MANILVA.

Monday4th/ Wednesday6th August.

In the morning we popped down to the shops in Sabinillas and also to pick up a paper to catch up with the weekend news.We now have online on the large PC both English and Spanish newspaper’s,Radio and TV news page’s with video updates from the BBC and MSN as well as the local TV stations on a small mobile TV monitor in the office.I’ve just downloaded a BBC Olympic news page personalized to our tastes so as we can keep up with the news and watch it on the Spanish TVE channel at the same time.At lunchtime we rang Jane in Chester to wish her a happy birthday as she is not back online after moving to a new house; the Skype phone has been updated and is now even better and had no feedback when speaking.We also rang an old friend who worked for us in Colwyn Bay,Hilda, who see’s a lot of our very loyal staff from the Seventy Degrees days, it was her birthday on Tuesday and we had a long chat and caught up with all the news including talking about Liverpool being the Capitol of Culture this year as she is a born and bred Scouser like myself!On Tuesday morning we arranged the hire car for when Tim is here so as we can get about and at the same time we booked for Sunday lunch at our favourite restaurant on the other side of Marbella.He has just phoned from Crete to say that he is looking forward to seeing us next Monday and to check on the weather! Today we got up early and went to the INSS office in Estepona to finish off the paperwork and get a social service number as all the documents arrived over the weekend from England so we will sign on at the local doctors tomorrow.We had set the alarm but did not need it as we were awoken with a bang! It was fireworks to announce the start of the local Feria week which takes place down on the Feria ground in Sabinillas and is a very Spanish festival which celebrates all things Spanish with music,singing,dancing,drinking and eating especially in the evening when the fairground and the whole area is covered in fairy lights.The picture below shows the village band this morning passing the top of our street as the fireworks went off dressed informally and playing lively marching music for the first time! Watch out for the full Feria report and pictures.