nbsp; July and August means lots of people are visiting the observatory, which means lots of guiding work for me. Great! I accept as much as I can, because I know work will be scarce in the autumn. I’m also making a real effort to exercise for my health. It’s working – I have more energy and the weight’s slowly coming off, but it does take up time. So does…
On Jan 6th the kings ride in on their camels and bring presents to baby Jesus and good Spanish children. Bad children get coal. I must have been very good; look at the boat they brought me! (Actually it’s the cruise ship, Ventura. I was the guide for an excursion). I tweeted about it, and my favourite comment came from my friend Nikki, “Those poor camels carrying that!” I also…
I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I agreed to work from Monday to Friday this week. I let myself slip way behind with paperwork and now I have to catch up. Besides, I’m self employed and the new year means setting up new spreadsheets. It’s not as if any of these jobs are particularly long or difficult, just that there’s a lot of them. Also my cleaner…
I spent quote a lot of time organising a visit for a large group (55!) of high school students. They’re Erasmus exchange students on an astronomy-related trip, some from Tenerife (the hosts) some from Poland, and some from Slovenia. The main point of their visit to La Palma was to see GTC, but they were going to be on La Palma all day, so what else could they see? So…
Whew, what a week! On Monday I did the panoramic tour with the Saga Pearl (basically, “Lovely views and quite a few of them”). On Tuesday and Wednesday I worked at the Roque. The first group on Tuesday included a French couple who didn’t speak any English or Spanish. I think they expected to just look, but I felt I had to try, so my extremely rusty French got a…
I saw very little of the ravens over the summer. I think they were so many tourists with tasty food that they didn’t need me, thank you so very much. Now that it’s getting colder there are fewer ham sandwiches and almond biscuits to be had. Yesterday, my bag of cat food was back in demand. First they ate from my hands, as usual, and flew off. Then one came…