Here is a relevant song with very few words!
Two faces, but only one ear. Is there some significance to that?
Last night we were sitting in a local bar, celebrating the end of 2014 and the start of 2015. One of the ladies had brought some masks for us to dress up, and much hilarity ensued as the largest, beardiest member of the group wore a spangly and distinctly girlie creation.
Being as blind as a bat without my glasses, I could not see a thing if I wore my mask the conventional way, so I put it on back to front instead.
All of a sudden, the years rolled back, and I was transported to an infant school classroom, reading the Wide Range Venture Reader article about Janus, Roman god of the gates and doorways. This chap had two faces, so that he could look both ways and keep an eye on what was occurring. This peculiarity lead to him having January, gateway to the new year, named in his honour.
Cheers!
I have to admit that I am not enamoured with endless harping back to the past, and I am very bad at making resolutions, as I think I have said before. However, inspired by the non-existent and probably rather unpleasant Janus – Roman gods and goddesses were a fairly heinous bunch, in my opinion – I thought I would take a quick dash back through the last year, which has been pretty momentous for our family.
I told you it was HUGE!
A week-long trip to the UK to celebrate my mother’s eightieth Birthday in January was followed by preparations for my beloved’s sixtieth birthday the following month. Family and friends came from far and wide to celebrate with us at a birthday bash at our favourite rural hotel in the next village, and we spent a week or more with house guests, and an overspill house full of people we would love to see more often. It took us nearly the whole week to finish the most unusual gift of them all – an absolutely HUGE loaf of artisan baked bread. We had it with soup, with salads, with casseroles, with gambas pil-pil, with cheese and finally as a bread and butter pudding.
March saw us embarking upon a menagerie road trip to the UK, to sell our little house in a charming Oxfordshire village.
The dogs are under there somewhere…
The car was stuffed to the hilt. As well as ourselves, we had the dog of the blog and the tiny tearaway in their crate, Boggle in his travel cage, suitcases and bags of clothes and bedding, and hundreds of tiny knitted garments. As we had insufficient room for it all, I had purchased several ‘suckie bags’ from the local Chinese shop. They were brilliant! With all the air sucked out of the duvet and knitwear, they packed down enough to fit everything in the car.
Everything was going so well until the bags’ seals failed, and the contents started swelling inexorably. Boggle’s cage rode ever higher, until he was wedged against the ceiling of the car, and we did the second half of the trip with the duvet oozing around and between our headrests, threatening to engulf us.
We loved our little cottage
Once we arrived at the cottage, we embarked upon a lightening redecorating and maintenance spree, restoring it to the state it was in before we had tenants. We met our lovely neighbours and were delighted to strike up a friendship with them. Their two dogs were glad to have a couple more canines to redress the balance between cats and dogs in the neighbourhood, and we enjoyed sharing meals and pet-sitting, as well as piggy-backing on their internet connection for the duration of our stay.
A short but happy life. RIP Dick van Duck
We were saddened by news of the demise of Dick van Duck. It seems he was the victim of a predator who got into the duck enclosure where he was living. We comforted ourselves with the thought that his short life was probably about as good as a duck could reasonably expect, and the experience of rearing him had been a delight.
Several months passed in a blur of viewings, offers, raised hopes, disappointments, more viewings and the entire trauma associated with selling a house.
From this…
During this time, we decided that we would take the plunge and move house in Spain as well. We became fully paid-up card carrying members of the in for a penny, in for a pound club. Our Spanish house, still on the market after nearly four years, might not sell in our life time, so we decided we would move into a rental property rather than have our dreams on hold indefinitely.
Upon our return from the lush and warm UK in mid-July, to the baking heat of Spanish summer we started to look into possibilities. We knew roughly where we wanted to find a new home, and after a fairly monumental false start, we found an ideal rental property. The move has been documented elsewhere on El Perro. By October we were three hundred kilometres away from our lovely pueblo blanco in Malaga province, and settling into life in a tiny hamlet in Almeria province.
to this
There followed a couple of months starting a veg patch, adopting our four lovely chicken ladies and getting to know the neighbours and the area. All of a sudden we were heading into Christmas, when we felt as if we had hardly started the year.
Rosemary and Matthew conspired together to install our spy camera in the chicken coop. By the time Christmas day arrived, we could watch from the comfort of the sofa, and see exactly who was sitting in the nest box. We could wait until the deed was done and then go and collect the resulting egg. We developed a gripping game of guess how heavy the egg is, and started to keep an eggcel spreadsheet of the ladies’ output.
Matthew described the excitement thus:
Gripping, I think you will agree!
We’ve set up a camera to spy on our chickens day and night. You can follow the thrilling action at the link provided, where motion-sensed snapshots are posted to a dedicated tumblr 24/7!
Be thrilled as four young chickens decide whether to stand in one place for an hour or to stand in a slightly different place!
Be amazed by the wonders of a chicken fidgeting in a box for half an hour then standing up to reveal a modestly-sized egg!
I could not have put it better myself. The link he mentioned is here.
Until we sort out our bizarre home internet arrangements, we are unable to set up the long-awaited Chicken Feed. Once that is up and running, anybody who would like to will be able to watch live video of the adventures of Las Señoras Ponedoras. El Perro readers will be the first to know when we manage that!
Minnow unwraps her present
Christmas was a delight. It is far less commercialised here than in the UK, and we enjoyed our low-key family traditions, some carol singing and a Boxing Day trip to Western Leone, one of the spaghetti western film sets in the Tabernas desert, not far from here.
I note that 2014 has just been summarised in around a thousand words. Fewer than three words a day, if my mental arithmetic serves me correctly. No wonder it seemed to go so quickly!
So what of 2015? I can report that thus far it is going well. We hope to find a house in this area to buy, and if all goes according to plan, we shall be embarking on a new adventure. Solar energy, grey water systems, recycling, milking goats, restoring an old Andalucian farmhouse are all possibilities peeping at us from just over the horizon.
However, it would have been impossible to foresee half of what happened during the last twelve months, so I hesitate to predict where we shall all be this time next year. Suffice it to say that I am looking forward to the adventure enormously, and, time permitting, El Perro will keep you posted.
As we head into a new year, free of resolutions but full of optimism, I wish you all health, happiness, laughter and love to make 2015 the best of years.
Western Leone- film set of Once Upon a Time in the West, among others.