Friday Smiles 2023# Week 30

I won't bore you with yet another photo of our thermometer, but suffice to say the blue line has not moved up and down much at all this week, and we are all still melting. The last couple of days have been a tiny bit cooler, but I still can only sit on the porch if our big fan is going round at top speed.

So not surprisingly, I don't have a lot of news this week, so I will share my son's news instead. (apologies to those who have seen this on facebook already. Our second son Mike celebrated his 50th birthday on Monday. (Well he celebrated it on Saturday really, and kept the fun going until his actual birthday on Monday!). 

On Saturday evening he had a party in a horse field belonging to a good friend. (We have had a few good 'bashes' there before). Fortunately there was a big barn with hay bales for seating, as it was a rather wet affair, but they didn't let that dampen their fun. Several of his friends had set up tents to sleep in, but I suspect most of them camped in the barn instead.

Of course Arsenal was involved as all his own family, and his brothers and dad are all ardent fans, so here he is with his daughter and two of his sons, and his new Arsenal shirt with his nick-name on it, which he is obviously very pleased with.

Mike has worn his hair long for most of his life, and it is thick and wavy, but once every ten years he shaves it all off, for a charity. So the first "Big cut" was on his 30th birthday, when his older brother did the same thing. He did it again whe he was forty, so of course, this week was "The Big Cut 3". His partner, his brothers and his children all had a go at cutting it; first the pig-tails it had been tied in were cut off with scissors, then with an electric shaver, and then twice with 'suds and bic razors' according to his brother, so in the end they did a fairly good job of it.  This is the before and after shots.

His carefully tied pig-tails were donated to The Little Princess Trust who make wigs for children with cancer, so it was all in a good cause. But I am very glad that it will grow again.

I made him a fun card with a concertina of fifty candles. Somehow I failed to take a picture before sending it to him, so here is the one from the cutting file I used in my silhouette, to make it. It was a bit of a  fiddle but he loved it and that is what matters. 

This is the cutting file for the back panel as well.

Our son Tom is still here with us of course. He is now officially on holiday but so far he has spent most of his time jumping in and out of the pool, and spending a lot of time watching videos etc on his laptop. He enjoys discussing new ideas in computer programming etc with Chris, but they may as well be talking a foreign language as far as I am concerned. But it is nice for Chris to have someone who shares the same interests as him, to talk to.

It is also good to have a young strong man around to do some of the things we find difficult now. So he has been up ladders to change our lights in the long passageway through the house. They are high, and very tricky to do so we put it off until the whole passage is in darkness, but now we have light again. He has also helped Chris to clean the pool thoroughly and replace some missing tiles, and between us we have had a general clean up in the yards so it all looks good again now.

One day Tom came to tell me we had a large moth drowned in the pool so I went to investigate, and found this beauty. 

When we tried to fish it out, it flapped its wings feebly and we realised it was still alive, so I carefully carried it round the back and left it on a sunny bunch of oleander flowers, and hoped it would dry out. 

It is part of the swallow-tail butterfly family. The usual one, with four clearly defined wings, is quite common here for a short while, but this is the Eastern Tiger Swallow-tail, and it is much rarer, so it was a nice one to find. They only live for a few days, but I hope it survived long enough to lay some eggs in the green zone.

One thing that makes me very happy is that a Spanish friend of ours, who is an electrician, is coming tonight to install a new air-con unit in our bedroom. He will also be returning when Chris gets home from UK, to fit one in the sitting room. Our existing ones have been here since the house was built as far as we know, and neither of them are very efficient now, so I am looking forward to nice cool bedroom tonight.

I will publish this tomorrow on Annie's Friday Smiles blog, but I don't know whether I will be posting next week. We arrive at our son Jim's house in London on Thursday night, so I may not have anything ready for the next day. But I will try to visit you all anyway.

Friday Smiles 2023# Week 29

If last week was a quiet one, then this week has been even quieter - if you discount the noise of the fiesta just behind our house. The second heat wave swept in and yesterday was even hotter than last week with our shady thermometer showing 45º. Although it is always hot in the summer here, we are not used to being confined to the house, and I find it quite frustrating. But it also makes me very sleepy so I have been siesta-ring in the afternoons. I usually start reading my Kindle but it doesn't take long for my eyes to close!

Our son Tom is staying with us but this week he is 'working from home', so he has set up his own mini office in the sitting room, with a fan blowing full blast on him, and he seems to have got quite a bit of work done. Next week he is officially on holiday and will no doubt hope to get to the beach in the evenings. As soon as he finishes work for the day he jumps in the pool and yesterday the water was 35º on the surface and 31 at the deepest point. We have never recorded such temperatures since we came here.

We spent very little time at the fiesta this year, though when we did go round to the plaza it seemed to be as busy as usual. We enjoyed watching some of the children dancing on the first evening. I was pleased to see that the one little boy in the group had managed to stay with them for another year, though I did wonder whether it was under duress. He didn't really look as though he was enjoying it much!

We like to see all the lights which are erected across the streets and  to see all the bunting and lights above the plaza.

The next night we went over to see the last few races on horses, in the street alongside the plaza. It was very hot for the horses but they behaved well and even lined up while the crowd applauded. Behind them you can see some of the young girls in their pretty fiesta dresses, who sit at the side and reward the winners of each race. Every bit of that sand is cleared, and the street is open as usual by the next morning.

It was very crowded so we only stayed for a little while but we sat down long enough to enjoy a mojito, my usual fiesta treat, and they were really nice ones this year. Chris didn't really have two on the go; one of them is mine!

Sunday was the last night, and as we were all very hot again, we didn't go out until quite late. After the mass on the plaza, the statue of the Virgen del Carmen is paraded up though the village, accompanied by the local band and the clanging of the church bell. Then all the folk from the mass collect the flower offerings they laid around her for the mass, and follow her up to put them in the church. 

We decided to meet them half-way up at the Town Hall. This is an important moment in the procession when everything falls silent. Then the statue is carried up to the doors of the Town Hall. The doors of the top veranda open and the Mayor (centre) and his team come out and throw copious bags of rose petals onto the statue. Then the mayor shouts out things like "Viva la Virgen del Carmen! "Viva Los Gallardos", and to each call the crowd calls back "Viva". Then there is lots of clapping and cheering and the procession continues up to the church.

There is a small plaza outside the church where the men stand, still holding the statue on its throne, (very heavy), and the band plays, then while the church bell continues to clang, there is a display of fireworks. Mostly out here we only get volleys of rockets which make a lot of noise but no pretty lights, but at the end of the fiesta there is a really good firework display. I always think it is like we enjoyed with the children years ago because they are all random. There is no patterns or setting them to music, just one beautiful star burst after another.

After a final loud explosion, the band plays the National Anthem while the men holding the statue dance with her, swaying from side to side, and then lower her to carry her back in to the church. I have uploaded a short very 'amateur' video onto Youtube of this which you can find here.

We have had plenty of birds and insects coming to our fountains and the pool for much needed water this week. Sadly some of the insects get 'water-logged' and can't escape from the pool. It was too late to save this pretty little darter from drowning, and there was another one in there today, and when we swim at night, the light attracts a lot of moths. If I can, I fish them out and leave them to dry on the edge but a lot drown too.

I'll end here with a very pretty  sunset that I spotted on Tuesday. I have used it as a new header for Facebook and on here.

And now I will link up with Annie's Friday Smiles.