Reasons to be cheerful

In an earlier post I said I thought our new house was like paradise. Here are some things to justify that statement:

1) The view. See below. It's difficult to convey via a two-dimensional photograph, but it's just mind-blowing to be able to see so far from our front door. That's the sea in the far background, beyond a few hills. To our right more hills rise up above our house. These are topped by parades of wind turbines. And to our left are forests of pines leading down to the coast.

2) The creatures. This category could quickly become very non-paradise-like, but while I'm still in the honeymoon period it's worth noting that yesterday evening we sat on our front porch overlooking that view and we saw (a) lots of swifts swooping and looping (b) an eagle gliding over the far hills (c) a toad which pottered out from under the bush right in front of our door (the cat spotted it first but we shooed her away just in time to avoid a nasty encounter) and (d) a line of thousands of ants staggering around with heavy loads of bits of leaf.

3) The weather. The locals have been moaning about how cloudy it's been, and it's not great for keeping our solar power topped up, but, in spite of this, it's lovely and warm and we have seen the sun fairly frequently (certainly more so than we would in London). There's no rain forecast so we've just had Joan the water man fill up our cisterna from his giant tanker. And when it's windy (which is fairly often in these parts) our wind turbine whizzes round and round and makes more lovely electricity.

Shrew in a shoe

Our first visitor. The cat and I aren't yet adapted to country living. I shrieked as it emerged from behind one of our as-yet unpacked boxes and the cat decided she'd rather play with her toy mouse.

Festa Cirera Miravet

Well, we've moved into our new house on the hill and I think I'm in paradise. But first, the cherry festival at Miravet.

On Sunday 12 June hundreds of locals, tourists and ex-pats packed picnics into cool boxes, grabbed their sunhats and piled into cars to drive to Miravet, a pretty hillside village on the banks of the great river Ebro which produces a good quantity of Catalunya's cherries.
Those that got there early bagged the shadiest of the trestle tables set out under the trees around the village square. Competition was so great for the best spots that a fist fight broke out at one. One particularly organised group set their table with a cloth, china plates and terracotta water jugs, then began to create individual bouquets for each place setting. We got out our scratched old plastic plates, disposable forks and cracked open the cans of Mahou.
Around the square were stalls piled high with boxes of cherries - bright red ones, dark red ones, purplish ones and orangey ones. More stalls were selling pottery (another Miravet speciality), wine, cheese and textiles. As we drank our beer, had a few snacks out of the coolboxes and wandered around the stalls, a huge paella was being prepared at the corner of the square. A very hot chef threw bucketfuls of rice and chicken into a paddling-pool sized dish over a big wood fire and stirred it all up with a giant spatula. A woman trolleyed two-litre plastic bottles of red wine to our tables and another delivered huge platefuls of cherries.

Once we had all feasted and drank and chatted, a band plugged in their amps and the dancing began. Later, cherry cake and a strong dark liquer were served. As dusk fell we decided we had had our fill of sunshine and cherries (and beer) - until next year.

Less than a week to go...

This time next week – fingers crossed – we'll have moved into our little house on the hill. What we need now is some rain to make sure our 10,000-litre cisterna is full, then some sunshine for the solar panels to charge up the batteries.

It's difficult not to take for granted the things that we've lived with all of our lives – as much hot and cold running water as we like (barring the odd hosepipe ban in London over the past few years) and electricity when and where we need it. Soon we'll have to fire up the generator when we turn on the washing machine, there will be no more leaving the tap running when we clean our teeth and vacuuming might well become a luxury that we decide we can do without (dust allergy or not).

We're going to swap the chatter and clatter of village life (church bells every quarter of an hour, the neighbour's garage door rattling up and down four times a day, the loudspeakered village announcements preceded by the Chariots of Fire theme, the shrieking house martins) for the silence of the countryside. Mind you, if that silence is broken by the thundering of wild boar hooves, I'm coming right back down to civilisation.