…when Tienda Inglesa prepares for the busy summer season and lots of visitors…

…by eliminating a third of its outdoor parking for additional sales space.

…like all of us?

Self-service produce weighing: “Please don’t put stickers on the scale or the table.”

What else would you do with them?

A bustling place―if not outstanding―with a deck overlooking the beach. Prime location. Buildings on the beach side of the Rambla are very rare. And then one day this summer the thriving business became an empty shell.

No idea what happened.

Apparently one thing you don want to be when a forest fire comes through is a huge commercial sawmill. I’m told 55-gallon drums of wood preservative were exploding like bombs.

This is the remains of what I thought I had documented: an automated machine for chopping and splitting past-expiry wooden telephone poles into firewood.

Unfortunately, no effort was made to remove the metal mesh embedded in the ends of the poles – eucalyptus being prone to serious splitting. I took most of those pieces back to exchange for “real” firewood. I didn’t plan to ever buy firewood from them again for that reason.

In semi-related news, today is the third Thursday in a row for which rain has been forecast – and failed to materialize. It is brutally dry out there.

…we know why Tienda Inglesa has been removing cashier lines near the doors.