Long time... no post...

....but not much happens around here that is not craft related, and that gets written about over there. I did think though, that I ought to mention the weather; 140-175 kph winds hit us over the weekend. Personally, we suffered no more than a few tiles off the roof, but others around us were not so lucky. Many trees were uprooted, and one unlucky house on the main road had three centenario pine trees fall, each one of which hit a different section of the roof. The picture above shows our friends' house after a neighbour's pine tree split down the centre and fell the wrong way over the fence. It has taken the left hand corner of the roof away completely and dislodged many tiles on the right. He is not best pleased because he spent rather a lot of money having the whole roof re-tiled this Summer. Luckily no one in Calpe was seriously hurt. Very large chunks of tall buildings were dislodged. The main sign on the top of the Diamante Hotel ended up a couple of hundred metres away on top of a car in the carpark of another block, and most advertising hoardings are now crumpled heaps of metal. We were without power for most of Saturday. It was only when power was finally restored around teatime that we found out from the TV that a high tension line had blown down and started a fire at La Nucia, this fire had spread rapidly because of the wind and the inability of the firefighters to fly their water planes and choppers. Between 14 and 15 thousand people had to be evacuated from the area, and the animals of Tierra Natura were in danger of being smoked out. By the time darkness fell, the fire had spread up the flanks of the Puig Campana. Thankfully the wind died down overnight, and as we drove past the next morning on our way to the airport, the waterplanes and helicopters were damping down the last remaining pockets of the fire. If you follow the last link, it will take you to the local paper's website and to some of the photos sent in by readers. All we could see was the thick black smoke billowing over the mountain and a lurid glow in the sky.