Days 217-222, 15-20 Jan '15, Caim - "Down on the Farm-let". We finally left the house on Friday 17th after a few days of hibernating. Popped into Enniscorthy for some dog food for the ravening hordes. We also gave in and bought a pair of winter PJs for James. Who would ever have thought we'd need such items - but it was minus 1 the other night (probably minus 4 or so "feels like"). Brrrr. Now that Joan has taken the heat wave back to Australia we're freezing! We even have icing sugar snow sprinkled on our nearby hills and have had several hard frosts (it was minus 4 this morning). In fact it's probably lucky Joan headed home - we had a major storm a few days ago and at 4 pm we lost power. Candles and lanterns were found, wood and coal topped up, dinner prepared on the wood range... then at 8 pm the power came on and we relaxed. All a bit too soon as it happens. The temporary fix failed at about 8.30 pm and that was it until 11 am the following morning. Gosh. We were on the verge of jumping into the car to drive to town to get water as the well pump obviously relied on electricity... so no water. The weather has improved immeasurably since then - obviously a lot colder, but fine. Other news? Big news on the spontaneous housesitting front actually. We had decided that we wouldn't book our 2015 Christmas/NY sit until say November this year. Unless something really, really (really) good came along. And then it did. We're pleased to announce that we're heading back to Turkey to the Mediterranean resort town of Fethiye for 3 months from mid October 2015 to mid-January 2016. Just one dog. An absolute holiday in house-sitting terms and we were keen to see more of Turkey - so between finishing in Spain at the end of March and then heading to Turkey in mid-October, we've only got 6 months to sort out. Wow. This is the life.