Balancing act...

This is a difficult post to write. There are so very many things in the world that are dreadful. So many people in unimaginable situations and the outcome of some of their actions washed pitifully up on the shores of beaches. We are rightly outraged, horrified and terrified by the concept of people taking such desperate measures to get away from their homes.

As the photographs of little Aylan were being published, my family and I were on a different beach, in very different circumstances. I posted a photo on Facebook as we were driving home but I had to take it down again when I saw Aylan's body - the contrast seemed heartless. Like many others, I am hoping that the shocking image will continue to move people to action and that governments acknowledge that we are in a situation that needs a new response. Opinions are polarising and on hearing some of the negative ideas expressed in the media, I have been appalled and disbelieving. Fortunately, there are a lot of people who are doing things to help in big and little ways in many European countries. In posting my photos here today, I am at pains to say how much I recognise the differences in our situations and how I regret so very much that so many are suffering.

And we all have our own trials and tribulations to face and manage even though many of them pale into insignificance in comparison. However, the illness of a loved parent will always loom large in our lives. And right now, my dear, dear father-in-law is facing a gloomy future and probably not very much of a future either. FR went up to visit for a few days earlier this week and spoke to the doctors on Monday, together with his brother. The doctor didn't pull any punches from the sound of things and showed FR the x-rays and the spread of the cancer. The fact is, they are not sure quite how my father-in-law is still walking around, eating and breathing. And the good news is that to see him, he apparently looks quite well - he gets tired quickly and has a nasty night-time cough - but otherwise, he seems fine. We are dreading the day we find out he has pain somewhere...

Anyway, it was a beautiful afternoon and the children and I drove into Granada to meet FR and as we were getting to the end of summer, I decided we should take advantage of being halfway to the coast and that we should spend the rest of the day at our new favourite beach, Calahonda on the Costa Tropical. My plan was decided - collecting more pebbles to paint - and I had little intention of going in the sea. Last time we visited, it was freezing cold and most uninviting. However, when we arrived, Ruy and Romy - always first in - announced it was perfect. So we all swam that afternoon. And it really was glorious.

As well as collecting pebbles, I sat and built a few stone towers in a zen-sort of way. And then the children all joined in and I took some lovely photos of them. So please, enjoy with me, the pleasure of sunshine and stones. They are mindful pictures. We are mindful.

A small tower of balancing stones

Concentration

And more concentration

My various stone towers...

Very satisfying and calming to do

They did this for a good half an hour.....

And then today, FR shared this video with me on Facebook that shows how it's done really....

Please enjoy this - it is something that I find utterly hypnotic and beautiful. He also has a website called Gravity Glue which is worth a visit.

Body and mind bending

I know I've said it before, I never said I didn't repeat myself. I do. But here I go again...

Isn't the internet amazing!!

I logged onto my blog yesterday and as usual, had a look at my twirling globe to see where my visitors might be coming from...who was I virtually connected to. And someone was visiting from Woking. (Hello, if it's you from Woking reading this post!) It set my mind back to my University days when my circle of friends included a trombone player from Woking.

A thumbnail sketch...many weekends spent drinking, playing music, going out and more drinking often led to this friend sleeping on the sofa, floor or just against the wall of the house we shared then with four others. He was long-haired, bespectacled and bearded at the time and one of the most laconic and taciturn creatures who would suddenly burst into spontaneous and infection laughter. He drove a red 2 CV and we once met him and his girlfriend whilst on holiday in the north of Spain - by complete accident - and when he got out of the car to greet us, it was just as if we'd met in the local supermarket.

One of my overriding memories of him is going to Bognor Regis one summer's day. He and my ex had taken their euphoniums with them...as you do...and the pair of them waded out to sea, with their instruments and proceeded to amuse the promenaders with various renditions.They drew quite a crowd. I remember 'Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside' went down very well, but probably not everyone appreciated 'For those in peril on the sea' quite as much. I laughed until I cried. And am laughing now as I remember.

