Phone facility

It is surely a sign of the times that, having owned my new mobile phone for some time and used it every day to take photos, play solitaire, check the weather, read the news, use the internet, it was only today that I worked out how to answer a simple phone call on the damn thing!

I mean to say, the clue to the function of the machine is found in the nomenclature of 50% of the “phone”: it is, after all, essentially a telephone. I have been making do with pressing the tactile screen in vain attempts to connect to people who phone and then, after failing to make that connection phoning them myself. It took me a while to discover that touch is not enough; touch and slide is the trick.

Lunch today was in Sitges and not in our usual restaurant whose name we do not know but at least we know which small street to turn down to find it. This time we went to a restaurant we had not used before and, to Toni's horror, it turned out to owned by Chinese. I took the opportunity to order chicken Taiwan Style and hoped that the overtly Spanish choices of Toni would be acceptable. In the end we decided that it was acceptable if not spectacular and, taking service in to account we might well have been better off at our usual haunt. Still, it's fun to find new places, even if its only to cross them off.

On the way to the restaurant in a small but exclusive looking shop stuffed with chocolate goodies and other desirable comestibles I almost succumbed to the temptation offered by the purchase of a bottle of Cava with particles of gold leaf in suspension! Such things do put one in mind of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the cost was really prohibitive but it might have been worth while just for the shock of offering it to The Family on New Year's Eve.

In the event I put off such an indulgent purchase (!) on the grounds that I would be carting it around with me; much better to buy it on my return to the car.

It was just as well that I declined the purchase as we went on what I regarded as an epic walk to the end of the bay on which Sitges is built. By the time we got back neither of us even considered calling into the shop we were too concerned merely to get back to the house and non-walking tranquility!

My copy of The Week (dated the 11^th of December) was waiting for me on our return and, as usual, I devoured it in a single sitting especially relishing the feature on “The dodgy world of football” giving me yet more vitriol to etch my hatred of FIFA and all its works just a little deeper. One wonders just how many members of the executive committee would be liable to little visits from the boys in blue if they weren't exempt from Switzerland's anti-corruption legislation.

Tomorrow I have to make the fajitas to take up to Terrassa as my part of the communal effort to feed The Family on this festive occasion – without the golden Cava.

I will have to make do with the plebeian stuff!