Time For A Wash!

November 11th 2008.
I woke up yesterday morning to that wonderful gurgling and whooshing sound that all Spanish residents adore – the sound of the water coming back on! It had been off since yesterday morning, I’d had the Dutch woman from next door round telling me that she’d been on the phone to the porter who had used the phrase – “Well, nobody else has complained” to fob her off insisting it was all in her imagination. I couldn’t have complained if I’d wanted to, when I moved in a couple of months back nobody gave me his number, so I had got in touch with the agent who mentioned that not only was it Sunday but it was the “Fiestas” so it could be a problem getting anybody roused before Thursday to sort the problem. So it was a huge relief then when it came back on today, which means I can afford those little luxuries like taking a shower and flushing the toilet. As anybody living over here will tell you this is not what you would call uncommon, and all you can do is hope that when the power cuts hit town you’re not in the lift. – The last time it happened to me, someone phoned the fire brigade but forgot to mention that in fact the building wasn’t a towering inferno and a dozen firefighters rushed the building with oxygen masks and pick axes, and all sirens blazing. It worked though, they had me out in a flash, - if I’d have phoned the “emergency” number I would have been there still no doubt.

Here’s a story from today’s papers that caught my attention -

Great Barrier Reef in garden shed
A man has created his own Great Barrier Reef in his garden shed.
Clayton Smith from Bromley has grown corals for ten years and nurtures more than 120 species in 5ft by 2ft tanks at the bottom of his garden.
He told The Sun: "Coral is an incredible 'pet'. Some people like soft corals, which are wavy, and others the big and fleshy large polyp stone corals.
"However, first-time farmers really like the ones which glow in the dark - they've got the 'wow' factor."