Beach Mad Bob

I see this man on the right on the beach nearly every day. His skin is the colour of mahogany and he always wears white shorts and a white shirt and baseball cap. He has snowy white hair down past his shoulders. He has a curious flapping of hands motion as he jogs, sometimes reading a book at the same time. I asked to take his photo once and he agreed as long as I wasn't going to publish it. He explained that he was very well known and possibly famous and casually added that he was the new Pope. I have put him into Maureen Chlorine's strip http://www.freewebs.com/maureenchlorine/ under the page called "Freedom" The locals tell me that he used to be a priest in Aragon but who knows? There are a lot of strange people here.

The supermarket is now so full of tourists you can't even push a trolley down the aisles. The Spanish older lady takes her place in the queue with a rugby tackle and much elbowing. The Germans are so tall people get out of their way. The French are polite but persistant. The Dutch shop topless. The British look hot and confused. The Russians shop with bodyguards. The checkout girls have muscles like boxers after weeks of swinging crates of beer and wine over the thingy that reads the prices. 35 degrees in the shade this afternoon. Arthur is asleep in my guitar case.

The Lifeguards have arrived.

This year the lifeguards are dressed in striking red and yellow uniforms. For some reason they are all wearing rollerskates. This struck me as odd because the beach that leads to the sea, where people sometimes get into difficulty, is made of sand. It was also strange that none of them seemed to actually know how to skate but were wobbling from side to side with their arms outstretched, flailing at the boiling air. Another group of lifeguards were riding brand new shining bicycles. The lookout chairs dotted along the beach were empty. I am missing something here.

The local council has decided to dig up the beach as well as the main road now so there is massive construction of a bridge which will connect this village to the next village for pedestrians. They have been working on it on and off for months but seem to be making no progress. There are only about four workmen who spend inordinate amounts of time in the shadow of the pine trees or huddled together in the air-conditioned cab of a mechanical digger.

Lottery fever is running high here. The Saturday draw is worth 20 million euros. We have a ticket.

Making Music.

I think I definately prefer handwritten captions. Maureen is learning to play classical guitar. So am I. We are currently on Mi Favorita (anon) , Chanson du Montmartre (Maria Linnemann), Leo Brouwer study no. 5 and 6.

I broke my thumbnail yesterday which will take two months before it gets back to the right length.

I am starting to think about turning Maureen into a comic book full of strips. I'd better start looking up the actual dimensions of a page so I can draw the strips to scale. Not much point in spending hours doing an illustration if it doesn't fit . Looks like the book would have to be 72 pages. That's a lot of strips. I've done about twenty but none of them are the right scale. I guess this will be my project for the next 12 months!

I have no idea why two pictures of Maureen have uploaded and why they are at the top of the page because I uploaded one pic of her after I had typed the above.

The village is rampant with tourists and it's boiling hot again. Storms predicted.