Catching up

After the party in Bristol we went for a couple of weeks to a lovely camping in the Costa Brava, called L'Anfora. We loved it. All of us, which is a rather rare event this days, as P.'s going into teenagerdoom and thus trying to make a point of not being in the same "vibe" as his old folks.

I took my newly acquired Harry Potter book and devour it in more or less a week. Of course I'm a fan and it didn't disappointed me; J.K. Rowling's not a subtle author and everything is spelled out for you, unlike more sophisticated books such as my beloved Phillip Pullman "His Dark materials".
I spend a lot of time reading, which is such a bliss for me!! reading by the pool, by the sea, by the tent... wherever!
The weather was really nice and it even rained once so we had a break from the heat. Just perfect.
We took our old tent, bought in Argos for less than 80 quids a few years ago and never used much. We were by far the poorest sight in the whole camping, as the other people had lovely caravans or state-of-the-art tents withe every imagined accessories.
After the first day we went out and bough a cheap gazebo to shelter us from the sun, and underneath it we had a small table, and chairs. We also rented a small fridge and microwave and that made all the difference as we were truly at home with really cold drinks and some warm food. Bliss!

It was such a relaxing time, just a short stroll to the most beautiful blue sea, 2 swimming pools to choose from, restaurants, a nice cafe, small supermarket and so on. They even have a little show, different every night, with things such a 80's disco, Disney's nigh of music, etc. And that was just the campsite, outside it there was a whole little summer town with everything else you may want to make a nice time.

It had a nice mix of people as well, loads of German, Dutch and French with some British, Scandinavian and even some Spaniards. Plenty of kids for my son to play with too and the language was mainly English or Spanish so we felt right at home.

Our neighbours were a family of 4 teenager girls and their parents from somewhere north of England. The poor dad was craving male company and totally fed up with going shopping, so he used to come by and go playing pool with my guys. It was their first holidays abroad and they were a bit lost with things such as food, but they were delighted with the weather and with all the facilities at their disposal. I think they were truly surprised to find that Spain was also a sort of civilized place!! And the ladies were delighted with how far their money went. Spain is at the moment very cheap compared to Britain.

After the camping we went back home for a few days so "the husband" prepared his poster and himself for the conference in Italy at the end of August. I took the opportunity to take my dad and son to the beach or the local swimming pool and just to keep on having a nice time. Is great to have a whole month of holidays, specially when the weather is so great and you can spend most time outside and the outside is good anyway!

Me in Rockery farm

This is me, holding Melissa and trying hard to befriend her... the poor thing cried every time I tried to hold her!
Is a picture taken during the weekend in the farm in the south-west of England. As I said before, the sun was really, and incredibly, shinning and all was green and beautiful but still very, very, wet. Mind you the thing behind me is a natural pond and not part of the floods!
Please note the Glastonbury's touch of my tiger Wellies, borrowed from Rossana, as is the top, most other clothes were kindly lend to me by Esmeralda. Thank ladies! The hair, accessories and make-up (as if!) are my own.

The hair may be totally white now, but at least I'm trying not to put on wight despite the many temptations to be found in Barcelona.

The picture was kindly send to me by Lili, who took it. I really appreciated it because we don't have any other picture of the event as our camera was in the lost suitcase.

I'm back

After a few very relaxing days at the Costa Brava, we're back home.

So much to tell so little time!!

First, our Bristol weekend:

Background information:
Every year at around this time we organise a weekend party at Martín's farm for the people of the Latin American group that I started many years ago. The idea is to get together with old friends and meet new ones, all somehow related to the Latin American living in and around Bristol. A few of us used to do all the organising and we all shared the expenses, great value for money as we had a big ball and a great barbecue. This was our fifth party.

We went to Bristol for our annual barbecue at Martín's farm near Weston-super-Mare. We traveled just for one weekend and had many plans to visit friends but Easy jet managed to make our brief holidays far more complicated by loosing our only suitcase.
That meant that we were left on a cold Friday night, stranded at the airport without anything just after we arrived.
Our plane arrived from Barcelona quite late and by the time we realised that our suitcase wasn't there, we find the appropriate desk to complain and we filed the complain about the lost bag and everything, the people at the car rental office were already gone and we didn't have the car we rented. Plus we were very cold as we arrived wearing shorts and T-shirts. Damn!
Luckily, our friend the farm owner, lives quite closed to the airport and is an insomniac so he rescued us and took us to his place were we slept in borrowed t-shirts.

