Oli’s leaving home, Montrondo again, cut off from the outside world and more Emma Bridgewater pottery

Olivia on her 24th birthday last month.
Hi again,

Wow I’ve written it. Oli’s leaving. How can that be possible? Well she is 24 and she is working so, yes, of course it’s possible. When she first told me, I was sad but not shocked as I was expecting it at some stage. Then I shed the odd tear and then I accepted it and now, of course I am helping her. What else can I do? Soon Suzy will be going too. It’s just a question of time. That will leave us three “oldies”, Eladio, my Father and I in this big, big house. Will we move out? Will we heck, we shall enjoy it and enjoy hosting the girls when they come back to visit.

Suzy won’t be going yet. She is doing what appear to be her finals but when they finalise is another question. The bets are on: this September, next February or next June? One thing I know, she will finish even if it’s over my dead body. She is studying quietly next to me on the table by the swimming pool with lovely background music by Mozart (piano sonata number 11) thanks to Spotify. Norah is at my feet chewing the ends of my beach wrap and I can hear children nearby splashing in their pools.

We are all suffering from the heat. Yesterday in Madrid it hit 40ºc! A swimming pool in another country may seem a luxury but most people have access to one in Spain to cool off when it gets hot as it does so often here.

We escaped a lot of the heat this week when we went to Montrondo. There was a national holiday for Corpus Christi which we took advantage of to travel north to order some lovely new furniture from Ikea for our room and the room the girls use in the village house in Montrondo. Ikea is very modern and very low cost but surprisingly does not have an online service. To avoid the hefty transport costs from Madrid we had to go to the nearest Ikea from Montrondo which is one hour away in Oviedo. A further inconvenience, we learned, was that the delivery service is when they want not when the customer wants. This means we will have to go again at the end of the week to supervise the delivery and assembly of the stuff we have bought.

The furniture we have bought in Ikea, it's from the Hemnes collection.
It was the first time Eladio and I had gone to his village house on our own for a stay and we have been going for more than 20 years. It was strange, yet nice to have the whole house to ourselves rather than share it with his huge family. Montrondo as I always write is very small and isolated. It is a rural village in a remote location in the north of León and there is no access to newspapers. In fact there is not even a shop. The television works but reception is weak and the internet connection is extremely slow. You always feel a bit cut off from the rest of the world but this time, being alone, we felt it even more. The third world war could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known it.

Our only socialising consisted of visiting Primo, my brother-in-law and Eladio’s sister’s husband, who is also from Montrondo. He is building a small house in the village and we went to see how it was progressing. From what we saw he is putting in a lot of time and effort but then Montrondo is his passion as it is for most people who were born there.
Primo picking wild strawberries from his kitchen garden for me. Thank you Primo.
We were joined on Friday afternoon for a few hours by his Mother, his two sisters, Adela and Pili and Pili’s do-it-yourself specialist and handyman husband Andrés. Always in fashion, he arrived wearing some lovely red leather moccasin shoes. I immediately wanted some for Eladio but who I know would never wear them, like the pink M+S lamb’s wool pullover sitting at the bottom of his pile of jerseys upstairs.

The few hours they were with us were spent on intensive spring cleaning and throwing out some old trash, such as the dusty plastic flowers that had adorned the staircase since before they were probably born. I had been campaigning against them for some years now so was very happy to snap the moment as you can see here.

Our mission in Montrondo was to prepare the two rooms for the new furniture. That meant an awful lot of work. We had to remove the old furniture which had been there for donkey’s years and was in a frightening state and find somewhere to put it. This was all very heavy and hard work.
This was the state of one of the beds we got rid of. It was high time too.
Eladio dismantling some of the old furniture in our room which he had literally thrown out of the window. How happy I was to see it go.
When the rooms were finally empty and ready for painting, we encountered dreadful damp patches on the parts of the walls where the wardrobes had been which made us think we had bitten off more than we could chew. To top it all, at one stage, Eladio fell of the ladder (or rather the ladder fell whilst he was on it) and developed a huge bruise on his thigh which had me very worried. Montrondo is very cut off and about an hour away on windy roads from any medical service. Luckily the next day it was better and he was able to get on with the job in hand.
Eladio and one of the damp patches he had to tackle.
Eladio, my painter husband, did the best he could do with the patches and by Saturday afternoon he had finished all the painting.
One of the newly painted rooms.
We spent the 3 days working hard but there was also time for making lovely meals together and for going on walks. Nature in Montrondo is at its best in May and June. This, coupled with sunny but tolerable heat, made for glorious walks. Eladio was only able to join me once but I went three times to Murias, the nearest village, some 1.6km each way. I took the old route rather than the main road which I love.
Nature at its best on the old walk to Murias.
I went twice for bread which was actually the excuse, although Murias’ bread is one of the best and now I have 3 loaves cut up and frozen in our deep freezer. When we have it for meals here at home it adds a little something just because of the connotation.
La Panadería in Murias.

