June 14 - 20

Sunday 14 – Saturday 20    I found my Achilles heal, unfortunately!

BREAKING NEWS:  11.40  21/06/2015   My estate agent  wrote to say he is back in Spain on Monday and then we can proceed!  phewy!

 

Cehegin probably taken in the 1970's before the expansion of "new Cehegin"

Not much to write this week as I have been incapacitated by this pulled tendon (my Achilles Tendon), I rest for two days and then try to walk and after about 1 km it starts to tighten up and become painful again.  I limped to the local “farmacia” and got some cream to rub in/on – hot cold – and it is helping but I am so frustrated that my health improvement plan has been derailed for the time being.  I am having to use the more local and slightly tacky supermarket where quality is certainly suffering but the prices are low.  So I have been thrown back on my improvisation skills again in terms of cooking. 

By Saturday I decided that things had improved enough to make the trip to Mercadona as I had plans for my Sunday lunch and had run out of so much other stuff.  Armed with my backpack I set off and after buying a coup0le more novels in Cosa y cosas did my shop  14 items €27 (including a very fine Valdepeña Gran Reserva 2006  and a  bottle of Rum for Cuba Libres.)

I had also bought a kg of lamb (€7) for my Sunday lunch of slow cooked lamb with lemon and herbs.

Disaster struck about 2/3 of the way back when my tendons just got tighter and tighter and I was reduced to hobbling the final kilometre back home in great pain.  So I am back to square one.

Having just read up on injuries to the Achilles Tendon, I am a bit worried and now fully intend to rest more and put no strain on this weakened/damaged muscle.   

Making it worse leads to all sorts of unpleasant complications!!!

Sunrise 1

Sunrise 2

Summer has arrived.  From sunrise at 6.30 to sunset at 9.45 I enjoy 15 hours of cloudless blue sky, little breeze sadly and the temperature is slowly going up from 24 last Saturday to 30 this.  The “Accuweather” gadget I have on my trashy Notebook tells me that the “real feel” is some 3 or 4 degrees higher.  From 1pm until 4pm it is almost too hot to sit out, despite the umbrella, so siesta time is th order of the day.   This coming week the 30 is going to increase to 33/34. Highest temperatures here are recorded normally in August so heaven alone knows what is in store.  But I do love the warmth and am being careful to use the sunscreen (thanks Andy) and my legs and arms are going brown.

Ready for the Oven

Cooking:   well last Sunday I cooked the loin of pork wrapped in serrano ham and cooked in Pedro Ximénez sherry with roasted onions and pears …… mmmmmm  my best Spanish dish so far, absolutely yummy.  The sherry as it reduced produces this intense sauce for the pork and pears. I offset all this sweetness with a fairly tart ratatouille called in Spanish “Pisto Manchego” and of course the Jumilla wine was perfect for all this.

 

Out from the Oven

Service.

My vegetarian dish of the week was Chickpeas cooked with Tomatoes, Spinach and Almonds showing the Moorish influence in Spanish cooking. Having made a sauce from onions and tomatoes the cooked chickpeas are added along with toasted and ground almonds (I chopped these in the mini food processor here so they added real texture as well as taste) and of course lots of paprika.  Finally the spinach was wilted into the mix.  Very pleasant and earthy.  Next time I want to cook this dish more slowly in a traditional “terracotta casuela”.

Today as mentioned above I cook Lamb.

My reading this week has been varied:

Sebastian Faulkes: Human Traces - Wow! 

C. J. Sansom:– Revelation “16^th century whodunit.”

Kate Atkinson: behind the Scenes at the Museum – what a varied nad for me nostalgic read, the 60’s captured so well.

William Nicholson: The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life – what happens when temptation is put into an otherwise ordinary life.  Very good.

This week kicks off with another Sebastian Faulkes ……..(A week in December)

Sandfield Road School, Guildford.

I have in no way abandoned my plan for the “auto-biog” and am making notes but not ready to commit to paper. However, I did go on a journey of discovery based around my brain making a link to the name of of one of this weeks books authors.  “Sansom” – my brain said no it should be Samson like your old headmaster at Sandford (actually I find out it is Sandfield) Road Primary in Guildford.  Then I remembered the annual reading test which gave you a reading age; you had to read out lines of words which got progressively more difficult and were linked to giving you a reading age. I remember when I was 10 I had a reading age of 13 years and 8 months but came to grief over the word “choir”.  My reading age was a product of being an only child and in a one parent family where the parent was largely absent as Mum worked evenings. 

This led on to trying to recall the names of all the teachers and more memories, Mr “Whacko-Jacko” Jackson  (long before another Jackson had the same title). Whacko got his name from his propensity for caning across the joints of your outstretched fingers with a cane split down the middle for added effect (what a sadist!); Mrs Seager, all bosom and glasses on a gold chain - handicrafts; Mrs Potter - lovely, but forbidding; the hateful Mrs McKay/McDougal/McSomething who reduced me to tears for once mispronouncing “Women” as “Woman” when practicing a reading for the carol service.  “Blessed art thou amongst women”. Well Mrs McShouty “damned art thou amongst women” forever in my memory. Horrible woman.  All this and more to be revealed later. 

Still awaiting the return of the estate agent from his protracted honeymoon (is two weeks protracted?- yes when you are waiting to put the deposit on a house!)

……. Thats about it for now.    One last photo of Cehegin in 1968!