Trev's at it again

As a kitten Trevor loved to play with bits of screwed up paper and the shinier the better. We'd throw paper around the room and curl up laughing when she brought them back to be thrown again. Little did we know that we were fostering a behaviour that would come back to bite us. We turned Trev into a cat burglar.

I think I mentioned in an early post that she's well known now for stealing from our neighbours, one of them even going so far as closing the curtains when she sees Trev looking into the house from her stalking post on the terrace wall. "I'm sure she's casing the house, sussing out what is small enough to get out" our neighbour told us. We've had hair rollers, carrier bags, a watch, various bags of nails, screws and washers and even wall tiles (no, we couldn't work out how she did those either).

As time passed she lost interest in bringing her treasures home. The stash of un-returned plunder was thrown away and things generally calmed down. Curtains and doors were left open, backs were turned, people forgot. That was when the new people moved into a house in the next street, a young couple with a small child.

It started again just before Christmas. I came home from work one day to find two small silver Christmas tree decorations on the kitchen floor. I put them on a high shelf and made a mental note to ask around the neighbours if anybody had noticed them missing. Then came a plug (complete with about 30cm of cable) which had been cut off an electrical appliance. Then a collection of red serviettes, wrapping paper and bows, carrier bags from a well known electrical store and a small football. The ball had the name Paquito written on it so I finally had a clue...which led nowhere.

A few days ago I got up, walked across the kitchen and realised my feet were wet. Half asleep I looked down and saw the floor was covered in little lumps of wet, brown fibrous stuff. They trailed through the kitchen and into the living room. They were stuck to the curtains, hidden under the rugs and generally spread as much as possible. That was when I noticed the filter tips. A quick check of the water bowl confirmed my suspicions, it contained a very wet and empty packet of cigarettes. Close by I found three small paintings done by a child. They were very good actually, showing a basic understanding of 3D, but I digress...

I'm going to have to go round to our new neighbours, who I suspect had a silver themed Christmas tree, who recently bought a new electrical appliance and then cut the cable off the old one. I guess they smoke English cigarettes, that their daughter is a budding artist and possibly has a friend called Paco. I'm going to have to try and explain the unlikely reason why they need to keep their doors and windows closed for a while. I'm going to have to give Trev another ASBO. Lets hope they find it funny.

You may or may not know that in Spain the kids get their presents from the three kings and not Santa, and that they receive them on the evening of January 4th (I think).

Throughout Spain The Three Kings arrive in processions and each area has its own take on how it should be done. In Malaga they arrive by boat before snaking through the city streets, throwing sweets to the kids. I've heard of cities where The Kings are on elephants, and when we lived in Estepona the kid's gifts were carried on the backs of camels. There's usually lots of music, excitement and the occasional casualty as the onlookers are pelted with hard sweets by The Kings and their attendants. Here in The Land Of The Smiling Mule, as always, it's scaled down. The kings arrive on tractors, their way led by the municipal band. For me you can keep your elephants, the cast of thousands, this scaled down event is packed with charm and the whole village takes part. But even better than the evening procession is what happens earlier that day, the can drag.

The Land of The Smiling Mule sits in the foothills of a range of mountains and when the wind's in the right direction clouds being blown across the Atlantic get trapped and hide the village from the rest of the world. Rumour has it that one Christmas the clouds arrived and sat so low and dense that The Three Kings couldn't find the village, so nobody got any presents that year. To ensure that never happened again the kids were told they needed to make as much noise as possible to guide The Kings to the village. So, at mid-day on January 4th all the kids drag long chains of tin cans through the streets of the village to attract the attention of The Kings. It really is VERY noisy and you can physically feel the excited tension in the air. I've been here for about five years now and never known the kids to miss out on their presents, so it proves it must work!

Well, it's been a while...again. Christmas came and went, as did New Year, Three Kings and the winter sales, in fact the whole festive circus passed without a blog mention. I know, I know, a prize winning blogger I am not. It seems this is as good as it gets, so I'll get on with it.

Christmas day was a bit odd. We usually go out of our way to do something untraditional but decided this last year to stay home and do whatever it is that people do. (Eat turkey and argue I'm told.) So, after breakfast we decided to exchange gifts. I was sure I'd bought the perfect gift and was looking forward to seeing P's face when he opened it. Paper started to fly as we both tore into our presents. Like a couple of excited kids we got the paper off, turned the boxes over and saw we'd bought each other the same thing, a digital photo frame. It's never happened before in all the years we've been together and it was so strange. Now, we all like to think we'd be generous in spirit at times like this, grateful and mature. Forget it. We both flipped the boxes over and started reading the blurb on the back to see which one was the best. Boys and their toys eh!

Later we each wanted to play with our new toys, as you do, and work out their little intricacies. That was when we realised the next hitch, we both have the same photos in our respective archives. So we fiddled for a while, adjusting settings, uploading pics until we were satisfied they worked. Then we read the instructions. Then we were ready to put the frames where we wanted them. Believe me, when you live in an open-plan house it's really easy to achieve digital photo frame overkill. Even though we put one in the kitchen and one in the living room you could still see them both. Every time the image changed we found we involuntarily glanced over. After a couple of hours of eyes flicking constantly from one to the other and seeing the same photos we pulled the plugs.

