August, and the heat is on

Holidaytime. Even this blog needs one, so we will be on the famous Gibraltar summer hours during August when there will be fewer posts on here and on Clouds. I will try and keep up to your blogs though and comment as and when I can.

I’ll be trying to finish off the manual import of the Land Rover posts from blogger to wordpress, and Pippa will be off to visit some of his pals (for those of you with dogblogs). I may even tidy up my pages on here. May.

In the meantime a quick thanks to Robin, of Bringing Europe Home who gave me an Illuminating Blogger Award. Judging by some of the comments where people say they have learned information about Gib and Spain, that seems an appropriate choice.

Robin’s blog is worth a visit, she lives in Georgia, USA, and has lived in Europe so writes about Europe from an American perspective. Always interesting to see our home through someone else’s eyes. She also writes about America too so there is a good variety of material in her posts.

If you are an awardy-type person, visit the link here for the rules and the candle pic. If you are a regular visitor to my blog, please consider yourself duly awarded.

In the meantime, a quick illuminating look at countries that visit this blog.

Regular readers and commenters are unsurprisingly from English speaking nations – Australia, Canada, South Africa, UK and USA. People from Gibraltar also visit, but being a small place, they never comment! Within Europe, Belgium, Italy and Spain come to mind and elsewhere Indian and Sri Lankan bloggers visit too. All have their own WP blogs.

The most visitors by far come from the UK, followed by the USA, and then Canada, Spain and Australia. For anyone interested in stats, this is interesting because it reflects a significant difference to my blogger figures which showed visitors were predominantly from the US. With blogger, a lot of my visitors came from the dogblog network – of whom the majority were American. On wordpress, I’ve more or less started from scratch with visitors, apart from a tiny handful of previous bloggers. Of course I’ve now forgotten how I found you all/you found me!

Looking at today (1 Aug to be pedantic as I started this yesterday), in the first twelve hours between midnight and noon, I’ve got:

Maryland, USA
Galicia, Spaiin
Stirling, UK
Ohio, USA
Bristol, UK
Veracruz, Mexico
Virginia, USA
Bath, UK
Enfield, UK
London, UK
Colombo, Sri Lanka

Yesterday (ie 31 July), I had:

Oppland, Norway
Maine, USA
Florida, USA
Michigan, USA
Quebec, Canada
London, UK
Izmir, Turkey
Texas, USA
California, USA
Victoria, Australia
British Columbia, Canada
Queensland, Australia
Tasmania, Australia
New Brunswick, Canada
Maryland, USA

Every day is different, and these are non-posting days. Days when a post is published, and the subsequent day obviously show a significant change.

The detail is taken from statcounter rather than wordpress, as it gives more of a breakdown on location. It actually gives cities but I left those out. Another interesting difference between blogger and wordpress is that statcounter can’t provide the same level of analysis on wp as it does on blogger for search engines and keyword activity. Sadly.

What about search terms? Well there are two categories at the top of the list and they are food and Gibraltar election results 2011.

Top posts and pages? Yesterday it was Me? You want to know about me? which goes to prove how important the about page is, but I’ve been pipped by one view today by Your questions about Gib. Those two pages are well ahead of the rest. But some other of my pages are also popular – Blogs I visit, My other blogs, and Places I have lived. Which suggests that the more information we write about ourselves, the more people will read!

As for posts – Gib territorial waters, Gib election result 2011 (unsurprising given the previous search engine result), 2011 – a review, Sofia the artist, Queen’s birthday parade, Lets hear it for Juan Carlos, and Summer hours in Gib received the most visits.

And although pages with high traffic don’t always attract comments – a lot of the ones mentioned above, also received the most comments. I’d put that down to regular readership whereas the passing trade via search engines rarely comments.

I’ve taken that info from the wp stats. While they are all interesting, I think they provide an interesting snapshot but not worth getting hung up about or shaping your blog around.

A couple of summery pix.

Summer salad of red chard, leaves out of the garden, radish, green onion.

Red and green salad

Gibraltar (and La Linea at Gib’s feet) rising out of the heat haze.

Gibraltar from El Higueron

Current temperature today forecast to be 35 degrees, the same in Málaga and 38 degrees in Marbella. At just after 9am it’s already 27 degrees here in sunny Gib.

Enjoy your summer wherever you are. And thanks once more for all your visits and interesting comments.

ETA I knew there was something else I wanted to write about.

