What a shock!

Our friend Ken, who we called our good samaritan last year - who helped us when our car was out of action - by taking us shopping each week, was doing a bit of solar connecting up, kinda work for us. Alan and Ken were having a chat, in our huge kitchen, whilst Ken was up a ladder fixing a light to the ceiling about 12 foot high. I was upstairs apartment 'pottering' when I heard an almighty crash and, you know when your heart stands till for a minute because you know something awful has happened? Well it was one of those times! I ran down the stairs and found Alan standing over Ken, whilst Ken swore.... he's alive! Phew! I thought Ken had simply fallen off the ladder but no he had had an electric shock, THEN fell off the ladder, onto the base of his spine!

Ken was rolling around in agony! That's good too! At least he can move! Poor Ken actually moved over here, as he was advised to move to a warm climate after a major motor bike accident, that had him laid up for 2 years! After about 10 minutes he managed to get up and sit on a sofa, whilst Alan made him some hot sweet tea. I phoned our Spanish friend David, to ask his advice, if we needed an ambulance. As Alan turned to give Ken his tea, Ken had passed out, only for a few seconds but it frightened the daylights out of Alan. When Ken came round he didn't know where he was or what had happened to him. What a shock.... oops sorry for the pun!

Well Ken sat and relaxed for an hour or so with us, then Alan made sure he got home ok! Now if he is coming over to our place his kids say 'Not up any ladders today dad!'

MAY- Camelidynamics Course, in beautiful Gaucin

Towards the end of May our alpaca friends were all meeting up in the beautiful whitewashed village of Gaucin, in the mountains behind Marbella. Our friends Juli and Simon kindly hosted a camelidynamics course as they have excellent facilites as they own many horses and alpacas too. Our friends Jane and John kindly put us up in their 'to die for' house.

Alan with one of Juli's horses

Julie Taylor-Browne gave a fabulous two day course on the handling of alpacas. Our gorgeous animals are by nature extremely nervous, and anything to enable them to be lessed stressed in our care is great for us. I seemed to pair up with the notorious Mr. Nigel Cobb who was on top form, but was rather naughty, and did get us told off on occasions.... sorry Julie! However even with Nigels misbehaving, we all learnt so much, and have a fabulous couple of days with our great alpaca friends too.

Alan gets hands on!

Our good friend Di
Mr. Cobb!
Me!

Alan gets rather embarassed as he is a rather fussy eater, and on the second day Jane told him to go into the kitchen and cook his own dinner! It was the biggest steak I had ever seen. He was of course extremely grateful, but rather embarassed too. I'm sure our friend Mike who decided to sit beside Alan, hoped he would not finish it all. Of course he did! It would have been rude not too!

After the course each day we all rushed up to Jane and Johns to enjoy the fabulous pool.

The evening meal was made all the better but our New Zealand friends joing us too.

David and Di had puppies of about 4 weeks old that they had 'adopted' from their vet. Being so tiny they had to come along...... ooooooh we were so pleased they did. They were adorable!

This is Alf, one of Janes gorgeous dogs

Our new Kiwi Friends

Two couples from New Zealand were travelling around Europe, visiting various alpaca shows along the way! We had an email from them and they were hoping to stay with us, but unfortunately we just were not quite ready, another week or so we could have done it.

Robyn, Phil, Kit and Sheryl did however come and visit us and we had a lovely afternoon and evening together, and Alan did us proud on the barby!

We have only 4 alpacas; where as between them they have well over 1000, how mental is that! It is great to know we have an invitation to New Zealand if we would like to go anytime. It was lovely to meet them, and hope to meet again sometime!

Robyn, Sheryl, Kit and Phil

Scruffy!

Nigel, the builder is a proper ole softy when it comes to stray dogs, and when the scruffiest little dog was roaming around our house Nigel could not wait to give him his lunch every day! Having enticed her in with chicken and ham etc this scruffy little cute thing thought she was here for good. I'm afraid with 4 dogs already, 4 alpacas 3 wild cats and a pig, we rather feel we have enough animals for the moment.... thank you very much! So sadly Nigel had to take scruffy little cute dog down to the coast to be re homed. We hope she found a lovely home she was a real cutie.

Scruffy

 After a little trim

Scruffy with Alan and Nigel

Ooooooops!

Poor Lily the alpaca has had a mite problem for a while now. We started treating it with Ginny's magic cream, then went onto 'Stop it all. A product which had good reviews over the internet. It was a 7 day program, then watch and wait. Lily is a funny little thing, rather nice looking, with a good 'bonnet'. She makes the weirdest noises when you take hold of her, rather like a very old lady being strangled.... Not that I have heard a very old lady being strangled, I hasten to add, but I could imagine it sounds something like that! Although once you have hold of her she is a good as gold. Maybe the odd air spit now and then, but I think she does this so the other alpacas will not think she is enjoying a cuddle!

Well we were about half way through the week, the alpacas were in the pen and we were rubber gloved and ready for action. Alan was holding Lily, and I was applying the cream, to her legs, around her 'booby doos' her eyebrows, ears and lips!

All was under complete control, so I thought. Alan was manoevering himself to enable me to reach the inside of her front legs. He suddenly said 'Are you sure you are putting that on Lily, only my inner thigh is feeling rather wet?' He did continue to say it wasn't a bad feeling, when chaos struck from nowhere! Lily decided she had had enough of this and sat down. Rafa the little boy's hormones are kicking in rapidly, and he thought this was a great opportunity for him. As he leapt on top of her, Lily did a huge spit, sadly Alan was in the way! Green spit from the depths of her tummy, rather vile and awful smelling, was almost dripping off of Alan. He headed rather swiftly for a shower! Poor Alan!

Lily, on a better day!

