Heat Wave

Listening to the news this morning, I heard about the 'heat wave' in south east England. They were giving out tips for coping with the hot weather. They were - stay indoors during the hight of the heat (11 - 3), keep curtains drawn during the day, open windows at night, don't sit in the sun and wear a hat if you go out.

This is how they cope with the heat here. While the 'shut down' time is different, here the peak of the heat 2 and 6, you will not find a sole around during these hours. All houses have blinds or shutters that come down when the sun comes out and of course, the reason why all houses have bars on the windows is because soon as the sun goes down, the windows open and are left open all night. This blows cool air through the house. Of course, more people are getting air conditioning, this will be less of an issue. As for the hats - Ian has a collection of straw hats that people have given him when they've seen him out without one. Umbrellas are popular too - for shade, not rain.

The big difference, of course, is everything shuts down at siesta and opens later. We've seen the butcher shop open at midnight - as people won't be eating their evening meal until this sort of time, that makes sense given the heat. And builders start work at 6 in the morning - so I am glad that we are builder free now!

Oh yes, one of the chickens crowed in front of me this morning, it was one of the white ones that we thoughts was turning into a cockerel - so we could be right with 2 boys and three girls (albeit one midget hen).

Moving Bag

I wondered why an IKEA bag that was hanging on the wall kept moving. So I called Ian and we were convinced it was some kind of monster. Therefore it was with a certain degree of nervousness that we went to investigate...

Who Just Crowed?

Someone crowed this morning - when I say 'someone', I of course mean a chicken. We currently think we have two boys, two girls and one unknown. Blackie is unknown. She has a definite pompom on her head, but also has the beginnings of what looks like long tail feathers. Spot is the smallest and we are certain she is a girl. She is the smallest chicken we've had, unless she has a growth spurt over the next couple of months, we'll be finding quail sized eggs I think!

The crower kept doing it when my back was turned - so I don't know who it was.

We've now had to take the food bowl from them to try and get them to forage more. They are amazingly lazy chickens. They have the whole of the back yard to free range in, however they prefer to stand by the garage door waiting for food!

Sausages, Cuddles and the Devil

The vet gave us very detailed instructions for looking after Henry. But he missed off the cuddles and sausages that are proving an essential part of his recuperation. He sits there looking all sad until he gets a cuddle and is gets a sausage after he has had his eye drops.

If the op had been anywhere else than his eye then Henry's recovery would have been almost instant. But being his eyelid, we are having to be very careful about infections and also that he doesn't pull his stitches. So he is wearing a super-big lampshade collar which means that he keeps bumping into things. We've cut it down a bit, and will cut it down a bit more when Henry stops trying to scratch it.

When we took Henry to the vet on Thursday, the vet thought that a stitch had come loose so he put another in. Unsurprisingly, Henry took exception to the vet coming at his eye with a needle, so the poor little chap had to be sedated again.

This weekend was the fiesta of San Juan. It started with the raising of the devil on Friday and ended at 5 this morning. We went to the first part of the devil raising, which is in the village square. The second part - which is with the singing, dancing and jumping through fires to raise the devil (at the convent) started at midnight and would go on to the not-so-early hours, so we nipped off home when they broke for their tea and we were tucked up in bed way before the devil made his appearance.

Saturday and Sunday there was a band and fairground by the large place where the sardine festival is held. This kicked off at midnight on Saturday, and we went along for a bit, but came home at about the time most people were going out! The band started with some rock songs, which seemed to throw everyone into confusion, however they soon settled down to wailing and pasa-doble-ing which they managed to keep up for several hours. I know, as it came drifting in through our new bedroom window!

You'd think that this would have quelled normal village life, however the streets were full of people (ladies) in the morning, sweeping the pavements and removing any sign of late night activities. It is quite remarkable, the fiesta spills over into the streets and one street in particular is full of people - packed full of people - drinking and eating. Yet the next morning it is swept clean and the only signs of fiesta-ing are the huge black bags that are propped up along side the street bins.