Congratulations to rowers Helen Glover and Heather Stanning on winning Britain’s first gold at the Olympics. Well done. Aus and NZ came second and third and it is always difficult beating them at water sports.

And Tour de France champion Bradley Wiggins took gold in the men’s cycling time trial. What a great year for you Bradley, and some well deserved wins.

An interesting link on the BBC website shows he now tops the list of British athletes with the most Olympic medals (seven), although not the most golds – Sir Steve Redgrave has five and a bronze for rowing.

What was interesting about the list was the events in which people won between four and seven medals (minimum of three golds) and they were cycling and water sports. Well, I thought it was interesting as they happen to be sports that interest me :D

BBC link here. [Thanks to V for alerting me to it]

Wordy Wednesday

Or maybe, Weary Wednesday?

All that really means is, a bit of a round-up, with a feeble attempt at alliteration. And a sly dig at the Wordless Wednesday photo posts with no text that do the rounds, which always seems like an amazing cop-out, as there is no way you will get a wordless post from me.

So, on with the update.

Firstly thanks to everyone who has participated in my poll and to those who also took the time to comment about what you find interesting, that was great. It is still open, if you haven’t voted, you can find it in the March archive.

Secondly, there was an election for the Junta de Andalucía (Spain) at the weekend. That’s like a county council in the UK but with more powers. Or maybe the government of an Aus state or North American ones.

The current government of Spain is the Partido Popular. That equates to right wing. The left wing is the PSOE. Partido Socialista de Obrero Español. Or something like that. Spanish Socialist Workers Party – but it isn’t as lefty as it sounds.That sort of title in the UK would be left of communism.

Anyways, Andalucía is a hot bed of lefties. Something to do with poverty. So normally, any election for the Junta gets a resounding lefty majority.

But, Mariana Rajoy, and the PP were expecting success. In Andalucía? Where the unemployment rate is 31.3%? The national rate is 23%. And apparently a record among industrialised nations.

My source for this is Revolting Europe, a truly excellent blog. Don’t bother clicking on the link if you vote Tory and are happy in your cotton wool fluffy dream life, because this blog posts about dissatisfied workers, discrimination and other such annoying stuff. Just, sweep them all under the carpet, yes?

Out of 109 seats, the PP got 50, the PSOE got 47 seats and the United Left got 12 seats. For any other statistical people out there, Tony Gill’s post is interesting, it’s a great example of how you can interpret statistics any given way. That is not to criticise his post, which is perfectly factual, but you could use the same stats and make a totally different post. Have a read if you like that sort of thing.

Málaga Hoy (Málaga Today) is one of the Spanish dailies that I read from time to time. They give a breakdown of the eight provinces in Andalucía, so for example in Málaga province, there were 17 seats, of which the PP got 8, the PSOE 7 and the United Left parties got 2. The only change there compared with the previous election four years ago was that the PSOE dropped a seat to the United Left.

I also looked at the breakdown by municipality for Málaga province. Interestingly the coastal strip was appropriately coloured blue, ie the Partido Popular got most seats in those municipalities. But as soon as I looked at inland towns – little tourism, little agriculture, little construction, little anything really – the votes turned red (parched arid landscape?) for the PSOE. I was surprised to see that even Málaga city was PP, because normally cities tend to vote left.

This was the lowest turnout in Andalucía for twenty years, with 62% of the electorate voting. And although the PP actually got the highest percentage of votes – 1% more than the PSOE, the total percentage of voters who chose a left of centre party was higher. Hopefully the United Left and the PSOE will combina to form the next Junta de Andalucía.

Thirdly, apparently some labour reforms passed by the Spanish government last month are set to produce yet more unemployment to add to the Spanish figures. The reforms make it easier and cheaper to fire workers, so another 172,000 workers could be set to join the dole queue.

Spanish workers – and unemployed presumably too – have already marched in protest about these reforms. Tomorrow there is a general strike in Spain protesting about the reforms. Since Franco died in 1975 and democracy was restored, there have been five general strikes.

Spain, it seems is the next Greece. And yet, I keep reading idiotic comments on forums from people who want to come and live/work in Spain because it is nice and sunny and they want to learn Spanish and get a little job.

The Spanish economy and labour market also have an obvious effect on Gib. No jobs in Spain – let’s all shoot across the border and work in Gib. If we can. And if we can’t get a job on a firm, we’ll work on the black.

Fourthly, speaking of jobs, the other week I went to the job centre a day late. This was pointed out to me by the employment officer. I may be unemployed but I am not stupid and was well aware I was a day late.

