Welcome to Techno-Billies

No this isn't a trailer about Game of Thrones, sorry to disappoint those who searched on Google expecting to find something quite different.  It really is a post about getting ready for winter.  In this part of Spain we rarely get snow but all things are relative and when you have had weeks and weeks of +40C temperatures during summer getting up in the morning to a mere 13C or 14C can feel positively nippy!  And it will get colder than that when winter finally kicks in. grey skies and the promise of more rain. Autumn came and we were overjoyed.  Imagine the best English summer ever and you have just described our autumn here.  A little rain and the grass starts to grow  - GREEN! What a joy to the eyes, especially as the sun is still shining.  Walking the dog can be done during the day rather than at the crack of sparrows and sitting out on the veranda is once again my favourite pastime. The Spanish tv starts showing more and more adverts for cold and flu remedies and a

I have been holding off of telling you about our latest building project in the hope that it would be finished by now and I could do a 'ta da' reveal for you.  Well... that's not going to happen any time soon so I thought I should show you all that life isn't always so chilled and stress free here in sunny rural Spain. Firstly... sunny it isn't, but that's a good thing, we really needed the rain and boy have we got it... it only took two days to fill the 6,000 litre rain butt that takes the run off the roof.  The overspill is cascading down the drive making puddles and rivers as it goes. Our building project in progress is an outdoor kitchen.  We already have a bbq area but its quite a long way from the house down at the campsite end of the finca and it really isn't practical if you forget the ketchup so we drew up plans for a very simple, rustic kitchen with bbq and bread oven at the end of the veranda.  The bread oven is something that I have d

We keep Spanish hours here.  It took a good couple of years, but we finally managed to change our body clocks in favour of local meal times which we have now embraced with gusto!  What do I mean?  I shall explain. Mexican inspired breakfast of cheese omelette, avocado mush, fried black beans and tomatoes. If you ask a large group of people in the UK at what time do they eat lunch, you are going to get quite a variation of times... anything from 12 noon through to 2pm would be likely, but the exact time will depend upon a lot of things... which day of the week, whether they are working or not, if its a special day and also what and when they are likely to eat their evening meal.  Not so here in Spain.  If you ask a Spanish person from Madrid what time is lunch time he/she will say 2pm.  If you ask the same question in Andalucia... you get the same answer.  In fact all over Spain lunch time is 2pm.  Or from 2pm onwards. Spanish strawberries turn up at the market earlier than in

I have a very old sewing machine - according to its serial number it was manufactured in 1887 - basically while Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London... It still works.  When I got it all I had to do was clean it and then oil it and then buy a new bobbin for it.  Well I can hear you sniggering now... you'll never get a new bobbin for a 120 odd year old sewing machine.  Well you'd be wrong. My hand machine from 1914 - different make but again I can still find spares for it. Basically the design of the machine has not changed and most modern parts and accessories can be fitted onto my old machine.  Now of course a lot of modern machines are computer driven these days but I am talking about the mechanical bits of the machine.  They have changed very very little. Two blind hem feet, one old, one new, they both fit either the old or the new machine! This is a brilliant machine.  With a design so good that it has never needed to be changed.  I am more