Mud Gorse and Pines

And more trees!

2012-01-29T12:09:00.001+01:00

Quite frosty this morning so I got out with Jasper quite early so that the mud would still be frozen!

There was hardly anyone about, which was good because Jasper isn't the friendliest of dogs - towards other dogs that is - and so I now keep him on the extending lead and rely on other folk to put their dogs on the lead too... if they want, but at least they can't blame me for having an unreliable dog on the loose! It's a shame but I'm just not prepared to risk it, and at least I can enjoy the walks without worrying that Jasper's going to take exception to every other dog and go for them.

If you're wondering why I've gone back to this old blog when there are no gorse bushes and no pines - well not of that kind anyway, although there's certainly plenty of mud... I don't know. It just felt like the best thing to do :-)

Trees

2012-01-28T13:41:00.000+01:00

Every time I go to Elvaston Country Park, which is most days, I just have to take a few photos of the trees that line the long walk down to the house gates. They are so beautiful!

A new post?

2012-01-26T23:11:00.000+01:00

Not really. Not exactly. But maybe soon. Have fiddled - oh not again I hear you cry - in readiness for a maybe new post.

Out of the living room window - to the left.

2011-12-08T12:21:00.000+01:00

I can't do blogging at the moment

2011-12-01T19:46:00.000+01:00

I can't do blogging at the moment, so I'm just going to leave it alone completely until I feel like it. I'm sure I'll still read all of your blogs, but probably not on a very regular basis. Happy blogging!

2011-11-20T09:52:00.000+01:00

Rain rain rain all night through, and thunder and lightening for most of that time too... apparently, because I didn't hear it at all until a massive crack of thunder woke me at about six. After that I couldn't get back to sleep because I was worried about Jasper downstairs, as he doesn't like storms at all. What dog does!

Last night I spoke to my Mum on Skype and although most of our conversation was fine, she finished on a rather depressing note, saying something about the unlikelihood of my finding a job when I get back to the UK. She may well be right, but she's supposed to be encouraging me!

Mum also found it hard to understand that the house I'm going to be living in doesn't have a back garden and that therefore I'll have to hang the washing in the front garden... what! You can't do that! This followed on from her realising that I wouldn't have a washing machine until I'd bought one, and would have no car and so where was my nearest supermarket........ The reality of it all is beginning to really sink in now. And that's not entirely to do with my mother!

On there or on here?

2011-11-13T21:03:00.000+01:00

I have a Blipfoto journal and sometimes I'm stuck, in a quandry, not being able to decide what to put on there and what to put on here. I know I'm not the only one to have this problem, but that doesn't make it any easier and, looking back, it was one of the reasons that I stopped blogging. It seems a bit ridiculous to write a bit of a blog to go with your photo on Blipfoto and then write even more of a blogpost (or not, if I'm all blogged out) on here.

One way of dealing with it would be to stick to different subjects, or at least different slants, on each, but that's more difficult than it sounds. Hey ho, the jury's out!

Awake. Again.

2011-11-12T05:55:00.000+01:00

Here I am at 5.47am again. Woke up sometime before 3.30am and eventually got up at about quarter to five to have a cup of camomile tea... although I'm not at all sure it does help you to relax and sleep! The neighbourhood cockerels began crowing about an hour ago and aren't getting any quieter, although that was a comparatively late start for them this morning.

Yesterday morning I lay awake for a couple of hours trying not to listen to the crowing, then I fell asleep. I didn't wake up until 9.30am and was then in a panic because I wanted to get to the doctors by ten, even though I didn't have an appointment. In the event I was told to telephone...... which is something I hate doing as we've had such problems in the past with the system and the language, and I'd thought that I wouldn't ever have to ring for another doctors appointment (here) seeing as it's only five weeks today that the dog and I will be getting on the ferry to Portsmouth. Oh well. Phone call made, without too much trauma, and appointment on Monday at 9.21am - what a strange time!

Looking back to our village

2011-11-10T19:55:00.000+01:00

Halfway up the second steep bit on the track leading from the village to our Mas, I stopped and looked back... as I always do... to our village on the opposite hill. A lovely view, and I took lots of photos today as it's one of the views that I'll miss.

Spices

2011-11-09T15:15:00.000+01:00

If I were to be asked what my favourite spice was... I'd have to think quite hard. I love the sweet paprika, which is used in many Catalan dishes and so is now used in many of my dishes, but turmeric comes a very close second. Another spice that I use quite often is garam masala, essential for curries but also very useful in stews and soups.

Just ignore the spice jar that says it should be used by September 2009... we've refilled it! Some of our spices are in old marmalade jars because we brought big bags of selected spices back from the UK last Christmas because, for example, turmeric and also ground ginger are not freely available here. Fresh ginger is very cheap and plentiful, but sometimes I want to use the ground variety.

Which is your favourite spice?

Jaspers swimming afternoon

2011-11-08T20:40:00.000+01:00

The weather forecast was good for today, fine and warm with no rain, and so we decided to go back to Les Olles de Bot (Bot being the name of the nearby village) and take the dog so that he could have a swim. I don't know if you've ever seen a Labrador in the water but they are superb swimmers, resembling seals, and Jasper is no exception. Poor lad, he hasn't been swimming for three and a half years, ever since we moved to Spain, but he soon got back into the swing of it.

He wore himself out and since we got back to the village house he's been sleeping by the fire, only getting up when his dinner was ready!

Cherries

2011-05-24T11:50:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we had another morning of cherry picking for our friends, and so returned home at lunchtime with lots of the fruit in payment. So far this month I've made three jars of cherry jam and nine jars of cherries in brandy syrup (yum) and I'm almost running out of jars again. I don't really want to actually buy any more jars as it would mean that my efforts weren't free, so we'll just have to force ourselves to sit there of an evening munching our way through them!

Our neighbour in the village has still got the builders on his facade, this is the third week now with scaffolding blocking the narrow street, and so we are still staying at the Mas. In that time the weather has turned from lovely spring sunshine i.e. not to warm, just right, to full-blown summer sun that burns your legs if you try and sit in it. Yesterday afternoon the blind was lowered on the outside of the lounge window to keep the worst of it out of the house, and dog walking now has to be done first thing in the morning or after our evening meal, but I much prefer to go early in the morning. We shall definitely stay at the Mas for the rest of this week and then I don't know... although Steve doesn't seem in any particular hurry to come back to the village, and Jasper and I certainly aren't!

The other day we booked my son a flight to come and see us - he hasn't been before - but now that b****y ash cloud is beginning to mess things up again. I've got my fingers crossed as I'm really looking forward to my son coming.

Black as night? Not!

2011-05-21T13:02:00.000+02:00

La llum del vent t'enfosqueix el ment.

(The light of the wind darkens the mind.)

This is what we see at night from the Mas, and in the photo I've lightened the sky very slightly so that you can see what's what. The numerous lights on the horizon are not from a town or village but from the couple of hundred wind turbines that stretch away towards the Els Ports national park, and they are flashing on and off all day and all night. Although the strong white lights do still light up the wall of the Mas, when the turbines were first erected they were even brighter and more annoying, and now the most recent of the turbines have red rather than white lights.

Before all the turbines came we could see thousands of stars on clear nights but now we're lucky to see the largest of the constellations, and I think we can totally forget about seeing the Milky Way again.
p.s. Blogger's playing up again I see as this post wasn't supposed to be in double spacing and I can't do anything about it.

Far flung ice?

2011-05-18T14:18:00.000+02:00

Did you realise that wind turbines are likely to fling blocks of ice far and wide? I didn't, although Steve did as he says that our little turbine does it sometimes in very cold weather. You get a build up of ice on the blades, the wind begins to blow and gradually that ice is loosened so that eventually it gets flung off..... and who knows where!

This sign, and others like it, have recently appeared at the entrances to each section of wind turbines at the slightly older wind farms a couple of kilometres away, so we are expecting that eventually there will be similar signs near us... to warn us that the Mas may be bombarded with falling blocks of ice and we may be hit if we go near to the generators. Which we will be, because the Mas is near to two turbines (270 m approx).

Catch up, sort of

2011-05-16T11:32:00.000+02:00

Well I'll try and bring you up to date a bit anyway, as it's been a week since I did a 'proper' post... which is almost unheard of for me.

Last tuesday we went to a friends' bbq which was very pleasant, but unfortunately I drank too much... which is easy to do when you're trying not to eat any meat and so are eating mainly just salad and vegetables and not nearly enough carbohydrates. Not that that's any excuse at all, but it didn't help. The next morning, needless to say, I didn't feel very well, but we'd agreed to help another friend with their cherry harvest until lunchtime. Oh dear. I spent the whole of the morning feeling very poorly, and inbetween hopefully unnoticed visits to the edge of the field (!) I tried my hardest to avoid having to either bend down or stretch upwards to get those cherries. And just for a change, I didn't eat a single one :-( But... the good thing about cherry picking is that I've bottled a good half dozen jars of cherries in brandy syrup as last years were so delicious!

So I'm not going to drink again. Maybe not for ever, maybe only for a month, who knows... and my husband doesn't believe it. But the fact is that, since we've moved here, I've slowly upped my wine drinking. And that's not good so it's going to go down again.

On thursday we went out for a menu of the day with a friend we hadn't seen for well over a year, so we had a bit of a catch up and a very pleasant wineless meal. That's all we've done really apart from lots and lots of weeding, both around the Mas and down on the veg patch although there are still masses of weeds to deal with, and the torrential rain of the other evening means that there will be another burst of weed growth - even though it was very welcome for the vegetables!

The other major change in my life is that I've begun to read again, which is quite wierd after a gap of quite a few years, and am working my way through several novels by Anita Shreve. The covers give the impression of being lightweight, romantic rubbish (to my eye anyway), but I think she writes very well and I'm enjoying rediscovering books.

We'll probably be staying at the Mas for the rest of this week and return here a week today... and then I'll have some time to read all your blogs!

At the Mas

2011-05-09T10:45:00.000+02:00

We're staying at the Mas for at least the next few days, although we'll have to pop back to the village regularly for bread and internet. When we came back for bread yesterday our village next door neighbour managed to explain to us that he was having the builders in to renovate the facade of his house... which will involve loads of dust and noise, and the builders usually start work at 7am in the summer... so we thought the countryside might be a bit nicer.

Here's a photo from yesterday of a happy Jasper!

Oily morning

2011-05-05T12:38:00.000+02:00

I've had a busy morning. Yesterday I scrubbed the wood strips at the front of our stair treads as they were absolutely filthy with plaster dust etc., and this morning I've been oiling them... not all the way down, but just as far as I've got with painting the bannister railings.

Some of the wood is very woodworm eaten and worn away by years of use, but the coat of oil will help the wood last until we have the money to tile them all... goodness knows when that will be. At the moment there's old lino on both the treads and the risers. Then I oiled the last door and frame on the bedroom floor, so that's a couple of jobs done!

