So now we have freakish weather in Spain

Whatever the weather here in Spain, it is always in the extreme. When it is sunny, it's really bright, if it rains we have a deluge and over the last few days we have had tremendously strong winds. It was difficult to stand upright at time on the golf course on Friday and the wind would sometimes just blow the ball across the green. Unfortunately it never blew it into the hole so needless to say the scores for the day were somewhat unpredictable.

The wind has continued for the last couple of days along with the ocassional downpour. Most of the properties around us that are lived in throughout the year have now started to have the heating on at night, and over the weekend we have had ours on through the day as well. Not bad to say we haven't needed to turn the heating on permanently until the last week in November.

What is most noticable walking around the area in the evening is the way it smells of bonfire night. Now, obviously the Spanish don't celebrate Guy Fawkes and it's too late in November - so why that odd smokey bonfirey smell? Well, the majority of people here have log fires in their homes. The area is not piped for natural gas - so gas central heating isn't possible so the options are electric heating - and electricity isn't cheap to use here just as it isn't in the UK. You could have heaters run off bottled gas or have a real log fire. A ton of logs which comes ready chopped and is enough to do a whole winter costs around €200 and some of the locals are complaining that there has been a price hike in the cost of logs this winter.

So, that odd smokey smell is just the homes burning logs to keep warm but having lived in a smoke free area for the last 20 or more years - it really is unusual to smell the smokiness as you walk around in the darkness, odd, but some how comforting not unpleasant to see whispy columns of smoke reaching up into the night skies - now, anyone for a round of chim chimeny, chim chimery, chim chim cheroo? Anyone seen Bert?