It is getting towards the end of February now and the weather is very changeable - one day warm and sunny, another cold and breezy and another ( v occasionally) wet and windy. The lack of rain has provoked the local municipalities into imposing water restrictions - turning the pressure down / water off between midnight and six and saying no use of hoses or watering systems and no topping-up of swimming pools. We try to do our bit by saving the cold water that comes out before the hot starts running (about 6-7 litres first thing) and using that for the plants (or the pool when the plants are soaked by the rain). Luckily the Andalucian Tourist Board has said that there will be "no problems for tourists", so there will obviously be some miraculous provision of water for hotels, and rental properties (not that anyone staying would know or give a toss anyway). It is the sort of stupidity that really gets my goat. My barber reckons that his aunt in a pueblo north of Cordobas has not had running water for over a year now and has to rely on the water trucks coming down the street. I reckon that will be a fun Tik-Tok tourist attraction for about one day. He also says that the bell-weather will be Easter as the number of tourist then indicate the summer prospects. Seeing as the pueblo has been full of tourists almost every day during the winter, I think I know the prospects.
February means a lot of the restaurants close (probably to give the part-time staff a month off and stop them having any employment rights). God I am cynical.
Local Bar Niño closed for about six weeks, so Manfred and I have had to find another watering hole for our Saturday lunchtime sessions. We tried the Tomillo Limon which had been recommended, but they prefer lunch people to tapas eaters - so we then moved to Bar Carmen near the bar G. Very good indeed and as typical pueblo bar (inside) as you could wish to find, with wIne €3 and tapas €1. (Niño is wine plus free tapas for €3).
However, yesterday Carmen was closed too, so we moved to what used to be "Roger´s Bar", which turned out to be more expensive and touristy and only did plates of 2 pieces of fancy tapas at €6 a time and wine at €4. We will not be using it again.
We have started having some viewings on the house, although the level of disinterest that some show you wonder why they bother - last week we had four swedes with their agent and our agent - never said a word or asked anything. Rude just isn´t in it. Have someone else on Monday so who knows? (Actually we do, as we know that someone will have bought it mentally before they get to the front door - it´s just a case of who and when).
I had a technological break-through this weekend when I installed an external SSD as the system drive on my Mac which has been a real pain running very slowly. I read online about the 2019 system I bought second-hand last year and the general opinion was that the "fusion disk" was so bad / slow that the machines were a bad buy - but then someone said you could sort it out by putting an external SSD drive on one of the fast Thunderbolt ports. I looked on the web and saw 2TB drives at 220€ and spent some time working out whether it was the correct / specific technology, then at the last moment saw a reduced price 1TB drive for 84€ - so snapped it up. Amazon fast delivery to an Amazon storage box at the petrol station, wired it up, then left the system trucking while I was at the bar!
Stone me! Not only do I now have a later operating system, but it is QUICK. Serendipity at its best.
In other areas, I had to fix a small leak from the escape valve on the hot water panels, also spent a loooong time trying to find a backup battery for the hot water control unit. (thought I would have it delivered to the Amazon box as a trial, but then they would not store even a tiny battery in their nice boxes - Grrr).
In the midst of this, we had an 8 hour power outage when the high winds in the night caused the cables to have problems on the hills. Tried phoning the emergency power number but incredibly complicated answering machine which drove me up the wall and recorded some choice epithets. They would not believe it wasn´t just my house and told me to "get an electrician", when the power was also off at the house below - meaning it was a problem in the transformer. Eventually they sorted it out. but not before I aged 10 years. Those automated systems are bad enough in English, but in spanish, you can forget it.
The joke is that I thought the backup battery was dodgy as the automatic thermostat system kept losing its memory - hence search for new battery - but then after the power outage, the system came back with all the parameters back as they should be. Sometimes power-it-off-and-on-again works for any sort of computer!
There was one other success, which was when we realised that G needed to renew her driving licence. We popped in to book an appointment in the Fuengirola medical centre (really) where it is undertaken and a very pleasant girl ushered (us) straight into her office where she did the ´photo and all the questions and tests (punctuated by me giggling helplessly as G tried to manage the two padels that drive two bars around a race track as part of the coordination test). Luckily the girl took pity on her! Anyway 47€ and "it should be delivered to your house within the next few weeks". Very quick, pleasant and simple. Maybe they should offer to provide a helpdesk for Sevillana electricity.
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