News from the South

I’ll just pop in to the corner shop for a jar of Marmite, a packet of custard powder and a few Oxo cubes then we can have a drink with Howard and talk about Brains SA and Rumney over a pint and finally we can cross the road and have fish and chips.@

Where does all this take place, well, of course in Orba, Alicante!

It is slightly disturbing to have a chat with two South Walians who know that one brand of Cardiff’s most famous alchoholic drink is known as “Skull Attack!” Talking about streets in Rumney in an outside bar on a quiet street in inland village in southern spain is incongruous to say the least.

English voices are heard along the main street and a short drive away in the main shopping mall of this area there is an English book shop and generally shop signs have much more English in them than I am used to in Spain – at least the part I live in!

For lunch we had the choice of a tapas bar and a British run restaurant which served fish and chips. I was all for going to the tapas bar but I was overruled by the other two and, I have to admit that it was a good call.

The fish (hake) was delicate and delicious and cooked in a light and crispy beer batter. There was homemade tartar sauce which was creamy and the chips were perfection and although our first bottle of Cava was mediocre the second was dry, sharp and tasty.

The sweets were an outstanding success with my white chocolate cheese cake being delicious to the last scrape of the spoon on the china. The suggestion of the more than helpful waiter (a Scot) to my refusal of a cognac but acceptance of a port that he had some excellent blue cheese was the final touch of delight to an amazing meal. He provided two blue cheeses with the one we all liked being a queso azul picante – which we unfortunately failed to find the next day in the shop where he said he bought it.

So filled with beer, Cava, port and cognac we drove home and prepared for the evening meal!

To be fair to us the meal was very late and eaten in almost total darkness outside by the pool. The darkness was a result of our increasingly desperate attempts to keep candles alight in the blissfully fresh breeze which mitigated the effects of the heat. And anyway poached salmon with caviar and prawns accompanied by new potatoes and orange salad was a relatively light meal. Unlike the consumption of alcohol which continued apace with champagne cocktails, red wine, Cava (of course) and amaretto. I think the last was possibly a mistake and I think that its consumption explains why I did not go to sleep when I went to bed rather than fall into a comfortable coma. Thank god that I had the sense to drink at least some of the water that Jennifer had thoughtfully placed on the bedside table before unconsciousness claimed me!

This morning we were the walking wounded and could do little more than stagger round a shopping mall and calling into various shops to get the sort of supplies that will be necessary to sustain the three of us in the next few days.

Jennifer has a house in an urbanization outside the main village. Her view looks across a sort of valley to a series of hills rising to bleak majestic mountains. And it’s quiet after the general noise which accompanies my living in Castelldefels. There are no dogs (apart from a Great Dane who lives with Jennifer) whose barking drives one frantic with their monotonous yowlings while Jennifer’s Great Dane is placid to the point of indifference; even wagging her tail takes a little more energy than she is prepared to spend on mere humans.

Jennifer’s garden is well established with various succulent looking exotic plants and some hardy green leaf plants which thrive in the sheltered, warm protection of the street facing walls which surround her property. The garden has a private pool shaped like a Greek letter ‘B’in which I have already done hundreds of lengths!

To my credit I even did a number of lengths before I went to bed, though I should, perhaps have taken a little more notice of Jennifer’s plaintive, “Stephen, don’t drown!” and merely have drunk more water than indulging in a flamboyant demonstration of athletic determination.

We have discovered that the next few days are going to be the annual festival of Orba and one of the events which mark the celebrations is ‘bull running’ through the main streets. Pamplona this place is not, but the general format is the same: bulls are let loose in the street and idiots run in front of them. I understand that, in a grotesque refinement of this pointless (ha!) entertainment, the bulls will have flaming torches attached to their horns at night. Although there are ‘strict’ instructions that people are not to touch the bulls or goad them with sticks this is generally ignored in the barbaric delights of terrifying and panicking a bull. I am half tempted to go and see what happens on the flimsy pretext of taking photographs - but the outraged responses of my companions brought me back to my senses and I shall remain aloof and disgusted!