Monday 30 July 2012

The Call of the Wild.....

Well, summer has finally arrived out here: way to hot for comfort most days. And nights. Well, that's something else entirely. Bleeding Mozzies whining and nibbling all night, driving us bonkers. Luckily, having lived in Sweden for so long, we have no shortage of Mozzie nets, so have now installed one here. Hopefully it will mean we can sleep with windows open and no fear of attack!

Friends from a neighbouring Alpujarran village, Yegen - the Gerald Brennan village South from Granada (Penguin Travel Library) - have pitched up about 60 Kms from us. They're running a small Gitey complex thingy, with a couple of pools and an acre or so of landscaped gardens. All very pleasant. So we visited them for a short stopover having just been to La Rochelle airport to drop off another elderly friend from our days in Brittany. John, a retired Cornish farmer, and his sadly now deceased wife, Dinah, lived in Brittany for about 12 years or so, before returning the UK. Now he's been at a loose end since Dinah's death. We managed to persuade him to come over for a break and , thankfully, all went well and he enjoyed himself. He even enjoyed the flight over,  accompanied by J who had again been over visiting our daughter, LVP near Carmarthen.

Now, we have acre upon acre of that old Froggo standard, Sunflowers. They seem to thrive and keep their peckers up even when sun is at a premium:



And while snapping the above, that most Froggo of Froggo cars came past: The old Deux CV:



Each day we are deafened by the sound of a high pitched, shrieking sound. It rends the air and peace of the village throughout the day. It is of course a couple of pairs of these beauties, residents of the village and useful guardians, no doubt:



And no matter what I did to attract its attention, it simply ignored me and refused to turn round until then, after its display had been viewed by its feathery fellows in the scrubby bit of wasteland that they call home:





Lovely though they are, they don't  half make a racket!

I'll close with a vid - if Chube let's me upload it, still having probs with it, I'm afraid - of an old buddy from Pittsburgh, PA. The best Gary Davis player, I know!:  Can't get to it, so here's the link. Good luck!:

http://youtu.be/vpv1DeYyuNs



Thursday 19 July 2012

It's Only Words.....

Weather here remaining rather unseasonal - more like Wales, really: rain and wind in equal measure though it has now improved (over past few days) to normal summer stuff with temps around 29/30 most days. Thankfully, this is scheduled to continue. So, Summer has finally arrived!

Charlie and Rocky spend most of their time outdoors, as do we. Though, it must be said, we tend to guzzle much more vin rouge than the cats. Or the resident hound, Jack! Which is as it should be.

J has gone over to UK for a few days to see our daughter, LVP. She flew from La Rochelle to Bristol this afternoon and will be collected from the airport by LVP and then off to her new place outside Carmarthen. We were both over a few weeks ago helping her with the move. A very tiring and taxing time for all. Not helped by her car packing in with a seized alternator pulley half-way through the move!  Her new place is lovely, with a pub just along the road and fine views Southish:



And one of those Welshy roadsigns:




In the course of moving, lots of odd stuff turned up. Including these two bundles of CDs, one a CD/DVD double disc set of BeeGee music and the other a triple album pack. These came direct to LVP from Robin Gibb, who of course died recently. She has no interest in the music, so I now have them:



In addition we have these two odd items. The blue jumper is J's and was a gift from Robin Gibb:



The cardigan, however, was Barry Gibb's and, again, came from Robin. It weighs about a cwt and probably explains why he was never one for trying the Jaggeresque moves on-stage. Just lifting an arm while wearing it takes some effort! 'Tis a Ralph Lauren, hand-made woolly thing. Looks more suited for a Scandawegian winter than a hot, steamy TV studio or stage. I can imagine him wearing it for one of those cheesy, Xmas specials: tree sparkling in the background, logs crackling in the hearth, fake snow etc.  I'll certainly be using it in that way this Xmas.  Maybe we could have a BeeGee Karaoke evening, as we now have two thirds of their clobber hanging around.

I suppose there will be some ardent BeeGee fans who would covet these things and maybe that's what we'll end up doing with them - passing them on to some BeeGeeGeeks. If that's the right moniker.

The sale of the Swedish house is still lurching along slowly but looks likely to go ahead. It means another trip North to empty the place and move it all down here to France. But we'll wait till we complete on our purchase here otherwise we'd have to double-handle everything. Not a good idea.

We made it to the local vintage car race thingy in the nearby town of Bressuire a few weeks ago. 'Twas a fine event, with a fair number of Brit entrants, all of whom were made most welcome and their steeds much admired:

1934 Aston Martin Ulster (I think):




UK owned 1924 Delage:



A local 1933 Citroen:


Lovely 'Blower' MG:


Maserati:


1956 (one of my own favourite cars) Jaguar XK140:


And this superb Jaguar C-Type engine - pure power with beauty (in my eyes, anyway):



And these people race these priceless cars: you'd need BeeGee bucks to take that risk in my view!


And you can't have an event like this without the odd Alvis.  A make we once had a couple of back when we had income from law. Miss the cars and the income but not the law!:

A 'Graber' coupe:



A lovely 1932 12/50 TJ