Spirit Bot at the Ibiza Villa

My spooky blog from yesterday was obviously rated highly on the media's ectoplasmometers as Yvette Fielding's twitter page shows.

Any old people reading this please don't ask me to explain what Twitter is

Grumpy Old Men

You know it, the BBC series giving a voice to 35 to 54-year-old men, probably the grumpiest sector of society.

Whilst I still just qualify here are my today's grumps against society.

As read in some girls' magazine. 'I love his effortless style' referring to the photo of some film star wearing a V neck T and denim jeans. Come on girl, you don't need to be a rocket scientist or style guru to put on the first thing that comes to hand in a morning.

As seen in Syp for the first time ever. A price tag for asparagus. Shame it was over the baby garlic and not an asparagus in sight.

Plumbers. I had one run in yesterday, replace a toilet flusher, and run out 15 minutes later asking for one hour's labour plus another hour's labour call out charge. In total, the same as I get for 6 hours work.

My only consolation is that tens of thousands of people read what I write professionally, whilst his labours are only witnessed by arses.

Ibiza's Most Haunted

Wow, the weirdest thing ever just happened to me. I was out filming some road scenes near Cala Conta and when I got the film back from the chemists something I hadn't noticed before appeared.

If you look very closely at the right hand side of the track you'll see a ghostly transluscent figure which appears to be standing at the side of the 'camino.'

I absolutely swear that I never saw it while I was driving, but then I was lighting a cigarette, sending a text message, programming the satnav and talking to someone in the back seat at the time!

Romance isn't Dead - Official

I've only gone and booked us into San Agustin's most romantic dining location - the upstairs balcony at Can Berri Vell - to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary. I'll be taking Jaki along for company and I'm just wondering whether to take her on the no. 9 bus or splash out €5 on a taxi?

I've Got Wood

Ibiza winter nights are perishingly cold. So what better way of spending a boiling hot August afternoon than preparing for the cold season by stacking two tons of wood for the fire?

With temperatures at 35 degrees centigrade (that's just above freezing in England given the poor fahrenheit to centigrade exchange rate at the moment) three and a half hours toiling in hot sticky conditions left us, errrmmm, hot and sticky.

So, this is what two tonnes of logs looks like when it's been neatly stacked in the garage. Pine on one side, olive on the other, and all on pallets to allow air and mice to circulate freely throughout. And this is what it will look like on a freezing January night................ click me

And why do we choose to buy so much wood in the heat of August? Because dry wood costs less than wet wood as it is much lighter and is bought by weight, and of course it burns rather than steams as wet wood does.

Anyway, after all that stacking, a pizza and a bottle of red wine, I slept like a log all night!

Hail Spotify!

Those about to listen salute you. Going off at several tangents the other day surfing Spotify I came across French trumpet player Erik Truffaz on a Blue Note album.

I'd never heard or heard of him before but I really like his stuff and our Ibiza villa has been awash with his music since.

here's a sample

As Seen On the Beach

I'm about to write an Ibiza news article about disabled access and facilities on San Antonio's beaches so I thought I'd go and take a few photos of the ramps from the promenade, across the beach and into the sea.

Braving searing temperatures, topless birds and the aroma of grilling bacon I managed to get the shots I needed to illustrate the article.

I also got this one of what must be the daftest novelty lilo yet produced. I'm old enough to remember when every lilo was oblong and blue on one side and red on the other. How technology has improved our lives eh?

These days judging by the number of tourists strolling nonchalently up the middle of Calle Es Calo in San Antonio Bay with a lilo tucked under their arm, then these nautical toys obviously also double as pedestrian air bags too!

Trouble in Paradise

Another frustrating week in Ibiza but brightened up by the new table top oven.

Can you imagine, when your tank's been on red for ages, nipping out to put petrol in and there being none at the petrol station - only diesel. OK, OK, it happens all the time in Rwanda, but at least the beer's cheap there, The car's still sitting on the drive with a pipette full of unleaded in the bottom of the tank in the hope that they'll have remembered to order some more Sin Plomo 95 by the end of the week.

So, back to the good stuff. Here's Roast shoulder of lamb, roast potatoes, carrots, onions and red pepper which took exactly 35 minutes to cook in the wonder oven. I love it.

Ibiza Summer Siesta Tips

Now that the Ibiza summer's well and truly upon us I've developed a habit of dropping off for a siesta in the afternoon. Sometimes, if I sleep too long, I feel worse than if I'd not slept at all.

What to do? Surrealist painter Salvador Dali (we've been to his museum in Figueres and his Jazz club in Cádaques) came up with the perfect solution. Obviously as he melted all his alarm clocks researching for his work 'The Persistence of Memory' he had to find some way of not sleeping too long at siesta time.

Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca in Cadaques

The idea he came up with was to sit in a chair with a spoon in his hand and as he drifted into the arms of Morpheus his grip on the spoon would relax, the spoon would hit the floor tiles and the clattering noise would wake him up, having had just enough sleep.

Dali's well used cutlery

Whether it would work for me, I'm not sure, as yesterday not even the washing machine jogging past on 1200 rpm woke me.

Ibiza Beer – Did You Spill my Pint?

Many British visitors to Ibiza are now moaning about how expensive things are here – pizzas, wine and pints to be precise. Even with the unfavourable exchange rate, the price they quote as paying for the above items is still less than in Britain.
So why moan? Well 40 years ago when Franco allowed bikinis onto the beaches Spain was very much a third world country and everything really was 'el cheapo.'
Now Britons still expect to pay around a quarter of what the pay at home for the same products and still enjoy air conditioned hotels, Sky Sports, newspapers less than a day old, and Webster's White Devil on draught.
It doesn't work that way now. Spain is an advanced western economy, the fifth largest in the European Union and 9th largest in the world in terms of nominal GDP, so like in Britain, Norway, Germany et al if you want a national health service, your beer tax goes up!
Package tour Brits will be glad to hear that there are still places in the world where you really can get a cheap pint and the only drawbacks apart from the lack of Satellite telly, karaoke bars, and shops selling bandanas for baldy men is the profusion of muck, bullets and all manner of air, water and rat borne diseases.
Here, courtesy of www.pintprice.com are the ten most affordable countries in the world – notice how they don't tell you whose ale it is!
Country Price
Panama £0.30
Rwanda £0.32
Myanmar £0.34
Bhutan £0.36
Ethiopia £0.37
Congo DR £0.38
Korea N £0.38
Madagascar £0.38
Kazakhstan £0.41
Philippines £0.41

As Seen on TV V

There's a saying that goes something like 'every black cloud has a silver lining' and for once it rang true this week at Knowsley Road, St. Helens where there were more black clouds than people in the packed ground for the derby game with Wigan.

It lashed it down all the game and saints were behind 6 - 4 with 3 minutes to go, thus ensuring that most Wiganners in the crowd had watched 7 minutes more rugby than they normally do.

What should we do? Why give the ball to Saints' young Wunderkind Kyle Eastmond and let him score a 'weather assisted' try under the sticks. Here's how it looked on the telly in our loft/bunker.

Thanks to the rain Eastmond was able to aquaplane in the last couple of yards to score the winner.