Ceasefire in Iran extended, our first barbecue of the season, homework with Elliot, explosion of nature and birdsong in our garden, centenary of the Queen, reunion with Arja from my Nokia days, shooting in Washington and other stories of the week.

 Madrid, Sunday 26th April, 2026

On one of our walks this week, surrounded by nature. Wish the photo would do it justice.

Good morning again this last Sunday in April. 

The weather has been amazing and we have enjoyed meals al fresco and the explosion of nature in our garden as well as choruses of birdsong at dawn and dusk. The variety of birds and flowers in our little parcel of land outside Madrid makes it an oasis of peace and beauty at this time of year especially. The late Queen of England who would have turned 100 this week was a great lover of nature and animals. We only have Pippa now but I would have loved to fill our garden with a donkey, a pony and more dogs. Eladio said if I did that we would have no garden left haha. Did you know that there is an initiative in Spain where donkeys are put to use as natural firefighters by grazing on undergrowth that fuels fire? I read about them in the Doñana National Park but apparently the idea is being spread to other parts of Spain, especially after the terrible forest fires we had last summer.  The donkeys live a good life  grazing happily while protecting the environment. 

Peace has not been reached with Iran. This week saw a halt in negotiations after the US seized an Iranian tanker in the Strait of Hormuz.  Trump extended the ceasefire but it is still very fragile, as is the ceasefire between Israel and The Lebanon. Meanwhile oil prices continue to increase and are putting in danger flights this summer for lack of kerosene. Lufthansa recently announced thousands of cancelled flights. I hope that doesn't affect our flight to Manchester at the end of May.

With such good weather we had our first barbecue of the season last Sunday. In the morning I went to pick up a gorgeous looking cake I had ordered from the upmarket Balbisiana bakery. I went to nearby Pozuelo to get it and while there ordered a coffee and a small cake. I was a bit cross they were served in paper at a cost of over 9 euros which maybe Parisian but not Madrid prices.The cake looked gorgeous and it was on the inside - sponge, strawberries and cream - but none of us really liked the icing. It looked as though it was made of royal icing but it was thick butter icing in pink; quite off putting. We only ate a bit which is a shame. It is the second cake I have bought from Balbisiana that has disappointed me and I will not buy one from them again. I love their little tartlets though. This was it; looked nicer than it tasted.

The beautiful looking cake from Balbisiana which was a bit of a disappointment. 

It was Eladio's job to do the barbecue and here he is about to grill the sausages and hamburgers.

Eladio about to grill the meat on the barbecue last Sunday

It was just us with Oli and the kids and a good time was had by all. Later we spent time with our grandchildren and Oli asked us to help Elliot with his homework. I was to help him with his English spelling test and Eladio with Spanish vocab. He is a clever little boy but does not have much patience. He is only 6 and still mixes up his b's with his d's. In any case it was pleasant to be with him and I hoped he did well with his spelling test this week.

Helping Elliot with his homework.

On Friday Oli sent me his results: 9 out of 10. The only word he got wrong was "dump".

9 out of 10 for Elliot's spelling test on Thursday

Of interest that afternoon, a wasp stung me while I was making a cup of tea. I didn't see it on top of the tap when I was pouring water into the kettle. I screamed in pain and had everyone alarmed. It was the first time I had ever been stung by a wasp and luckily after the initial pain it didn't give me much bother. 

Monday came and our last guest, Vicky, an Argentinian girl who had been with us for 10 days left. We thought no one else was coming until Thursday but I was wrong. In the end we only had one guest free day this week. It's amazing the amount of bookings I got this week. I have more than 45 upcoming reservations and have to be on top of my work in order to run all the bookings smoothly and correctly. 

The weather was marvelous again and I caught Suzy on camera with Pippa on the front lawn sunbathing. This was one of the photos.

Suzy in the sun on Monday

As we were leaving for our walk, I spied the flowers which had blossomed almost over night. They are one of my favourite flowers in the garden; mock orange. In Spanish it is called Celindo and I think it is referred to as dogwood in English. We had the same tree or bush in our previous house in Boadilla and as it always blossoms in April, just the fragrance brings back happy memories of our lives in Rio Tajo when the girls were small. The smell is nearly as nice as jazmine. 

I love it when the mock orange blossom blooms in our garden

On our walk we were surrounded by lush green and wild flowers, many of them being bluebells which I love. I got Eladio to take a photo  I have chosen as this week's feature photo. I  love this time of year when nature explodes. It's warm but not too hot and everything is lush and green.  Just look at the lovely blossom from the horse chestnut trees by the pool. 

