General Chat

PS forgot to ask, where is Berona, have not heard from her for a few days.?
Also a few others who normally post fairly often, are they all sun bathing??

I will be busy for the next few days so thought I would say," Happy Easter" everyone.
I am very excited about my eldest son coming tomorrow to stay for Easter, I have not seen him for nearly 2 years. Every time we arranged something, the plane was delayed, he was offered work he could not turn down, or I had to work, etc. We have talked to each other regularly but it is not the same.

Bye for now.

21.42 hrs Spain

Hello Everyone although I have not posted recently I have popped in and read the posts. I hope that your son makes it to Spain this time Bridget, it will be lovely for you to see him after so long. I know what it feels like not to see your children even though I see mine every couple of months or so and talk to them on the phone. We have decided to move closer to the children later this year as after my OH's serious illness over Xmas we have decided that we are too far away from them. In the meantime I can look for work up that way and if necessary go and stay with one of my children during the week whilst I work and come home weekends. We have lovely sunny weather here in the UK and it is forecast to last until after the Royal wedding. We have the same surname as Kate and I am trying to find a connection to her through my OH's family tree. I think that's all for now and if I don't pop in before Easter have a happy Easter everyone,.

Bye for now.

10 pm here in the UK

Just popped in to say I'm about to go "up the wooden hill to bedfordshire" as my father-in-law used to say.

Back tomorrow, good-night ladies.

23.32 UK

Tess

Jacqueline, Thanks for your message. Pleased to know that you are moving to be nearer your children, Unfortunatley all our children live in various places. I may have said this before but just to let you know.
L..r lives in Barcelona
K,,,,,n lives in Suffolk UK
A.....y lives in Sw,,,a
T....s In the Army
K....h lives in Holland
M....n Lives in London
You can now see how difficult it is to get everyone together!! The one coming for weekend with his girlfriend and her 6 year old son is the first on the list.
Second on list is my only daughter, A &T are my identical twins.
Happy house hunting for when you move, will it be far from where you are now?
Tess, I hope that you have had a good nights sleep. I went to bed at about the same time as you and have just made my first coffee of the day
My father taught my sister and I the "Up the wooden Hill to Bedfordshire and I can recall saying "dad we live in London not Bedfordshire!!

The weather here this morning is damp, gray and cold, not typical Easter weather here. I am keeping my fingers and toes crossed that it might just brighten a little.

well apart from wishing everyone a Happy and safe Easter, there isn't much more to say of any interest, so Bye Bye for now

Bridget

07.55 hrs Spain

I know I have not been on here for ages but just wnted to wish you all a Happy Easter and hope the sun shines for you all - although here in Spain the forecast is rain. more rain and even thunderstorms. Oh well cant do anything about the weather can we ?

Love Mary xx

It's another very windy day for us, so much so that I didn't even do the washing to-day as it would just have twisted round and round the wash-line.

Lots of visitors here for the long weekend, Monday is a holiday and is known here as Family Day now and then the 27 April is a Public Holiday, Freedom Day which commemorates the first non-racial democratic election which took place on this day in 1994.

Bridget enjoy every moment of your son's visit, I hope the sun shinesi for you.

To-night we will attend a Tenebrae Service, the purpose of which is to recreate the emotional aspects of the passion story.

I would like to wish you all a happy Easter.

Val.

14.00.

Hello everyone

Well Val i had never heard of Tenebrae so I looked it up and this is paet of what I found.

Tenebrae (Latin for 'shadows' or 'darkness') is a Christian religious service celebrated by the Western Church on the evening before or early morning of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, which are the last three days of Holy Week. The distinctive ceremony of Tenebrae is the gradual extinguishing of candles while a series of readings and psalms are chanted or recited. In the Roman Rite of the Roman Catholic Church the Tenebrae readings and psalms are those of Matins and Lauds. The Polish National Catholic Church and some churches within the Anglican Communion also observe Tenebrae. The name may also be used for various Holy Week services among Protestant churches such as Lutheranism.
do you agree with this description?

