I headed off to Alicante on Saturday in February. It was a bit spur of the moment but I enjoyed a few days of sun and high temperatures. It will probably take a few days of recovery but I was glad of the chance to see a few of the places I visited in September 2024.

I also feel somewhat guilty about swanning off to ‘help’ with a move only to find that most of it had been done so we ended up swanning around beach resorts and eating lots of tapas.

Being Alicante and Villamartin areas the beaches are favoured by lots of expats, many Belgians, Dutch and Brits. English is predominantly spoken and there are Belgian and Dutch bars and eateries including an ‘Oirish’ Irish bar serving apple crumble and custard, and Belgian bar serving Flemish and Belgian delicacies in a large local market with endless rows of stalls of clothing home decor carpets and ‘tat’ for tourists to take home.

My youngest appreciates her new leather bag and we have new curtains in our oldest bedroom/guest bedroom during termtime from Jysk, a homewares shop across Spain which reminds me of Habitat or certain Muji objects. Sales reduced the prices but not the weight for my homeward luggage!

Travel was good for the soul when temperatures rocketed to 25 degrees and I was sad that I hadn’t included those shorts I nearly brought! Beaches at La Zennia were visited and people were swimming and sunbathing.

And I came back to Trumpery at his most dangerous and was I glad my flights escaped the airport shutdowns of last weekend which paused my happy holiday thoughts for thinking of the madness of this life. 2026, what is going on? Illegal warfare! Bombings and assassinations! Eek!