Steve put up a set of coathooks halfway up the stairs, which I've painted blue to match the skirting edge stripe to the stairs, which you can just see at the bottom of the photo. Now we have somewhere to hang our coats... although we haven't worn coats for about a month and won't be wearing them again until about October, but no doubt I'll find something to hang on them!

Lunch in a minute and then off to the Mas to check on and water those plants.

Only one sort of bread

2011-05-04T17:42:00.000+02:00

Why do both of the bread shops in the village only make one sort of bread? I'm not referring to the shape of the bread here, just the type, as there are lots of different sizes and shapes to be had but only one sort of dough. White and bland. Cottonwool, as my Dad would say.
It would be so lovely to be able to buy a brown wholemeal loaf with that very close texture and lovely taste, and oh for a seeded batch with all those gorgeous seeds that get stuck in your teeth! Not only is the bread a bit boring, it costs quite a bit too at 1.40 euros for 0.5kg and another 5 cents if you want it cut... yes we do have a bread knife so we could save that little bit every day, but we'd have tons of crumbs all over the worktop and on the floor every time we cut a slice as it's so crusty. We have to go and buy a loaf almost every day as we do get through it, and anyway it's stale if you save it to the next day and only fit for freezing for breadcrumbs or making garlic bread. One of these days I'll wake up and find that I've been dreaming about the stuff!

A planting day

2011-05-03T21:26:00.000+02:00

Today Jasper and I walked to the Mas mid-morning so that I could get the tomatoes and peppers into the ground, and I managed to get them all planted before lunch.

Although the plant in this photo looks a bit droopy, by the time I'd got the stick in beside it (and all the others of course) and given the whole bed a really good water, it had revived. But I ended up planting the tomatoes fairly close together... quite a bit closer than I'd intended because we've ended up with 19 more plants than we've actually paid for. I'd forgotten that nurseries always give you extra plants for luck... although I'm not sure I'll need them as all the plants look really healthy.

Swallows, tomatoes and languages

2011-05-02T21:01:00.000+02:00

First of all, are they swallows? They're black all over... I have got a bird book but I'm too lazy at the moment to go and find it. This morning I took my cup of tea up to the roof terrace and just watched them all in amazement shrieking and squealing, screaming down over the roofs and through the narrow streets at amazing speeds. I took lots of photos, but of course have failed to capture any more than the odd one, instead of the usual groups of four or five.

Steve had a hospital appointment this afternoon, and with a different consultant to usual... and it never occurred to us that he might not speak Catalan. It worked out fine though as he could understand it, so we spoke Catalan and he spoke Castilian... slowly... so that we could understand it. Funny how you can manage a conversation and understand each other perfectly - or more or less perfectly - while not speaking the same language!

Then onto the supermarket for a bit of a shop, although the shelves were rather empty for some reason, maybe just because it's monday? Although it's not a bank holiday here. We should have gone to the plant nursery before the supermarket, but we forgot and luckily the prawns didn't defrost, because we'd also forgotten to put the fridge back in the car. Anyway, we got three types of tomato plants including cherry, beefy and for preserving - ten of each - and ten pepper plants too. I didn't want many peppers because we still have bags and bags of green ones in the freezer! They gave us several freebies - some long green pepper/chilli things and some basil - lovely! Hmm, I wonder if the birds in the village eat basil... I bet they will!

I leave you with a photo of Jasper looking towards the kitchen hopefully... although I can't remember what it was he was hoping for... and I don't think he got any anyway. It's a dog's life as they say!

P.S. The tomatoes etc will be planted tomorrow. Not ideal, but it was so late by the time we got back, and we were so hungry, that it was no contest! They are safe and secure, still in their newspaper wrappings, in a bucket of water.

Confessions of a nest disturber

2011-04-30T17:08:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, for the second time in my life I disturbed a bird's nest full of babies. I'm not proud of it, and I didn't mean to do it... on either occasion. The first time was about eight years ago when we decided to give the conifers at the side of the garden in the UK a good prune. I'd forgotten that it was nesting time and was horrified when I'd nearly sawn a branch off and a nest almost fell out, full of babies that couldn't fly... but I quickly put the nest back in another tree that I'd already dealt with and hoped for the best.

Along the edge of the car parking area at the Mas there are some cypressus trees that we planted about four years ago, and although they've grown really well they're only about five foot tall on average and I wouldn't have thought that they were a very safe place for a nest... although I suppose there are no cats about. It's amazing that the trees have established themselves so well in this very rocky soil, when the only water they've had was a share of the washing up water, and only for their first year.

Yesterday I was repainting the name of the Mas on the gatepost as it had almost weathered away, and Steve noticed that Jasper was acting very strangely. He was trying to look into one of the trees just above his head height, looking as if he was going to jump up - although thankfully not actually doing it - and Steve thought that maybe he'd frightened a mouse into the tree. I decided to have a look... and about half a dozen tiny birds flew out of a minute nest. I hope they'll be alright, I couldn't believe that I'd disturbed a nest again, but at least they could fly and Jasper has been told to "Leave it!".

Between Thursday and this afternoon we've done a lot of work at the Mas, including loads of gardening - see here for a few more details - and I've dug up two osteospermums, potted them up and brought them back here. Hopefully they'll fill out and provide a bit of colour for the front of the village house, although I suppose the flower heads will always be looking up towards the sun and not down into the street...

Yes, we have no tomatoes :-(

2011-04-27T21:30:00.000+02:00

I nipped up the road to the market this morning, sure that the plant man would be there so that I could buy tomato and pepper plants... but he wasn't. There was a woman selling pot plants, but no-one with trays of babies waiting to be wrapped in newspaper. Oh dear, I hope we haven't missed the tomato boat completely. We'll have to go to the nursery down in the valley and get some, but we can't go there until Monday when Steve has an appointment with the Otorrinolaringologia Consultant, (the ear nose and throat person), because it would be a bit of a waste of diesel to do a one hour round trip just for some plant plugs.

Then I black glossed half of the window railings, leaving the other two windows to be done after we got back from the Mas, where:-

Steve rotavated inbetween the rows of potatoes (I don't like rotavators, but he does) and earthed them all up.

I watered all the veggies and did a load more weeding because, as you know, weeds just love the springtime!

Got some painting done!

2011-04-25T17:03:00.000+02:00

Something woke me up at just after 5am this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep, so by 8.30am I was all ready to paint the metal railings of all four Juliet-type balconies at the front of the house with undercoat in a very bright shade of orange.

The remaining two windows on the first floor, where the lounge and kitchen are, have smaller windows and so no railings... although they would be useful for stopping pot plants from falling into the street! At the moment one of those windows still has the mosquito netting and frame that came with the house, and it doesn't look very nice at all from the outside... or from the inside either come to that. At some point we'll take it out and replace it with nicer looking netting, or at the very least paint the existing frame to match the windows. Not having lived in the village through a summer as yet, we're not sure how many flies and mosquitos there will be, but there are bound to be quite a few!

I'm hoping that people know that the orange is just the preparation coat and not the final colour - which will be black - and that they're not looking up and thinking, "Oh my goodness (in catalan of course) what on earth are Els Anglesos doing now?". With the street being so narrow, and with railings being such a messy type of painting, every time a car came past I stopped painting for fear of spattering their vehicles with bright orange. And why are most of the cars white?

Lunch and then to the Mas, where I picked quite a lot of broad bean pods and a good handful of mangetout peas as well - they're for dinner tonight. The rain started spitting almost as soon as Steve dropped Jasper and myself out of the car at the edge of the village so we could walk the 2k along the lane, but we didn't get too wet, it was quite warm and the wild flowers were looking their best.

The slightly shorter walk suited me today because the last two afternoons we've taken Jasper on a couple of different and quite a bit longer walks so my legs were a bit tired, although that may have been partly due to not having enough sleep.

I used to be a jogger

2011-04-23T13:05:00.000+02:00

The Catalan Way blog post has just reminded me of when I used to go running, ok let's say jogging, way back in my mid-to-late-twenties, and how I used to enjoy it. I probably did it for about three years, and I was never very fast (ten minute miles) or very serious, it was just fun.

I can remember very well how it was when I started. I used to wear my normal clothes, including my duffle coat because it was winter, with my running shoes and pretend I was running for a bus because I felt a bit silly. I'd start by walking, then do a bit of jogging and so on... rather like scouts' pace, but was always very careful in the beginning not to end up too worn out and panting so as not to draw attention to myself.

Of course it gradually got easier and I could do a bigger percentage of running to walking and still be alive, and eventually I stuck at what became my regular routine - two miles every other day, with four miles on a sunday. I'd go out first thing in the morning before I even had a cup of tea (I could manage to do things before a cup of tea in those days) at about 6am, come back and have a cigarette - yes I know, it sounds ridiculous but that's what I did - breakfast and then go to work. It didn't take long before the excess weight dropped off me, not that I had much of that then, and I felt so much better for it all. Over the couple of years that I jogged I did a couple of half marathons, the Robin Hood ones as we lived in Nottingham at that time, and a few shorter races such as the Christmas pudding 6k in Heanor, Derbyshire.

Then I had two children and the jogging stopped. I did try and start again a few times as the children got older, when they rode their bikes while I jogged (I wonder if they remember that), but somehow I never really got back into it again. And now, well brisk walking's enough!

More parades and Tomato plants

2011-04-23T12:05:00.000+02:00

At ten o'clock last night we could hear people just up the street, outside the church, and then the band started playing a very sad and solemn tune... yes, it was another parade around the streets to mark the journey of Christ this weekend. But I'm afraid we didn't find our coats and shoes to go out and join everyone, although the turnout wasn't nearly as high as the previous night. The trouble is that we don't very often know in advance what's going to be happening. We do get a programme of events through our letter-box about a week before all village festes, but religious things are not usually on there. I suppose if you've lived in the village for years, and go to church too as most of the women seem to, then you'd know what's going to happen when.

In about an hour I'm going to walk up to the main square and see if there's a market... although I may find out in a minute from the tannoy anouncement which has just started. If there is a market, and if the seedling man is there, we'll buy some tomato and pepper plugs and get them in the ground later... which might be fun (not) a we had torrential rain yesterday and our mud is incredibly sticky!

1 hour later: Well the market's there... but the plant man isn't, but there was a stall selling flowers as part of Sant Jordi and so I bought a white geranium to go in the pot on the roof terrace. I'd been hoping that the one from last summer, that I'd left in the pot when I replaced the other two, would come back - but it's a dead as a dodo!

Here are all the plants we have on the roof terrace, which is still waiting for the tiling but there are other jobs more pressing - pinks, geraniums, jasmine and the herbs (rosemary, parsley, mint and thyme) at the street end, and a periwinkle at the other end by the door. The periwinkle was given to us by a friend. He gave us some about two years ago for the Mas, where it promptly died, but this one seems to be doing well.

