Life in Culebrón

Not that I expected a marching band or anything but I did expect a bit more of an event. A queue of people waiting for the vaccination would have made it more memorable, serried ranks of desks each one attended by a little group of medical personnel all in purple gloves would have been good. But none of it. Yesterday I got a phone call on the landline. It was the local health centre and they gave me a time for an appointment today. I left home fifteen minutes before the set time. "I'm here for the jab," I said and I think the person on the door already knew my name rather than reading my name from the health card she asked to see. No temperature check or anything. I was taken to a chair in the corridor, where people normally wait to see the doctors, and told to wait. I was given a couple of stapled bits of the sort of photocopy where the second copy was made from a copy and the third copy from the second copy and so on for forty generations. Stencil quality. The first she...

Over the weekend the wind blew lots of branches off our fig trees and uprooted a two metre high aloe vera plant that I've never much cared for. It took me three trips with the wheelbarrow to haul the remains away. At least the wind means that it's not quite as cold. When we first bought the house one of the few good things about it was the tree lined drive. We still have the trees despite the sport practised by so many visiting vans and lorries of reversing in to them - usually serially. In fact, rather as you would expect, they are somewhat taller now than when we first moved in. I was listening to the two big pointy ones nearest the house creaking in the wind. Culebrón, like Skegness, can be bracing.  The tree alongside the house is at least 10 metres tall, a plumber warned us against it. Roots under the house, blocking up the drains, he threatened. The tree a bit further away, possibly a larch, is even taller and heavier. They probably won't blow over but they might. I c...

This is a post about Covid. First though one of our cats has been missing for nearly three days. Bea, Beatriz, was the cat that I most expected to die of old age; a bit of a homebody, an easy going girl that gets/got on with all of the other cats. We have no idea where she is - gone walkabout for some reason, carried off by an eagle, poisoned by a wicked witch or squashed by a car. Nothing is too theoretically outrageous because we know nothing. Cats can disappear for days and then re-appear, that's what we're hoping for. Generally though ours don't come back. I know very little about Covid 19. I have no idea why it is that Spain has incredibly high case figures and Burundi, the Seychelles and Laos have next to none. I've heard lots of "explanations" as to why we're in such a pickle from regional pride and too much hugging to irresponsible young people and an inability to count. I've read how the Swedes handled it well and how the Swedes got it compl...