Four years

Four years have passed since we moved into our house here in Villalobos. In some ways - as we all say - it seems to be only yesterday when we packed up our things yet again and drove out in the drizzle to the countryside. It was such an exciting day...

The lovely table didn't survive.....it collapsed sometime last year.

The garden in its original wild state

Romy happy in the silly little doorway...now reformed to full height!

Four years on and there has been a lot of work. It's involved digging up existing parts, adding new bits, rather a lot of concrete and huge amounts of toil, mainly by FR but with help from the boys on the more back-breaking things!

There has been a lot of planting, building of walls and the placing of strategic electrical points in preparation for summer living....
Lots of trees....walnut, almond, cherry, nectarine, plum, pear,,,,

There's still a lot to do but FR's vision is taking place. I keep putting bulbs every year - slowly but surely our garden is starting to bloom.

I don't have a lot of time for gardening 'proper' but Mateo is a good helper and a brilliant weeder...I'm looking forward to getting the front of the house done...it's still the original ugly concrete that was here when we moved in. In time, it will be a beautiful terrace and additional living space, with furniture and plants and nice things. In time. 

And today, I have just taken a walk down memory lane as I dropped Romy off at her friend's house, which is the house we lived in before we moved here! It's such a beautiful day that I decided to do my old, favourite walk (though sadly without my favourite little white ball of fur that was Darwin....) up through the pine trees to La Mota, glad that there was no one around to hear my panting and puffing as I plodded up the steep hill. About halfway up, I heard a band playing. Practising for Semana Santa. It was lovely to listen and as I got to the top, I could see that they were rehearsing carrying the platforms that in a couple of weeks will be topped with figures of Christ, the (various) Virgins, plus donkeys, flowers, other figures - making them very heavy indeed. Today though, from an onlooker's point of view, it looked like a large table with about 20 people underneath it, who from time to time, lifted it up onto their shoulders and 'processed' a distance to the music, then stopping for a break. 

The glorious view from the top towards the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the distance. The playground is new. 

As is this 'recontstructed', in a wonderfully minimal sense, church at the foot of La Mota. 

It really was a gloriously bright and sunny day on Sunday.

My photo is embarrassingly bad - I didn't manage to capture the 'table' or really even the people underneath - and you can't see the band that was just around the corner...I felt a little rude taking photos of a rehearsal. Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered at all!

Anyway - it was a slightly comical sight but will be impressive in a week or so from now once the processions start.

Four years ago, blogging was an integral part of my life. I could hardly carry out any activity without thinking how my blog post would accompany its description. Nowadays, I rarely write and rarely read blogs....and with a few notable exceptions, I think many of my blogging friends must feel a bit the same. It's too easy now to upload a photo to Facebook or Instagram and be done with it. I also have less free time than I had for writing. My free time is usually spent drawing my Zentangles. I am more addicted to this than ever! Partly, this is because every Friday evening, since last October, I have been sharing my passion with a class of, mainly, women in the Women's Association that I am a member of. It started out as the usual sharing of different skills, but very quickly after I did some Zentangle drawing for them, there is now huge enthusiasm and more than a little talent amongst this group and I'm going to show a little of our work here. 'Being Here', for me, is about being part of the town I live in and apart from my children, Zentangle is a thing that has brought me more into the community than almost anything else. It's important to say that I am NOT a certified Zentangle teacher ....yet! I am so determined that one day I will be so for now, we say we enjoy tangling. In Spanish, all those consonants together means that Zentangle is a very difficult word to say!

Our classes are informal and just for fun and we practice different patterns.
Outside the class, people also tangle - and bring in their various artistic endeavours each week. And each week, they are more impressive.

Note, for example, the beautifully decorated box on the right - absolutely stunning work by Aurora. You can see some of her 'practice' work, albeit a bit blurred, in the notebook she's working in.
She's really very good.

This is a final set of tiles, done in the last half an hour of the class. There is a peace and tranquillity that descends at this time that is incredible. A room full of women - Spanish women for the main - and silence. Beautiful, eloquent silence as we slip into a Zen state of concentration and creativity.

