Saturday 23rd October 2010, Pinar San Jose (PSJ) and it's still warm.

Decided to get up early, 7'ish, this morning, for no particular reason other than the fact that I was dying for a cuppa. This time we have brought out about a years worth of our favourite red label tea bags because last time we ran out and the Spanish tea is, in a word, pretty crap. OK that's two words but you know what I mean, if you can't get a decent cuppa in the morning, or any time you want it, the day is a write off. (or right off? I'll look it up) OK according to Wikipedia it's a write off as in crashed cars etc. Who says reading this doesn’t help your knowledge base?

Also most mornings are accompanied by some tosser, or tossers, firing shotguns, at rabbits I assume because the Spanish quite like them and as we are near a very large private farm, understandable perhaps. But it's 7/8 ish, this morning it's cold (19°C) and at 7 o'clock, very dark, and some daft bugger is giving it what for with a shotgun? What are they looking for, luminous rabbits?

Yesterday, returned to Mercadona Conil, and finally got the lettuce costing 80 cents and the rest of €10 on some cream that SWMBO must have. Then it was “Well as long as we are parked, let's look round the shops”. These words, to me are the equivalent and have the same meaning of, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes”, and “do you take this woman”, i.e. basically a curse and can only end in me handing over some money for a over inflated item in the most expensive part of town. And guess what, so it came to pass, a brown T shirt with “Espana” on it (how original is that), and four post cards that will arrive at their destinations about a week after we do.

Apparently it's going to rain a bit today so I think we will just laze around and read. There's not much to do on Mothership maintenance although if I manage to get hold of some light ladders I will attempt to remove the last of the insects that welded themselves to the front of the MS. Also we may look for the lost “pepper” spray stuff I imported from America, had three of them, gave one to Heather and the other two have gone walkies.

They are now shooting the luminous rabbits in the evenings after dark!

A game of dominoes occurred after a lapse of 4 months, I won best of 5, 3 to 1 and she claimed she had forgotten how to play. We are also into the 7^th series of “24” and it hasn't changed at all. It's still Jack Bauer saving the world at the last moment and using all the same expressions both physical and verbal. “Send the schematics to my cell”, “We haven’t got time” and the immortal, “It's a duodecimal 132 bit encrypted algorithm but it's got a back door that only I know about, it'll take 2 seconds, there done”.

As it's shot for a TV audience there are breaks for the commercials but as we are watching it on DVD all it shows is a time, i.e. 11:23:55pm and the the new time of 11:29:16 a few seconds later, so the commercial break takes approximately 5 minutes, but of cause this varies. I can imagine the producer trying to fit a “Miller light”, “Cheerios” and a few others in so that it fills the time exactly as the show is supposed to be in real time and last exactly 1 hour. So we have invented a game where we guess the exact period of time elapsed for the commercials, which is instant as far as we are concerned, that's how bad it's getting. Stopped now as she is 10 to 6 up in the series and I've ruled that it has become too easy.

BTW, none of the characters ever sleeps or goes to the loo. It's fast paced though but and lots of people get shot so it's just the ticket for SWMBO. Unlike “Prison Break”, which became so predictable that we gave up during the 3^rd series, we will last this one out and then call it a day if an 8^th series heaves over the horizon.

Sunday 24^th and not quite a full nights sleep, SWMBO decided to have the hot and cold flushes and I'm not talking about using the loo, so most of the night was spent wrestling the duvet back and forth and her clinging to me like a haversack trying to get warm. Then around 7'ish the shooting, I really thought there was a full scale battle going on in the field opposite, and cock crows began so might aswell just get up. As it's Sunday SWMBO gets her soft boiled eggs and soldiers in bed so as it's now 9:30am I better get a move on.



Los Canos De Meca beach



Meant to mention earlier, they have all sorts of different bins for the recycling stuff, you know glass, cardboard, stuff etc. So everyone is following the rules and have various plastic bags in their respective Motorhomes and then when full carry them out and put them in the relevant coloured bin. Just watched the “bin man” collect it all this morning, he just empties out each bin into a BIG bin in his trailer on the back of the golf cart he uses to get around, so it all gets mixed up again but saves him replacing every large plastic bag in the bins! So I guess I will save him more time and pre-mix ours for him and shove it into one bag.

Joy of joys, all four of our hobs on the oven ignite and stay on! Now I can understand some people may not find this very exciting and the fact that we only have three pans may not stand up to hard questioning, but the thing is that more or less from the moment we got the Mothership we've never had all four working. Sometimes three, sometimes only two, oh and on occasion the oven went out for no apparent reason. But because I am just a God of an engineer, (BTW I did not put that capital G in there, Open Office did and will not let me change it ('cos it's probably true)) I got new thermocouples and other bits, and during our 4 month stay in the UK, took the oven to bits and fixed it all! I think I will buy another frying pan.

Today we are planning a cycle ride to Los Canos De Meca, a little village down the coast just past Cape Trafalgar with the present Mrs Swinhoe planning a picnic. (didn't happen, just went back to the MS for lunch, see below) We were on the coast the other night and the sunsets were quite stunning and this bit of coast looks even better so may pop down this evening for some pictures.

Just got back from the 10 mile ride including some off roading in the hills and now tucking into a pile of large prawns in garlic butter with loads of dipping bread, so that weight watching diet of mine is right out the window for today.

Egrets in trees

There are lots of Egrets (type of Heron) wandering round in the fields along with the cattle. I've only seen Egrets, over here, in shallow river beds and assumed they were wading birds, so what were they doing in dry fields? They also roost, 200 at a time, in large trees. Turns out they are, wait for it..............Cattle Egrets and basically follow the Cattle around as they disturb the ground and kick up insects, there you go.

Tonight, probably cribbage followed by Chicken and chips? Then a few episodes of the dreaded “24”.