Bridget

17.56 hrs Spain

Good evening ladies, just popped on for a few minutes to wish you all a Happy Easter. Bridget I hope you have lots of fun with your family and the weather picks up for you.
Val I hope you too enjoy your Easter celebrations. Hope to pop back over the week-end meanwhile all take care Penny

good evening every one. I hope that you are all well.
My son, his girlfriend and her son aged 6 yrs all arrived from Barcel..a safely and having promised myself that I would not hug him for too long nor would I cry, i did both!!!

His lady friend is delightful, mature and has brought up her son very well, He is great fun but knows that when Mum says "No" or "enough" she means it.
Now can you imagine this scenario.
4 of us speak English, three of us are fluent in Spanish, two of us speak German from birth, three of us can speak enough German to understand each other.. I am so proud that I am the third one, I thought that I hhad lost all my German. OH asked if they all speak French, well 2 of us do...so are we the tower of Bable????

I look forward to reading all your messages and I will try to come back tomorrow or on Sunday.

21.38 hrs Spain

Good morning to you all,

Gosh Bridget indeed a multi-lingual lot you are. After not seeing your son for such a long time you are entitled to hug him for ever!! Hope you are all having a jolly good time and the weather has changed for you.

I agree with what you have said about Tenebrae. At our service there are no announcements, we follow the order of service leaflet which is given to us. We start with a hymn, then a prayer, another hymn, then one of the elders lights the 8 small candles and 1 large one. We then have a scripture reading and communion. The lights are switched off, further readings and hymns, a candle is extinguished after each reading, the last candle to be extinguished is the large one. (the gradual extinguishing of the candles and the Church lights symbolises the darkness gathering around Jesus, the darkness of the spirit which swept over Him and the desertion of His disciples), a time of silent prayer and then an elder re-lights the large candle (this points to the renewal of hope and the emergence of new life at Easter). Then we sing 2 verses of "When I survey the wondrous cross". At the conclusion of the service we leave in complete silence. We each take a torch to use when the lights are switched off. I do hope this is not too muddled.

It is quite chilly this morning. We will be visiiting friends as we usually do on Saturday. Oh yes, I managed to get my pansies planted. Yesterday eening we watered the garden carrying watering cans, quite back-breaking. Our gardener didn't work this week because of Easter.

Have a good day and take care.


Val.

Thanks for the description of Tenebrae ladies. Although I became an atheist over forty-five years ago, I still remember the great feeling on Easter Sunday in church.

THere would be a blaze of candels, a profusion of flowers. the ststues would be unvailed and (nearly) everyone would be wearing their Sunday besy, or even new clothes for the big occassion.
All a big contrast to the few preceeding days.

Penny, you are right I don't like gardening. Actually it would be more accurate to say that I haven't ever really gardened.

Have only got my garden cleared, a lawn put down and a garden shed installed in recent months.

A little while ago I bought (my first) lawn mower.
However I couldn't get it to work, so locked it in the garden shed till my son could give it the once over (before I sent to back in disgust).

Well, son unlocked the shed, got mower out, had a look at it. Then he told me what I had been doing wrong (surprise, surprise). He left themowr out, as it was too hot and sunny to cut the grass (he was worried about the grass, not me you understand).

Then he went off to work - (a thirty hour shift, looking after people with learning difficulties.

Didn't get round to mowing the lawn that evening, so put mower in shed .. couldn't find padlock. Lookes in dhed, on windowsills and inside the house near the back door, no sign of it anywhere. Phoned son at work, he suggested I look in his pockets, as he had gor changed into work clothes. Still no sign.
Bought mower back into house meanwhile, looking again in the places I looked before (you know what it is like).

This all happened on Friday, yesterday I was going into town to a concert, for St George's Day, so saved my energy for that.
A couple of hours ago I tried with the mower... followed son's instructions and it worked!!!

Not only that but I found the LARGE padlock, hidding in the long grass.

