Friday 19th February, Roquetas and Tess has been with us all night.

Friday 19th February, Roquetas and Tess has been with us all night.

(with apologies to "Paint Your Wagon")

Away out here they got a name
For rain and wind and fire
The rain is Tess, the fire Joe,
And they call the wind Maria

Yep, Tess and three of her sisters, constant, freezing cold and wet through are keeping her company.

Poor old Mike our opposite next door neighbour keeps getting his attached awning flooded out every morning, “Has not been winter weather like this for over 102 years!” Funny, he doesn't look that old.

Usually Tess disappears around noon but her cousin Maria comes along and gives you more than a hand shake. We should have figured that one out when we arrived because all along the beach was covered with these kite surfers and they are only about if there are strong winds and there are.

Dries the washing quick, I give you that and as mentioned Maria hardly ever turns up with Tess which is a good thing.

Plan is a bike ride into town then back for some jobs I need to do.

So got a bit nicer but Maria did her stuff and trying to cycle in Roquetas against such a head wind needed a very low gear indeed. Finally arrived and went to the the Torro Museum at the Bull Ring, never much cared for it myself and usually pretty pleased when the chap has his nuts whipped off by the bulls horns, funny kind of “sport”.

Had our usual coffee, mainly to use the toilets. Here's a thing, over here in Spain it's law that you can use a café's toilet although you are not a customer. Reason being, there are no public loo's, that's why you see so many Spanish HGV drivers pissing on the side of the road in England, they don't want to pay for a coffee, they are not used to it. It's such a well bred habit with us that we just have to buy a coffee and get on with it.

I remember in Paris with the family, Tricia and Heather were for ever wanting the loo and every time we went into a café it cost more than €12, remember this is Paris bloody France. By the time we got to the Champs Elysée's I was broke! Oh my God I've also just remembered sitting outside the Louvre eating 4 x omelette and chips with some cokes cost, €90! I don't know what it is but I don't like the French per se. I don't believe I actually typed that last phase, honest!

Now I've met quite a few OK Frenchman during my business life but as a nation, well I just don't know. Hang on, my opposite number in France working for Gould Computers a number of years ago comes to mind. Vincent Detourier, AKA “Vassont”, as he pronounced it. Now OK he was rather good looking and over six foot and his English was perfect but when he was around women, especially English women, especially my wife, you could cut his French accent with a garlic knife. I thought he was gargling, the sudden strength of his accent. The last time we met him, one evening in Paris, SWMBO had to go to the loo three times because she was feeling faint. I'm sure he was involved in the sinking of Rainbow Warrior when he did his stint in the French Navy. Bastid.

Where was I? Oh yes, here in Spain.
Called into a Bazaar, mainly for some cloths pegs and black thread to repair my cycle shorts, pocket got ripped trying to stop SWMBO from taking my money the other day. When in also bought some needles which was probably a good idea and spotted some LED front and rear cycle lights. Now we very rarely cycle at night and when we do it's me holding a hand torch at the front and her having a flashing red light attached to her anorak. Used that system to get to the Pamplona bull run at 5am one morning last year and although it left the safety angle a little bit to be desired, it did the trick. So anything would be an improvement on that. Now these lights were €3.50 for the pair and even if they did not work I couldn't resist something so cheap that was electrically based and made up of more than one piece. I can't even buy a gallon on red wine for that, well I actually I can but I spilled some of it and the carpet the other day and it has gone threadbare. So I'll have to wait until I'm really desperate, to finish it off, it could possibly do with a little ageing anyway.



Back to the lights, got back to MS, put in the batteries and they worked! Not only that they were programmed with various combinations of flashing on and off, and they fit, and nothing was missing.

So they are on the bikes and I for one will be cycling round the camp site tonight at 9pm trying them out.

On the way back the wind was so strong I just opened my anorak jacket and sailed along the promenade, brilliant! Oh, I forgot to mention SWMBO fell off her bike, in the mud, on the crossing from the promenade to the site, God she really went on about it, what a wuss, and apparently I don't love her anymore. She cheered up and cleaned both bikes when we got back, something is definitely in store, I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. We are due to go to Almeria tomorrow to shop, oh my God!

