Bit sad

Went to a funeral today for our friend and neighbour John.  He has been ill off and on for about two years.  John and his partner Michael have been our friends and neighbours here in Spain for getting on for 24 years.  We weren't close friends but always knew they would help if we had a problem and think they felt the same.  I was a bit surprised when they took the lid off the coffin in the crematorium before the service.  John was Irish and some of his family were there.  I think maybe it is an Irish thing to have an open coffin but it is not here and they closed it before the service began.  I really feel for Michael as they had been together for over 50 years.  It could not have been easy for either of them in the early days but they stuck together, had a successful business which they sold and came to Spain where they were more readily accepted.  Can you believe that, a catholic country gave them more protection, more tolerance than we did in England.  I worry about the UK, it seems to me that too many do gooders are worried about anyone other than their own.

So comfortable

Shula and Sky relaxing, I don't think they realise tomorrow they will be on their way back to Spain.  I have deliberately not started packing as this seems to alert them.  They cope very well with the traveling but I like to make it as stress free as possible.

In lots of ways I will be glad to get back to Spain, we have had so much work on the house it has not been a restful time.  For this year, everything I wanted done has been done.  One of the things I was stressed about was deciding to change our service from BT to Talk Talk.  I really left it a bit late and was worried the roughter would not arrive before we left, it came today.  We really have had a bad service from BT and being ex employees were reluctant to leave but having to ring them about our broadband day after day, queue for ages, get cut off while they were so called testing the line then queue again got beyond a joke.  I was most annoyed that each time we rang there did not seem to be any record of the complaint we made the previous day, this is not the company I used to work for. 

Sunday we will be back in Spain waiting for the dogs to arrive, hopefully the weather will be good.