In between times I have rejoined my Italian class and we have been to a concert at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester. The latter cost us twice what it cost is to go to concerts in Vigo, but we did see Vladimir Ashkenazy conduct, and it was a splendid concert, so it was worth it.
That evening we ate, in haste, at an Italian restaurant in Manchester. This cost us half as much again as eating out in Vigo. Mind you, I am comparing eating out in the evening with eating out at lunchtime so it’s not really fair. The food was nice but we did suspect that as we only ordered one course each (we were, as I mentioned, eating in haste as we needed to meet friends at the Bridgewater Hall), they possibly judged us as cheapskates and spiced Phil’s arrabbiata sauce accordingly. It was VERY arrabbiata: extra chilli pepper, we thought! But he survived and we got to the concert on time.
During our just over a month in Vigo, I watched a fig tree on one of our short-cut-down-to-Travesía de Vigo routes change from this:
to this:
to this:
Quite spectacular!
I also watched the progress of a vegetable plot behind out block of flats. Most days, when I went out for a morning run, I saw a chap weeding and hoeing and digging, gradually clearing what started off as a bit of a field, with chickens running around in it, into a well organised little allotment. By the time we left he had finished the plot and had festooned it with bird-scarers. There were plastic bottles hung from sticks, a hub cap, presumably picked up from the roadside somewhere, and, most spectacular of all, a brightly coloured dead umbrella, also hanging from a stick and clacking around in the wind. I have to admit to being very impressed.
I spent one of the days since we returned baby-sitting my daughter’s two younger offspring as they had a day off school while staff were doing training of some kind. My grandson took me off to the park to improve my football skills: still quite lamentable apparently. Later he persuaded me to watch him playing a FIFA game on the Xbox. This seems to involve his controlling the players of a football team during a match. When he managed to make one of his players score in the final minute of extra time, thus winning the match, he was so excited that he leaped over to hug me, wanting me to share his enthusiasm, and proceeded to make me slide off the bench we were sitting on. Both of us ended in a laughing heap on the floor.
Even better was his attempt to teach me to play this game. Despite my protestations that I don’t play electronic games of this kind he was most insistent. And I suppose I made progress, of sorts. In the end I could make my players run around with the ball and even scored one goal. I am not at all sure how. However, I never managed to make my goalkeeper throw the ball back into play properly. If he kicked it, all was well, but whenever I tried to make him do an effective throw-in, he turned to one side and threw the ball off-side. I swear the system was rigged against me!
Yesterday I took my recreation in a calmer fashion, walking around one of our local beauty spots, Dovestone reservoir, one of my favourite places around here. The sun shone for me very nicely. 
Then I returned home and found that my normal route into posting my blog wasn’t working and, even worse, my computer expert was away from home. But he’s back now and all is well. Normal service can be resumed.
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