More from Córdoba!

This was taken from a narrow alleyway that half the visitors were all trying to walk up and down at the same time! Leading to much confusion and photographs of unwanted persons! The confusion also I guess... that once up the allow into the pretty little plaza... no way out!! LOL

 
 Photographs above the massive monument lead towards the river and the beautiful Roman bridge originally built in the early 1st century... It crosses over the Guadalquivir river.

The Alcazar of the Christian Monarchs  above.. he stands guarding the entrance way...

Cordoba

Well, this could be a long post, apologies for being so lax in my writings...

I shall begin with my trip to Cordoba!

A coach party organised by a local charity shop in Coín and a friend invited me, and very grateful I am too! Having been several times to Granada and Seville I had never been to Cordoba!

This trip is every year at this time to visit the Patios Cordobas! The patios of Cordoba!

And extremely beautiful they were! My friend and I raced to the area in the city to see them and were quite lucky to be early in most of the lines to get in!

There was no charge, but you could donate, on your way out of each private house...

The wide angle below is inside one of the most spectacular buildings I have ever been in, which includes the Vatican, and the Coliseum!

The cathedral/mosque is truly amazing, it is one of the world's heritage sites and I would definitely go again.

We had an amazing day, and I'll post more photos tomorrow, I promise!!

Ultreya

Ultreya: Moving forward with courage.

I guess over the past couple of years, and esoecespec this last year, I have forgotten what my own Blog name means.

I may take several steps forward with courage, but many back in fear.

If I told you I apologize, but I am teafire a book I last read back in 2001, Shirley MacLaines The Camino, A pilgrimage of courage.

As I sit here now on the terrace, had to go to the social security office this morning, as always futile, have an appointment now for later today, great I get my healthcare here, only here, not in the UK by the way. Which is fine, but I applied for this in October last year... took papers into social security office, have waited over two months, still don't have the documentation... Been without any cover now since January, I think I will have to apply in August this year! It's idiotic that in the 21st century a simple email cannot be sent and printed out.

And I don't even know yet if he'll say it's going to be another two months!

I've had enough.

And so the journey continues.

Listening to music in my ears... Left my placement, spent a drunken night with a good friend, spent a day feeling icky! Got on a coach said "Bedford" ended up in Oxford!

On the approach to the bus station amongst those dreaming spires! And passing restaurants, passed the Franco Manca restaurant! That wasn't fun at all! I knew there were a couple in London, but didn't know or expect to see one suddenly there!

Then after a short but plain speaking argument with the driver, where he admitted he didn't hear me when I asked for my destination, bit odd that he charged me what he did think I asked for!! I had to disembark and reboard, but not pay again, which was good news, it not actually being my fault!

And okay I didn't check my ticket, I wouldn't normally, I didn't even wonder at the route really, I didn't know it! So, anyway, Tony collected me from Milton Keynes eventually, an hour and half later than I should have been in Bedford!

I've now had a good day with Tony, lovely weather yesterday, and we went to the movies, saw the new Marvel movie Avengers... In 4DX! Which meant moving seats, air blowing in faces and from behind, water spraying about! But the biggest thing was definitely the seats! Moving up and down left and right, taking punches in the back and rocking every which way! Sounds rough? It was a rough ride indeed, but l loved it! Lol now I'm on the train, going the right way for the right city, it's pouring with rain and the smell of diesel is overwhelming!

At Tonys I started watching a series called Happy, which is really good, just hoping now it's available in Spain too! Oh how could I forget I also spent time on Tony's Oculus Rift! Amazing as always! So I am buying the Oculus Go! Well why not, what does it matter eh...

Time has gone and I forgot I had made these notes, so only just now putting my Blog together! It's Saturday night, and had three wonderful days with Baz and family. Walked, been to the parks, to the city centre, and a couple of walk pasts of their soon to be new home.

Today especially the weather has been really warm, still 19°c out there and gone ten at night!

Hey friends, sorry, again! I've been here on placement for two weeks nearly, it's a good one, me being positive, talking lots, and good conversations... I actually don't want to leave!

We've been in the midst of April weather, the real deal, showers and sunshine... Like our lives... The stunning magnolia above...

And it's fallen few below....

Walking onto a nearby bridge this week to capture a phone signal!! Really please, 21st century and still black spots?!?

