Although I am getting know the little seasonal quirks of Catalonia, sometimes the details pass me by.
Today was Kings. Yesterday the three of them arrived in all reasonably sized towns and made their way in procession through the streets throwing sweets at the children who lined the route. Today I made my way from the warmth of sea side Castelldefels to the cold of Terrassa for lunch.
The lunch was delicious as usual but the important part was in the sweet. This comprised the traditional Roscón de Rey which is circular bread like cake with a hole in the middle. It is sliced across the centre and cream is spread between the two rings. The outside of the loaf/cake is decorated with crystallized fruit to stand for the jewels in the crowns of the wise men and the centre hole also contains a cardboard crown for the King of the meal.
This is where it gets interesting. Inside the cake are secreted a number of carefully wrapped objects and finding one is either quaint and interesting or expensive. The little objects we found in our Roscón included a tiny china duck, ditto tiger and ditto a disturbing oval faced girl. These are the interesting objects. There are two important ones to find: a king and a broad bean.
Finding the king means that you are king of the table and you are entitled to wear the crown. Though if you have a three year old child the chances of usurpation are 100% - though in this case the legitimate owner did eventually get a chance to wear the thing.
The tiny china broad bean is bad news. This little gift means that you are the person who will have to pay for the Roscón next year. I had not realized this and upon finding the king (a thoroughly repulsive and sinister looking little thing) in my chocolate cream I assumed that the gift would have to be mine. There was a general lightening of the atmosphere as soon as the broad bean was found and people helped themselves to seconds!
The meal was tainted for me by the weather conditions outside: it actually started snowing! The rest of the family were excited and wrapped up to go out and take photos of themselves with snow flakes on dark apparel.
I was thoroughly disgusted: the quid pro quo for my feet touching the earth of Catalonia was that the rest of my body would be bathed in almost continuous sunshine (at least during the daylight hours) and adverse weather conditions would be left behind me in Britain. I graciously allowed that snow could, if need be, virtually obliterate the Pyrenees but Castelldefels and immediate hinterland were to be kept warm.
I drove back through sleet, but my car thermometer rallied my spirits by slowly but positively rising as I neared the sea shore. The temperature in Castelldefels was double that in Terrassa – which sounds good but actually disguises the fact that Terrassa was a snowy, sleeting 2 degrees and Castelldefels was a torrid 4 degrees, but at least it was only raining here!
I have now completed the reading of E F Benson’s
novel ‘Michael’. This is an odd little tome which concerns the progress of an unprepossessing member of the aristocracy who defies his father’s wishes and turns to a life in music. It was published in 1916 in the middle of the First World War and the action of the novel takes place before the start of the conflict and ends with a situation of mawkishly sentimental morality when the hero is invalided out after being wounded in the trenches.
The novel has little of the lightness of touch which makes the Mapp and Lucia novels by Benson as absolute delight to read and its seriousness grates because the narrative is so contrived. Two of the essential coincidences of the story are so astonishingly awful that you shudder as you read and as soon as War is declared you know what the second coincidence is going to be!
I know that life is full of the most impossible coincidences; things happen that no writer would have the bare faced gall to dare to put in a novel (unless he was Dickens of course) and hope to get away with it. If you want to hear totally unbelievable coincidence stories I suggest that you ask hard contact lens wearers to tell you tales of losing and finding lenses. I have heard stories about contact lenses that make Dickensian coincidence look as casual as F R Leavis after the gas attack. I have heard a few stories so fantastic that the only reason I have given them any credibility at all is because I have been telling them!
Benson is no Dickens, he isn’t even an F R Levis (though he is funnier) and his novel cannot sustain its intent after his manhandled plot. He does manage a few interesting character sketches and he does articulate a response to Britain’s state of unprepared ness at the start of the war and he illustrates the ethos that Britons liked to think that they were personifying in the struggle. ‘Michael’ is more of an historical curiosity than a literary gem.
One time the writing does come alive in when Benson is trying to express just how life affirming Michael’s use of music is and then Benson’s musical descriptions sound on the page. The other place in the novel which has a sinister effectiveness is when Michael is in the trenches: a hard, unpolished reality for a moment gives this novel gravitas before it slips into mere sentimentality. Still worth a read. But the Mapp and Lucia stories are a must!
I am writing this in a delicious silence, broken only by the sound of the waves - and a passing plane if I have to be strictly honest. The neighbours above, below and sideward have all departed to lead their ‘other’ lives in the city, leaving us seaside folk to our littoral lives.
Even a cup of tea tastes better when the sound of silence is yourself.
