Jacobean drama comes to the rockpool. Granny too disheartened to write about it all yesterday.

Octopus' pearly colour nothing to do with happiness. Was actually a deathly pallor. Having polished off crab, an attempted hit on sea cucumber appears to have poisoned him. Around four in the afternoon, the peaceful if pallid el senor Pulpo popped his many clogs. Granny realised it when she saw a gobie trying to eat one tentacle, not a liberty likely to be permitted by live octopus. After removing the corpse from tank, Beloved and Granny noticed that the sea cucumber too was in a bad way, from combating its would-be predator. His corpse too has been removed. Tank just like the Duchess of Malfi except for the lack of dying soliloquies -all protagonists dead on stage. Gobies and hermit crabs play the role of cynical survivors.

This of course what you have to call (yuk) a 'earning experience' - what you can and can't keep in the same rockpool. No comfort to dead animalitos though. Even if they can be replaced. Granny made a start on refilling tank yesterday on visit to swimmable beach at low tide where many hermits lurk on the rocks. Lacking bag, jar, net, she had to shove them down her swimming costume and swim back with little claws of hermits scrabbling round her bare tits rare, not to say interesting sensation. (Men lacking upper swim wear might face still a more interesting one. Beloved does not try it.)

Beloved by the way disputes theory about changing colours. What about people turning pale, going red, getting blue with cold? he says. When Granny protests that these are physiological states not 'moods' he says moods are physiological states. Granny feels there's a difference but hasn't the knowledge or language to combat this. She and Beloved are always running into such semantic and othewise problems. Inevitable, with the two cultures co-existing (if happily) under the same roof.

Still sun sun sun. Minimal cloud. Cleaner Nieves too is complaining. 'Mucho pulvo' - dust - she says, it's given her four year old swollen glands. Noone planting. Including us. Our newly planted vines seem to have given up the ghost. (Unless the rabbits ate the leaves, which is possible.)

Dishwasher is going wrong. Telephone is going wrong - being on the internet cuts off telephone line. Wonder of wonders, reporting latter problem this morning has brought a flurry of phone calls from usually reluctant local engineers: one says he's appearing; any minute. We'll see. Radio Classica meantime seems to have given this island a much stronger signal. Granny is now listening to Death and the Maiden without accompanying fades and buzzes. GREAT. Grannyp