Invaded By Swarms Of Flying Ants

It was day One Hundred and Eighty Three of this current year, or to be a little more specific, Tuesday the 2nd of July. What has that got to do with the price of eggs, I hear you ask 🤷‍♂️ Well actually, now that you mention it, absolutely nothing really 😁 But, that is how many days it had actually taken us before we finally decided that it was probably about time that we got ourselves down to the beach. Now it’s one thing having it right on your doorstep, but quite another to actually go and use it although, yes, it is very nice to be able to look at it everyday, but come on, isn’t this one of the reasons that we liked about this particular location and why it was also part of the decision to come to live here permanently in the first place, rather than move anywhere else, either within Spain or even another Country, so, the question is, what had stopped us ? Well if there is one thing that you can be certain of, it wasn’t due to the inclement weather now was it 😂 On numerous occasions, when we have been on our walks, Shazza, or I, have said, “We don’t have to rush back home, we could just get the sun-loungers out of the car and have an hour or so just sitting on the beach”, but we never did 🤷‍♂️ There was always an excuse, we weren’t wearing the right clothes, was the popular one, but as it happens we were always in shorts and tee-shirts so what more did we need ? Okay, yes I know, we were not wearing swimwear and, Shazza certainly couldn’t be sat on the beach without feeling the need to go in and have a splash, although, as you probably already know, the swimming in the sea bit, well I can take it or leave it, I am more than happy just being nosey ‘People Watching’, or looking at boats, or the surrounding scenery, I never get fed up of that, even if the mountain backdrops don’t move or change very much, but the sea conditions can change from one day to the next, there are always lots of different boats coming in, and out, of the Marina, which is right next to the beach that we always tend to use, or they pass in front of me a little further out to sea. We also always have the sun loungers and Umbrella in the car boot, that is apart from when we are collecting, or returning, visitor’s to and from the airport and so need the luggage space.

So the truth of the matter is, we have just been too lethargic, we have settled into our nice relaxed retirement routine’s, and with the heat being too excessive to really do anything any more energetic, the morning walks, taken now only on some morning’s, when it starts off a bit cooler at around 25 degrees(c), or even just swimming and lazing around the pool, before the more noisy individuals arrive, has actually fitted into our daily and weekly routines perfectly, just like weekly shopping and doing the domestic chores. But, in comparison, going down to the beach is much like a military planned operation, it also means that we have to make an effort, even having to think about things, now that would never do, for goodness sake we did not enter into this retirement lifestyle to actually then have to ‘think’ about doing things. We always apply the sun lotion ‘before’ we go down to the beach, apart from it being a really time consuming task, and not, before you even think it, especially after my last couple of posts on my stomach ‘bloat’ , no it actually isn’t because their is now a lot of skin surface to cover 😂 but because, putting it on later, down at the beach, there is a high risk of getting sand on our hands from setting up the furniture, then the sand, and fine gravel, stick to the cream on your hands and so, when it is applied, it is more like sandpapering your skin, peeling it off, and doing in advance, what the sun will probably do a few days later, when we change from lobster red to a nice shade of light golden brown 😲 Then of course there is the checklist, oh yes, there definitely has to be a checklist, Water Bottles filled with ‘chilled’ water from the filter jug in the fridge, Beach Towels, Kindles, Camera, E-Cigarettes (Fully charged and filled with fluids of course), bottle of sun cream, just in case and somewhat reluctantly, more needs to be applied, sunglasses, reading glasses…………. So generally speaking, it is easier to just go down to the pool, which is conveniently surrounded by manicured lawn, not a grain of sand or gravel in sight, the sun loungers and umbrella’s are already provided, so no unloading and re-loading of the car boot and carting them, albeit only a few metres from the car park, down to our selected piece of beach space, and the pool is actually only a couple of minutes walk from the apartment, not the laborious five minute drive to the beach in the car 🤭 Mind you, the swimming pool does not have a handy Cafe/Bar a few minutes walk away, where you can sit and drink a nice ‘Cafe Con Leche’, and enjoy a ‘Tostado’ for breakfast, before the hectic task of hours of sunbathing and swimming, and yes, before you comment, we have started back with the ‘Tostado’s’ again, now that I have ruled it out as being one of the possible causes of my ‘Middle Age Spread’, well my ‘bloat’ at least.

