Round and around and around.

It is Mike's birthday, so I had to make him some poached eggs for breakfast and then we set off, Dougal in tow, for Deia. The plan was to get to the restaurant on the beach for a fish lunch. The sun burned through the clouds and as we rose above the valley the sound of chainsaws accompanied us through the olive groves. Everyone was out in their olivars building up a thirst. We stopped off at the big house for an orange juice and a cup of tea, and Dougal had a good chat with the resident pug. It was glorious up there, the clouds swirling just a few tens of metres above our heads and the sunlight sparkling on the sea below. There are so many wonderful houses hidden in the folds of the hills, real products of love, patience and no doubt money. The land has to be worked. There was much evidence of the terraces slipping with the recent rains and some heavy cropping of the pines revealing ancient olives beneath, desperate for their bit of light.

By now, we were getting desperately hungry and we knew the beach restaurant would probably not be open yet, so we headed for the town and found a great table at the lovely Chinese. Finally! We've tried to eat here a couple of times and we weren't disappointed. Dougal sat outside, incredulous that we weren't feeding him tasty morsels. Shamed, we got a tin of food for him and let him eat it under the table at Sa Fonda, where the empty was whisked away and we sat watching the world go by over coffee and chatting with Brendan. I knew he would be around. We hadn't been here for 8 months and there he was. Deia is like that. We had passed houses of various people we knew and they appeared somewhere one by one.

Thank heavens in fact. We saw the queue for the bus. We knew there would be a huge demand for taxis, so I said let's start walking back. Dougal looked at us astounded. Two and a half hours more!!!!!

Within ten minutes, a blaze of red hair from inside a car heralded Hannah! Hallelujah! She took us on a detour up the mountain again for a sit on a terrace to watch the sunset at E and S's house, with much talk of walls, plants, chickens, matzos and future celebrations and we revelled in our luck for this one. Back in Soller, Hannah provided me with a bottle of cherries for a birthday cake I had been planning. (Actually, I was convinced I could get them at the Deia shop, but they turned up in the end!)

Mike is now flopped on the sofa. Dougal is flopped on the floor. 'World's worst place to be a' will be on shortly and I am thinking of Simon (the series producer) and Sarah, my lovely Deia friends now living in the UK. Sarah will be back visiting next week and I am hoping to catch up with their news. I understand tonight's programme will be about firemen and the burning of the forests in Brazil.

So it has all come around and around and around. How glorious!