Jules was Mr H’s wingman – again, bless him – for the trip down to Chiclana again this year. Which meant that Nicky & I could fly out to Seville 4 days later and meet them at the house on our check in day.
Nothing has changed there, which is a good thing, so all was as expected. Spent a week together revisiting some of the usual haunts, doing our walks to Bongo’s beach and round the swamp. They also headed off on bikes as – bloody annoyingly – my shoulder is nowhere near being mended enough to join in with any ‘tuggy or stretchy’ activities.
I am still reeling from what my surgeon said when I asked him what the recovery time would be. He told me ‘you’ll be able to play pickleball in two weeks’ time’ (post op). When I then had some weird slippage with the shoulder and got a bit worried, I spoke to him on a Zoom call and his – unbelievable – words were ‘I only told you what you wanted to hear’. WTF??!!!
So the three weeks recovery I had anticipated pre trip, and which there was time for in terms of mending, its now stretching out to god knows how long. H is already making the most of cheap as chips padel lessons (28 euros for an hour vs about £60 at home) and is on a WhatsApp group already, picking up games, while I am now consigned to doing my physio in the gym and waiting, endlessly, for any sign of the shoulder improving. Very grumpy!
Anyway – I ended up driving to meet them post cycle in Conil, a nice little beach town up the coast, for another really good fishy on a little dishy lunch there.
We all did a David online exercise class, which was good, in the garden. Though it’s the only thing I can think of that might have caused the very odd dizziness that I then experienced that night. I got up for the loo at 3am and suddenly tipped right forward off balance and whacked my head on the window handles. Had no idea what had caused it, but perhaps it might have been the tipping forward to the horizontal on one leg exercise? Or just a random coincidence. Anyway – that lasted three days and was like being drunk (without the fun or the buzz) so am glad its now gone!
The weather then turned this weekend, from the nice sunny days of J&N’s visit to torrential rain. Even the Spanish looked very bemused and were capturing the downpours on their phones… Our lovely local barman Jope said that the weather has been very random in Spain this year, with a colder wetter winter. I wonder what could be causing that?!.. Hmm.
The boys also managed to squeeze in a sherry and vermouth tasting with a very nice chap called Fede whom they met in London last year. Followed by Nicky & I meeting them for lunch, with their boxes of liquid purchases..
And we discovered a new and really good butchers – not far from the amazing ‘yellow bread’ (turmeric) bakers, both oddly based in the industrial estate. How over excited were the boys at cooking this mahoosive steak?
And Maddie is of course utterly delirious at being back by ‘her’ pool, constantly wanting the ball to be thrown in. One very happy dog, and this year we have been wise enough to bring stuff to clean her ears every night, in the hope of avoiding an ear infection from having soggy lugs all day long. One week down and she’s fine so far – though we have of course already been to the vet’s, though only to get her rabies booster so no emergencies … yet.
Fi & Rich arrive this Wed so we are out and about exploring a few new places to hopefully add to our list of banker options for what to do and where to go.
x