The best photo of Christmas has to be Trevor (above) who got inside some wrapping paper and stayed there for several days. Very wise.

I can't come out today, it's raining.

There's a river that runs through the Smiling Mule. During the summer it's a series of muddy puddles, but through the winter it's fast flowing and deep.

Last month we had some heavy rain and in one day the river rose by two and a half metres. Most people live on this side of the river, but there are a few who live on the other side, and Maria is one of them. She lives alone in a house where she can't see any other buildings. She's recently had her house connected to the main water supply, before which she relied on rain water which collected on the top of a hill behind the house and ran down a home-made system of pipes. I can't decide whether I think Maria is really brave or barking mad. The last time I saw her she was excited about having a floor laid in her bedroom. I assumed she meant she was having the tiles renewed, but as we talked I realised she meant she was "having a floor put it". Until now the floors in her house were earth, topped with carefully chosen, flat stones from the river. "The problem", she said, "is that during the winter the ground gets wet and leaches its way into the house through the floors." No wonder she was excited at the prospect of a bedroom floor!

Contacting Maria can be difficult. She has no land telephone and relies on a cell phone, but the other side hardly gets a signal. There's a patch about a metre square, somewhere behind her house where she usually gets a signal of sorts which she calls her office, and that's where she stands to make calls. After the heavy rain of last month I got a call from her. We'd arranged to meet and she called to say she couldn't get over the river so was stuck at home until the water levels dropped. She said she was fine (it takes a lot to faze Maria), that she had plenty of food and books and would be in touch when the river allowed.

I've decided at the moment I admire Maria. She doesn't have to live like this, she wants to. She's lucky enough to have choices and brave enough to make her choices work for her, but I'm sure when we next meet and I'm sat with my mouth open listening to what she's put up with I'll go back to thinking she's as mad as a bag of snakes.

Oh, and the above picture is in fact that same river. I think it dates from the 60's and shows the kids from the other side going to school.

Digital frustrations

Over the years we've had a few digital cameras. We always take care of them, they've never been dropped, accidentally ended up in a swimming pool or had wine spilt on them as I've seen happen with others. So why is it they all end up useless after a year or two?
Our latest camera has been showing signs of giving up over the last months. When we go to view the photos we sometimes get an error message saying the card is empty, but they upload on to the computer. Once we've uploaded we delete images from the card, only to find out later that they hadn't gone and duplicate themselves in our pictures file. Nothing major, just annoying and a sign that all isn't well.
Last week P took a party of kids from school to Granada to draw, paint and photograph examples of Islamic design as the foundation of an art project. He took lots of photos but when he went to upload them onto his computer it said the card had not been formatted and if he formatted it now he'd lose any pictures already on it.
It seems to me that digital cameras have a very short life span. In our experience they start to become unpredictable after a couple of years and shortly after that unusable.
We tend to buy middle price cameras so I don't think the problem is we're being cheapskates. That said, we're thinking of splashing out a bit and buying a digital SLR but nervous that the extra cost would end up a waste of money if this too has a short life span.
If you're reading this and have a digital camera please leave your thoughts in a comment because I'd be interested to know whether other people have found the same thing happen to them.
Thanks.

The one about the sink

Ever since we moved into our small (but beautifully formed) house five years ago one of the sinks in the kitchen has been a bit dicky. We've had several plumbers come to fix it, each one slagging off the work of the one before and adding an extra pipe here and there, and none of them actually fixing the problem. What we've been left with is a sink which sometimes drains, sometimes not, sometimes smells, sometimes not and so much pipework it looks like the Madrid Metro system in the cupboard underneath. A couple of days ago it all came to a head when all the dirty water from the dishwasher erupted from the outlet pipe and flooded the kitchen. I'd had enough. It was time to get the big boys in. I contacted a company which specialises in unblocking drains and they came this morning.
"Oh dear, oh dear" said #1 when he opened the cupboard. "Looks to me like somebody's been trying to do the job of a professional here", he managed (cleverly I thought) to say whilst sucking his teeth. My heart sank. "Compressed air", he said, "that's what's needed here". "Compressed air", repeated #2. I stood back and watched them shoot compressed air down the main outlet. "That should do it", #1 said with a smile. "Should do it", echoed #2. I felt my eyebrows meet in the middle. "But how do you know it's worked", I asked. "Because it's compressed air", he said, "and that's what it does, it works". Then he got a pen out and I thought, "oh please, no, please don't draw me a picture!" But I was wrong, he started to write my bill.
This is the point in the spaghetti western that my home has turned into with all the cowboys wandering through it that I know I should make a stand, say my piece and refuse to pay. But the problem is I always think they must know what they're doing and certainly know more than I do. "You are going to put my plumbing tribute to the Madrid Metro system back aren't you?" - I said instead. "That's my colleague's department", slimed #1. "Work of art" said #2, "should see my plumbing..." I pushed that thought away and replaced it with a confident glimpse of future sink heaven, all draining and odourless after its treatment of compressed air.
They raided my wallet and left. Wanting to get everything back to normal I started putting the clutter back into the cupboard under the sink, and that's when I heard the drip.
Does anybody know a good plumber?

Children in need

How far would you go to raise money for charity?