Ian is cleaning the floor in the new kitchen. This is a HUGE task, he's been working on it for three days already. The hall will be nasty as well, but hopefully the other rooms will be relatively straightforward!

The Princess and the Tuna

We've hung a long white mosquito net over the bed. It looks lovely and it is like lying in a lacy tent!

I said it is like being a princess.

Ian said it is like being a tuna caught in a net.

Sigh.........

Furniture

We've been storing some furniture for some friends and they came to get some of it yesterday. The furniture was from his sister who lives in Portugal and it is lovely,so I was a little worried about how it would have fared as its been in the barn for almost a year - with Manuel working around it! It had stored very well.

They swapped some of their old furniture for the new pieces. So they have given us their two old settees (one is a bed settee which was high on our list of things to buy) and the other is a large and comfortable settee which is in my workshop. This has got a huge thumbs up from me! We've also got a large sideboard which is also in my workshop and another cabinet that will go in the house.

What we weren't expecting, however, was a marvelous stone table-sort-of-thing. This photo just does not do it justice. I think it is marble and granite and was so heavy that Ian could only move it - in pieces - in to the house in small stages. It is in the shower room where it looks great.

Pudsey Henry

Poor Henry had an operation on his eyelid and is currently looking like Pudsey Bear. The eye wart that he had last year has come back and this time the vet wanted to cut it out rather than freeze it. It was quite a big operation as the vet cut part of his eye lid away. He did a good job, however, and rather than cutting a little triangle which would have shortened Henry's eye lid which might have made his eye sore, he made a bigger operation of it to cut the inside away.

We opted not to stay with Henry during the op - so the vet took photos for us!

I have said before about how strange it first appeared to stay with your pet during an operation. However I now wouldn't go back to it being any other way. Although we didn't stay during Henry's op, we were with him when he was being given the anesthetic and back with him when he was coming round, and he was home to recover. I am sure that this is much nicer for the animals as it must be pretty scary to wake up from an op, probably in a cage in unfamiliar surroundings. In fact, I was talking to someone about this and she also said that she preferred this way of doing things - it comes as a shock the first few times, but once you are prepared for the role of vet nurse, it does make a lot of sense.

Henry's eye is bandaged now and he is peeking through a tiny gap. Later we are going to get the bandage taken off - which I am glad about as the vet 'tacked' the bandage to the top of his head with a couple of stitches, which is a little gruesome. The stitches will remain for a week or so.

Somebody's watching ewe.

Here are some pics of my birthday present from Ian, which is in our new bedroom - our first finished room (with the exception of doors) - yippee. Also, another picture of the mushrooms, which, admittedly, might not be as interesting to you as it is to us. Plus a pic of the finished workshop and a pic of the new bedroom when it was work in progress.







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What a Load of Balls!

Yes, this is Ian rolling around on the floor. In case you are wondering whether the picture was taken after a night on the town, I will assure that it was taken this morning! So, what is he doing...?

Ian is making a lampshade from a load of old balls! The plastic balls are being hung to form what will be a large structure. I won't try to explain! He is rolling round on the floor trying to get a good feel for what it will look like when it is finished. The dogs, of course, think that it is a game.

We found the balls when we were tidying my workshop - it is now very organized, which you can also see from the picture!

More Pics

Work in progress - the dining room.






A table lamp that we've turned into a wall light



Our home grown mushrooms - we'll be looking forward to eating these when they are a little bigger

Chickens

The chicks have finally started free ranging, however, instead of wandering around the back yard, they walk into the garage and stand there with beaks pressed against the wire netting gate. All we could see was little feathered top-knots peeping into the patio - the exact reverse of the picture below. We've now had to shut the back gate to the garage to stop them from doing this. Not because it wasn't endearing, but because they really have to learn to range around outside.

We're also going to have to take their box from them. This feels a bit mean, but they are getting too big and they all insist on cramming in there at night - even though they have nice perches to roost on. (it's a good job that our neighbours can't see the chicks crammed into their box at night - we (English) have a bad reputation for battery farming and it would look as though we had bought factory farming techniques with us!)

