Monday 21 September 2009

Health and Safety


We have now lived in Spain for five and a half years and for the most part it is good, however, when it comes to health and safety it's like living in a third world country.
Today was a typical example of customer beware, we paid a visit to the large DIY store in Lugo, on display were shelving units, these had been placed on a slightly raised area to represent a living area surrounded by a metal strip, needless to say this was not properly fixed, so I tripped on it but no harm done, we continued round the store, loaded up the trolley and made our way to the check out, this took us past the offending display, a mother and child went to look at the units and the child went flying, luckily caught by his mother. This sort of thing is not unusual in Spain, toilets in cafes often have a small step down, or even worse a door marked aseos which opens into darkness and a steep flight of stairs, I am against the Nanny State, however, I do expect a certain degree of safety in public places, I'm sure that there must be EU regulations covering this, however, if there is Spain has not read it.
The weather continues to be warm and apart from one day of light rain we are still in drought mode meaning we are still having to water the garden every couple of days or so.
The geese have started laying again but not sitting as yet, if they do hatch any they wont be ready for Xmas, but we will have geese for Easter. All the chicks are doing well, we hatched four in the incubator, and a hen hatched seven, so we will have to see how many males there are for the table.The peaches are ripening slowly, they need some rain, and also to be left alone by the geese who have learnt how to pick them, and the goats try to break loose whenever they can and make a bee line for them, but there's so many on the tree that we can spare some for the live stock.

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