A few days away was a great pick-me-up and whilst Learned Counsel and Sir Henry of Staines and I loafed about amongst the orange trees in 22 degrees of sunshine, we gathered that hurricane force winds and buckets of rain were making things rather disagreeable at home.

Learned Counsel, whose stamping ground this is, took Sir Henry and me on a guided tour of the region and I snapped away at whatever took my eye. Over the few days of our stay we trundled happily down the coast to Cartagena and back up to Alicante, taking in some of the smaller towns and ports on the way. Everywhere we went there was colour - such a contrast from the greyness we'd left at home.

There was a 'Don Quixote' moment..

... quite a lot of sea...

.. a great deal of urban colour...

.. and some recent history.

In my travels abroad, I've almost always stayed in the countryside - the one most recent exception being Rome - and to find myself in a town that over the last couple of decades had been developed specifically for holiday homes, was a new experience - one that I found stimulated all sorts of thoughts and comparisons....

A window in an estate agent's office was dedicated to models of future developments in the area.

I was struck by the similarity to a display in a shop window a few doors along...

All this seemed a long way from the problems currently faced by the Spanish and their government and even further away from the events described in Paul Preston's book The Spanish Holocaust; probably the most difficult read I've undertaken for a long time.

We had plenty of time to think about the wiring for the ignition circuit on the Hillman.

Never my strong suit, I enlisted the help of Learned Counsel who, whilst cooking breakfast, encouraged me to take notes. Sir Henry, at intervals, nodded sagely. I'm not sure if I got everything down as it should be but there's enough there to give it a go. One of the unknowns - to me at least - was how to hook up the ammeter to show the charge rate. I've drawn it as a spur from one side of the alternator (I've fitted an alternator that looks like a dynamo) and I was speculating whether or not the ammeter might take the place of an ignition light. I should probably look at the instructions before I dive in... I jotted down also, a few things under the column, To Be Done and, as the list unfolded I began to wonder if loafing about in Spain was such a good idea after all. The battery box is the next job and then I can commence wiring the ignition circuit and skin the inside of the cockpit. I'll have to paint the underside of the rear floor with bituminous paint before it's finally screwed down. The wiring for the lights I'll run in a stout sleeve underneath the floor rather than inside the skin - the method I used on the Austin.

It would be fun to have an orange tree, a lemon tree and a fig tree in the garden.