It's another Sunday Morning

It's yet another hot and humid Sunday morning in Ibiza and I have just had my "healthy" breakfast (for the first time this week!) and thought I would have a glance through the weekly English speaking Newspaper - The Ibiza Sun, for last week just to see what has been going on.

The Front Page has the headline EMERGENCY FUNDING which on reading made me feel if I had truly landed in cloud cuckoo land. It would seem that due to the drop in visiting tourists (mainly the British) the Island Council have decided therefore to spend €600,000 on a Marketing Campaign in the UK... I don't think they have twigged that an exchange rate so bad the £ and the € were almost equal, that the prices here have consistently risen to make a "cheap" holiday a thing of the past. I saw a beach sign the other day that proclaimed a beach bed and a parasol at €3.50 each so for a family of four they could see themselves paying for 4 beds, 2 parasols for 14 days a nice sum of €294(£245) by today's exchange rate. Another beach was advertising these items at€4.50... Spend the €600000 on reducing prices and cleaning up the beach areas I say! The complain about the "credit crunch" here but they ain't seen nothing yet! The greed bubble is sure to break here soon and then perhaps they will see the light?

So, on to page two where the news is about the rising cases of skin cancer on Ibiza which comes at a good time with the number of fools wandering around like lobsters in the town. I have noticed the British seem to wear less in the streets when not on the beach. The Germans and Dutch are hard to tell from the Brits now though.. sometimes its even difficult to hear which languages are being spoken!! I heard a Scandinavian the other day only to realise it was a Welsh group passing us.

Jelly fish have also added to the beach problems this year, here and in the Med in general. The fishermen have been offered a bounty for each jelly fish netted... it's not working. The Italian resorts have placed nets off shore to protect the beaches, unheard of here.

The high price of sea-front holiday rentals is also headlined and I must admit that I was shocked to hear the other day that most rentals are in the €2000 to €4000 per week in the high season!! Out of my league I'm afraid.

There are short reports on the pending arrival of a natural gas pipeline to the Island ... someday.... a fashion show by the "Famous" Adlib label (?. The arrest of a Romanian thief who tried to steal a wallet from an unsuspecting Frenchman who he convinced had run over a cat! Looks like he faces 15 years in gaol and has already had to pay €1200 in compensation to the Frenchman. Of course the Spanish do not have ANY thieves in the community. Under the heading "Police State" it reports that the Guardia Civil is up to full strength with "close to 600" officers on the Island. Trouble is a "large number are trainees" - Yes and we had two of them come here to bumble around our "crime scene"

Oh, the summer sales have started!!

For such an Island in denial about crime, i.e. It's everyone apart from the Spanish and there isn't much crime anyway, there is an awful lot of crime reported in the paper and if you walk past the Court in Ibiza town there is always a queue of miscreants lolling about waiting to be dragged before the presiding judge. I have to say that most criminals are not detected they usually for some strange reason give themselves up.

Road accidents although frequent are by some miracle not as frequent as you would expect given my observations in my previous post so I will not add any more for the time being.

There are lots of pronouncements from the Authorities here to "move up market" or "improve the standards of tourists" - This is such a stupid assertion that I find myself lost for words. The facilities here are often poor (except in the exceedingly upmarket venues) and attract what they were designed to attract.. people wanting a lot of booze, cheap food, access to clubs and a sandy beach to lay on to recover from the night before. The Council here claim they want a better tourist yet ignore pimps, prostitutes and drug dealing on the streets in San Antoni... the police, many of whom police a visiting population yet do not speak their language even basically. Sorry, but the ethos here is based upon GREED.

Back to more happier subjects I think.... The weather while oppressively hot and humid is fabulously sunny for the next seven days according to the forecast. The paper prints a chart for seven days... why bother when they could simply print the line.... "29 degrees / Sun" !

Weight loss.... we continue to battle against the ravages of time and despite our "healthy Mediterranean diet" we are struggling to lose a few pounds before we return and despite a pretty big set back for me which I claim to have been "water retention" I am back on track and have got back to where I was happy a few months ago... I have to work harder though so no more "one beer a day".

Our diet is largely low or far free so we are at a loss what it is that causes us to put it on (weight) or not lose it!!

The wildlife is still very interesting and we have a new generation of Lizards now with several tiny new ones scurrying about the terrace and clearly unafraid of humans. There are the thousands of Cicadas still chirruping away at high volume and a new HUGE Gecko that is living somewhere in or on the garage block. The multitude of scarlet "Sentinel" bugs are not as prevalent now but they seem to breed in hundreds, but they seem a bit thin on the ground at present. Ants in their millions are plaguing us though, they vary in size to tiny highly venomous ones that nip you and numb an area on your leg as big as you hand! The there are quite large industrious ones that toil all day carrying small bit and pieces into their nests.

The most spectacular sight has to have been the Falcon that nests nearby. The other day on our return from town, V was unlocking the gate and I was sitting in air-conditioned bliss in the car when the falcon swooped down and over her head by no more than about 5 feet - she didn't notice it at all! I then watched the bird circle and glide all afternoon, simply using the thermals to soar high in the sky and then in a downward spiral ending with a sweep right across the field in front of the house giving a warning "screee" as it flew by. In the sky it looks so big with a wide wingspan that is reminiscent of the those photographs of a wartime Spitfire.

Our cat visitor continues to bring us gifts of the bodies of lizards that she thinks will endear us to her.... Hmmm. Not when she eats them and then suffers the consequences! Uva (grape) arrives most days and either pesters us to distraction or by studiously ignoring us by sitting with her back to us in the shade and the stalking off with a haughty strut when we ignore her!

Well, it's a new week now with only 24 days to go before we come back... I have to sell my car!!!!!

Back again soon....