Bedrock

Spanish rip-offs: Monday – a nice enough day, went to Huescar to pick up some bits and pieces and ended up getting fleeced in the new hardware store – £17 for a pair of needle-nosed pliers!  Did a spot of travelling around as you can see in the image on  the right… and ended up back here early afternoon just in time to fix a “small” problem with the bedroom wall – a bit of loose paint which then turned into a 2-ft square problem with the wall, all of which was fine until I started to vacuum the mess and the vacuum gave up spraying the room with my collected dust!  So we’re watching a spot of TV then it’s off back to the town to get parts for the vacuum. No rest for the wicked!

Comparison of Spanish and British fuel prices – we’re being ripped: Some information for you….  checkout the price of diesel over here.. and that’s not the cheapest. The price is in Euros incidentally.  81.9 cents – and that’s a on dual carriageway in the middle of no-where.  Compare that to motorway diesel in the UK even despite the high cost (for us) of the Euro right now. Doesn’t it make you sick. Americans looking in will wonder what the big deal is (that’s a litre, not a gallon – and in the UK we’re paying around £1 right now)

New door sign at Bedrock: Well, the hot-tub fixing didn’t quite go as planned – it’s too cold! Saturday night we ended up in a local pub/restaurant. Yesterday was very quiet and so being a Sunday I basically sat and did nothing – nice for a change. Got the new sign up above the door as you can see, however.  The neighbours popped in last night to borrow our hosepipe. Apparently the builders were having an off-day when they built their house, as the mantle above their wood-burning fire was actually built into the chimney, the result being that as the chimney heated up while they were warming their new cave, the wooden mantle set on fire!!! Spanish building regs are obviously not quite as striktly observed as ours!

Buying batteries: Anyway it was a good opportunity to meet new neighbours. Today we’re off to Baza to get some provisions and a new battery for the UPS – Maureen seems to think there’s a new DIY place so I’m hopeful.  It’s cloudy outside and around 7 degrees C. The fire’s running at full steam ahead and only just keeping the place warm. The electrician has been over to doctor the main fusebox at the top of the hilll so we’re now sharing 40amps between us and the one neighbour who’s in situ right now – as against an impossibly low 20amps. Problem is the wiring is still temporary out there – and so the voltage drops significantly when you start turning heaters on – I’m trying not to think of how much of our electricity is heating up the mountainside!  The WIMAX on the other hand is working a treat and so at least we can keep up with what’s going on in the outside world.

Panasonic pocket cameras: A quiet day ahead I think – not much chance of any Kodak moments – but I am researching a new camera. We bought Maureen a new Panasonic Lumix, the DMC-LZ8  and I’ve been looking at the range – I’m coming to the conclusion I’m getting little benefit out of lugging my unweidly SLR around as the top of the range of the Panasonics – which still fits in a shirt pocket, has 10* optical zoom AND HD video capability.  More on that elsewhere.