Dealing with a Heatwave and Really Missing my Son.

Monday 13^th August

Olivia:

Hi; the weather this weekend has been incredibly hot, most of the time during the day it’s been around 40-42oC (96-100oF). Now if you’re lying under a sunshade beside a pool, that is beautiful, but when it comes to working in a bar or restaurant, it’s not so convenient. Fortunately we only get a few days like this a year when the wind blows up to the Costa del Sol from Northern Africa. As we don’t open our bar on Sundays I only had to deal with the exceptional heat of Saturday.

We checked what was needed in the bar at 9am and then went to San Pedro early to buy stock, before it started to get hot. We have a good air-con system in the jeep, so it’s always comfortable even when it gets up to 100oF+ outside and when we arrived at the bar, we put on the air-con in the lounge end of the bar. The kitchen has windows to the north and to the west, which open upwards, so it’s pretty well ventilated. We only switch on all the cooking equipment between 1pm-4pm and then between 7:30pm-11pm this way we have a nice cool environment between 4pm and 7:30pm. The staff and myself eat our lunch at 4pm in the air-conned lounge area and our evening meal late at about 11:30pm.

Sunday was also very hot, so I went with Graham to spend the whole day on the beach directly opposite our bar, which is called Isdabe. The warm wind blew off the sea all day and the water was beautifully warm. Isdabe beach has two hotels, which let onto it, but there is plenty of isolated beach between the two hotels for those who want to pass a more peaceful day. The two hotels are the Atalaya Park which has a bar and restaurant open to the public, the other hotel is the Marriott, which also has a bar and restaurant available and then finally at the west end of the beach, there is a “chiringito” or beach bar. All three facilities have beach beds and provide waiter service, so it’s not difficult to enjoy yourself.

The weekend then was great, but I am really missing Victor. Graham had a long chat with Victor on Saturday and Victor told him that he was really enjoying being in Paris and that Graham’s fiend Saman was doing a good job of looking after him and taking him out to eat at specialist restaurants and try out fine wines at his favourite bars. All this made me feel so happy for Victor as he is having such a great experience in Paris, but as we are such a close family and have always done almost every thing together, I am finding it really hard to be without him. I am looking forward to him coming home on Thursday evening; full of stories of what he’s done and descriptions of places he’s visited. I am counting the days