All being well, in a couple of days time my husband, son and I will be in Colombo, Sri Lanka, to share some Christmas spirit with 70 orphaned girls from 3 to 17 years old in a small orphanage on the perimeter of the city. What’s that got to do with sunny Spain you may […]

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During the summer a Mallorcan friend begged me to teach English to her daughter. I hesitated. After all, I’m not a qualified teacher and lessons with a Mallorcan-speaking seven year old sounded like a bit of a challenge. Finally I agreed. After all it would only be for the holiday period. ‘That’s great’, she enthused, […]

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Something I haven’t been aware of in the UK before, but which is alive and well in Mallorca, is the parking pitch phenomenon. Driving into Palma on a busy day, when parking is near impossible in any of the underground car parks or on the street, we head for the small plaça by the Es […]

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It’s a funny old thing, but whenever I enthuse about my regular shopping forays to our local town of Sóller, London friends view me with some skepticism. How, they ask, can I find the weekly grind of grocery shopping so enthralling? Well, I say, shopping in our town is not a perfunctory affair but more […]

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The other morning I awoke after a terrific rainstorm to hear a rhythmic croaking emanating from the garden but something was wrong. The frog anthem was coming not from our pond, but the swimming pool. I dashed into the garden just in time to see… a row of at least twenty glistening, green frogs dive […]

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There we were bumping along the mud-caked lanes, not a soul in sight, when our hire car suddenly listed to one side. Hire car, you say? Haven’t you been living in rural Mallorca long enough to have purchased your own by now? True, but having a car in our neck of the woods is a […]

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Now I may be no gardener but come on chaps, give a snail a break. As British weather totters between humid, cool and wet, those little Brians - remember he of woolly scarf fame in The Magic Roundabout?
- are being persecuted by gardeners up and down the country. Here in Mallorca, garden snails are of […]

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‘Oh dear. This passport’s had its chips.’ The nice Gatwick airport official who’s examining my dog-eared and disintegrating passport is clicking her teeth. ‘Use it a lot?’ … ‘All the time.’ My voice cracks with desperation. ‘The magnetic strip’s torn. Get it renewed as soon as you’re back in Mallorca.’ I’ve been shunted into my […]

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What, I wondered, should I buy my budding horticulturist Scottish husband for his birthday? Then I hit on it. Two thousand live worms, a box full of wooden slats and a small plastic bag of nuts and bolts. The Scotsman had been muttering about buying a wormery for some time, a concept unknown up here […]

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