We have enjoyed an expended period of warm weather here in Bigastro. Although many have taken to wearing winter coats, scarves etc, in truth you could still go around in a T shirt and shorts when the sun is out.
That will come to an end on Sunday when the temperature is forecast to plummet by 7 degrees. No more balmy 24 degrees during the day, the forecast says 17 degrees followed by 16 and 15 the following days.
I recall that some of our British neighbours left their winter coats behind when they moved to Spain. It may still be sunny in the winter but it sure isn't warm.
For years Strictly Come Dancing has been as much or more about popularity than dancing. The system whereby the public get an equal share of the vote to put contestants into the dance offs means that the more popular contestants survive even when their dancing skills are not so good.
We might disagree with some of the comments the judges make and certainly their scores are often questionable. However, they do know a thing or two about dancing and can recognise when someone is good or more to the point not so good. The mix between technique and entertainment value is not so easy to evaluate. They don't usually give high scores to those who are struggling. Ability rather than effort is rewarded particularly when we get to the final weeks.
It was clear from the start that some of the contestants had little sense of rhythm in their bodies and would struggle to pull of the more tricky dances. I'm thinking about the likes of Paul Merson, Nick Knowles and Toyah Wilcox here.
The person who has struggled most is probably the blind contestant, Chris McCausland. We are in awe of the fact that he can dance at all. His ability to keep in time with his partner is a mystery. Does that mean though that we should vote for him to win the competition? I don't think so.
I confess to visiting the Strictly Spoiler site on Sunday mornings as much to find out who is popular and who is not as much as to discover who has been eliminated. Each week you have the chance to vote for the three competitors who you think are the best. Almost every week, Chris McCausland tops the list by a large margin.
If the public keep putting him top of the list, then he will certainly be in the final when the only vote that will count will be the public vote. Should he eventually win over much stronger contestants like Tasha Ghouri or JB Gill? I'm not so sure.
Oh yes, and finally, why is Pete Wicks escaping dance offs?
For the first ten years or so we had no problems with the water supply. Then the leaks in the supply pipe started and have continued getting worse and more frequent as time has gone by.
They tried to resolve the problem on the other side of the estate by installing valves that limited the pressure but that caused problems for showers, central heating boilers and even washing machines.
Every week the water company were on site repairing leaks. The job was made more complicated by the fact the pipe was under the pavements where there were other supplies. They had to be careful not to damage any of the other cables, pipes etc that lay above the water main.
Eventually, they decided to replace the water main with steel tubing. They started on the roads most effected and have gradually moved on to the other roads. Instead of laying the pipe under the pavement, they have laid it in the road close to the kerb.
This last week they came to our road and so we now have what we hope is a permanent solution.
Pascual Segura tells us lots of fascinating things about the history of Bigastro.
In his latest post her tells us about the old houses in the town that had a loft with a small window for ventilation. Apparently that is where they raised silk worms fed with mulberry leaves grown on trees in the town.
In the eighteenth century they would produce up to 5,000 kilos of silk per year.
It was silk from those worms that was used to produce the cloak that the statue of Mary wears.
Now my wife was born in Macclesfield. They didn't cultivate silk worms there but they did weave silk from Italy into fine cloth which made the town famous.
Silk was woven in Cheshire from the late 1600s. The handloom weavers worked in the attic workshops in their own homes. Macclesfield was famous for silk buttons manufacture.
