Clock's gone cuckoo

Our bed has a little shelf on it, above our heads, where we put water, books, mugs of tea and our alarm clock. Unfortunately there's a little gap between the back of the shelf and the wall and so things, especially our alarm clock, regularly fall off. Usually it's just a case of the battery cover coming off, no big deal, but occasionally it completely disintegrates and has to be put back together. This morning, when Kate got at 6.40am to get ready for work was one such occasion. As I reset the alarm to wake me up at 8.30am I knocked it off the back. Crash. It flew apart. I managed to get it back together again and having just reset the alarm I knew what time it was - 6.45am - and reset the time accordingly.

I struggled to get back to sleep and in the end gave up, made myself a cup of tea, got back into bed and read for a bit. After a chapter I checked the time. 4.50am. What?! I 'd sworn I'd reset it. It occurred to me that having being half-asleep earlier I'd muddled up the clocks hands (big & little). With no other clock in the bedroom I'd have to get up and reset it from the kitchen clock.

I got distracted by various things so it was 10.37am when I got around to resetting in. The alarm clock, now on our desk, read 5.50am. I picked it up, held the dial, prepared to reset it and locked again at the face. It now read 10.35am. What?! I was pretty spooked. Either I was going crazy or the clock was haunted. I put the clock down again. It now read 4.30am. Huh!?! Ok, maybe I'm just too tired and I imagined that the clock said the correct time, my mind predicting what it wanted to see. I picked up the clock again. It now said 10.40am. I put the clock down very slowly. As the clock tilted, gravity took hold of the hands and swung them down to 4.30am. Phew! I wasn't going nuts.

The mechanism holding the clock hands in place had finally succumbed to years of being knocked onto the floor. I was relieved; I thought I was the one going cuckoo.

Shame though - that £2 clock has been Kate's for a long time and has served us faithfully all round Europe. It's practically an heirloom! Or at least, getting on for an antique.

east of eden

Before we left we picked fresh lemons from the trees and gathered windfall avocados to take with us. That's how much of a paradise Patty Pan's place was and is. A more characterful campsite and friendlier host would be hard to find. It's not ideal if you don't like animals (Patty has three dogs, Lika, Charlie and Norman and two cats, including a certifiably insane black moggy with three legs called Tripod. Theo was very taken with her in particular - I think it was the vigour with which she attacked him that attracted him) and I can't imagine it being favoured by the efficient Netherlanders in their spotless motorhomes (although they might get the washing machine working) and the roaming retirees, who tirelessly cross the continent in their shiny Winnebagos. Nope, it's definitely one for the more alternative type of traveller, who's more interested in making new friends and a lifestyle which contains a few quirks. One other thing about our genial hostess which particularly pleased Kate: she whooped Theo's arse at Scrabble. Yes! Anyway, the time has come to move on, so this morning we got back on the road.

The Spanish are in the wrong time zone. In a line North to South with the UK and thus on the same longitude (or is that latitude?) with London, Spain should, geographically speaking, be on GMT like Morocco and Portugal. Instead the Spanish use CET - Central European Time - and so share their hours with Germany, France, Italy et al. This is a masterstroke as it means the Spanish get long summer evenings, with sunset around ten, and can catch the dawn, even in May, at a not inhuman hour.

So, after spending a warm evening bathing in fresh water rock pools in the hills behind Estepona, we hit the road early to be greeted with a spectacular sunrise over the Med at 6.30am as we rounded Marbella heading east from Patty's eden.

We are heading to Barcelona, to the Primavera Sound Festival to see, among others, our good friend SJ Esau. It's a long drive, over a thousand kilometres from Estepona, so we're doing in it two days - after nearly 12 hours in Sheena today we made it to the Costa Blanca near Valencia. There is such a huge variety in Spain's landscape - we're seen nothing like the Basque country or the plains of Castile since we left them - and today was no different. Almeria was just a maze of polythene, each hill rounded bringing yet another series of plains and terraces of long, low, industry greenhouses. Murcia was dry and dusty, with unattractive bungalows sprawling across arid plains. Valencia, so far, seems beautiful and picturesque, full of orange trees and striking hillsides, with even the high rises of Benidorm appearing (from the road at least) attractively built and well laid out - a huge contrast to the usual, unthought out apartment block monstrosities we've found on the fringes of most Spanish cities.

Tomorrow Barcelona - if we have half as much fun as we did last time we were there we'll be in for a treat.