A beautiful morning dawned, cool but sunny. There’s an interesting phenomenon we’ve noticed on other visits to our friends’ house which is also half way up the mountain; fire smoke rises so far above the vineyards and then spreads out in a layer You don’t see it from down on the valley floor, you have to be in an elevated situation. This morning a fire was putting up smoke and it was forming a layer for Francine to capture, still clad in her dressing gown. We really are being spoilt being the only ones here.
In the same way that major construction works celebrate their start by breaking the ground, I thought I should bite the bullet and drill my hole in a Spanish wall. I’m familiar with English constructions methods and am comfortable drilling holes in English walls but Spanish construction is something new; they use blocks with large holes in them. I could imagine drilling into nothingness looking for a fixing. A friend over here, living full time in the same urbanization had kindly lent me a collection of wall plugs and screws. The very same friend was the reason I needed to drill this first hole in the first place. Being aware of my dragonfly obsession, he had purchased for Casa Libélule, a magnificent ornamental dragonfly to put up on a wall. Anatomically accurate it isn’t – it seems to have eight wings though that isn’t obvious from the picture. So, to note both its curious wing configuration and also its purchaser, I have dubbed it Octodoptera murdochii. As you can see, my first Spanish drilling was successful.
Flushed with success, I went on to attack our partially finished filling cabinet – partially finished because a couple of screw holes proved a little too big for the screws provided. Before resorting to messy resin mixtures, I tried a trimmed plastic wall plug. Strewth, it worked! Once the drawer runners were securely fixed, our badly behaved cabinet was soon finished. Downstairs with it.
Enough work, time for some play. Today is March 17th. Along with a few other friends in the valley, the folks we dog-sit for and the purchaser of Octodoptera murdochii, we had been invited to lunch by a Scottish couple, living over here full time, and instructed to dress in either green, orange or white. Fortunately I had packed a distressingly bright green fleece. Now here was what I can only describe as complete international confusion: an English car load (Francine volunteered to drive) descended upon a Scottish household in Spain to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Go figure, as they say in America! There was another couple invited to the gathering, the man of which proved to be the Irish connection. Mind you, his wife was Italian, despite sounding like a Londoner and nothing at all like an Italian. Mind you, the Irishman didn’t sound in the vaguest bit Irish. I felt more than a little relieved that the two Scotsmen at least sounded Scottish, even if one of them was dressed as a Leprechaun. Well done, chaps! [Inset your own joke beginning, “An Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman went into a bar …”] The green beer was an inventive twist, I thought. 😀
And I got confused on the ferry because of “welcome to Malta” messages and Norwegian Google search screens. Sheesh!
Sounds as though you are having fun, all that furniture building and DIY. Was a bit alarmed at the very large crême de menthe, but now understand (although it could have been a v large Green Dragon cocktail). Hope the internet goes smoothly and expect to hear from you both v soon.
Bit of a glitch with the electric storm that visited us just after we got connected but a reboot of the router seems to have sorted it. As usual!