‘Why was that?’ she asked.

Well really who gives a toss. It’s not as though I’m getting benefit. Should I ever get a job I may well be able to turn up for work on the right day at the right time. I have been known to do it in the distant past.

I didn’t say ‘So what, who cares?’

Instead, in an extremely whingey and dateless voice, accompanied by dateless look on face, I said ‘I forgot.’ Not a lot you can say to someone suffering temporary memory loss is there?

I do hope she gets a transfer to a different department. I can’t be doing with little Hitlers in the Job Centre.

Anyway, apart from the fact that there were no interesting jobs in there today, just yet more gaming ones all requiring gaming experience, it seems the system is changing. I now have to visit once a month.

Naturally, I couldn’t let this go. Why is it changing? Apparently it is something to do with Department of Social Security changes. ‘I don’t claim benefit,’ I said, ie I had no idea what those changes were. Still haven’t. Fruitless search on the internet to look for announcements although I did find a job to apply for.

‘What happens if I can’t make this date and time?’ I mean, it is a bit specific telling me to turn up at 10.45 on a Tuesday the whatever. I’m used to this flexible thing where you choose the day of the week to ‘sign/register’ and at whatever time in the morning you want. Usually just before it closes. And sit there happily reading your book for half an hour.

‘Well, the belief is, that if you are unemployed you should be able to attend then,’ she said. And then added quickly that as I wasn’t claiming benefits it did seem a bit odd.

Those of us who don’t work are busy people. We need to write blogs. Look for jobs. Shop, cook, iron, mop floors. Pay bills. So much to do, so little time.

And fifthly, a pictorial distraction – the WordPress photo challenge of the week is the word ‘through’, so here are a couple of pix to reflect ‘through’.

1) The pedestrian tunnel through Wellington Front which was restored recently.

2) The Dudley Ward tunnel on the eastern side of the Rock which was re-opened in 2010. You can now drive right round the Rock. This tunnel is not open to pedestrians however, moan, moan.

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3) The Churriana tunnel on the new Málaga bypass.

What do you enjoy reading on roughseas? – playing with polls

Always good to try out all the WordPress bells and whistles, so here is a poll for you all. To those of you who haven’t tried it, it is easy. Click on polls, click on create a poll, click on automatic account from polldaddy – and shazzam! you can start to play.

This one is based on the fact that on here, and on the dog’s blog, people (and dogs!) say they want to see and read more about Gibraltar, and Spain too.

Yet, looking at comments and visits, the most commented on posts are the most mundane topics – baked beans tops the list, followed by a walk to the shops. OK, I admit my walk to the shops is pretty scenic so I did get the chance to stick in some nice Gibpix. Interestingly after those two, my pretty serious post on International Women’s Day came third in the comments rankings.

But my busiest days (ie most visits received) were the posts about Commonwealth Day (and more recipes) and Not a drop to spare (the water being cut off :D). Now I accept that busiest days don’t necessarily mean people are just reading the main post of the day, eg on Commonwealth Day, just over half the views (55%) were on that particular post. Virtually the same percentage applies to the water post (53%).

Looking at the most commented on blog posts, the balance shifts a bit, and two thirds of the visits (68% and 63%) were on those particular posts (baked beans and shops). What does all that prove? Not really much, except you can tell I used to analyse statistics can’t you?

My only sensible conclusions are:
a) that people do like looking at pix of Gib/Spain and reading a bit about it, but what is there to comment on? (apart from supah post dahling)
b) everyone can comment about baked beans or whether we like shopping or not, it’s something most people have in common (apart from people who don’t do their own shopping or have never eaten baked beans)
c) I’m guessing, and this is why I have added a poll, that people actually like reading a mix of topics – I do when I visit other blogs, although I also like some of the ones that are single topic based. And maybe you like to get to know the blog owner?

With which I shall play by the rules today and tell you seven things about me that I was meant to do to accept one of those award thingies.

I am tall, slim, green-eyed and have brown hair. It was blond when I was a child. I lack my appendix and tonsils/adenoids.

There. Wasn’t that riveting? Bet you couldn’t have managed without knowing that today.

And, two blogs for the other part of the award. I’m only doing two a day, ‘cos I know you all don’t click on the links. These two aren’t on my blogroll although I do follow them.

This one is one of those photo a day blogs. Based in NSW, Aus, the author tends to take some great photos of her local surrounds, often sea or water shots of some type. Worth a look.

