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Merry Christmas folks. I should have written a blog before this but have been a tad busy.

Anyway, this is a short blog wishing everyone all the best for the holidays from Rosalie and me.

We went out to the other compound for an appy dinner on Christmas Eve. There were eight of us initially but Art and Linda showed up later, so the ten of us had a great visit.

Us partying last night

Rosalie and I got home about 10:30 which is way past the bedtime of old folk but seeing we’re not that old yet we stayed up another half an hour and listened to the Mexicans celebrating with lots of music and fireworks.

At six this morning I was up and sat on the roof listening to the ongoing celebrations; the Mexicans go all night. It was fun as they like to use a microphone and sing along. By this time though they had been drinking all night and the singing was hilarious. More entertainment.

This evening we go down to the compound again with all our friends for turkey dinner.

Rosalie and I bought a chiminea as it’s starting to get cooler in the mornings and evenings. We enjoyed the last one we had so much we had to get another one. They only cost 650 pesos ($50.66CDN) They are made of un-fired clay so are somewhat delicate: once in place, it’s best not to move them. We showed ours to Jim and Ylda and they got one too. Tomorrow Jim and I go on a quest for firewood.

On the way to the airport to pick up Bill and Connie, the car started to play up. It sounded as though it was miss-firing on one cylinder. The problem was intermittent so we managed to get them home okay.

After arriving home the engine light came on so the next day, off we went to get some repairs.

We ended up in the same place where we got our muffler fixed. The guy didn’t speak English but there was a couple from Alaska and she spoke fluent Spanish so she explained our problem.

The young mechanic told us to pull the car in and then used a laptop computer to check the error codes. He lifted the hood of the car and pulled one plug. After fiddling about he indicated that he needed to go for a road test. So we sat and waited…and waited. He was gone a long time.

Rosalie and I amused ourselves with pure speculation.

“Perhaps he’s gone to find a garage that can fix it.”

“No! he’s picking up the wife and kids.”

“I think he’s running a taxi service.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t even work here and our car’s been stolen.”

We seem to find many ways to amuse ourselves, Rosalie and I. We find the funny side of most things.

A little later we saw him across the highway dropping off another guy, (??) who came over to the garage, picked up a motorbike and took off. And still, we waited!

He finally showed up and after a phone conversation with a lady who spoke English, he said he had possibly fixed the problem but wanted us to drive around a lot and see if the engine light came on again to bring it back. He didn’t want payment and trusted us to come back the next day to pay him.

After driving to Barra and back twice the car seemed fine so today we went back and paid the guy.

Our second trip to Barra was amazing. Watch for the blog.

I was feeling like a snack the other evening at about 9 o’clock so I asked Rosalie what she had on hand. After the usual offering of muffins, popcorn and other assorted crap, she hit the holy grail.

Who else would make their husband a boiled sausage and a chunk of cheese for a snack at 9 p.m.? I am so blessed.

You may think I’m weird (true) and something of a peasant (also true) but it was delicious.

I’m a bit picky when it comes to food according to Rosalie. She’s starting to realize after all these years that I grew up in a different culture. In England almost every meal involved French fries fried in lard. In fact, everything was fried in lard. And of course, the main takeout was fish and chips. But now apparently it’s Indian food.

Since coming to Canada I sure miss English potatoes. The fries were better and the small new potatoes were delicious. Down here in Mexico, the spuds are similar to the English ones and I love them.

I have a very tender mouth and can’t tolerate spicy food even though I like it. Also, when I get a hot drink I have to let it cool a lot, unlike Rosalie who can drink coffee right out of the machine. I tried smoking cigars once but found that they burned my mouth so I quit that quickly. I did smoke for a while but that didn’t seem to affect me.

What food do I like? Anything from the Ocean except octopus or oysters. I eat a lot of Shrimp while here as well as fish. The fish in the restaurants is a bit hit-and-miss. Either it’s perfect or too dry. They love to put way too much salt or garlic on sometimes and that kills the flavour. I still like anything fried in lard, Although, at my age, I have to watch my cholesterol levels. People cringe whenever I mention that but “studies show” some lard is good for you. like anything else moderation is the key.