Eladio told me that when they were children they used to dress up to go to Murias. I, of course wore shorts and a t-shirt. Murias, is bigger and there must be a sort of inbred inferiority complex in people from Montrondo and certainly a rivalry. As with most bordering villages or even countries, there is not much love lost between the two communities.

After leaving everything spick and span, we left and drove back to Madrid and arrived late last night to a very warm house but also to a summer storm so typical of these times.

It was nice to see the family and our pets but also to open the parcel of pottery I had ordered from Emma Bridgewater to increase my collection. It looks like this now. Isn’t it lovely?
My Emma Bridgewater collection so far.
That’s it for now. The week coming up promises to be busy as I have to fit in a second trip to La Rioja in preparation for the Yoigo summer party on 25th June (yes I’m organising a party there for 150 people!!), another trip to Montrondo for the furniture as well as dinner on Friday with Gerardo and Irene at Quënco, the place we held our wedding party in Madrid and to which Eladio and I have never been back. That will be something. I just hope the Ikea transport people won’t spoil my plans.

Cheers till next week.
Masha
PS you can see the full collection of photos of our trip to Montrondo here.

Calle de Paris, Emma Bridgewater, a visit to Santa Pola, a pig in quarantine, the Pope visits the Middle East and other stories.

Eladio at one of the fruit and vegetable stalls this weekend in Santa Pola.
Hiya again

This week has been the warmest so far this year with temperatures reaching 30º. It seems the summer is almost here where we spend almost all our time outdoors and all family meals are outside. How I love the long Spanish summers. I think the weather has also had a positive effect on our animals as this week for the very first time, Norah and Joe ate from the same bowl peacefully. Phoebe still prefers to keep her distance!
Norah eating from the cats' bowl while Joe looks on calmly
Amongst other things, I met with my friend Elena as we do nearly every month since she left Ericsson as their Communications Director. We are neighbours and roughly the same age so share many common interests. Of note this week she told me about a musical group called Calle de Paris who are actually a brother and sister duo who are her sons’ friends and not a street in Paris as you may have thought. Patricia and Paul, of part French origin, compose their own songs, play and sing and very recently have become number 8 on the Spanish Cuarenta Principales chart. I love their music and thought you might like to listen to them too. They are as yet quite unknown so any ideas as to how to promote and help them would be very welcome.
The Calle de Paris duo, Paul and Patricia.
Emma Bridgewater is not another friend of mine as some of you may have thought. No, she is the designer of lovely English pottery I spotted at my friend Amanda’s house when she served me tea in one of her mugs. The word “spotted” is actually quite appropriate as her most famous design and the one I like best is “polka dot”. Thanks to Amanda again, I found the supplier on Amazon.com and have now ordered a set of baby mugs. I will be starting a small collection whereby each month I collect a few items and thus will have something nice to look forward to in the post apart from bills.
Some of Emma Bridgewater's pottery.
As the weather was good we, as in my two men and I, decided to spend the weekend in our pad by the beach in Santa Pola. We also wanted to check on how the refurbishing was going and to see that everything was ok after Oli’s visit recently.
Refurbishing at our block of apartments in Santa Pola. The progress is so slow.
Unfortunately the temperatures dropped everywhere in Spain this weekend, but that didn’t stop us enjoying long and brisk walks on our beach as you can see in this lovely photo of us. Eladio was taking photos of me when a lovely Icelandic girl offered to take one of both of us. And this is the result. Not bad, as my friend Anne said on Facebook, after 25 years of marriage. No, not bad at all.
Eladio and I on the beach at Santa Pola
We decided not to do much cooking and this time discovered a great fish and chip shop in the Urbanization where we have our flat. A fantastic couple from Glasgow have a “chippy" called Darby’s which is so authentic you could be in Leeds which is actually where they imported the machinery from. I was very impressed and asked permission to take this photo especially for my blog. The fish and chips were out of this world, so much so we repeated the second day and will be going back for more in the summer.
Darby's "Chippy" in Santa Pola, just like the real thing.
On Saturday morning Eladio and I went to the market in Santa Pola to stock up on great local fruit and vegetables which taste so much better than supermarket produce as they mostly come from private orchards.

