Great Friends!

I am sure you will all realise by now that I never discuss visitors that come here, be they friends, or paying guests on my blog ...HOWEVER some time a rule simply has to be broken!  Before we moved here to Spain, a great friend of ours, who is an artist, very kindly designed our "Alpacas el Sol" logo for us.  At that time he refused to charge us for this, so we said him and his lovely wife must come and have a long weekend break with us.  Four years later we managed to get them here!

Now the artist in question, and his lovely wife, have been part of my life for a very long time.  In fact the mum of the so called lovely wife, and my mum worked together when we were just toddlers I believe.  Our mums had a fantastic relationship, they would visit each others houses, and keep up with the latests gossip.  In order to get the most excitement from the recent gossip they would get physically closer and closer as the gossip became more interesting, and it therefore became almost whispered, and at that point bottoms would come physically off of seats.  It was also the type of relationship that would appear to develop into a fully blown argument over who would pay for the tea in the local tea shop.  "No I'm paying, put your money away!"  "No I'm paying, I insist!" Money would be thrust into either the other friends pocket, or given to the lovely wife and I, who would be sitting and children, bewildered at the goings on between our mums.  I so fondly remember the parties we used to have especially at New years eve.  Great times and great memories, especailly treasured as our parents are all enjoying those parties in heaven together now.  Still keeping up with the gossip I'm sure! .

So this dear friend and I, have indeed been great friends for many years, and then of course her lovely husband came into our lives, and when the next generation came along, once again the friendship continued!  So at last they came and visited with the husbands cousin, who is also a good friend of mine, plus her other half, who it was lovely to get to know too.

Now the lovely wife is allergic to the countryside, well I'm probably not exaggerating, she is allergic to most 4 legged creatures, and probably a lot of green stuff too!  I have in fact seen one photo of this dear friend and it was titled "...... is in the country!"  So she came armed with her antihistamene, and I'm pretty sure she thought she was going to have a fairly rotten time!  But I don't think so, the sangria certainly seemed to help the allergies LOADS plus any other need to go shopping seemed to be put on hold too.  Great pills!

The "lovely wife", in the countryside!!!"

Extremely close to a very large dog!!!

One night we decided to visit the Cordoba Feria which is the highlight of the year for the Cordoba people.  The entrance takes a couple of months to erect, and then the same time to be dismantled again.  The plan was that our friends Pat and Pedro would come too.  Now it is such a small world but the husband, the artist... well his cousin (you are still with me are n't you?) used to work with Pat would you believe, in Brighton, so we thought it would be lovely to get them back together again.  It was also the night of the  football match, so the cunning plan was that we would have a drink and nibbles whilst watching the football, well that was the men really then go out after the match finished.  Luckily in Spain everything begins very late, as the match went to extra time and then to penalties.  That meant we did n't even leave home until 11.45pm.  We drove the three quarters of an hour to Cordoba and headed for the bright lights.

Well I'm a wuss when it comes to fairs, I have always been the one to hold the bags, and take photos, and that suits me just fine, but it was great to see them all on the rides.  There does n't seem to be any such thing as health and safety issues in Spain, or at least around where we live, and as harsh as it sounds it makes for hugely entertainly rides to watch hehe! I'm chuckling to myself just reminicing!  The first ride they went on were three rows of bulls, that each seat about 4, and they work similar to a bucking bronco and basically it throws you off, however even more funny, is that the floor is moving too, so even when you land on the floor you are still thrown about.  At one point my 4 friends were on on the floor as someone said, being tossed around like mushrooms in a frying pan, and a small boy landed in amounst them.  I'm not sure what happened to the small boy, I don't actually recollect seeing him again!

One minute they're on....

.... and they're off!

Next stop the HUGE big wheel!!!

Now the cousin of the artist hates heights, however somehow she managed to find herself coerced to go on the big wheel.  Please enjoy the video below, and I'm sorry about the "F" word! 

Next stop for this poor friend was yet another very high ride.  She was told, if she did n't go on it, she would be missing out, and she did n't want that!  No videos of this one I'm afraid, although I did think she had passed out as they brought them down as the ride finished!

We all had an amazing night at the Cordoba feria, and arrived home just before 6am.  It was a little later than it would have been, possibly half an hour, as they have a problem with their hire car.  To cut a very long story short it was swapped over the following day after the men sat and waited for over three hours for the car swap to take place.

Soon it was time for our dear friends to go home and they kindly invited us to have lunch with them, in their apartment on the terrace.  They needed to leave at 6.30pm which worked out perfectly for us, as we were also needing to leave at the same time, to meet Alan's mum from Cordoba railway station, as she was coming to pay us a visit for a few days!  We were all sitting eating drinking, chatting and laughing, and enjoying the sunshine, when all of a sudden someone shouted "IT'S HALF PAST SIX!!!!"  We all leapt up!  Food was cleared away, dishes washed, and clothes were thrown into cases.  

It was lovely to have you all here, thanks so much for coming.  My dear friends rushed to the car with their bottle of sangria for the journey!  It was fab xxx