Friday, 22 August 2025

A Postcard A Day - Friday 22 August 2025 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely peeps,

Again the week has come to an end and a (hopefully exciting) weekend lays ahead. I have a postcard to show you from Germany:

It as sent to me by Helen, who lives in Wilhelmshaven, somewhat to the west of this area.
It's an old card as the old East-West border is clearly indicated in red. 
I spot a village called Wittenburg (on the east side) and I remember as a child having a pen friend who lived there. Her name was Gitte. She wrote with a typical German handwriting, which is beautiful, but totally illegible to me so my dad had to help me out. I wonder what became of her.

There are some pretty stamps on the card:

The two stamps the left are paper art to do with letter writing. The stamp on the right has the pride banner on it and in small letters at the bottom I read: 'Delivered with pride 2025'. A clever play on words. The title 'Love Wins' of course is also very appropriate.

What have I been doing? I have been ill last weekend as you probably have read in my Tuesday blogpost. I still had to go out and one of those I-don't-want-to-miss-this occasions was the baptism of my friend Janet in a friend's swimming pool. She had been a Christian for 60 years but had never been 'dunked'.
Here she is raising her arms triumphantly. Martin on the left is reading the translation of her testimony for the Spanish speakers (which were most people).
I didn't stay for the party as I was feeling really ill.

That morning I had wanted to poach an egg in the microwave. (put water in a small dish with a splash of vinegar. Add egg. Cook on 700 watt for 20 seconds, check, then another 20 seconds, and again of necessary). I hear a loud 'Bang!' And this is what I saw:
Now I know we are here to remember our smiles of the week but this certainly did not make me smile! I had forgotten to set the microwave to 700 watt and it had been cooking on 1100 watt! I wouldn't normally make that mistake but I was ill and my brain was clearly not playing ball.

By Monday I was okay again. On Wednesday I was walking to my friend's house for a prayer meeting and some of my other friends came by and offered me a lift. Normally I would have preferred to walk but look at the car!
What a fun cabriolet. People don't drive convertibles here as it's so hot, it's better to have the airco on and be cool.

Talking about cars, here's one for Angela (she like classic cars and so do I):
This was parked in the center of Caniles. What a beauty!


It's a Packard and my guess is a 1947 model. I just expect any minute President Rooseveldt to climb out of it.
I never found out who it belonged to and the next day it was gone. It is definitely the most beautiful car I have ever seen. It was immaculate inside and out.

That's enough excitement for one day. I'll leave you with some funnies at the end. And now let's go over to Annie's at A Stitch In Time for some more smiles.

Enjoy your weekend,
Lisca













































Tuesday, 19 August 2025

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 19 August 2025 - T for stamps, paella and a ginger cat

 Hello lovely peeps,

Here I am again with a postcard and hopefully a beverage of some sorts to celebrate Elizabeth and Bluebeard's T-Party.

My postard comes from Rhode Island:

I love these Lou Paper cards as they teach me about states in the US snd they capture the essence of each state.. Of course I had to look up where this 'smallest state' in the USA is.

The stamps are gorgeous:

I love the the left stamp with the schoolbus:
Even the clock is set to ten to eight, have you noticed?

The USPS writes: "With the release of this additional ounce stamp, The US Postal Service celebrates the iconic yellow school bus and its role in ensuring millions of children get to school and home again every day.
About 2.5 million children across the United States ride a yellow bus to school every day. Besides providing reliable and safe transportation - a child is about 70 times safer riding the bus. than being driven to school in a car - these buses keep millions of cars off the road, saving billions of gallons of gasoline and preventing millions of pounds of harmful carbon dioxide emissions. Yet each bus remains its own little world, where countless childhood dramas play out, friendships form and dissolve, and daydreams are dreamed as the landscape passes."

The middle stamp has an eagle over the stars and stripes flag, and I have realized that it is the cancellation stamp and not part of the postage stamp.

Then there is the stamp on the right which celebrates the 250th anniversary of the US army and honours its service to the nation.


The USPS webssite writes this: "Predating the establishment of the Unites State by a year, the Army has been called America's first national institution. With its revolutionary-era motto 'This we'll defend', today's Army includes approximately 450.000 active-duty soldiers, more that 350.000 soldiers in the Army National Guard, nearly 190.000 soldiers in the Army Reserve, and more than 265.000 civilians who provide mission essential support, all of whom remain mindful of the Army's core values: loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage." 

What have I been doing here in the south of Spain? I was invited to the dedication of my best friend's three grandchildren. Her eldest daughter, Isa, lives not far from here. I can see her house from my window. The dedications took place at her house.
Here are the three sisters with their babies, all born within a month of each other. Two boys, one girl. One born in Spain, one in Germany and one in France. 

Their brother, a pastor in Granada, did the 'service', and after that there were drinks and nibbles for the 40/50 people that were invited. There was a man setting up to make paella:


The burner was lit and he started to fry stuff:
King prawns in this case. 

The prawns get taken out and the meat goes in:

It takes a couple of hours to prepare the paella so it was dark when we finally sat down to eat.