BTW, SWMBO's back on her diet which means I got to finish off all the cakes and biscuits left in the MS before they go off, se la vive?

My new blocks for the slide out.








I will not apologise for any of the following jokes, I'm getting desperate.
A Real Fighter Pilot

A fighter pilot sat down at the "O" Club bar and ordered a drink. As he sat sipping his drink, a young woman sat down next to him and turned to the man in the flight suit and asked, "Are you a real fighter pilot?"



He replied, "Well, I've spent my whole life flying jets, deploying overseas, going to fighter and weapons schools, dodging SAMs, jinking through dog fights, wearing big watches, and strapping into A4's, F4's, F/A-18s, F-14s and performing Air Combat Manuvers, shooting down airplanes, bombing the enemy, so, you bet, I'm a fighter pilot and a damn good one."

She said, "I'm a lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the morning, I think about women. When I shower, I think about women. When I watch TV, I think about women. I even think about women when I eat. It seems that everything makes me think of women." The two sat sipping in silence.

A little while later, a man sat down on the other side of the pilot and asked, "Are you a real fighter pilot?"
He replied, "I always thought I was, but I just found out I'm a lesbian."

A man left work one Friday afternoon, but instead of going home, he stayed out the entire weekend, drinking with the boys and spending his entire paycheck.

When he finally appeared at home, Sunday night, he was confronted by his very angry wife and was barraged for nearly two hours with a tirade about his actions.

Finally his wife stopped the nagging and simply said to him, "How would you like it if you didn't see me for 2 or 3 days?"
To which he replied, "That would be fine with me."
Monday went by and he didn't see his wife.
Tuesday and Wednesday came and went and he didn't see her.
On Thursday, the swelling went down just enough so he could see her just a little out of the corner of his left eye.



A old man decides that he wants a pet, and goes to the shop to buy a hamster. He gets it home, plays with it, feeds it, and eventually goes to bed. He wakes up the next morning, to find that his hamster is dead.

He takes it back to the shop, to complain. "This hamster I bought yesterday is dead!" "Well, I'm sorry sir, but there's nothing I can do about it."
"But I only bought it yesterday!" "I'm sorry sir, but it was in perfect health when it left the store. There's nothing I can do, except..."

"Yes?" "There's one thing you can try. I have a recipe. You can make it into jam - I hear it's quite nice." "Jam? We are talking about a dead animal - what on earth do you mean by this?" "Sir, I am merely suggesting a way to put the poor, departed animal to good use..." So the man takes the hamster and the recipe home. He gets the jam-jar, adds the other ingredients and adds the hamster.

Next morning, he wakes up, and decides to try some of the jam on his toast for breakfast. He spreads it on, takes a bite, and it's the most disgusting thing he's ever tasted - he throws the entire jar out of the window in
disgust, and goes to work. That evening, he comes home from work to find that his garden is covered with a thick carpet of daffodils.

He remembers throwing the jam out of the window, and decides that it must have somehow caused the prolific growth. So, he goes back to the pet shop, and complains. "Not only did my hamster die, but now my garden is covered in daffodils!" "What do you mean, sir?" "Daffodils! Everywhere, ruining my beatiful lawn! And all because of that jam I made - you know, from the dead hamster!" "That's very odd, sir. You see, normally you get tulips from hamster jam..."

There are two guys who have been lost in the desert for weeks, and they're at death's door. As they stumble on, hoping for salvation in the form of an oasis or something similar, they suddenly spy, through the heat haze, a tree in the distance.

As they get closer, they can see that the tree is draped with rasher upon rasher of bacon. There's smoked bacon, crispy bacon, life-giving juicy nearly-raw bacon, all sorts.

"Oh my, Pepe" says the first bloke. "It's a bacon tree!!! We're saved!!!"

"You're right!" says Pepe. So Pepe goes on ahead and runs up to the tree salivating at the prospect of food. But as he gets to within five feet of the tree, there's the sound of machine gun fire, and he is shot down in a hail of bullets.

His friend quickly drops down on the sand, and calls across to the dying Pepe.
"Pepe!! Pepe!! What on earth happened?" With his dying breath Pepe calls out "Ugh, run, run!! It's not a Bacon Tree...

its a ham bush!”