More rain! At 10.30 or so see man sitting huddled against it on his donkey cart laden with some kind of wood and food, everything wet. Need to treasure this - all the men with donkeys are old: when they've gone, no more donkeys. (Donkeys are it seems, strangely, very hard to buy here and very expensive.) Local cleaner Nieves says it never rains in May normally, and that the television is saying that in July it will be stinking hot. This will also make the sun more dangerous: she is afraid of skin cancer herself, and has a mole which she needs to get checked out. ('Nieves' means 'Snow'...either wishful thinking here or she is in the wrong latitude entirely. Or maybe it's the closest Spanish can get to'Snow White'. Why has 'Rose red' never been made a name, I wonder?)

Rain clearing now. Nieves cleaning behind me at this very moment. I have wasted half an hour looking for my Spanish chequebook - suspect Beloved may have put it with all of his.....Action Man is on the roof now it's drier, hammering away, as yesterday, and Mr and Mrs Handsome are out the front planting succulents from their garden and marvelling at the wild flowers. It has not only stopped raining, it's brightening a lot, just like yesterday - in the afternoon the light was very bright, sky very blue, shadows very dark, all of it brutal. I walked round the land 2-3 times realising how the scents change according to time of day. Lizards darting, butterflies crazily air-surfing, grasshoppers lifting, drifting, as suddenly falling, at all times. In the morning close to the rain, the land all steaming, the early-opening purple carpet flowers scenting the air. By mid afternoon, though the later-opening scentless deep blue eyes of the tiny Canarian forgetmenots are still open the purple eyes are shut and the perfumes gone. It's grass smell instead, that warm afternoon scent. Between walks, I watch the end of the Test Match against NZ on the telly - one merit of getting Channel 4 is cricket. It was pretty close and pretty exciting - English won by seven wickets and Nasser Nussein got another century. Action Man meantime hammering over my head and no doubt puzzled at my leaping around after some of the best fours. All Very pleasing - to me at least, Beloved doesn't see it, and disappears to the other house to work after an interrupted morning, and does well. So everyone is happy.

Maize field next door still not totally harvested. I saw the old man out on his own early, then in late afternoon there were five or so of them again and the boxes and the truck. The dogs have found out how to get on the wall by the compost heap and bark at them which can be embarrassing. Beloved's dog has taken to disappearing in the evenings and we think she goes to the maize field and chases rabbits. This might not be popular with the neighbour: but hard to tell.

In bed last night we discuss more differences. My 'daydreaming'. His 'thinking' - around ideas on the one hand, problems on the other. My need for music as background to this - sometimes- his only for silence. Hard to explain that in the end there is not so much difference between the thinking and the daydreaming - wasn't Einstein day dreaming rather than thinking when he looked out of the window and came up with relativity? - certainly my plot problems can be - usually are - solved liked that. Hard also to explain that knowing can be not knowing.And that fiction can address problems and ideas just as well as fact. Beloved tends to call much of my thinking in all such areas 'slippery,'- not to say self-justificatory -(solipistic is another word that comes to granny's mind at least, but I don't think he knows that one, luckily!) Maybe it is. The whole thing drowns in words in the end and we are exhausted and find it hard to sleep. Alright this morning....Grannyp