Fiesta Time!!!!

At the beginning of October, Pilar´s month-long fiesta to celebrate the Virgin of Pilar starts.
Last weekend, beginning with the Friday Bank Holiday for the Valencian Region and ending with Monday´s Columbus Day, was a high point.

It was marvellous weather and all the towns on the Mar Menor were packed out with people from Madrid, Murcia and other inland towns enjoying the hot sunshine and the warm Mediterranean.

For Pilar itself, the Saturday evening´s top attraction was the dressing of the front of the church with flowers brought along by the town´s inhabitants. There were exhibitions of handcrafts done by the Spanish equivalent of the Women´s Institute and then in the evening a fantastic fireworks display. Things go on almost every day but perhaps the next high spot will be the carnival parade of floats next weekend.

The noise level in town is staggering at times and it can be hard to get to sleep when the music sounds as if it´s next door!! Still, it´s great fun and the Spanish really throw themselves into it all. They really do know how to enjoy life. Myself - I´m exhausted and after I´ve finished this, I´m going to bed with a good book. With luck, I´ll fall asleep before it gets noisier at about midnight!!

Back to Normal.

End of September saw the worst rains for years on the Orihuela Costa. I´ve seen heavy rain here before but in fairly short, sharp bursts. This time it went on in waves for about 40 hours and we had a lot of heavy thunder and, at times, quite unnerving lightening.
Fortunately, in our town we didn´t have any of the really dangerous and destructive hailstones but in places where they had that, enormous damage was done to cars, houses and of course crops. You Tube has some videos of this, both from this recent Gota Fria ( this is what the heavy rains and hail is called in Spanish - the Cold Drop) and from the one in 2007 which devastated parts of Calpe.

I had been shopping about 30 minutes away from our town and when I came out of the supermarket, I was stranded on one side of the road and the car was on the other. The road was abour 6 inches deep in swirling water. After waiting for a while, I rolled up my trousers, took off my shoes and paddled across with my trolley to the car. In a lull in the storm I was able to get back home before the next lot came over. Since then, almost a week ago, the weather has been incredibly warm, topping 30 degrees some days!

Now we´re into October things are beginning to revert to normal. Spanish classes have started, with a teacher I´ve had before who is really good, I´ve started back to the Writers´Group, which never stopped over the summer, Rummikub has begun once more and my book group is on Friday. I´ve only just got hold of the book (Cry, The Beloved Country) so I´ve got my work cut out to read it in two evenings! I´d better get on with it!