And this beauty was there in the grass verge! Gorgeous isn't it! I saw its leaves and thought tulip, but this flower head is extraordinary, once back in the house I checked it's name 'Sun lover' tulip, it's beautiful.

Not much else to say really; I ordered something on Amazon and inadvertently hit the 'Amazon Prime please' instead of the 'no thank you' with these apparently massive clumsy fingers of mine! I don't bother zooming out enough so I guess my finger was like a giant in the land of ants placing the order!

But, I've taken advantage of the free books offer thingy and chose a book I really shouldn't have 'Things we never said.' Don't get me wrong it's a wonderful book, I'm just not in the right place to read it, and maybe never would be. Maybe there never is a good time for some things...

So yes I'm reading it, crying with it...

It's been a difficult few weeks, I'm either feeling okay, or down in the depths of complete and utter sorrow.

I can't for confidentiality reasons say very much about work situations, but I have to say I was somewhere talking to a psychologist who had given a talk on one subject about our mental health after something! (Sorry!) But although it was not about grief it felt like it, and his answers gave me answers, or maybe more a way of thinking or realising that carrying the grief changes, maybe doesn't so much lesson, it's about learning to carry it differently.

But then we are all different, all see life differently, thankfully, and what works for one won't necessarily work for another.

Still, I'm glad I got to hear the talk.

I'm off from here on Sunday and headed across country and then north!

Sorry, I am here, not been very talkative.

Had the worse anniversary of my life, sorry mom... But Franco was with me for yours...

The day passed here at work strangely, very unreal, in fact don't call out the men in white coats, but when I'm this close to where we lived I feel Franco is actually there, and even just half hour ago I wondered if I ran off in the car to Britain Ferry if he might be there.. you know, in some bizarre other dimension.

I don't even like going in British supermarkets... Even ones he didn't go in, because they just remind me too much.

I leave here Sunday and onto the next one.
Two weeks then nearly a week in the uk, chilling! Before heading back to spain, Pippa is in her hokdida home anyway because of the May celebrations, and mammoth rocket explosions.

And well that's it folks!

One of the hardest lessons in life is letting go. Whether it’s guilt, anger, love, loss or betrayal. Change is never easy. We fight to hold and we fight to let go. — Unknown

Not many Blogs lately, too many words in my head, little I can express...

I am working soon, time with one customer in the cardifC area, which is good, and then back to where I was last.

My bag is packed, fur-baby has her normal pet care in place...

She knows I'm going, and before I go it I'll be back!

I haven't  slept well the last few nights, so not holding out much help for later, getting a lift to the airport, not having to worry about carparking which is good.

As you can tell, as you know... This is a difficult time now.

The open road.... It really is isn't it?

Yes, its been a while! I hadn't realised, been busy editing a book and just being....

I am going to begin with a dream I had last night, very symbolic... I was on land, and I had to cross a large expanse of water... I could see no land to my left or right... The water was frozen in parts, I knew I had to cross it, someone was with  me, a man I couldn't see, but I felt his strength.  I walked over the lake, even the parts with no ice, and I reached the land on the other side.

And it felt right... Telling me to brave the divide and take the risk...

I have kept on forgetting to publish these two photographs of Plaza Alta! How bare the square looks now, and so open!

And I was thinking yesterday, how in the year following my mom passing, for the two months I was with her, I read my own Blog up to when she died... I read it and re-read it, constantly for those two months stabbed those words into my very heart... Like a real blade, because believe me I felt real pain... As I am sure I would now, reading it again.

I have not, nor will I in the foreseeable future read this time last year. I think I would bleed, my heart held together now with hope and love and some hard as nails glue... Would shatter and I am deeply sorry for bleeding on the pages of my Blog... I am sorry I realise now how painful my words were for everyone travelling the road with me, family friends and unknown friends... but of course also, I couldn't have made it through without you...

This morning I visited our neighbor from Calahonda, had a good morning, coffee, Colacao! And good conversation... Went to Aki for some mastic and tile paint then home.

Then I suddenly got really tired, and went to bed for a nap!!!

