Good to be home

Tucanon
Dick and Irene Craig
Tue 21 Jun 2011 14:46

We have been extremely busy since arriving back in Spain. Relearning how to play Bridge has consumed a large part of our time and we have been playing three times a week. Last week I actually played four times and Dick managed to play five times.

This has been sandwiched between painting and gardening. However, although we still have just over a week before flying to the UK for the months of July and August, there is likely to be little time to play bridge, and no time at all for the other practical pastimes, as we will spend the next seven days relaxing with our friend John and showing off to him, the area within which we live, when we are not sailing.

Living here has been something of a comedy of errors for me since returning after an absence of two years. It could even be thought of as a bit of a comic strip as one accident after another seemed to befall me. In truth, I feel a bit like the cat with seven lives.

Within a day or two or arriving home, we visited our local doctor for a check up. I also got her to check what I thought was a melanoma on my scalp. Fortunately, the problem on my head was much less dramatic and turned out to be just a fungus which I treated for several weeks. When it disappeared, it took a bunch of hair with it which was a bit disappointing. I tend to have quite fine hair and cannot afford to lose any.

Dick was advised to cut down on his alcohol intake and did extremely well as shown by a further blood test several weeks later. He also had a small lump in his wrist removed, which had been with him for the last four years and despite being thumped regularly with a bible, or similar, had not disappeared on its own.

During the first week back, watering the pots on the back naya, I slipped on water which had leaked from one of the pots and fell down six steps, onto the terrace. It was my own fault for wearing crocs which are lethal on wet tiles. That didn’t make me feel any better as I badly bruised the lower part of my right leg and foot. Several days later my knee was swollen and hurt, whether I rested it or walked on it.

Mid June, while moving one of the ladders, from the front to the side of the balcony, the ladder lost balance and it was no mean feat to extricate my head from between the rungs, before I completely lost control and it fell onto the terrace.

Accident number three occurred a few days later while I was trespassing in the untended vineyard adjacent to our front garden. I had already sprayed weed killer on the vines, brambles and other weeds which were encroaching our hedge, a few days earlier. It was now necessary to start trimming back our hedge. The downside is that the abandoned vineyard is about six feet higher than our front garden with a gap between the two. The gap is about 40cm but extends to almost a metre wide for a distance of around five metres. Busily snipping away, I eventually overstretched myself and fell into the “ditch”, badly bruising my left wrist and scratching my right wrist. It was a miracle that the secateurs had remained attached to the conifer and hadn’t fallen with me, or into me.

Hopefully, if things really do happen in threes, we can put an end to this comic strip.

Our friend Richard’s Chinese girlfriend flew back to China on the 7th June, planning to sell her apartment there, bring the money to Spain, then purchase an apartment here, where she and Richard could live. Sadly, a few days after her return to Canton, Richard received an email from Jing-Jing’s son. His mother had been rushed to hospital and undergone surgery for an aneurism. The operation had been a success. Last heard, the patient had regained consciousness and was still in intensive care.

The weather now is very warm, with bright blue skies and lots of hot sunshine. It is even hot at night and we find that a top sheet is no longer required.

The garden is looking good. The grass is green from all the recent rain. The bougainvillea hedge is a mass of purple, the hibiscus is covered in red flowers, red and white flowers adorn the oleander and the ground cover alongside the conifer hedges is bursting with orange, daisy-like flowers.

 Ed now has a regular spot on Kiss FM. Caroline’s baby Mia, is all smiles.