46 (más o menos…)

Here's the international version:

Penblwydd hapus i ti
Joyeux anniversaire
Happy birthday, Elise
Cumpleaños feliz


Ah, yes, another year has passed, and so SWMBO celebrates her 46th birthday (with apologies to Eric Morecambe, they are all the right digits, but not necessarily in the right order).

The event was duly noted a few days ago with a trip to El Corte Inglés in Elche, one of Elise's favourite hideaways, where she bought numerous items to soften the blow, including yet another handbag to add to the collection.

To celebrate even further (is there no stopping?), she goes into hospital on Friday for a hiatus hernia operation. Hopefully, she will be back home by Saturday evening and all will once again be well with the inner workings.

Gelukkige verjaardag, Elise!

A Couple of Shakes

We live in a reasonably active area, at least as far as seismic activity is concerned. And earthquakes have no respect for a good night's rest, so at about twenty past five this morning, we were shaken awake by quite a good rumble. The epicentre of this nocturnal motion (if you'll pardon the expression) was literally just up the road form us, as can be seen in the map to the left (click on it for a larger image), provided by the Instituto Geográfico Nacional. The maximum magnitude was 2.8 and here in El Raso it was probably about 2.7. Not bad for a night's work.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for the day, this afternoon, at about twenty-five past three, there was a nasty little blip, which felt as if it was just below us. This time the epicentre was first reported by the Instituto to have been just off the coast, next to the lake at the bottom of El Raso, but that information was later corrected, to place the epicentre to the north-west of Guardamar, as can be seen in the following map:

This rumble had a magnitude of 3.2.

Who knows? There might be more to come, so batten down the hatches; make everything ship-shape and Bristol-fashion.

A whopper of a wasp

Megascolia maculata flavifrons (female)

We are fortunate enough to have a rather unusual visitor to our garden, namely a mammoth wasp, or a Megascolia maculata flavifrons. I believe that this is the largest wasp in Europe.

And it really does live up to its "mammoth" name, for it is at least 5cm long. In fact, I have spotted two individuals, the larger one at 5cm or more and a smaller one that is perhaps 4.5cm long. Both of them are impressive creatures.

Both of them are also females. The body of the female mammoth wasp is black with large yellow markings. She has strong wings, tinged with amber, resembling the skin of an onion, showing crimson in the variegated light. Her legs are coarse, with a knotted appearance and are very hairy. She has a huge body and a powerful head, which is well protected by a hard skull. Her flight is quite low and is surprisingly quiet for such a large insect. The male mommoth wasp, which I have not yet seen, is less colourful and of finer frame.

The mammoth wasp does not attack humans (no European wasps do, except out of self-defence, so stop waving your arms about). Instead, it hunts out the larvae of the rhinoceros beetle (Oryctes nasicornis), which it paralyses with its sting in order to lay a single egg in the beetle's body. When it emerges, the larva of Megascolia then devours that of the Oryctes.

Size comparison with ordinary wasp (Vespula vulgaris)

And here's a little video (the quality is far better than the preview image).

Home from Belgium

We have been away for a few weeks. Because of the health problems last year, we were unable to make our usual late autumn visit back to Belgium, so it really was time to do so. I didn't fancy the queuing up at airports, not to mention the getting up at unearhly hours of the morning in order to catch a plane with a take-off time of 06:30, yes six-thirty in the morning and you're supposed to check in a couple of hours beforehand. Instead, we planned on driving up, but on taking our time in doing so.

And that's just what we did.

The first night, we stopped in Tarragona, after an easy drive of some 500 Km. Then on to Montauban, aother 500 Km or so, an a night at a chambre d'hôtes (not wonderful, given the price). We had hoped to visit a few bastide towns in the area, but the weather was really bad—cold and wet—so we had a hot chocolate in one and drove on to Sorges, supposedly the truffle centre of the world, where we spent two nights in the wonderful Auberge de la Truffe, a place that was right up SWMBO's street. Food, glorious food (says she). An extensive evening meal upon our arrival on Friday evening, a visit on Saturday morning after breakfast to the market of Périgueux, in the company of the chef (not SWMBO, but the actual chef of the Auberge), dinner that same evening, breakfast on Sunday morning, followed by a visit to the truffle museum, and a final two-hour-long lunch to send us on our way.

And our way took us to Senlis, just past Paris, where we stayed the night before proceeding the following morning to our apartment in Belgium.

Surprisingly, the weather in Belgium was much better than we had anticipated from the horror stories we had heard during the months leading up to our departure. Indeed, we had several sunny days, with balmy temperatures, so nothing to complain about, even if the general impression was rather grey.

Anyway, thanks must go to Marleen and Danny, Robert and Godelieve, Jean-Pierre and Rita, Christiane, Frans and Marie-Christine, Jan and Nicole, Luc and Monique, and anyone I might have forgotten, for making us feel welcome once again in Belgium.