The next market is on wednesday, so we hope that the plant man will be there then. When he had a stall a couple of weeks ago we were looking, but neighbours said that it was too early in this area. But the other day we noticed that a neighbour at the Mas had put his tomatoes out, so it's obviously time.

Dijous Sant... Easter thursday to you

2011-04-22T10:47:00.000+02:00

I've already written about the procession that we had in the village last night and early this morning on Blipfoto - see the link near the top of the left-hand sidebar if you want to read it - and I don't really want to write it all again... I could copy and paste but that seems like cheating!

The best bit of the procession was at the beginning, when hoards of Roman soldiers came marching up our street, right below our lounge window, which we immediately opened so that we could see/hear what was happening. The bright costumes, the sound of marching, the beating of their drums, the fact that they were all squashed inbetween the high walls to either side of them... very atmospheric. Even Jasper came to have a look through the railings, although a bit warily!

We knew that there was going to be some sort of a procession because we'd read it in the village programme of the Events for Holy Week, but didn't know where the procession was starting from and none of the details of what it all signifies. We've just assumed that it represents the Roman soldiers coming to take Jesus to his death.

The night began in the dry, but soon it was raining quite heavily... and I was rather stupidly dressed in jeans and a fleece and sandals. So I got a bit wet. Through the night we could hear it pouring with rain, as it still was this morning, although it's eased off a bit now, which is good as I've got to go and buy some bread!

Lunch bunch

2011-04-21T18:19:00.000+02:00

About once a month our group of english take turns in booking a restaurant of our choice for menu del dia. There are usually about 12 of us, even though there were only 8 today mostly because of a mix-up with venue, and it's a great opportunity for us all to catch up with gossip etc... well, I'm sure you can imagine! It cost 11 euros each, which included four courses, bread, coffee, wine and water - brilliant value.

Around our Mas, they've been re-surfacing the new roads that were created to bring the turbine parts along, because the existing surface had become very pot-holed and uneven, and now the surface is lovely and smooth once again... but for how long? There's been so much time, labour, materials and effort lavished on the road that we hate to even imagine how much it has all cost... maybe even more than the turbines.

The ((( bells ))) !

2011-04-20T13:49:00.000+02:00

The other day there were four new church bells, intended for the church just up the street from our house, standing in the main square so that people could have a look at them and clang them to see how tuneful they were... in fact they were being clanged almost continuously all day and it wasn't just the small boys! We haven't seen them again until this morning, when they were hoisted up to the bell tower by crane. Hopefully they will be sounding the hours again by tomorrow morning.

What do I do with a rabbit's head?

2011-04-19T21:23:00.000+02:00

We went shopping this morning. We thought we ought to with it being Easter this weekend and who knows when the shops will be open... this isn't the U.K. you know! So I queued at the meat counter in the supermarket and I bought:-

mince

lambs' liver

rabbit

All well and good, but I have never cooked rabbit - which is ridiculous when we've been living here for almost three years now. I've eaten it in restaurants and I've eaten it as a child... my Mum's rabbit stew and dumplings was gorgeous!

We got the shopping home and I took all the meat into the kitchen so that I could portion it up, put it into bags and freeze it. The rabbit was a sort of job-lot, with legs and chopped-up-legs, rib-cage, liver and the head... sliced very neatly down the middle. Oh goodness, what on earth do I do with a rabbit's head? Soup? Stock?

I put it in a bag in the fridge while I thought about it. Now I've thought, and got nowhere in particular, so I Googled and this was the first recipe that popped up:-

Rabbit Head Pasta

Nice try, but really Google was no help at all, and so I think I'll just boil up the head with onions and herbs and make some stock!

Edit: I asked a Catalan friend, and she said to just put the head in the bin! She said that some people cook it with the rest of the meat and then take it out and throw it away after cooking... which is the same as making stock from it I suppose.

Oh well, gone for a Burton!

2011-04-19T13:53:00.000+02:00

I've just emailed my daughter and hey presto, that's just about everything I was going to post here gone in an email! It would seem silly to write it all again, so I won't.

(If any of you are wondering where the title phrase for this post came from, as I was until a second ago, the answer's here.)

Jasper dog's walk

2011-04-18T17:35:00.000+02:00

This is one of the walks that Jasper and I do most often, from the edge of the village where Steve dropped me off today, to the Mas. It's a very pretty walk and, though the steep bit at the beginning means that I have to rest for a moment (even though we're still non-smokers), it's another opportunity to take in the views.

There's no need for us to leave the main track towards the end of the walk, but I like to get a bird's eye view of the vegetable patch. It just looks so nice!

This evening, while waiting to speak to my daughter on Google Chat, I phoned my Dad to ask him about his cholesterol levels. Apparently they were never as high as mine are, he took statins for years with no noticeable side effects and...this is the strange bit... as he's got older his cholesterol level has dropped and it's now quite low. But I hope I haven't got to wait another thirty years for mine to drop too!

You never know what's around the corner

2011-04-18T10:46:00.000+02:00

You just never know what's waiting for you around the corner. This morning I received an email from friends of ours. They have a house not far away, and we've been expecting to hear from them with a date of when they were coming to Spain for the summer... though why anyone would want to come for the summer beats me. Come for the spring, yes. Come for the winter, when it's not going to snow, yes. Even come for the autumn... although it doesn't really last long enough to bother. But to come for the summer, when it's too hot to do anything unless you're prepared to get up at silly-o'clock... Sorry, I get side-tracked easily. The point of the post is that our friend told us in the email that her OH has a serious medical problem which has come more or less out of the blue. But it certainly makes you think about what you're doing, and why...

Pecked by Birds!

2011-04-17T18:28:00.002+02:00

I had half a dozen lettuces on the lounge windowsill, outside the actual window but inside the fly-netting, and they weren't doing terribly well due to the lack of light. Remember that our street is very narrow and gets about ten minutes of sun. So I took the lettuces up to the roof terrace and they began to look more healthy and started growing again. All went well for about three or four weeks and a salad was in sight, when birds began to eat them... down to the earth in two days!

I also had a small container of calendulas on the lounge windowsill. They don't do well at the Mas and so I'd brought them to the village house to see if I could get the benefit of them as they're so pretty, but they too began to suffer from a lack of light. I took them up to the roof terrace and guess what? The birds ate them too!

So I've now replaced the marigolds with a pink, dug up from the Mas and fetched here to try it's luck. So far, so good!

And on a completely different topic:-

Can you tell I'm not happy with this blog, well I haven't been for some time now, which is why I keep fiddling with it and messing about.
Maybe I'll just go for plain white and be done with it... in fact, if you don't read this post within about five minutes, it may already be done!
Maybe I'll change the title of it completely - which I don't think does your stats much good, but who cares. Maybe I'll give it up completely and just carry on with a daily photo on Blipfoto, but write more than I do now so that it's more like a blog.

High Cholesterol

2011-04-15T20:48:00.000+02:00

I thought the chances of me having high cholesterol were quite, well... high, because it does run in the family, and that's apart from my diet not being perfect.

I found out on Tuesdsay morning, after I'd tagged along to Steve's doctors appointment so that I could find out the result of the blood test I had a few weeks ago. Of course, the doctor prescribed statins for me, as I believe is common in the UK too, so I have to take one tablet a day for the rest of my life I suppose.

Then I got home, took a tablet and had a look on the internet to see what these tablets were going to do, which is especially important as the instructions on the box are all in Spanish of course. I didn't like the sound of the side effects, although it's not guaranteed that I'll suffer from them, the most common of which (I think it was affecting more than 1 in 10,000 people) are back pain; constipation; diarrhea; flushing (eg, dizziness, itching, redness, tingling, warmth); headache; nausea; runny or stuffy nose; stomach upset. And then, more rarely, muscle weakness and memory loss... as if I need my memory to get any worse than it already is!

So I'm not taking the tablets for the moment, I'm having a go at altering my diet instead to see what affect that has. I have to go back for another blood test in 4-5 months and, if there's no difference in my cholesterol level, I'll take the statins. So take pity on Steve as I'm not going to add butter to the mash any more, not going to make cakes with butter, not buying any more belly pork (even though it's delicious) and not cooking mushrooms in butter. I do most of my cooking with olive oil anyway, so that's ok, but there are lots of changes to my diet which don't have to affect Steve, and which are already in place:-

oats for breakfast
no bought biscuits, cakes or croissants :-(
no pate or cooked meat for lunch (which I don't mind not having)
no hard cheese - and just when we'd found some lovely mature cheddar out here!
no more roast chicken skin
limit my helpings of meat and remove the fat
more oily fish

I'm sure there are lots more things, but I can't think of them at the moment. Of course, even if this doesn't lower my cholesterol, I should loose some of the weight that seems to have crept onto my body over the years.

Weekend Sorting the Pool Out

2011-04-11T22:36:00.002+02:00

This is mainly what the last weekend at the Mas has been about... getting the pool painted and filled. The tins of paint said that it would be dry in 24 hours and we took it at it's word and filled the pool with water the next day, using some of the water from the cisterna.

The night after the water went in, the wind got up and was blowing a gale all night, and in the morning there were loads of bits of golden pine flowers floating all over the surface. Luckily we have a net and they were all fished out very quickly. The existing pool cover had been ripped to shreds by the winter winds and we need to buy another heavy duty plastic sheet, but for the moment Steve's used a sheet that's slightly too small... but better than no cover at all! It's not a very large pool, more for splashing about it than anything, although it is possible to swim round and round in very tight circles while being careful to avoid scraping your leg on the steps!

I did a bit of weeding on the vegetable patch, we had numerous cups of tea on the sun terrace and we watched a lizard jumping in the air trying to catch a bee and then, just before he had a shower, Steve went completely mad and jumped into the freezing water of the pool!

The weather on saturday was really hot, just like in the middle of summer, although we came down to earth with a bump on sunday with a cool and cloudy day. Today began with a few showers, but has turned hot and sunny in the afternoon... although we came back to the ~~cold~~ cool of the village house this afternoon. I went up to the roof terrace and got a bit of a shock. The half dozen lettuces that were doing very well up there have been pecked to bits - well I think birds are responsible - so that's the end of that experiment!

Floating Crane and Honey Cake

2011-04-08T12:59:00.002+02:00

This morning we noticed from the roof terrace that yet another wind turbine was going round, but I suppose that is what they're supposed to do! Soon all 21 of them will be online. It won't make any difference to us how many are turning, as it's only the three nearest to us that make all the noise!

The Irish crew from McNally's Crane Hire are getting ready to go back to the UK, Cornwall to be exact unless their plans have changed, and have been working on the big crane body. It looked so strange, suspended in mid-air, that I just had to yell "Stop!" to Steve so I could take a photo. We've passed it again since and there's been a bloke underneath it... with dark glasses on for some reason, unless it's to keep the oil and bits out of his eyes, but at least he's been out of the sun. Summer seems to have come in with rather a bang and it's rapidly getting too hot for me (and for Jasper) to walk to the Mas after lunch, so I shall have to begin going in the morning.