And this is in my English teaching classroom - sometimes the drawing creeps into an English lesson. I have one group of young teenage girls and it's a special treat for us all when we have a lesson devoted to the language of Zentangle!























And whilst I started off this post by saying that it seems like only yesterday that we moved house, looking back now, and seeing how life has changed and developed in these four years...it seems like we have done a lot and moved on even more, not forgetting those we have lost.

Life has changed in many ways for us all. What were you doing four years ago?

Axxx

Lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

Yes, the song sung by Nat King Cole that I remember so vividly from my childhood. His voice, so easy, so hypnotic and smooth was one that my father, in particular, loved to listen to. My dad was not musical but I have two clear memories that relate him to the music he obviously loved and that we often heard at home when I was young - up to me being about 8, after which the fish and chip shop they bought and worked in wore my parents out to a frazzle and left them little time for listening.

The first of these memories is the singing of Nat King Cole. We had only a couple of his records but they were played a lot and I knew them all. At the time, I wasn't a fan of any of them, apart from the title of this post - which I thought was great fun and I loved those three rhyming words - lazy, hazy and crazy. The second memory is his love of Mario Lanza and his permanent regret that he missed going to a concert by him as he had an ear infection. I've done a bit of research and I think this must have been the concert in Sheffield in 1957. It would have been amazing and most memorable, I am sure. However, I never really grew very attached to this voice, although his power is undeniable.

Nat King Cole, however, has, in the intervening years, become utterly irresistible for me and I love just about everything he sings.

All this is totally irrelevant preamble - because this is my blog - to sharing a few photos and thoughts from our home and lives during these incredibly hot weeks we've been having. I know it hasn't been the same everywhere - some of you have been feeling damp or chilly at times - but it's been so very hot here for so long that I cannot remember what it's like to get up and not see bright blue sky and know that the temperature is going to be well into the 30s.

So - what do we do all day? Well, I have had a couple of weeks where I've been up early and off to work before the sun really starts to hit. It's been fantastic to arrive home and have a dip in the pool - even the little plastic one that we are still using. But the afternoons are when we have to have all the windows closed to keep the sun out, stay as cool as possible indoors and basically wait until around 7 or 8pm before we can start to do anything useful.... Afternoons here in Andalucia are for eating a very late lunch, watching silly films, having a siesta and probably doing some drawing.

Here are some of my Mandala/Zendalas - apologies if you've already seen these posted on Facebook but on here for posterity, or as long as there's a web and because I scanned some of them so the colours are truer to real life. A mandala is a circular drawing, often done in sand or rice, the process of creating it is partly spiritual and partly meditative. A Zendala is a combination of the circular format and the use of specific Zentangle patterns. I am absolutely hooked on creating these at the moment and can confirm that they really do focus the mind and help relaxation and concentration.

I had to laugh recently as I have another blog, Annie's Tangles, where I usually post all my drawings, Zentangles and challenge entries. I had a comment left on one of my posts from a blogging friend from this blog, who'd popped over for a look. I laughed because she said she thought I was speaking a strange language and was there a glossary? And looking at my other blog from a non-tangling point of view, I absolutely understand how she might have wondered what on earth we were all on about! Annie, for your information, it definitely takes a while to get to know all the right words, descriptions and technical terms...but hope you liked what you saw!

This was the first one I did and it took me ages because my usual pens didn't like drawing on top of the acrylic paint. I also wasn't sure what to do about the bit of canvas that the zendala didn't 'fit' - it being round and the canvas being rectangle. I decided to leave it as it was.

Then I found a canvas that I'd had for a while that was square. It is actually quite white in real life but as the canvas is 50 by 50cms it was too big to go in the scanner, so this is a photograph, done without any real photographic help - ie. taken on my phone in the kitchen! I also tried using a permanent marker, rather than my special Zentangle pens, plus white and gold gel pens . It is very finely detailed and quite pretty, I think.

Then I went and bought a couple of smaller canvases - 20 by 20cms - and prepainted them and I got on quite a roll....