I went out like a light, missed calls on house and mobile, I didn't hear them!! When I was almost waking up, yet holding onto sleep I felt like I could choose where I was, when I was even... It's a strange place, like a twilight zone! They, whoever they are, say we are at our most physic in that inbetween place... Of course normally an alarm is going off, and I wouldn't have had this experience, it's only when I nap, and there was no external noise to make me know where I was or when!

It's okay! I am okay!

Mijas Pueblo

This morning walking Pippa, in a break in the torrential rain... I pass as every day a tree now in bloom; over the past week more and more little pink buds have turned into flowers... This tree was full of bloom and returning leaves last March and April when Franco died...

This morning as I stopped beneath and looked up into its bare branches and small flowers I thought how life returns eternal... and that even if life cannot always be seen life force never leaves... I've always said this, always will say this because I will always feel this, that our energy lives on; with us when our bodies live, but our energy our souls, live on eternally afterwards... In what we have done, in where we have been, people we have loved and known, in the difference we have made in others lives even...

Mijas Pueblo

Yesterday was the eighth anniversary of my mom passing... Eight years.  Time continues on its merry way doesn't it, it doesn't care, it doesn't take away anything either, it doesn't take away the loss or the missing or the sadness.  It changes it, we have to change because we can't live with that degree of loss and continue to live.

Some days its like we can time-warp back, to that one moment where time stood still... because that one moment lasted forever, a big empty blackness of eternity for us, unable to see the eternity that had opened up for our lost loved one... I am again reminded of a sermon at a funeral of a dear friend, when the minister said... "Imagine our loved one on a boat, sailing away from us, from our coastline, headed out to the horizon, towards a setting sun (that bit I think I have added to my memory of it!) Well that vessel carrying them away from us is also carrying them towards a new horizon, where we lose sight of them, others get to see them again." And adding my extra shillings worth! I feel, that they travel to a new day, they travel with the light, not away from from it.... Away from us but towards others... past and future maybe even.

On the way to Coín yesterday about 10am

I should check when I last wrote... Okay, that seems like ages ago! February 24th... Yesterday I went to La Trocha with a neighbour, showed him where to park etc, walked around the quite empty underground parking lot, so much rain, so few people! We had a nice break in the weather yesterday...

We had coffee there, saw a few friends, everyone was outside in the outdoor bar, nice to be out and dry for a change!

From there we went to Mijas Pueblo, as he had missed the village a few times when they have been out previously.  He loved it, so now knows how to get there, where to park and where to take people!  Another coffee and boquerones fritos!

We have rain rain rain! I can't even remember when it started now! The skylight has been leaking since day one! The contractor is coming out to fix that! My U-bend has been leaking, but fixed now. Also the direction the wind has been blowing the rain, it has been coming in under the cap on the chimney, so a constant stream of rain water has been coming down the chimney to the wood burner! Unluckily its been making its way out of a small hole in the pipe near the connector into the burner itself! And into a bucket!! There is one more place the rain water has found its route through! The cave of course, as it would by nature with this amount of rain, it must have only happened about 3 or 4 times in all these years... Or maybe I don't remember... but its coming in through the cracks in the cave, making its way down as water does, gets into the cave, onto the tile then down onto the little patio and out through the drainage system!

And still it rains! But the worse thing has been the wind, gusts of up to 95 kph... about 60 mph, something like that... the roofing is trying to lift off, or at least it sounds like it! It is just giving into the wind, or the pressure of it I guess... It sounds like something dragging!

Still, the Pipster and I have been warm enough, had the burner going when we needed it, its much milder now, despite the rain and winds...

The worse thing is being marooned in the house! The worse day the electric started going off and on, and then just staying off!

I've had rain soaked clothes drying every day... Pippas towel constantly out! She only stopped one day, and went about 18 hours without 'going'!!! It was just to fierce outside!!

Was a lovely although breezy walk along the paseo until I turned towards town on my way in, the sea crashing onto the beach, must be a storm at sea! It's cloudy and I drove through rain as I came around the mountains down to the coast.

It's a bit eerie driving down here so early, few cars, fewer people, kind of spooky, like everyone is just about to get going, of just getting home from an evening out! Probably the latter being a Saturday!

Fuengirola is changing, always changing, intrinsically, visually today road directions different, building works going on and the worse thing Bar Central has closed... The bar at the entrance to Las Rampas... So many memories under its awnings...

