Every days a SUN day in the Algarve

    Algarve Weather Forecast

   

   17º C Clear   17º C Clear    16º C Clear    17º C Clear   17º C Clear    16º C Clear    17º C Clear

  Sunday   Monday  Tuesday Wed'day  Thursday  Friday  Saturday

Last year we had the wettest winter on record, this year we are back to the good old days and are set to have one of the driest winters on record.

I think that I am right in saying that it has only rained twice since the end of September and that was during the night, it could have been longer than  that, I can’t really remember the last time that I saw any wet stuff fall from the sky.

Tried to do some gardening during week, the ground was so hard, the spade was bouncing back, so I have had to put the irrigation on, in February. Not to be outdone, I found a pick-axe that the gardeners had left behind and had to use that to break up the soil where it was set like concrete.

Reminded me of my younger days down the pit when I was a wee lad and I used to wield one of those things on the coal face for 18 hours a day, those were the days.

When it doesn’t rain for a couple of weeks in the UK, there are always immediately calls for a hosepipe ban, no chance of that here, we have been told by the authorities that  there will be no restrictions in the Alagrve as the local “Barragems”, that’s dams/reservoirs to you and me, have enough water for the next 2 years, this seems to be something that Portugal really does get right.

……… and if that wasn’t a kiss of death for it to rain now, I don’t know what is.

Having said all that, it does get very cold during the night and we have had some very sharp frosts, although being a top of a hill we haven't had too many here, but only a kilometre away (as the crow flies), down in the valley, it has been down to minus 4ºC and as low as minus 8º in the north of the country. 

Along the Algarve the frost was so severe that a number of plants ingardens in the Faro area have reportedly caught the dreaded Black Frost(can you say that, must be Jack's colonial cousin), and have died. 

Never mind, a few cuttings from the luckier ones and the new shoots will be back in full splendor by the summer.

Music Quiz

Test your music knowledge.
There are 6 songs in the playlist for you to answer.
Hit the play button at the bottom of the page and see if you can name the songs and the artist, be careful, there is a tricky one, don't fall into the trap.
You can put your answers in the comments section which will be hidden from other readers (therefore the comments count will always read 0, but rest assured that your answers will be posted), sorry no prizes, just for fun.
I'll post the answers at the end of the month, no cheating, good luck.

That's why Mums shop at Iceland

...........not in Portugal they don't.

The Portuguese beurocracy maze strikes again. This time forcing the recently opened Iceland store at the Guia Retail Park to keep its doors firmly closed.
This except has been taken from the Portugal Daily News;

Shoppers found the doors closed at the Iceland store in Guia this morning. Here follows a statement from a company spokesperson.

"I can confirm that yesterday the Iceland store in Guia was inspected by more than one authority.

No real fault could be detected with the store except for the labels which we have to by law place on to imported food stuffs. Until yesterday we believed we were complying with all regulations by translating English ingredients in to Portuguese and adding additional label with this information to each food item.

Yesterday we were told that this information was insufficient and we are required to translated all cooking and storage instructions also in to Portuguese and the same for household, health and beauty and pet items and this information has to also be added to each product.

We were not given a time frame to accomplish this within, instead we were instructed to close until we are able to achieve this.

All at Overseas (Iceland) are now working very hard to ensure we are back up and running as soon as possible with minimal disruption to our customers. We would like to say by the weekend but we simply can't put a time scale on it at the moment.

We recommend our customers contact the store directly or check our web site before making a journey.

We apologise to all of our customers and are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause to them."

One wonders whatever will the authorities do next, another good Portuguese idea, don't you just love 'em.

Seagulls & Egrets

You must have noticed that whenever there is a tractor about, ploughing a field, there are always thousands of seagulls following there tractor, looking for a tasty morsel no doubt.

I went into the bottom field the other day on the tractor in an effort to keep the weeds down and keep plants that the snails love to grow on under control so that we won't be bothered by Pedro Gypsy next year.
I had only been in there for less than 30 seconds when along came, not a flock of seagulls, but a flock of egrets. It never really struck me before but I reckon that they must have bionic hearing, or perhaps the egrets had been on their egretphones and logged onto twitternet and spread the word, much the same as if you want to set up a riot or go looting and pillaging in the UK these days. Anyway, within a couple of minutes a load more egrrets appeared, check out the tractor-cam.

Homes Under the Hammer (Part 2)

Very recently I blogged about our first house being on Homes Under the Hammer, the BBC TV programme. It is almost 40 years since we left that house and I thought that I needed a blog about our current house here in Portugal.

 

 This little dwelling caught our eye back in 1999, it came with 6.5 acres of land and as you can see was in need of some TLC and a spot of DIY.

 

This is how it looked before it went under the hammer.

 

 This is what it was like after it went under the hammer, oh oh oh.