What a beauty!

For Elizabeth and Bluebeard's T-Party, here I am with a drink in my hand:

And there are probably a few drinks on the table here too
And one last photos with drinks:
Just as an aside: My house is one of those houses in the background.

That is all from me today. Shall I show you where Ronni is?
On top of the sofa cushion, looking at me. But it's not such a good photo. Let me take another one:
He mauing at me and then jumped onto the table:
Now lying peacefully next to my laptop. 

Happy T-Day all!

Lisca



















Friday, 15 August 2025

A Postcard A Day - Friday 15 August 2025 - Friday Smiles

 Hello lovely ladies, Here we are on the 15th of August, a public holiday in southern Europe as it's the Assumption of Mary. This is the day to visit Rome (for example)m as it will be empty. Everybody has gone on holiday! Here in Caniles, everything is shut and people are also going away. I've planned to go out with my Danish friends tonight, so I hope there will be something open....

Let me show you a postcard that arrived a few days ago:

It was sent to me by Monique who lives in the Netherlands, so she wrote to me in my own language. The card itself is an image of Steampunk Mushrooms. I love steampunk, so this is a card I love. The artist is (I had to lift the washi tape to be able to read this): Melkozerova Elizaveta, a Russian artist. She has created a lot of lovely images and postcards. There is a postcard website (In Kazakhstan of all places) that sell a lot of her art and I am sorely tempted to buy some myself.
The stamp is a used stamp as she has sent this postcard in a home-made envelope with somme other bits and pieces.

The writing on the stamp reads 'sparen', which is Dutch for 'saving'.
The stamp features a 25 cent coin which I remember well. The Netherlands changed to the Euro in 1999 with a three year transition period. A banking website writes:

The euro banknotes and coins were introduced in the Netherlands on 1 January 2002, after a transitional period of three years when the euro was the official currency but only existed as 'book money'. The dual circulation period – when both the guilder and the euro had legal tender status – ended on 28 January 2002.

I don't remember much of this as I left the country in 1977.

What have I been doing? I bought an induction hob. A small one as my electricity supply can't cope with more than 2000W. Of course I can have more but I've chosen the cheapest tariff.
But that's not what I wanted to show you. This Friday blog is about smiles and this made me smile:
Ronni immediately appropriated the box and had hours of fun with it.
He's now sitting behind me on the sofa:

That's it for this Friday. I will of course leave some funnies at the end for you to chuckle over.

Now it's time to visit Annie at A Stitch In Time for some more smiles.

Have a lovely weekend,

Lisca










































Tuesday, 12 August 2025

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 12 August 2025 - T for fiesta and potatoes

 



Hello lovely peeps,

I had scheduled this post, as per usual, to be posted at midnight. But i have just discovered that it hasn't posted at all. So sorry....

I have another postcard for you:


This one was sent to me from the Netherlands. It has an old Vespa type scooter on it. That takes me back it does.

Hester, who sent the card, went through the trouble of using more than one stamp. Aren't they great!


Unfortunately I have not been able to find much information about these stamps. The one on the right reads 'aalscholver', which means cormorant and I can't read the small print on the photo below as the resolution is too low.


The second from the right is a Christmas stamp from this series from 2024:


No information on any of them. 

So, what have I been doing? It's been Feria (fair) time in my village, so the whole week went by with a sort of carnaval atmosphere. I went out a few times with my friends and the village itself is bursting at its seams with visitors.

I wanted to go and see a performance of a local singer called Maria del Tango. She is quite well known in the region and she grew up here. She has an amazing voice.

It's a bit flamenco-ish of course as I live in Andalusia. (I don't know if the video works).
My friend Antonia and I made sure we got seats so we came early and ordered some drinks and snacks:


As it's T for Tuesday, this will be my qualifier. They only sold beer, so that's what I had as I don't drink soft drinks (soda).

Antonia took this picture of me:


Then on another night I went out again with my friends Antonia and Patricia:

We went out at 9 and queued outside a baked potato place for some supper.

It was called Don Papón. (Papa is a potato, papón is a huge potato). And huge they were:
With the topping the potato is hardly visible. It was really delicious.


We managed to get a table behind and somebody was kind enough to photograph us three ladies:

On the way back we strolled through the old part of the village:

It was a super evening.

That is all from me today. I am going to prepare the upstairs flat as I'm having my first HomeExchange guests on Wednesday. I want everything to be perfect.

Happy T-Day all,

Lisca

I have noticed the video hasn't come through and I don't know what to do about that, so here are two YouTube videos, both filmed in Caniles where I live. The first (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inVLRwYF9sA) is Maria with her mum and aunties who are teaching her an old folk song about the daughter of the miller and she does her own take on it of course.
The second (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gqkbiqEKWU) one is in black and white and was recorded the winter before last, also in my village. 

This last one (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoYiipVY8fo) is my favorite and it is also recorded and filmed in Caniles and has some lovely guitar playing in it as well. The venue is the recently restored tythe barn called the Posito.