Broken Brakes

We had a nasty surprise as the brakes on the car broke on Wednesday - but amazingly, they did this in the back yard where no damage could be done.

Happily a new mechanic has started working in the village so Ian was able to slowly take the car up there.

Although not so happily it  transpires that break shoe doesn't translate literally in Spanish and they were left wondering whether Ian's shoes don't brake or what strange message we were trying to communicate (although, quite honestly with the pickles we get ourselves into, why Ian didn't think to double check that the likelihood of 'shoe' being used in Spanish too to describe brake pads, I don't know!)

Hopefully we'll get the car back for early next week. We also need a new pump thing for it, which is going to be expensive. We'll have to get it done for the equivalent of the Spanish MOT so hopefully the new mechanic person will take pity on us and do it for a good price.

The brakes actually went after we'd come back from asparagus picking. It's the end of May and it's still going strong. Probably thanks to the wet weather we had a couple of weeks ago. For the first time in a  number of years we have some in the freezer again.

All the animals are well. I realized it was a year since we had the lovebirds and were hand feeding them. I remember how I had them in a little budgie cage and carry them around with me. I like to think that Larry's life is better since he's had avian company, however given that I think he thinks he's a, well, I'm not sure what he thinks he is (but certainly it involves being some sort of premier in his kingdom) I think he may think that they were pets we got him. When we move we'll probably put them in together, but we'll see. Larry is completely back to how he was - other than the fact he can't climb. But we've put ramps in his cage so he can get around to his different perches. He seems quite happy other than he doesn't like electrical appliances. When the coffee grinder goes in the morning or the soup maker goes into liquidize mode, Larry takes it upon himself to try to outdo them noise wise. And he wins.

Summer's arrived (almost)

Last Saturday I was sat wearing a fleece and moaning about the cold, and yesterday I was sat wearing a t-shirt and moaning about the heat, what a difference a week makes! We went asparagus picking on Friday and had to take a bottle of water with us and definitely felt the full force of the heat! Happily the rain followed by hot weather had the desired effect on the asparagus and we were picking triffid-like specimens.

Last week we had a bit of worry with Pixie who last Sunday was acting very strange. She kept running away from us and hiding, and squeaked when she was picked up. We couldn't find anything wrong with her, and took her to the vet on Monday - only to find it was a holiday. By Tuesday she was getting back to normal, so I can only think she had knocked herself some how. She won't let us cut her claws, and she's got her leg caught a couple of times in fabric, so I don't know if that was it. We'll try again with her claws and if she still doesn't let us do it, she'll have to go the vet and get them to do it. Who would have thought our smallest dog was the biggest problem! Part of it is her size, thinking about it, her legs are so tiny we're worried about damaging her when she struggles.

We'll be heading off into the country later to look for asparagus again - it's getting very close to the end of the season so could be the last or near last time we get a whole meal's worth in one go this year.

Rain Rain Go Away

After what must be over a year of relatively dry weather, this past week has been full of rain clouds. So much so, I assumed that we had someone coming to visit which had triggered the bad weather, as this is what normally happens. But no, no visitors other than a lot of heavy falling raindrops. How ever it's getting brighter at the end of the week and I am guessing that the hot weather will arrive with a wallop.

It was San Isidro, patron saint of agricultural workers,  last weekend which is where the village goes on a camino (walk) to the Romeria ground, drink beer, have a tractor contest, eat food and then bring the saint from his chapel there back to the village church. Unfortunately it rained, so the jollities were moved to the nave in the village and the poor saint was left in his chapel on his own. It's the custom for people who ride to ride their horses to the romeria ground, so instead they just rode them round the village a few times. I was giving classes so saw them go outside the window, and Ian heard the hooves from inside the house. I was surprised how many people ride horses. It's not something we see a lot of, but what appeared to be half the village traipsed by on horseback.

I was going to buy some plants for the back yard, including a little tree to plant where we put Anubis, but the rain rather put pay to that (we actually got to the garden center but decided it was too rainy to go outside - it was 'proper extremaduran rain'. Perhaps I'll try again this weekend!

Farewell Anubis

It seems like such a long time since we've lost one of the household, but sadly Anubis' illness became too much today and she was put to sleep.

She'd been through a cycle of deteriorating and then recovering with intensive feeding and injected fluids twice last year. She never really fully recovered, though she gained a lot of weight both times.

Over the last few weeks the downward part of the cycle had started again and we'd decided to try and get her through it again with a programme of feeding her up. It hadn't been as successful this time and after a vet visit on Friday, we also started injecting fluids. While she looked stronger over the weekend, she went quite sharply downhill yesterday and showed no sign of rallying today.

It's never easy losing one of the cats or dogs, but it never seems right when they're still young. Anubis was delivered to us by some of Kate's students when she was still a kitten. They'd found her lost and after failing to find anyone nearby who'd lost a cat decided we were the obvious destination. That's less than three years ago now and she was a skinny little thing to start with.

She seemed horrified at first to find herself in a house filled with dogs. I think it took her less than 48 hours to start punching Rosie and demanding that canines always backed out of the room when leaving her presence and absolutely never made direct eye contact, unless invited to do so. The invite would be a punch.

As with them all, we were fortunate to enjoy her company, even for the short time that it was.