Our journey back to Spain followed a similar path (excluding Montauban), though we made a slight detour in order to be able to visit Oradour-sur-Glane, the village destroyed in 1944 by German troops, who also killed 642 civilian inhabitants. The day was dull and miezerig, but that suited the sombreness of the place, where the ruins still stand, many with household effects still in them: almost each house seems to have a sewing-machine. I have made a small website about our visit to Oradour-sur-Glane; you can visit it here.

Good buy?

SWMBO and I took our German neighbours to a few garden centres recently. They were looking for a new palm to replace one lost to the dreaded Red Palm Weevil and an alternative to their straggly bouganvilla.

In one of the centres, I spotted a set of three large cacti. Way out of my price range, I imagined, but I went over to have a closer look and to check the price anyway.  It was marked at just 47 euro, which I thought must be a mistake, but when I asked about it, I was told that as it was marked at that price, I could buy it at that price. So I did. (And then I paid more than that for the pot!)

It was delivered a couple of days ago and I wanted to know just what I had bought. As is the wont here in Spain, most garden centres do not mark cacti and are of little help in identifying them, so I placed a pleading post on the Cactus World Online forum and within less than an hour had the name I was searching for: Pachycereus pringlei.

The tallest of the three parts stand 90cm. with an almost unbelievable maximum circumference of 70cm.

As well as the portrait view, you might enjoy a top view of one of the stems and a closeup of an areole with its spines.

A good buy, I think.

Good bye.

Fruit soup

Over a hundred and fifty years ago, Lewis Carroll provided us with one of the very best tales ever to have been committed to paper, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Like Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Alice is often regarded as no more than a children's book, and contributions by the Disneys of this world have not helped in this respect.

Carroll provided us with mathematical insights, exercises in logic, word play, and many more non-childish aspects in Alice. One of these was parody, though that parody is now largely lost, as we tend to remember more Carroll's parodical versions than the originals and therefore have little basis for comparison.

One such parody that Carroll presented was in the form of Soup Of The Evening, and he based this poem on a popular song of his time called Star Of The Evening by James M. Sayles.

Carroll's amusing version goes thus:

Soup Of The Evening
by Lewis Carroll 

Beautiful Soup, so rich and green,
Waiting in a hot tureen!
Who for such dainties would not stoop?
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,
Game, or any other dish?
Who would not give all else for two
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Beau—ootiful Soo—oop!
Soo—oop of the e—e—evening,
Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

One would imagine that Carroll held soup in the same high regard as SWMBO.

I do not share their enthusiasm. At least not for the vegetable soups that SWMBO usually prepares in the Soup&Co machine that we purchased recently and which I have already written about. I am even less enthusiastic about fish soups, shellfish soups, or any other form of marine creature soups, and keep well away from cold soups of the gazpacho ilk.

As you can imagine, the Soup&Co has been put to enthusiastic use by SWMBO, so that vegetable-type soups are just about coming out of my ears. Recently, however, I have discovered a far more sensible use for the Soup&Co: it produces extremely fine fruit drinks.

And I make them in it.

The photo shows today's creation, a magnificent concoction consisting of half a mango, about 150 gr of strawberries, a largish banana, the juice of half a lime, a piece of ginger about the size of the top part of a thumb, cut up (the ginger, not the thumb), and freshly pressed orange juice. That was enough for four glasses of the size shown in the pic (roughly 33 cl. each).

These drinks are very easy to make. I started out with a book of recipes for smoothies and other fruit drinks, but once you get the hang of it, such a book becomes just a source of inspiration, not something to be rigidly followed. Basically, you just put the fruits into the machine (larger fruits being first cut into smaller pieces), add a liquid ingredient (and I've used yoghurt, horchata, Casera—a sort of sugarless cream soda—and, of course, orange juice) and mix it all up for about thirty seconds at top speed. Check for taste and consistency, adding some honey, if necessary, or some more liquid, then mix again for a few more seconds.

Tomoroow I shall make something based on papaya.

Lubbly jubbly!

Llongyfarchiadau

And we did! (Or we don't, depending on which part of the badge you're looking at…)
Good game, good game.
Who'd have thought it after the disastrous first match against Ireland, all those weeks ago. But the Welsh rugby team pulled their metaphoric socks up and went on to beat the Scots, the Italians, and then, in the deciding match of the Six Nations Rugby tournament, the Old Enemy, the English.
And not only did they beat the English, they beat them admirably and decisively.
The thing is, Wales had to beat the English by at least eight points in order to win the tournament, so the task was quite a bit more onerous than merely having to "beat the English."
And they did it!
And not only did they beat the English by more than eight points, but they beat the English by a lot more. Indeed, they beat the English by 27 points, the final score being Cymru 30, Lloegr 3.
Congratulations also go to the Italians, who have come a long way since they started in the tournament some years ago and beat Ireland in their last match of this year's edition. France also deserves congratulations for coming back from a terrible run of poor play to beat Scotland in the final match of the series: not a wonderful display, but better than much of late.
But the biggest congratulations, of course, must go to Wales, who, in case you haven't heard, beat the English in an exciting match of delightfully fast and hard rugby.
Nothing like it.