And moving swiftly around the world to Colorado, USA, for a totally different photoblog here. The author isn’t too keen on people (can’t blame him for that), so tends to photograph old trucks, old buildings, animals, nature – you get the idea. He has a dog so there are some dog photos too.

Don’t forget to play at my poll. You can click on as many options as you like – if I have set it up right. I hate the ones where you are only given one choice :( So click away :)

Two confessions, salad pots, and – skins

Or should that be true confessions??

Confession number one: I’m not really into these blogging awards. Over on blogger the dogblog community used to dish them out endlessly, and like a lot of things it seemed a) competitive and b) somewhat pointless competition. The dog invariably found more interesting things to bark about, and when he did remember to post, he never followed the rules.

Confession number two: It’s still nice to receive them though! Haha. What a hypocrite I am. Not receiving them is a bit like not being picked for team games at school and you wonder why no-one wants you. Now I’ve got two awards I feel like I’ve been picked for rounders and netball teams.

Without further ado, thanks to: EllaDee for the Versatile Blogger award and The Vegan Kat for the Liebster one.

Taking a leaf out of the dog’s book, I shall of course not follow the rules.

For the Versatile one, I’m supposed to tell you seven things about me. I tell you all loads of things about me every time I write. I’m sure you don’t want to know any more. I’m meant to list 20 blogs I follow. I don’t think so. Most people don’t click on links anyway. The Liebster one suggests listing five blogs that are your personal favourites. That’s a bit more like it.

I do like the fact that an award gives you an excuse to list a few decent blogs though, and I’m going to write why I like the ones I’m going to list. For a later post however. If I remember.

But if you do want to visit a couple of blogs, both Elladee’s and The Vegan Kat’s are great. Elladee has more than one blog (who doesn’t?) so you can flit between places, words, images and more. Kat’s is a food blog with some excellent recipes. You don’t need to be vegetarian or vegan to enjoy browsing around there.

As one of the awards was passed on to me by The Vegan Kat, it gives me another good excuse to sneak in a food post. Do I need an excuse, you may ask?

I used to loathe taking sandwiches to work for lunch. The availability of food at work was appalling and in the end, depending on commitments or whether there was a lunchtime meeting, I went home for something whenever I could.

Here in Gib Working Partner only gets half an hour for lunch and hasn’t got a chance of coming home, so it’s the sandwich run for him. I open the sandwich bar just after seven to start the prep. I figure if he is working nearly ten hours, the least I can do is make some decent food for him. (I used to get paid for making sandwiches in Sydney!)

The Spaniards he is working with take a full three course meal – olives, tortilla, casserole, fish, yoghurts, dessert etc etc etc half of which gets offered around or thrown away.

One day Partner was offered some olives and tortilla so naturally he accepted (he refused the fish). The next day I was ordered to include olives in a pot so he could reciprocate. I chucked in a bit of tomato, cucumber, and some cheese so he wouldn’t be too ashamed of my food prep abilities. In fact he didn’t have lunch with the same guy so to this day, I don’t think he’s got around to sharing his olives back.

But what has happened is, that every morning now needs a fancy salad pot, sometimes involving food prep the day before. The salad pot has become the focus, the sandwiches the mere accompaniments.

So, salad pot staples:

Black olives
Green olives
Capers
Dressing

*Tomato – cherry or normal size
*Cucumber
(*when organic ones are available)
any herbs or greens that I have kicking around – but not too many

The trick is finding ingredients that are easy enough to eat, and suitably tasty. Egg is a no-no because it falls apart. Beetroot stains everything a disgusting red (so it goes in the sandwiches instead, along with onions in red wine vinegar)

Salad pot extras:

Rice
Tofu
Pasta
Potatoes
Broad beans
Cauliflower
Roasted red pepper
Chick peas/haricot beans/butter beans etc

These don’t ALL go in together, needless to add. Or maybe I do need to add that!

So a tofu and rice dish in the evening provides enough left over to join the salad pot staples. Similarly pasta. Or the veg.

Last night I grilled a red pepper and peeled it, added garlic dressing, (oil, salt, garlic) and left it in the fridge overnight to absorb the flavours. This morning it was chopped up, and with some cauliflower from the evening meal, added to the olive and caper mix. There was also a tiny bit of rice left so that got used up too.