The morning had started pretty much as usual, my coffee on the balcony, Shazza’s in bed, but when she did eventually grace me with her presence she uttered those immortal words “What do you want to do today ?”, I guess anticipating the usual response from me, which could either be, “Not a Lot” or “Shall we go down to the pool”, and I know that she would have been happy with whichever of the two I answered with. However, and nobody can ever call me predictable, because on this particular morning, just to shake things up a little, I responded with, “How about we go down to the beach today ?”, there were no remonstrations, or words of rejection to the idea, she simply turned around and, as she left the balcony she said, “Okay, I will go and get ready” 😳 And that my friends is how we ended up going on our first visit of the year to the beach and, which ultimately turned out to be two consecutive days visits 🤷‍♂️ A bit like waiting for a bus, which doesn’t turn up on time, and then two come along together 😁

We had replaced the reclining sun chairs last year with the sun loungers, although we do still have the chairs, which we now allocate solely for the use of ‘guests’ 🤭 To be honest, the chairs are very comfortable and they do recline quite a way back, so for me, it was always exceptionally easy to have many moments of ‘Personal Contemplation’, which as you know, is always best done with one’s eyelids closed 🤔 The problem was that they did not go perfectly flat, so turning over in them to get some sun on my back was impossible and so ended up with me having to lay on a towel on the sand, which is never as perfectly flat as it looks, and so I personally found it very uncomfortable. These sun loungers are very lightweight and they fold up in three sections, so they are very easy to carry and easy to store and, as a bonus, they have one of those adjustable sun shade contraptions that stop the sun from burning your head, so they are actually perfect, and just as convenient, if not more so, for obtaining those moments of ‘Personal Contemplation’, well it would be rude not to 😉

So our current new routine was to drive down to our usual parking spot in the fishing village, the one that we more often than not park in when we go on our walks, and then we head to a little corner Cafe/Bar, opposite the village church, to get our Coffee’s and Tostado’s.

Once we had finished our breakfast’s we returned to the car, unloaded all our beach stuff and then looked for an appropriate area of beach to get ourselves set up to solar baste for the next 3-4 hour’s. On that first morning visit we were not the first to arrive, their were other couples like ourselves, you know, of a certain age group, if you get my drift, but also, now that the Spanish school holidays have commenced, there were also lots of family groups, still primarily Spanish, although we did hear the occasional English voice, but most of these beachgoers had come with the sole intention of staying for the best part of the day, with their sun chairs, umbrellas of all sizes and colours, some of which could have been designed by the LGBT Group as they were so colourful, tables, cool boxes, and yes I do mean ‘boxes’ in the plural, water toys of all shapes and sizes, buckets and spades, beach tennis rackets, the whole bloody nine yards 😲 and of course not forgetting their precious cargo of ‘Little Darlings’, although some were not so little, but they were all pretty much well behaved and just having fun on the beach or in the water, their were the occasional screams from some of the youngest when introduced to water for the first time, who I am sure did not see the funny side of things, albeit that everyone else was laughing at their discomfort, including their own parents, grandparents and siblings, and perhaps, if I were to be totally honest, that included me too 🤭 But it is funny, as you already know when you see the adult carry the youngster into the water, what is about to happen. As they try to lower the youngster into the water, the child automatically pulls both legs up anticipating what is about to happen, a bit like an undercarriage on an aircraft once it has got airborne, but eventually, once said undercarriage cannot retract any further, they get that dunking that they were so not looking forward too, and after which they are not afraid to let ‘everybody’ know about their displeasure 😱🙉 I am sure that anyone reading this, who has had children themselves and introduced them to water for the first time, will now be reminiscing that experience which they had with their own precious ‘Little Darlings’ 😁

