Ladies who lunch!

today we are off for lunch again, i think its the same 20 or 21 'ladies'!! so i am off out later today, always seems strange to me being in in the morning, i am such an early bird out early and all that.

last night when franco got home we went over to la trocha, did a bit of christmas shopping, we just went to have a wander around really, but came home with some pressies which was good, as i am off to england in less than two weeks now!

saturday though, i think i just went down town as usual, bit of a chat with friends and home, sunday only took pippa for a walk and relaxed the day, except for the bit when pippa got out! a thing i thought would be impossible considering our garden as such is the roof terrace and that is two flights of stairs up, with a small bit of the mountain behind us and houses either side.... but she did! i thought she had been gone to long up on the roof, and that she must be up to no good, and i went up to find out, but she wasnt there, i searched the house and the cave, and back up top! then i saw her, she had jumped onto the wall 3 nearly 4 foot high and was walking about on next doors roof, its a slight pitch tile roof, bit slippy with the weeds growing on it, and of course a big drop down to the street! when she saw me and saw my face! she ran the other way, looked over the next door but ones wall, they have a terrace like ours, but instead she walked to the edge and onto a little over hang they have like we do, only theirs is two tiles deep and she started along there! i could see her falling in my mind, so walked away.... pretended to go back down stairs, anyway, i came back and gently called her over and she came head and eyes downc cast... i grabbed her up by her harness she still had on and then told her off!

and would you belive when i was hanging out the washing an hour or so later, she jumped onto the wall as i watched and i had to get her all over again!

it looks terrible up there now, with what looks like a barracaded wall! chairs leaning, bit of an old fence, brooms! just stuff to keep her away!

we will have to put a little fence on top of the wall now! i think she thinks she is a mountain goat! she jumps so high, when franco comes home she jumps up and down like a kangaroo reaching his face!

yesterday work was good, did a good trade day, and we had a meeting first thing, that none of us realised was on, and only one lady out of all the other 5 days turned up to it, so it wasnt just us, although of course we four would have had to be there as it was 'our' day afterall!

the meeting was a short photo film of the hospice that our shops keep running, the cancer care hospice down at arroyo de miel, down at the coast, it was good to actually see what goes on, and where all the money goes, and how many people it helps, 80% spanish patients, and the rest devided up among other nationalities.

we just wish the local people of alhuarìn realised what the shop was for, most dont know its to keep a hospice running to look after people just like them, a place to go for the terminally ill, and their families. it seems that they think its run by the english for the english, and it just isnt so.

The Good Fight is the one that we fight
in the name of our dreams...

TTFN
Marian

Fire

cant believe i havent spoken since monday! well not not spoken, obviously that would be totally impossible for me, but you know what i mean....

but firstly i cant believe i didnt post my Happy Thanksgiving to you all! to my family and friends! apologies...

ok quicky run through.... tuesday my friend in the shop and i went to coín, she didnt know the town too well and needed a guide, so we went to a shop that is closing down so she could check out any stock etc and shop fittings, then we went to have some lunch in a bar called 'c u jimmy' scots owned... of course, had a nice jacket spud!

wednesday mate and i went down the coast, firstly to the market at la cala, good look around there, lots of holiday makers wearing shorts and vests! looking cool, and i mean cool ... now its down in the lower 20's it feels cool for us! then we went to part of the miramar complex down at las lagunas so i could get barrys christmas present! that was funny, but of course cant tell you just now, you will have to wait, by which time i will have forgotton what happened!

yesterday, friends down the road and i went into town together to take some books into a local store, and we spent about 2 hours in a bar next door having coffee!

today, just into town to meet mate, had coffee, bit cooler here today and a spot of rain, but didnt need my brolly...