I once ordered garlic fish on the beach here for lunch and it was horrible. dried up and crunchy I did it a second time and vowed not to do it again. There is a difference between filet of fish with garlic and garlic fish, and I made that mistake.

On our way to Manzanillo a few years back we stopped at a restaurant on the beach for lunch. I once again mistakenly ordered ‘huachinango’ garlic fish. When I saw what I had ordered I was cursing myself and apologized to Rosalie. When we tasted it though it was delicious. Now, whenever we go to Manzanillo we stop at the same restaurant for garlic fish. Who’d a knew?

We found out that ‘huachinango’ is red snapper. We buy our fresh fish from one of the local ‘Pescaderías’ ( fish shops.) Rosalie couldn’t get our usual ‘sarangola’ so she got red snapper instead. It was so good that it’s now our go-to fish.

We also noted that when we first came here eighteen years ago the jumbo Shrimp was 220 pesos a kilo and it’s the same price today about $17 CDN.

How do two people live with each other and are in each other’s company nearly 24 hours a day?

Rosalie and I seem to manage really well. I mostly just say okay to whatever she wants and all is well. But wait a minute, she says that’s not true so I guess I’ll have to find another reason. (See that? I went along again.) Mostly, it’s because we get along 99% of the time. For the other 1%, I just apologize and we carry on.

The remarkable thing to me is that after nearly thirty years together, we still talk a lot and laugh all the time. We seem to find the fun side of most situations and I think that helps. We are so opposites in many ways. It must be true that opposites attract.

Going to the beach is great too, not just for the margaritas, although they do tend to loosen Rosalie’s tongue. We mostly leave our devices at home and rely on conversation. We have solved a lot of our Spanish language problems there. If something can’t be figured out we ask a waiter as they are always willing to help.

At home, we have a routine. Up in the morning, me about 6 am Rosalie a little after. It’s still dark so I go up and put the light on. We take our tea to the roof and while I check the news Rosalie likes to get on to Facebook. Once I have read the drivel on the news I also look for laughs online. We share giggles and so our day of laughter starts.

At about 9:30 it starts to get hot upstairs so we go down to the patio and Rosalie uses her 3D pen while I tinker with the 3D printer. We make a second pot of tea or coffee and hope that we have nothing serious pending that day. If we do we both groan and hope it’s for the afternoon. That way we can make yet another excuse to go to the beach afterwards.

After lunch at home but sometimes out, we wander uptown (in the car) to do a little shopping or get money from the bank.

Back at home, we go to the roof again as soon as the sun is off it, at about 5:30 – 6 o’clock. when it gets darker we decide whether to watch TV or not, lately mostly not. Sometimes the tequila comes out which produces more laughter. At about 10:30 we head to bed. The rest of the night is none of your business.

The only real break we get from each other is about once a month when Rosalie gets her nails done for a couple of hours. I usually drop her off and scoot back to the casa to spend my two hours in isolation. I don’t do anything different, I just do it alone. The funny thing is I’m always looking forward to picking her up again. Perhaps it’s because we usually go to the beach again or ‘Restaurante Rita’ on the lagoon.

Me, when I pick up Rosalie from the esthetician

Even when I take the car to the garage for repairs, Rosalie wants to come along and she sits with me patiently until the repairs are done. On the other hand, I won’t sit for two hours while she gets her nails done.

I think mostly while this works is not just the love affair but the friendship and respect for each other’s needs. I’m not good at expressing these things but whatever it is it works and we know it will keep on working.

Things are a little less lonely here now. A lot more of our friends have shown up so we’re getting to socialise a little more.

The weather has finally started to cool down a bit. It’s been brutal for the last two months, even Rosalie was getting a bit owly and I had to take her to the beach most days for a margarita. It wasn’t the temperature so much as the humidity, even the Mexicans were complaining.