I had forgotten the simple joys of just sitting on this particular beach, one that we had used numerous times over the last nine years, and which is located quite conveniently, close to the small marina entrance, so I could witness all the comings and goings of the different boats. Just sat there listening to the gentle sound of the sea, as it rippled up on to the shoreline, looking out across five Andalusian mountain peaks that stretch right up the coastline to Malaga, and beyond, and which served as a backdrop surrounding our particular bay, the almost clear blue sky, scarred only by the thin wisps of vapour trails, from aircraft thousands of feet above us, but still visible, the differing colours of the Sea, completely crystal clear at the water’s edge, but then changing to turquoise blue, then dark blue, as it extended outwards towards the horizon, and which, through the heat haze, in the distance I could see the tell tale shapes of the Sailing and Motor Yachts, heading to their own far off destinations, they stood out quite easily from the much larger cargo vessels in which they shared these waters. Much closer to us were the various array of smaller vessels, from Paddle Boards, Jet-Skis, Sailing Yachts and Motor Yachts, but these were not of the multi-million pound variety, those big boys were either moored at the more luxurious ‘Sotogrande’ Marina, twenty-minutes South of us, or at ‘Puerta Banus’ near Marbella, which is around 40 minutes North of us, and in-between their is of course Estepona Marina, where the main local fishing fleet is based, as well as leisure craft, located just on the opposite side of the bay from us, we do often tend to see lots of boats from there, which either pass by, or call in to re-fuel.

Now it does seem a little contradictory of me, for one minute I am telling you that I dislike the noise and disturbance from our own pool area, yet here on the beach I am much more tolerant of it, I can only assume that that is because our own pool area, which is relatively small, unlike a larger tourist hotel pool, and is also enclosed with tall hedging, whereas, down here at the beach, it is a much more extensive and open area 🤷‍♂️

It wasn’t long and the sea-view in front of me just got busier and busier with more people coming out to play on the water, in their array of different sized boats, jet-skis and paddle-boards. Fortunately there is a breakwater between the Marina entrance and our stretch of beach, and a yellow marker buoy in the sea, delineating the boundary between the safe swimming area from the motorised marine traffic.

It wasn’t just events on the water that caught my attention, there is always a vast array of birds to watch, seagulls, unlike their cousins in UK coastal locations which have learnt to steal food out of the hands of their unwary human foes, Battered Fish, Chips and even Ice-Creams, but here, they still fly out to sea to catch their own fish, or follow the fishing boat nets hoping to get an easier meal, we also see a lot of Cormorants and it is not uncommon to see Egrets and Griffin Vultures, along with flocks of much smaller birds which run along the beach at the water line, catching whatever morsel they can that the incoming or outgoing tides serves up for them. However, I was attracted by a small flock of sparrows, which are everywhere, no matter what part of the world you may be in, they are quite daring and will get as close as possible to humans in an attempt to feast upon any scraps that get dropped. However, on this particular day at this particular time there was no food being consumed, especially not by us, where a small flock kept landing, almost at my feet, and they would peck away at whatever insects there were laying between the fine sand and gravel particles. They are quite nervous little birds so they didn’t stay still for long, often spending only seconds on the ground then taking flight, before returning again to the same spot a few minutes later. I waited patiently and then was fortunate enough to get a decent picture of one, only then did I discover that there were literally hundreds of ants amongst the sand and fine gravel, and this is what they were feasting upon. In the local news the following morning, quite coincidentally, I came across an article explaining that the whole of the Malaga coastline had been ‘Invaded By Swarms Of Flying Ants’, many that had landed on the beaches were washed into the sea on the incoming and receding tides, bather’s right along the coastline had been alarmed at the black masses just floating on top of the water, indeed, Shazza had seen them when she was out swimming on our first day, but as she pushed them away in the water she just mistook them for dead flies. So I guess these small nervous little birds were doing us a favour, acting as a kind of Natures ‘Beach Dyson’ by hoovering them all up, for the following day there was no signs of the ants, either on the water or the beach 🤷‍♂️

