Busy week. Seems that way anyway.

And in lots of different ways.

Changing from the bizarre to the even more bizarre and merely strange.

Over the last few months or maybe even a year, L has been mentioning that a cat has been getting into our terraza.

And then frequently doing its business in her plant pots.

I’ve just tried a search with mixed results and I’m none the wiser whether I’ve mentioned this before or not.

I am sure I would have mentioned that the cat actually came into the house and we were suddenly aware of a furry object that was not normally there.

Once spotted it decided that retreat was the better form of honour and scarpered it.

L went upstairs to close the door to the terraza and on the way back down happened to look in the spare bedroom and spotted the cat hiding there.

Well eventually the door to the terraza was reopened, the cat exited, and all was well.

I forgot to mention this or you just had a resume of something that happened a few months ago and I cannot find it in previous missives.

The other night we were sat on the terraza for our normal look over the town at midnight.

This happens just about every night, come rain or shine, and if it’s particularly raining we’ll stand indoors and look out.

I happened to glance over to the wall that leads to the street. Via a bit of sloping roof.

And I wasn’t quite sure that my eyes were not deceiving me.

Because I could see half a head and a pair of ears and a pair of eyes looking back at me.

I quickly decided to do as little as possible. Because the piece of roof it was standing on is around 20 or 30 ft above the ground and I would not have been happy to cause it to try and escape and maybe lose its footing.

So I very quietly turned to L and was going to mention something but by then the animal had made a strategic withdraw and was not seen again.

And I have not seen it since, for that matter. In terms of good ways to weird yourself, this is a winner…

As I mentioned last week, it’s been the world championship of jamón on the Paseo this week.

There has been a large selection of hams, pork, other meats, cheeses, olives, and anchovies. Most have been on offer in plates costing €5.

There is also the cut price bars and these have been offering cerveza at €1.50 and tinto de verano at €2 a can.

I really pushed the boat out and we had dinner there last Sunday. Four plates and two tintos de verano for the exorbitant cost of €24!

Me encanta España. I really do.

Yesterday was Astronomy Day.

We had a six-planet alignment in the morning, which we didn’t see.

This was followed by an almost total eclipse, more of which in a while. And the whole was finished off by apparently the best display this year of the Perseid meteor shower, which we also missed because it was between 1:00 and 4:00 in the morning, this morning.

Ho hum, can’t have everything.

I knew it was a while ago since the last time I’d seen a total eclipse and my PA managed to track it down to 1999.

It’s bizarre. I keep looking back at previous posts. I think I’m sure I posted a paragraph about X, Y, or Z but sometimes you can’t find them.

The one in point this time is going into our local farmacia.

I asked if they had Gaffer’s Day eclipse aid. Or even gafas de eclipse en español…

The assistant’s eyes lit up. She vanished into the optician part and brought back a couple of pairs of eclipse spectacles.

And when I asked how much she said, “You are good customers. They are free.”

Well yesterday, late afternoon, saw said Gaffer’s Day Eclipse Aids put into use.

And considering they’re sheets of plastic in pieces of card, they are very effective.

Busy week.

I’m sensible enough not to even attempt to look at even a near full eclipse without protection.

And I’d forgotten just how much light there is even when the partial is in the 90+%s.

But with the spectacles everything became visible. And as we approached the biggest percentage, a little bit of ingenuity was brought into play.

One set of glasses balanced on top of my distance glasses and the second held in front of the camera lenses.

And once we’d managed to stabilise holding the phone, the pictures are quite good.

To get the angles right we ended up with a mobile phone holder with one part resting on an upside-down plant pot holder with some pamphlets underneath one side of the plant pot holder.

Don’t knock it. It worked.

Busy week.

Meanwhile Die Tochter had a good deal of success taking photos from their flat in Gibraltar across the bay towards Algeciras.

And even had enough time to knock up a sun setting in the background video using time-lapse.

But yesterday was not the best of what there’ll be.

On the 2nd of August 2027 we are going to have a total eclipse here in Andalucia.

So the first total eclipse I will have experienced since that one back in Fareham in 1999. I’ve said I experienced because while Lorraine experienced the same eclipse she was in Southampton.

The Burger Cup hits Estepona. Photo by author

Humidity.

The only thing bringing everything back down to earth at the moment is the excessive humidity.

The humidity has been quite high for a couple of weeks now but yesterday it just started to get very, very oppressive.

And while the temperatures are not altogether unpleasant, the overbearing feeling from the humidity is making it quite hard to bear.

When I took Lorraine up her second cup of coffee earlier, it was like transitioning from Spain to the outer circles of hell.

The Christian biblical hell introduced to scare people into being frightened of ignoring the clergy.

Not the cold, dark, dreary place of many of the older religions and sects.

It gets a bit complicated so I’ll just put the reference here and you can look at it yourself.

Is there anything else I was going to write about?

There’s one thing that I’ll probably mention hopefully next week when it’s properly concluded.

I’m sure everything will work out fine but I don’t want to pre-empt matters.

The most important thing though is that from Wednesday to to Sunday the Burger Cup is being held in el plaza de toros, the (boom plane) Bull Ring.

I understand it is connected to the certamen mundial de jamón. And let’s hope that this too turns into an annual event.

I’m just hoping they do bite-size burgers because the idea of having to eat six or eight full ones between us to be able to vote is a little overwhelming.

I’ll let you know next week. Hasta luego.

Hopefully a less busy week.