Quite A Lot Going On

Two things are noteworthy today. It is the Spring Equinox, officially the first day of Spring, though you wouldn't guess it from the weather, and it's also my youngest granddaughter's ninth birthday. She is now the delighted owner of a selfie stick. I know because she posted her first selfie-stick selfie on Mummy's FaceBook page. I first became aware of these devices in the hands of Japanese tourists who brought with them the disconcerting habit of 'doing the village' with gaze fixed on their camera floating ahead of and slightly above them. I've often wondered whether, as they trawl through the skipload of photos back at home, they have the faintest idea where they were taken.

On Thursday we celebrated our wedding anniversary by heading off to Málaga for the night. We had previously booked to spend a couple of nights at the Parador in the small town of Chinchón about 30km from Madrid, a five hour drive away. Then on Monday I saw the weather forecast for the whole of Spain; low temperatures and heavy rain until the middle of next week. We cancelled and decided to go to Málaga instead. The forecast was not wrong. Even in Málaga it was miserable, but we found a 'marisquería' (restaurant specialising in fish and seafood), just across the road from our hotel. Opposite was the invitingly named Bar Gin Tonic, so that was a good place for a pre-dinner drink. The only difficulty was deciding which combination of around fifty gins and a dozen or so tonics to choose. That's my kind of problem so it was no hardship.

We had intended to make our way back to the bus station on Friday morning by way of the large central market where we could find some fish for our evening meal, but the weather was so miserable that we just got a taxi straight to the bus station and came home early.

Tomorrow is another important day in this part of Spain. The country is divided into seventeen 'autonomous communities', the largest and one of the poorest being Andalucía. It is governed by the Junta de Andalucía, and tomorrow is election day. We expats don't have a vote in Junta elections, so I find myself an interested observer from the sidelines. It promises to be an interesting election this time round, with a number of new parties, so it seems wise to wait for the results and then comment on here.