Wildlife within

This little chap was hanging around on the ceiling above my desk. When I tried to persuade him to go out of the window, he dropped onto the desk (leaving a slimy belly print on the glass surface) then scooted off behind the bookshelf. Hope he's found the way out of the front door now.

On one of our first days here the cat was delighted to catch a gecko. She cheerfully trotted up to the house with it in her mouth - still alive but bleeding from its tail - and had lots of fun chasing it around the porch until David rescued it and set it free in the garden where - we hope - it might have recovered. The cat hasn't come back with any more since then - perhaps they taste nasty.

Fire and water festival: Correfocs i festa de l'aigua

Your teenage son riding a bike laden with explosives and your toddler sliding around in two-foot of noxious-smelling artificial foam is certainly not most British parents' idea of a suitable Saturday night's family entertainment.

But here they really know how to entertain the young people. This weekend was the annual Festa Jove (Youth Festival). It kicked off at 9.30pm as gangs of young people with drums slung over their shoulders pounded out vigorous rhythms and danced around the square. Then they set the place ablaze.

Most (but certainly not all) of the older boys (plus a handful of girls) were clad in flameproof devil suits and they brandished long sticks with firecrackers nailed on the end. Together a group would hold their sticks aloft, touching in the middle, and set light to the lot. One even set his bike aflame.

 As the firecrackers blazed, banged and spun the devils ran and danced through the streets of the village.

Smaller children chased after them (the Catalan version of health and safety in this case being providing your young offspring with some long trousers and a scarf to cover their face). The rest of us dodged the sparks, drank beer and had a great time. (You can read about the symbolism of the correfoc on Wikipedia - it's all about the powers of good and evil.)

After a brief firework display in the village square, a huge canon jetted gallons of foam into the street until we were knee-deep in it. A good way to cool down, for sure, but it smelt vile. Covered in bubbles, people then moved on to the bars and the disco at the football pitch, which apparently lasted until dawn, although we didn't.

Should I get a mangle? Sensible and not-so-sensible energy-saving ideas

We're off grid - we have no mains gas, electricity or water.

Gas is easy. It comes in big orange bottles which, when empty, you exchange for full ones from garages or the gas man who comes into the village every Wednesday morning.

Under the house is a massive concrete cisterna which stores rainwater drained from the roof. When there's no rain we can get Juan the water man to fill it up from his lorry (90 euros per delivery - last time we shared it with our neighbours), or we can put a water cube on our trailer which we can fill for free from the well in the village. The water gets from the cisterna into the house by an electric-powered water pump.

Electricity comes from our solar panels on the roof, our little wind turbine on the highest point on the hill behind the house or our generator.

Even though I've always tried to be frugal with resources, the whole world changes when you can no longer take them for granted. Here are some of the sensible - and a little bit crazy - procedures I've been putting in place.

1) Not flushing the toilet very often. This saves gallons of water, plus lots of electricity as the water pump takes a great deal of power. Am I a little bit strange for telling visitors who come from the world of plenty that they're very welcome not to flush? NB if you go to a party in an off-grid home, it's perfectly acceptable not to flush.

2) Re-thinking clothes washing. The washing machine has to run directly off the generator. It takes about an hour and a half and 3 or 4 euros-worth of petrol to do a wash. The waste water gushes straight out into a bucket so I can see the huge amount of water that it's using. I'm thinking hard about whether clothes are really dirty before they go in the machine, hand washing some more clothes in the outflow (the water is used twice that way), and beginning to wonder if I could stop the machine before the spin cycle and rely on the sun and the wind - or even a mangle (it's one of these, kids) - to do the drying.

3) Trying to read by candle-light. That doesn't work very well.

4) Buying more batteries. We've been running the CD player off batteries so that we don't have to worry about it draining the electricity system. But do old batteries pollute the world more than us having to put the generator on a little more often?

5) Unplugging things when they're not in use. We've been told for years that phone chargers suck up power, even when they're not charging your phone. I never bothered with unplugging them when they weren't being used - I do now.

6) Trying to work out what volts, amps and kilowatt hours are. I'll get back to you about this.

7) Saving water. I take a bucket into the shower to collect the water that I'm too chicken to wash under before it's warmed up - I'm getting about three litres a day from this, which is enough to water quite a few plants. We're using eco-friendly washing up liquid and clothes washing liquid so that we can throw the grey water onto the garden without worrying about poisoning everything. Obviously, turning the tap off when teeth-cleaning. And doing the washing up all in one go rather than turning the tap on every time a cup is dirty.

8) Not opening the fridge - unless it's absolutely necessary. Because every time you open the fridge it warms it up so the power has to kick in to cool it down again. No more staring into the fridge idly wondering what to have for lunch - a decision has to be made fast.

9) Loving sunny, windy days. This means power!