I parked at the Sohail end and walked to the market at the feria ground, I stopped for breakfast in a nice bar, Cafeteria Valentino, which used to be my dentist 15 years ago, which is strange, ironic! As my dentist in town used to be a bar I frequented!!

I noticed here today a few of the older long-standing shops have also gone... Change will come (down the barrel of a gun! Alabama 3) quote!

At the market I was only tempted by a few things... a beautiful art deco mirror, and a pair of steam punk boots and a neon New York sign! Tempted, but not enough to purchase! The market full of everything I have managed to get rid of over the years! Quite refreshing to just see them and pass them on by!

I came back up to Alhaurín and immediately had to drive a different route!! Just past the crematorium the road to the car park is the one we have to use! Then follow down, the wrong way if feels the new road, then its an option of left or right once through the park! Left to take down Calvario or right to take you back out of town!! Then the new route leads people up Candilajas and back onto the old road to continue ones journey!!

It looks a permanent route too, the signs are firmly fixed, and for me, its better! Sorry! But it is!!

So! After parking I walked down into town, had a hot chocolate with friends, no more coffee!! And then back home!  The weather has not improved here, still cloudy and cool...

The detour road

I forgot yesterday, when I left IKEA yesterday, I came through Churriana with every intention of keeping on the main road and just going for a long drive, enjoy the countryside, enjoy the drive... I love driving, and I miss driving when I'm at work and usually unable to do so!

As I was approaching the nursery for Guzman's the traffic was parked up! Literally! And the only traffic that appeared to be coming towards us were the cars that were turning around in the line ahead!

So after a while I did too! Along with the cars directly in front and behind! So was like sycranised swimming with cars! Only a few feet drop on the edge of the carriageway either side!

I turned at a roundabout further down the road back towards Churriana, and got up to the high road from there... We, everyone from the detour, were making good progress and then in Alhaurín De La Torre, the main drive through road had a policeman stationed there, his car stopping access to everyone! And off we all went again, turning right and left right again... And down to the ring road I would have originally been on! But that took ages to actually get onto, the amount of traffic coming from the direction we couldn't get to? I am guessing they too were turning around!! And everyman and his brothers uncle from every other direction!

And eventually I was on the road to Alhaurín again!

So I got my mystery tour! Just not what I was expecting!

Today I have to go to the local social security office to get my healthcare papers in order, I may never be seen or heard of again!

Aqui en españa ahora!  Lol okay, in English! Here in Spain now! Above a pitufo with manchego cheese and a small beer! After my drive out this morning to IKEA!

And in IKEA I had coffee and Dime pie! Of course! Too early for meatballs... Maybe next time, and actually I could just eat those now!

I went with a specific purchase in mind and I stuck to it, not wanting to buy things I purely liked, but didn't need!

I was doing really well, I did pick up a few things I liked the look of, feel of or color of!

I was on the approach to the check out, when the bargain area came into view!! So, throwing caution to the wind I entered the zone! And picked up and bought a set of lights! A string of lights, heavy duty they turned out to be, so maybe for the outside! No external sockets out tgere but will be okay inside, I just need to find somewhere to hang them! I'll take a photograph when I do! And they were only five euros!

The small unusual blue dinosaur I came across yesterday when walking the Pipster!

He was already extinct by today! Or just walked off!

Plaza Alta, near our house, Monday they were cutting down the beautiful trees! It looks worse now than then, above! I'll try and remember to take the finished destruction next time I pass!

Airport Road!

Well here I am, near to Bristol airport! All cosied in at a guest house! Zero facilities but absolutely lovely none the less, I was concerned about it prior to my arrival forsure! Not able to get in until 4pm, no food or anything else at all! But the room I am in couldn't be better, and the en-suite shower room looks like it was finished yesterday!

There were builders in the room next door when I arrived, so probably not far from the truth!

The bed has a beautiful soft blanket over the duvet, so I'm showered and under the covers already watching tv, drinking frothy coffee and eating jammy dodgers! Because no food, and because I wanted to sample the food at a pub in the village I was working in... I had the superb meal below in my break, the little lemon squeezer is so cute! I want one!!

Westbury Inn
Fish & Chips

I couldn't finish the plateful, but now thinking of the chips I had no room for and wondering what the desserts were!

Banana Life!

My banana!! Still there today! And now totally abandoned by me!! Who will check on its now daily decomposition!

