Journal: Week 41, 2026

The day began, as these things so often do, with a four o’clock trip to the toilet and a swift return to bed, where I stayed until my alarm had the good manners to wait until 07:30 before going off. Coffee in hand, I sat down to check my messages and work on my website. I immediately found something to worry about: my website’s navigation menu had gone half-missing on mobile hardware. A spot of detective work with the browser’s inspect function revealed the site was blocking bots it had no quarrel with. CoPilot’s verdict was that my hosting company had tinkered with the access codes themselves, their anti-bot fix, it seemed, had rather overdone things. I lodged a complaint with CloudAccess and did my best not to dwell on it.

I’d planned to go swimming, but my get-up-and-go had apparently got up and gone without me, so I used helping George with his paperwork as a convenient excuse to stay home instead. As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered manufacturing an excuse at all. George rang to say he and Yvonne would rather meet me for breakfast in Buena Vista at 10:00. I wandered over at 09:45, made small talk with my usual waitress while I waited, and was soon joined by George and Yvonne, who both opted for the full English while I went for a rather more modest tostada with tomato and tuna. We talked until nearly midday before parting ways, and I ambled home with a full stomach and a clear conscience about the missed swim.

Back home, the messages had multiplied: CloudAccess were looking into the server fault, and IgniteGallery had written offering help. I explained my theory to them, that the hosting company’s security crackdown was the likely culprit for their extension going dark, and suggested we both wait for CloudAccess to sort themselves out. To their credit, CloudAccess replied faster than usual today, which felt almost suspicious in a good way.

At one o’clock, Peggy the robot vac/mop, named, with great affection, after my mother, rumbled out of her dock to begin her rounds. I tidied the floor ahead of her like a nervous host before guests arrive, then settled in with the plan of squeezing in some WhiskerWood while she worked. The plan lasted all of five minutes before another message arrived: the website was fixed. I tested it myself, found everything present and correct, thanked the gallery designer for his patience, and asked him for pointers on making my galleries look less like an afterthought.

Then, at five o’clock, the afternoon delivered its main event: an almighty bang that shook the entire apartment and had me briefly convinced a gas canister had gone up somewhere nearby. Facebook's army of keyboard warriors, ever reliable in a crisis, informed me within minutes that it was a Eurofighter. I’ve lived under flight paths for years, including the Space Shuttle’s old route over Orlando, and I can say with some confidence that I have never felt a boom quite like that one. I remain sceptical. I am, however, prepared to be wrong.

Having somehow misplaced lunch entirely in all the excitement, I cooked chicken and pepper skewers in the air fryer and hoped they’d hold me until tomorrow. They were pleasant enough, if not quite the fortress against hunger I’d been hoping for. The evening wound down with a fresh game of WhiskerWood, my previous colony of mice having tragically starved while I wasn’t paying attention, a recurring hazard of mine, it seems. True to form, I lost track of time completely and didn’t surface again until midnight, at which point I finally, properly, went to bed.

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Four o’clock found me stumbling to the loo again, and I was back under the covers within minutes, not properly surfacing until seven. When I got up, made a coffee, and settled into my armchair to see what the world had been up to overnight. I had Radio 2 on in the background, which I find is the best way to wake up properly, mostly because it doesn’t go looking for arguments the way television news does these days. I’ve long thought television has become too obsessed with ratings, deliberately pushing bad news to the front because it gets a stronger reaction, and a stronger reaction keeps the advertisers happy. Oddly enough, the BBC is one of the worst offenders, despite supposedly not relying on advertising at all.

It was on the radio that I heard Jeffrey Archer had died overnight. I’d watched an interview with him only on Sunday, and he’d seemed fit and healthy. He certainly thought so himself. Love him or loathe him, the man was a character, and his writing alone will leave a gap.

At ten, I walked along the beach to Buena Vista for my usual, a tostada with tomato, tuna, and a coffee, before heading home again by eleven. The website was behaving itself at last, so I set to work adding details to my photo albums. The idea is to have them appear both in the main gallery section and as modules scattered through pages that relate to each album.

With that underway, I took the disability scooter out to drop the rubbish at the bin, then on towards the shops. The charge wasn’t going to stretch as far as Lidl, so I pointed myself at Día instead, only to find a queue stretching well into the shop when I arrived, which was enough to send me home empty-handed. Light rain started falling on the way back, and I counted myself lucky I hadn’t made it to Lidl after all, or I’d have got properly wet. Back home, the scooter went on charge in the garage, and lunch was a tuna and cheese sandwich followed by one with cheese and ham.

