It is cold tonight in Jerez. There was no swarm of swallows and bats around sunset which made me wonder if there is going to be an earthquake or an apocalypse of some kind. Very weird not to have them.

After I slept this afternoon I washed some clothes and as I was hanging them out, Maria came to the window. From the way she talked I wondered if she thought I was someone else. She said the others had left and didn't even say Adios. It must be confusing for her with Geoffrey only coming here once in a while. I tried to explain to her last time that I'd be back and forth between here and Seville but living here in July.

I planted some tomato seeds in one of the many pots this afternoon.

There is going to be a major battle with mice and ants. There are probably nests of both in various places. If they are not gotten rid of the house is just going to fall down. There is a little bit of a fight with dirt from just general decay - the falling off paint on all the outside walls of this and other houses nearby. When the paint falls off it leaves the sandy structure of the walls bare to just crumble away. The sandy stuff and chipped paint accumulate with the wind in corners and then get blown into the house. I tried to sweep and get rid of the stuff outside that could blow in and have bleached everything according to internet instructions to get rid of ants.

If I had the card reader for my camera I would show pictures of here. But I think it is locked inside Sachiko's friend's suitcase, which I inherited. I've opened and closed it many times, but the other day the combination lock finally must have gotten moved the wrong way and I can't open it.

Jerez water is hard, while Seville's is actually quite nice. My hair is all weird and my tea doesn't taste good. The electricity eventually has to be fixed as it is still on 120V or something crazy like that, while the rest of Europe has long ago gone to 220. Actually Geoffrey said back a while ago that he tested it and it was more like 135. The normal switches are not wired right now, I forget why. The electricity is coming in through the front suite and it is just a bunch of extension cords going along the floor and drilled through holes in the walls. You have to unplug the fridge for a while to use the oven (which is a freestanding little groovy thing, very low on energy - there is also a normal oven which is not plugged in to anything and looks like it has travelled from the UK). You also have to unplug the bathroom light to start the washing machine. As you can gather, he has a lot of work to do here.