It’s funny how quickly unfamiliar sounds become part of normal life.  Most mornings I’m now woken by the sound of the roadsweeper cleaning the runway followed by the barrier tannoy being tested.  We used to comment when we heard a plane and even dash up to the cockpit to see it land or take off, but now I might well think, ‘Oh, mid morning, that must be the Easyjet flight’.  Come going home time, it’s usual to hear the car horns beeping in frustration at the Frontier as the queues build up.  There seems to be no end to the stand-off between Gibraltar and Spain over the concrete block saga, and the local papers are full of the difficulties people are experiencing going to and from work.  Just writing this makes me wonder why it’s a Frontier not a Border but anyway, that’s what it says on the maps and roadsigns.

We’ve found and joined the local library and that’s a real step back in time.  No computerisation here – just the card taken out of the book, put into the cardboard ticket, book stamped with the date and the details entered into a ledger.  The book I’m reading was donated to the Gibraltar Garrison library in 1965 and many of the books seem to be from that era, so it will be back to my kindle when I want something a little newer.