The pink and white blossom from some of the horse chestnut trees in our garden

Credit has to be given to the gardener, my husband, who keeps it looking good. He mowed the whole lawn this week which is quite a task. A lot of the  lushness will be  gone by August when he will fight to keep the garden green. But right now it is perfect.

Lunch was leftovers - we hate to throw food away in this house. The highlight of the day, after some Airbnb admin work  was my weekly Facetime call with Amanda. We shall be together this week in Seville and I can't wait for that day to come.

We had dinner al fresco with Suzy and I served a divine cantaloupe melon with ham. I always find them not very sweet in Spain compared to France and Italy but this was sweet and I have bought another one this week.

The news that night was a bit grim. Apart from the tanker seized by the USA, an Israeli soldier was filmed vandalising a statue of Jesus Christ in the Lebanon. I found that disgusting. 

A terrible thing to do - an Israeli soldier vandalising a statue of Jesus Christ in The Lebanon.

What I loved that night was the birdsong from the terrace of our room. Thanks to the Merlin ID app, introduced to me by Andy and Amanda, I identified hearing a nightingale, a black redstart, a Eurasian Blackcap and blackbird and even a small owl. I was fascinated. But the next morning was even better.  There were so many birds chirping and singing at about 7 in the morning on Tuesday, including a goldfinch, a ring necked parakeet, a dove, a blackcap, a coal tit, a black redstart, a woodpigeon, a warbler, a raven, a swift, chaffinch, great tit, blue tit, greenfinch, a common starling and of course a house sparrow. This is proof and AI at its best.

Some of the birdsong in our garden this week

I was never a bird lover, especially after being traumatised by the Hitchcock film, The Birds. I hate birds landing on my table while eating or having a coffee, but I do like birds in their natural habitat. We look forward to hearing and hopefully seeing some rare birds when we visit Doñana. It is a bird paradise so our friends will be happy.

Tuesday was 21st April and would have been the late Queen's 100th birthday. Oh how we miss her. She was a constant in my life as I was born when she was on the throne. Her son, now King Charles, led tributes to her life. He posted a video which I watched avidly. This is it. He described her as steadfast and a wholly devoted figure. He recalled that twinkle in her eye, when she appeared in the lovely Paddington sketch made for her Jubilee in 2022, the year she died. I couldn't think of which picture to choose for this post and finally chose one from Paddington bear's Instagram. It's lovely and hopefully will make you smile. I think she would have liked it too.

Our dear Queen would have turned 100 this week.

In the recorded speech her son said his "dear mamma"  would have been deeply upset by the troubles in the world today. On a brighter note he spoke of her belief that "goodness will always prevail. Let us hope he is right. The Royal family marked the centenary with some events and plans. The final designs were revealed for a permanent memorial in St. James' Park featuring a statue of the Queen and Prince Philip and what I'm not so keen on, a tiara like glass bridge. Her daughter Princess Anne officially opened the new Queen Elizabeth II garden in Regent's Park. It is good that we should continue to remember her in this way.

Talking about memories, that day Oli sent me a wonderful photo of times gone by. It was of Suzy and her bosom friend, Copi taken when they were about 5 or 6. This is it.

Copi and Suzy aged 5 or 6. 

What a lovely photo it is; one to treasure. I love to see their friendship going strong after nearly 38 years when they first met at St. Michael's school in Boadilla del Monte in 1988

I spent part of my morning fixing a time to meet with some of my oldest school friends from St. Joseph's College  when we go to Yorkshire in June. We have chosen to have brunch at Betty's in Ilkley. I already had a booking there for Eladio and I when we are in Bradford, so that will be two visits to my beloved Betty's.

Before our morning walk I lured Eladio to the churros bar in Boadilla and this time my "porra" , the thick type of churro, was enormous. Just look.

A rather large "porra" which was divine. 

We then went on our lovely walk both to enjoy it, get the exercise and work off some of the calories ingested by the porra hahaha. I was loving the wild flowers and thick and tall grass but I mostly love the great big dandelion clocks you get in the countryside here in Spain, so much bigger than the ones in England. I had to blow them of course and got Eladio to take some pics of me behaving like a child. It's nice to do that sometimes. Here is one of the pics.

Look how big the dandelion clocks are on our walk.

In the afternoon I discovered more flowers that I love blooming in our garden and had to have another photo. The flowers are known as guelder roses but look more like snowballs. And here is another photo of me enjoying the flora at this time of year.

