World Of Tourism

There has been very little activity in this blog over the past month because I have been observing a period of mourning for my late mother, who died one month ago today. I hope to return to slightly more regular blogging from now on.

(My time in Mazarrón is almost over as I return to Scotland tomorrow.) I shall very likely be back in Mazarrón, however, near the beginning of March next year and will probably be here unti the end of May.Meantime I've altered the sub-header message at the top of the page to mark my imminent departure from Spain.As you were ...

Keen-eyed readers may notice that I have adjusted the sub-heading at the top of the page to reflect that I shall soon be travelling to my home in Spain for a month - I won't actually be travelling until Wednesday, but may be quite busy for the next few days and not have time to make the change later in the week. I'll be in Spain until mid-October.As you were ...

It is possible I shall not be blogging much over the next few weeks, or at least even less frequently than has been my habit of late. I have not been feeling well since the weekend and at lunch-time today I had a doctor's consultation to diagnose the problem. It took him less than 5 seconds to decide what is affecting me and prescribe the treatment.My ailment is not, thank goodness, in any way

Occasionally I discover a new blog which rather than spending time in my RSS feed readers before being 'promoted' to my public blogroll, goes into it straight away. The Hola Valencia City Blog is written by an American and a German living since last year in Valencia. Apart from the lively writing from Mike (the American), there are great photographs of the city from Juergen who is apparently an

It's been a long time coming! Blogrolling.com was inoperative for updating blogrolls for about 5 months (since last October) and there have been many blogs I've started reading in the interval, some of which really merited being added to my blogrolls. There are also some blogs which have become dormant or taken down entirely which required to be 'pruned' from my lists. Happily Blogrolling.com was

Yay! After about 4 months when it has been impossible to update blogrolls hosted at blogrolling.com, we are now promised that the updated version will FINALLY be launched this coming Monday, 2nd March.I've been adding quite a lot of new blogs (to me, at any rate) to my feed readers over recent months, but have been unable to incorporate them into my two most important blogrolls embedded in both

I have just updated the header message at the top of my blog in anticipation of my departure tomorrow, almost exactly 24 hours from now, for about three months in Spain, to escape the tail end of the British winter and enjoy the early Spring-like weather in Murcia over coming weeks.I'll probably be blogging here rather more frequently during my time in Spain of course than I am accustomed to when

After wasting many hours on Thursday trying to cope with a very defective internet connection (it became clear to me it was not my own connection that was at fault, but was obviously a fault in the internet itself, as I could easily get into some websites, but not others), it came back to life at around midnight on Thursday/Friday.This allowed me to do two specific things I NEEDED to do urgently

This morning there seems to be severe disruption of the internet, presumably as a result of the weather (we are having heavy snow in Nairn just at present).I can get onto a few sites sporadically, but a lot of others simply won't load - for example my email provider website appears to be down, a few blogs seem to be available, at least partially, but the whole thing is very patchy.I'll try and

Today is the first birthday of 'casabill - the blog'. It's been an eventful year for people in Spain and around the world. What will be next? The fall-out from this is possibly only just beginning. Whilst I was on balance opposed to the plan anyway there is no doubt that the continuing uncertainty will have a destabilising effect. Later in the week we may know more. Hold on to your hats, folks!

(Please see UPDATE at end - I'm back online!)I had a trouble-free, if tiring, journey back to Scotland on Friday; I left home in Mazarron at about 2am for the drive up to Alicante for a 6am flight to East Midlands Airport, where I spent from 7.30am British time until 1pm waiting for the flight up to Inverness. East Midlands Airport, the airport for Nottingham, Leicester, Derby and someplace

I shall be away for a few days, in and around Glasgow - visiting gardens, museums and art galleries - call it 'domestic tourism'; I'm looking forward to it. I'll be back late on Friday so may get a chance to write here again during the coming weekend.

Internet users may have noticed that since last Saturday a wide variety of websites and facilities have been unavailable, the result of a fire at 'The Planet' data server centre in Houston, Texas.So far as this blog is concerned this affected 'StatCounter', as its name suggests a service I use to track visitors to this site; 'StatCounter' seems now (since Monday or Tuesday) to be back to normal.

I arrived back in Nairn yesterday afternoon, after a pleasant sea-crossing from Zeebrugge to Rosyth and a very easy drive back up north - the road, specially after Bruar, was not very busy in my direction so I made pretty good progress.I won't write more now because I seem to have internet connection problems at home - I don't think it is a problem with my equipment, or my broadband wi-fi modem,

I shall be departing Mazarron tomorrow morning to begin my journey back to Scotland, which I am scheduled to reach on Tuesday 6th May after having driven north through Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands, spending some nights in hotels, others with friends and/or family.Earlier today I recorded a couple viedos of my preparations for my final lunch in the house here; the last

Strictly for YouTube addicts! I thought I would share with readers the sight of me preparing my lunch earlier today. Usually lunch for me, even when I'm in Scotland is on a cold winter day, is cold - either cold meats or fish, accompanied by a mixed salad. What I decided to have today was some Serrano ham (a Spanish dry-cured ham) and my usual salad. I always prepare the salad first, then the

In the event the roller-blind I mentioned in a previous entry was not delivered last Monday, but I did have a 'phone call early in the morning from the installer to tell me he wouldn't be here that day, because a close relative had just died the previous evening (cancer, I discovered later); he said he would contact me in a few days. Very sad, but it was very thoughtful and responsible of him to

As I indicated in my previous entry (on Wednesday) I was able to move into my new holiday home on Thursday afternoon, the hob, oven and cooker hood having been successfully installed on Wednesday evening. I'm still waiting for certain items of furniture, principally wall units for the living-room and the proper bed-frames for the second bedroom; both furniture shops have put in temporary stuff to

I left this morning around 10am and by about 11.45 was driving into House of Bruar (a rather upmarket pit-stop for food and some quite fancy shopping), a little north of Pitlochry on the A9, where I had some lunch and bought a few 'typically Scottish' gifts to give to a couple of people at my destination - basically jams produced locally. Then just before 1pm I was on my way. The weather when I