I carried on with the website work until around16:00, by which point my eyes had had enough, so I stretched out on the sofa for a nap. I woke at 17:00, decided against getting up, and promptly dropped off for another hour. When I finally surfaced properly, I put a chicken thigh in the air fryer and threw together a salad of lettuce, carrot, sweet corn, and olives. My sister rang while it was cooking, and we talked for a quarter of an hour, her dinner arriving from Brett at almost the same moment mine came out of the air fryer. So, we said our goodbyes and both sat down to eat. The chicken was excellent, and I’m slowly getting the hang of eating more salad, helped along, I suspect, by the steady weight loss giving me a reason to keep it up.

After dinner, I put my feet up and went back to the laptop & website work, fiddling with titles and descriptions on the photo albums. An email came in from the IgniteGallery designer with a few tips and some links to my galleries, so I had a play with a sidebar menu for the Victoria Selina cruise, complete with its photo section. Just to see whether it would behave. It didn’t, not quite the way I wanted, and it’ll need a bit more tinkering before it’s fit to use. I scrapped the test menu and carried on with the new layout for the cruise instead. If it ends up looking as good as the code suggests it might, I’ll eventually roll the same approach out across the rest of the site.

I was in bed by 23:00.

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I was up for a wee at around 05:00 and back under the covers within minutes. The alarm had its say at 07:30, but I let it go unanswered for another half hour before finally hauling myself out of bed. Coffee made, I sat down to check my messages and found one from Nashi about the noisy toilet, which I hope they’ll send someone to sort soon.

I managed the Wordle puzzle in four and posted my result on Facebook, dropping in a clue or two along the way. Posting the result each morning has become my quiet way of telling the world I made it through another night in one piece. I took my time over the coffee, had a shower, and got stuck into the website.

By late morning I’d finally got the first of what will eventually be over three hundred galleries set up exactly as I wanted, visible now at the Victoria Selina Cruise Photos page. Once it was tested and working, I stopped there, showered, and got dressed properly for the day.

I took the scooter out to the ferretería in Los Narejos and picked up two LED lights to replace a pair that had died in my apartment. The shop arranged an electrician on my behalf and passed me his number, assuring me WhatsApp would translate anything I needed to say to him. While I was in there I bumped into my friend Stuart, whom I hadn’t seen in ages, and we ducked into the café next door for a coffee and a proper catch up. Partway through, my cousin Jill walked past, and we stopped for a quick chat and the usual promise to meet for coffee soon, a promise neither of us has quite managed to keep lately. It seems going out for a drink less often than I used to has cost me rather more social contact than I’d realised.

I left for home afterwards, got about halfway there, and remembered I still needed cash from the ATM, so I turned the scooter round, withdrew what I needed, and set off again. Back home, a message from Jim was waiting to remind me he’d be picking me up for lunch.

Jim duly arrived and drove us to Alaba restaurant in Los Narejos. The meal was good but not as good as my preferred restaurant in Los Urrutias, Ruf Mari.

Jim dropped me home afterwards, and I stretched out on the sofa fully expecting to doze off quickly, which I did, falling into a proper deep sleep almost at once. I was woken by the electrician the ferretería had arranged, earlier than I’d expected since I hadn’t messaged him myself yet, but after a moment of fog I realised who was at the door and let him in. He tried both new lights and neither worked, pronouncing them, in his words, caca, and told me to take them back to the ferretería tomorrow for replacements.

I spent the evening adding menus to more of the photo albums on my website, and finally went to bed at 23:15.

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I was up at 04:45 to use the loo, but sleep refused to come back this time, so I gave up trying and got stuck straight into the ongoing website work instead. I added new menus to a string of photo albums and a couple more in the Short Trips blog section. That last bit means I’ll now have to expand some of those blog posts properly, something I’ve been putting off for far too long. A coffee followed not long after and did a decent job of settling my stomach, which had been grumbling since I first got up.

Around 10:00 I took the scooter out and returned the two faulty lights to the ferretería. I explained the electrician’s verdict, and they offered to swap them straight away, at which point I asked whether I could upgrade instead, to a couple of better lights with fans built in. They helped me pick out a decent pair and credited me the value of yesterday’s lights against the new ones. While I was there, a man I know called Mark came in to buy a few bits. Since the new lights and fans were too much for the scooter to manage, I asked if he could drop them round later. He agreed, evening only, and loaded two into his car while the shop assistant brought the other two out for him. Mark’s a builder by trade, and the whole shop clearly knew him well, so I had no worries about leaving it in his hands.

From there I carried on to Buena Vista for an English breakfast, seated next to an elderly Spanish couple, one of whom insisted on playing music out loud from his phone. Loud, intrusive, and entirely unnecessary, in my opinion. Why people can’t simply use earbuds and spare the rest of us their playlist is beyond me. They didn’t linger long, thankfully, and I was left to read in peace. My usual waitress asked if I’d leave her a review on Google, wrote her name down so I wouldn’t forget it, and I promised I would when I got home.

