Saturday evening. Ironman day - not that I've seen any of it; woke up late, with headache to the sound of the bulldozer on our land, come to clear stones. It was gone not long after it arrived, leaving little but a new heap. waiting for a non-arriving truck, and never re-appeared. Beloved not happy about this. By the time I'd got up he had departed to his other place, and I'd forgotten about Ironmen one way or another; not a solitary labouring cyclist, not an onlooker seen. Everything up here, though, has seemed very quiet. No campers round La Santa; nothing. I guess this is about one of the only events that puts this island on the world may so maybe they go to watch. Or maybe they don't.

Hazy, lazy day, wind north to northwesterly (I think) but minor. Sun, on and off. Spend morning struggling with website which only made headache worse. Two inspections of land - one fig tree is bursting with future fruit - the other which had more in the first fruiting as yet has none: I think this partly relates to later coming of leaves, and that there will be fruit in due course, though I may be wrong. First tree looks set to burgeon just when we're away, which is unfortunate. My tomatoes ditto. It is a feature of exile, I think, which even when unchosen, like mine (no, the Canaries are not my 'dream' retirement home, far from it, I quite like England...) means that you are permanently split. I long to go 'home' ie to England, but this time, when I'm there, and before, travelling through Spain, I'll be regretting not seeing the fruit ripen, what happens to the flowers, whether the birds go on frequenting my garden - is this a feature of the past rains or is it because of the trees and plants growing up? - regretting not seeing if the trade winds come or not. And perhaps I'll still keep smelling the fig-tree reek, so profound, so deep, not fruit exactly - certainly not that over-ripe insect ridden smell once the figs ripen, but not wholly leaf either. Inerradicable.

Poppies on my land. Our resident kestral came and sat quite close to me on a rock, during one of my circuits. On a walk with the dogs just now I saw a hoopoe, always delightful if not exactly rare here. I also saw how leggy the vines are, how green, much leggier and greener than usual - shoots in some places across the path. Some of the fruit is swollen already. Some is barely beyond clusters of seeds on a stem.

Last night Beloved said. 'You have such a memory for people and what they did; I don't remember any of that, I just remember how things are done. I can always remember all of that.'

'It's the people I'm interested in,' I said.

'Unlike me,' he said. (Well more or less.) Grannyp