So anyway, its been really quiet this month – normal for August so I am told, a little scary never the less; but not to be idle I decide (or rather Liesl decides for me) that it’s time to sand down the new, second hand, front door and frame so that it can be varnished – not a bad job me thinks, all day in the sun, I can handle that!
Anyway, off to the local DIY shop to buy sand paper, varnish and the like, no problem there, very reasonable (about 10 euros for the lot), excellent.
Liesl started to read the instructions – well her Spanish is much better than mine! “What is the temperature?” she says. “Well its 37 degrees at the moment” I reply.
“The directions on the tin say that the varnish should be applied when the temperature is between 12 and 25 degrees!” says Liesl.
LOL, the lowest the temperature currently drops is about 27 degrees – would you believe that I am going to have to wait for winter before I can varnish the bloody door!
Whilst walking through our local town of Santa Pola today I witnessed the not-unusual sight of a Spaniard allowing his dog to “mess” on the pavement. I was however surprised when he self same chap proceeded to take a plastic bag out of his pocket and pick up the mess that his dog had left behind – I have never seen this before, even though there are free “poo bag” holders all around the major cities of Spain, they all seem to be full of “poo bags” because no-one ever takes them!)
You can imagine how much more shocked I was when I saw the man put down the bag, take hold of his dog’s tail and hold it up so that the dog’s back legs were just off the ground, put his hand into his pocket, took out a q-tip, and proceeded to clean the mut’s behind!!!!
Now that is what I call attention to detail – good man. I dont think I will tell Liesl about it though for fear of being forced to carry q-tips around with me when taking Hetty out!
Today we went to visit our friends and old neighbours Pam and Dave – they are the guys that we bought our last house from in the UK (5 Holbush Way) and, as they used to live there, they are, of course, also ex-neighbours of Dave, all we needed was for Bob and Jackie (our other neighbours from the UK) to turn up and most of the top part of Holbush Way would be empty!
Pam and Dave moved to San Miguel (about an hour’s drive away from our place) in September of 2006 and therefore have been here almost a year as well.
They took us to a lovely restaurant for Sunday lunch. The restaurant, “Market St”, was in San Miguel and for a very reasonable 20 euros (fifteen quid) we each had a very filling 3 course meal with wine, not bad really, although Liesl and I are clearly getting used to living in Spain as both thought that it was expensive – mad really as it was nothing.
Afterwards we went back to Pam and Dave’s to enjoy some of Pam’s homemade sangria – very refreshing – nice one Pam!
Well, with Dave’s request for us not to plan anything ringing in my ears I gratefully accepted an invitation to a BBQ from our friends Paul and Jackie – well Dave loves a good BBQ anyway!
We had a fantastic time, all jumping in the pool within 30 minu
tes of arriving to play “pool volley ball” – hehe, fantastic and a great laugh, however someone needs to invent a way of getting the ball back after it gets punched outside the pool every 30 seconds – business opportunity there!
As you can see from the picture (click to enlarge if you need to) Liesl seems to have found something to do with the long tube like float – not sure what, but she certainly had a smile on her face for the rest of the day – strange.
After some serious messing around in the pool we sat down to have a lovely BBQ – chicken kebabs and lots more – jum!
Then we had a little drink – well a big one actually – thanks for driving Liesl 😉
Finally we finished the evening off by jumping back into the pool at about 10pm to cool off, first class!
This evening Dave, a good friend and ex-neighbour arrived to visit us for a long weekend (he goes back next Wednesday), he has been working hard down in London but, thankfully, has found the time to come and visit – probably sick of the rain in the UK – hehe.
He has instructed us not to arrange anything for him as he just wants to sit by the pool and “chill”, not sure whether that is because he really does want to just sit by the pool or whether he is being his usual thoughtful self and doesn’t want to put us to any trouble.
The past few weeks have been busy work wise, well probably more for Liesl than for me, but this has, in addition to the hot weather, meant that we have not been able to spend the afternoons on the beach.
r on the Saturday for drinks and a stopover. We were really looking forward to it as we had a great time with them the last time they were out in October – they didn’t disappoint this time either, we spent most of the evening chatting, however because Alan had kept up to date with this blog (hi Alan), he unnervingly managed to finish most of my sentences off, knowing more about what we had been up to in the past 6 months almost than we did, as you can see from the pictures we ended up floating with a beer in the pool – we were to be slightly worse for wear and spent the Sunday recovering at home. 
er’s house one day I saw a scene that could only happen here in Spain, a goat herder leading his herd from the field, straight across the road in front of me (never mind the fact that cars are coming – they can wait), into another field.
It’s a small village perched on the pinnacle of a granite mountain, and the views from it are fabulous as you can see from the pictures. Afterwards we stopped at a small roadside restaurant and had a bite to eat before heading back to Gran Alacant. 