I ran it through a Photo Editing programme to put the frame round it - but the scanner reproduced the colours really well - this is pretty much how it looks. What has impressed me is that I started with just three concentric circles in yellow, green and blue. The patterning makes it look more complicated than it really is. 

In this one, I painted and blended related colours - yellow/orange, yellow/green, green/blue, blue/red and red/orange on the canvas to begin with. Then I added a Zentangle 'frame' which you can see around the edge before doing a Zendala starting from the middle and moving outwards. 

And then, utterly inspired by colour, I decided to add some to a tangle I did quite a while ago, just for practice. Here it is in a photo edited frame. I have decided to go and get them framed in town and then I shall put them somewhere in my bedroom and enjoy looking at them.

OK - enough about drawing, painting and Zentangle....or is it????

There are three of mine just about visible in the sea...

Last week, we went to the beach for the day - all together - and decided to go left at the coast, rather than the usual right. We ended up in a lovely place called Calahonda - or rather a little area just before Calahonda called, very appropriately, La Perla de Andalucia - where the beach was clean and long and quiet and the sea was divine.

We wanted a pebbly beach as we had a plan....and the pebbles were spectacular - smooth, round, lots of white ones, lots of sparkly ones. Perfect pebbles.


I had a couple of pens with me, of course, and so now, someone sometime will probably find a smooth, round Zentangled pebble!

During the course of the day, we gathered three big bags of pebbles to put in the garden. However, when we got home and unloaded them, we only filled a quarter of the space - so we have to go back at least another three times!

And after a day on the beach, what did our children do when they got home? Went in the pool! I swear they'll grow fins and flippers before long.....

And our garden? We're definitely learning to live with the ugly floor. We have to, so we are doing. I bought some little mosaic solar lights and love them so much that each evening, at about 9.45, I go outside to count them all as they light up.

A close up of the colours and patterns - bought from Amazon, of course - and Amazon UK at that. How can it be that they are cheaper and the postage is less from there than buying them from Amazon Spain?? And not a bit less but a lot less!

I have them lined up along the terrace and also all around the curved part opposite and they do look lovely, although difficult to photograph with my phone. I may try and get some better shots with my proper camera - if I can remember how to use that... I'm very out of practice.

A few people around, 
but a quiet Paseo de los Alamos.

Did I say 'lazy'? Well, a bit of that, but quite a lot of 'crazy' too. We've had visits and sleepovers and Etnosur in the past couple of weeks. Etnosur, a big music festival held every year in Alcala la Real, seemed more subdued this year. Many local residents leave the town during this weekend but many others have opened their doors in the morning to find someone asleep  or cooking their breakfast on the doorstep...and perhaps have got a bit fed up of finding evidence of a lack of toilet facilities outside the houses. For the first time this year, a lot of wire fencing went up to protect park areas and streets from the visitors who come in camper vans or on the bus and doss down anywhere. They have been directed to designated parts of the town instead - but on the morning and evening when I went into town, the places that are usually packed with people, were very empty.

The shops and stalls around the edge of the park were also fewer than usual and without much custom.

The fountain is always a fun place to go
 and these are not locals, but there aren't many there.

The music was apparently quite good. Mateo went on Saturday night and was out all night. He said there was a real mixture of styles, including rock and African and he enjoyed it. However, we got there at about 2am, with Romy, Ruy, Jasmine and Isabel and there was some really awful music that we didn't like at all. This year, as usual, on the Friday night, we'd heard the distant sound of music in Villalobos. But the organisers had changed to position of the stage to face away from the town, instead of towards it and I was amazed as we walked down from the Paseo de los Alamos, at the top end of town, to the stage area as we simply couldn't hear anything at all! It must be such a relief for the local residents - it's one thing to have a free concert in town, but to not get away from it is quite stressful. I couldn't believe the difference it made. Wonder why it has taken 18 years for someone to think of this solution?

