We were coping with Spanish summer living & adjusted our days to suit. When in Spain etc… The Spanish avoid the heat & constant sun in the afternoons to early evenings then eat & socialise until late. I write this at the end of August 2018 & the last time it rained was 21st May. After a damp & windy spring, it actually wasn’t a surprise to see pouring rain in Malaga as we hadn’t fully understood what summer would be like.
Fortunately Dobbie’s aircon started working 🙂
Admittedly we’d been out for the day & had driven for more than four hours & were just ten minutes away from home when it kicked-in. There must have been a blockage or something which cleared itself, but we now had lovely cool air for travelling. However, even using the foil windscreen shield, the car was boiling hot to first climb into.
We actually stopped going out so much & there are now so many places that are put on our list to visit in Autumn.
If we hadn’t left first thing in the morning (& Rob’s not a morning person), it was far too hot to travel during the day – into the evening too. It remained daylight until after 10pm, so didn’t feel as late as it actually was & many-a-time we dashed-off to the supermarket with minutes to spare before closing-time at 9pm. Some were open until 9.30pm & one fairly close-by, until 10pm, but no 24 hour trading here. Nor Sunday opening & if we didn’t shop on Saturday & had few provisions on Sunday, we made-do, or went out to eat.
No eating out on a Monday though! Most of the restaurants are shut on a Monday evening. Something we discovered when friends came to stay for just three nights & wanted to treat us to a meal.
It’s quite often dog food which necessitates a supermarket shop. In the heat, dried food is best, but our dogs think they are missing half their meal if there’s no wet meat. In particular, they like the pate-meat sold for dogs in large plastic wrapped sausages. This is only available in Mercado though, as it’s tins from Lidl, Aldi & others, whilst pet shops focus on dry meal with a limited selection of meat. Tinned dog-food doesn’t have the same appeal & for an ex-rescue dog, Roxy is a surprisingly fussy eater. She doesn’t like tinned meat in sloppy gravy & it’s actually quite important to buy food that they will both quickly eat.
First of all the dogs have a battle with the wasps which zoom in on freshly distributed meat, then the ants do take a little while longer, but cover everything, even a cleanly licked-out bowl, never-mind food left for their taking. We tried leaving dried food out for the dogs to pick at throughout the day which is what they are used to. However, I’ve had to raise the bowl to stop ants & it now sits atop a plant pot weighted down with half a brick. Banging it periodically knocks off those determined ants attempting to climb under the rim of both containers & up.
The odd dry croquet, possibly dog-licked, is left on the tiles & either has masses of tiny ants attacking it, or larger ones attempting to drag it away. Creepy, but fascinating to watch. We’ve seen wasps grab food from ants & ants carting off immobile wobbies, whilst both grab the discarded parrot feathers.
I still rescue drowning wasps from the pool & know where they nest, so Roxy’s uneaten dried-out meat is tipped close-by to hopefully keep them occupied. There was limited table space in the kitchen so a challenge to 
prepare a meal, but I discovered a length of worktop in the store & supported this with pillars of the hollow bricks I found stacked in the bottom yard. I was very careful to check the bricks for lurking critters, but soon found this was where the wasps had set-up home. There were plenty of bricks for all though.
The wasps are annoying, but only tend to hover around & don’t seem vicious unless provoked. However, it’s impossible to eat a meal outside as they are incessant & it wouldn’t be difficult to spoon one in on a fork-full of food, so we tend to retreat inside. I’ve only been stung once though (so-far) when I reached round to dab at the sweat trickling from behind my ear & this time it was an insect crawling. The sting was sharp & really did hurt, but eased after I’d taken an antihistamínico & then ceased to bother me for the remainder of the day.
But mozzies & their bites are a whole different story…