This one is about love making in the Americas.

Padiddle.

( Dict. Amer. Regional Eng. (2002) IV. 79/1)

If a fellow sees a car coming with only one light and says ‘padiddle’, he may kiss his girl. If she sees it first and says ‘padiddle’, she may slap the boy.

I am having a morning off, first for a long time, and am filling in the time happily and without guilt by hanging out on the social media, tweeting, facebooking and blogging. The thought strikes that without these methods of keeping in touch with both old and new friends, now scattered around the world, life would be very different out here. In fact all of the profound changes in the last years are responsible for easing us into our life out here painlessly.

Without mobile phones, emails, free landline calls, Skype (particularly for the grandsons) , Ryanair (Yes I am grateful to Maestro O Leary) and now I am realising Facebook and Twitter our lives out here could well be much more detached from our past.

So lets raise our glasses to technology.
God bless it !

At last, the moment I have been waiting for all winter : Breakfast on the terrace.

Bought in Pezenas market last week open prettily on the Kilkenny marble.

About five years ago Síle planted a vine in the garden. The intention was that it would grow up on to the terrace and provide a canopy of leaves in the summer.

Vines are amazing, once they have established their roots they grow at amazing speeds, I would guess at about 3 metres a summer. The vine appeared up at the edge of the terrace two summers ago and started to grow its many tendrils along the wires we had strung there. Last summer it grew even more and even produced grapes, white table grapes of not great quality and very attractive to wasps, this year we plan to cull any grapes and let it put all its energies into growing.
In the last week the leaves have come out and it has started to shoot out tendrils.

It is going to be fun marking its progress.

A Starbucks van á demi déshabillé reveals too much.

Tremendously kind doctor brought me a present of an Observer from Edinburgh last Sunday (Thank you Dermot)
Now I am on the terrace, in blazing sun (temperature of 20+) doing the crossword.
No clients for another 7 days. Bliss.

Tulips on the dining table (with some Irises from the garden)

Normally the Winter Jasmine which grows over our terrace is well gone by April, this year , for the first time, its still there in Spring- looks good against a blue sky.