Quick March

MARCH HARES

It's March already and as the Almond blossom fades the fields become a mass of yellow, red and white wild flowers and a lot of weeds that Nevertheless look pretty as they are so widespread. The land that surrounds us in tiers is to be ploughed up shortly once the grass and weed season has passed the the weather becomes too hot to sustain any growth so things will start to look a little less ragged and untidy.

Rather than try to manages what would be a huge garden we are only tending the immediate areas around us, a herb garden with several unidentified herbs, a rectangular bed of orange flowers and some roses with a very old fig tree in the centre and finally the small “roundabout” that is at the top of our drive that has geraniums with a carob tree in the centre.

If I was a gardener, and neither of us are, then it would be a major challenge to undertake and would cost a small fortune to build into something that provided some sort of show throughout the year.

Amusing ourselves (or myself really)

We are still waiting for the right moment to purchase Sky Sat TV from the right trustworthy person here. Steve the plumber who is friends with Steve the electrician knows a trustworthy bloke called Steve henceforth known as Steve TV (and that's television NOT Transvestite) who I have yet to contact and then I have to speak to Pedro the landlord for the satellite dish installation.

Now having broken the Steve mould I have to comment on the disproportionate number of Steve's involved in the Ibiza enterprises, its uncanny that there are so many here. It did cross my mind that they were all the same person as I have yet to see them all together in one place!

In the meantime to amuse myself whilst without radio and TV and when not viewing DVD's or taking photographs, I have a variety of computer games. So while we wait to install telephone and internet here (there are no Steve's involved in this yet as I don't believe that Telefonica employ any Steve's – a few Miguel's without any doubt as that is a very common name here. For example our “personal banker” (yes we have one) is called Miguel Angel Garcia Gomez... what a wonderful handful of names!

On the subject of computers, since Mrs H the new “local computer engineer” diagnosed and fixed my PC problem the machine has been running perfectly. Her consulting rates will now be reviewed in light of her recent success in the field of PC diagnostics and repairs – I wont have to text Alan East then will I???

Val is also amusing herself with some reading and endless brain teasers she has from the Daily Mail which she has now become quite adept at solving in record times. But there again she is the intellectual here whereas I am the more practical one (Really?) I am as much use with a brain teaser as I am at performing brain surgery don't get me involved in maths, arithmetic or anything to do with numbers as I am the numeric equivalent of dyslexic in that respect and my brain simply shuts down as soon as it detects problem involving numbers.

I lived in hope that some cakes would appear one day and I am pleased to report that we have now experienced two of the lovely “very sticky prune and date cakes” and an equally good Lemon Drizzle cake. Franco who is Alix's house mate had one last Christmas while we were in the apartment at Playa den Bossa and he (as a Uruguayan) devoured it almost on his own. I wait to see what else emerges from the cake department.

I was shocked to see Val come scampering down the corridor the other morning clad only in a bath towel complaining bitterly that the water was cold and that she was having to take a cold shower. (isn't that my prerogative?) We are currently waiting for a solution to this problem that may well be solved by the time I publish this blog. Mind you when I was having a shower every time Val ran a cold tap I had to leap out of the shower to avoid being scalded ..... can't figure the plumbing at the moment.

UPDATE:

Plumbing figured! A New hot water boiler powered by good old gas (butane) has been installed and is proving a success with instant (almost) hot water and no more need to alternate our showering arrangements to conserve hot water. The fontanero (plumber)arrived to fit the boiler on the Monday but left because it was raining. Came back again 2 days later with his workmate (a bloke) and fitted the boiler. Great Joy in the household as we come to terms with almost instant hot water and a more agreeable Mrs H. :-)

LIGHTING FIRES

I had not had to light an open fire for over 40 years until this month. It got so cold in the house that the internal temperature was lower than that outside by a good 2 degrees and this forced me to gather kindling and logs and set about learning all over again. My first attempt with newspapers and fire-lighters was a disaster with clouds of smoke filling the house. The next day just having been able to start the new fire from the dying embers of my first attempt made for a fire that lasted for nearly a week. Mind you I nearly did myself permanent injury lugging huge logs too and fro.

THE WEATHER

It's been mixed I think describes the weather which has given me a chance to switch on my “weather station” at last. It's fun to see that it's going to rain almost every day or that it's cloudy but sunny. The reality is though that it is relatively cold each morning until about 10:30 when the sun comes through and it's usually warm enough to have a coffee outside when we are in town. It all starts to cool down again around 3:30 to 4pm and then gets quite chilly once the sun has gone in. I even did some sunbathing this week and am starting to get a little more colour.

We look forward to the summer months although I can foresee us looking forward to cooler times once the summer sets in!!!

For those of you reading this who were thinking of nodding off... I'm sorry and I promise NOT to mention the weather again.

OUR LANDLORDS

Our landlords,are a lovely couple called Pedro & Marilina, both always very friendly and helpful in our times of need, which seem to have been quite often up to now. Pedro comes up here to us on the first of the month to collect the rent and to check that everything is OK with us and the house which is very useful as we can deal with any issues face to face if need be.

This is also an opportunity for him to check the water level in the cistern that supplies our “mains” water, which is not for drinking, from their supply at the foot of the hill below us. The drinking water, apart from that we buy by the bottle, is supplied by a well that has been here for many years. The water is clean and fresh and has no perceptible taste although Val will only drink it boiled, whereas I have chanced it and am still here. So we have well Water or in the Spanish, “Agua potable”.

An additional benefit recently provided by Pedro was a bottle of red wine made from his own grapes grown from a hundred or so small vines that can be seen just below our house. The wine (here comes the Bond wine experts description now) is rich in colour, a dark ruby with a strong fruity nose and a hint of “sulphur” indicating its young vintage. Hah ah ah you may say about my expertise - The wine is almost sweet at first tasting but this diminishes very quickly with each mouthful.... OK I give in.... the wine is good to “glug” down with a meal and has been christened “Château Pedro” or would it be (Pedreau) by a French friend of Pedro's.

Another bonus is that we have two fig trees in the garden, one that produces fruit in August and the other in September. We also expect to be able to get some fresh almonds later on too as they start to be harvested in September too.

As I speak, Marilina has just arrived with a bag of huge oranges and some equally large lemons that grow in her garden below us and across the main road where they spend weekends as they normally live in Ibiza town during the week. All in all they are a nice couple and genuinely pleasant people.

MY BOOK

You may find it both surprising or even amusing to hear that I have been writing a book for about 3 years now and have actually started to reach a point where I can say I am more than three quarters of the way through. The book is a first hand account of the almost nine years I spent in the army, the reasons I joined in the first place and ultimately the reason I left in 1969. I have called the book “An Uneventful Soldier” as I consider that my peacetime engagement was very much an uneventful period for me. However it was not so uneventful for the many other soldiers who were either fortunate or unfortunate enough to serve in the many trouble spots of the 1960's – Aden, the Radfan, Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei to name the main ones. However in 1964 Cyprus had seen the end of any major hostilities against the British when I arrived but was in the midst of it's own inter community fighting between Greek and Turk. The British Army briefly intervened in early 1964 to prevent any further bloodshed and were replaced by the UN Troops of UNFICYP who we were supporting from the two bases of Dhekelia and Akrotiri otherwise it was a blissful place for us to be stationed despite the troubles going on around us. All in all I was lucky but then I suppose I could have been posted to Singapore, Hong Kong, Gibraltar or Malta again all easy postings with little in the way of action but plenty of adventure none the less.... oh well lucky me.

The book may never see the light of day but I will publish an Internet version once it's complete and see how may thousands of copies I have to provide to my avid readership!