Notoriety

Well well: Granny's island made it into the Guardian yesterday - and not in the travel pages, either, though the story is, predictably, related to tourism and the profits to be gained therefrom and - equally predictably - the inevitable corruption this attracts. A third of Lanzarote's hotels are illegal - as if we didn't all know -and should be demolished: as for two of its mayors..... Granny has banged on about this often enough, so she'll spare you - if you are really interested you can go here. All she'll add is that the chances of the demolition gangs going in any time soon are small, except in the case - possibly - of the two most outrageous hotels, right on the coast, on top of one of the most beautiful and supposedly most untouchable beaches on the island. As for the mayors ending in prison....which they deserve. WE SHALL SEE.

She, meantime, has sorted out - or rather her Beloved sorted out for her - her two most intractable problems; the mysterious disappearance of her master card, and the sudden refusal to work of her new printer. Can't you guess? The one had, somehow, got sucked up inside the other....but not till yesterday did the latter deign to spit the former out. It did spit it out; neither seeming much the worse for wear, she now has her card and a working printer. Very satisfactory. One of the odder accidents of life lately - if your workroom wasn't such a mess, said Beloved....he might have a point.

One goat, by the way, has disappeared to its maker - otherwise known as its breeder, so don't get worried, it's alive and kicking. The young one is keeping its pregnant aunty company and will only be moved on if one of the kids at least turns out female too. Goats don't like to live alone - something else Granny has learned lately. Oh the education of living with an animal man.

Meantime Granny has been busy persuading the animal man, her Beloved - a man to whom all religion is a total mystery - that this is Holy Week, the most significant festival in Spain, that the shops shut on Thursday and Friday, that it's no good going down to the school where he runs a project club each week because it too will be closed all week. 'Look at the campers, Beloved,' she urges him, what would they doing there except for Easter.....' He believes her in the end, but only reluctantly. 'Why?' he asks. 'What's it all about?'

They have this conversation every year. To give Beloved his due, this year Easter has arrived particularly early - the earliest since 1907, or something; but even so.

Hurry hurry. Granny and Beloved must go shopping. They can't wait till Saturday to eat - the vegetables in the garden aren't yet ready and they can't live solely on bantam eggs and potatoes, let alone the marmalade Granny made over the weekend with the Seville oranges given by a neighbour some time back and stashed in the freezer up till then. Potato and egg pie with marmalade sauce, anyone? Perhaps not; not even with their own thyme, basil, marjoram mixed in.