and the ground is saturated. The wind abates and all is silent but for the call of bird life. The forested hills around Los Gazquez appear from clouds, great shadowy shapes on the horizon, only to disappear. And it is warm, warm like a cold sauna. Time to open all the windows and doors and let the day in.

With the smell of wood smoke in the air and this misty landscape we could be in Darjeeling not Al-Andalus.

With the rain and howling wind outside it’s a good time to sit down by the fire with a new book. The children are watching ‘anime’, Laputa, castle in the sky and I’ve run short of some fiction. Time to raid my old collection of Penguins.

This one’s an historical drama based around the Spanish guerrilla war with the occupying Napoleonic army. Not my usual choice of fiction I must admit and here lies the dilemma. Can I discard the faces of Frank Sinatra as a Spanish army officer and Cary Grant as an English army officer in Spain to lend a hand against imperial France. You see The Gun was made into a film in 1957 called ‘The Pride and the Passion’. I might stick with the love interest (Sophia Loren) when I come across her character though. It is fiction!

Don’t know if I’ll make it from front to back though Forester’s series of books about Hornblower were much admired by Hemingway and Churchill alike. I’ve never put those two names together in a sentence before, but now I come to think of it they are rather snug. Two great wordsmiths if nothing else.

Now where’s my pipe?

Los Gazquez is being lashed by high winds and rain. Wind speeds up to 32 km/h (20mph) and driving rain, which last night alone yielded 30000 litres of rainwater for the deposit.

And the new satellite dish (touch wood) is taking the strain well.

The other morning at Los Gazquez the children thought we had a lake at our doorstep. Like a scene from ‘The Kraken Wakes’  waters seemed to be flooding our landscape.

But no, it was an inversion, one caused by radiation from the surface of the earth being inferior to the amount of radiation received from the sun, which commonly occurs at night, or during the winter when the angle of the sun is very low in the sky. This effect is virtually confined to land regions as the ocean retains heat far longer.

This was at 8.30am, an hour later and it was gone.

Miro is gone. After two years of nurturing and training this bright little mongrel, she turned from un disciplined ‘stray’ to un disciplined family pet. She was a good and loyal part of our family but has sadly disappeared.

I suspect I know what has happened. Last Sunday night there was a lot of barking and growling as she guarded her patch from the wild boar. She was not an aggressive dog but if she saw boar piglets running through the dark the thrill of the chase would be undeniable for her. And if the boar sow was in attendance she would chase and kill a dog being in possession of great speed and agility and some mean tusks.

I have searched high and low for her but alas no sign. It serves as a reminder as to how wild and remote we are here.

40 days and 40 nights ago, after three days usage of a successful home installation of satellite broadband, the service provider decided to change satellite. This required us to buy a new and bigger dish at great expense because the signal was weaker.

The time it took to re-install the system is a product of logistical incompetence and technical indifference. To be fair to my service provider though, they did come ‘good’ in the end. We are now on Eutelsat W6 and this picture is it’s footprint.

I am past anger and frustration, withdrawal symptoms even, and I am just happy to be back on line.