I am approaching 70 . In fact I am galloping towards it , I looked at a note I made in 2014 saying I will be 65 this year , it seems like yesterday . (I was 70 in September just to keep us up to date)

When I was young I did not really think I would get old, I remember looking at far distance dates when certain things would occur such as retirement and becoming a pensioner and expiry of my driving licence and thinking it to far off to be bothered about . It seems suddenly to have arrived and I cant think where the intervening 50 years have gone . So, my driving licence will expire shortly . I wasn't sure quite what to do , would I need to take another test ? I didn't fancy that . The government sent me a form to renew my licence . I was torn between joining the 21st century and doing it online or remaining firmly in the paper age I prefer . I opted to do it online. I started to complete the form when I got a message saying you cant renew the following groups online and should stop now unless you wish to give them up . I wasn't sure if I needed them , I decided to phone the DVLC . Nobody wants you to phone them . It took me ages to get a number . Then there was the usual layers of menus and if you choose the wrong one you end up not with a person but with a website address . Finally the nice man I got to talk to agreed with me I was probably unlikely to want to drive a pantechnicon or double decker bus and I should let it go.
 I finished the form and hit send .
 A message was appeared saying well done Martin , but , we need just a teeny bit more information so we are sending you a form. What info ? I phoned the nice man again ,easier this time as I had the number and knew the menu . Don't worry he said it does it all the time its nothing and you couldn't have renewed online anyway because you have a paper licence..

My mother said she called me Martin because the name was uncommon (this being back in the day when William , Stephen and David were the sort of names people got rather than Brooklyn ) there were 5 of us called Martin in my year and I went to a small school . But there you go there are fewer of us now. I found a note at one point that Hernan Cortes was given 20 slaves by the natives of Tabasca (I wonder if that where the name for Tabasca Island comes from ) anyway one of the slaves was a women called La Malinche who became his mistress they had a son and guess what he was called - yup Martin !!

Mind you strikes me as an unlikely name for a Spanish conquistador and a 16th century south American women to choose but there we are .

I looked it up intrigued by my own question and find it is derived from the latin name for Mars and is quite common in Spain particularly as a surname where its pronounced Marteen .

I started this blog in 2016 , mostly for me more a diary than anything else and certainly not something I expected anyone to read . Although its several years since my New Zealand trip it seems interest has suddenly manifested itself in the very small bit I did on Pounarmi which intrigues me . I looked it up because I had written it so long ago and thought perhaps there was more than I remember ,but, no its just a short record of my attempt at the ceremony surrounding the gift from my son . Anyway to those that read and enjoyed it and commented - Thank you .

and of course walks

Did you think I would leave you standing there when there was room on my horse for two

Down in Santa Pola we decided to go for an ice cream . Darren asked the girl behind the counter if we could take a picture of us behind the counter , she said yes . the owner turned u as we were arranging ourselves, at first I thought he was angry turns out he was a great guy and was offering to take the picture so we could all be in it 

He turned into a bit of a David Bailey and insisted on more pics arranging us and posing us until he had the photo that he was pleased with .. nice man 

I wanted everyone to have a good time , to chill and to get away from it all although with three of us now retired , that shouldn't be so much of an issue , but then free from family and in the company of good friends is a quite different experience . At the bottom of the road is the swimming pool and games area catering for tennis , football , basketball and petang

 I was comprehensively trounced everytime even though they tried to ensure I won but it was good fun .

Swimming of course was available to those that wanted it and we mostly had the pool to ourselves