A bit of sad news

One of our lovely Springers that we left in England has had to be put down. Poor Lucy was living with La D’s son (she was really his dog) and his dog Harley, also a Springer. She was getting on in age but she was a game old bird up to the end. She will be missed by all of you who knew her. Still she is up in dog Nirvana playing with Maisie and Jazz. She had a lovely life.

Visitor Report

We have a had a great time with the “boys”. Bert is very enamoured with them. We took him to the airport to meet my youngest. He was all over him like a fake leopard skin leotard – I thank my second son for this description. People were looking and smiling at this huge white dog fussing over this tall blond boy. It was a great sight.
We didn’t take him to the airport a week later to meet no. three son as the boys wanted to stop off and buy a football to knock around, which they did.
Now, I did say that it was quite warm at the moment but they thought I was just fussing. I reckon they must have played with the football all of 27 minutes.
We have had some good walks with the dog and a few trips to the beach. The water is just fantastic. Lots of playing with bats and ball, Frisbee, etc., etc..
The first week was set apart from the second in that my youngest was quite happy getting up around 10:00, but when his brother came, that went back to about midday. Still it allowed us to get on and do some chores and work.
The weather was always pretty warm but there was a bit of rain – see the next section – but it was great at the beach.
We thoroughly enjoyed having them over and look forward to seeing them over here again as soon as we can.

Rain? No, Tempest

Last Sunday it was my turn to get up and see to the dog. As I was lying in bed contemplating my duty, I heard a few drops of rain on the shutters.
“I wonder if we left anything outside last night?” I said to myself.
I got up pulled on a pair of boxers – well you never know who might be passing by, I had to make myself a little decent – and hurried outside and sure enough there were a few things on the table. I quickly picked them up as the rain started to get a bit heavier. By the time I got back inside the heavens had opened. But the worst bit was that the wind was picking up and the rain was flying all over the place. I have never seen anything like it actually. Then the thunder and lightening began. You know the old saying that if you start counting in seconds after seeing lightening until you hear the thunder, it will tell you how many miles the lightening is, or was. Well this time they were concurrent. The noise of the claps of thunder was just immense. It seemed as though the air was being shaken.
By this time. La D was up, looking slightly concerned. Bert was looking at us as though he was thinking, “What’s wrong with you two? Never seen a bit of thunder and lightening before?”
Then youngest son appeared and enjoyed the natural firework display.
Then the rain suddenly became even stronger and there was a loud crumpling noise.
“Oh no! Look at the gazebo!” La D exclaimed.
A large gust had just picked the gazebo up, ripped it out of the brick weights I had put in place on the uprights, and thrown it into a corner against one of the Olives – the one that Bert uses as his little play area, where all his outside toys are scattered. The wind kept tugging at the canvas and at one point we were getting very worried that it was going to have another bit of a journey into our neighbours garden, but fortunately our fears did not materialise. You can see from the photos how bad it was. Ina few places the metal was actually broken in two.


























I do hope that this was very much a one off.


Unfortunately there was one fatality from the “stormette”. I promise you this was not posed, this is just as we found it.



Of course at this time of year, we are totally lost without some form of shade from the sun and we have had to buy another gazebo. Not something we had budgeted for at all, but there was nothing we could do about it.


The vegetables took a bit of a hammering, especially the courgettes, but the big leaves soon bounced back. La D had actually did some more tying up on the tomatoes the previous day, so they were fine.
Of the course the rain and the sun have a fantastic effect on the rate of growth of the veg but I am not sure we really need such large quantities of water delivered from the sky with quite the frequency we have been having. Hopefully we are in for a bit of quiet weather now, but we will have to see.

Ciao, mantenere la fede