A Postcard A Day - Friday 27 February 2026 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely peeps,

Short and sweet today I'm afraid. I don't have any photos and I haven't been anywhere. But I still receive postcards and that makes me smile. Look at this one:

It's a pretty doll-like girl with some wildlife on her head.  I found out it's called 'pop-manga' and is created by Camilla d'Errico.

Camilla d'Errico's Pop Manga art fuses the heart of manga with the magic of pop surrealism, creating stories on canvas and in detailed hand-drawn illustrations as well as whimsical colouring books.

As well as works of art, she has also published colouring books

stickers and postcards.

The postcard was sent to me from the USA, from San Diego to be precise. 

The stamps are Forever stamps with sail boats on them.

What have I been up to in Spain? Not much. I already wrote in my Tuesday blogpost that I had been out for the day on Saturday with my friend and we had lunch there too:

I've been to the docs because I wasn't feeling very well and had dizzy spells. Turns out I have very low blood pressure. I had my bloods done this morning and I will see the doctor again next week to hear if that has revealed anything.

My lovely cat Ronnie is very affectionate and cuddles up with me in the evenings when I relax with as book or the TV.

 I have finished my audio book Painting the Darkness by Robert Goddard:

Loved this 19th century mystery. Is the heir to the family estate really who he says he is? A twisty tale of love, lies, secrets and revenge. 

It was a long read (20 hours) but really good.

I've now started 

First in the medieval whodunnit series set in Bampton, Oxfordshire, during the plague years and featuring a newly qualified surgeon.

That is all from me today. I will find some funnies for you for extra smiles.

Have a lovely weekend,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 24 February 2026 - T for fish & chips and pizza

 Hello lovely girls,

That weekend went really fast, don't you think so?

Mine went fast because I went out on Friday as well as Saturday. But I'll tell you about that later. First my postcard which comes from the USA:

It was sent by Nicole, who lives in south Texas. The picture shows bluebonnets which is the state flower of Texas. 

I had never heard of bluebonnets so I looked in Wikipedia:

Lupinus texensis, the Texas bluebonnet or Texas lupine is a species of lupine found in Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. With other related species of lupines also called bluebonnets, it is the state flower of Texas.

The stamp is very 'American':

Stars and stripes.

The weather here has improved and so has my mood, but I'm still very tired  and not quite right. I have a dental problem which I will get fixed but if I still feel that way afterwards, I will have a chat with my doctor.

My friend Antonia suggested we go for a walk on Friday afternoon, but at the appointed time she told me that her son had asked her to pick up his children and take them to the Carnival party. So instead of walking we drove to Granada (1h and 20 min) to pick up the children. I had my photo taken in the garden as the view from their house is amazing:

The mountains are the original Sierra Nevada. Still full of snow.

On Friday evening my friends David and Patricia invited me to eat a pizza at a local place that does really good Italian pizzas. I was surprised when three people entered the restaurant. They had met their new neighbour and had invited her along too. How lovely. She is a very nice lady from Barcelona.

We had a few dishes to start with and then ordered two pizzas between the four of us. I really enjoyed the evening.

On Saturday morning, my neighbour Dian and I went to a town called Albox, about and hour and a quarter towards the coast. There are a lot of Brits (and a lot of Dutch too I have discovered) so there are shops with British groceries and charity shops (which are thrift shops, which the Spanish don't have). I had packed two Ikea bags full of clothes and the last of my late husband's suits. And several jigsaw puzzles that I had finished. So I had plenty to donate. Dian wanted to go to the market where she can buy eco veggies and then we went for lunch. I love to eat fish & chips and in a community with lots of Brits, there is a fish and chips restaurant of course;

I had a large cod with chips and mushy peas. I don't like chips, so Dian had all mine, and she was happy to have a sandwich. My drink is a draught cider. (As Dian was driving I could have a drink).

We found a place in the shade and I enjoyed my fish no end!

Yesterday afternoon I went to the dentist to have my teeth professionally cleaned. I don't like going to the dentist (who does?) and I confess I was a nervous wreck. But he had promised me to give me local anaesthetic so it didn't hurt at all. He discovered a rather deep cavity in one of my teeth, so I have to go back next week to have that treated. Yuck.

That is all for now. I shall be joining Bluebeard and Elizabeth for the T-Party. Several of my photos have drinks in them so I do qualify.

Happy T-Day everybody!

