Well that was nice!

I got a rather mysterious phone call from one of the bookshops which sells my book.  The owner said that she'd sold one, and the other was stained, but I had to come and see what stained it.  "It's a surprise. And I must say, the customer's attitude surprised me."

Obviously that roused my curiosity, and I went.

My best guess was that the stain was from something like an insect that snuck in there and then got squished, and that the customer had been snooty about it.

The stain was actually quite faint, although I would be reluctant to sell it like that. Which is fine - I want a copy for myself anyway.  But the real surprise is that it was from a 10€ bank note.

Yes, he handed the note over to the shop keeper.  And she gave it to me.

This surprises me less that it would in many other places, but it's still very nice indeed.

So thank you, mystery customer and thank you Dimaro libería in San Pedro!

Babysitting

One of my friends is hugely pregnant.  She also has a very cute one-year-old.

Today it was almost 30 ºC, and the last day to get the paperwork done for quarterly tax returns (mandatory for all freelancers in Spain, including my friend.)  And the tax office has lots and lots of steps.  And her partner had to go out.

 In other words, she needed a little help.

So we went into town in her car (which has the baby seat) and found no parking spaces anywhere near the tax office except the disabled ones.  So we parked there for a moment while she got out and I got into the driver's seat. (Most Spanish car insurance covers any driver.)  Then I drove into town and parked on a meter near the post office. Me and His Cuteness went into the post office and sent off a book to a customer (thanks, Richard!) then headed back to the tax office where - Hallelujah! - I found a parking space close to the tax office. It was far too hot to wait in the car, so we went into a nearby bar and had cold drinks and played with the beermats until Mummy was done.

It meant that I didn't get any work done on the book, but I'd forgotten how much fun it is to play with a one year old.

Fixing the Spanish economy, all by myself.

So I finally got my quarterly tax declaration in.  This year, for the first time, I have to pay I.G.I.C. (Canarian VAT).  After about 5 hours of extra paperwork (done by me) the government has netted an extra 17€.

That's 3.40€ per hour.

Does anyone think that 17€ will fix Spain's economy?

Mobile again!

Yay! We got the Yaris back.  It's so nice to be mobile again.  And it doesn't hurt to have transport with a working CD player, and which doesn't smell of petrol.

Stuck!

And now the Berlingo's bust.  We have no working cars at all. [Update: it's the water pump.]

We're going to try to manage without a hire car for a few days, but if the Yaris isn't back by the weekend, I'll need one to go to work on Saturday.

Cake and a view

Working hard

Holy week was busy.  After months of very little guiding work, I had three days work at the Roque in a week, plus a trip to the dentist, plus starting work on my next book.

I was also running around the island distributing books. It made for long days, but there are compensations.  Like when I visited the viewpoint at El Time to see whether the shop would stock my book (they did).

In fact you can buy the book in lots of places now.