Welcome to my first Blog
February 2010
This is getting silly.
I can honestly say without fear of contraception, that this is the worst and wettest winter I have experienced since Noah started felling trees. Hurricane's, tornado’s, landslide’s, we have had the lot, oh and not forgetting the odd occasion when the sun popped out for a brief appearance. We have now enjoyed a total of 4 days since the beginning of December when it has not rained during the day in some form or other. If you have seen the news recently about the weather in Maderia, well that is what we have been on the end of; fortunately it has not got as bad as that just yet. The ground is so soft, when the winds come the trees have no firm ground to hold onto and we are forever putting the tree back upright and the forecast for the 3 days is thunderstorms and then just more ordinary wet rain.
The golf course has been closed a number of times, which really doesn’t matter as we don’t play golf in the rain anyway. There have been a number of landslides, but so far the houses on the golf course are still standing.
In between the rain I have then tried to catch up on some gardening, the trouble with that is you have the wrong clothes on to go outside as you have dressed for rain and when it stops and the sun comes out, the humidity is high and you get
wet through with sweat, or perspiration if you are a lady.
Having said all of that, it hasn’t stopped us doing things indoors; like making Strawberry jam, Lime Marmalade, Orange Marmalade, Mixed Citrus Marmalade, Lemon Curd & Lime pickle, you Women’s Institute members would be very impressed, we even sing Jerusalem while making the stuff.
The Marmalade especially, is like gold out here as the Portuguese only having something equivalent which comes in slab form and is not the best. Like most things though you can get it from the UK Food shop but end up paying a premium. We now have over 50 jars of the stuff and have been selling it for €3 a pop, which goes straight into the Pink Ribbon fund.
We have been adopted by a local feral moggy, who I have called “Mogli”(Mogli the moggy) as she lives in the jungle of a land on the next plot (I know Mogli was a boy but in this story she is a girl), she could even be living inside one of the rock walls that have some rather
large gaps in them, ideal for a litter of kittens, so far, we
haven’t see any.
Mogli visits every day, mostly twice, morning and night just to be fed. Over the past 3 weeks she has become more trusting, we are now within 1 foot of her but there is no chance of touching her just yet, as she is still too nervous.
As mentioned in earlier postcards, crime is becoming a big issue on The Algarve, mostly caused by Eastern Europeans. I know that I mentioned that Lynette had her purse stolen from her handbag in Lidl's supermarket in the summer. Well, just before Christmas, my friend Bob had his house broken into and the bandits knicked about a sunstantial amount of stuff. They entered the house by removing one of the smaller window frames andthen just took the window out, turns out the frame was only being held in by 25mm screws. The Polizia came had a look, gave him a crime number and that was that. Supposedly there was agang on Rumanian gypsies that we responsible for a big proporation or burgalies and the policia had recovered about 80 cameras, dvd player, tv, computers etc, etc but Bob has heard no more. I am currently in the process of installing video cameras and extra security, sad really.
Wednesday 24th February; No golf today, its raining.
Friday 26th February; Always play golf on Fridays with the boys, the girls play with the girls, not today however, its raining.
There has just been a severe weather warning on the BBC of more bad weather in Spain, Portugal & France, with heavy consequences. It looks like we could again be on the end of it as its main track is heading through Lisbon and to the north.
Saturday 27th February, the mother of all thunderstorms.
Wow, that was the strongest and worst storm that I have ever been in. Fortunately I had put away all the sunbeds and stuff that was likely to have been blown away. We escaped with only have a few roof tiles blown off and nothing like what France endured. If we were on the end of it, God knows what is was like in the North.
Do you remember the bird that was coming every night to sit on one of our porch lights and I asked for any suggestions. Suprisingly no one got it right, that was probably because none of you could be arsed to send in a suggestion, but no matter, the answer is, its a Bonelli's Warbler. I think what you are supposed to do with Blogging is put regular updates, which I will do when I have something to say. You can follow if you wish by joining in and clicking the FOLLOW button, or you can just ignore this sad old fart who has nothing else to do inbetween thunderstorms.
Well tha's it for the first BLOG, in fact that was the front door bell, better go and see if its Cheryl coma callin' now that she is free and single again.
Thanks for reading.
Chow