We're going to have lunch in a minute and then go to the Mas and get the pool painted - at last! I've just got a honey cake out of the oven, a recipe on the BBC website that I haven't tried before, so it had better hurry up and cool so that we can have a slice for lunch. It smells just like the local honey cake that everyone makes here, although that often has a pastry base and sides sort of a la Bakewell, so I hope we like the taste as we're not that keen on the local variety. It could end up being a lot of cake and custard puddings!

It's only very slightly burned, and not as badly as it looks! A continual problem with an oven that I have absolutely no idea what the temperature is, even though Steve's made me a gadget to measure it, and I always fill the tray underneath with water and cover the top, bottom and sides of the tin too :-(

Vegetable Growth, House Update, Turbines

2011-04-06T18:01:00.002+02:00

It's almost a week since I posted, even though I took some photos of the vegetable garden the other day, meaning to post them straight away, somehow I didn't. So better late than never:-

Lots of little pods are visible on the broad beans now.

Four rows of potatoes are coming up... must have been all that rain!

The swiss chard's grown big enough to eat, so we've had two meals worth.

All the fruit trees have blossom, but the apples are smothered.

At last the beetroot is starting to grow. I was ready to give up hope.

Going to seed onions...

We planted 100 onion plugs earlier this year and put them in with the dozen or so left from last year that I 'discovered' in the tomato bed - they were the overflow from the proper onion bed - but I think they were so swamped by tomato plants that they never did much. But they've begun to go to seed now, so I'm just digging them up and using them as quick as possible!

That reminds me, I sowed some melon, butternut squash, cucumber and courgette seeds the other day. It's still quite early up this way for sowing them, but the weather's so hot and the forecast so good that I thought I'd take a chance. It may turn cold again for a little while, but we'll see.

Steve's done quite a lot to the house in the village over the last few weeks including skimming and painting the bigger of the two existing bedrooms. I then painted the window and shutters and, when the smell of paint had disappeared, we moved our bed in. The floor still needs doing. Because we removed a whole wall of built-in wardrobes so that the door could be knocked through to what will be the en-suite, the floor level was different and tiles were absent of course. The plan is to have laminate flooring, but we can't quite afford it at the moment so we're making do with the original floor tiles, which do cover most of the floor space. We had previously been sleeping in the smaller bedroom but it was a bit of a squash with a king size bed and also the next door neighbour, a single man in his 60s/70s, makes quite a bit of noise... well, it's probably more that the wall is quite thin... which is strange given the thickness of the outside walls, but we think it may have been a huge house and it was split into two using thin mahons to build the divididing wall. We don't know when Mr Neighbour sleeps as he usually comes in at about midnight, does some washing up and listens to the tv, then gets up at around 6am and bangs all the pots about again. What with him, and the tractors passing at all hours (yes, really), it's not a peaceful place to live at all.

Mind you it's not peaceful at the Mas now either. Today we noticed that five turbines were now turning and they do make a lot of noise. Don't let anyone try to tell you different! We'd imagined that if it was windy enough to turn the turbines fast, then we'd hardly hear them over the noise of the wind. We were fools, because of course the wind blows much more up where those blades are and they're designed to catch every single bit of it. We can manage to cut it out now and again for a while, but the noise is so constant and so all-pervading that it's impossible to ignore it for long. It's such a shame, as it was so peaceful and tranquil there before they came.

Flowers

2011-03-31T21:34:00.000+02:00

We don't have very many flowers at the Mas, and most of what we do have were there before we were and are those that grow wild all over the place, such as gorse and rosemary, but there's lots in bloom at the moment!

We seem to have some fruits on the apricot tree, although not nearly as many as last year.

We sat and had a cup of tea before driving back to the village and then the wind turbine in front of us began to go round... quite fast. Then, all of a sudden, they must have slammed the brakes on because the blades stopped turning and the whole of the top of the turbine shook quite violently. As Steve said, they must have been practising an emergency stop. After that, they started the blades again, locked the door at the bottom and left for the day. The turbine must be generating now, and yes, it does make a noise!

A Mouse in the House!

2011-03-30T20:56:00.001+02:00

I'm sorry, we've no photographs of him/her because it's too quick, but we've had a mouse in the house for the last few days. I ~~foolishly~~ left a bag of general rubbish at the bottom of the stairs, just inside the door from the hall, which is where I sort of collect all the recycling stuff ready to leave it out on the appropriate night for the man with tractor to collect and take to the village tip. Forget 'bottom of the stairs' in a typical UK house, as this is nothing like it!

Steve discovered the mouse near the bag of rubbish the night before last and we put a trap down... which didn't work, probably because it was a wee bit on the rusty side. Oops! This evening I opened the lounge door to go upstairs and thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye... and sure enough, Steve shouted up the stairs that I'd let the mouse into the lounge! Well I didn't know that was going to happen, did I?

We watched it circle the lounge a few times while trying to trap it in a cereal box, because neither of us really wanted to kill it. Jasper was very alert and interested but, let's face it, Labradors are not usually known for their hunting ability and the mouse was too quick for him. Eventually Steve managed to drive it towards the waiting box, I picked the box up and closed the lid and Steve took the boxed mouse down the road a bit so that he might find a new des. res!

I've fallen out with blogging of late, but I will come and read all of your posts very soon. I promise!

Language Problems

2011-03-26T18:01:00.002+01:00

I'd just begun to write a post all about the car blah blah, which I've now deleted in case it leads to us being hauled up in court for slander... if they have slander here... but let's just say that we are not going to be taking the car to that garage in the village again. The whole thing wouldn't have happened in the UK, because we'd have been talking the same language and would have been able to sort it out.

Another problem we thought we'd solved but apparently haven't is to do with an insurance policy. We believed we'd successfully cancelled it, or so the folk in the office told us, but head office don't agree and so we keep getting letters. A friend suggested we visit a local consumer office, which is government funded, and we're now waiting to see if the bloke there can sort it all out for us. Again, language is at the root of the problem... well, leaving aside the insurance company's incompetence of course!

List writing

2011-03-23T22:25:00.000+01:00

I used to be a list-writer, but I don't seem to be now, so what on earth happened? I don't know why I stopped writing lists when I'd been doing it for years... I even used to write lists of my lists!

Are you a list-writer?

24 Hours at the Mas

2011-03-21T21:43:00.003+01:00

We weren't going to go to the Mas (see it on the ridge?) this last weekend, but changed our minds on Sunday morning. So after lunch we packed our rucksacks (more like over-sized day bags) with the food we'd need for 24 hours, got the cycles out and off we went... although it's only 3k.

On sunday afternoon I got a bit of digging done on the vegetable patch and then I finished the wall I've been building for... um... about two years. And yes, I know it's not all the same height, but it's the same at each end and there's a rather gentle, artistic slope in the middle so it's fine and I'm very pleased to have completed it.

On Monday morning I did a bit more digging on the veg plot and then thought that I'd extend the rosemary hedge which goes down one side of the patch, as it's pretty and also encourages the bees. I haven't finished it because I need about 20 more plants, but getting them is no bother at all because rosemary grows all over the place!

This sign should really read "nuclear power station this way" and "wind turbines that way". But it doesn't because it's signposting part of the local cycle way. Jasper looks a bit confused though...

Big Moon

2011-03-20T10:45:00.000+01:00

In case you didn't know, last night as the moon rose it looked larger than for some years. But our camera isn't really up to photographing such things.

Pine Processional Caterpillars

2011-03-19T22:32:00.000+01:00

I was up so early this morning (couldn't sleep) that in the end I took the dog out for a very early walk. Not the full walk to the Mas, the 6k round trip that we've done this afternoon while Steve was busy painting, just a quick venture out to the edge of the village to try and settle myself so that I could go back to sleep when I returned... which did work actually. And then I saw these...

...some Pine Processional Caterpillars walking across the track, nose to tail, but luckily only about twenty of them. Jasper had already gone past them, but I wasn't panicking too much as I hadn't noticed him bending to the ground to investigate and sniff the caterpillars, thank goodness! They are extremely dangerous to dogs as, when alarmed, the caterpillars shoot all the hairs from their bodies and it is these hairs that can cause very severe irritation to humans, and immense nerve damage to the faces/noses/tongues of dogs as they bend to investigate. Apparently you only have a very small window to get your dog to the vet if they are affected in any way. Jasper showed no signs of being affected, but I kept a close eye on him on the way back to the village.

The Vegetable Garden After the Rain

2011-03-18T18:09:00.001+01:00

It's a couple of days since it stopped raining, after doing so for the best part of a week, and both of our cisternas (water storage tanks) at the Mas are full to overflowing. In fact I think we've had a good six month's worth of rain. So this afternoon I went to have a look at the vegetable patch as I haven't been able to get down there for nearly a week because of the mud!

Everything looked fine, and I was pleased to see that the ditches I'd dug either side of each bed were still there, even if they were a little full of mud. If I didn't do those ditches I'm sure that heavy rain would wash all the vegetable beds away as they're on a bit of a slope.

All of the fruit trees are covered with buds, but I could only take a successful photo of the fig trees as it was blowing such a gale. I could manage to photograph some of the vegetables though, as they're nearer the ground!

swiss chard

mangetout peas

broad beans

leeks

onions

I started the leeks from seed at the end of last summer and they're still tiny, but hopefully they'll begin to grow now. There are some large onions in amongst the babies, they're last summer's that I discovered when digging the bed over. They may go to seed quickly, I'll keep an eye on them. There's still no sign of the last sowing of carrot seeds, but they do take for ever to germinate!

The Car's Out of Action

2011-03-16T12:53:00.003+01:00

We are carless. Not careless, car-less!

This is the garage's car, not ours!

Following very heavy rain overnight on Friday last and through Saturday, we found that the E.C.U. (electronic control unit) in our car was misbehaving very badly, with lights coming on, wipers etc. for no reason at all. We managed to get home from friends and then Steve had a look at it. It was soaking wet. In fact it was full of water. He emptied and dried it out, but it still wasn't working and the car wouldn't start or anything.

So we locked it up (luckily that worked) and biked it back to the village so that we could go to the garage there. They had the car towed in, but they've been unable to fix it, and so this morning we've rung the RACC and the car's been taken to the main dealers in Reus... about an hour away. From what we understand (ha ha) it will not be ready for about ten days (how long is a piece of string?)..... and then we'll have to ask someone to give us a lift... or get the train...............

Soooo, we are unable to go to the last session of the medical vocab. course that we were helping with and I've already rung our doctor to tell him, we will have to try and get a lift next week to the hospital to collect Steve's injections and will have to hope that a friend will pick us up for this month's meeting of the lunch club.

