The secret garden

... is even more secret nowadays. S had to do some hacking for us to even get in through the gate. Then we had to battle through more reeds and rampant hypericum to reach our, er, "patio". The Washingtonia palm was invisible under a mass of reeds. The oleander had formed a massive barrier. The bay tree was a forest all on its own. It turned out we'd left the sun loungers in situ, so we battled our way through to them, brushed off the many dead leaves, and settled down for a not terribly civilised apero. On the way back we passed S and R's house and were forced to stop for a top-up ...

Earlier I had taken Mystère to the vet ... when we were in Almuñecar the vet had tried in vain to find his microchip with three different devices. I popped in to our local vet yesterday to ask about it, and the receptionist told me to bring him in today so the vet could have a look for it. Sure enough he couldn't find it by scanning, so he did an X-ray. There it was, in the correct spot and completely illegible. So we had to do a whole load of paperwork in order to inject another one. It was free of charge though, as they are guaranteed for life. Mystère was not happy! But he has had a saucer of freshly cooked sea bass, which has cheered him up.

Covid-19 update: the vets were all wearing masks and so was I. Only about half the customers in the busy waiting room were.