Bedrock

Archive for the ‘G8’ Category

Very quiet here in our corner of Galera – lovely in fact, haven’t heard a dog bark all day. This morning we went off first thing to see Mrs Sanchez the dentist in Huescar. Very pleasant, the surgery was modern and efficient looking – the service was great considering they generally don’t speak English and I generally don’t speak Spanish. Left there complete with sparkly new smooth filling and headed off to the Huescar market for usual supplies (oranges), a new glue gun and some coffee.

I’ve spent the afternoon working on my timing software, a little glitch somewhere was causing lights to come on at 2am in the morning – hopefully that’s now history. Maureen’s foot is still a bit sore so I have a lonesome trip to the pub coming up – mind you – it’s Thursday so there’s no chance I’ll be on my own for long.

And that really is about it – the weather was cracking – maybe 29-30c at it’s peak – mid-evening it is still very warm, just the job for a walk down the hill.

Tomorrow we have a friend coming over later on and I have to hang around for a delivery but the hope is at the weekend we can get some tourist travel over on the east coast. All down to weather and aching feet.

Another fine day in Galera – not that warm I have to say – quite a cold wind but not a cloud in the sky (my solar-charged deep discharge battery will be thinking its summer). Spent the morning wasting time following some guy’s guide to emulating the Raspberry Pi 2 only to find out at the end of the day that it’s physically impossible for it to emulate the full memory of the new unit – timewaster.

Went down to see friends for a while just to chat – and we’re planning a lunch later in the week – that’ll be nice. Meanwhile I’m back in my office late afternoon to catch up with the (work) email mountain (done) and to progress the learning curve I started this morning. I can see an early night coming on. Meanwhile here’s a couple of sunny pictures I took this afternoon to cheer up the folks back home – apparently the weather is not too good back in Blighty.

A very pleasant evening out with friends last night, down in the town – the famous “G8” which basically means a bunch of us out on a Thursday night for drinks. We started at the Galera Hotel and ended up at La Posa.

A favourite Spanish trick about this time of the year to terrify the wits out of the British – is to set off an explosive every time the church bell has finished ringing – which it does quite a lot. Yesterday I was reversing the car when it happened and I’m sure the thing had to be within feet of me because I was convinced I’d blown the exhaust pipe up. Talk about heart-stopping.  From a distance you at least have a chance to save on heart attacks because you see the puff of smoke before the sound reaches you – but close up you don’t have a chance.

After a couple of beers last night we were convinced someone had heard enough and decided to commit suicide. If you look at the front of the church here – the rightmost window, at first glance it looks like someone ready to jump.

Thankfully I had my camera with me and a quick zoom made it clear that’s the bell!!! I thought it was someone’s leg.

So much for the evening’s entertainment. We ended up at La Posa for drinks and Maureen and I shared a pizza.

This morning I went down to the village to meet Antonio from Habland who supply our Internet here in Spain – to get a new router as mine’s been acting up – he was extremely helpful and now I’m up and running hopefully reliably – we even have the iPlayer running without having to go through hoops. We do have a little issue that my cameras will no longer talk to me since fitting the new router but I’m sure I’ll resolve that in the next day or so.

Late morning after Antonio left, Maureen and I went off to the village for some ZUM – which is a powerful spray to kill insects – particularly those who like to eat your wooden beams. On the way back we stopped in the centre for a coke.  We’d popped up to the house of some friends who can’t be here right now armed with water to sort out their plants – but it turns out a friendly Spanish neighbour has taken on the job.

The village is being set up for the forthcoming August festivities in which we have bands playing and all sorts of family entertainment throughout the month.  Funny old day, it started off with a spot of rain which immediately disappeared in favour of stunning sunshine – by lunchtime it was up to an amazing 38c though the car even after driving for a while said 41c and I’m inclined to believe it…. then by mid-afternoon it was back to a little rain and lots of cloud – still hot of course. 

As I look outside – it’s sunny again. Apparently this will all have cleared up by tomorrow – I think it’s the first spot of water the weeds will have seen for a couple of months judging by the colour of most of them (a kind of dead orange-brown colour).

Probably tomorrow we’ll wrap our heads in towels before spraying the place with ZUM and backing out of the door for a few hours to make sure only the insects die and not us along with them. We’ve been warned – and the can looks pretty ominous – though being in Spanish I can’t follow a word of it.

If you don’t see any more entries here you’ll know what happened.