A couple of weeks ago, my poor friend Lou has torn the ligaments in her foot, and has to wear a plaster. That would be bad enough on its own, but her son is just two. And to really put the tin lid on it, her partner’s run out of holiday now, and he’s currently working in Barlovento. That’s normally an hour’s drive away, but with the current roadworks, he…
The Art of Fire
Artefuego glassblowing studio is at the back of Plaza Sotomayor, where they hold the Argual flea market every Sunday. It’s a good idea to combine the two, because they hold public demonstrations on Sundays between 10 am and 2 pm. They combine fragments of lava into their creations, and to the best of their knowledge, they’re the only people in the world to do so. This makes every piece unique….
Credit cards and Baskets
Idiot that I am, I’ve gone and lost my debit card. I spent yesterday evening and half the morning hunting everywhere, which at least left the living room and home office considerably tidier. So I went into the bank and cancelled it. They checked, and it hasn’t been used by anyone else, thank goodness. So I’m waiting for a new one. Of course I half expect the old one to…
Word Book Day
The 23rd of April is world book day, because it’s the anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes (author of “Don Quijote”), the death of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Mejía Vallejo and Halldór Laxness. Actually Shakespeare died ten days after Cervantes, both on April 23rd. How come? At the time, England used the…
A Day’s Serfing
No that isn’t a spelling mistake. It was Helen‘s birthday on Wednesday, and she said she didn’t really want anything you could buy in a shop. What she really wanted was some help with getting the house and garden sorted. So the whole family spent yesterday being serfs. We shifted the piles of vine prunings tot eh bonfire, where Theresa burned them. We dug out the old rubbish heap and…