A Postcard A Day - Friday 11 December 2020 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely people, Happy Friday to you all. I hope I can get this blog on the road as the internet is playing up something awful. The weather is bad and that seems to influence our internet although we are supposed to have fiber-optic cable.

Today is Friday Smiles hosted by Annie at A Stitch In Time, so I will be heading to her with lots of funnies at the end. And there is Rocking Your World Friday, counting our blessings week hosted by Virginia. Do pay her a visit too.

I'll start with a smile (and a blessing) in the shape of mail received:

Let me show you a postcard that I received recently. It comes from Holland and it contains a poem about friendship. Translated:

Friends

Where you dare

share everything,

hope and pain,

and where you can be

your uninhibited self,

with or without 

words.

The stamp is beautiful. It reads Feminae Pacis, which is latin for 'women of peace'.  Then it says: daughters of Clare. And at the bottom it reads: Peace and all things good.

I looked that up of course. The daughters of Clare are an ecumenical community inspired by Francis and Clare of Assisi. At the moment they have two members:Marianne van Haastrecht en Hanneke ter Maat and they are based in Delft in the Netherlands.

The weather has been awful, so my week has been an indoor week really. When it rains here, we often have a storm at the same time. The rain just gets blown onto our windows with such a force that we always get a bit of leakage. Luckily we have tiles on the floor.

At one stage we were sitting at the table and we heard a loud bang. One of my kombucha bottles (that now live in the lounge) had exploded. Again, I was so thankful that our floors are tiled.

My best friend's daughter has married a Dutchman and for the sake of their 5 yr old daughter we planned to celebrate Sinterklaas. A Dutch tradition on the eve of St Nicholas. 

Sinterklaas is portrayed as a bishop who comes on a boat from Spain and brings presents for children who have been good.  He has Moorish (black) helpers. called Peters. These are now no longer allowed in the Netherlands. People of Afro-Caribbean descent have declared they don't like that and it is now an offence to paint your face black.

Here in Spain we have a festival of 'Moors and Christians', where the people that play Moors, paint their faces black. I can see that in the future that might be banned as well as black people might feel offended. I don't understand why. The Moors were black people and I don't think you can change that bit of history.

The Moors ruled in southern Europe for 800 years (until 1492, the year that Columbus sailed for America) and brought many innovations in those years. 

If you're interested read the this article

For lunch on the 5th we celebrated my best friends' husband's birthday. (No masks as they are in our 'bubble' so to speak. They are people we see daily) and in the evening we celebrated Sinterklaas at the daughter's house (the one with the Dutch husband). We had put all the presents in a jute sack, and at some point my husband slipped out and banged loudly on the front door, left the sack outside and then hid in the bathroom. The little girl knew that was Sinterklaas, and together with her daddy she went to collect the sack. She was disappointed to learn that Sinterklaas was not there. He has moved one, we said, he has many other children to visit.

All those collages that I make, I had a book printed with the first 100 collages since the beginning of Covid in March. The book arrived on Friday. I've entitled it 'Glad to be Alive'.

I found out too late that Monday was a national holiday in Spain (Day of the Constitution) which was on Sunday, so they have a day off on Monday. Then on Tuesday it was Immaculate Conception Day, another holiday. All the shops are shut, so I baked my own bread and we have plenty of food in the house.

On Tuesday night we had a 'date night'. There were some new films on Amazon Prime and Bohemian Rhapsody was one of them. Neither of us had see it, so we settled down with some popcorn, lit some candles and had a lovely evening.

Wednesday was the only nice day this week. Our friends came to visit and we went for a walk around the estate and showed them our own patch as well. It was lovely.

Thursday it rained again, and I spent most of the day at the computer. Because we are going to Holland to visit my mum (she would have been totally alone this Christmas) I was trying to get travel insurance (still not done) and booked a Covid test in Holland 72 hours before we go back to Spain. Lots of things need doing and booking and forms filled in etc. A bit of a night mare. But apart from the insurance, it's all booked and organized.

So that is my week and my smiles. 

I have just read that in Andalucia the restrictions have been relaxed a bit. From Saturday onwards we can go into town (shopping! Hurray!)

Have a wonderful weekend,

 and take care,

Hugs,

Lisca

Here are some funnies for you: