August 2023

August starts with a bang, as an important website project finally went live in the last few days of July, and sales begin rolling in a few days later. This site has been a long time in the planning, with over six thousand products on sale, getting it all sorted has been quite a challenge, plus there’s a lot of sexy back-room code to llnk it to and from Sage, the well known accounts system. Although it’s not finished, the fact that it is now live and functioning is cause for celebration, and a medal for long suffering Husband! We enjoy the first super moon of August.

Another celebration is called for when the devices I have been chasing (electronically of course) around Europe for the last six week finally arrived. Stuff bought in Hungary, also a part of the EU, shouldn’t really have a problem being dispatched and delivered, or so you’d think! However UPS have done their upmost to make this an Herculean exercise in deduction and diplomacy to finally track down their whereabouts, what the missing documentation was and finally pay VAT again on top of the VAT I’ve already paid in order to get them though “Customs” which of course is all a lot of twaddle and a euphemism for greased palms.

A lot of experimentation and enterprising wiring later, two match-boxed sized gizmos now allow me to control the gate and garage from our phones rather than the flakey fob we’ve had previously – completely OTT I know, but I’m a geek, no point saying anything else!

As readers will know we were disappointed to learn that Seven hadn’t managed to be finacially viable, and our dinner their on the last night was quite emotional. We note that several of their other ventures have gone dark too, so we don’t know what the future holds yet. However the chef at Seven has taken over the place and it’s re-opened as Tapas Boutique, where we had a fabulous dinner and plan to return before too long.

Mid month on a Sunday it is so hot we decide to go up into the cooler hills and do one of our favourite forest walks. Driving about 30km, climbing up to about 1500m above sea lavel (this particular walk takes us in to the mile-high category) we notice that the car’s temperature guage continues to climb too, not drop as expected. As we draw up in our regular parking area it reaches 39.5C, and we notice that the rangers have closed this popular entrance to the forest. Two days later we read about the terrible fire started that night!

Writing at the end of August it’s a relief to know the fires are under control, but for a week it wasn’t the case and people were worried. Sadly we also heard about a few instances of bad behaviour – one evacuated family home was robbed by other family members, and astonishingly a grumpy farmer objected to a helicopter filling up from his reservoir and threw rocks at the tail rotor – only the skill of the pilot saved a multiple fatality crash, the farmer will be tried on an attempted manslaughter charge, in addition to destruction of one of the only four fire-fighting helicopters we have here in the islands.

Even more tech arrives on the 16th, rather satisfying as I would have been my Mum’s birthday and although she mightn’t have appreciated the finer details, even in the 1990s before she died she was used to solar energy as Dad and I had many such devices for recharging batteries. The scale these days is on a different planet, and we have thirteen almost 1/2 KW units lifted onto our flat roof. It was also satisfying to see the company ran electric Buzz vans, as you’d expect from an energy fitter I suppose. We now have free motoring, without having to drive to one of the nearby free chargers – what a result.

Within three days, the amazing team had fitted the panels, done all the wiring and installed the computer control system. Instantly our electricity bill is cut by 50%, which is quite a relief as the cost of electrons on our island is horrifying – even more than UK prices at their worst – understandable of course. The next step is a battery which will save even more, by topping up during the day and then powering lights and ovens into the evening.

The final part of this jigsaw is after a few months of stability, and an external engineer’s approval, we can apply to push surplus back to the grid, but that is a way off yet.

When we returned from Yorkshire in June, we thought we had a mutant banana leaf – thick and stumpy instead of long and slender. When it then drooped over like drunken lamppost we nearly chopped it off, until we saw the flower – although it’s technically not a flower at all. In fact our lovely tree was busy making it’s produce and in the following weeks we have watched with awe as hand after hand has popped out of this most complex of structures. In a mature plant there would have been many more, usually around 200 bananas, but this one is at most five years old and it drew the line at 73.

Even now they are not ripe but we have the first hand in a brown bag hoping they will soon start to ripen. Banana cake anyone?

Being August, there’s no opera or symphony orchestra to visit, but instead we managed the cinema once and also a cabaret show. Based in a smart hotel in town, we have a fabulous evening with friends at Scandal, where singers and dancers perform all around the venue on multiple stages thus ensuring no diners are spared a close-up of the action. With an excellent five-course dinner and unlimited wine, this is a great value experience and a fabulous way to spend a Saturday night.

We’ve taken to walking early morning whenever meetings can be rearranged – just whilst the heat and humidity is at its highest. A bonus is the relative peace and quiet, with virtually empty bays and beaches.

Second supermoon is a blue moon too!