Wall art

A cute gecko catching some winter sun on a wall in the garden.

We went on the traditional Thursday walk with H and R today, around the fruit growing area near Lobres. It was an easy one, appropriate for post Christmas torpor, but we did climb a hill for a fine view over Lobres, Salobreña, and the mar de plastico.

When we stayed in Lobres in a house-swap, back in 2016, we thought there was no bar (extremely unusual for a Spanish village), but today H introduced us to "the bar with no name", an anonymous building on  a housing estate which in fact contains a bar, where you have to set out your own chairs and tables from the stacks around the edge of a large, deserted room. Especially if there are 16 of you. But the barman coped, and even provided generous helpings of tortilla de patatas as a tapa.

On the way home we called in at the market in Almuñecar to buy some pez de limón for dinner. Google suggests this is amberjack in English, but it doesn't seem to coincide -- what we bought is a white fish similar in size and shape to sea bass, but cheaper. It worked well baked with potatoes, onions and tomatoes in our rubbish combi oven.

When we got home after the walk we found a very subdued Mystère, hunched up and miserable. He had evidently suffered some kind of trauma, although there were no external signs of injury. He spent the afternoon curled up in a ball on the sofa, but suddenly revived when the fish was served up. It definitely gave him a morale boost, but he has now gone to bed on his own without a single complaint about not being allowed out. We'll be following him soon for some bedtime reading.