More useless information than you are likely to need

This post is really just an excuse to say "Hola. Cómo estáis?" but I cannot resist passing on a couple of other thoughts.

• The first is that we notice, especially being here out of the holiday season when many people are going about their everyday life, that the Spanish day has a different shape to the English day. The day seems to start about 8.00 in the morning. Although most shops will open later (much later in some cases), if there is a building site that is the time work starts and banks crank into action then too (although that sort of bureacracy is one area where we would say that Spain is not yet quite 21st century). Then there seems to be what we have taken to calling "the eleven o'clock breakfast". This may not be the way they do it in Madrid, but here, you will often see business people adjourning to a local cafe for a cup of coffee, a cake or a tostada so that there is no need to eat lunch till 2.30 or 3.00. Lunch is followed by a siesta-not necessarily a sleep, although in the height of summer we have often seen workmen fast asleep by the side of the road, and coach drivers in the luggage compartments of their coaches. I would say that in our part of the world this rest time is almost sacrosanct. For instance, we have a community person whose job it is to keep our little area looking spick and span and he is often out in the morning with his leaf blower, chasing pine needles up and down the street, but I have never heard him between 3 o'clock and 5 o'clock when, even in the height of summer when this area is at its busiest, you could almost hear a pin drop. Then at around 5 o'clock everything starts up again and it's back to the cafe for more coffee and cakes (it's the tourists drinking wine and beer by and large at this time of day) followed by work till about 9 o'clock or, in the case of Sebastian, our gardener, or the dustbin men/women of Chiclana, even later. We said goodnight to Sebastian at 10.15 on Saturday night last week, and the dustbins are emptied everynight at 11.45 pm in our street! You will not be surprised to know that we are finding it very easy to adjust-the mid afternoon rest does make it feel as though you get two days in one. We are going easy on the cakes though (but not that easy!)
• We have had a few days of the "levante"-in fact one day when we have had gusts of up to 40kph. This is the warm wind from the east, blowing from Africa across the Straits of Gibraltar. It is considered the optimum wind for windsurfing, if that is your thing, as opposed to the "poniente" (helpful conversation with Sebastian about this the other day) which is colder and comes from the west.

See, (if you got this far), I told you this was useless information.

"Hasta luego, chicos"