I am now hot sweaty but happy. Haven't fininhed the lawn yet but hope to do more tomorrow.

Will also have to think about getting a few plants, shrubs etc in the garden.

Bridget, it is so good to hear that your son and his patrner were able to visit youat last.
It must have been really great, especially with all the languages being spoke.

Penny, where about in the West Midlands do you live?

Val, the celebration breakfast sounds great. Lovely to not have to get lunch later.

We seem to have a few people from Spain on here (and other threads). I know that Spain is a big country but I haven't seen many people from other European countries (except perhaps Ireland).

Good to see all of you on here over the last few days.

Hope you all have (or have had) a happy easter.

Tess

Tess, many thanks for your posting, nice to see you are with us.
I also recall the time when everyone seemed to hsve a new outfit for Easter. My mother used to make our clothes and I must say that she was a very good seamstress.

O really enjoyed reading about your garden. It is never to late to give it a try, it seems to me from what you have written that you are now on the first step of a new hobby...I have always gardened, my father was an excellent gardener and as children we helped him and that was how we learnt.
The fact that you were happy when you finished the first task says it all!!

Re the different languages...it must sound like the tower of Bable at times and like most Spanish children the little one speaks very loudly...it is the only thing that is a little difficult to accept, I want to say please speak quietly.

Now you mention it there does not seem to be many others from Main land Europe on the threads, or perhaps they do not note it. There are a very large number of Brits in France and some small villages are almost all English, not so sure about Itally but do know there are a lot of Brits in Germany.

Interestingly where I live, not a large lace by any means most of the Brits have gone back to the UK,our coatnof living in Spain is now higher than in the UK, and the unemployment levels are still increasing daily. The change over from pesatas caused a huge problem and most people would prefer to go back to them rather than have Euros.

Well everyone time to finishe now, I may be back later, I hope you have left some of your Easter chocolate for today, and that all is well.

08.38 hrs Spain

Hello there,

Nice to see you back Tess, aren't childlren wonderful, always get their priorities right! I must admit I too am not a gardener, very good at giving the orders though - do this move that etc! Happy gardening.
Hope you enjoyed the concert.

After getting the pump and moving some quite heavy stones around and placing pot plants and a couple of little gnomes around, we couldn't get the tubing we need to attach to the pump, there is one more place we will try to-day and if we have no luck there we will have to wait until we next go
through to Port Elizabeth.

Another birthday! This time our daughter. so we are taking her out to lunch to-day to a little restaurant called The Sunflower, it is quite small but the food and the service are outstanding. There are a couple of tables outside but I think it is too windy to sit outisde.

I didn't have any chocolate eggs yesterday but did have chocolate brownies which perhaps I should have given a miss, what with all these birthdays!.

Because Wednesday is a holiday many people have taken to-morrow off so that they can have an extra long-weekend.

Hope you all have a good day whatever you will be doing.


Val.

10.03.

Having a wonderful time with son etc being here until tomorrow. My language skill look pale against a 6 year old boy and I find it amazing how son and his girl friend switch so quickly from one language to another. Why is it that I find German so much easier to pick up Spanish????

Val your day sounds very busy, I hope that you are able to get the pump sorted out there is nothing so soothing as water in the garden, I would miss mine if it wasn't trickling nicely. We do not leave it on 24 hrs I suppose about 6 hrs a day.

I do not have to do the cooking tonight as Son has told me he has it all in hand...

16.02 Hrs Spain and it is still raining we had about 4 hours without rain today!!!

Take care everyone

Hello from Tenerife, on the count down now as we go home on Saturday. We don't thik the weather has been as good in April as it normally is in May but I suppose that is to be expected. we have booked in for May next year. But we will be back her in august this year for 6 weeks this time.

Bridget, I often wonder how the Spanish people understand their own language it sounds such a muddle and they all seem to talk at once and don't stop to listen. I can understand some of it when written but not spoken. Mind you I don't understand German either. and yes, all Spanish children seem to talk loudly.

