Loco, locissimo

Brief update. Granny's piece is in the Guardian this morning. Very appropriately - given the subject - it is August 13th which is the date of two relevant - in the light of the article - birthdays: that of long-dead mother, on the one hand, and Lucy's youngest daughter on the other. You may have seen a version of this story before here: but you can see it again if you're interested here. (She did not write the intro by the way: she could have done without that...)

Well well. It NEVER rains here in summer. But on Wednesday, guess what, a monsoon. Leaky roof, disappeared satellite, just when the payoff on the telly was about to be revealed. (No, Granny will not reveal the trash she was watching at the time; this is summer, darlings, holiday time, she is allowed trash.) Now all is steamy and the wind is down, at least. Day after the storm appeared a rather glamorous young photographer from Tenerife in orange-striped harem pants and orange sandals. Her Spanish was much easier to understand than the local version. 'Where's the sun?' she asked looking at the lurking cloud and water-darkened land. Then she made granny play not so glamour model all round the house and garden and never made her say 'cheese' once. The photo is to go with an article by Granny in the Guardian - based on the post she wrote about meeting her friend Lucy. Article in theory should run on Monday; but you know the Guardian; always changing its mind as well as its spelling. (This latter is probably unfair these days. But once a reputation, you know..)

Photographs - oh the wonder of email - have already appeared; they're good. Short of making her look younger (not possible) Granny can just about bear looking like she does in most of them.

Granny to Beloved. 'Why does any photograph you take make me think 'Omigod can that old bag really be me?' Whereas these..'

Beloved to Granny. 'That's why she's a professional, of course..'

Granny still can't quite understand it. You just point a camera don't you... and it's the same person in front of it, whether camera is pro or am, the same light, the same room or landscape... Mysterioso. Not to say loco.

Granny is proposing to buy some photographs at vast expense. Maybe she'll put one up here. Let's hope that one day soon she'll have something more (one of the books she's writing? - she should be so lucky) to publicise - that's when people ask for photographs, just as the Guardian did. If not at least her family will have something to remember her by. Assuming they want something to remember her by. You'd have to ask them about that.

Meantime it's the usual summer thing: all Spanish functionaries -don't THINK of carrying out any bureaucratic or legal transaction - almost everyone else too - including many fellow bloggers - disappear, stop working: except Granny, of course, this summer, who moves from euphoria about what she's writing to despair. How to do it. HOW? What about this hole in the plot? What about that? How to stop this part of the narrative or that part sagging? Oh dear. Bugger it. BLOODY HELL.

Bug continues bugging her, a bit, but not a lot. This is the weekend of the Demon Botanist- he is coming to visit plus Danish girlfriend and Danish girlfriend's reportedly somewhat nutty brother - and can't eat anything with onion or garlic....Granny will set Beloved to that one maybe. They can't afford to poison Demon Botanist- apart from anything else his garden is full of enchanting little green frogs and where else can you find such things on this - usually - dry island. The DB helpfully suggests Granny and Beloved put a water feature in their garden if they want frogs. But along with frogs come mosquitoes don't they? And anyway Granny is too busy writing, and Beloved too busy inventing something. It's all go here, even among the bantams - they keep on reproducing, Eight young ones now going cheep cheep cheep. (Anyone fancy one? Or two? Or three?) While all round today the grape-pickers are out, getting their grapes in presumably before the next heatwave comes along to ruin them. (Too late, alas, for the delicious moscatels the best of the lot. They were burnt to a frazzle two weeks ago, which means that this year there won't be any of the wonderful moscatel raisins they sell here either. Pity.)

Retirement? Summer holidays? What are those about? Granny's quite forgotten.