Today is the last day of Christmas in Spain. Tomorrow I ought to start a grand session of housework: taking down decorations, tidying up and cleaning everything. Sounds boring, doesn’t it? So I’m sneaking off to El Hierro instead. Of course the housework (and the guilt) will be waiting for me when I get back, but it’ll be worth it. Besides, last time I snuck off like this, I got…
The Kings in Los Cancajos
Although Father Christmas does visit Spanish children, he’s a new arrival. Traditionally the presents arrive on the morning of January 6th, when the three kings visit baby Jesus. This is why the sales haven’t really started yet – Christmas isn’t over here. And on the evening of the 5th, they ride in procession through most of the major towns and villages in Spain. In previous years we’ve usually gone to…
Taxis on La Palma island
The taxis on La Palma have their own website in English and Spanish (with German coming shortly). It lists all their various services. Obviously you can call a normal taxi for a single trip, but they also have 8-seater taxis for bigger groups, and at least one taxi which can take a wheelchair. They have a series of standard tours, which are great if you want to see more than…
Happy new year
Happy new year to both my readers. We had a fairly quiet family party for new year’s eve. I was very disorganised, and kept sending my son out to the shops for things I’d forgotten, so the leg of lamb went into the oven late, and we ate late, but it tasted pretty good when we finally got around to it. And the fireworks at midnight were amazing. We could…
New Year on La Palma
Santa Cruz de la Palma, Los Llanos, and most big villages will have a public dance to celebrate new year. In some cases, that blocks the traffic. For example, Santa Cruz’s main road along the sea front will be shutting at 10 pm. (If you need to get through, use the bypass inland.) Many people dress up – I mean really dress up, as though they were going to the…
Submissions
One of my new year’s resolutions for 2010 was to send out two submissions per week. Note that this doesn’t mean two new stories — on average I have to send out each story about ten times before it sells, and then I often try for reprint sales. But nothing’s going to sell sitting on my hard drive, is it? Well, two sales per week comes to 104 in a…