Wow, the earth just moved

Another sunny day in the Algarve was started as usual with a cup of tea that I have just delivered to my beloved, something that she must have before she can move a muscle. I personally prefer coffee first thing in the morning and collected my cappuccino on route to the PC to catch up on the news.

Then at 7.36am precisely, when I had just sat down at the PC, I heard a rumble followed by a shout from above.
"We have just had an earthquake" she called out, apparently the bed shook, the chandelier swayed, the windows rattled and all I heard was a faint rumble.
The earth moved and it was none of my doing, but it did register a magnitude of 4 on the Richter scale and there was no tsunami to follow it.
The epicentre on this particular quake was only a few kilometres away in the village of Silves in the Monchique mountains and so far this month Portugasl has had over 50 earthquakes but this one was the biggest.

This link shows all the eathquake activity;

http://www.meteo.pt/en/sismologia/actividade/

The dreaded Red Palm Weevil makes a double strike

This is my friend Steve's house and once upon a time he had two lovely palm trees. Then the red palm weevil came along and gobbled them both up.

The only remedy is to chop them down and start again, 30 years later they will be as good as new, unless the weevil gets them first.

At least now Steve has a much clearer view and he won't need any fire lighters for years.

Breast Cancer Awareness 2011

We'll go to any lengths to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness, well these three will. Unfortunately I will be washing my hair on this particular day, else obviously I would have been there myself. Click on the link to see;

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=whittakerskydive

You just can't get the staff (2) ............

Just been to the UK to take the car back for an MOT as it had outstayed it's welcome in Portugal and returned to Portugal a few days later on a BMI baby flight from East Midlands Airport. I arrived in Faro but the luggage stayed in the East Midlands.

Two days later at 6pm last night, after a wonderful days golf with the sun blasting down and burning my head, I finally took delivery of the missing suitcase with all contents intact. Fortunately I had a spare pair of knickers available, unlike the three girls who were on my flight and who had packed their entire luggage into one case to cut down on the cost.

The geezer who delivered it told me that he had delivered 40 items of missing luggage during the day, which was an easier day than the previous one, when he had to deliver 80 sets of missing golf clubs.

You just can’t get the staff can you?

Thundering good night Gromit

For the past couple of days days we have been experiencing some tremendous thunderstorms. The first one lasted for around 10 hours starting on Saturday evening and going through to Sunday morning.
All through the night, the lightning cracked and lit up the bedroom as if it were daylight; the thunder shook the house and rattled the windows as the rain and hail beat against the shutters.

I couldn't get up and watch the England v South Africa World Cup cricket match on the TV as the electricty supply went off in the early hours.
When the power was eventually restored at 11:30am, I found that the TV & cooker had blown a circuit, so had the PC printer, the fridge freezer and other some items of electrical equipment that was plugged into the mains, so there was no way I was watching the cricket anyway.

Last night, it was more of the same, as the storm started at 12:45am with the power going off shortly afterwards at around 1am.
All this time, I could see the local electricity department trying to fix the blow-out, 400 metres down the road. There were a number of vehicles at the substation, trying to reconnect the power supply while the lightning cracked and the thunder roared around them, what a job.

At 6 in the morning, the burglar alarm went off as the backup battery power kicked in and woke us up, not that we had got much sleep anyway.
Finally at around 7am, the power came back on, and the burglat alarm went off again, hallelujah.

It is now later the same day and the thunder has been rumbling all day, currently I can hear it in the distance and it is coming our way.
For the third night running it looks like we are in for another tremendous light show out at sea.

According to my weather station we have had 52mm of rain so far this month, that’s in the last 2 days and it’s still bucketing it down, luckily we live on the top of a hill and not even a tsunami would get up here, well, I don't think it would.