Welcome to Techno-Billies

For the last five months I feel like I have been the filling in a sandwich... I was worried about my step mother and my father and then she died and I worried about my father more... and then my daughter was ill and I worried about her and my grand daughter to be... I have been to the north of Scotland twice and to Spain twice and to Japan too... Now I have come home - been home for a week actually - I just feel exhausted and like it has all caught up with me.



The allotment is full of weeds (and my onions went to seed!!!), the house is 'out of sorts' and my website has not been updated for ages and ages... (Natural Skincare Made Easy) ... Billy Christina is due home from Japan at the end of the month... and Philly Billy is about to embark on a new career and I just don't have the energy for any of it!



Because of this... I am going to take a rest from blogging. In fact I am going to take a rest from everything except the allotment, the cooking and the cleaning. I may do a lit…

Of course spring has sprung here in Andalucia for a couple of weeks before I became a grandmother, but now I feel like it is a personal celebration of the joy I feel. Like spring has never sprung for any one else's baby ever before! Don't worry not all my future posts will be full of baby... but you will have to indulge me a little at the moment.


In a couple of months it will be very brown and desert-like around here but for now the countryside looks amazing. So many wild flowers.


The day before my daughter went into labour we went out to visit a monastery at Tiscar.



Tiscar is perched high up a mountain and only reachable by driving some very windy roads with sheer drops on one side.



I must admit I closed my eyes quite a bit on the way up, but once we got to the top the view was amazing.


We took a picnic, and on the way back we stopped at a conveniently sited bench beside the road.


As we opened the car door the smell overwhelmed us... wild rosemary


.....................and thyme g…

Six Pounds and Three Ounces... and not even 24 hours old!

Sorry I have no photo's at the moment... but I hope you will understand... after a labour of 47 1/2 hours (most of which was without pain relief!) my grand daughter arrived at 03.28 am 5th May. Both mum and baby exhausted but healthy. My grand daughter is tiny tiny tiny - don't know her weight yet - but of course she is very beautiful!!

I have had about 4 hours sleep in the last 24 so things are a little crazy here... we knew that the baby was a girl for some time but her name was kept a secret until she arrived.... so....

A Great Big Welcome to Io Florence


This is the other Io... obviously not quite as important!

Even though this visit to Spain has been a bit like a holiday there really has been a sense of waiting and watching. Especially the watching. I find myself watching my daughter's face, or looking at the shape of her belly... the way she walks... the slightest grimace bringing forth questions of concern.. are you ok? Have you got a pain? Do you feel sick? Is there anything I can get you? It must be trying for her... but also for me... I have had four children of my own but I always felt reasonably in control. Now I can only watch and wait.

I have been sleeping quite lightly. I know that they would wake me if anything starts in the night but I hear every time she gets up for the toilet... I hear voices and I strain to catch any tell tale signs. Last night I had the worst sleep of all... I heard her going to the bathroom several times, and they were talking and then she was running a bath... I waited for someone to knock at my door but they didn't so I tried to get back t…

This weekend all over Spain they are celebrating The Day of the Cross. Christianity simply took over the old pagan festivals and overlaid them with their own so we can be sure that we are celebrating a festival thousands of years old... perhaps even back as far as the dawn of humanity.

This weekend in England, the Morris Men will be out in force, jingling their way through the villages, dancing outside the pubs and in the village squares, bringing good fortune, welcoming in the summer as they have done for centuries... In my own village in England the May pole will come out tomorrow and the young girls and boys of the village will dance in the village square. Well the day of the cross here in Spain is pretty much the same kind of thing...


The villagers dress up in their best and go to church first. The church service is hardly listened to by the throng of people inside all chatting at once about what they are wearing and who has come and who has not... so much so the priest had to …