The only bright note today is that the rain is easing. Maybe stopping altogether? And if we can remain not-smoking through this - which we have - then we've done well!

JAPAN - I've added a blog to the sidebar - Japanory - as it gives the man in the street's point of view... although in this case it's the woman in the street!

Here Comes That Rain Again

2011-03-15T21:30:00.021+01:00

Here comes that rain again, Falling on my head like a ~~memory~~ torrential downpour ...with apologies to the Eurythmics!

We had heavy and continuous rain Friday night, most of Saturday, day off on Sunday, most of Monday, all of today and it's forecast for tomorrow as well. We do need the rain, it's true, as we've had hardly any since this time last year as the usual autumn rains never happened. But all of the fields are flooded, both of our cisternas are full and enough is enough now!

Today's walk with Jasper was a repeat of yesterdays, setting out during a five minute gap in the rain in the hope that it would last half an hour. It didn't and was pouring again before we even reached the end of the street. It takes about ten minutes to get out of the village and onto a track where I can let Jasper off the lead, and by that time we're both soaked and may as well carry on! Today we took a very roundabout route to the Mas. My coat was soaking and so I hung it up to dry there and put another one on when we left to return to the village, but while I was there I had a cup of tea and put a few things in a bag to take with me - the eggs, peanuts, spare jar of marmalade, my book - things that we hadn't been able to take back on the bikes on Sunday. By the time we got back to the village I was exhausted. Maybe tomorrow's walk will be in the dry?

Children's Carnival Yesterday / Rain Today

2011-03-12T09:33:00.000+01:00

This weekend is carnival in our village, but don't get too excited as it's nothing like Rio or Notting Hill, just fancy dress parades and competitions, a bonfire and cooking sardines. Yesterday afternoon we watched the children's fancy dress parade, with all the costumes being made in school.

Then very heavy rain all night and still continuing, which won't be good for the adults fancy dress competition later if it doesn't stop!

ITV, Vets and Beautiful Blossom

2011-03-09T17:46:00.001+01:00

The almond blossom's still looking gorgeous around here, but it's obviously coming to an end soon as the leaves have started growing. I think this is when almond blossom looks its best, the pale pink with the bright green!

Edit:-
When I wrote this post earlier I was in a rush and completely forgot to include a summary of our busy morning, so better late than never. It was the morning for our car's ITV (MOT for those in the UK) and so we drove down into the valley, with Jasper in the back as he had an appointment with the vet afterwards. I was very considerate and took the dog for a little walk while Steve took the car actually through the test, as we didn't want any growling at the mechanic or technician, or whatever they're job title is, while they checked the seat belts etc. Then on to the vets. There's nothing wrong with Jasper, it was just time for his yearly jabs, and we were pleased to find that he's lost 2kg in weight over the year... once we'd managed to persuade him to get onto the scales! Labradors do have a tendency to get rather fat, which is why we're quite strict with how many treats he gets. Then back to the Mas, lunch for us (but not for him even though he had been a very good boy), another walk and back to the village house... and he's been asleep ever since, only waking up for his dinner.

Pancake Day

2011-03-08T12:32:00.000+01:00

I made the batter early this morning and then realised that we didn't have any fresh lemons. The shop round the corner only had oranges, so they'll have to do but Steve prefers them anyway! While I was in the shop I had a look to see if they sold Oxos, but they don't, and in common with most shops and supermarkets only have Knorr stock cubes. I don't much like the Knorr variety as they are about twice as salty as Oxos, so the search will have to go on!

After explaining about Oxos and why I didn't want Knorr my Catalan was coming to the end of it's tether, so why on earth did I begin to explain about Pancake Day while I was asking for some oranges??? In the end I gave up, although the poor woman did manage to understand that it was vaguely similar to truita (Catalan for tortilla) so well done to her. We must ask our English speaking village friend if there's a similar tradition here. Pancake Day is a religious thing after all, so it's possible.

A bit of an early walk today as I wanted to take some photos of the village from a distance. I might try making a panorama if I can work out how to do it!

Re-Arranging the Blog

2011-03-07T22:20:00.002+01:00

Yes... I know I've done more than my fair share of re-arranging everything on this blog, what with changing the layout and the colours and what-not, but I mean a more fundamental change. I want to have all the blogs that I follow on a seperate page, and maybe other stuff too. Because the problem is that I can't make the whole blog display wide enough to allow me to do what I want to all on the same page. But I don't know if it's possible. So if you take a look at this blog and it's all to pot, just tell yourself that it's just Jan having a fiddle yet again!

Edit: Having looked at some stuff I'm not sure that it can be done - I don't do HTML altering. I'll have a look at the help pages and forums....... Ha! Not that they've ever been much help before!

Bike Ride

2011-03-06T17:56:00.000+01:00

The second bike ride for the three of us in as many days, but it was a shame that we'd both got too many clothes on and our coats were not the sort that tie around your middle nicely. We hadn't realised that it was quite so hot!

New Zealand Flatworm

2011-03-06T08:18:00.003+01:00

I'd never heard of these before this morning. I came across them while reading about microwaving compost... not something that I'm interested in, but I was just browsing :-) They look a bit like leeches.

Thank Goodness for Some Rain

2011-03-04T17:58:00.000+01:00

We've had steady, reasonably heavy rain since yesterday afternoon, with a couple of hours of dry this morning, which is great as the vegetables and fruit trees badly need it. We've had hardly any rain at all since spring last year and so it's very welcome!

English Course for Local Medics

2011-03-03T17:33:00.001+01:00

When we visited the doctor in the village yesterday morning he mentioned that he was attending a course in english at a local town. The purpose is to help doctors and nurses in the area deal with english speaking patients by learning english medical vocabulary, which is a great idea as far as we're concerned and amazing considering the financial crisis. Anyway, our doctor asked if we'd like to go along to the course to help with pronounciation etc, and we said we'd go today.

It was very interesting and so nice to be able to speak english and not have to struggle to find the right words in catalan. We were asked to introduce ourselves and tell the group a little about our lives, and then some of those on the course asked us questions, in english of course, so they ended up exhausted after two hours of listening to and speaking english, and we... well we felt fine! We've been asked to go again to the last session of the course in a couple of weeks, following which we're all going for lunch. Apart from the enjoyment factor, it's nice that we're able to give something back to the system!

A Walk to the Veggies

2011-03-02T19:56:00.001+01:00

We had an early lunch, and then Steve carried on with tiling the floor in what will be our en-suite bathroom while I walked to the Mas with Jasper.

On the way we passed this digger, which is in the process of putting the land back to normal now that most of the irrigation water pipes are in. When we reached the Mas I made a cup of tea and had a look at the flowers that were out in the garden... not very many, but definitely spring-like.

Then I built a bit more of my drystone wall, which is something that I'd like to get finished before we sell the place.... not that a sale is on the cards, and I'll post a photo when it's done. Then another cuppa and off down the terraces to the vegetable patch.

the chard will soon be large enough to pick some leaves

not perfect caulis, but good enough... especially as we asked for cabbages!

the broad beans have just begun to flower

I did a bit of tidying up and weeding

I'm a bit of a control freak when it comes to the vegetable patch, and like it just so, even if there's not much planted at the moment. Ridiculous really, but that's me. The pop bottles are covering some lettuce plants to protect them from the wind, but a few have died even so. There are also some lettuces in the cold frame and some on the windowsill at the village house - I'm hedging my bets!

When my brother was here (a year ago I think) we brought back lots and lots of small rosemary plants from our walks and planted them down one side of the vegetable patch. I thought they might make a windbreak when they've grown, and they're doing well so far. At the very least they'll attract pollinating insects.

Catalan Telephone Challenge

2011-03-02T11:30:00.000+01:00

But first, up on the roof... hmm, sounds like it could be a song title!

We usually take our morning coffee up onto the roof terrace, and of course Jasper comes too. He doesn't get coffee though, he just lies about in the sunshine!

Now back to the title of this post. Yesterday morning we had one of those telephone conversations from hell, when neither we nor they understood each other. We needed a doctors appointment in order to renew our prescriptions as they only last for a year, and so Steve rang the appropriate number, only to be told to ring a different number. Ok, that's fine, except that the woman who was answering the phone on the other number couldn't understand what Steve was saying and he couldn't understand what she was saying. He passed the phone to me in the hope that I would have more luck... I didn't! She was speaking very fast in Castillion. We asked her to speak Catalan, which she did, but not for long before reverting to Spanish! We asked her to speak slowly, which she didn't do at all! I could hear that she was getting very exasperated with our inability to understand, and she was probably cursing bloody foreigners under her breath, but we cannot possibly be the only non-natives that she has to deal with. She must have got out of bed the wrong side or something. Eventually I managed to understand that we had an appointment at 9.20 this morning, by which time all three of us were stressed!

In complete contrast the actual doctor's appointment this morning was a dream, because we walked in and he asked us to speak in English! He's attending a course two days a week at the moment to help him to learn medical terms in English and he wanted to practise on us. With all the extra chit-chat that this involved, our appointment lasted a long time and we got back just in time for coffee on the roof terrace... which is where I came in!

In the News

2011-03-01T20:50:00.000+01:00

Two recent news items have left me thinking that the world really has gone mad, at last!

The first was the announcement that a devout Christian couple could no longer foster children unless they agreed that they would teach the children in their care that homosexuality was acceptable. I was left more or less speechless. Surely there ought to be room for compromise here so that experienced foster parents, of whom there is a shortage, could be retained 'on the books'. Maybe they could have agreed to teach the children in their care that Christians believe... etc, etc, (which is what athiest and agnostic school teachers do all the time and I should know), thus leaving the children to make their own minds up without feeling guilty. What about all the natural parents who teach their children all sorts of rubbish? Is the High Court going to have something to say about them? In the end, no matter what children are told, they will come to their own conclusions, and usually those conclusions will be the right ones.

The second news item to astound me, and it was this morning I think, was the decision by the European Court of Justice that gender could no longer be used as a risk factor for insurance premiums. I always thought that statistics were used to help set insurance premiums and that those statistics showed that men posed a higher risk than women. So, given the decision, does that mean that men's premiums will be lowered to meet those of women halfway? I'm guessing not. It will probably just mean that mens' premiums will remain the same and womens' will rise.

"Taking the gender of the insured individual into account as a risk factor in insurance contracts constitutes discrimination," the court said in a statement. Ok, so what about taking the age of the insured individual into account as a risk factor..........? Maybe in time we'll see motoring insurance premiums for 20 year olds being the same as for 30 year olds? What do you think?

2011-03-01T20:22:00.001+01:00

All

Change

... Again

But it's better than smoking :-)

Marmalade Recipe

2011-03-01T09:25:00.001+01:00

In response to a request for the marmalade recipe, I used a recipe from my old Mrs Beeton's... but only roughly because for one thing I'd left the scales at the village house, and for another I found that I didn't have quite enough sugar, but by that time it was too late to change my mind!