After reading the article it did make me wonder wether this was just another sign of the impact of Climate Change, yet again another ‘unnatural’ phenomenon that we will just shrug off as being a strange one-off incident and not give it a second thought, and I do include myself in that statement. Nature is our ‘Early Warning’ system that things are not as they should be, and when you stop and think about it, unusual weather patterns, Volcanic eruptions, Earthquakes, Floods, Wildfires, Droughts, Pandemics etc. etc. etc. have been happening at increasing regularities all over the World but which, in the main, we humans are just putting down to freak incidences of nature or just generally ignoring them 🤷‍♂️ I don’t know how many of you will have taken any notice of the rise again in ‘Bird Flu’, which is currently and quite alarmingly infecting global ‘Dairy Milk’ production, yes the stuff that some of you put in your tea and coffee, or pour on to your breakfast cereals 😲 Shazza and I on the other hand no longer drink ‘dairy’ milk but occasionally we have no choice, when we go to the Cafe/Bars, unless we drink it black, which we don’t tend to do, so perhaps this is another good excuse for just sticking to drinking Anti-Covid Vaccines 🤭 And how many of us are taking any real notice of the global increase again in ‘Covid’ incidents. I am not trying to be one of those ‘Doom and Gloom’ merchants, or a ‘Sooth Sayer’ wandering around the streets with a sandwich board strapped to my body pronouncing that ‘The World Will End Tomorrow’, that would be ridiculous, because we all know that nothing will happen until after the Euro 2024 football tournament, or Wimbledon, has finished, so we have at least another couple of weeks yet 🤭 I don’t mean to make light of the situation, but what can any of us, as individuals, realistically do about any of this, I mean how much of our food is produced which has been grown using ‘Commercial’ fertilisers or exposed to Chemical Sprays, directly or indirectly before it even gets into our shopping baskets ? How do we know what the personal hygiene standards are of the people who both process and package those foodstuffs ? It really is another minefield for which we have no control over, of course there are simple measures that we can all take, like washing our fruit and veg before cooking or eating them, and cooking them properly, but is all of this just a measure of how far we have now come as a society ? I remember as a kid, ‘scrumping’ fruit off trees in orchards, I never worried wether they may have been sprayed with some sort of insecticide, and I certainly never took them home and washed them before devouring them. Neither can I recall my mother ever washing fruit, or vegetables, before serving them up to us, perhaps maybe she was surreptitiously trying to kill us off 🤔 Anyway, once again I am beginning to digress and go off on a tangent so, enough of all of that, I am depressing myself, now where did I put that ‘Sandwich Board’ 😂

We remained on the beach on that first day until mid-afternoon, probably until around. 3:30pm, but decided to leave when we observed a bit of an exodus, there had to be a reason for the Spanish leaving the beach this early, normally they would remain until 8-9pm 🤔 We had seen all day, what we thought at the time, was a heat haze, creeping up the coastline but it was bright sunshine where we were. We got home, had a nice hot mug of tea, as we Brits tend to do of an afternoon, normally accompanied with a nice slice of cake, or some biscuits, but not these days for us though ☹️ Then we both took showers to get rid of any sun cream that was blocking our pores, sat with our iPads on the balcony to see if anything important had occurred whilst we were out, it hadn’t 🤷‍♂️ and then we waited for the next set of Euro 2024 football fixtures to commence, starting at 6pm (5pm UK time), which is also when we would have our evening meal, Vegetable stir fry tonight 😋

Suddenly without any warning the thick ‘Sea Fret’ totally engulfed us, now we have witnessed lots of these over the years, they are common occurrences, but it still always amazes me at just how far inland they stretch, and just how quickly they enclose everything in a veil of invisibility, buildings, roads, lights, it is quite an eerie sort of vista really, and with it comes a notable temperature drop, to the extent that we have to close all the doors and windows, this time to keep the heat in, it really does feel that chilly, whereas we normally have all the doors and windows open to help to dissipate the heat at this time of the year. This explained the mass exodus from the beach earlier, but how did they know ? I hadn’t seen any pre-warning by the ‘Works of Fiction’, perhaps the Spanish just know the difference between a ‘Heat Haze’ and a ‘Sea Fret’ 🤷‍♂️

It was not quite the same routine the following morning, for we must have been far to eager to get down to the beach again, as we were half an hour too early at the Cafe/Bar to get our breakfast’s 😳 We just went back to the car, unloaded our beach paraphernalia and then trundled it to the beach to bag another space close to the water’s edge, in order that we would not have to walk too far, barefoot on the hot sand, to get into the sea. As it happened we had a wide choice, as it appeared that we were also far too early for any of the other beach goers too, I mean come on, where were they all ? It had after all just gone 7:30am 🤭 Only joking, it was actually 10:30am, I am sure you know us better than that, we don’t move very fast first in the mornings, unless we have to of course.