but, wednesday night!!! we had a fire! we had switched on a new wall heater we got a couple of weeks ago, just testing it out really seeing how much heat it will give out when we need it, it was plugged into an extension cable, the lead only measuring 2 metres! not even enough to reach the floor never mind a socket! only then, because we have no socket in this house, well hardly, it was then in another extension lead.... i guess by now you know...(excuse the pun) where this is leading..... so, there we sat pressing this and that button on the remote for the heater when two things happened... one the fire! two the electric box tripping off! BANG!! then it was all action we both ran to the fire, a throw i have (had) on this chair flames licking up it, i pulled it off and doubled it over to suffocate them, franco got the flames on the lead out and then ran for the torch with me screaming to hurry! i was more worried about losing the telly than anything!! as you know by now, when the electric goes off in our house it takes forever to get sky channels back on! so we didnt! not till yesterday afternoon infact, and so we missed that nights episode of i'm a celebrity get me out of here! goodness me!

the cables the fire was running about all over was the first extension cable, not able to hold the voltage we now see, but it was plugged in with all my computer stuff, so it was burning about my keyboard, hub, modem, printer monitor! oh everything else here, all those cables, we were so lucky non of them were burnt, only bit sticky where the other cables started melting on them.

so we have taken a couple of things of there now and plugged in elsewhere, and we are even being more causious about the gas, we are turning the on/off valve on both the cooker and the boiler at night, and when were out during the day, not worth the risk is it, and sorry pippa, but the tv is off now when i am out during the day, she will have to sing to herself!

thank goodness it didnt happen when we were out, or mom was here alone and switched on the heater next month...

by luck, as usual todays quote fits quite well does it not!

The path to wisdom is not afraid to make mistakes...

TTFN
Marian

Los Elefantes

hi, came across this photo yesterday, one franco took, this was when we got caught up in a stanpede down at benalmadina a couple of years ago, those elephants were really moving, there they were stuck in the middle of the road, the trucks and vans... oh what excitement!


yeah yeah yeah... really, si verdad! not! of course, i am sorry, but they do look so real dont they, specially the way they got caught on camera! the elephants were placed on the roundabout prior to being placed in the childrens area on the other side of the road to holiday village, a what was new then, complex between fuengirola and benalmadina, and of course the beasts were not flesh and blood! but i still think i should send this in to a local newspaper what do you think!?

today its been one beautiful day, the sun is warm, i came home and went straight up on the roof to sit in the sunshine, need some on my pale skin, and in doors its so cold now! up on the roof it was 22C in the shade, i sad and read for a little while, lovely...

and also today beautiful because i woke up without a headache, again yesterday bad with another pain in the head and neck!

work was very busy, we had a new person start today, didnt know 'he' was even starting today, aparently he decided to come in today! he had lots of ideas on how to change things around, which i had to advise him wasnt really up to us! and some of the prices he thought would be good, would just not go down with our shoppers in the least.... lots to read between the lines here! :-)

tony has left aylesbury now.... :-(

one door has closed and another opened, or at least it would have, had the certificate for the gas in the new place been sorted, but it wasnt, so he is staying with a friend for a few days!

Certain things are so important that they need to be discovered alone...

TTFN
Marian

Urban Legends

just came across.... its good! facts and urban legends!

TTFB
Marian

Friday again...

cant believe its friday already, not been a great week, for me, seemed to have gone through all my pain killers and not found a single one that wants to work for me!

tuesday it started bad, wednesday mate and i went to gibraltor, luckily i wasnt too bad, but then yesterday and now, back with avengence! feel like someone took off my head and then didnt put it back onto my neck quite right!

but then everything from my thumb to those little bones inside my ears are achy so i guess it must just be the change in the weather or whatever, we had rain yesterday again... so much for my forecasting efforts! and there is definately a chill coming up through these marble floors now, but its nice and warm in the sun...

my old childhood dream boy has been on telly today, david cassidy.... arh.... i was a member of his fan club, the partridge family, i still have the whole thing, from writing paper to photos and stickers etc, he looks older now forsure, just like me, but i can still see the boy he was there... apparently him and donny osmond are having a concert together next year at wembly arena, i would love to go to that! sad! what do you mean!!

had a good day in gib, weather was nice there, for a change, although i did take my brolly, and for lunch i had a wonderful morrocan meal i have had before lamb tajina i think its called, beautiful... comes to the table in a little brown dish with a tall funnel like lid with a little chimney on top!

