General Drivel [Tontería General]

We had a lovely surprise yesterday. Two days ago, BetterArf had had a number of calls on her mobile, from 'no caller ID'. She was unable to answer them at the time because she was in a class, and of course could not call back because the number was not identified. Having established that the caller wasn't our son (the most likely candidate and if he couldn't get through to his mum he would have called me), she got this idea in her head that it could be Karamah, a long-standing friend and former colleague from Dubai, who had mentioned that she would be whizzing through Madrid at some point in December. Long story short, it was Karamah, and we went to meet her for coffee yesterday teatime in the Northern Boondocks of Madrid. It was really, really wonderful to see her again.

The lift in our building decided to take the weekend off. It packed up on Friday afternoon, when it was too late to get the repairman out, and so we had to do the 150 steps once on Friday and twice each on Saturday and Sunday. We are just sooooooo fit!

You'll be pleased to know the lift is working again now.

Tomorrow morning I am heading off to the airport to meet our son who is flying in from Londres. He's staying until Dec 30, so we'll have a proper English family Christmas - BetterArf says it wouldn't be fair to make him wait until Jan 6 for his prezzie! And on the 27th we have a couple of very long-standing friends coming over from Liverpool, again until the 30th. Fortunately our upstairs neighbour will be away for this period, and has very kindly asked us to look after his flat.

Madrid is enjoying its coldest day of the winter so far. Apparently snow fell on the Sierras, and the overnight temperature in town was mostly -3°C, and -4°C for a short time. We were tucked up nice and warm in bed and missed it, but there was frost on the rooftops this morning.

Brrr. Apparently it gets really cold at the end of January. I can't wait.