And so the summer continues and the 'hazy' comes from the rolling of one day into the next and then one week into the next. The children have already had one month of holiday - another six weeks to go. There are plans, not quite in place but in mind, to send the children up to their grandparents in Valladolid at the beginning of August, but first, there's the Medieval Festival at La Mota, here in Alcala this weekend and this year, our neighbour, Sergio, has succeeded in convincing the local council that an Archery competition is just what is needed to add authenticity to the event. So he and Ruy will be donning their costumes and taking on all comers...although actually, I have no idea what is planned. Maybe it will be a proper competition and maybe it will be the chance for visitors to fire a few arrows themselves. I will report back! Should be fun either way. Do come along if you're in the area, won't you? There is always some good fun activities for the children - last year organised by a friend of ours - and the food is excellent. And there could hardly be a better setting than the wonderful fortress castle in our historic town.  If you go in costume, it's free entry too!

A photo taken from a previous event that I found on the internet.

So - lazy, hazy or crazy - we definitely feel like it's summer at the moment.
What's the weather like where you are?

Melting point

There's a heat wave or three hitting Europe at the moment - if you didn't already know.

Captured by a friend of ours 

We've been on yellow and red alert in this area for the past two weeks and now there are several serious forest fires in Jaen and neighbouring provinces.

...not far from where he was holidaying

About 116 degrees F...

Record highs have been hit this month and on the date/weather displays in cities like Cordoba and Sevilla, there have been figures that seem impossible.  Suffocating.









Here in Villalobos, it's been around 38 degrees C (or 100 degrees F) most afternoons and the nights have remained quite hot until the very early hours of the morning. Sleep is easiest in the afternoons in our cool, thick-walled house. With the fan on. Fortunately, we haven't had to use air-conditioning but the pisos in the town will definitely have needed theirs on almost non-stop to keep the heat at bay.

It hasn't hindered the amazing Miguel and his little team from battling on at our house. FR had eventually arrived at a point in the garden where we could arrange to have a proper floor put down. Masses and masses of work he's put in over the past year - and at times, I have been guilty of wondering what the heck he was doing, (yes, I admit it) but now, the method in his ways are clearly visible. We're going to have a fantastic garden...

As yet, it's not quite finished. In this searing heat, Miguel has been arranging the pouring of concrete across the prepared areas, colouring it with powders and then stamping patterns on it. I will share a couple of the photos as things are - the 'final' photos will follow next week. ('Final' because as you will see, there is still plenty for us to do to finish off what we've started here....)

Trapped indoors as I took this photo....the first section going down.
FR keeping his beady eye on things!

View from Ruy's bedroom window of the area that was next in line for a cemented layer.
(Why is it in black and white, I wonder?)

With the colours mixed but not finished yet.....

Still impossible to imagine the finished look, though I guess it will be a sort of random mix of these two colours.....

There was a bit of an issue about the colours....this colour here is 'Crema' - although I swear to all and sundry that we finally chose a colour called 'Corcho', which is 'cork', I wanted it a bit darker and more neutral than I thought the Crema colour would be, so when I came home and saw this, I had a mini-apoplectic fit! However, it was already done and as it's going to end up different from its 'naked' state here, I am sure it will be fine - and if not, then SO much better than the way it was before! It won't be either grey OR sand-coloured when it is finished.

The colour in front of the door is a bit warmer but we didn't want the whole garden a warm colour - rather one that wouldn't emphasis the heat!

But my, how the men have worked. From 7am until around 12, with the temperature rising above 30C before 9am. It's going to make such a difference to our house and I can hardly wait to see it when they have put the resin coat down and then power-washed off all the excess coloured powders. But I have to wait until Monday!!

Then, the plan is to put out the small pool that we had last year and the year before, in its usual place. In the autumn, in good time this year, FR will finalise the arrangements for a bigger pool for the coming year. Now we have decided on its situation and the land around it is prepared and flat. It will be further away from the house, but takes advantage of the huge amount of land that we have and as yet don't really make use of. Slowly, slowly...we will get there.

And, at risk of making this a much longer post than I intended, I just want to mention that last week, my darling husband reached the ripe old age of 50. We celebrated in the most muted style imaginable with just a good dinner, a bottle of cider and a bit of Zentangle.