Hello everyone, I hope that you all had a great Bank Holiday for Easter, we certainly did.

It was wonderful to have my eldest son here and his girlfriend and her son were also very nice to meet.

Time passed so quickly and they all went back to Barcelona late morning today. The trains here are very good and reliable, and also very comfortable, not sure about the inner city trains as I have never used them.

We thoroughly enjoyed having them here but I had forgotten how much energy boys of six have. His mother had placed his Easter eggs and small gifts were hidden around the garden, and he was so excited it brought back many memories of when my four children and my now husband would bring his two sons as well and we had such great fun.....

Yesterday the weather started to improve and today the sun has been shining since early morning so all my washing has dried and some will be ironed later tonight. Now OH says it is daft to iron sheets etc as they will soon by crumbled anyway...do every one iron all their linen as I do?. Just asking in case I am out on a limb here?

However we noted that the forecast is not brilliant so please pray hard that our normal weather resumes very soon!!

I am looking forward to hearing you next messages, take care of yourselves

18.29hrs Spain

Good evening Everyone, I trust that you have all recovered from Easter and guess that you may be preparing for the Royal Wedding. It will be interesting to learn how you all spend the day. I suspect that most people will watch or be one of the thousands who line the streets waiting for a glimpse of a Royal or a Famous person. I remember my daughter going to see the marriage of Dianna and Charles...

Today we went to the bi monthly meeting about 40 of us attend, mostly Brits and some Germans, a couple of Spanish to have a meal together, have a chat about going to other towsn of cities etc and also to raise funds for a local charity....I did not win a prize today, but took along some raffle prizes. I do not know how mauch we raised today but am sure that an email will be sent tomorrow.

No other real news so will not bore anyone, but say goodnight, I hope you are well and look forward to seeing more postings tommorow.

Bridget 21.03 hrs Spain

Good morning everyone and I hope that you are all well and have not eaten to much chocolate!

We do not have any plans for today so it will be a very relaxing time and I can choose what to do rather than have a plan.
This morning I was woken by the sound of birdsong, the sun was begining to lighten the sky and Jet and Joe (dogs) were still sleeping until I tiptoed ont the verandah. It was so peacful and calm that it almost made me shudder, and I simply stood an watched the sky as it entered to day light. Those of you who have known me throgh this thread from the begining will know that this time of day has plaed a very big part of my life here in Spain and to feel so calm and enjoying my special time was another big step forward for me.

I have always enjoyed the early part of the day when everything is quiet, peaceful and my time.

This morning I have been watching some of the information on TV about the Royal Wedding tomorrow. I must say that I have conflicting feelings about this especially as the younger members of the Royal Family do not have a particularly good record of staying married and after all the pomp and glory yet the romantic side of me will overcome me and no doubt I shall enjoy myself. ( I must admit that I have also been married twice so my last sentence is niot really fair...Oh never mind!!)

Is anyone on this thread going to London to join the crowds???

well the sun is hsing so I am going around the garden now to check all the plants and do some spraying on one or two parts of the plants, just to help their feed.

Bye bye for now

10.36 hrs Spain

Hello,

Enjoy your day doing nothing in particular Bridget, we all need a day like that from time to time. I also enjoy the quiet of the early morning.

The water feature is up and running but I haven't been able to sit iutside to enjoy it yet because we have had the most terrible wind blowi ng here for the past three days, this morning it tried to rain but the wind has blown the rain away. The sun is shining at the moment and the wind is still blowing. I have also cleaned the birdbath and want to buy a bird-feeder on Saturday at the Craft Market, this will attract the birds to the garden again and I will be able to watch them from the lounge.

Not sure whether I will be watching the wedding to-morrow, my daughter will be watching so I guess I will also be parked in front of the TV.

I made a big pot of soup for lunch to-day as it is cold, made some dumplings but they seemed like lead lumps! I will freeze what is over for another day.

That seems to be all for to-day, nothing exciting at all.


Val.

15.30.