Autumn has arrived and with it rain, electrical storms, fog and snow … though not all at once. The news reported the first snow of Autumn, the cameras were in a Spanish home to show its occupants with the heaters turned on full and the lady of house sitting on the sofa wrapped in blankets sipping hot chocolate, hands wrapped around the mug, shivering!

Dare I say it without being sent back to UK in shame … the Spanish are just a wee bit soft. In this area the temperature in the daytime is around 22 to 23 degrees Celsius. This morning I was looking out over the car park to see a Spanish couple with their kids walking to their car with the shopping, all wrapped up in warm clothing wearing boots. Soft! I think so, at least just a little, on the other hand I was really cold last night, shivering with blue toes and hands, the temperature … 14 degrees Celsius. Nuff said! Goodness knows what will happen when, or if, I ever return to Scotland.

This morning Eliza awoke, made a “girlie” little squeak and flicked the cockroach that was on her bed onto the floor. It was huge, in the way that only cockroaches can be huge, and yet so small! My turn came when the cockroach approached my feet, “I can’t get up” I screached, before finally managing to raise my bum off the chair, then running … well hobbling really … for the safety of the kitchen. Eliza placed a plastic container over the cockroach, I managed to get something underneath the container before opening window and evicting said bug. Yuk, I hate Spanish bugs, they seem so much bigger than any I have ever seen before. Again, yuk!

I am quite brave really. When I was 8 years old my friend and I were walking up the main road in our village, two bullocks escaped from the field opposite and chased us down the road, we both ended up sitting on top of vicarage wall, the bullocks rammed the wall over and over again, they became bored, moved on, and we escaped to our homes and told our parents of our encounter. Mine didn’t take much notice, but later told me the farmer had to shoot both bullocks as apparently they had “gone mad”. Brave, I think so.

Two years later I was again climbing walls, escaping from school through the “back door”! I fell, landed on my bum, my teeth went right through my bottom lip. My mother was horrified but as usual calm, when she finally got around taking me to the doctors that evening, it was too late to stitch. Did I learn my lesson and not climb walls that were well over 6 feet high, did I heck, I remain a “tom boy”. Even though I cannot get up to my old tricks, it is still there deep in my heart, a tom boy till the day I die. I never had any sense of danger either, always take risks in the sea and rivers. There was a wooden half moon bridge over the river near my home, my friend and I went onto it to play, despite the fact that there were many large gaps. If Mum had known about my antics, she wouldn’t have let me out of the house. In the holidays after swimming was over, I left the house and did not return until dusk. We had so much more freedom that today’s children. In a way I pity them, must be like prison, or so it seems to me. It had its down side though, this freedom, my best friend drowned in the river where I played. I loved him then, and I love him now. Still think of him 51 years later. His Mum lost two children in 11 months, her eldest daughter and youngest son.