Five Fruit Marmalade (makes 5lb)

2lb fruit (1 orange, 1 grapefruit, 1 lemon, 1 large apple, 1 pear)
.............. I used 5 oranges and 1 apple
3pints water
3lb sugar
.............. I used a bit less than this

Actually, now I'm looking at the recipe again as I type it here, I find that I didn't follow the recipe at all! So here's what I actually did:-

Cut all the fruit up and soaked it in the water overnight.
Bring to the boil and simmer for an hour and a quarter until reduced by one-third.
Add sugar and stir over a low heat until dissolved. Then boil rapidly until set - about half an hour.
Cool slightly before putting into hot, sterilised jars.

Chunky Marmalade?

2011-02-28T21:02:00.000+01:00

Anyone for some really really chunky marmalade? I rather like large chunks in it (although Steve's not so keen), but even I think I may have overdone it and really should have chopped it up smaller!

We've Given The Fags Up!

2011-02-25T10:43:00.002+01:00

So I'm sure all the family are cheering that we've at last managed it. It's early days - this is only the 6th day - but we're doing ok. Steve found a few ancient nicotine patches in the cupboard, which were out of date in 2008, but we're using them anyway and I think there's another week's worth in the box.

These two cigs are the ones we don't need and they're being kept to ensure that we don't need them... if you understand what I mean.

Almond Blossom at Speed

2011-02-24T16:53:00.000+01:00

This morning we went to the hospital in the valley, just a routine appointment, and I tried to take photos of the almond blossom from the car as it's well and truly out now.

When we got back to the Mas though, which is higher above sea level, only about a quarter of the almond trees are in bloom so far. But with the continued sunny weather it won't be long before they all are.... and the first iris of the spring was flowering in the garden!

So... What Do Village Women Do Then?

2011-02-23T18:02:00.003+01:00

What do you do all day when you live in the village? Because I'm a bit at a loss, although maybe not as much as I will be in the future... now there's a thought!

I'm not particularly big on cleaning. I don't let it get so dirty that it's in a state, but I can't see the point of cleaning for cleanings sake. So, after breakfast, when we're deciding what we're going to do for the day, I'm at a bit of a loss. Take this morning for instance. I made the bed, and prepared our dinner for tonight so that it's all ready to just pop in the oven, then I took all the meat off the chicken that I roasted yesterday and sorted it out (with Jasper's eyes getting bigger and bigger) and then boiled up the chicken bones. When they were done, I made some vegetable soup with half of the chicken stock. No cleaning was necessary today, especially since I knew Steve was going to be concreting this afternoon! But if I didn't have the dog to walk and the vegetable garden at the Mas to see to in the afternoon, there would be nothing to do... apart from sitting on my backside, read, computer, and then end up with a bad back from sitting too much.

So, what do village women do? As far as I can tell, they spend a long time shopping for not very much, with a lot of gossiping, some cleaning, some cooking and more gossip... now I'm stuck... maybe more cooking and more gossip?

Too Late

2011-02-18T09:36:00.001+01:00

The week before last I took photos of each of the vegetable beds, more for my own records than anything else, but I was going to post them on here... except that it's now so long since I took the pics that the beds have changed again. So I'm not going to bother.

Instead here's a photo of the new village roundabout in the process of being finished off - they'd just put the olive trees in their holes. We're not sure why the village has a roundabout now, but assume that EU money was available for such things and so they thought they'd have one! The construction has caused a lot of disruption for the last few months as there are only two entrances to the village, and this is one of them, so people have had to go all the way round to use the other entrance. Everyone will be glad when it's completely finished.

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous!

2011-02-15T09:50:00.000+01:00

The two pots on the roof terrace, and what a contrast!

El Cap De Setmana Al Mas

2011-02-14T22:58:00.001+01:00

We've spent the weekend at the Mas, returning to the village mid-afternoon... although I did try to use delaying tactics i.e. having to go down to the vegetable patch to sow a few broad bean and mangetout pea seeds into the gaps, but actually I needn't have bothered because there ended up being a genuine reason for leaving there later than planned. We discovered that the freezer door on the fridge freezer wasn't shutting properly, which meant half an hour of frantic ice chipping and chivelling, although in the end we just transferred the contents of the top drawer into the middle one so that the door would shut, and a proper de-frosting will have to wait..... which is why it got into this state in the first place!

Both of us got lots of jobs done, including emptying and sweeping the pool clean of debris, a table for the village roof terrace repainted, the vines and fruit trees pruned, more carrot seeds sown and quite a bit of digging on the vegetable patch. Here are some photos:-

Almost empty, apart from the dregs and the heap of pine needles!

Family, remember that old white table...

The mangetout peas are growing and I've got sticks in for them now.

The broad beans are about 6" tall.

You can't really tell from this, but there are lettuce seedlings in there!

Away from the vegetable patch, I had some lovely (if a little exhausting) walks with Jasper,

but what fabulous views, and just look at that expanse of sky! The weather was warm, we saw our first sunsets for a few weeks... we can't see in that direction from the village house... which was lovely, and it was so good to be able to walk out of the front door and be in the countryside and fresh air. Oh well.

Spring is Sprung

2011-02-11T12:18:00.000+01:00

It's feeling very springlike, although it may be a little premature as we had a third snowfall at this time last year! Yesterday I took some photos of new growth at the Mas, sorry they're a bit blurry - I don't know why... apart from incompetence!

the first of the Lavender blossom

Snowdrops! I forget where they are every year.

The first crocus.

The buds are showing on the rose.

Blossom on the apricot tree.

Another Beautiful Day

2011-02-08T19:54:00.001+01:00

A day of rest today, as Steve was aching after spending the whole of yesterday plastering, so we went to the bar for our morning coffee (which I think is feeling the effect of the recent smoking ban in Spain) and then called into the breadshop on the way home. After lunch we spent a couple of hours at the Mas, walking Jasper, and then spreading several buckets of sawdust on the vegetable plot.

Just before we left to return to the village, the police called round. As soon as I saw their car coming along the new road I knew that they were coming to see us - no, we haven't done anything wrong, they call round periodically on everyone who lives out in the countryside to check that they're ok and that there's been no trouble with burglars etc. I managed to explain to them that we now lived in the village for most of time, which no doubt set their minds at rest. We'd been expecting them to call, and in fact they had been before but we hadn't been there, as a friend had told us that they were giving everyone living in the countryside their own grid reference, so that if emergency help was needed they would know exactly where the emergency was. A good idea, what with the language barrier! But we weren't given a reference number... presumably they feel that we don't need it now.

Edit: As far as we know, there's very litle crime of any sort around here, but the rate is much higher down in the valley, including burglary of expat places off the beaten track. Touch wood that stays the same!

Donkey Racing

2011-02-06T21:03:00.000+01:00

A donkey race is one of the village events during the Festa de Sant Blai and, because we hadn't managed to see it in previous years, we thought we'd go and watch. After waiting for ages for something to happen, seven donkeys emerged from a horsebox and were tethered to a house up the street... and then we waited again. It turned out, according to friends, that there was a problem finding enough people to ride the donkeys... well, there were no saddles so I don't blame them!

The race began, and was all over in about five minutes as they only had to go round a small circuit once, although there was a bit of excitement when one rider came off and his donkey carried on!

I don't know if there was any betting going on, but imagine there might have been!

Steve cooked a lovely breakfast this morning, and so we didn't bother with any lunch before going to the Mas for the afternoon. It was so hot that I put sun lotion on and a sunhat, and we were actually down to tee-shirts! It's only the beginning of February, so what's going on?

I went down to the veg patch and weeded another bed, so that's two done out of six. The baby lettuces that I'd covered with pop bottles didn't look very good, but I gave them a good water and maybe they'll recover. Steve pumped some of the old water out of the swimming pool as we're emptying it so that it can be cleaned up and repainted ready for the summer. But... surely... this can't be the start of summer yet? Can it?

Festa de Sant Blai - part 2

2011-02-05T18:02:00.002+01:00

When we got to the Placa Major this morning (which is only two minutes from our house) there weren't very many people there, but that wasn't really surprising as most village events tend to run a little on the late side. There were just a small group of people waiting outside the Ajuntament and a couple of friends inspecting the firewood trailers.

Ten minutes later we heard the band start up and lead the procession of (mainly) women and children up a side street, through the Placa and into the church. Can you see the cakes they're carrying? They're a very important part of this festa... although we're not sure why... but possibly the cakes all had to be blessed? Everyone was in their best clothes and, to be honest, we both felt a bit under-dressed, if not actually scruffy!

A friend called out for us to follow her into the church and, although it was lovely to listen to the singing and interesting to admire the arched ceiling and stained glass, the service lasted a good hour and a half and we were very cold by the time we got outside again! I did like the atmosphere in the church though, very relaxed and family orientated, with folk chatting and taking photos, and can you see the two groups of girls in the pulpits either side of the church? They were having a great time playing while the service was going on!

Once everyone left the church, they gathered in front of the trailers loaded with firewood, stepladders were fetched and a group of young men in dark suits climbed on top of the firewood ready to take bids. They looked very smart, and I think they may have been the same group of men who sang so beautifully at 7am this morning. People shouted out their bids for the trailers of wood and, although we didn't stay until the end of the auction, the price seemed very cheap as the bidding had reached 740 euros for four trailersful, and just after we left we heard a huge cheer go up so the lot must have been won. The trailers held an average of 4 tons each, so we didn't think that was a bad price.

In about half an hour there will traditional dancing in the square... while holding the cakes, but we may wait until they do it again (minus cakes but plus confetti) tomorrow afternoon!

Festa de Sant Blai - part 1

2011-02-05T11:49:00.001+01:00

The festa de Sant Blai is the major winter festival in our village and it's this weekend. Last night a band played all through the streets, and this morning we were woken at 7am by singing just up the street from our house. A group of young men were making their way around the village, stopping every now and then to sing quite beautifully, and ending at the church at the end of the street.

While we had our breakfast, another group of people passed us in the street below, as part of the religious aspect of the festa.

We took Jasper to the Mas this morning, leaving him there while we went to buy yet more sacks of plaster. We shall go back to the Mas after lunch, to walk him and make the most of a lovely sunny day. In a moment we are going to the main square to watch the auction of several trailer loads of firewood for charity. I'll post more photos later.

Deleting Facebook / Erasing David

2011-02-02T12:49:00.000+01:00

We watched Erasing David last night, even though with the time difference it meant that we didn't go to bed until 2am, but I'm glad I watched it. This morning I've deleted my Facebook account and also made some adjustments to my Profile on Blogger... not that I ever put much personal information on either.

Take a look at this page of the Erasing David website. You see? You can deactivate your Facebook account, but you can never delete it. On the programme it was mentioned that there may be a link between Facebook and the CIA... who knows? Anythings possible, but I don't particularly want to be part of it. Unfortunately I am though.