I didn't find many links when I googled him - as you do - (oh, don't you? I do!) but came across quite a lot of 'Upcott' references... his rather unusual surname. And then I found a photo of an Upcott family - and there was a clean-shaven, smiling friend! And a few of his sons and daughters...two of whom are WORLD CHAMPION ACROBATS!! Not just good acrobats, not just British Champions but both Edward and Alice are or have been World Champions. And both were in the group, Spelbound, that I now know won 'Britain's Got Talent' in 2010. Just take a look at this amazing young man - I can't believe half of what he does is physically possible!





I was able to contact his father and he wrote back very quickly - he has five children and lives just half a dozen miles away from where I used to live. I do vaguely remember that his shoulder used to dislocate very easily - I wonder whether this loose-jointedness in his children comes from him? I have never seen body control like Edward's before though. Do watch and be wowed.

This post is called body and mind bending. Well, I certainly can't and don't body bend very much these days but I've been bending my mind with a new thing I found (guess where...on the internet) called 'Zentangle' which takes doodling to another place entirely. I have always been a doodler and always done quite complicated patterns. But I haven't been doing it properly....not until this week. Now my head is full of wild and wonderful repeating patterns and no piece of paper is safe...in fact, I've even doodled on some nice flat stones I found in one of my collections and I gave Ruy a wonderful temporary doodled tattoo the other day.

So, what does serious doodling look like?

This...

I started top right and there are nine squares, which I completed from right to left, top to bottom and I think my last square, bottom left, is my favourite...

Well, I've finished bottling fruit and making jam. I had to do SOMETHING!!

How do you doodle?

The Cherry Orchard

Last week, as I read that the UK was having its first heatwave for absolutely ages, we were enduring the relatively chilly temperatures of about 17 degrees. As I dug out my thicker clothes and took my cardigan with me when I ventured out, I was put in mind of the old saying : 'Cast ne'er a clout til May is out', which made some sense to me when I lived in the notoriously fickle-weathered Pennine area of Yorkshire.

But here in Spain, there is a similar - nay even more prudent - saying - 'Hasta el 40 Mayo, no quites el sayo' - which means, 'until the 40th of May, don't take your coat off'.

Well, that makes it around the 9th or 10th June and it was pretty spot on.



This week, we've had temperatures of 36 degrees.
It's nearly killed off some of our new plants, which, because they went in rather late this year, haven't yet got themselves quite established.
We're holding out hope but there are a couple of trees that don't look too good.








I've had a week of feeling well below par myself, starting out with some sort of stomach bug which left me with chronic backache and a very stiff neck - though I'm really not sure how these two things are related. We are really lucky here in Alcala to have a wonderful masseuse at hand for all things painful. She's a most lovely English woman, married to a Dutchman, with many years experience in providing specialised treatment - often for sports injuries and to some pretty high-ranking sportsmen - when she lived in Majorca. (Go figure who.) She gave me some treatment yesterday and I felt so much better afterwards - I may have to go again next week too....

And I've been not 'bloglovin' recently. I've been concentrating on preparing students for their exams - indeed, those of them doing the Cambridge syllabus have now done the exams and I've no more classes with them. I've had some sleepless nights worrying (without any real reason) that if they don't pass it will be all my fault, though the other teacher and I have a pretty clear idea as to how it will go for each of them. But I'm obsessing a bit as my contact with them comes to an end.

I would have loved to have spent the last week of term having fun but tradition at the Academy has it that all the classes do exams in the last week. My youngest group have theirs on Monday and then, on their last day, after the first 20 minutes, their parents come in to see me to get their results and for me to give them their marks. I'd much rather sing songs and play games with them but they'll all be fine with the exam and we have all had a lot of fun this year - and goodness me, I'm very proud of them!

And on Friday - when the school term ends - a whole group of students taking the Trinity Syllabus have their Oral exam. What an end to the year. I'm very hopeful that some of them will get really good results and the nice thing is that we will know by the end of the day, which of them have passed. This  has been a lovely syllabus to teach, but as this is the first time the Academy has offered it - and the first time that Toni and I have taught it - there has been an enormous amount of work for us to do to ensure we've got it right. We still have a mountain of paperwork to complete before the end of Wednesday - so I have been a bit preoccupied. So much so that I've hardly read any blogs - so apologies if I've missed any of your lovely posts.