So I’ll have one!
Today was Kings. Yesterday the three of them arrived in all reasonably sized towns and made their way in procession through the streets throwing sweets at the children who lined the route. Today I made my way from the warmth of sea side Castelldefels to the cold of Terrassa for lunch.
The lunch was delicious as usual but the important part was in the sweet. This comprised the traditional Roscón de Rey which is circular bread like cake with a hole in the middle. It is sliced across the centre and cream is spread between the two rings. The outside of the loaf/cake is decorated with crystallized fruit to stand for the jewels in the crowns of the wise men and the centre hole also contains a cardboard crown for the King of the meal.
This is where it gets interesting. Inside the cake are secreted a number of carefully wrapped objects and finding one is either quaint and interesting or expensive. The little objects we found in our Roscón included a tiny china duck, ditto tiger and ditto a disturbing oval faced girl. These are the interesting objects. There are two important ones to find: a king and a broad bean.
Finding the king means that you are king of the table and you are entitled to wear the crown. Though if you have a three year old child the chances of usurpation are 100% - though in this case the legitimate owner did eventually get a chance to wear the thing.
The tiny china broad bean is bad news. This little gift means that you are the person who will have to pay for the Roscón next year. I had not realized this and upon finding the king (a thoroughly repulsive and sinister looking little thing) in my chocolate cream I assumed that the gift would have to be mine. There was a general lightening of the atmosphere as soon as the broad bean was found and people helped themselves to seconds!
The meal was tainted for me by the weather conditions outside: it actually started snowing! The rest of the family were excited and wrapped up to go out and take photos of themselves with snow flakes on dark apparel.
I was thoroughly disgusted: the quid pro quo for my feet touching the earth of Catalonia was that the rest of my body would be bathed in almost continuous sunshine (at least during the daylight hours) and adverse weather conditions would be left behind me in Britain. I graciously allowed that snow could, if need be, virtually obliterate the Pyrenees but Castelldefels and immediate hinterland were to be kept warm.
I drove back through sleet, but my car thermometer rallied my spirits by slowly but positively rising as I neared the sea shore. The temperature in Castelldefels was double that in Terrassa – which sounds good but actually disguises the fact that Terrassa was a snowy, sleeting 2 degrees and Castelldefels was a torrid 4 degrees, but at least it was only raining here!
I have now completed the reading of E F Benson’s
novel ‘Michael’. This is an odd little tome which concerns the progress of an unprepossessing member of the aristocracy who defies his father’s wishes and turns to a life in music. It was published in 1916 in the middle of the First World War and the action of the novel takes place before the start of the conflict and ends with a situation of mawkishly sentimental morality when the hero is invalided out after being wounded in the trenches.The novel has little of the lightness of touch which makes the Mapp and Lucia novels by Benson as absolute delight to read and its seriousness grates because the narrative is so contrived. Two of the essential coincidences of the story are so astonishingly awful that you shudder as you read and as soon as War is declared you know what the second coincidence is going to be!
I know that life is full of the most impossible coincidences; things happen that no writer would have the bare faced gall to dare to put in a novel (unless he was Dickens of course) and hope to get away with it. If you want to hear totally unbelievable coincidence stories I suggest that you ask hard contact lens wearers to tell you tales of losing and finding lenses. I have heard stories about contact lenses that make Dickensian coincidence look as casual as F R Leavis after the gas attack. I have heard a few stories so fantastic that the only reason I have given them any credibility at all is because I have been telling them!
Benson is no Dickens, he isn’t even an F R Levis (though he is funnier) and his novel cannot sustain its intent after his manhandled plot. He does manage a few interesting character sketches and he does articulate a response to Britain’s state of unprepared ness at the start of the war and he illustrates the ethos that Britons liked to think that they were personifying in the struggle. ‘Michael’ is more of an historical curiosity than a literary gem.
One time the writing does come alive in when Benson is trying to express just how life affirming Michael’s use of music is and then Benson’s musical descriptions sound on the page. The other place in the novel which has a sinister effectiveness is when Michael is in the trenches: a hard, unpolished reality for a moment gives this novel gravitas before it slips into mere sentimentality. Still worth a read. But the Mapp and Lucia stories are a must!
I am writing this in a delicious silence, broken only by the sound of the waves - and a passing plane if I have to be strictly honest. The neighbours above, below and sideward have all departed to lead their ‘other’ lives in the city, leaving us seaside folk to our littoral lives.
Even a cup of tea tastes better when the sound of silence is yourself.
So I’ll have one!
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