House Pics

We've put gold scrolls on the wall of the sitting room. This is work in progress (above), the wall is wet but it dries out and looks great.


We've hung the chess-men pics in this room - and put Nanny's dresser in here too.



The newly white bedroom with floral embellishments. ·I've also re-grouted the floor. Ian's face was a picture when he saw that his lovely clean floor was covered with grout - but it all cleaned up nicely. I did think that I might grout the floor when he is out next time, as he kept walking past the door muttering and casting evil looks in my direction.



This week Ian is going to work on the floor of the new kitchen/diner. Manuel is going to come round and repair the roof of my workshop which is leaking, so when this is done I can try to get my workshop straight, which will mean we can clear some of my books etc from the house.

We've let the chicks out to range freely. This is a concept that they didn't take to for quite some time. The spent the first couple of days just stood in their box with the door open refusing to come out. They then just stood in their barn, but today have been roaming all round. We've been looking at their legs, as another way of telling the gender of silkies is to look at their leg feathers. This proved confusing - however we definitely think that blacky and spot are female and that we have two males - so we'll see what the other white one turns out as. Blacky and spot bustle around, whereas the two that we think are males have started to strut. Better odds than we first anticipated...

Close up of floral embellishments in bedroom

Dogs can see the chicks out in the back yard

Chandelier

This is the chandelier that I we found put out for rubbish - Ian has sanded it down and it looks really good!

Pics

Sam

I keep meaning to say that Sam has been seizure free for several months now. Probably 5 months. It is very strange, if he follows the same pattern as last year they'll start again in September. I am going to research any chance that this could be influenced by the seasons - but in the meantime it is nice for him, and for us, of course.

One thing we have noticed is that he has started barking. He does one single bark and startles himself, sets the others off and then he starts running round looking to see what they are barking at.

I think he is missing Billy. He only started barking when Billy died and Billy was always not far away from him.

Floor Cleaner and things

Well, our new floor cleaner arrived and we've used it in the new bedroom and it works very well. It is a low level industrial machine (for small offices) and is quite big, but easy enough to use. It scrubs the floor with little brushes, so it is ideal for taking up fine layers of cement and dirt, but we need to take the big bits off by hand. So far this has entailed Ian spending day with a metal brush. But it is looking nice, and if we hadn't re-painted the bedroom white instead of blue it would be nigh on finished. As it is, we now need to take the paint spots up :)

We went for white as, as you know, I'd been umming and ahing about the blue. I had originally wanted a denim sort of colored room, which I thought would look good with the exposed tiles that we have and the pink ensuite. However, the color came out more forgetmenot - which was Ok, but not quite right. But what I hadn't considered, was that the bedroom has, in effect, four doors leading off it - bathroom, upstairs, windows and doors to hallway. The windows and doors to hallway are large double doors. These will be dark wood - so given that the room is half tiled, I've got the white tiles, big dark wood doors, exposed brick and then the blue. And it just didn't feel 'quite right'. The blue felt like a bit of an afterthought.

So we painted it!

It was a good move as although it may sound like it's stark, the big dark doors and the shine of the tiles stop it from looking too harsh.

We've also wallpapered one wall of the pink ensuite - long story, but to summerize > trip to DIY store, agreed shopping list of screws, nails and boring things, agreement not to get diverted onto things we don't need, roll of pink and silver wall paper = wall papered wall. Why just one wall? 25 euros a roll!

Ian finished sanding down the chandelier that we found put out for scrap by the church - it looks very good. That is in the shower room.

So, this week our aim is to re-grout the floor tiles in the new bedroom, put up mirror, shelf etc in pink bathroom and clean floor of new sitting room. We can then start moving into these rooms. The floor of the new sitting room is quite cementy but more of a film of it than lumps, so we might be able to get that up with chemicals.

Roomba - we are very happy with our robot vacuum cleaner. It is very clever and buzzes around picking up dust and dirt. We noticed that they've started watering the roads again, which is always a sign that it is getting dry and dusty.

I'll take some pics later of all our work!