AndyBlog

The Great Lemon Theft

Louise personfully reaches from the car to enact the dastardly crime

We were traveling towards Oriheula from San Miguel de Salinas. It was a spur of the moment thing - no premeditation whatsoever. I saw the lemon trees, I turned the car round and pulled in so as to enable easier access to the trees, and Louise did the rest.

Just a few branches overspilled the boundaries of the crop, and Louise reached up to them. Her nimble arms seemed to scale the little trees with ease, and less and less of her was actually in the car. The lemons started to appear, small ones at first - then nicer ones, more yellow - more ripe.

Later, at the flat, I sliced into one and ate it exactly as it was - no sugar, nothing. It was sweet - not bitter at all. I have eaten some bitter ones in the past. Old, wiry lemons that have seen better days having languished for eons on supermarket displays. Our stolen lemons were in a different class entirely.

I have brought some of them back with me. If you know m very well, you might just be fortunate enough to be given one.

Sun-Day

Last day in Spain today.
It's been a mixed week. I have a fair bit to tell in words and pictures - but getting to an internet cafe which is both open and able to plug into my laptop has proved elusive.
So: There is the charming story of 'The Nut House', 'The great lemon theft' and 'The terrible Storm' - to name but three of the exciting things that have happened to us.
The apartment has been very comfortable, and the Sky television has enabled us to keep up with the penultimate week of Big Brother. Marvellous.
So, here's hoping you can contain yourselves long enough for us to fly home tomorrow and for me to get myself tucked up in front of a real computer.
It's been a lovely holiday in so many ways. Great to get away and allow my mind to fill with other thoughts than work related ones. A great time to reflect and to be greatful for the wonderful friends and newly-acquired family that I have.
Life, having been a little cruel, is now being very kind to me - and I am grateful.

A postcard from Playa de La Zenia

Well, here we are safe and sound in southern Spain. The airport and transit experience in general was surprisingly stress free, despite our increasing tiredness after at 3am start.

Liz didn't even go to bed at all, whilst I only managed a couple of hours. somehow, the fine-tuning of what to take on a plane seems to take me forever. I must have been tired already, because I remember puzzling long and hard about whether to take just a phone to mini-jack cable, or whether to take a full phono-phono cable in case I needed to channel composite video somewhere.

Just sometimes, I hate my nerdyness. I really do.

Once in Spain, after the two and a half hour flight, we quickly located the hire car and I familiarised myself with the controls, sufficiently to get us on the way. Forty minutes away from Alicante airport is La Zenia - a small town right on the coast.

We discovered the apartment easily enough and, despite the four flights of steps up to the door, it is a very pleasant place indeed. A breeze blows across the town, getting gradually more gentle as it gets inland. Just enough to seduce us into believing the rays might not be too dangerous.

We have cable TV here, British channels laid on for the ex-pats, so we are able to keep up with the happenings in Big Brother. Thank goodness. The distressing thing is that there is no wireless internet. I had fully expected to find a commerical wireless service for the holiday trade to enjoy, but not a sausage.

The result is that there will not be a lot of blog entries from here. That said, aside from meals we eat, there probably will not be much to say. This is a very typical holiday for British people to have - and I almost hate and resent that. I don't really want to be somewhere where the Brits out-number the Spaniards. I dislike the shops and signs all being in English - the radio being English - the products being strangely familiar.

And yet, I like it. I hate that I like it, but the convenience is lovely. I have heard what this holiday and “second home” trade is damaging the south of Spain and causing a serious water shortage, and I am not surprised that the Spanish are starting to resent our being here. We have taken the area over and created a real “home-from-home” atmosphere - except with very warm weather.

It may not be colonial, but it feels colonial, and carries with it much of the unease I feel about our awful colonial past. I wonder, if the weather was this warm in the UK - would we still travel over here and make holiday homes? Do we really “love the place” ?

Now, I understand that this is just a postcard, and I would have had to write very small to get all that in.

Weather's lovely, wish you all were here with us to enjoy it. No sunburn yet.

I'll writer more in a day or so. Now, to try and find an internet cafe.

The crowded beach at La Zenia

Hard to believe from this panorama, but a force 6 gale blows through the beach, making everything rather difficult. I've already caught someone's parasol as it blew by.

This is all being posted a day late because when I finally found an internet place with wi-fi they were about to close. They open at 10am in the morning, so I will attempt to be out there, bright and early to get this posted. Being without internet in this way reminds me of a holiday in Cornwall - where I had to drive 4 miles inland just to get a mobile phone signal.

I could connect this up to my mobile phone out here and use the internet that way, but the costs are prohibitive, thanks to Orange's current withdrawal of any international packages or savings. They have done this in response to offcom's ruling that international calling prices must be slashed at some point in the future. I don't know the exact date. So, until that day, Orange seem to have decided to make hay while the sun shines. Full price on everything and no concessions, call deals or packages.

I am disgusted with their attitude and I am seriously starting to doubt whether my future will continue to be Orange.

Rant over.

Fantastique!

Words cannot adequately describe my joy and rapture upon biting into this work of sin from France.

Happily unfettered and already deeply into my "eating" week, Jason's present of a Breton Tart (well, two, actually) not only hit the spot, but pretty much smashed it.

The taste is difficult to describe, but a good place to start is "buttery". If you have eaten a Baclava, this will help with the texture - although the tart is more chewy than mot Baclava. A syrup runs through it, and the crust is, at time, almost pure caramel. There is no way that this is anything other than naughty to eat.

