number two last month. I have decided that I have too many photos from my trip to Denmark, to include them in this blog, so as soon as I have time to sort them out, I will do a special post just about them, and link it into my next Friday post.

My second son Michael recently moved to a new house in Llanymynech, near Oswestry and very close to the border between Shropshire and Wales. He wanted me to see it, and I do like to have seen their houses so I can picture them there, so while I was in UK I travelled to Wellington, (where Mike works), on the train, and he picked me up from the station on his way home. His house is lovely, with much more space for his big family, but it was too dark to see outside, so I was looking forward to the morning. We had a lovely tea together and then my granddaughter and one of my great-grandsons came round to chat which was  nice surprise. I spent the evening being sat on by two dogs and tormented by two kittens until they all got warm and sleepy and settled down together.

When I woke up it was rather cloudy but the sun was doing its best to break through.

Mike had the morning off so after breakfast the boys went off to school, and Mike, Lucy and I took the dogs for a walk, (Well Lucy walked the dogs and Mike took me up the hill in his car!) and we walked along the edge of the golf course. The views were stunning. You could see right out to Wales, as well as back to our home town of Oswestry.

The trees were still showing their autumn colours and it was beautiful.

The path we were on was right on the edge of the cliff, and it looked a long was down so we were careful not to slip on the wet grass.

We then got back in the car and drove down to their house and a short distance further on to some woods that led to the old lime kiln. This is now a heritage site and has been renovated a little, and it was interesting to see. The lime kiln itself is still intact.

You can walk inside it. It is dark and damp and it was hard to imagine it full of rocks, packed round with the burning coals used to extract the lime from them.

There were still some outbuildings standing, and lots of equipment that would have been used there.

This poor man had the job of walking on the roof opening and closing small vents to keep the furnace burning at the right temperature.

It was a tough place to work and many of the men died young because the lime dust got in their lungs.

As we walked back through the woods to the car I saw this old tree branch covered in a deep green moss.

Very soon it was time to get back in the car. Mike then drove me to visit our lovely host Annie, coming back for me an hour later so he could drive me back to the station on his way to work for the afternoon. I packed a lot into a very short visit, but I am glad I manged to see them all. (I showed my photo with Annie a couple of week ago).

And now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and Rocking Your World, and go and get some much needed beauty sleep.