And something else, I know over the past weeks, months, I have had constant mind changes about where to go from here... and going back to Spain has held sadness for me, but today I realized I have felt quite happy here on this placement, made easier by the man I was supporting, and everyone who supports him, family and healthcare team...

And maybe because I feel happy right now, right here, I actually feel happy I am going home to Spain!

My Banana

I wonder if when I was a child I was afraid of being lost? Or in another lifetime even? I cannot be lost now, my Blogs, Tweets, Facebook, what I add on Google Maps, Google in general I suppose! Am I afraid a big nothingness will swallow me up! Lost forever and forgotten...

Every move I make, every step I take, chronicled!

My life open and raw for the world to see, but how many people really know me, the child I really am inside... The one with the lost banana, still laying sadly on the wall... Abandoned.

And finally today, day 25 of my banana Saga! Shall I take it tomorrow?? 

"Enjoy today because there might not be a tomorrow. Sometimes, there are no next times and no second chances..."

I don't want everyone to think I am where I was in my head six months ago; sometimes it's a much worse place, but most of the time a better place, although still very mixed emotions about where my future lies, which I suppose this is normal for many of us.

I have less than a week in placement, and a week today heading back to spain...

Be glad to get back? (Yes you asked me yesterday :-) I don't really know, I feel I am wasting time there now, okay okay I hear many shouts of confusion and anger even! Wasting time in my own home, not having to get up for work each day, (wasting time), wandering down town to meet with friends for coffee, or getting in my car and driving wherever or whenever I want... All the amazing places here, yes, the white villages of Andalucia indeed!

Yes, that's correct even writing it down, all of the above only saddens my heart, what use of this if with an empty heart, no that's not fair, my heart isn't empty I know infact it's incredibly full... my cup runneth over, but I don't know if my heart is here anymore...

I sent it on ahead of me back in August 1988... I returned from Spain and realised that's where it would reside until I could join it! I did, fourteen years later... Now?

Huntington Beach, Cali

Like a wild horse running free

With the wind in my face 

And the storm at my heels

Its not quite 7am yet, feeling a little tired, had one helluva Saturday with many many phone conversations, in which I sent around and around the system until eventually getting an ambulance, three hours after my first call... a long journey to the hospital, arriving at 3pm, went straight into a booth, got seen in time, got into a ward at 6pm for either going to a bed ward or home, at 7:30 an ambulance crew came to take us, but we needed assistance to wheelchair, by way of a turner machine, there wasn't one actually in the room so they... left! We were abandoned! And had another crew take us at 10pm, we had to go via another hospital further away than that one! And the driver used a satnav to negotiate the drive, we ended up on some moor? Drove over cattle grids? and had to reverse at one point!  That day I went through many towns I have only ever heard of, and we got back just after midnight... So yes, yet again, one helluva day! The music in the ambulance on the way back, a journey of 2 hours... was love songs from the 70's and 80's... to be honest I didn't know weather to laugh, cry, or just get hysterical!! So I kind of sung along and let tears fall in the dark when I just couldn't take any more...

Last night I dreamt of my mom, I know I dreamed of her before in the last eight years, nearly, since she died... but last nights dream was long, and now in retrospect how I wish I could have lucid dreams... So much I want, need, to talk to her about, so very much... I could I have spent so long, in a dream which felt like it went on for hours, with many conversations between us, so long without anything I that would like like to say... I know our dreams feel like hours and are in fact nano seconds... but in that dream I had some time with my mom...

And today we should be waking up to a frost, not seen one since I arrived here, only mild weather, sometimes rainy or drizzly, but mild non the less, no ice or frost, double figures too much of the time! Supposed to have been 0 or -1 last night, time will tell when I draw back those curtains later on the world here in the Mendips! I can hear the birds chirping their morning chorus already!

Overall, it is a very good placement, able to talk and watch TV with the customer, have incoming care also, so I am having some more interaction, which is always the hard thing when working solo.

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one life has waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell 1904 - 1987

Very rushed last second photograph above, of my banana dropped over a week ago!

It was picked up and left there on the wall for all to see, abandoned by its owner... Me.

The sad banana lies awaiting
Uneaten, unappreciated, near to feinting

To not even a bird or mammal taken as sustinance
It must end it's days alone now in penance...

