Author: Kate Wilson

Tales from the River

~ Kate Wilson ~ 11 Comments

Sometimes nice things happen and I don’t take a photo – either I don’t have the camera with me or the battery is dead or perhaps it just feels awkward to pull it out and start clicking.
Tonight we went down to the river to take Duna for her walk. On the way we passed by the little vegetable patches and the rough fenced in wasteland that houses chickens and geese and the two dogs that I always visit as I go by.
Do you remember? The border collie who is normally tied up inside the enclosure and who barks as you go past but wags her tail at the same time. I used to shout ‘Hola Guapo’ before finding out he was a she and on heat.
Tonight she and her terrier friend were running freely around the chicken plot. Her owner was there relaxing on an old plastic chair. We all got talking – actually I mostly smiled and listened as it was all too fast and in spanish. But I learned that her name is Lolita. That her owner is passionately against cruelty to animals. He is Andaluz and comes from Huelva north of Cadiz . He feels it is more important to live simply and take care of the planet than to work all hours just to pay for things you don’t need. He had three baby ducks who were being mothered by a large speckled hen. I don’t know what happened to the mother duck – you miss those sort of details when you can’t keep up with the language. Lolita put up her nose to nuzzle the ducklings soft yellow fluffy coat. Border collies are like that – protective rather than menacing.


Lolita obviously loves him and the chickens and the ducklings and her little terrier friend. So, sigh of relief, she is a happy dog!
And all around the swifts were swooping and swirling and screaming and streaming

Reading Aloud

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments

I’m getting faster now. After the trip to the library I read this one almost without putting it down.
Carme Riera is a good writer and L’Estiu De L’Anglès is a black comedy – actually scary at times – about a woman who is desperate to learn English and goes to stay with a very eccentric teacher in an isolated house in England.  Soon she is speaking it well but only because her life depends on it!!

This by the way was my birthday breakfast in Estartit – eaten slowly while I read the last part of the book out loud. Apologies to those who hate to see a book lying like this – I’m too old to stop now!

Virtual Vermut

~ Kate Wilson ~ 8 Comments

So at last we can sit down for a virtual vermut. It’s sunny and hot and I want to enjoy it to the full as I am off to Cornwall again on Wednesday and someone told me it’s cold there!
Sorry about Friday – I don’t know what happened with the blog site but it was impossible to get online. But my friend Bodhi Chicklet was ready with a bottle of bubbly on the right day so I hope you went over there instead!
So much of life seems dependent on technology now and it can really wind me up – only a few years ago these things didn’t exist and I don’t like feeling so vulnerable to the whim of the airwaves. Perhaps they are the new God – we don’t understand them but we try to please them and hope they won’t suddenly knock us to the ground.
I have the feeling that I keep up, but only just. I can’t get my phone to send pictures by email – something which would evoke derisive laughter from the Resident Adolescent, if I dared to ask him for help! And now yet again my  whiteboard drawings are stuck on the phone and I can’t send them here. Not even by Bluetooth……which I am quite proud of knowing about. It still fills me with awe that I can press a couple of buttons and music or a photo will just invisibly move from one machine to another.
If this is how I am at age 54 then how will it be in ten years time?
54 – yes, it was my birthday at the weekend and we went to the Costa Brava.  Sometimes I feel like an innocent abroad, a wide-eyed child who still jumps up and down with delight

I still get a thrill from words like Costa Brava, Mediterranean, Barcelona…..I have to pinch myself that I am here. Must be all those years living in rainy cold climates huffing with asthma and being buffetted by sharp winds. By the way, do you see those small beginnings of muscles on my arms? That’s the gym starting to work……more on that later.

So, when I see a vegetable market I HAVE to look round the stalls

And after shopping, I HAVE to have a coffee on the terrace of a cafe.
The sight of a pastisseria makes me HAVE to eat a cake

and when I find a beach with  sparkling blue green Mediterranean waves, I HAVE to swim

The taste of Orxata makes me swoon although I could have it every day if I wanted

Duna came too and enjoyed the sea, drinking it by the bucket after a long hot walk with the inevitable consequences later that night

Talking of markets and my excitement when I see one – I took these photos in Granollers last Thursday. I love this one of the men’s arms stretching across a sea of fruit and vegetables

These aubergines looked like a painting

Talking of arms…….I don’t know what to do about Golds Gym. I had a really good session last week and also a more tense one. Depending on who is in charge there is music on Flashfm or a combination of videos and music on CD.  If there are videos you get the opportunity to study at close range some of the fantasies of the men in the room. I don’t think you really want to know about this in detail. Perhaps another day I’ll tell you more. But sometimes I am so glad that I am probably the only person in the room who understands the words of the songs!
After one of these not-so-nice sessions I girded my loins to return on Thursday – only the promise that ‘running will make the weight drop off you’ makes me go on days like these. When I arrived the place was almost empty. No videos, no pumping muscles, no stern unsmiling faces to greet me at the door. I did my running – more than 20 minutes straight through. When you get on a roll it feels like you could go on for ever. Like you get into a groove and it carries you along.
No sign yet of ‘the weight dropping off’ me though.
Then, for the first time ever, another woman, who wasn’t Tiffany, walked in. Ok she didn’t look at me or smile and she was young beautiful and slim and dark. But somehow I felt the presence of more oestrogen in the room and it made me relax. I ran another 15 minutes before leaving with more of a strut than my usual scuttle to the door.
When you arrive in the gym this picture greets you

– after that it is all sweat and iron, noise and boys.
Hope to see you next week. We might have to make it a virtual gin and tonic? Not sure where to get vermut in Penzance.

Belated Vermut!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

I was ready to have a very early vermut with you on Friday morning – like the French men who you see in cafes at 8am having a calvados. I couldn’t meet later as we were off to the Costa Brava for the weekend to celebrate my birthday. But I wanted to meet up first and share a virtual pre-birthday drink. However, Bloggr was having some problems and I couldn’t access the site nor write a post so I left for the seaside without even taking my computer, and I’m sorry if you came by hoping for a chat.

What about tomorrow – I’ll provide the cake – we bought it on the way home in a French pastisserie called Xidors.  I can tell you all about the trip and show you my photos!
Hope to see you!