There was a tragedy at the beach the other day. A shark killed a young 25-year-old Mexican woman. There is a bouncy castle with slides floating in the shallow water and one of the theories we heard was that the little fishes go under it for shade followed by the bigger ones followed by the shark. Who knows though? We heard four or five different versions, even one that it was a crocodile. We got our info from the Mexican restaurant waiter that we were at so we tend to believe that one. It was definitely a shark!

The waiter said that that was the first shark he’d heard of in thirty-eight years. Friends of Jim and Ylda who are Mexican heard fifty years ago. Either way, it was a tragedy. I guess we can add this one to the global warming phenomena, but who knows?

The plants that we put in last year are doing well. we even have a lime on one of them. If I remember correctly it was a lime tree so that would make sense. Duh!

Back in 2017 Rosalie and I were barred from a beach restaurant because we refused to pay for a table on the beach. No other restaurants made that charge and we did buy drinks.

A few days ago we decided to take a chance and try it again. The nasty old lady who threw us out was probably dead by now anyway. If she wasn’t I was prepared to run for it. She wasn’t there, it was great and we made friends with yet another mesero.

Rosalie getting robbed by yet another beach bandit. When I showed the little monster this picture I got the most beautiful gap-toothed grin.

The main street in Melaque is a mess from the new drainage pipe install. I now understand the expression “You can’t get there from here.” crossing the road was almost impossible. Walking up one side you get to the end and can’t cross there. So, back to the beach end and finally crossed there. Unfortunately after going to the bank, we were so stressed it was necessary to go to the beach for a margarita to calm us down.

We hadn’t been to Manzanillo this year so decided to go for a few things. After stopping in La Comer and Home Depot we were out $400 Cdn. But worse was to come, or so I thought.

On the way home the car seemed to be over-revving and I was worried. Eventually, I realized that it was the muffler making all the noise. Back in Melaque, I took it to our regular guy who couldn’t do it for a few days so we found a ‘mofle’ repair place. I had visions of a new very expensive muffler but should have known better. The guy looked under the car and waved us in over his pit. He grabbed his welding gear and fifteen minutes later we were out of there. The cost? 250 pesos about $20. We love Mexico!

My 3D printer finally arrived. It was brought down here for us by Rod and Sue and we are very grateful.

After unpacking it I set it up and printed my first test piece. It’s called a benchy but is really a small tug boat. After that, I was off and running. I had two rolls of filament from when we bought the last printer so we were fine for a while. Also, the new printer came with a roll of green.

I keep getting asked, “What do you make, it seems to be so impractical.” Well, so far I’ve designed and printed several prototype pieces for the hydroponics setup when we get back to Canada as well as some other pieces.

Not all of the prints are a success for various reasons. I tried three different prints with the green filament I got from Bambu Labs and all but one was a disaster and the one that did print wasn’t very good. I contacted them and they sent me a test cube which turned out perfect. It was only some of the stuff I designed that wasn’t right so I thought I goofed up somewhere. When I did the same designs in a different colour they were fine, so I don’t know.

All the following are my designs except the Benchy, the cutter holder and the jewel box.

The printer has four speeds, quiet (slow), normal, sport mode and ludicrous. I have tried them all. Normal of course is the best. A print I did with sport mode survived but the quality wasn’t very good. Ludicrous is just that. It was very fast and shook the whole table. I had to slow it down to save the print. I’m sure these fast speeds are helpful in some instances but for now, I’ll stick to normal.

Rosalie has been printing up a storm with her new 3D pen. She’s having a lot of fun and I’ve only had to help minimally.

I love the minion. Her 3D pen takes the same filament as my printer so I have to watch her as she likes to steal some from time to time. If I have some left on the roll when I’m done I give it to her, but I do make her beg.

Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and lot.

I grew up with that little verse. To us kids it was as important as “Jingle Bells.”

It celebrates the burning of Guy Fawkes, (actually, he was hung) for the attempt by him and his buddies to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London.