we did a lot of walking too and rushing to get to the local supermarket but not miss the coach home!

tony is moving this weekend... feel so sad, i know i'm just being daft old me, when i last left his home i knew i wouldnt be visiting him there again and was sad, i told myself its not the place i am going to miss but him there of course, but i think too i have to be honest i think what it really is is that it will be strange not having that link with aylesbury anymore, we only lived there for four years, but i had worked there for 7 or so years, and so so many of my good friends, and of course tony was there, a place for me there... and now.... well i'll stay at tonys new place, about an hour away, and at moms, still over in the next county, and it just wont feel the same.

ok, enough of that melancholy...

Sometimes the warrior feels
as if he were living two lives at once,
'There is a bridge that links what I do with what I would like to do,'
he thinks.
Slowly, his dreams take over his everyday life,
and then he realised that he is
ready for the thing he always wanted.
Then all that is needed is a little daring,
and his two lives become one.

TTFN
Marian

La Playa

here is pippa today on the beach, we went first to the market at la trocha, then visited a new store selling english products... bit like the one down at calahonda, drinking chocolate 5€, shredded wheat 5€, crisps special offer one pack for 2.20€, please excuse me, but we dont understand these prices? if you work here in spain and earn euros, say 10€ an hour do they realy think you are going spend 5€ on a box of cerial there, when you can go into mercadona or one of the many other supermarkets and buy the exact same thing for 2 or 3€, and coffee we pay 4€ at the moment, seems to have gone up recently but if your not careful some people will want to charge 6 to 8€ for it! the crisps we have here are called lays, its walkers crisps in england but in the states and europe its lays but it is walkers ok! they are no different and around the euro mark, and big, not one portion size enough for 4 people! not 2.20€ as above, and our friend who sells english products at the market was selling chocolate buscuits today for 1€ a packet, in fact all his biscuits are a euro, but there they wanted nearer two!

i think, or am i wrong, but i think that some people move out here and for some strange reason are scared to just shop as they would in the uk, or wherever, just go into all the normal shops and there are all your normal foods! and some others that are even better, i mean why move to another country if you dont like the food!

ah thats better, that really gets me going that does, up on my soap box again, as usual eh!

anyway, we went down to maria's at the beach and took pippa for a walk along it, ok from september to june with dogs there, and she loved it much more this time, she even noticed the mediterranean this time! big engough i hear you laugh, but she didnt seem too the other two times! she even ran in and came out looking all ratty!



but what a beautiful day and warm enough, lovely...

we stopped at the garden centre on the way down for coffee and bread with iberian ham, jamon serano... en español, wonderful flavour ....

What is the real 'I'?
It is what you are,
not what others make of you.

TTFN
Marian

Sabado

today, franco and i walked into town and got a few bits and pieces! then we drove down to fuengirola, the new road in las lagunas is nearly done now, it will save so much time and so much waiting in line, for now as you approach las lagunas from la vega areas you just have to stop, all the way to the N340 especially when its busy, and this is the main road for us in alhaurín who want to go directly into fuengirola. the new road starts by dunnes/lidl, and by passes all the industrial areas of las lagunas! you see the road, and the round abouts are finished so maybe in a month or so it will open!?!

but anyway we went to aki, a giant hardward store, got some more 'bits'!! then we were going to dunnes to get filters for our water jug but went into lidl first, got home and completely forgot dunnes!

since home, franco got about doing some DIY and i starting sorting out some of the rubbish in the cave, its strange it sort of collects it! empty boxes, broken things and unwanted stuff, so its waiting in the back lobby till tomorrow when we dump it on the way to the market!

little story from yesterday i heard on telly... a vet who specialised in cockatoos, this one had been with its owner for many many years and had a lot of vocabulary, the vet was having to put the bird to sleep as it was in too much pain and his time had come.... the bird just as he was about to put it down... opened his eyes and said ¨thank you, i love you¨ ........ amazing isnt it, of all the things it could have said it said that eh!

before i go just noticed when writing vocabulary... the first few letters 'voca' is very much like 'boca' mouth in spanish! and the v and b are sometimes very hard to tell apart when hearing spanish people speak...