We got ourselves set up on the beach, uncertain as to wether we had missed a beach warning, perhaps there had been ‘Shark’ sightings in the area 🤔 We discounted that as they would almost certainly have taped off the beach access points and put up warning signage, the Spanish are very efficient at taping off access roads and putting up ‘Prohibition’ Signage 🤭 Although the ‘Shark’ quip is not as silly as you may first think it is, as a lot further up the Spanish coast from us, and only a week or so ago, a ‘small’ three-metre Hammerhead Shark had been spotted very close to a popular tourist beach, however the media immediately discounted claims that it had been put there by any of the Anti-Tourism brigade 😂

After obtaining our breakfast’s at the Cafe/Bar, at the second attempt, we returned to where we had left our sun-lounger’s, beach towels and umbrella. There were now a lot more people on the beach, much like the previous day, but nobody had taken umbrage at us leaving our beach accessories there, it wasn’t as if we had left a big reserved sign and towels with English Emblems on them 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, and at least down this part of Spain, people are a bit more civilised than in some ‘other’ tourist hot spots. Over breakfast I had joked with Shazza that we should have left a ‘Gone Swimming’ sign on our sun-loungers, but she reckoned that that may have sparked a coastguard alert when we hadn’t returned after half an hour, although I am not really convinced that ‘anyone’ would have been actually bothered or unduly concerned, apart perhaps the police beach patrols at around 11pm, when they came to check that the beach was clear, and by that time, it would surely have been far too late for a rescue attempt, but they may have got a good price on the sun-loungers and umbrella 😂 Did you know that here in Spain you can be fined if you set up on a ‘Public’ beach ‘before’ a certain time in the morning, and you certainly cannot pre-position beach furniture and then leave it, ‘before’ a certain time in the morning, which I believe I am right in saying is 8:00am, and, you can also be fined if do not ‘leave’ a ‘Public’ beach by a certain time at night, again I believe that to be 11:00pm 😳 Unless of course there are ‘official’ functions or events, such like the recent ‘San Juan’ Fiesta.

The previous day Shazza had done a lot of swimming and snorkelling, which is nothing out of the ordinary, as usual I wasn’t that bothered so I just sat underneath the umbrella, People and Boat watching mainly, not even having time for a period of ‘Personal Contemplation’, there had been just so much going on, in and out of the water, so I didn’t want to miss anything did I 🤷‍♂️ However, I should just mention the young woman right next to us, she was probably in her early thirties at a guess, now she ‘paraded’ topless all day, and I do mean paraded, and then there were numerous young women, mid-twenties, who wore, well what I can only describe as ‘Thongs’, there certainly wasn’t enough material for them to be considered swimwear, especially at the back, I have never seen so many ‘bare and very firm female bottoms’ in one place before, not that I was paying that much attention you understand 😳 Shazza did say at one point, “It’s pointless them actually wearing anything”, I of course agreed very enthusiastically 🤭 before saying, “Disgusting behaviour my darling, it shouldn’t be allowed” in my bestest ‘Frankie Howard’ voice, with a big ‘cheeky’ grin on my face 😁 “Did you know that there was a Naturist Beach in Estepona ?” I said to her, just by way of passing related conversation, “Well you can get that idea out of your head before you even suggest it, and looking at this lot, you don’t need to go to Estepona” she said, this time with a wink and a wry mischievous grin on her face. It did remind me of an old TV fashion Advertisement where the strap line at the end was, ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it” and this lot were certainly taking that quite literally.

