Domestics

No, no not cleaners. Although we did have one once.

My Partner did exactly the same as my mother and went round cleaning the house the day before so it was nice for when she arrived. I ask you. The Roughseas foot went firmly down and we managed not to get her back after we took a holiday. We slipped back into happy slovenliness, rather like now.

Firstly, domestics on the blog. Both thehistorytourist and canoe & communications have recently given me The Versatile Blogger Award. I shan’t bother with the silly rules but I will mention the two blogs which are both well worth a visit.

In their own words:

canoe & communications

Imagine yourself walking up a wooded path to a place where you can talk with others about ideas, nature, travel, literature and events–Canoe Communications Blog.   It’s a blog where you can learn a little about Midwestern culture and life and more.

thehistorytourist

This is a travel diary about trips to my favorite destination – historic sites.   I’m not a historian but a lover of history, especially early American history.   And I’m lucky enough to live in the Washington DC area, where there’s an endless supply to feed my addiction.  I write this blog with the hope that you’ll be entertained and find some useful information for your travels.

I’ve learned more about American history in the last few weeks than in my entire life!! Great photos too.

And I should add a special thanks to thehistorytourist for including Pippa in the awards as well, but I’m not letting him near the keyboard at the moment. Dogblogging to resume, later. Ish. With photos of Pippa’s encounter with the lovely vampire dog upstairs.

Melody has given me the One Lovely Blog Award. I was extremely flattered to be the odd person out on her list of seven nominees, which apart from mine were all photography blogs. As she said:

Okay, this is the odd man out today – er, woman, actually – because it isn’t strictly a photography blog, although there are great snaps here too.  It is stories from everyday life in Gibraltar, which I am finding to be very informative and interesting!  Check it out!

Thanks Melody. What I liked about that, was that my blog about life in a tiny place, thousands of miles away from most of you, is interesting enough to make it onto a list, when all the others are stunning visual photoblogs. It’s nice to know that in a different way, people enjoy visiting mine. In this case, I definitely liked being odd one out.

Here is the link to Melody’s page where she lists the photoblogs, so if you like photography, you may want to have a peek.

Melody herself has two blogs, one about the garden, and the other has beautiful photos – usually of her gorgeous flowers – and with a poem. The link above is to the poetry/photoblog, so if you like either photography or poetry or both, well worth a visit.

And I’ll end with The Commentator Award which I received from Rahul who is an engineering student from Kerala and I love his photos of India.

This is a slightly different award in that it is based on the most frequent commenters from your stats. I shan’t embarrass the six of you who appear on my stats by naming you and I’m sure you can work out who you are.

I think that’s it for awards, thank you for the nominations. I’m not writing boring stuff about me, and I’m not listing a zillion blogs. What I will do is start a new ‘blogs I visit’ page as I’ve found some other interesting ones since I first set up the initial page. And there is nothing worse than a long list.

And, I’ve also altered settings so that the blog shows one post only. I hope that improves loading time, please let me know if you have any views. There’s a balance between faster loading and being able to read quickly by scrolling.

Next. A quick nip to Spain.

‘We were expecting you yesterday,’ said our neighbours (in Spanish, obviously) when we arrived on the Sunday for a long weekend due to Queen’s birthday holiday.

‘I’ve watered the garden, but I ran out of water from your containers so I used mine.’

Well that’s very sweet, but I don’t think an 85 year-old pensioner should be using his metered water for my garden. So I suggested we install the water butt. We’ve had this for years. We never installed it in the UK, and we’ve never put it up in Spain either, partly because there is no guttering. Its most useful role has been storing fake Christmas trees.

Up it went, balanced on a crate. José came round to inspect and promptly put the wheelbarrow in front to shade the butt from the sun. We had to prove it was high enough off the ground to get the watering can underneath, and with that he was satisfied. Good old boy.

Safely installed

On the way back there was a bush fire. It was a biggy. Other photos will be on the Landy blog.

Smoke

On the Gib front? A new bus service has started, a number seven to Mount Alvernia, which is an old peoples’ home. Some of the older residents are fit enough to travel into town, and it will also provide a service for relatives, friends, charity workers, and staff who work there (depending on their hours of course). There is a trial period of three months. Nice move there.

Samantha Sacramento Minster for Equality and Social Services noted that she is delighted that this service has been commenced in response to requests made by visitors to Mount Alvernia, as well as representations made by the charity Friends of Mount Alvernia and that this was long overdue given the location of Mount Alvernia and the access difficulties that it entails.

Commenting on the above, the Minister noted: “We must be mindful of the fact that given that the majority of the residents at Mount Alvernia are in their 80s and 90s, their visitors will mainly be their spouses and children, most of whom will be elderly themselves. Historically, access to Mount Alvernia has always been a struggle to the extent that it has been a deterrent for elderly relatives who would otherwise visit more frequently.

As it’s Saturday, it’s reenactment day. At noon, there is a march up and down Main Street which is always colourful and interesting.

Having a chat

Like the last post, I’ll finish with food. If you’ve read my Quorn post on Clouds, you’ll know I’m not a huge fan of the stuff (ie Quorn, I like food).

Due to the bush fire the other day, we had a rather extended journey as the road was closed off, and we had to go back on ourselves and detour. Arriving at Morrisons, I grabbed a bag of ready made pasta off the shelf for a fast, easy and hopefully tasty meal. Making pasta is not my strong point, which I wrote about on Ravioli unravelled.

Recommended

I’d bought some setas (oyster mushrooms) in Spain and had some left, so thought a complementary sauce would be better than the usual tomato. I also thought there weren’t many ravioli in the bag, so a sauce was needed. And an extremely large green salad. They were yum.

Yum

They were so yum that I went to look for the spinach and ricotta version the other day but obviously everyone else thought that was yum and there were none left. I bought tomato and basil or something tortellini, which I did serve with a tomato sauce. More yum. And – I made two meals out of that lot.

No recipes, you all know how to buy pasta from the supermarket and make mushroom or tomato sauce. It’s not vegan, but at least the egg is free-range. In summer when inspiration is lacking, it makes a great meal with a good salad.

Makes a brunch too. Buen provecho.

Last of the tortellini and salad for brunch