This week has heralded the end of the summer; it’s been overcast, all week, today it’s raining and it’s due to rain tomorrow as well.
The last time that we had this much rain was in April!
Also, Liesl and I seem to have acclimatised – which is kind of worrying for the fore coming winter period as last year, our first winter, we were still used to the weather back in the UK and felt warm, something that was obvious to us at the time as though our neighbours were wandering around in coats and other warm clothing we were still in tea shirts and summer clothing.
We are already starting to feel the change in temperature, it’s now dropping to the low twenties at night and we are certainly feeling the difference – strange given that only 2 weeks ago Liesl’s mum, who had arrived with Ken for a 2 week holiday, were complaining about not being able to sleep at night because of the heat; at the same time we were putting extra covers on the bed at night and stopped using the fan to cool us!
I think that this winter is going to give us a much better idea of what its going to be like living in a flat in Spain as it’s the first winter that we will actually truly feel the cold.
We went 10 pin bowling tonight with a group of friends in Elche (a town about 30 minutes drive away), had a great night – made all the better by me winning both sets, although with scores of only 111 and 134 that probably says more about my friends abilities than mine!
The trip was in aid of Dave’s (Jungle Drums editor) birthday – 65th I think 😉
Afterwards we came back to a bar for a drink, great night and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.
Went out this evening with our friends Gerry and Tricia, they are spending much of the year over here as Gerry is on “Garden Leave”, they bought their place (down the road from us) late last year.
Found out today that Liesl had received a call from the local library, we put our names down for Spanish lessons when we first arrived in Spain about a year ago and they have just got back to us to tell us that we can be enrolled on the course starting in October – talk about manana!
Anyway, foolishly she said yes and we are now enrolled on a 12 week course – 2 days a week (Wednesday and Friday) for 2 hours a day – intermediate Spanish – God help me!!!!
Watch this space!
Today we went, with our gestor (Official Spanish Administrator) to Delores, to complete our will – scary stuff eh?
Finally decided who we wanted to leave all of our debts to – sorry Dave 😉
The whole process was pretty stress free really (although it hurt the wallet a little), only took a couple of hours which is pretty good going for a Spanish process!
Bob and Jackie invited us out to the cinema this evening, the cinema in question, which showed films in English (with Spanish subtitles) every weekend, was located in Pilar de la Horadada; a town about 30 minutes south of Bob and Jackie.
The cinema was quite small (although Bob pointed out that it could seat 800 people after a quick count of the rows), and used to be “open air” with a wooden concertina roof which I don’t think works any more (shame as it was quite warm).
The cinema is opened by the local council and manned, we think, by volunteers the cost to watch a film is only 5 Euros and the whole thing seems to be run rather like a non-profit making organisation, the local Spanish council worker that organises everything is keen to point out that without people attending they would not be able to show up to date films like the one we watched last night – Oceans 13 – great film.
We are going back in 2 weeks to watch Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix.
I have decided – I am never going to drink again!
Bob and Jackie came round this evening to take us out for a meal – to thank me for helping get their computer working, this was a really nice and unexpected gesture and something that was typically kind of them to think of.
We went down to the Patagonia Steak House and had a really nice night, I experienced what it was like to stay sober all evening – it’s good to have new experiences every now and then 😉
This evening we went to Dave’s house (editor of The Jungle Drums) for a BBQ, problem was that Dave was a little disorganised when it came to actually cooking anything and consequently when I decided to JFDI (Just F****g Do It) the BBQ was cold and not capable of cooking anything!
Thankfully after a quick text, one of the other guests arrived with some BQ coals and we managed to get things going. Of course this lack of sustenance meant that I had to replace any time not eating with drinking – boy that was a heavy night, but really enjoyed it!
Worst of it all was that I had to get up for work at 9am (only went to bed around 3am!), I somehow managed to do the 2 jobs I had that day and then I crawled back into bed to sleep it off for the rest of the day!
Today our friends Bob and Jackie arrived from the UK, bringing with them (as we ask most 
people to do) all those little things that we need to have sent over from “home” – although I have to say that Spain is feeling more and more like “home” every day.
In true Thorogood style Bob had a little job for me to do, his PC was knackered when he tried to turn it on -payback to me for him bringing our English goodies over 😉
Although why on earth he needed to get into his emails less than 6 hours after leaving them back in the UK Heaven only knows – and I thought I was addicted to the Internet!
Anyway, it was great to catch u
p with them in their apartment in Torrevieja and Jackie laid on a bit of lunch as well – all very nice.
In the evening we all decided to go down to Santa Pola to watch the “Moors & Christians” parade, we had previously arranged with our other friend, Ralph to collect him and go to the parade together. The Moors & Christians is one of Spain’s biggest festivals and are held to commemorate the battles, combats and fights between Moors (or Muslims) and Christians during the period known as Reconquista (from the 8th century thr
ough the 15th century).
The streets were lined with chairs (5 deep at parts on both sides) and the lines ran the whole length of the town – and amazing number of people turned out and we couldn’t help but to comment on the fact that a similarly sized town in the UK (Wellingborough) were considering stopping their carnival because of lack of interest!
http://www.youtube.com/get_player
The parade was supposed to start at 8:30PM, however true to the manaña attitude of our adopted countrymen it actually started about an hour or so late; it was well worth the wait! Wave after wave of groups of men, women and children passe
d the spot where we had decided to stand and watch, each group an elaborate theme based on either the Moors or the Christians, as you can see from the photos. What the photos don’t do justice to is the mock battles and other moving displays that passed by us, little re-enactments of Moors invading, pillaging and finally being beaten back by the Christians, all acted out on the move past us. Following each group was their band – I lost count of the number of individual bands that we saw that evening but there must have been at least 50!
Each group of dancers we were told were each responsible for buying / making their own particular costume, some of them must have cost 100’s of euros each.
We watched the proces
sions for about 2 hours before it became too late and we became too tired of standing to continue – poor Bob has a dodgy knee at the best of times and had already decided to sit down on the pavement as he found the pain of standing to be too much. It was clear that the parade was going to continue for some time yet, we made our way out onto some of the back streets to see whether we could find a little bar to have a sit down and a drink – it was now around 11:30 at night.
Liesl quickly located a bar, no surprise there then, and we went inside for a drink (Ralph was taking the photo btw) while the 
crouds subsided outside, after about an hour it was all over and we were able to wander along to the car and drive home – a really great experience.