On our second consecutive beach day the unthinkable happened, no, not that unthinkable, I didn’t wear a skimpy thong to fit in with the crowd, that would only have served to get Shazza looks of sympathy from onlookers and, in my case, it would be more like, ‘If you haven’t got it, wear something loose to disguise the fact’ 😂 No, the unthinkable was, that for once, I actually went in to the sea for a swim ‘before’ Shazza, in fact I even had two swims before she even considered dipping her toes, mind you, I must be honest with you, my swims were not really swims in the true sense of the word, my little dips were only so that I could cool off and which lasted no longer than a couple of minutes at a time, whereas when Shazza goes in she is gone for up to half an hour at a time, and she swims way out, way beyond my personal comfort zone. But also on this particular day, I actually spent most of the day solar basting, whilst Shazza, somewhat unusually for her, remained under the shade of the Umbrella. Wether I live to regret that choice, I will get to know in a few days time, if the peeling stops, and new skin grows back that is 😲 I still had plenty of opportunities for both People and Boat watching though, and once again, much like the previous day, I was so preoccupied with ‘everything’ that was going on around me, that I hadn’t had an opportunity for any ‘Personal Contemplation’ 🤷‍♂️

By mid-afternoon, having been out again for what turned out to be another five hours, we had both had enough sun, beach and sea, and now we were both feeling a little ‘snackish’, on past beach days we would take some ham, tomatoes and cheese down with us, we would purchase a baguette from a small local corner shop in the village and that would be enough to see us through the afternoon. Mind you, those were the days prior to the late breakfast’s of Cafe con Leche and Tostado’s. There was also a ‘Chiringuito’ on the beach, one that we have used on numerous occasions for non-beach day lunches, which serves some delicious fresh Fish dishes but, my lack of discipline would have inevitably led to me also ordering a portion of fries and an Anti-Covid Vaccine, or perhaps two, as I had to of course allow for the ‘evaporation’ factor in these sorts of temperatures 😂 However, we did both agree that whilst we were ‘both’ sorely tempted, we preferred to stick to our ‘current’ weekly healthy dietary regimes, at least between Monday-Friday, if we didn’t, it would be so very easy over here to acquire much more than my little ‘Middle Aged Spread’ and border on us becoming Alcoholics, I for one do not need much excuse to stop for a cheeky Anti-Covid Vaccine 🍷 whenever the opportunities arise We currently very rarely drink any alcohol during the week, unless we are out somewhere and decide to stop for lunch. We also knew that at home we had a nice big juicy water melon chilling in the fridge for our mid-afternoon snack and, for my evening meal, well I had a nice quarter piece of chicken to have with my salad (I need to keep my protein levels up as I am still eating very minimal carbohydrates), Shazza on the other hand still eats her normal portions of carbohydrates, Rice, Pasta’s, Jacket Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes and an assortment of Legumes, and with her salads she enjoys her home-made meat free ‘Falafels’, or ‘Bean Burgers’ although sometimes she will join me in eating Fish, mainly Tuna, Pilchards, Prawns, Salmon, Sea Bass or Cod, the latter not being covered in batter I hasten to add 🤭

I have never really eaten breakfast’s, for year’s, this isn’t a new thing, and often, in my former working life, I could go all day and just eat a main meal in the evening, now not so many years ago some dieticians would say that that was a really unhealthy practice, but these days ‘fasting’ as they now label it, is the ‘in thing’, the latest health fad. However, I have never taken any notice of these fads, my stomach always tells me when I am hungry, then, I eat, and if I am not hungry then I don’t, it’s a pretty simple system really and I haven’t, as yet, starved to death 🤷‍♂️ Shazza used to eat breakfast everyday, in fact at one point she had to have three meals a day or would get very grumpy if she didn’t, but now she too tends to miss out breakfast, other than our late one’s of course when we go on our walks or, like the past couple of days, going down to the beach, which we then actually consider to be more of a ‘Brunch’ than a breakfast, and that always tends to last us until our evening meal, with perhaps a piece of fruit mid-afternoon. Shazza does still make her home-made soups, Cheesy Broccoli, Spiced Red Lentil, African Peanut and Minestrone, although some of the titles are a bit misleading as the Cheesy Broccoli has no actual cheese in it, it is what they call ‘Nutritional Yeast’, and she often puts that in some other meals she prepares. The African Peanut has no Peanuts in it, not sure what substitute she uses, Cashews I am guessing, but I can honestly say that they are all absolutely delicious, as well as healthy, and each batch she makes serves six individual portions, so we often have those for lunch, even now, in these hot Summer months, with a slice of her home-made sour dough bread, which then see’s us both through to our evening meal. Shazza has always enjoyed cooking and baking, my regular reader’s may remember by rambles from our Motorhoming days, when I would give accounts of all the cakes she used to make whilst we were ‘On the Road’. Obviously things have changed a little over the last five year’s, she rarely bakes cakes anymore ☹️ but since we have been on our ‘Plant Based’ journey she has adapted her recipes and cooking skills, there are of course ‘Plant Based’ baking options but, apart from the very occasional ‘Scone’, she hasn’t really been that enthusiastic about going down that particulate route.