Irrigation Water from the Ebro

2011-02-01T21:09:00.000+01:00

Thought I'd do a post about the irrigation water that they're bringing to all the land around here, including ours. As far as I can remember, work was begun around the beginning of last summer, when the diggers moved in to dig trenches all over the place for the water pipes to be buried in. In the photo above, there is now a lane where there wasn't one before i.e. the route of the water pipe, but whether it will remain like that we don't know, or maybe the farmers will plough over it all when the irrigation work's finished.

The area above was covered with pine trees and scrub before it all had to be removed so that the pipes could be buried. There are lots of areas that look a real mess at the moment, but I'm sure it will all get back to normal when they're done, and irrigation water is such a necessity. There are lots of plots of land that have been neglected for years but, with water on the horizon, people are burning off the scrub and ploughing the land ready for planting.

When the water pipes are all connected up and taps and things are put in place, a concrete and metal box is placed over the connection. Here are some of the different boxes, and I think the large one houses the meters.

We're not sure when they'll be finished and the water will be turned on. At that point we'll have to pay!

Village Traffic and Refuse Collection

2011-01-31T21:38:00.000+01:00

Earlier, this car drove past our house and had to wait because there was a car at the end, that was in turn waiting for another car to move. These streets were never meant for cars of course, just people and donkeys, so it's amazing that problems with traffic are not much worse! Some villages operate a one-way system, but not ours... yet!

One of the problems with our street, and others like this one, is that it's only just wide enough for a car, so there's no room for passing, or parking, and the noise of a car going by is literally right outside your window... even though (in common with most houses here) the floor with the kitchen and living room is on the first floor.

The village operates a five day a week refuse/recycling collection system, with different sorts of rubbish being collected on different days e.g. monday is general waste, tuesday is plastic/tins etc. You either put your appropriate bin outside (but out of the way of traffic of course), or you hang it in a bag/bucket on your outside wall. Starting at about 2.30am, a tractor and trailer makes its way around the narrow streets and empties your rubbish into the trailer. I'm sure you can imagine the noise made when it's the morning for glass collection! But it's a good system, and here we can recycle so much that one regular plastic carrier bag contains an entire weeks worth of our unrecyclable waste... who needs a wheelie-bin?

Forty Stairs

2011-01-30T13:23:00.001+01:00

The tiles destined for the room underneath the roof terrace are gradually making their way up the stairs. Steve takes four at a time, but I only do two as they're heavy. We didn't have to buy these as they were part of the small "builders yard" in the garden of the Mas when we purchased it. Maybe we wouldn't have actually chosen the colour, but there's nothing to dislike about the grey/green, although they will be slippery when wet... we'll have to be careful about that, as the room will house the washing machine, a shower, sink and toilet.

The stairs themselves have lino stuck on them at the moment, with wood (maybe olive) strips at the front. Eventually it would be nice to think that they'll all be tiled beautifully... but they'll have to do for the time being.

(There are another 10 steps up to the roof terrace, so thank goodness these tiles don't have to go there)

Village Chores

2011-01-29T13:23:00.001+01:00

I'm not and never will be a typical village wife, their lot doesn't appeal in the slightest! Their morning's tasks should include cleaning the entire house from top to bottom followed by sweeping the street... not the whole of it, just the bit outside their house, shopping for bread and then vegetables from the market accompanied by a good dose of chit-chat, rounded off by preparing a three course lunch from scratch. I can't do it, I don't want to do it, I won't do it... but I did get some veggies from the market this morning and a lovely soup is almost made.


onion, garlic, celery, parsley, carrot


butternut squash

The market man invariably gives you a stick of celery and a bunch of parsley... and he learns the english words into the bargain! And, along with the red and green peppers, apples and parsnips, I bought some green beans and was also asked what they were called in english. I do understand a lot of what the conversation is about while waiting my turn, but it's so difficult to formulate a contribution to make, as by the time I've thought of how to say something the conversation has moved on!

While we were up on the roof terrace having our morning coffee (we often go up there for it, unless it's really cold) I took some photos of the surrounding roofs/rooves - spelling?

Our roof and plastic cover to the light tunnel.

Next door's roof runs from the chimney backwards.

Our satellite dish (for UK TV).

Roof terrace.

The roof terrace is now all ready for floor tiling, hopefully in the next few weeks, and then the walls will need plastering, although goodness knows when that will be. Today Steve's been busy fitting a sensor to the front door so that when we press the button on the first floor (where the lounge is) to let people in, the light will automatically come on. Otherwise they come into the pitch dark! He's also finished off another couple of lights. Me? I've been wasting time on the computer!

Onions Etc.

2011-01-26T20:31:00.000+01:00

Two posts in as many days... whatever next! We spent the whole day at the Mas today, determined to get all 100 onion plugs (therefore approx 300 plants) and a whole sack of red potatoes planted before tomorrow, because snow/rain is forecast... which would be good if it happens because there's been hardly any rain since last winter. I'm sure it's not the right time of year to plant either onions or potatoes, never mind the 30+ lettuces we also bought, but the potatoes will be ok, and the onions and lettuces only cost 3.20 euros.

When I lifted the onions in the early summer there were a few that I missed. So they've been replanted (although they may go to seed) and the new plants have been put between them.

Steve ~~played with his tractor~~ ploughed, ready for planting the Pontiac Red potatoes.

The broad bean and mangetout pea seedlings look healthy enough.

The cauliflowers have been hit by the frost, although the flowers look undamaged. I should have tied the leaves up over them ages ago, but I've done it this afternoon.

It was lovely to have a whole day on the vegetable plot, and I sort of re-discovered by love of gardening. My previous waning of interest was (and probably will be again at some point) due to the fact that I didn't have long enough there to do what I knew needed to be done.

A Get Everything Done Day

2011-01-25T19:08:00.001+01:00

Almost anyway! We managed to get a registration document relating to the village house corrected, and in five minutes; an insurance policy cancelled; our address and telephone number changed at the social security office, a hospital appointment attended and various bits of shopping done, including buying a sack of seed potatoes, 100 onion and 20 lettuce plugs... although I hope it won't be too cold to put them in. That will be tomorrow's task.

After having a lovely menu del dia we had an hour to kill before it was time to get to the hospital and so we made a trip to a local font, La Font dels Aiguadins... which translated literally means that there's water in the font I suppose!

The dry river bed.

Trickles into pools from the font.

It seems that I can now upload a photo for the header, although the size needed is quite different from before, but at least it's done!

Header Picture

2011-01-24T09:50:00.001+01:00

I thought I'd change the header picture on here this morning, but Blogger must be messing about because I couldn't get the new photo to be anything more than a tiny one on the left hand side. So I tried putting back the old header pic...... and that's a small one too, in spite of the fact that it fitted perfectly ten minutes ago! I give up.

Edit:- After looking at the Help Forum, it appears that this is a common problem and they're trying to fix it. In the meantime I shall just be header photoless. See Blogger's Known Issues Blog.

The Will to Blog

2011-01-18T21:58:00.000+01:00

Sorry to everyone who's been looking at this blog in the hope that I'll have written something and find that I haven't. I just seem to have lost the will to blog. Somehow. But I expect it will return at some point... at least, I hope so.

I thought my non-blogging was to do with having to try and cram a blog post into the time that we spent at the Mas during the afternoons, once we began to live full-time at the house in the village. We'd have about two hours at the Mas, during which I'd walk Jasper, see to the vegetable patch (although not very well, but that's another story (see below)) and have a little time on the internet... which was not usually enough time. But now we have phone and internet in the village house - full marks to Telefonica for promptness and efficiency - and I still don't feel inclined to blog. Oh, except that I am......................... ok, well maybe I will be blogging more regularly from now on. Time will tell (as they say, or somebody did) whether I've rediscovered my blogging mojo.

The vegetable garden is another matter though I think, even though it's similar in that I seem to have lost the will to garden. I know Rose, (my daughter), this is serious! Of course, winter is a time when there is not so much to be done on a vegetable patch, but even so there is a lot that I should be doing - weeding, digging, putting in peasticks while the ground is soft, sticking more garlic cloves inbetween the new rows of carrots etc. and planning for the spring. But I can't really be bothered. Luckily, as you can maybe see, I've done so much weeding this year that there aren't very many coming through in spite of the lack of very cold weather, and the patch looks tidy. But keep your fingers crossed that I'll get the gardening bug back before everything starts going mad in the spring!

Dog At Rest

2010-12-14T19:32:00.000+01:00

Jasper had a 'mad' ten minutes this evening. Here he is at a standstill.

Cold Walk Photos

2010-12-12T16:55:00.000+01:00

We had the first really hard frost of the winter this morning, but by the time Jasper and I went walking all that was left was a layer of chunky ice crystals beneath every tree. We're back here at the Mas until Thursday now, which is nice.

The Vegetable Garden's Still There!

2010-12-08T17:22:00.000+01:00

There are plenty of carrots, even if the sizes are very mixed,
and we should have enough for the winter.

These are the plants that were supposed to be cabbages, but
which we're fairly sure are cauliflowers... and it wasn't my
catalan that was at fault!

The swiss chard was transplanted a few weeks ago
and they all seem to have survived the trauma.

Almost all of the broad bean seeds have appeared, and some
of the mangetout peas... although I seem to remember that the
peas took much longer than the beans last year and I may
have once again put the seeds in too deep.

Our vegetable garden is still there, down on our field, but it's a little neglected now that we're spending so much time living in the village house, which is a shame. We (or just I) do come back to the Mas every day to check that everything's ok, to use the internet and to walk Jasper - he is just so pleased when he comes back here, although I do think he prefers his bed in the village house to the one he has here - and I do always go and see the veggies. But I don't have the time to do much work down there, maybe just a bit of weeding or making sure that the new row of carrot seedlings (which are just coming through) are damp enough. I can't take things easy down there and potter, and I do so like pottering! Consequently I'm losing a bit of interest in it all, now that I can't just walk down there and do a couple of hours whenever I feel like it.

When we were here last Friday and Saturday I managed to get all the flower beds (and I use that term loosely) tidied and dug over, and I also did a lot of gravel raking which has smartened the place up a bit, which were two jobs that I'd been meaning to do for a while. But in general, now that we're not here the whole time, there's a sort of deserted look about the place. Shame!

How to Build a Wind Turbine, Step by Step!

2010-12-05T14:07:00.000+01:00

Well, not quite step by step because we were staying in the village house when the first and second mast sections were erected, but near enough! These are the photos that I took yesterday while we sat on the terrace in the (quite hot) sun, watching the final stages in the construction of the wind turbine 270 odd metres in front of our Mas.

The end!

