A VERY WARM & SUNNY MANILVA ON THURSDAY.

THURSDAY 31^st/AUGUST 2017.

I was up early this morning to welcome back little princess ‘ Reina’ for the day, she’s back tomorrow, she as usual joined us on the bed for a little lie in before going onto here duvet, Brenda grabbed a quick shower, I’m having mine later, so I shot along to the local Bank in ‘Calle Mar’ to pay the water & electricity bills, on the way back I spotted the ‘ ‘Movistar/Telefonica’ engineers working down the next street to ours, installing the Fiber Optic cables, I enquired when they were coming to ‘ Calle San Vicente’ and they said possibly tomorrow - ‘Hasta Manana ‘! Watch this space.

PS; The ' Movistar/Telefonica ' engineers have just appeared outside our house, see below!

When I returned we had our breakfast of ‘ Crispy Smoked Bacon toasted Butties’ – open on Brown for Brenda – with mugs of steaming tea, we then put the shopping list together as I’m out on my travels tomorrow morning, down to Sabinillas, for the weekly shopping.

Yesterday evening the handyman, Juan, came and started on the work in the downstairs toilet, he’s removed the window frame & door frame, taken the tiles off and re-plastered the walls, this evening he’s putting the new tiles up, re-fixing the frames, cleaning the floor, painting the ceiling etc, fingers crossed that he gets it all finished, watch this space.

The sun was out early this morning and the sky is bright blue, it’s already warm & sunny, by lunchtime it will be in the high 20s, tomorrow and over the ‘Vendimia’ weekend it’s getting hotter by the day, next week is going to be settled, hot and sunny , again in the high 20s, watch this space.

At lunchtime we went along to ' Bar Castillo ' for a cool drink & Tapas, Mano came and joined us, he's calling in later to help me apply for our ' European Health Cards ' online- it gives us a second option in the future and cover us for travels outside Spain.

Last night when Lee collected ‘ Reina’ – Daniela is away on business in London, he stopped to check the ‘ Amazon Fire TV Stick’ system, the BBC has gone off again, he had no luck so it’s back to ‘Plan B’ – try again later! I had made a bowl of the ‘Cottage Pie’ for him, his ‘takeaway supper’

For our supper this evening we are having the rest of the ‘ Cottage Pie ‘ – on Friday its ‘ Fish Night’ – over the ‘ Vendimia Wine Festival Weekend’ I’m now making a ‘Casserole of Sliced Beef Steak’ in a rich Red Wine, Mushroom & Onion sauce, which we can come back to as the weekend goes on!

See below a picture taken back in 2013 when the new 'Plaza De La Vendimia' was opened, it shows on the left, our neighbour, Mario,  who is the Mayor, on the right is Diego, the ex-Mayor and in the middle is me! This picture was used to design the Ceramic Tile Mural  which is now on the wall behind the grape crushing pit!! 

Yesterday Chris Froome increased his overall lead in the ‘ Vuelta a Espana 17’ as he climbed away from the rest of the field on the final climb to the summit, today’s Stage 12 is from Motril to Antequera over a hilly 162 kms, is in the area of the ‘Sierra Navada ‘ above Malaga, it’s the nearest the race, this year, comes to us.

See the route map below;

This evening after supper we will be back to channel hopping to find something to watch, as usual we will have our ‘Happy Hour ‘ cocktails earlier in the evening.

Thoughts for the Day;  See above.

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