24 hours and a second

It’s sad, isn’t it? that I should be writing a blog entry at 11:30pm on New Year’s Eve. Actually, it’s only indicative of the fact that the dinner isn’t cooked yet and I meant to do this hours ago and didn’t get a-round-tuit.

Maybe it’s just as well the day is going to be slightly longer than other days as there is so much to do. 24 hours is simply not enough, though that’s what the clock in the photo (at Greenwich) offers:

accurate to the second?

successes, exits and happenings

Although it’s only the 30th, people in the village are already beginning to round their conversations off with the phrase “feliz salida y entrada…“

the way out to success?

It always seems such a mouthful to me, and I can never get the order right – subconsciously I think “happy exit and entrance” seems a bit cart-before-horsish, although in the context of the old year leaving before the new one comes in, it’s perfectly correct. Still, it twists my tongue every time, and today it’s set me thinking:

festive food, anyone?

I’m used to the neighbours’ guard dogs objecting to my walking down their patch of road when I go for a walk, but this young animal seemed mighty friendly as he came to investigate when I passed the garden he was in this morning:

on the hoof...

I wonder if he realises he’s probably destined to be guest of honour at the New Year meal next week.

Of course, some people prefer to buy their festive food pre-processed from the supermarket:

utilities are useful

Water, electricity, telephone, adsl… we tend to take them for granted, don’t we?

water: one of the things we take for granted

That’s one of the things about living in rural Spain: you never know whether the standard utilities will actually be available. You may go to bed with everything working fine and wake up – like I did today – with certain basic services unavailable.
 
 

taxing my patience

Buying blank cds to back up my ever-growing collection of photographs, I am reminded of university days when I studied Adam’s Smiths canons of taxation.

Just a few of many

Every blank cd sold in Spain is subject to el canon – popularly referred to as “un impuesto por si acaso“. That pretty much describes it: a “just-in-case tax”.