Close to the 5th of November, we kids would make a ‘Guy’ to be burned on our local community bonfire. We used old clothes and stuffed them with newspaper and whatever we could lay our hands on. Then we took him out and sat him in a prominent position so that we could ask passersby to give us a “penny for the Guy.” We managed to collect a fair amount of cash this way; then we had to spend it on fireworks.

We would sit the Guy outside the local store while we went inside to buy the goodies. I don’t know why, (Yes I do) but we always bought bundles of ‘bangers’ (firecrackers, not sausages). These little guys gave us a lot of pleasure even though we were in danger of losing a finger or two. We would build bridges and dams and blow the heck out of them. It was very satisfying.

Later when we got older someone found out that if you dropped one down a piece of blocked-off pipe and added a rock they made a pretty dangerous rifle. My buddies and I didn’t go there but I knew several kids who did.

The community bonfire was awesome! Everybody contributed with old furniture, books, cardboard boxes as well as wooden boxes from the local market. We even went around the furniture stores asking for old stuff. The branches of local trees were a little nervous too. One year someone came across some railway ties so we added them to the heap.

While at the market looking for more stuff to add, one of the council clean-up guys told us that they were going to come the next day and take down the bonfire as it was getting too big. Panic plan!

When the community heard the news everyone helped. The railway ties and a lot of the old furniture disappeared into various basements and when the council came the next morning, there was just a tiny bonfire left. The truck they used backed up to the site and a wheel sunk into the road. It was later discovered that there was an old Roman tunnel that went to the river right under where we lived.

On the day we bought all the stuff out and built a great bonfire. I have a souvenir, as a lump of coal got into my shoe and left a nasty burn on my ankle.

Today, in England, you can’t buy fireworks from the local store like we used to, but you can go to an authorized community site to see the show. It can’t be as much fun as we used to have, but I’m sure it’s a lot safer. I sometimes shudder to think what damage we ten-year-old kids could have done with a bag full of explosives.

About a week ago we were a little restless so decided to take a trip over to Barra, we dropped in on John and Ronda for a quick coffee then had to leave as Rosalie had a Dentist appointment that afternoon. She arrived only to find out that the dentist, ‘whom she had made an appointment with‘, was out of town until the next month.

It was decided to go back to Barra for a margarita at Nacho’s bar. This place is becoming a favourite of ours. Rosalie made a quick call to Peggy and Don inviting them to join us. Peggy didn’t sound up for it so we decided to go alone.

After about ten minutes Peggy did show up but by herself. We shared a plate of nachos and did our usual chit-chat. Then it started to rain. And it rained! And rained! Eventually, the gauntlet had to be run, so in a break, the three of us went for it. We got soaked!

On the way back to the car a vendor tried to sell us an umbrella; his timing was right but the location was off as it was only fifty feet from the car.

Our spycam caught a pair of miscreants trying to steal gas from our electric car the other day. Thanks for checking the place Jim and Ylda.

Another picture arrived the other day from the spycam with a guy in it that we didn’t recognize. After contacting security at Spidey we found out that it was Brian, the park manager so all was well.

As well as Jim and Ylda we had an interloper here. I call it Adrian. It was a big green iguana. It walked back and forth in front of our gate for a few minutes but couldn’t get in. I had put up chicken wire last year to keep dogs, cats, chickens, goats and small children out. It wasn’t deterred though as it soon found that it could get claw holds and in no time it was over into our yard. It was assisted by a young girl somewhat, who startled it. I have no idea where he went once he was in as he got lost in the foliage.

Jim and Ylda like to taunt us with their fire pit as they know we can’t have one. Ylda said she was taking off a layer of clothes as it was getting too hot. Rosalie wanted to do the same as it was another hot day here. The only difference was that Rosalie would have either been arrested for indecent exposure or gotten a round of applause.

The reason for going back early this year was to finalize our Residente Permanente. This gives us the rights of permanent residents. The main reason among many is so that we can keep our Mexican-plated car; such as it is.

