At last I had finished writing my letter to another sister in England. And I had bought some sobres (envelopes) from the 100 peseta shop. Not that it is 100 pesetas now. They don’t even call it the one euro shop. Not sure what it is called come to think of it. However they are great cheap shops and I picked up 10 sobres for 60 cents. Cheap or what!!

Next came the stamps. Now the difficulty here is the use of cars. My sister’s husband and the boys all work renovating houses and need their cars. Generally one can be left here at the house, but then my sister also has some English classes to go to. Or there is a big food shop to do which can only be done at a certain time anyway because the supermarket car park gets chocker-block and no-one can get in and out. So the busy time is avoided. Add to that the siesta time when the shops all close at 1 or 1:30 and don’t open again until 5pm.

I wanted to go to Fuensanta our local little town to buy stamps. It took several days for an opportunity to use a car. So eventually I get to the Estanco. The tobacconist’s shop which also sells lady’s stockings, a selection of plastic jewellery and one or two lady’s cardigans, O yes and also it still had the child’s satchel in a showcase from 10 years ago! To my sheer delight the same very old gentleman served me. I asked for the sellos, (stamps) I needed para Inglaterra.

He opened a drawer, in the old fashioned shop counter, into which I had been peering through the glass at the plastic jewellery (which was possibly a bit of a find as it would be considered trendy now). He took out an old box that used to hold a selection of stockings in a certain size. Immediately I was transported back to my childhood and going to the shops for my mother to get her a pair of stockings from the shoe shop and her 20 senior service from the sweet shop and 4 fruit salads for me. (4 for a penny! An old penny!) I smiled benignly at the box, I could even smell the smell of the shoe shop where we were also kitted out for our clark’s shoes once a term.

The stamps were found among all the other sheets of stamps in the box. He took them out. He then rummaged for a pair of scissors and a piece of paper. He cut off a small piece of the paper and wrapped the stamps.

The whole process must have taken 10 minutes. It was so time consuming and so delightful and unbelievably relaxing!! Manana, manana.

Ahhhh It is raining!