By our guelder roses also known as snowballs. Love them

What Suzy and I did not enjoy that afternoon was a shopping trip to Majadahonda as just after parking, the rain began which we hadn't expected. We looked in a few shops, found nothing and decided to go home, except that the heavens opened and we had to take refuge under a cafe awning. Even so, we got drenched. It was rather an unfortunate outing. I suppose the rain is good for our garden, hahaha. 

That night I got an extraordinary email from the Stratford Literary Festival. It praised the book about my father and asked me to participate as an author. I could hardly believe my eyes and neither could Eladio. Later emails asked for a fee to build a booth to promote my book which is when I began to suspect that this could be a scam. Indeed it was a scam and very clever phishing that is apparently being targeted on a global scale at thousands of authors. Had I agreed, I would have sent some money and that would have been the end of the tale. What a horrible world we live in. 

Wednesday was the day that Trump announced the ceasefire was to be extended until a peace plan was reached. Olivia did a piece on that story for her programme on TVE which you can watch here. Wednesday was actually quite a difficult day but I won't go into that here as it is a little private. Some things I have to keep to myself. 

So let me move on to Thursday which was International Book Day. For the occasion my granddaughter Juliet's class had to dress up as a character from a book. She went in a Disney Snow White outfit I bought for her at a second hand market in Santa Pola a while ago. She looked lovely.

Little Juliet dressed up as Snow White for International Book Day this week

I do hope she grows up to be a reader and book lover like me and my immediate family. My love of reading began when I was about 7. The Tozcek family next door to our house at 6 Heaton Grove in Bradford were moving and Paula their daughter gave George and I her whole  collection of  Enid Blyton books. We devoured them and that set us off reading all our lives. I am not an intellectual reader. I prefer biographies or books based on real life stories. If I had to say which is my favourite book of all time it would be "A town like Alice" by Nevil Shute. There are many others but this is a book I have gone back to many times over the years.

Suzy came with me to do the food shopping that day and we also had coffee together. She was a great help. I came home to make our lunch that day when we would be joined by Olivia - a real pleasure as it is not often just the 4 of us are together. 

I made a popular summer dish, "salmorejo" as a starter followed by hake meunière with spinach and home made mashed potatoes. Here is the salmorejo which is similar to gazpacho but thicker and always garnished with egg and ham.

Salmorejo

And here is a photo of Oli, Suzy and Eladio just before we sat down to have lunch together.

Family lunch on Thursday

I managed a 1.5 hour siesta in the afternoon which helped me catch up on a bit of sleep; sleep I am always deprived of.

Dinner was al fresco too and I must show you the "chirrimoya" (custard apple) Suzy shared with us as it was just so enormous. It was one of the best I have ever had.

Suzy dividing up an enormous custard apple we shared for dinner one night this week

I was a bit upset that evening when brushing Pippa's teeth, to notice she has lost one front tooth. I can only attribute it to her age; 12 going on  13. I hope she doesn't lose anymore. 

Friday was the highlight of the week. I was meeting Arja S who, when I was at Nokia, was first head of communications for Nokia Networks and then became SVP for communications of the whole group. She is of course Finnish and just one year younger than me and I hadn't seen her for many years. I think the last time was on a trip to Helsinki when I worked for Yoigo in about 2014. I well remember meeting her for the first time in the impressive Nokia House in 2000. I was introduced to her as having come from Motorola. Her first words to me were "what's it like being in the enemy camp?". It was the moment in time when Nokia overtook Motorola as the number one mobile phone manufacturer. Looking back, it felt good to be at Nokia House, the world HQ in Espoo outside the Finnish capital. I have fond memories of my work related trips to Finland, a country I came to love very much. Arja had come to Madrid for a long weekend with friends from her time as SVP of Finnair Communications where she went to work after she left Nokia when it was famously bought by Microsoft.   I had given her some tips and recommendations of places to stay, where to eat, what to see etc and we agreed to meet for a coffee and a chat. We met at a new cafe for me, one in the Palacio de Cibeles or Cibeles Palace. It is a wedding cake type building which is a landmark of the city, first being the HQ of the Spanish postal company, Correos which it still is. It also serves as the Town Hall and a cultural centre. 

