And Spikey Is Back…..

3

Wednesday 20 November, 2013 by Uncle Spike

Last Thursday afternoon we had a good old storm roll in, fast and furious it was. That’s all pretty normal stuff as we head into our version of winter; but our services (water, electricity, phone etc.) often take a hammering during these storms, and this one was no exception. The electric was on and off for much of the afternoon and into the night – that’s ok, we have a couple of rechargeable torches and lanterns and even Cousin Spike Jnr takes his wind-up torch to the bathroom when there is a storm, just in case. On a decent stormy night, the power can go off up to 10 times and sometimes for prolonged periods of a few hours – all very ‘normal’ for us. With the coal-fired central heating system of course relying on an electric water pump, having the woodburner always on the go serves as a useful backup.

But this week’s ‘main feature’ was the phone and internet line – it simply went off sometime mid Thursday afternoon during the height of the storm, and has still yet to be restored. Today I have travelled 65km to Aunty Spikes office to use one of the computers – hence this post and my ‘sudden burst of blogging activity’…

I must admit that it felt quite strange being separated from WordPress for 5 days – thankfully, the post publishing feature of ‘scheduling’ came in handy, having only literally just before the storm hit, scheduled a number of posts to cover through until today, including the latest guest post. Of course, you guys will have all seen this as it went live 🙂

Me thinks I have some catching up to do now; lots of posts to read from bloggers that I follow, and to a heap of comments and emails that I received ‘in my absence’ that I want to respond to (thanks so much for keeping in touch). Sounds funny too I know, but my weekend just didn’t seem right without the Weekly Photo Challenge…; so I will have to see what that was all about now and get my thinking cap on for my belated entry for this week.

Every cloud has a silver lining though, and whilst Uncle Spike the blogger was forced ‘offline’, Uncle Spike the farmer made some good use of the time. I spent 3 full days olive picking once the sunshine popped back out, right on cue after the storm. And just yesterday, I was down at the olive oil factory with this year’s harvest all complete. It was very much our ‘off’ season this year, with just 140kg (308 lbs) of olives, compared to what, some 700kg (1,540 lbs) last year – so whilst it means we have enough oil for ourselves, there’ll be none spare to sell. But a much reduced crop also means a much reduced harvest time, so I now have some spare time to concentrate on other work on the go… and perhaps, just perhaps, get around to writing up some more travel adventures as I keep promising you guys 🙂 

Good to be back though… 🙂

UNCLE SPIKE