A joint effort on a wine box with some of his favourites inside. 

And we had cake....


Romy may be looking more grown up these days, but I'm delighted to see that she is still just a big kid inside.




And as happens every year.....






One week later and it's Mateo's birthday!! This year, he has reached the dizzying heights of 17.
So proud of him....

He really wanted a motorbike, I know, but I made him a summer pudding instead.
I'm working on the motorbike idea....but not just yet.

And the heat is set to continue. With all the work reaching a point where we could stop and have a rest, I think the beach is calling....

The brave and the good set forth...Part one. The Dolmens of Antequera.

This will be a blog post in three parts. I have lots of photos and want to share the whole adventure with you but there's a lot to take in in one go!

A friend of ours runs an eco-tourism business. He's incredibly knowledgeable about nature, wildlife and birds and his guided tours combine education and information with photography, walking and birds. (Do check out the website - all the photos are by Juan Carlos - he's an incredible wildlife photographer!)
He often takes the school children on local rambles and they return with plants and notes and full of enthusiasm. Romy is really good friends with his son - they love playing together and Romy often spends weekends with the family even though she's now at another school.

I got a message last week from his wife to say that there would be a day trip to El Torcal near Antequera, which is inland Malaga. This is a natural park, formed by incredible rocks which rose up from the seabed many millions of years ago and which have eroded into weird and wonderful shapes, and showing the many distinct layers that went into creating them. Mateo went on a school trip there a few years ago and was deeply impressed, so we decided we should take the opportunity for a guided tour and go all together.

I booked our 5 seats and we made sure all homework and tasks were completed on Saturday and the packed lunches were made and ready to take - we had an early start on Sunday morning.

The weather forecast was poor...without doubt we were going to get some rain, but we were prepared for that and the trip set off in good spirits (- but without our guide's children and wife...by the time Tere had told everyone about the trip, she discovered all the seats were booked and there was no space left for her and the children! However, they'd been many times before so it wasn't the end of the world.)

Our first stop was to view some Dolmens, which were located just outside Antequera...next to an industrial estate, actually. Apparently, until around 10 years ago, these incredible relics were just part of the landscape, unmanaged or monitored and people could access them however and whenever they wanted. Now, there's a car park, the area is fenced and kept natural and there's a good visitor centre where you can see an informative video about how the Dolmens were possibly built. And then, you can actually go into them!
Despite being open to all and sundry all this time, there was no graffiti or obvious vandalism anywhere at all - apart from a few crosses carved into the entrance of one of them - but these had possibly been there for a good thousand years or so...

The first, discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, around 4000 years after its creation, faces east as is customary for dolmens. It's a long corridor-shaped dolmen with a small chamber at one end. Twice a year, at the Summer and Winter Solstice, the sun shines directly along this corridor to reach the chamber at the end. The stones, despite their huge size, fit carefully together...goodness knows how this was achieved.

Surrounded by wild flowers.

The second dolmen we visited, known as the Dolmen of Menga, is actually considered to be the largest structure of its type in Europe and is definitely impressive.

When it was discovered in the 19th century, many hundreds of skeletons were discovered inside.



What makes this more interesting is that instead of facing east, as dolmens usually do, it faces directly towards a most fascinating geological feature of the landscape. Check out the photo below and then look at the closer version that I managed to get..as the clouds and the rain began to close in on us!

Observe the large mountain in the middle of the photo - then look at it again in the next photo....

Does it not look rather like someone's profile? Mother Earth asleep, perhaps?

Well, this is probably what the ancient people thought - I could be convinced myself. It is incredible, although the more common name is 'El Indio' nowadays, as it does look rather like some American Indian Chief on the horizon.

Entrance to the Dolmen...big stones!

Inside - 25 metres long.

More big stones....

The well was discovered some years ago and although it's not know whether the prehistoric people knew about it, it was clearly used, as there are footholds carved into the sides. The well is the same depth as the dolmen is long....is this a coincidence??

View of Mother Earth rock from the entrance. 

 And as we emerged from the tomb, it began to rain....

