Ramblings in Retirement
January 2009

It’s the beginning of a new year and we are now in our 7th year of living here in Spain. It has been a damp start, which is unusual for us, and the weather has been decidedly mixed but things seem to be looking up. Have you noticed that it is not getting dark so early? We see on the TV that the UK is experiencing some bad cold weather towards the end of the month so we are somewhat fortunate to be enjoying blue skies. Having said that, in the third week we had unusually high winds, which affected our enormous satellite dish, causing us to loose our TV signal. We were unable to get an engineer out for almost a week (many others were affected also). Around us there was a trail of blown down trees and many large signboards as a reminder that nature can be unkind at times.

We had our friends Connie and Dennis round on Hogmanay for a lovely meal and to watch the fireworks from the naya at midnight. Those of you who checked out my weblog would have seen the annual boozy video clip.

I am grateful to Dennis for bringing back from the UK some items of golf equipment, which have proved to be invaluable in improving my game. (I had ordered a “rescue wood” and this is now my “magic” golf club)! I have surprised my colleagues by playing significantly above my handicap and taking the prize-money from them (it’s only €3 per head so I won’t get rich). I hope this run of good play continues well into the year. Our golf society played a course near Alicante on the 23rd and we experienced severe gales to the extent that there were many “lost balls” and the phenomenon of trying to putt with the ball blowing away! A very different experience!

My neighbour below us seems to have gotten tree surgery fever, since we cut down the trees which were in danger of obscuring our view, he has now had several more removed. This has provided me with a good source of logs for the fire in future years. Added to this I am attacking the area where we have a scraggly carob tree (they normally grow with one trunk but this beast has several thick trunks) and again there is a good supply logs. The smaller branches I grind up in a shredder to use as a mulch in the garden, so I suppose I am doing my bit in recycling.

Start & Mandy, were in Benidorm for a winter break and joined us for a couple of days before returning to the UK. It was nice to have them with us and we arranged for Tony & Liz Conway to join us for a meal as they know Stuart & Mandy from a time they came to the villa on holiday. (It was about 10 years ago and they were denied boarding because Jessica had chickenpox so Liz & Tony kindly put them up for a week).













Penny has given me two smashing presents, firstly a new copier/scanner and printer which is a wi-fi model and does not have any trailing wires so I can have it positioned away from my computer. Secondly I have a new mini camcorder which we got from the USA. It is marginally larger than a mobile phone and easily slips into my pocket unlike the very large semi-professional one I normally use. The benefit of this new camcorder is that I will probably use it more as it is more convenient and I can immediately upload film to the web. It also films in Hi-definition.

Well that’s all for this month, can’t wait for the better weather to get stuck into the garden.