Spend? Spend? Spend?

It is half way through the first month of the holiday and time for me to make a humiliating admission.

In spite of buying a conversational GPS; a collection of hardback art books; a mobile air conditioning unit; a watch for the summer; a hi-fi unit for the i-pod and a selection of summer clothes, I have dismally failed to spend the “extra pay” that is given to workers in the summer.

I have no real excuses. God knows my mother spent years trying (with some success, I might add) to counteract my father’s “Go/Buy/Leave” attitude towards shopping. I have inherited her uncanny ability to select from an array of similar items the one which costs the most. I have a positively Pavlovian reaction to quality glassware, crockery and cutlery. I can shop till I drop and yet living within a 70c bus ride of one of the great cities of Europe I have failed to spend to the limit.

The true explanation is probably I have omitted some of the things that I have bought because, in another character trait that I have inherited and cultivated, I am very good, once the excitement of the purchase is over of consigning the mere monetary transaction to distant history – however recent the actual releasing of the filthy lucre might have been!

Now that I think about it, there is indeed something else: a special piece of clothing which has had to be ordered and has not yet arrived. But of that, more anon.

Wispy cloud is smudging the perfect blue of the sky and, much more importantly is getting in the way of the sun. The clouds are quite spectacular and look like a sort of monochrome aurora borealis. No matter how attractive, I sincerely hope that the growing power of the sun will burn away these clouds so the mid morning bake can begin!

Seeing the dance company in the National Theatre of Catalonia has made me itchy for more culture. Sitges has a summer programme of events which a couple of years ago I attended and thoroughly enjoyed because of their heterogeneity and the historic locations in which the performances took place.

Friday was the name day of all Carmens, so we went to the local restaurant and had a mariscado: a metal serving dish piled high with seafood. A feast! I had a surtido of trufas which consisted of five fruit chocolate truffles on a mountain of whipped cream. Well, it is the summer holidays after all!
The Rosé Wine Tasting wasn’t.

That is to say that there was rosé wine and we drank it but apart from some cursory efforts to make a comment about nose and flavour we simply drank it.

The ‘tasting’ was set in the courtyard of an old house in a village just outside Sitges around a table set with delicate flowers and herbs and lit by large fragrant candles. Just to limit the romanticism of the scene the flowers, herbs and candles were all there to dissuade mosquitoes from joining the party and having their own feast.

We started the evening by toasting ourselves with a glass of Tattinger which had the effect of making everything else we drank seem a little second class, but we struggled on!

The wine was from some French vineyard or other (you see how little the niceties of proper tasting were being observed) and it was notable for not having the candy pink colour that I at least expect from rosés. Both of the first two bottles were from the same French vineyard and had been sent to us (inexplicably) from Majorca. The first one was awful and even I (tell it not in Garth) threw it into the geraniums while the second was palatable but not, I think, worth the cost of transportation. There was some beautifully bottled lurid Spanish rosé which we drank so that the hostess could later use the bottle for herb flavoured olive oil!

Our meal was of mussels cooked in a delicious sauce with butter – the taste of which was a real treat as I have not bought butter since I made some Welsh Cakes on St David’s Day in the School That Sacked Me.

We also had a generous selection of oozing, liquefying pungent French cheeses which were washed down with other bottles of wine from here and there.

Although one of our number did his best to keep the conversation on things vinous his greatest achievement was in eliciting the arch comment from Jane that “I have never considered the drinking of Champagne to be seasonal!”

A thoroughly enjoyable evening which I did my best to compensate for by a slow if determined swim this morning after driving back.

The day has largely been taken up by my lying in a suitably prone position, the prostration being disguised as sun bathing with occasional periods of hydration.

The Pauls have found flights and will be over on the 4th of August so we will have some summer visitors after all!