Lisca

 

A Postcard A Day - Friday 20 February 2026 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely peeps, Today is Friday, when I look back on the past week and remember the smiles and the good things.

Top of my list (for this blog at least) is the arrival of a postcard in my letterbox. Today I will show you a postcard from Japan:

It is sent to me by Kanae from Tokyo. I googled whether this name was female or male and it's mostly female, (but a famous Vtuber (male) is also called Kanae). Anyway, he/she explains that the drawing is a ukijo-e by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka. It depicts a well known geisha of the time and the famous landscape of Tokyo. 

The artist is called 'the last of the ukijoe artists'.

Wikipedia writes:

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi ( 30 April 1839 – 9 June 1892) was a Japanese printmaker.

Yoshitoshi has widely been recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. He is also regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. 

Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing. In a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.

His life was summed up by John Stevenson:

Yoshitoshi's courage, vision and force of character gave ukiyo-e another generation of life, and illuminated it with one last burst of glory.

— John Stevenson, Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon,

The stamp is not spectacular, but pretty:

Sorry I didn't quite get it in focus.

What has been happening here in our village in southern Spain? Well, we had Intercambio (our English/Spanish conversation group) on Saturday. 

We always have fun, and afterwards we often go for a drink. This time we went to a different bar as most were fully booked because it was St Valentines Day. It hasn't filtered through here to a great extent (no cards etc) but couples do tend to go out that night.

I managed to also finish my jigsaw puzzle in the week:

From Monday onwards the weather was a lot better. No more gales and rain and cold.

I feel a lot better now that the sun has come out. I get quite depressed when there are long periods of greyness.

I still go to Pilates twice a week. Here is our studio, photographed before all the ladies arrive. Usually we are 5 ladies and one man.

Ronnie is doing great. The bad weather doesn't affect him. He still wants to go out onto the patio and have a sniff around, but when it rains, he sits under one of the chairs. 

Below is Ronnie sitting on the back of the settee. In the background you can see a bag of pellets ready to be put into the stove. Next to it is a special vacuum cleaner for ashes, which I use before I turn on the pellet burner.

Of course I will put some funnies at the end for you to have a smile about.

Have a lovely weekend,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - 17 February 2026 - T for St Barbara, a walk and a snake

 Hello lovely peeps, here I am again with a postcard. This time from Austria. It comes from my friend Maggie, who travels a lot and she sent me not one but two postcards of this amazing church (in an envelope).

It's the St Barbara church in Bärbach, Austria. It was designed by Hunderwasser.

There was nothing on Wikipedia, but from all the different sites I visited, I cobbled this information together:

Despite its post-war origin, St Barbara Kirche was in need of renovating in the late 1980s. Local citizens voted to commission the maverick Viennese artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser to undertake the redesign. 

Below the other postcard of the church by night:

Work began in 1987 and was completed in 1988.The façade, the roof and the tower with the golden sphere are rich in colour and form. The twelve gates symbolise the twelve world religions,

(Below two images from the Internet)

 and with their symbols Hundertwasser made a gesture of ecumenism, dialogue between all denominations and tolerance. The interior of the church invites to silence and prayer and shows works by local artists., with Hundertwasser's own works in the altar niche and at the baptismal font being particularly impressive.

This church is not a museum-like place, but a lived expression of diversity, spirituality, and artistic freedom. An inspiring destination in the Graz Region that uniquely combines art, religion, and imagination.

Here are more images if you like to see them

I like this unusual art by Hundertwasser, like I like Gaudi.

The stamp on the envelope was this:

It celebrates the cello.

This past week has still been awful weather, but one of my boys Richard came to see me. He lives in the UK but was in Barcelona for business. He caught a flight to Granada and we enjoyed a couple of days together. That lifted my spirits no end. He took me out to lunch:

And we went for a long walk in between showers:

We met a snake along the path who had the same idea:

I don't know what sort it was, and it didn't stop, just crossed the road.

The weather was really stormy and at times it was difficult to stay on my feet.

We also went out for dinner and it is here that I can show you my drink that is a requirement to join the T-Party hosted by Bluebeard and Elizabeth.

My bottle of alcohol free beer. (I'm still on antibiotics for my peridental problem).

Then a friend and I drove him to Malaga airport to fly home. 

The below picture was taken out of the car:

It's the Sierra Nevada mountains. Still very snowy.

I'll end with a photo of Ronnie, my cat, sleeping beside me as I type.

That is all for today,

Happy T-Day all,

Lisca