We have a friend who likes to celebrate Burns Night, even though he isn’t Scotish. What the heck, why not? So I made a tray bake of sticky ginger cake and off we went. The cock-a-leekie was superb, the haggis OK. Our friend’s cat, Torta, joined us at the table to supervise and disapprove. And then there was the whisky. Perhaps rather too much whisky. Perhaps that’s why my attempts…
Happy 2025
I’d like to wish both my readers a happy new year. Last year I started to feel I was putting the cancer behind me and building a new life. After lots of paperwork to get subsidies, we had a stairlift installed Yippee! I can finally get upstairs again. The catch is that my wheelchair stays downstairs, so I have to hop around with a walking frame, but that’s good exercise….
Astrofest
La Palma holds a festival of astronomy, Astrofest, with activities for all ages and knowledge levels. One of the highlights is “The big turn off” (El apagón) where town halls turn off the street lights for an hour so that the stars are visible. The Island Council provides amateur telescopes and starlight guides to each municipality. I used to really enjoy being one of the starlight guides. The closing ceremony for…
Christmas cards done
Every year I write a Christmas letter to the people I care about, but haven’t been in contact with all year. I take a bit of trouble over it, trying to include some laughs and always some photos. Every year I’ll promise myself that I’ll write the letter in November, so that the cards are ready to go in early December. This year, I actually did it for the first…
Thankful to have that bit sorted
Spain doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and we don’t eat a special meal, but I do like remembering the things I’m thankful for. Although I do think once a year isn’t nearly enough. In any case, we spent today on a trip to Tenerife to talk to the specialists who adapt cars for people like me. I was utterly confused by so many options, and I wanted them to see me, see…
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
La Palma has it’s own version of the stars in Hollywood Boulevard. Ours are stars from astronomyrather than show business and we don’t have nearly so many of them, but in October we got a fifth star, Jocelyn Bell Burnell. She discovered pulsars in the 1960s, so they gave the Nobel Prize to her boss and her boss’s boss, but not her. She’s physically a small lady. She’s 81 now,…