Please note that it is an electric

We decided to use the services of our friend Eddie Peña to do the leg work for us for which he will be adequately compensated. The language barrier is the worst part of the process and of course, he knows English as well as his way around the system.

There was an appointment to meet him at the immigration office at 9:15 a.m. and after signing some documents and parting with some money, the worst of it was over. Then the wait for final approval, to get our new ID cards. We thought we had paid all that was owed except to pay Eddie. Apparently, there were another three thousand pesos each (we thought) before getting our new cards.

When we did it ourselves in the past it was way more difficult and entailed lots of visits to the office as well as internet work and photocopying. Back at INM the cost this time was over $6,000 pesos each. I cringed but as we had come this far, what the heck. So, we have been approved and eventually got our new cards. Rosalie is not happy with her picture!

And while we waited we played.

I’m addicted to Maynard’s Wine Gums so I bought a 1k bag to bring to Mexico. I paid $12. 49 and got another small bag for free. I figured that I could order more when I got here. Wrong! I can get them on Amazon okay but the cost works out at over $202 CDN a kilo. On Mercado Libre, they are $310 CDN. I don’t think so! I guess they don’t sell too many down here.

One of the unique experiences here is sitting outside watching TV in the middle of a nasty thunderstorm. It was fine to start off with but as we live outside it soon developed into a panicked attempt to get all the electronics inside. Our patio is covered, however, the spray from the wind and the general splashing threatened to soak everything.

So after getting everything inside, we sat back and watched the local geckos chase flies around and a friendly little land crab trying to get past us to get to the beach.

It’s been a warm summer according to some of our friends here. Lots of heat; the other day it was 28C with 91% humidity. There hasn’t been a lot of rain so far but temperatures are slowly getting better/lower.

I’ve mentioned before that there are these evil little devices in Mexico called topes. Unfortunately, they have their uses. In Canada, we call them speed bumps. In the small towns on the highway, they are essential. The speed limit though is usually 40 km an hour but as I’ve said before, this is only a suggestion.

There are various types of topes. Some are small and rattle your teeth and some are large and, if going at the correct speed the larger ones are quite pleasant. However, you don’t want to hit one at speed, as you will be launched into the air and come down with an almighty crash. Venders often stand at the side of the road where they are, because everyone has to slow right down and it’s a great opportunity for them trying to sell something.

They do have signs warning you that one is either about to come up, 200 metres ahead or that you have just passed one and will land soon. There are only signs on the highway but not in town. Then there are ones made by laying a three-inch rope across the road, they are very nasty.

There are some on Isla De Navidad that are especially bad. They consist of rows of concrete squares, that rattle your teeth no matter how slow you go. Before you cross them it’s recommended that you take out any false teeth and tighten bra straps.

Someone who makes the decisions on these things decided to paint the larger ones on the highway with yellow stripes. Eventually, of course, the paint wears off so that you can’t see them until you hit them. I think camouflaging and the location of the topes is a college course. Most, we find, are in the shade of trees so that they can’t be seen until the last moment. Others are the same shade of black as the road. The best time is at night because they cast a shadow in your headlights that’s easy to see.

The unofficial inverted topes (potholes,) are everywhere, and these are not small holes in the road some are craters. It’s surprising that there is enough asphalt to make topes but not enough to fill the potholes. They have been filling some lately but rely on the traffic to flatten them out, so now we have mini topes all over the place.

Even though I know where most of the local ones are I still manage to hit them occasionally. A while back I hit one so hard that the jarring really hurt my back. I noticed when I got home though that my back felt better than it had done for quite some time. I’m going to take people with sore backs out for a ride and charge them for my chiropractic services.

When in a strange location where I don’t know where they are, I try to follow another car to see when they pass over one. It’s fun to see the motorcycles go over them as they rarely slow down. If they have a passenger you often see them lift several feet off the seat, and that’s not an exaggeration.

What we need down here now are a few roundabouts; that should cause a little more confusion.