Blasted car rally

I really hate the annual car rally that comes past my front door. The snarling noise goes on for almost 11 hours and I can't get my car out unless I remembered to park it elsewhere before they start.

 This year was worse.

I left home early to be sure I could get to work at the observatory, got as far as Mirca, and found another section of road blocked for the same damn rally. This meant a detour of well over an hour through the north of the island to get to the Roque de Los Muchachos. I managed to time coming home so that Mirca was open, and parked in the village.

And then some officious oaf insisted that I wasn't allowed past the barrier to walk the 100 yards to my own house.

I couldn't believe it! I phoned my husband to tell him, and he couldn't believe it either. He came out to investigate, and nobody stopped him. So we walked home together, and nobody stopped us, thank goodness.

So I can see three possibilities.

1. the official changed his mind in 5 minutes without telling me. 
2. he's incredibly sexist - middle aged woman needs a man to stop her jumping out in front of a rally car or 
3. he didn't believe I lived where I said I lived until he saw a local man come and meet me. 

Whatever, I could have bloody well done without it.

A new(ish) printer

Yay! I have a printer again. It's second hand, but it works, and I managed to install a driver so it talks to the computer. I can now get on with FINISHING THIS DANG BOOK!

Cheeky Raven

I had two groups up at the observatory today. There was a pretty cold wind on the heliport at 10 am, so I cut that part a bit short. But not before one of the ravens turned up to say "Hello."

Well, I'd got some cat biscuits in the car just for him/her, and s/he ate from my hand while people took photos, which was all very nice. Then I laid the box on the car's bonnet to carry on talking. And the raven pecked a hole in it to start helping itself.

Cheeky beggar!

The importance of printouts.

I'm proof-reading. That means that the Spanish version of my children's anthology, "The Seer's Stone" has been laid out ready for printing, and I'm going through it with a fine tooth comb, looking for mistakes.

 Actually, it's the second time through. I found a worrying number of mistakes last time. Mostly (I hasten to add) stuff like extra/missing spaces, and capitalising words which would be capitalised in English, but which shouldn't be in Spanish. But still far more of them then I expected.

So I'm doing it all again. Now, for some reason, human beings catch far more mistakes on paper than a computer screen. So it's quite important that the final checks are done looking at a printout.

So naturally my printer has died. But of course!

I needed cheering up

The internet obliged.