Another trim

I mentioned last week that I go for a haircut when the hair starts menacing my ears. It's much the same with the palm tree in our garden. Not that the palm has ears, at least I don't think it has, though it is a grass apparently and lots of grasses do have ears. No, in the case of the palm tree the time for a trim has come when the fronds start to scrape the roof of the mini as I park up. And that's what happened as we came home this afternoon.

Not being a traditionalist I don't shimmy up the tree using a rope harness nor do I lop off the fronds with a billhook instead it's a pruning saw and a set of stepladders -  more Tunbridge Wells than Elche but, then again, there aren't that many palms in Kent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2024 Population in Pinoso

Image
This was such an obvious blog, but one that had been published on the various Pinoso Town Hall websites, that I decided not to do it. Then, in casual conversation to Maggie I mentioned that it was easy to remember that there are now 345 Dutch and Belgian people in Pinoso (it's a topic of conversation amongst the Brits here, the obvious increase in the numbers of these two nationalities). She replied that she'd seen the article but not really taken it in. So, I decided to take the easy blog. Pinoso had, at the close of 2024 a population, according to the statistical department of Pinoso Town Hall, of 8,836 people or maybe 8,846 (as the various figures in their article don't quite add up) but we're only talking about 10 people so I've used the higher figure to work out the figures in the next two sentences. Of that population 6,758 are Spanish (76%) and 2,078 people are foreigners (24%). There are 3426 Spanish men, 1039 foreign men, 3342 Spanish women and 1039 foreign...
Read more

Submarines in the harbour

Image
Done it then. The prescribed treatment for my throat cancer and inflamed lymph nodes was three sessions of chemotherapy in Elda and thirty three sessions of radiotherapy in Alicante. Today I had the last session - everything finished. The medics tell me that I'll still feel sick, not be able to eat through my mouth, continue to have skin peeling off my neck, and whatnot, for a month or two yet. My next appointment with the oncologist isn't until 11 November (not at 11am) and the next time to speak to the ear nose and throat people who did the original biopsy isn't until mid December. But, for the moment I won't have to get up at 5.30 am to be ready for the ambulance to take me to Alicante every weekday and nobody is going to poison me with vile chemicals or bombard me with particles for a while. Of course nobody has suggested what will happen if it hasn't worked. I don't know whether they wade in with more of the same or if they give it up as a lost game and jus...
Read more

Trying to get an ID card

Image
In Spain you have to carry ID at all times. For Spanish nationals they have an identity card, the DNI and for foreigners there is a TIE, the Foreigner's Identity Card. EU citizens, within an EU country like Spain, are neither Nationals nor foreigners. This means that EU citizens have to carry the form of ID in use in their country. Now we Brits are a little odd in that we don't have an ID card so Brits are supposed to carry their passport with them at all times in case the "Competent Authority" needs to see it. As well as the need to carry identification EU citizens, living in Spain, have to register. When the scheme was first introduced the registration certificate was a bit of green A4 paper but later it became smaller and more card like, something like the old UK paper driving licence. A couple of weeks ago the UK left the European Union. Consequently the registration document became a bit of an anachronism for UK citizens. Nonetheless with the transitio...
Read more