Very soon it was Sunday and there we were once again, cleaning up and packing to go home. The worst thing about owning a second home on the beach or wherever are the preparations which you don’t have to do if you go to a hotel. We stopped for lunch at the Parador in Albacete which was full of First Communion parties as is typical in the month of May in Spain. However the treat was still nice.

Then it was home again and more clearing up or cleaning after the girls’ multiple parties or soirées despite our cleaner Zena having been here on Saturday morning. It’s always great, though, to come home from wherever you have been and yesterday was no exception.

And now I must move on to my new news section. So what caught my attention this time? I must admit my main sources are the online versions of The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, the good old BBC, the New York Times , The Times, of London, of course and the never allowed to read at home when I was a child, scandalous paper, the famous Sun. Often these “papers” have great sections called “weird” which I love to browse through. Funnily enough it is these pieces of news that you then see in the “most read sections”. Often I am alerted to news too through links from friends on Facebook. Latterly and not just out of family loyalty I also use RTVE.es where Oli writes as my best Spanish source of information.

Perhaps the weirdest piece of news for me was finding out that there is one pig only in Afghanistan and that it is kept in a zoo! Owing to swine flu and although there is little evidence that the disease passes from pigs to humans, this poor singular pig is being subjected to quarantine.
It can't be nice to be the only pig in Afghanistan so being put into quarantine hardly makes sense!
If that was the weirdest, the worst was the news of a massacre of 45 people at a Turkish wedding in the Kurdish south east, probably caused by a blood feud between families.
Family feuds are awful but even worse in places like Kurdistan where they can end in a massacre like this
On a funnier note, poor Gordon Brown, the UK premiere, who is already in trouble for financial scandals and decreasing rapidly in popularity, had another media headache this week when his make up secrets were left in a taxi by someone from his advisory staff. The British press, who are notorious for making or breaking any personality they choose, are having a field day with Gordon Brown. The picture they used here to illustrate the story is a perfect example of classic British media personality assassination. I imagine he had no make up on him when this photo was taken!
Not a good photo of Gordon Brown which is precisely why the British press have used it to illustrate the lost make up tips document issue.
Of political interest, here in Spain, the socialist Paxti López was sworn in as head of the Basque local Government and will govern together with the PP, Spain’s right wing opposition party. The news here is not only that they will govern in a coalition but that they have taken over from the Basque nationalists after 30 years of sole rule.
Patxi López, the new leader of the Basque government
Also this week the Pope Benedict XVI visited Jordan in his first visit to the Middle East. Today he is in Israel to visit the Holy Land and later he will go to the West Bank. The BBC sums this visit up as his “facing a combustible cocktail of issues combining relations between the world's three main monotheistic religions, one of the world's most intractable political conflicts and the legacy of the Holocaust”. I wonder if that will ever change and I suppose this visit will not even crack the ice of the issues this area faces.
The Pope who will be praying for peace in his visit to the Middle East.
On a lighter note I move on to sports, the “opium of people” but actually something which generally unites us all far more than religion, except for sporadic episodes of violent football. So yes, this week, Spain got a place in the Champions League final to be played in Rome this month. Barcelona (I say it’s Spain!) beat Chelsea at the last minute and will be playing Manchester in the final. So who do I want to win if I am English yet have lived in Spain for “donkey’s years” (excuse the pun!)? I’m actually divided and don’t really mind. So if I am English and like fair play, my answer should be: “may the best team win”.

Finally this week Madrid was visited by the Olympic Committee to evaluate it’s candidacy for the 2016 Olympic Games. Here Madrid is competing with the likes of Tokyo and Chicago. Madrid was beaten by London in the last election and may well be outclassed again, probably by Chicago, the home town of the ever more popular Barack Obama. The good news at least is that the Committee dictated that Madrid was as apt as the other candidate cities to host the games. We won’t know however until September which seems a long time to wait.
And as I end this post, I wonder what the title for my next week’s entry will be. Well, like the Madrid candidacy, we will have to wait and see.

Till next week
Cheers Masha