Second Section

2010-12-03T12:13:00.000+01:00

Doh! We missed the erection of the first section of the wind turbine in front of our Mas the day before yesterday, and now we've also missed the second section going up. This morning I took the dog and his breakfast up to the roof terrace of the village house... and could see the turbine mast from there!

So I had my breakfast and walked back to the Mas, with Jasper obviously, in the hope that the third section will go up later today. In the past, while watching the erection of the turbines further away from us, we've seen them put up two or three sections in a day, so I'm staying here until it's up... sorry Steve, you might have to get your own dinner!

The three turbine blades are already attached to the nosecone so they're obviously going to lift it all in one piece, although I'd have thought it was too windy today. Oh, just had a thought, maybe it's too windy for the third mast section?

Tales From the Village House

2010-12-02T16:40:00.002+01:00

This is what we've been up to this morning:-

The chimney saga is now (hopefully) finished, as Steve
had to venture out on the roof again this morning. We'd
already replaced all the chimney apart from the top section,
but this had come adrift from the rest of it, meaning that
the fire wouldn't draw properly. He managed to push the
old bit down inside the chimney (and it fell to the living
room) and then I hooked rope and bit of wood through
the new section and Steve hauled it up and managed
to get it properly connected to the rest of it.

The little door on the roof terrace which opens on the
street side is meant for hoisting things up. It's quite
woodwormed (now treated) and a bit rotten
but we like it.

Through the open hoist door, the sun terrace of the
house over the street. We could almost shake hands!

A liberal coat of oil later, it's looking much better
and will hopefully prolong its life. The wall will be
re-rendered and painted sometime.

See through the hoist door and looking to
the right, the terracotta waterspout and
gutter above.

Looking to the left the spout has an old
tin can jammed onto the end... we've no
idea why and would have a job reaching
it anyway!

Looking from the stairs on the bedroom
floor, Steve's just started blocking up the
doorway which leads into a storeroom, which
will be the ensuite. He's already knocked a
doorway through into what will be our bedroom

I'm not doing very well at reading all your blogs at the moment, but will try to catch up soon :-(

We Can Hear, But We Can't See!

2010-11-30T12:18:00.001+01:00

This is the clearest it's been this morning, for five minutes and then the cloud closed in again! The frustrating thing is that we think they've lifted the first section of mast and placed it, because we've heard them tightening the bolts. I'll have a walk round later, after lunch. This is what I've done this morning:-

Iced the little Christmas cake I've made for my Dad.
I'm hoping the marzipan decorations won't slip!

Made some more butternut squash soup.

The last batch of butternut squash soup I made more or less turned into tomato soup, as I added a bag of frozen tomato sauce to help make some room in the freezer, so today is a more normal version.

Edit: Steve's just been down on the tractor and the first section is up. It's so annoying that we didn't actually see it, but I suppose there'll be plenty more to watch!

The Resting Crane and other Stories

2010-11-29T21:15:00.000+01:00

On its way down.

Aaand rest!

Oo-er, control gear going into the hole.

A cherry picker being lifted clean over all the mast sections,
from left to right, and placed carefully between control gear and man.

That totals the excitement for the day, not that we spend all our time watching what's going on! This evening, just as it was getting dark, the big crane and its little brother seemed to get all ready to lift the first mast section (which has to cover the control gear) but then the floodlights went off and they all went home. That'll maybe be tomorrows excitement then. I can't wait.

The Pyrenees

2010-11-29T15:42:00.001+01:00

The Pyrenees are looking so beautiful today, they're so clear even though they're about 180 km away. They're absolutely covered and have been for several weeks now. I've had to zoom in a bit and also alter the contrast so that you can see the snow on the peaks, but of course that's made the foreground too dark.
I'm sorry that there haven't been any vegetable/gardening posts for what seems like ages, but the thing is that we're rather occupied with the village house and with the wind turbines (as if you couldn't guess) and so the garden's being a bit neglected. But I'm off down there to pull some carrots in a minute and I might take the camera with me.

Oops

2010-11-28T12:26:00.000+01:00

the bolts have been put in the ends of the blades

Seeing as it's sunday and nobody was working on the wind turbine sites, I came back from walking Jasper via the "bits". I took a few photos and then... two of the boss cars arrived. But they didn't say anything to me i.e. ask me what I was doing, so I whistled the dog and strolled off home.

artichoke flower

Domination

2010-11-27T16:16:00.002+01:00

Domination by crane... nothing more exciting... as wherever I walked with Jasper after lunch today, it was there.

Sorry, I'm sure to bore you with photos of the crane, but it's all I can see at the moment if you know what I mean. In the bottom photo you can maybe see our Mas amongst the trees, centre skyline, or maybe not as I've compressed these photos. After having a couple of posts where I didn't compress the pictures, I thought I'd better as otherwise it can take sooooo long for the page to load.

p.s. Just realised the title of this post was a big mistake, from a spam point of view!

More Crane Shots

2010-11-26T15:47:00.000+01:00

McNally's unloading all the crane parts.

One crane, as seen from our sun terrace.

It is huge, and we can't even see the top of it through the window. The actual turbine will be just a little bit smaller.

Update on the possibility of renting the Mas to a couple of the McNally's, we haven't managed to even spot the two men we spoke to the other day, let alone speak to them while they're working. All the men look the same, bundled up against the cold wind with just their eyes showing. But never mind, I don't really want to rent the Mas out anyway, and Steve just has euros clouding his vision!

McNally's Are Moving In

2010-11-24T16:59:00.001+01:00

This is the wind turbine site in front of our Mas with McNally's equipment all over the place, and more stuff being unloaded as I type. They will be working here until February (and the rest, given the winter weather to come), apparently this will be first turbine to be erected and it's scheduled to happen next week.

On the way back to the village yesterday we shouted hello to one of the McNally's workers and then had a bit of a chat to him and his mate. They've just finished putting up some of this type of wind turbine in France and say that they're much quieter than other types, you can only hear the swoosh, swoosh............. er ok then... But we have to look on the bright side, so maybe we won't mind the constant swoosh..... swoosh..... swoosh..... swoosh..... swoosh..... swoosh..... swoosh..... Ok I'll stop now.

They asked us if we knew of anywhere that they could rent in the village as they're staying in their cabs at the moment. We had a word with a friend in the village about it, but to be honest there are so many workers staying in the village at the moment, that it seems unlikely. I'm not sure that we'd want to rent the Mas out, although it would generate some more money to be spent on building materials for the village house!

The Crane's Arrived

2010-11-23T15:58:00.000+01:00

Some of the jib bits and a McNally's small crane.

Second from the left, the McNally's large crane,
that all the box section bits get attached to.

We heard it being announced this morning on the village tannoy system that there would be Transports Excepcionals arriving today, and we thought it probably referred to the BIG crane... which it did because we found it parked up when we came back to the Mas after lunch. So. Now there's nothing stopping them putting the turbines up. Which is quite exciting in a way...

Interestingly, the big crane and all its bits belong to McNally's Crane Hire of Ireland, which is good because they'll be earning euros to pump back into the failing Irish economy. It's an ill wind, and all that.

A gorgeous sunny day, but with a bitterly cold wind that sent me searching for my gloves before taking Jasper for a walk.

Cycling La Via Verde

2010-11-20T16:43:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we cycled a section of the Via Verde (literally the Green Way) with three friends, driving the cars to Bot station (disused) and then heading down the line to La Fontcalda. There wasn't very much pedalling involved on the outward cycle, it being slightly downhill most of the way, but we had to work a little bit harder on the way back. I think there are Via Verde routes all over Spain and this was part of the Terra Alta route. We had a very nice picnic lunch at La Fontcalda, sharing cakes, salad and quiche, and then walked a little further up the actual river gorge in the valley floor, the cycle track being the disused railway line a little way up the side of the mountain.

One of several tunnels of varying lengths, lit by solar powered lights -
if they haven't been stolen or vandalised :-(
Most of them on this section hadn't been, but apparently it is a problem.

The river runs through a steep-sided gorge.

Stopping for a breather!

Prat de Compte station, just before you reach La Fontcalda.

Again, Prat de Compte station.

Part of the river gorge as seen from the cycle path.

This is where the riverside footpath ends, so I had
to cross the rocks to get this photo. D'you know,
I'm not nearly so sure-footed as I used to be.
I need to practise!

The weather wasn't as good as it could have been, cold and cloudy so we were glad we'd taken gloves. We enjoyed ourselves so much that we've arranged to cycle a different section of the trail in a couple of weeks. We didn't take any of the dogs, our friends have four (!), because we decided that it would be easier not to, and running several kilometres on small gravel might not have done their pads much good!

Gratuitous Shot of Jasper

2010-11-19T20:44:00.000+01:00

Sleeping peacefully at the side of the estufa in the village house.

Aaaahh!

Short Post - Two Photos

2010-11-14T08:46:00.001+01:00

Looking back in the direction of the Mas, although it's hidden
behind the clump of trees to the left on the horizon.

There are plenty of fresh wild board prints going through the trees.
It's hunting season, but I think they're good at keeping out of the way.

New Chimney

2010-11-12T16:03:00.000+01:00

We've found out why the estufa in the village house was smoking. Steve lifted the chimney pipe off the stove this morning and found it completely blocked with soot. Not only that, but it appears that parts of it were rotten, which is a fairly regular problem (every couple of years) and which I suppose is due to the acids in the wood.

Luckily there was a whole set of new chimney sections up in the golfes (roof attic area) which were obviously bought to replace the old ones. So we covered everything in dust sheets, sent Jasper up to the roof terrace out of the way, lowered the old and very rotten chimney sections down the chimney, and then sent the new ones upwards, slotting them together one by one. Unfortunately we couldn't replace the very top section, the bit that comes through the top of the chimney stack, because there's a ridge around the tubes that was cemented in, but we've managed well enough and there's no smoke escaping that we can see. I'm glad we didn't have to buy the new chimney sections as there are nine of them!

Now the estufa's fine and draws really well. We can even open the door without smoke billowing out!

Dog Walk

2010-11-11T15:01:00.001+01:00

This morning the estufa in the village house was smoking badly again, just when we thought we'd cracked it as it was behaving beautifully last week when we stayed there. We had to go shopping in the valley, and thought it best if we dropped Jasper off at the Mas on our way so that he didn't end up as smoked dog meat! We came back to the Mas for lunch and then I set off on a walk with Jasp...

Sniffing out fallen (and possibly rotten) figs!

A lovely clump of pines.

These almonds should have been picked by now.

Back to the Mas (top of photo), but I wonder where
this pipe goes to? Could it be for us?

Yes! A peg and the end of the pipe are in the corner of our field!

We knew we were going to get agricultural water piped to our land, we've signed for it, but didn't know which part it would go to... but we do now. We'd hoped that it would be in the car park at the side of the Mas so that gravity would help get the water to the field, while still enabling us to easily fill the cisterna. But, if we move to the village permanently, it's not going to matter.