I’ve got a current couple in Cameron who could be rated perfect  – she doesn’t speak any English, he has just enough to get us by, they’re up at 10 and out for the day, return around midnight, we smile a great deal and say a little in Spanglish, and so long as they’re smiling, I’m happy!

The previous guest in Cameron was my Anglo-Saffer buddy, come to see what the Elefante Blanco has turned into, and that was huge fun.  She’s a runner with a club we can call Narnia, and likes to run early in the morning. I’m not an early bird in any way (or a runner, perish the thought) but armed her with the necessary pidgin Spanish to ask her way back to somewhere familiar if she got lost (effectively, dónde Iglesia, where church?)

As it turned out she slept later than her usual 4 am (probably due to much tinto de verano (summer wine) and blethering the night before, she also credits the bed, ta very much) and only donned her running clobber, emblazoned with the club’s name, around 7.30. The streets were already coming to life and she was greeted with friendly interest by those she passed, and the old men sitting under the pergolas. From the second morning there were calls of ‘Hola, Narnia!’ as she sped by, waving, and by the end of her week she probably knows more people in town than I do. She loves Spain and Spain, or certainly Velez, loves her.

When under linguistic pressure she switched to Afrikaans and said it was miraculous, the person who could only talk Spanish a minute earlier suddenly managed to disinter some English from the recesses of their memories. Of course as an Anglo-saffer she’d have had problems if they’d been fluent in Afrikaans as she isn’t exactly vlot herself. But ‘twas enough, it sufficed.

We ventured through to Granada for a day, and found it experiencing bone-melting temperatures but thanks be, there is a hop-on hop-off bus-tram. We fell onto that with glowing relief and were rattled briskly around all the scenic bits of fabulously scenic Granada. There are over a dozen places to hop off, very few of which tempted any of the steaming passengers, and the route includes the perimeter  / outer gardens of the Alhambra Palace.

We did get off to check out the cathedral and square,

and again for lunch in a beckoning plaza, where huge umbrellas over the tables puffed out misty spray at regular intervals. We sipped lazily at iced summer wine and enviously watched a dog plunge into the fountain and swim around until he felt braced enough to get out.

The return to Velez felt positively cool, but even here it was 34 degrees. Wow.  Not even August yet . . .  Danish J is still in Oliver, the front room, and has extended his stay another two weeks, and I’m considering blocking off the rest of August on both rooms and taking the month off. It will be my first August, and I have no idea what to expect, but as I don’t have air-conditioning, I’m really not sure the big fans in the rooms will be enough.  I know what last September was like – I will have been here a year, then.  That’s flown!