The flowers smelt amazing

Umbrellas went up - the skies darkened.

And were delightful to look at.

 And we climbed back onto our bus.......more in Part Two!!

On the crest

I have always thought of my blog as a sort of diary and in my blog list, some of my very favourite bloggers have a similar approach. It means that how I feel or what is happening to me and where I go and what I do forms the focus of my posts. Sometimes things aren't always so good. Sometimes when things are not so good, I don't post. Sometimes when life is really busy, I don't have time to post. I haven't posted very much recently. And I haven't been overly busy....

But fortunately, the bad things pass and we often grown stronger as a result. 

And then not just good things happen, but really great things happen!

This week has been a great week...and I would like to share a few highlights.

Monday, FR, Ruy, Romy and I (leaving teenage son at home) set off for a day on the beach - the first this year!

We found a beautiful, uncrowded bay near Almuñecar, on the Granada coast. It was a hot but not too hot day and the sea looked incredibly inviting. But there were few people in the sea....we so hoped it wasn't a jellyfish invasion. Ruy was the first in and he didn't stay long. He reported that it was cold. Very cold. So Romy went...and she also came back and reported the same but then she and Ruy returned and went in again together. 

I was next....and oh my! It was as cold a water as I have ever been in!! This is the Mediterranean, remember, and it was as cold as the waters that come directly from the mountains. It was impossible. I managed up to waist high but couldn't, absolutely could NOT dip any further and the thought of getting my shoulders in was too much of a risk, so I retreated. FR managed up to his calves. 

The sea to himself....Ruy the brave

Apparently, the wind had changed a couple of days earlier and had brought the currents through the straits of Gibraltar and with it the cold, cold waters of the Atlantic. It made our last beach day at Scarborough seem like swimming in a warm bath....(which wasn't how we described it at the time!)

But gorgeous, it was. And Ruy and Romy had a happy hour in a hired canoe, which they enjoyed. 

Next highlight of this bright week...Sam and Dave back from Scotland!! Yes, three months have passed and they've embarked on and embraced their new lives, new jobs, new schools in what has been a sunny Scotland...but were so very glad to be back in Alcala - especially Sam. We met on Wednesday evening in the park, where Alcala had thoughtfully provided some great live music outside the beautiful library and every one was out and about and just happened to be passing to say hello. We had a lovely evening.

Then the next day, they came to us. As with all good friends, it was just as if they'd never been away and we had one of FR's memorable and initially spectacular barbecues. 

We had a naming ceremony for a small, unusual dog whose eyes light up when the sun goes down - a gift sent to me by Sam from Scotland. We weren't sure why at the time as he is, to say the least, a tad unusual, bordering on tacky but as Sam said, we think of her every evening as he lights up the garden! And she was right. His chosen name...by democratic election - managed excellently by Isobel - is Rocker. (Though for the life of me, I can't think why!)

We ate well, drank well, talked and talked and laughed a lot...(and cried a bit) and had a wonderful evening together. (And took some pretty rubbishy photos....but never mind!)

Looks like we weren't eating much - but believe me, we got through quite a lot!

And the fun didn't stop there. Last night, there was a Flamenco evening at the beautiful little square right at the top of Alcala la Real, overlooking the town and La Mota. So of course we were going! 

Amazing....

View from San Marcos ...

And yes, we met Sam, family and friends there...

A wonderful setting for a fantastic set of performances...

And the highlight of the evening for me was the performance of these two.....I cannot begin to describe the emotion and sensation they created - it's not that sort of blog....! Needless to say, they were very much appreciated by the audience and there was a lot of 'Olé's as they performed...a sign that a phrase, a sentiment and a musical delivery has really hit the spot. I even spontaneously 'Olé´d myself a couple of times...it just seemed to pop out of me!

My photo was a bit blurred so I used an app on my new tablet to give it some character....I like it!

SO, we end our week on a real crest. And I can cope with the downs in a realistic manner when the ups are so high. And I can also really enjoy the blogging bit too. And will be reading and catching up on all my lovely blogging friends' posts again very soon.....