Choosing one path means abandoning others -
if you try to follow every possible path
you will end up following none.

TTFN
Marian

Narnia

now this is strange, i have been 'surfing' and came across this, we all know the stories of narnia, i think i read these books so much i can recount the stories without the books now! and when i was a little child our house, only a couple of hundred years old, my bedroom wardrobe was a wire with a curtain that utilised the corner of the room.... was definatly a direct doorway through to my narnia.... but anyway, i digress... i came across another lucy, in another Narnia... what do you think amigas?

TTFN
Marian

Sunshine

beautiful day today... yesterday when i went out i wore a light jacket but had to carry it once i got into town, time of the year when you never know what to wear! people wearing heavy sweaters and cords, others... some tourists, wearing shorts and t-shirts, and us others! we sat at bar rosa yesterday for about an hour or more, three of us to start, then another friend joined us, she left and another came by... nice day.

our walk this morning was a bit muddy through the wasteland we go through, and it is now the time of the snails! loads of little ones all over the place, and not nice if you dont watch where your walking, but they are so tiny, poor little things!

how is your word a day in spanish coming along? i said to franco yesterday grifo means to bristle, i thought it mean tap, or faucet, depending on what side of the pond you speak! and today it says faucet! another one is strange, gato in espanñol means cat or but gato del coche means car jack!

rather than carry our passports around all the time, a must if your in the car... some of the police here will take your care if you dont have it with you! down at a friends shop they are reducing it down and laminating it, all you have to do is get it's authenticity stamped and then laminated, so off i went to the policia local to do just that, but they sent me up to the town hall, luckily thats next door, and they did it there, so now, when its all completed i can carry this with me instead, much safer, always worry about losing it.

seem to have writers block today... strange that, so will leave you just now...

We are allowed to make many mistakes in our lives,
except the mistake that will destroy us.

TTFN
Marian

Marooned

wasnt marooned here! this is taken from on top of the mountain overlooking my friends house... look down there... beautiful, the camera has caught the sun just right, what a view from up there, you can see... montgo of course! calpe, javea everywhere from all sides, it was a winding journey to the top, specially coming down as i was on the nearside of the car and right on the edge! no barriers there!



and this shot was taken a 5 minute walk from their home, the road ends and its rocks all the way to the bottom, and this spectacular view of the very private beach, if you didnt know this area you wouldnt know the beach was there...



and this view taken from a small area made for taking pictures.... i guess... a kodak spot, wonderful.

but marooned was yesterday, the rain.... all day and so fierce couldnt take pippa out, and nor would she go! we had our own very private flood, on the roof would you believe, and i didnt realise how deep the water was despite pippa being ankle deep and treading very oddly, bit like my cats on snow! so out i went, also ankle deep! only i was wearing my slippers! now ruined, or at least they are still wet nearly 24hrs later, i unskrewed the drain and pulled it up, now at this point i should have removed the stuff causing the problem, but as the rain was starting up again i just let everything go down the drain... which means into the system that runs somewhere through our house (!) so the waters receded, and i saved us all!

my feet were freezing to start but after a few minutes they got warm, all by themselves.... before the cold set in again!?! probably not a good thing, had chilblains once, a long time ago, and i am pretty sure getting wet feet was the cause, still they felt better later, much later!

today we and i made it out for a walk and i managed to get down into town and into friends shop before it started all over again! had my brolly with me and back home ok before it got too bad.

tomorrow forecast is for sunshine, from now till the end of the year! sorry silly mood, must be the damp!

have popped in a little extra there on the right, a word a day of spanish, now i must learn them, si! and as i re-read this i see what hope do i have of learning español when i clearly have trouble with the english language!

funny how paulo's quotes seem to be there exactly at the right time and place...

Sometimes it is imposible to stop the river of life!

