After a mixed career as an aircraft technician, London fringe theatre playwright, Franciscan friar, and secondary school teacher, I find myself looking after the needs of four donkeys in a remote location in the mountains in the Costa Blanca. I like to listen to BBC Radio 4 and the wind in the pine trees. I am writing a comedy about a school in Benidorm. My favourite film of all time is "Jean de Florette". If I had my time again I would not have spent the early 1970s working for Special Branch.
It has seemed for the past few weeks as though my broad-ranging life has been crammed into a narrow funnel in which I have been stuck and struggling to squeeze through to the light at the end. A rather stupid metaphor illustrated in the photo by yet another piece of plastic which will end up … More Light at the end of the funnel
No not this one… geogcostablanca.blog is now finished. Please take a look at that blog to see why. This blog will resume on Tuesday with a blog post from Rubí.
We are coming to the end of the third week in Lent. It was International Women’s Day on Thursday and this became a point of reflection for me in my Lent spiritual reading because my text is the first book known to be written by an English woman. An element of humour has always been … More All shalle be wele, and alle maner of thynge shalle wele
I was going to write the Tuesday blog this week, but Rubí got in there first. So you get two Tuesday blogs this week. The nasty people who get their thrills by stressing a worried donkey, in the benighted village that the Refugio del Burrito brought to our attention, claim to be doing this because … More Goodbye to tradition
An Inspector Calls… Today at El Parral we had the ministry of agriculture official veterinary inspection. To keep equines, whether horses, mules or donkeys, requires a set of paperwork which is more complex than that needed to purchase a house. This is no exaggeration: in fact it is probably twice as much paperwork. Therefore there … More The Ministry of Silly Poos
I have been pruning all the trees at El Parral. I am into my second winter season here, and the trees have mostly been saved. Regular readers may remember the trees were in a poor state because the property had been long derelict. Now is the time to increase the yield by pruning back the … More Lord of the Files
Today 14th January is the Feast of the Ass. See the page about this in my donkey Culture & History pages. I was also sent a link by Jim in USA to remind me about today, which I must admit I had actually forgotten. Many thanks Jim! He included a link to a priest’s blog. … More Feast of the Ass
For most people it is the end of the year. For teachers, it is simply the end of the first term. An opportunity to relax at home with the inevitable illnesses you have caught from the children. It has always been a mystery to me, why we always have to finish the hardest, most tiring … More The Brexit bouquet
I first put Santa hats on the donkeys in 2011 when the foals were only three months old and skipping around like mad goats. After that, it became an annual tradition for us. It is nice to get a line-up of donks in Santa hats, looking spontaneous, but it is not that easy. Just getting … More It’s Donkey Christmas hats time again
Plaza Torreta 17 Finestrat Alicante 03509 Spain garethomas@hotmail.com Nigel Farage MEP The Old Grain Store Church Lane Lyminster West Sussex BN17 7QJ nigel.farage@ep.europa.eu 14 December 2017 Dear Mr Farage, I was galvanised by your performance in the Brexit plenary in the European Parliament on Tuesday. You may remember I wrote to you before this plenary concerning my … More An Open Letter to Nigel Farage