Roasted pepper, cauliflower, olives, capers and dressing

Still on the food theme, here is a bar in the midst of the New Harbours Industrial Estate that I forgot to include on my pub crawl. Don’t know what it is called. It’s only open when the estate is open, a bit like the bar next to the Coviran supermarket.

An oasis in the industrial desert?

It’s a nice leafy looking spot in the midst of trade centres and stores. A good contrast no less – contrast being The Daily Post photo challenge word this week. Spot the glimpse of the sea between the large building and the trees.

Busy busy busy

Finally, and only very vaguely related, I see sausage skin tights are back in fashion.

Back in my NHS days, I noticed one of my colleagues had some rather nice glossy tights. As she was tall, with long dark glossy hair, and long (glossy) shapely legs, I decided I must buy some of those tights.

All went well, I too had long glossy shapely legs from thenceforward, until one day I read a description that said they resembled sausage skins. I still have some stashed away in the drawer now, never worn after reading that horrid unkind article.

I watched these young women wandering up the street in front of me today with glossy legs, and horrors ! in American Tan too – what a vile combination. And they still looked like sausage skins. Luckily I didn’t take pix of them.

Update: Saving Sergeant Rex

Reblogged from Philosopher Mouse of the Hedge:

At 10, he's considered old. Rex is certainly experienced - and probably wise beyond his years. Certainly a disabled vet deserves something. His friend and former soldier-in-arms thinks so - and is willing to give him a forever home. But, no?

You have got to be kidding.

Does the military realize they are holding the equivalent of Bambi hostage?

Sergeant Rex is featured in the book "Sgt.

Read more… 366 more words

An update ...or rather, more info

Saving Sergeant Rex.

Reblogged from Clouds moving in:

I think this blog by Phil, Mouse of the Hedge, says it all.

I am not into internet petitions, or any petitions, as I think they rarely work. But I have signed this one, and I would encourage anyone else to do so too. You don't have to be in America - if I can sign from Gib, I reckon the rest of you can too.

Read more… 135 more words

For those of you who don't read my Clouds blog http://philosophermouseofthehedge.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/saving-sergeant-rex/ Seems I can only reblog once - and on a reblog from a different site, you lose the original. So either go over to Clouds or to Phil's post.

One more ….

A woman can never have too many blogs in my opinion.

So here is my new one.

Every picture tells one

NO!! It is not a photo blog as such, although there will be a photo on every post, apart from the initial intro one.

And to go with the randomly chosen pic, will be an anecdote to add some context.

That’s it. Enjoy.

Blog of the month

Been toying with the idea of a new blog for some time and actually started one up this weekend.

No, not yet another one in addition to existing ones but rather mothballing a couple and trying a new direction.

However, it seems a shame to resist the invitation from expat blog to be their blog of the month.

So – back in business for now…… as that’s rather an incentive to post again.

Christmas was spent in a wet Gibraltar, followed by a wet New Year break in Spain – although it fined up for New Year’s Day, and once back in Gib – a fine evening for the procession of the Three Kings on 5 Jan. Not having seen this before in Gib, it was a huge contrast to the simple one I’ve seen at our pueblo in Spain. Big extravagant floats, and a long cavalcade. Well worth watching.

Wintry, rainy, overcast, Gib

My festive dog

Kitchen table on New Year’s Eve – can recommend the Rioja

The village from the beach

An empty beach on New Year’s Day – well apart from us of course

After the beach walk – and not getting rained on – we settled on the terrace to enjoy the sun.

New Year’s Day butterfly

Antirrhinums

Some sort of daisy thing

No snow in our village but there was some on the top of the nearby mountain

One of the Three Kings passing up a packed Main Street

Waiting outside the Convent for the band to approach

Given the present and historical presence of the armed forces in Gib, it was interesting to see they were also in the parade.

A nice Defender

And a large military float

To end with, a couple of photos from our meal out that evening at Pizzaghetti Factory in Irish Town. They were practically full as they were expecting a pre-booked large party but they managed to find a table for two. Thanks to them for that, and the food was excellent.

The two main courses

Close up of that yummy pizza

And a happy 2010 to all my readers, past and present.

Blogs computers and all that

There are some seriously good blogs around and I could get very distracted reading everyone else’s. But my time will be better spent writing my own. I hope.

Tomorrow I will have to say something about my computer, which is still less than a year old and very independent.

He will like to be the star of the blog for at least a day.

He is an Apple or a Mac or whatever you want to call it. With even less originality I occasionally call him Hal.

But that’s for tomorrow.