TTFN
Marian

Cumbre del sol

couple of photos from my holidays! the one above is from my bedroom, i had to lighten the pic to get more detail, but if you look carefully the line of sea on the left hand side is a bit bumpy.... thats ibiza! about 70K away, it was the only morning i got to see the islands, but i think come the winter and the cool air the view will be better.

and beneath, another photo i have zoomed in and then enlarged... this is montgo the mountain range that stands 750 meters above sea level between denia and javea, can you see how much it looks like an elephant? laying down its head on the right with its truck laying on the gound ahead of it? i can see his eye too, but maybe thats because i have seen him for real, he is amazing! hey look i did a link! i wondered how you lot did it! how slow am i, now i guess i will get real boring and do it all the time!


had good weekend.... sunday franco and i went to the market down in fuengirola, not on! then to miramar shopping complex, not open! so we went to a garden centre, had a look around... back to miramar for kentucky friend chicken! yes we have one here now! the one at the la cañada complex is too far, well almost! i know it sounds daft, craving a take out food like that, but we do sometimes...

on our way home we popped into our local garden centre where the prices are so much lower, the higher up the mountain the lower the prices! and we got four poinsettia plants for our front balcon, and a jasmine for the back wall.

and home!

Good and Evil have the same face,
it all depends on when they cross the path
of each individual human being.

TTFN
Marian

Hollybush

just a couple of photo's today... the hollybush plant.... above a variety we all know, green or varigated prickly leaves and in the winter those wonderful red berries, lots of them and in england it is supposed to foretell a bad winter to come.



now this photo above is one i took near my friends at cumbre del sol, and look its a hollybush, bit scarse of leaves this one, but there were lots of others, the thing i most wanted to get a good shot of were thoses acorns! what is that? i jokingly said at first ¨franco has been here¨the sort of thing he would do, super glue acorns onto another type of tree... but no, no franco there, and too many bushes covered in these acorns, so has anyone anywhere, ever please seen a hollybush with acorns??? we dug up a good root, and i brought it down here and we have planted, and will see if it lives and if it flowers etc, and watch, hopefully as the acorns grow! how weird is this!

TTFN
Marian

All Saints Day

open your imaginations here folks... please! because here is a rather strange photo ... taken during a rather stormy day up in scotland, at my favorite castle, eileen donan, chap in the fore ground goes by the name of 'flep' he is known only by a certain few people... he came to live with franco some years ago, although a close relation of simon a good mate of franco's, he absconded... had enough of the cold weather in wales and came out with franco one time to live here in spain!

on a few occasions si has tried, in vain to re-kindle relations with flep, even involving payments of money, but all to no avail! he, flep, came with us to vegas when we got married, he stood very dangeriously on the edge of the rail on the top of the stratosphere tower!

when we were on holiday in sardinia, asked to stay, but we worried about how the cold winters would effect him! we know si worries about him, so these few paragraphes were to put his mind at rest!


and now to... a different reality shall we!!

above are my friends and i on their balcon the morning i was leaving, very early and the sun was just rising.... a sun i hasten to add i brought back down with me, been lovely since i came back, so looks like the rain they had has all gone now for the time being, lets hope, we needed it, but a week is enough all ready!

we went one day to 'la cova del rull' curly's cave in english, it was found by a man nick named uncle curly! we couldnt take any photos, this is the first real cave i have ever been in, one with stalactites and stalagmites, and such wonderful nature made architecture... will try to hunt down pics from the web, just remembered though have been in the 'rock' at gibraltor, cant remember seeing anything as wonderous as this! we were stood marveling at what appeared to be figures and statues when i got a drop of water on my head! i exclaimed... tengo una jota en mi cabeza! and the guide said i better be careful or i would become part of the fixtures! no good for me, it was 15C and so so cold, its that temperature all year regardless of outside, and the humidity... of course it was 100%! my fingers turned white within about 5 minutes, and took hours to get back to normal... tingling, pain, etc! still glad i have been now!

now have to run, have an ton of ironing to do.... great fun!

Every human being has inside them
something more important than him or herself - his or her gift...

TTFN
Marian