Mid November and all is well.

Today we are halfway through November and we have eaten all three meals of the day on our terrace in T-shirt and shorts. I know we aren't acclimatised yet but the sun shone and we felt lucky that light cloud provided a certain amount of shade allowing us to do some pool cleaning, weeding and ironing. You see life goes on much the same as back in the old country - it's just a bit warmer and more relaxed. We do admit to missing our friends and family and probably the odd British idiosynchrasy but today was one of the days when we realise why we made the move in the first place. Some longer term residence have resorted to lighting fires for the evening but we are still finding the temperature mild and just resorting to a cardigan for the cooler evenings. At 8.15 pm (the time of writing) the temperature stands at around 19+ degrees which many of us would consider to be a warm balmy summers evening.

We are noticing a lot more wildlife. Now that the weather is cooling down - the birds are around most of the day. We watched a black wheatear (with white tail feathers) doing the light fandango in the back garden. On looking around for another of it's species to find out if there was a response I noticed that it appeared to be all alone. Practising for a later date maybe? It was only on closer inspection that I noticed that the bird was actually squaring up to a rather large butterfly. It was dipping and diving displaying outspread wings and hopping sideways, in fact, almost cartoon material. I then noticed that the said butterfly was actually defending itself and the bird was trying to distract it with the dance before going in for the kill. He finally succeded in overcoming the butterfly - by the way he was going he probably made it dizzy to put it off guard.

Yesterday when we went out we spotted our first snake slithering along the road - think we had just saved him from becoming someones tea as there was a bird having a go at him as we drove up - our passage giving him the time to disappear into the undergrowth at the side of the road while the bird flew out of our way. The snake wasn't very big probably about a foot (30cm to those of a European persuasion).

While we sat and ate our meal this evening the clouds gave the promise of a rather spectacular sunset. It is very easy to become immune to sunsets here because each evening we watch the sun disappear behind the distant mountains and watch the sky to see what will develop - we are rarely disappointed. However, they tend to be all the more spectactular if the right cover of cloud is present. As the number of days with cloud present are few and far between then the right proportion of cover happens even more rarely. Luckily it seems to be the right time of year for them.

We are looking forward to seeing Alex out here in 4 weeks after his first semester at Uni. Wondering what the animals' reactions will be like when we arrive back from the airport. I suspect that Tiffy will have a few scatty moments and will follow him around incessantly.