Liz spotted the danger signs and quickly shoved the second one into the freezer for later enjoyment. Thank you Jason and Antonia (and family) - we love our presents.

I am slightly more perturbed by Jason's present of a sharp knife to Liz. I'm pretty sure it'll all be OK, but I will confess to a slight uneasiness.

Now, I must return to the rather frantic and slightly desperate activity of "packing for a foreign holiday which involves air travel."

Phew!

I just feel an immense emotion of relief.

Well, stress and relief, actually.

I've been working every spare second on my project for the Legacy of Life charity, and doing updates for the Newbiggin Bay web site whilst Jason was on holiday.

This may not sound like much, but when the project is as big as this one, things tend to get rather fraught, to say the least. Last minute changes and additions usually go together to make the ending of a project the most stressful time, in my experience.

So, with Sue due to call at 6pm and pick up the master discs, and control of the Newbiggin Bay web site due to pass back to Jason at exactly the same time, I am already feeling like the end is all but here.

Now, I have a wonderful holiday in Spain to look forwards to, starting tomorrow bright and early at 3am. Massive massive massive thanks to Jason for offering to take us to the airport at this crazy hour of the day. I am amazed that he volunteered so willingly and without any kind of prompting or pressure. He is truly an amazing and wonderful person - and one who is in the enviable position of being able to ask for practically any favour he wants to from me in return. Lucky bloke.

On another front entirely, it is the "On Day for Newbiggin" photography day today. Such a shame there is no nice weather for this truly important happening. So, I have already found some time to click off a few pictures which may form part of my submission, or may not. The hardest thing is to think of subjects which really do look good in the rain.

I have some ideas, but I don't think I'll share them with you just yet. In particular, there is one shop I'd like to take a snap of.

Have a nice Sunday, folks. I expect I will be doing some holiday-type blogging in due course - especially if I discover a little bit of free internet.

This is my mum

Here she is, the one who is partly responsible for my being here on this planet. She is staying here for a few days. She's pictured with her husband of some quite a few years now, who is, sadly, not staying with us. Frank is a lovely man and I am glad to have him as a kind of step-father, although we don't see him as often as we'd like.

He started a company making "decorative panels" many years ago and has long since retired from it, but still goes in to help out with some book-keeping each week. In conversation, it soon becomes evident that the "decorative panels" are in fact coffins. There is usually a pause at this point, then some laughter, then slight guilt.

They don't make coffins now - apparently it's a bit of a cut-throat business these days. I hear at one time they made panels for IKEA - another source of disappointment for me. IKEA make such play of being Swedish, what with all those funny names and everything - and yet the stuff they sell is often made in this country.

I know I should be thrilled by this news, and so I apologise. I just think that if they are going to sell things made in the UK, they should be called something more British - like: "Harold Robson & Son" - and the stuff should have good, solid, believable British names like "Basket", "Wardrobe" or perhaps "Chicken Tika Masala".

I must now get on with some work, but I hope you enjoyed hearing a little about my mum.

Tiree Photos now online!

Eee, Tiree.

This, just to let you all know that my Tiree photos are now uploaded and online.

You can view them in two different places:

The first is the regular TypePad Photo Album, with full descriptions done a great length by me:

http://adlib.blogs.com/photos/tiree/

The other is the new .Mac Web Gallery, which is all posh and smashing, but it's harder to get to the descriptions.

http://gallery.mac.com/twosheds#100030&bgcolor=black

Take your pick, or look at both, or neither. I'll try not to take it personally. They are pretty, though...

Leaving a Legacy - The Follow Up

Thanks for the interest

Thanks to you all for your comments and views on the subject of organ donation. It's good to talk about these issues and thus prevent them from being somehow distasteful and to be hidden away - in our minds if nothing else.

To Angela I must say this:

I'm slightly surprised that you would take exception to me using your family relationships as an example. I can't see that there would be any doubt of my intentions here - and I hope that it would be completely obvious that I was not wishing any ill on you or your loved ones. Quite the opposite. I'm truly sorry if I caused offence in any way. I was merely putting a "What if?" situation to you, so that you had a chance to explore how you would feel if you were in a position where you were unable to ignore the issue of organ donation.

The fact that it touched a nerve is the very reason to use examples like that. They are the only ones that matter. When it is you and yours involved - it brings it home like nothing else can. That said, I'm sure they're all fine and I hope and pray they will never either require a transplant, or be in a position to actually be a donor.

When I signed up...

In my own experience with going on the organ donor register, I will say that it is a slightly strange feeling filling out the online application form. It is a bit creepy because it connects you with your own death in a way that I guess we'd all prefer not to. Like Ian, I found that I certainly did feel a bit weird. That said, I felt good when I had done it. I doubt anything of mine will be much use to anyone when I am gone, but on the off-chance that it is they are very welcome to it.

At that point, I certainly won't have any further use for the bits that were my body. I mean, by then, I'll be right in the middle of discovering whether everything I have believed about God all my life is actually true or not. Which, I suppose, means I'll either be tremendously happy and fulfilled or just gone forever and lost in oblivion. Either that, of course, or due to a slightly garbled reading of the truth about forgiveness - rotting in the pit of hell in eternal torment.

I wish my mind didn't scream at me at times like this: "Now, that sounds more like it!".

No pictures please

I have decided not to illustrate this posting.

Yesterday I nearly did it.

Today I got half way down the stairs before I realised I had not got dressed.

That is all. I am losing it, it's official.

Also, with Jason away on holiday - how will we all cope?