Well, I’ve guided two tours at the Roque, started the paperwork to re-register my son at the same school (yes, I’m still his mother, yes, I’ve still got the same ID number), picked up a small travel writing job (yay!), repotted a bunch of plants, submitted three stories, handed in my tax return and written several thousand words of fiction. Phew!
The island of La Palma will soon go nuts for about five weeks as we celebrate the bajada. Bajada means “coming down” and in this case, they bring the statue of the Virgin Mary down from the lovely church at Las Nieves down to Santa Cruz. They’ve been doing this every five years since 1676, when the statue was credited with ending a terrible drought. These days the bajada involves…
I went into the chemist this morning, to buy a first aid kit to keep in the car (best way not to need one.) I queued behind an old lady with a crutch who was clearly feeling down. She was just telling the assistant that it was taking her forever to get over her fall. Several years ago, I broke my ankle. I remember feeling it was taking forever to…
On Sunday I continued my walk around the island, from Montes de Luna to Los Canarios. Unlike previous sections, this part of the path doesn’t run through villages, criss-crossing the main road. It goes through the lonely middle of nowhere, and I wasn’t sure whether there’d be mobile coverage. Walking alone seemed like a bad idea. Not that there was any particular reason to expect an accident, just that twenty…
Thursday is the feast of St John the Baptist. On La Palma, they have the very sensible custom of holding the party on the night before the public holiday, so that everyone can sleep late the morning after. Since fiestas often go on until the early hours, sleeping in next morning is delicious. In Catholic countries, people celebrate the feast of St John with bonfires. (Any similarity to pagan midsummer…