Now then, this post was going to be about our wonderful neighbour, Sergio. I wonder if I've already gone on too much about other things to start with him now? Especially as it's half-past midnight. Oh, what the heck - I'm here and I'm typing and the children are upstairs watching 'The Fellowship of the Ring' - again - and FR is working on the other computer.

Sergio lives just a little further along the road from our house, with his aged parents. He is the fount of all knowledge and I am so very glad we have got to know him.

Our relationship began early on - he walks his three handsome and huge dogs every day and passes all around the village, thus getting to know all the gossip. He has small pieces of land in various different places around the village, which seems the usual thing around here, so he pops up unexpectedly in front of us on nearly all our walks.

He calls us up to insist we come for a walk just now because the light is perfect to appreciate the views. He dragged FR off to buy tomato and pepper plants to put on his land as we'd decided not to plant on our land this year (lack of water and fencing - the latter a problem as the sheep and goats pass over our land - they've already eaten the potatoes we planted there!) He made the children go and pick wild strawberries the other day.




He is wonderful to talk to because he knows so much - I've found myself having conversations with him about things from archery (he has a hunting bow) to vets (he knows them all and which are the best). He is also full of advice - from cars to chorizo - even which dog food provides the best consistency of dog poo...!

My vocabulary has increased remarkably since I met Sergio.

Last week, he took FR and the children off to pick cherries from his cherry field - I say field as it isn't an orchard in that quintessentially 'English' orchard way - though I guess orchard would do really.
This year has been dreadful for the cherries as there was a late frost and so there is not a lot of fruit. He told us this week that it's not worth harvesting them for sale, so we should go and take what we want.






So this evening, we did just that.

We filled our bags and ate cherries from the branches.

It was clear that there was a problem this year as some trees had no fruit at all - but the odd one or two was laden and delicious.








It was no surprise when Sergio suddenly turned up on his motorbike. He told us the cherries would be even better in a couple of days but that it was due to rain on Tuesday and if it did, then the cherries would be ruined.

I wouldn't argue with Sergio - he's always right. I should have asked him if it was a cherry orchard, I guess. I will do that.

Fruits of my labour

Been busy, busy, busy these past few days. We'd already stopped on our way back from a lovely day out in Valdepenas de Jaen and picked several bags of green figs, which I turned into our favourite fig and orange jam with walnuts. And there's only one jar of that left...it is so delicious.


And on a walk in the countryside, we found a tree of plums - (a plum tree) - which were too sour to eat so I made a sweet and sour sauce to eat with pork. That's sitting for a month to develop its flavour.

Then we had the rain of tomatoes and pepinos (cucumber) from all sides - our landlord, our next door neighbour and our ex-next-piso neighbour all showering their fruits upon us. So we salsa'd and passata'd and tzatziki'd and gazpacho'd and chopped and ate and froze our welcome and unexpected bounty.


 
Then two weeks ago, Greet, a Dutch lady who has joined my Spanish conversation class, brought me a big bag of gorgeous purple figs - glut from her many trees. We ate a lot of them almost straight from the bag- then we ate some more with honey or mixed with greek yogurt and when we'd had our fill, I froze several handy bags and with the rest I made a spicy fig jam.

And we're already part way down that jar.









And last week, Carol, also a conversation class member, brought me bags of pears - so many that she actually apologised. I shared them with several other people who fancied a couple of kilos but still had to make two trips to get them all home.

This week I have been mostly peeling pears.

And I found this wonderful recipe for Belgian Pears which is basically sugar, white wine vinegar and pears but the chemical mix and the combination of the ingredients is pure magic! They are out-of-this-world delicious and I know they are not going to last long...


Our new shelves are now bearing the weight of all this wonderful - almost free - food. It is almost (but not quite) as good as making chocolates.....

I am so very grateful for all generosity of everyone around here. I shall be handing out a few of these jars as tangible thanks and that feels good!