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.
The general advice is to leave oil paintings at least 6 months before applying varnish. That is because the oils in oil paint cure rather than dry.
I only finished my painting last week and although I didn't use thick undiluted paint, it still won't be ready for normal varnish.
The problem is that parts of my painting appear matte and the colours a little dull without a coat of varnish
I need to have it ready to hand in next week so I will have to apply a couple of coats of spray retouching varnish and hope that does the trick.
Wish me luck! Last year I got third prize for my painting, "The Procession", Let's see what happens with "The Floral Offering" this year.
For those of you unable to visit the exhibition of our paintings, I have made you an album which you can find in the sidebar.
From an idea proposed by Evaristo and I many years ago, BigArte was formed last year with six artists attending the first meeting in Evaristo's office.
Our first exhibition was last May. Then we had a homage to my work as a photographer. That exhibition was restaged in the town square and in the Auditorium. We then went on to produce paintings for Santa Cecilia with the theme of music.
Our latest exhibition is called "Diologo con los Maestros", a little of the Prado Museum in Bigastro. We were to reinterpret the old masters.
Artists chose to reinterpret the works of Dali, Magritte, Picasso, Durer and others. The Spanish artist, Joaquin Sorolla was popular. My contribution included works based on Constable. Turner and Rembrant.
All the paintings are offered for sale.
Work has already started to build three bike lanes in the municipality. In this case, as we previously reported, it is the execution of a bike lane that connects the CV-95 walkway next to the Municipal Auditorium to the Sports Center, another lane on Avenida Europa to the San José de Calasanz School and another lane to connect the urban area of La Pedrera with the leisure area up to the pool.
With these actions, which have an investment of more than 181,000 euros thanks to the Generalitat Valenciana, it will be possible to improve traffic management on several roads in the municipality with the cycle-pedestrian connection between the urban area and three unique points of the municipality, two of them far away, such as the Sports Center and the La Pedrera leisure area, improving road safety and creating new services that will serve to promote sports and healthier activities.
The objective set in our sustainable mobility plan is to reduce the impact of the use of tourism in urban areas and above all the reduction of speed within them, prioritizing actions of this uniqueness.
During the next few weeks we will encounter temporary road closures in some of the streets of the municipality, especially those closest to the school, although certain signaling works will be carried out at night to avoid minimizing the impact in the early hours of the morning. the high influence of vehicles with long traffic queues. Sorry for the inconvenience
There have been a number of complaints from neighbours on the community WhatsApp about cats in gardens.
One neighbour in particular is incensed about the way they use her garden and her porch as a toilet. She has a young child and is rightly concerned about the possibility of infection.
Another neighbour has a similar problem and has installed ultrasonic cat scarers along with chemicals that are supposed to repel cats.
When our original neighbours had cats, I invested in ultrasonic devices to try and keep them out of our garden. I can tell you that they didn't work. On one occasion, one of their cats was sat quite happily next to the scarer. I could see it was functioning because the light was on.
Luckily, we don't have a problem anymore but I do sympathise with those who do. It is unpleasant and unhygienic.
We went for a coffee whilst the band from Cox were playing so we missed them.
What we can say is that the Bigastro band were magnificent and fully deserved to beat the band from Torrevieja.
DOMINGO 10 MARZO TARDE
1ª Sección
SOCIEDAD MUSICAL LA ARMÓNICA DE COX
Puntuación: 409.75
Primer Premio y Mención Honor
UNIÓN MUSICAL DE BIGASTRO
Puntuación: 401.38
Primer Premio
UNIÓN MUSICAL TORREVEJENSE
Puntuación: 394.63
Primer Premio
