Mixed weather and mixed finances

...You can't live in Spain and fail notice that Spaniards have different habits than us Brits. For example in England you walk up to a Zebra crossing and expect the car to stop as soon as the driver sees you standing there. In Spain it's more like a game of dare. Its easy to spot a tourist, they are the ones who apply the Brit code in the Spanish world and discover that Spanish breaks are quite good and the horns work well too! Equally, we Brits queue up in Banks, bus stops, cash machines, taxi ranks and so on. The Spanish do too, but and this is a big BUT, when it is someone else's turn it's every man for himself. The Spanish love their dogs. Usually small yapping little things. And I am convinced that within a few generations, the Spanish dogs will no longer need legs and evolution will change their genes, because the Spanish carry their dogs around with them. Hence very few buy Geat Danes, Dobermans or St Bernards.

Occasionally you see something funny, yesterday I was having a Mahou in the Marina Bar and I saw a young girl riding a bike along the promonade and tied to her handle bars was a larger than normal dog (which made me think the girl may not be Spanish) everything was looking fine, the girl laughing and the dog loping after. I thought "This could end in tears" I didn't have to wait long. The dog decided it wanted to sniff a palm tree and stopped dead. The bike continued until the extent of the lead was reached, and the bike stopped dead, catapulting the girl from the bike but she was fortunate enough to be at the end of the bay and flew over the wall on to the sand. She wasn't hurt but she was certainly in shock and the dog was coughing due to the strangulation of its dog collar...

...As I am writing this I am able to look through the balcony patio doors at the Mediteranean sea, its a dull day and we are waiting for Neil to call as we are off to Dave and Pete's for lunch. Even thought its dull and rainy, people are still out and about walking across the beach, and this time of year is always prone to unsettled weather on the Costa Blanca. We had thunder storms last night and the temperature is down on what it was 2 days ago. None the less its still nice here and tomorrow or the day after we will be back to glorious sun once more and by June we will be expecting wall-to-wall sun until the end of September.

The former being said, tourists from colder climates such as the UK, the nordic countries, Germany and Holland, tend to feel warmer than us who have become climatised. So as I was sat yesterday in a Shirt and sweater, I could tell non-Spanish and ex-pats from tourists. Initially they sit in the sun, but as it was sunny interspersed, with short downpours, the awning was in and out like a yoyo, and the seat cushions on and off frequently, so they sit part in the sun and part under cover. For them it was warm enough to bask, and they tolerate being wet for a short time, but what they are blissfully unaware of is how cold it gets when the sun goes down combine that with wet and it can be a very miserable trek back to the hotel.

On that theme, trekking that is, Trevor and Andrew were here for Easter and we decided to go to the Chinese restaurant for dinner one night. They had a couple of friends stopping with them who are keen walkers. During the day they had been on a walk from finestrat to Villajoyosa which is around 5 to 7 kilometers. It was a very sunny day and I think they didn't apply much sun cream so when we met up with them they were glowing. We had a superb meal as per usual, and afterwards Andrew needed to use the cash dispenser. He went to the one next to the restaurant. He put in the card and it didn't go all the way in. The screen was blank and unlikely to do anything else. Andrew was concerned, quite rightly that someone could defraud him by finding the card and using it dishonestly. By the time we caught up with him he was trying to grip the card with another card he had. "It's stuck but I can see it" he told us, so we managed to go back and get a couple of tooth-picks, came back and used them like tweezers to grip the card. It dislodged and out it popped, the thing was that it wasn't his card!!! It was someone else's. Andrew decided to take it to the Bank and swap it for his in the morning.

In the meantime it did cross our minds that if they had closed circuit television on the machine, the Policia would see three men close up fiddling with the machine as if they were interfering with it. So we are now waiting to see if we make 'El Policia cinco' on Spanish TV....