whatever next?

In haste; no chickens, sorry. Talkative (very) Irish house guests, arrived yesterday, needing entertainment. Plus Granny has to make mincepies. (No mincemeat or frozen pastry available on this island. All has to be Granny's own manufacture.) Work work. Work work.

Plus this. What's going on here? Lovely friend, Ova Girl, in comment on previous post suggested the hand of Snow White's Stepmother; never mind FH the wrong gender. In which case she's been busy again. To traumatized chickens, to poisoned cat, add boiled fish. The thermostat failed on the heater in the fish tank (otherwise known as Beloved's Rock Pool.) The water slowly boiled up. Result; cooked shrimps, fish, sea-anenomes, urchins. Heater has been removed and lethal liquid replaced. But that's all. Tank is literally now a rock pool and nothing else, till the shore is braved again. After Christmas probably. Christmas house-guests - even talkative ones - shouldn't be required to risk breaking limbs. (For their hosts' sake as well as theirs. Let's be honest.) Trip to much less hazardous salt marsh to see recently established - and previously, here, unheard of - pair of spoonbills is quite adventure enough.

It's been raining. Good. Sun is now out, wind down, the chickens laying. Wild marigolds are coming out all over Granny's land. Feline Houdini continues to improve, the obstruction in his gut 'mas blanda.' But it has not entirely gone. If it's not disappeared by Monday he will have to be operated on.

(Granny to lovely Pedro. It's a minor operation, isn't it?

Lovely Pedro to Granny. In principle, yes. But the intestines are never certain. We'll see.

All this in Spanish, naturally.)

Still Christmas will follow first. Christmas Eve: the big fish, in salt. Christmas Day: the big chickens and chestnut stuffing and the Moroccan rice and apricot stuffing. And the pudding (made) and the mincepies (about to be made.) Wey hey.

Granny was wrong about one thing. The all electric singing dancing Papa Noel at entrance to local metropolis does not just sing Jingle Bells. He appears to have built into him the same tape of Christmas songs, sung by schoolchildren, as relayed by most supermarkets here at this time of year, including Granny's local one. It includes, she knows for sure (wishes she didn't), Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; in Spanish. Local supermarket too, in common with most shops, businesses on the island, even tyre shops, garages, estate agents, etc, has put out little plates of biscuits, cheese, ham, nuts and so forth, also bottles of wine and pop for the delectation of their customers. Granny would like to put some out on this blog, for hers; she can only do it virtually, of course; but so she does. None of it will be poisoned - she is not anyone's evil stepmother. And all of it the very best biscuits, cheese, ham, wine etc. That goes without saying, seeing how lovely you all are.

Merry Christmas everyone. And Happy New Year!