The afternoon went entirely on rebuilding the website, new navigation menus for the photo album pages, a few links tidied up, and several blog stories shifted into different categories so they’d surface in more relevant parts of the site. It’s slow work, and the navigation alone is going to take an age to finish, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end. I stopped at 13:15 for an hour’s nap. My pension manager rang in the afternoon to go over January’s payment and where the money should end up after I had moved providers. I was pleased with how the investments were sitting, and he assured me the January payment would land on time.

Mark turned up around 16:30 with the lights and fans as promised. Dinner was salad with a chicken thigh again, and a lovely one at that. In the evening I messaged my friend Bob to see if he’d help fit the new lights and fans in place of the old ones, and he came back saying he could manage Sunday.

I made myself step away from the computer tonight, which I never find easy, if only to give my eyes and my brain a proper rest, and sat down to watch a couple of films on television instead. Neither was particularly good, certainly nothing worth recommending. Bed came at around 23:00.

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I slept well and didn’t stir until the alarm went at 07:30. Coffee made, I sat down to do the Wordle, only to realise with some surprise that I’d missed it entirely the day before, which reset my win streak yet again. I never used to miss a day, but over the last few months it keeps slipping my mind, so I’ll have to start doing it first thing, before coffee even, rather than after.

I put in a little time on the website before stopping at 10:00 to head out for shopping. Having gone to Lidl with Jim last week and liking it, I decided to make the trip again myself, so I set off on the scooter. I parked up, grabbed a trolley, and swapped a joke with a policeman who’d parked his motorbike next to my scooter, the two of us agreeing we should trade vehicles for the day. Inside, I did my shopping and went to pay, and the girl serving me noticed something I never would have, two items had rung through twice, and she’d already processed a refund for both before I’d even clocked it. I’m grateful she caught it because I would never have checked the receipt.

Back home, I put the shopping away and poured myself a glass of the cold hibiscus and ginger tea I’ve taken to making and keeping in the fridge. Settling down to rest, I noticed a bag still sitting in the shopping, and pulled out three freshly made doughnuts, all different, which must have thrown themselves into the trolley without my noticing. Doughnuts don’t keep well, or so I tell myself, so I ate all three on the spot. I’m calling it a healthy breakfast, whatever anyone else might say about that.

I settled into the armchair with the television on and carried on with the website work, which remains one of my favourite hobbies, cheap, absorbing, and a reliable way of keeping me out of the pub and out of trouble. Work stopped around 14:00 for a cheeseburger, after which I turned up a massive stash of holiday photos buried in oversized folders on my server. Finding anything in them had become a nightmare, so I spent a good while sorting the images into something more manageable, with an eye to adding the missing ones to the website.

By 15:00 I’d had enough of the screen and found something forgettable on television to nod off to on the sofa. I’m not sure how long I was actually asleep for, but I surfaced about an hour later, & let myself properly wake up. I decided I wasn’t hungry enough after lunch for anything more than the chicken wings I’d bought earlier. Into the air fryer they went, and the smell alone had me waiting impatiently by the time they were done. Once they’d cooled a touch I worked through the lot hungrily, and while they were decent, they weren’t a patch on the peppered ones I usually get from Mercadona. I think the answer is to start buying plain wings and seasoning them myself, so I can get the flavour exactly how I like it.

A couple more hours went into website work before I gave up and started browsing the internet instead. I came across news of a small earthquake a couple of miles West of Los Alcázares, measuring around 1.3 on the Richter scale. This scale is used to rate how much energy an earthquake releases. I didn’t feel a thing. I carried on with the site again in the evening, and after a bit of back and forth with Claude, the AI assistant I’ve been using to help check and tidy up code. I made a few changes to what I’d been adding all day.

I also spotted an advert for a Pink Floyd tribute act playing in Alicante in December. After weighing up the ticket price & a hotel for the night, I went ahead and booked myself a seat. Something to look forward to in December. The evening ended on a less glamorous note, trying to load the dishwasher before bed and finding the door wouldn’t close. My eyes too sore by then to work out what was in the way, so I left it for the morning. I went to bed around 23:00 but was kept awake until nearly midnight by noisy kids outside, waiting to be collected by equally noisy parents.

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I woke around 07:00 but didn’t bother getting up straight away, lying in until the alarm went off properly at 07:30. My phone had stayed in the lounge overnight, so getting up to silence it was unavoidable. No sooner had I got the coffee on than my second alarm arrived. An old man who walks three dogs past my window at the same time every morning. One of them a tiny thing that looks like a gerbil on a lead and yelps, rather than barks, loud enough that the first few times I heard it I genuinely thought a child was screaming. Neither of the other two dogs makes a sound, and the man himself doesn’t appear to be doing anything to the little one, so I’ve no idea what sets it off. I do rather wish he’d pick a different route.