We had every intention of making it three consecutive days down at the beach, the previous evening we had even talked about missing out the late breakfast routine and going back to taking some fillings for a sandwich down with us, and then purchasing a baguette from the local shop. However, we both awoke and it looked very misty across the sea, almost as if there had been another ‘Sea Fret’ that hadn’t quite cleared away. Although the sun was shining, it was the usual 24-25 degree’s, the sky had a thin haze to it, not the more usual clear blue sky, to be honest I don’t think either of us were really that bothered about going down, but this did provide us with the perfect excuse not to, not that we needed an excuse, we were free agents now, we could do whatever we wanted. However, I think that it was more a case of the both of us thinking that the other, after the previous evening’s conversation, now had it in our heads that that is what were were doing, and especially as Shazza knows what I am like for making plans, and my OCD Buddy, for not liking last minute changes 🤷‍♂️ We could have chosen to have just gone down to our pool, but we both just couldn’t drum up the enthusiasm for that either 🤷‍♂️ In the end, I had the opportunity to finalise these ramblings, something I probably would not have got around to doing until the weekend. Shazza was happy to spend the morning in the kitchen, where she prepared another batch of soup, Cheesy Broccoli this time, we had just finished off the last of the African Peanut batch, so that would be on the menu for that day’s lunch 😋 She also made a fresh batch of Humus and some Pesto and just generally enjoyed pottering around in her kitchen domain.

As I sit on the balcony, tapping away at the keyboard, stopping occasionally to cast my eyes at what is going on outside, there is a gentle breeze blowing in, the sun, fortunately during the Summer months, sits high in the sky, so it does not shine directly into the balcony and force me to take refuge in the inner sanctums of what, with the external shutters down, I call the cave house. The temperatures will continue to remain in the low thirties, as they have been for several days now, they will steadily climb by only a few more degrees, unless we get more of the strong ‘Terrell’ winds which will push those temperatures up even higher. However, the main change is in the evenings, nights and early mornings, when the temperatures do not drop very much below the very warm and humid 24 degrees(c) mark, but we have learnt how to cope with that now.

Fortunately, neither of us are suffering any adverse effects from the last couple of days of solar basting, my skin was already a nice shade of light brown, gained from being constantly out in the sun, primarily though from what were our daily walks, going into town, either our own town or in Estepona, doing bits and pieces, as you do and then, much more recently, being out around the pool. However, I never tend to go deep bronze, I could stay in the sun for day’s, or even week’s, and I still would remain the same shade of light brown, although Shazza always goes a slightly deeper shade of golden brown than me, more irritatingly, she seems to retain her tanned features far longer than myself, although that is probably because generally I tend to hide under the sun umbrellas most of the time 🤷‍♂️

So I will be now publishing this latest ramble a few days earlier than originally scheduled. Now, we are just awaiting for those two all important big final results 😲🙈 No, stop being silly, I am not talking about either the UK General Election result, or the French one for that matter, no these two results are far more important than those two put together, I am talking about the Quarter Final match of Euro 2024, Germany 🇩🇪 v Spain 🇪🇸, and the other important Quarter Final the following day, Switzerland 🇨🇭 v England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿, fingers crossed that we will be singing both 🎶 Olay, Olay, Olay, Olay 🎶 and 🎶 Sweet Caroline 🎶 on those respective two days, rather than seeing the premature appearance of the ‘Fat Lady’ making an unscheduled early appearance, and singing us a song, an indication that, like in Operatic terms, means that for us, it really is ‘All Over’.

Until the next ramble……………………..

Hasta Luego mi Amigos, (La Vida Es Buena)