Hurrah, meanwhile here in Valencia....

Great news! We are already champing at the bit for a place in line to buy tickets, dear Ruth. It is indellibly marked into the calendar! We will try to get goat's cheeses at the market before setting off...

Meanwhile, here in Alfaz I am feeling inspired by Julian's new website front page. As it looks like you have painted your way out of my budget, dear boy, I will have to wait until Christmas before setting one of your emotive paintings up against our magnolia walls alongside our print of the Green Lady and dogs playing poker... Perhaps it is time for me to start writing poetry... a poem a day sounds like an original idea.

I am no nearer making real head-way into The Artist's Way, Ruth, but I am hard pressed to find hours to sleep in at the minute. I am going to discipline myself alongside the weight training and dieting to ensure that I read some of it regularly. Currently I have four unfinished books on the go... Unfortunately this is reading, not writing. My only written book looks a sorry piece of history nowadays but I remain positive about making in-roads into future authorship in my next life. Mind you, it would be nice to reap some success before that.

I have a new panama that I look very dashing in. It is very much a stock item for me (a hat), especially given all the sun we are having nowadays. Jan is making some progress in trying to get her music project off the ground. Let us hope and pray for immediate success so that I can continue to live in the style to which I hope to become accustomed, as my lovely dad likes to say. Ah, but we don't get goats cheese here like they have in France. C'est la vie, n'est pas?