With the kitchen a bit brighter this morning, I finally noticed the dish washing machine was sitting at a slight angle, enough to catch the door on the cabinet it’s fitted into, which explained why it had refused to close properly last night. I must have nudged it off kilter at some point. I straightened it up, closed the door, and set it running.

I caught up on the news headlines on my phone, where the usual theatre was playing out, Trump making fresh excuses for his handling of the American economy and threatening new tariffs on Norway, apparently for not giving him the Nobel Peace Prize, as though their government has any say whatsoever in who wins it. Why he thinks picking a fight with a country that has nothing to do with the decision, makes any sense, is beyond my limited understanding of his tantrums. I’m still baffled that so many people in the US fall for a narcissist, someone with an inflated sense of their importance and a constant need for admiration. In the same breath he’s lifted sanctions on his friend Putin, so Russia can sell diesel to America, presumably hoping lower pump prices will do him some favours before the midterms.

After typing up a few notes for my journal, I got back to my website, put in an hour’s work, then showered and had a tostada with tomato. I carried on adding sidebar menus and created a handful of blank pages for places I visited on my Southern States tour back in 2012, ready to be filled in properly when I get around to it. Lunch was simple, a banana, and blueberry protein shake with toast and cashew butter. I pulled the washing out, piled it on the bed for sorting later, loaded a second lot in, set the washer going again, and sat down to watch Arsenal take on Leeds.

Arsenal edged it 2,1 at the Emirates, a tighter contest than their recent record against Leeds suggested it might be, with Leeds making them work for the win right to the end.

I unloaded the last of the washing and hung both lots on the clothes horse in the bedroom, and while I was at it sorted through a few shirts I’ve decided to get rid of. All still in good nick, barely worn. I’ll pack them for the cruise, wear them while I’m in Florida, and drop them at a charity shop once I’m done. I used to buy my shirts from JC Penney when I lived out there, so if the one in Cocoa is still trading I’ll pick up replacements while I’m at it.

I switched over to Chelsea against Bournemouth, partly because I’ve got three Chelsea players in my fantasy team, Arsenal and Chelsea between them making up six of my fifteen. Tea tonight was pork cheeks with potatoes. Chelsea made light work of Bournemouth, winning 5,1. I caught the first half of Manchester United against Tottenham afterwards, which was poor stuff, goalless at the break and not much better before I lost interest.

Just to get out of the flat for a while, I walked to Porscha’s bar for a Piña colada and sat outside to watch the second half of the football. Janine and Gary arrived and joined me for a chat. Once the cocktail was finished, I had a pint, then walked home once that was done too. The temperature had dropped sharply by the time I got back, and I suspect it won’t be long before I’m reaching for a jumper or cardigan whenever I go out. I’ll have to check whether any of my trousers still fit, come to that.

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I woke at around 08:30, had a shower, and put in an hour on the website before heading to Buena Vista for breakfast, a medium English breakfast and a large coffee. Oyvind turned up while I was sitting there and joined me, and we fell into a conversation about photography, comparing notes on cameras we’d both owned over the years.

I was home by 11:00 and carried on with the website. Bob came around in the afternoon as promised and fitted the two new lights, though it turned out I didn’t have quite enough bulbs to go around, so each one is running on a single bulb for now until I get hold of more. He also fitted the new fan light in the bedroom, which looks good and works well. The other fan I’ll hold on to until the one in the lounge finally gives up, at which point Bob will come back and swap it over.

I spent the evening watching bits of the football while chipping away at the website, and at 20:30 a message came through from NCL saying check in was open for my cruise from Barcelona to Cape Canaveral. I went online straight away, and during the process was asked to pick a check in slot, with only one place left between 11:00 and 11:30, which I managed to grab. That works out well, since I land in Barcelona just after nine and should have time to get to the port by Uber. I will be among the earlier ones to board, rather than kicking my heels until a later slot opens up. Once aboard I’ll at least be able to get a drink, something to eat, and relax properly instead of hanging around waiting for the ship to let me on.

I’d also noticed that plenty of people booked on the same cruise were talking about hiding and swapping mini cruise ducks, a tradition that’s apparently become something of a fixture on cruise ships recently, where passengers decorate small rubber ducks and leave them around the ship for other guests to find, sparking something of a treasure hunt that’s grown into its own little community online. I’d come across it before, but never actually seen or even heard a duck. I liked the idea enough to join in, and bought some ducks to take with me, little ones dressed up as sharks, which ties in nicely with my nickname of Sharky and should raise a smile with whoever ends up finding one.

I went to bed around 23:00.

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