What a coincidence

The beginning of May I had a strange but lovely experience. We had been emailing a gentleman called Alan regarding some alpaca conference affairs. He lives in Madrid and wanted to come to visit the alpaca owners in Andalucia, with regard to organising a conference next year. Well Alan and his partner came along, and within a couple of minutes he said to me 'Where did you live in England Lorna? 

'Near Brighton', I replied. The converstaion then went, 

"I used to live in Brighton!"

'What did you do there?'

'I was a dance teacher!'

'Noooooo, so was I!'

'Nooooooooo, where did you teach?'

At that point I thought maybe Alan remembered my name as a teacher in Brighton, there were around three main schools.

He said 'Lorna.......... er Lorna ......................'

Excitedly I said 'Lorna Roff?'

'Yes that's it, I TAUGHT for Lorna Roff!'

'I AM LORNA ROFF!!!!!!!!!!'

'NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'

Alan Stables had taught dancing in my dance school around 25 years ago. What an amazing coincidence! I remembered him well, and the great times we had, teaching Ballroom and Latin together on Saturday morning! Alan said if someone had told us in 25 years time, we would both be living in Spain, working with Alpacas, we would never have believed them in a million years. It was so lovely to see him again. Obviously the main conversation was about dancing, with a little alpaca chat for good measure!

Alan and I

APRIL - A wonderful trip to Brighton

Well as you can imagine every trip back to Brighton is wonderful for me. I get to see Mark and Frankie, and their partners, and sometimes my uncle Charlie if he can hear me knocking at the door that is. Sometimes my dancing girls, and the stroke clubs members, where I used to help out at the Haven Stroke Club. This trip though was extra special. Although I had not said anything in my blog previously I was about to become a grandmother. My darling daughter Frankie had told me on mothers day. Unfortunately she not been keeping great, but hopefully soon that will change. This trip back was the first time I had seen my expectant daughter!

Frankie and Chris met me at the airport as they often do, Frankie and I were sure we were both going to cry, but no, we were both pretending to be grown up and were surprisingly ok! They took me to Barbara and Graham's house, my good friends that always allow me to come and go, as though I was in a hotel. Thursday morning was the big day. Frankie's very first scan, and I felt very privileged to go with them, although I did say to Frankie that it was a very special time for her and Chris, but Frankie said she wanted me there. How lucky am I! The scan was a great experience, the radiographers were kind and made it very special for us all, and I was shocked! I know it has been 21 years since I had a baby scan, but wow how technology has improved. I am sure at Mark and Frankie's scans I probably pretended to understand what parts of the body they were pointing out to me, whereas in a fraction of a second, there was a baby! It rather took me by surprise and I tried very hard to disguise the tears in my eyes, and the boiled egg like lump that appeared in my throat, I think I did an ok job of it!

Frankie's 12 week scan

That afternoon I went with Frankie to her own dance class in a school in Eastbourne where she has been teaching, it was a lovely little school, and the children and teacher seemed to be very fond of her. After that we went to the City Dance classes in Brighton, and saw Kelly and my lovely dancers. OK well there are not exactly mine any more, but of course I am stilll very fond of them. Simon met us after dancing as did Mark, and we all went out for a bite to eat together, what a super day! I spent a most of Friday with Mark which was great, he has grown into such a lovely young man, I am so proud of..... sorry Mark! I had arranged after this, to have a little get together with some dancers that had left dancing and had wanted to meet up. We had such a laugh reminiscing about our dance weekends at Butlins and as usual, with them, there was never a dull moment. I should probably keep some of our hilarious meeting private but I could be persuaded to divulge by private message!

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day, I spent the morning at dancing with Frankie. Once again it was so wonderful to see the children that are still dancing. It was also so lovely that Dorothy, Melanie and Lucia came into see us, and also Julie and Elicia too. We had a little treat and had our hair done after. The weather being so beautiful, we had an invite to join our good friends Cathy and Rich on the seafront. Rich is an extremely talented artist, that produced our logo for us. He now has an art gallery on the seafront and we spent a lovely afternoon, on Brighton seafront, with good friends and a glass of wine.  It doesn't get much better than that!

Lovely sunny day on Brighton seafront

Rich's Freddie!

Saturday evening I went out with Mark, Frankie and Chris, sadly Mark's gf was working, and we met up with a few dance mums. It is always lovely to catch up and have a good ole chin wag.

On the Sunday we were invited to Louise, Mark and Renee's, Alan's auntie, uncle and nanna. As always we were made so very welcome, I feel so lucky to have them as my new family. Well the weather once again was kind to us, we met their new chickens and of course their beautiful 'rag doll' cats and had a lovely barbeque. Thank you for such a lovely day!

One of their beautiful "rag doll" cats

Renee
Louise with "Tikka"

Bank holiday Monday we spent yet another day with good friends. We popped into see Jo and Nick at lunch time to catch up, and Wendy and Richard during the evening and had dinner with them. It's funny but I am sure I see more of some friends now, since I have moved away. I guess we all make more of an effort. Later in the evening I went to see my good pals Ron and Maureen and stayed with them, to go to the stroke club on Tuesday morning, a place that is very special to me. Everyone there seemed well, and all going about their normal tasks eg jigsaw puzzles wordsearch etc.

On Tuesday evening I visited one of Simon's line dance classes, what a great class, he really has done well, good luck to you Simon, and all the ladies love him! As usual he had wine and a buffet for my visit, but he loves an excuse for that! During the evening Mark and Callie, and Frankie and Chris and I all managed to have a meal out together. We had a really great night together, full of fun and laughter, and made the most of our new camera. Home on Wednesday and once again it was a very tearful goodbye.

Mark and Chris

Chris and Frankie

Mark and CallieFrankie and I