I am starting to side with the people who leave here for a few months in winter and go somewhere warmer (think Thailand or South Africa). All this garbage you hear on tv about "indoor / outdoor lifestyle" is just that - garbage. When the sun is shining, there is always a warm spot in some corner of the garden, but as soon as the sun disappears, it is cold. Our newish neighbours may have been seduced by the sales pitch, but in the last couple of weeks have had to face the reality of cold evenings and nights. They have almost completed installing the underfloor heating, but not finished, so actually went out and bought a wood-burning stove as it was so cold. That remains to be installed, so their visitors are finding out that the Costs del Sol does not mean Costs de WARM Sol (and of course we have the same problems here with the general European costs of electricity with the times when you want / need to use the power to warm the place up being the most expensive).
I am actually writing this while waiting for the sun to get through the clouds so that I can clean the pool. A pleasant task when the sun is shining, but not when your hands stick to the metal pole which is like ice (mild hyperbole).
I have actually spent a large part of the last 10 days in my bed, as I managed to bring on a spot of bronchitis (I think caused by all the dust I was inhaling as I chopped down some bouganvilleas). It was "only" a chest infection, but I realised it mirrored something I had back in the 90s when we first went from the Far East to Holland. On the second day I walked out of the hotel and round a corner - and inhaled a freezing blast of wind from the North Sea which just shut down my warm-air-attuned lungs and gave me acute bronchitis for a week. Same again this time - lungs just suddenly felt frozen and went into aargh mode.
Of course it was called man´-flu by some (!), but I at least know what it was. We actually dug out the Covid test I had bought as precaution a couple of years ago, but of course it had timed out (by one week) and dried up (by a few months). G got me a fresh one, which was supposed to identify a multiplicity of ailments, but it just returned a blank screen with only the test line. Good news I suppose.
Just before the plague hit me, I noticed that my meds had run out and tried to get them renewed. Jesus, what a shambles of a system. They tell you to book a telephone appointment, whereupon your doctor will call you and your meds will be renewed. All well and good, but the doctor doesn't actually call - you just have to assume all will be sorted - and when it isn´t, the reception and general system just goes into meltdown. I have had 3 (non) telephone appointments and still no med renewal - with the main problem being that the appoints are usually 3 weeks ahead, so you wait for the time of the non-call before you find out it was a non non-call. Receptionist useless as ever and just to compound it, they have switched us from a series of locums replacing our previous doctor to a female doctor who (apparently doesn't / won't speak English) and never has available appointments in person. Next week I am going down to La Cala to see if we can switch doctors and go there. We have private health care (as do half the civil servants down here), but the meds are on the national health system so require a doctors note. Bizarre.
We had one interesting visitor recently which I believe to be a spotless starling. similar to a blackbird or largish starling, but plain black (hence spotless), scruffy neck feathers and a beak designed to open tuna-cans. Apparently they are N African / Iberian only and would appear to change their beak / leg colour due to age and season. I noticed the scruffy neck feathers and thought it was just a moulting stage, but it turns out to be diagnostic. That and the beak which is more raven-like than blackbird. Photo is not the best, but trying to get a photo of a bird on a chimney at 30 metres is not that simple - especially as it keeps on naffing-off to catch a bit of trough (and being replaced on the perch by a succession of black redstarts that also appreciate the good (Will?) hunting spot).
My life is also in abeyance at the moment as the bar Niño is shut (CALAMITY!). Juan postponed his usual holiday from January due to non-availability of builders and has now shut for 6 weeks to put a better front and roof on the upstairs area. When the Niño is shut, there is literally nowhere this side of the village centre. My social life is a wasteland. Anis and coffee at my home bar is not the same as paying for it.
Roll on April.
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