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Friday, May 09, 2008

Exculsive produce


The cachet of getting cheese sent over from a specific farm in New Zealand and even from a specific cow was somewhat lessened by the chore of extracting it from the Spanish Post Office.

The post office in Castelldefels is the original of the location of the land that time forgot. Time, which as we all know is relative, seems to achieve a stasis of unimaginable proportions in that building.

When you arrive you are, or at least if you have been before and know that it is there, confronted by a machine which gives you a ticket. The ticket is your indication of when you are likely to be seen by a counter assistant.

These machines are not uncommon. The factor which makes them much more problematic to the noviciate British user is that you are offered a choice of buttons to press to get your numbered ticket.

I have solved this conundrum by pressing all available buttons and taking all the tickets which are disgorged by the machine and going to the counter which is indicated by the first number to be illuminated on the counter board. I then rely on my mumbling incompetence in the Spanish language to ensure that I am seen by a forgiving counter assistant.

An encouragingly low number on the wrong ticket (I think) and a disappointingly high number on the right ticket (I think) might have forced some sort of moral choice if the unequal completion rate of customers had not meant that I actually made the appropriate choice at the end after only an hour of waiting!

Cheese has to be very good to justify all that waiting, sitting next to a strange man who gibbered away to himself about the number of telephone bills that were his fascinating reading while I waited for my number to flash up on the board.

The truckle that I was sent had a dark rind and was surprisingly soft in texture and interestingly mild in taste. Well done that cow!

The weather has been unseasonably wet and the kids had restricted time outside and a disproportionately long time inside during the day. Although the last half hour of lunchtime was outside it was getting more and more problematic as more and more obvious rain began to fall.

The end of the day coincided with a torrential downpour and the dispersal of the pupils resembled the evacuation of a sinking ship as they were herded to the front door and taken to safety to their umbrella wielding parents. It was an extended moment of delicious chaos.

Toni is still not feeling 100% and so we didn’t go out to dinner on his birthday and his birthday present is looking interestingly professional as it languishes impotently in the corner of the living room. I can guarantee that the purchase of a reflector telescope will ensure cloudy skies for the foreseeable future.

Sods’ law is the only unalterable constant in an uncaring universe. I’ve found!

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