Here I am in England!

Arrived late evening into placement, all okay, lovely little village in Somerset, is all I can say of course! Client confidentiality and all that!

So prior to this made a few notes! Walking the Pipster the day before I left Spain I noticed at 7:20ish that there was a subtle change in the light! That day was indeed breaking! And not only I that noticed this! The birds also, and they were beginning their song of daybreak! Was nice to hear, no, it was good to hear, an uplifting sound of promise...

Which was good after another nightmare! I was hiding, then running, stole a plane! By then we were a group on the run. And the plane small, it also didn't fly above about 50 feet!! Then we were  hiding in a house, I saw a chance of escape through a window... But woke up before I could do so!! Great! Lots of meanings there, the obvious I suppose is I want to run away! Maybe by plane? But the idea didn't get off the ground really did it!?!

Then my old thing of randomly smelling cigarette smoke again, every day for the past week actually, in the house and morning noon and night! Anytime of day!

Some great excitement also! I have actually talked to new cousin! Another new one! He lives near some of my other family in New York, but it from my mom's side of the family!!! How crazy, and what a small world in which we live...   I think he thought me a little crazy! Welcome to the family!

Yesterday I went down to the coast, to a store I do not frequent very much at all! Yes I know, no names and no disrespect meant, it is what it is shall we say!

I also went to Aldi, where I got the things I actually wanted, so a bit of a wasted journey, but the day was lovely, so lovely, I drove back dropped the shopping picked up the Pipster and we drove to Mijas Pueblo...

It is so difficult not to take repetitive photographs in Mijas Pueblo, especially after 29 years!!

Luckily the plastic bottle Christmas tree still standing was there and real quirky, another tree or two... I didn't get pictures of, were frames decorated in can tops! real pretty too!

The other photograph above and the one on the left below are of the new single track road that circumnavigates the area below the gardens... there are steps up to the village from there! Phew, not take them yet!

A different view above... with a cold looking sky... and below wild lavender.... This has changed so little in some ways and so much in others... the walls and railings safer now... no wobbly parts as there were...  steps safer too... that wall on the left that runs the whole way round, it was just rock on rock, now its cemented in place... so precise... and without the momentum Tony placed there back when we were only on holidays, and I used to look for, and find, and look each and every single time we walked the steps... and then... cement... change... It is the same but not the same.. life I suppose, the same but not the same.

Boquerones Fritos

I sat with my back in the warm sun eating the above boquerones fritos, Pippa was getting harassed by a little furry male dog...

Yes I was in a thoughtful mood our whole visit, because I didn't want to be in the house, I needed to be out and away... Because sitting here all I do is plan my escape, I want to go through things, I want to clear more things I need to do something, I know what I want to do, but the next step will be difficult, the hardest next step.

Obstruction Road...

Random photograph above, mom and I at home in California, 1960...

I awoke this morning from an awful dream, a woman who was either my mom or my husband's mom... I could see her on the other side of a deep concrete waterway... had fallen and needed help, (she wasn't familiar to me when I woke up... Not a mom I know...). And in the dream I was trying to make my way to her, crossing the waterway by the nearest bridge didn't... You know how dreams are, so I travelled about through unknown streets, and into scary houses with scary gardens... I was nearly there, I could see the same bridge, and knew I was close to 'mom' then the alarm went off... I snoozed it, in hope of returning... But could only see the scary house I'd been in, with strange people living in the cellars...

Obviously an obstacle dream... So expected obstacles today... The last few days I am my own obstacle, and today has been no better, after what had seemed baby steps forward of improvement, this week I have been thrown back months...

I shall be glad to get back to work next week, support someone who needs me. I feel sorry for Pippa, wish she could have the stability she had before...

We've had snow, torrential rain, hailstones, high winds and sunshine! It's been three seasons in one week! Freezing cold inside and out, warm in the sun and wood burner keeping us snug in the house, when I can be bothered!

I've gone to the dentist to get the stitches out which refused to disintegrate naturally, after four weeks I thought it time!

Pippa has gone out for morning walks okay, some afternoon walks have proven impossible, and the shortest block is all we have accomplished!

I think I'll pick another photograph at random! Just opening up and stopping where I hit it!

And a quote:

Nothing changes unless you make a change...