It was a wonderful break in my routine to go into Madrid on my own to meet an old friend and colleague. We caught up over a cup of coffee for me and a cup of black tea for her which she learned is called "té negro" in Spanish. I then took her for a short walk in the Retiro Park, Madrid's equivalent to Hyde Park or Central Park. About the same size as the former and smaller than the latter,  it is much more beautiful because it was once a Royal Park  and ornate in parts.  It was  opened to the public in 1868. Known as the lung of Madrid, El Parque del Buen Retiro is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which I think it well deserves to be. When we lived in Madrid from 1983 to 1988 we used to take the girls there every Sunday morning. We would buy them sweets and take bread for them to feed the ducks in the grand lake and later walk along the main promenade enjoying the activities from the buskers. The girls especially loved the puppet shows. I took Arja through the entrance near the Puerta de Alcalá to the lake where I took a photo of her and we had our picture taken. It is a pity it was cloudy as the photos don't do it justice.

With Arja at the Retiro Park on Friday

Both being innate communicators we chatted non stop from the moment we met to the moment we parted. We reminisced and spoke of some of our colleagues fondly. Marianne and Mark were two we mentioned. I wish we had had time for more reminiscing. Those Nokia days from 2000 to 2006 were for me the golden era of telecommunications. I loved the Finnish culture and we all worked hard but had a grand time and travelled the world spreading the brand to all 4 corners of the world. 

We parted at about 12.30 as Arja had a date with the Prado. I haven't been for so many years and must go one day; after all it's on my doorstep. I took the metro back using my trusty OAP free transport pass and was home in a jiffy. It only took me 35 minutes there and 35 minutes back so I don't know why we don't go more often into the city. We should. 

I came home to join Suzy and Eladio for lunch and soon had to leave the house again; this time for an appointment with my hairdresser Conchi. I just couldn't go to Seville this week with such white hair. Aarrggh. 

In my absence, a new guest had arrived. Eladio greeted Carlos a personal trainer from Asturias which we know well. He must be into fitness quite a bit as he went in the pool and then used our bike to ride to the supermarket to get provisions. He came by car but wanted to use the bike. Like most of our guests I found him to be a very pleasant person.

The news that night was not good for tennis. Carlos Alcaraz, now number 2 in the world, holder of  7 grand slams and reining champion of Roland Garros, will not be competing in Paris owing to a complicated injury in his wrist. I am so sorry for him. 

The other news was ridiculous and once again it came from Trump. Apparently he wants to see Spain leave NATO as we are not supporting his war with Iran. Well, who is? Sometimes he makes you laugh but mostly he makes you cry. The latest is that talks will be resumed in Islamabad but not directly between Iran and the USA.

On Saturday I finally found where we are going to go to celebrate our wedding anniversary this year. It is on 21st August so always difficult to find good places and avoid the heat. I had looked at the coast of Cádiz and didn't find anything. Where I really wanted to go was to Biarritz where I used to spend some holidays with my parents at my Uncle Kolya's flat or flats there. I have always wanted to stay there again and have only ever passed through. Also it's not easy to find a good place there that fits my criteria; near the beach, parking on site, a terrace or balcony and good reviews; and all this for a decent price. I found it here so let's see how it goes. Meanwhile, I booked a table for dinner on our anniversary at the Terrasse & Rotonde Brasserie belonging to the famous Hotel du Palais, now owned by Hyatt. No way could I ever dreamt of my parents taking me there, hahaha. I shall drink a toast to them that night. You see when they first met and fell in love, my Mother took my father to Biarritz to stay with her brother Kolya and they must have gone many times in the 50's. Imagine what it was like then; certainly not as crowded as now. I wonder if it is still as chic as I remember. I so look forward to taking Eladio there and we shall be spending a whole week. It will be something to look forward to. 

Suzy was at work and Eladio and I went out to get some cash and pay another bloody traffic fine but I enjoyed my coffee at Manacor this time; a change from Alverán.

Saturday was a good day and today Sunday promises to be good too. Today we shall be celebrating Suzy's birthday which is actually next Tuesday 28th but she will be in London so we are putting the family lunch forward. It will be all of us and two of her friends, the sisters Chati and Elena and once again we shall be having a barbecue. 

I imagine Donald Trump's day will not be good as he reels from last night's shooting. The biggest news of the week came this  morning. I woke up to read a shooting happened during the White House annual Correspondents' dinner at the Washington Hilton Dinner last night.  An armed guest at the hotel aimed at a security checkpoint with the objective of entering the event hosted by Trump and shot a Secret Service agent. His main objective was to  kill the President in what would be the third attempt on his life in the very same venue another shooter tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan in 1981. Thankfully no one was injured and the shooter, 31 year Cole Tomás Allen,   was detained immediately.

There will be no shooting here today during our quiet celebrations. 

Next week I shall be publishing my blog from sunny Seville, a trip I have planned with much detail and love.

Hear all about it next Sunday.

Cheers for now,

Masha.