Next day, instead of visit friends in the morning as we had planed we spend most of it at the airport trying to locate our luggage and getting a car, by the time we sort of gave up on finding the luggage... it was time to start preparing the farm for the party!

We not only had clothes in the suitcase but all the Latin American music for the party, some ham and cheese, again for the party, mobile's chargers, camera and, this is the worst, we had my son's Teddy, Winnie, in it. That was a disaster for him as it meant sleeping without Winnie for the first time ever. I think I can survive without clean knickers for a few days, but the poor child couldn't sleep in peace for most of the trip and he lived in a state of fear that the suitcase was lost for good with his beloved Winnie. I truly think that this totally ruined the return to Bristol for P. And this was a real pity as he was looking forward to go back home for a long time.
Luckily we have many good friends in Bristol and as soon as they knew they rally around us and brought us all we needed, from clean undies to Wellington boots for us all! That was really kind and it warmed my heart a lot.

This is the first time I organise this huge event since I left Bristol and on top of that, Miriam, the person who always do more than half the job, moved to Brazil for good, so I was more or less left on my own. On top of that all our previous notes and lists were in Miriam's computer, which was somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic going to Brazil, so I have to trust my memory. So I had to do a lot before, during and even after the party. This was hard work this time instead of partying as it was all the other years and I only wish I had taken more days in Bristol. (This is the fifth year we do this party).

It was harder that ever. So many thing to take care of, from food to toilet paper; so many request to accommodate... Ouch! We had around 80 adults for the barbecue on Sunday, plus around at least 20-something children and I managed to organised it all. We had so many people wanting to attend the event that I had to reject a few and of course they now hate me. Tough! If they didn't like they can try and organised it themselves! I even received hate mail about this !!

We solved the music problem because "the husband" shares the DJ's duty with Alan and he brought all his Brazilian music. Of course you can have many parties with just Brazilian music, but we did miss the other Latino rhythms, at least I did.

I tried my best to delegate all that it was required on to as many people as I could so nobody had a big burden, but that meant that I had to check everything and follow people as they were arriving and then coordinate it all. All that plus organising where the tents should be, where the cars should park, all this a new problem as the ground was very spongy due to the heavy rains in the area and we don't want to ruin Martín's fancy farm.

And it all worked pretty well. People started arriving to the farm after lunch on Saturday we shared a buffet (without our Spanish ham or cheese) and danced until very late despite the sometimes torrential rain. The motto of the party was "Think Glastonbury's festival" and it worked just right as we ignored the rain and had a great time.

On Sunday the sun came up pretty strong and it was all soon very dried and nice, by the time we had the barbecue it looked as lovely as any other summer day in the south of England.
Martín and "the husband" worked overtime to cook and serve the most delicious barbecue that you can have this side of Argentina.
Sadly, I don't have any picture because our camera was in the missed suitcase.

We run out of many things, from plastic glasses to toilet paper, but every problem was solved with the help of everybody. Special mention to a Brazilian lady, Cirlei, who lives locally, so she knows where to go and find things at the last second. She was invaluable help. But she was not the only helpful person as everybody did his or her best to help with many details. I also forgot to ask somebody to bring potato salad, and we almost run out of meat!
But all in all was really great, although I'm not sure if I'm going to organise it again next year as I finished totally exhausted.

Then on Monday, instead of going shopping and visiting friends as we planed, we had to go back to the airport and then to the farm where they finally delivery our suitcase. On Monday!! 3 days after it was firs lost!

By the time I managed to drive to Filton library, it was closed and I missed seeing my former colleagues. And the next day, in the morning we flew back to Barcelona.
Sorry ladies, I really wanted to see you but life doesn't always work as we plan it. Now I really have to go back somewhere again, as I missed doing many things that i wanted to do and I missed many people I wanted to see.