Talk and Tranquility

It is amazing what sort of sumptuous spread you can produce if you go to Tesco with an open mind and never closed wallet and buy nibbles for an exciting evening meal.  I was determined that Paul Squared would not have to cook anything for the get-together of our friends and this I managed to achieve.

The only cooked item on the menu was a collection of chicken legs which were something of a centrepiece of meat for an other wise largely vegetarian array of interesting dips and constructed savouries. 

By the time we had finished setting the table the results looked more than delectable. 

Part of the effect was made by defrosting a large packet of smoked salmon and augmenting its appearance with various forms of cooked prawns. 

The cheese board looked particularly inviting, especially with the artfully positioned grapes, which I have been long taught are essential component of any real cheeseboard lurked on the periphery of the gleaming wedges.

The number of people who arrived in the evening together with their “variety” was a perfect combination.  It was a delight to see people who I have not seen for a couple of years and to see again those who have been over to Castelldefels in the more recent past.

One can tell the success of any social gathering in which I am involved by the length of time it takes me to get some food into my mouth.  Everyone had eaten something and the table was beginning to look like Miss Haversham’s wedding feast (without the cobwebs, but with the destruction of the food) before I picked up my plate.  A success!

Toni would have been proud of my abstinence, though from a Catalan point of view I lived up to my British heritage!  I even remembered to drink some water before we finally went to bed in the early hours of the morning.

My lie-in this morning had the advantage that I missed the rain, so that my depression with the climactic vagaries of my country did not get into gear until I was told that the unenviable record of dampness had extended itself for another day.

The Cardiff Festival of Food in The Bay was our destination for the afternoon.  This annual extravaganza takes over the space in front of the Millennium Centre with a series of tents showcasing local and national producers of various types of food.

It was packed and it was difficult to fight your way through the crowds to get the miniscule free samples on offer.  We eventually gave in and bought a lamb burger to save off a hunger which had no right to be there after the Tesco flavoured excesses of the night before!  However, the single burger was largely insufficient (though delicious) and it was joined later by another bap containing most of the ingredients of an English breakfast.  This too was delicious – though the combination of the two did mean that I took to my bed for a little rest when I came home.

However the main even in our version of the festival was to see Angela Gray demonstrate her cookery skills in the John Lewis Partnership supported super tent.  It was brilliant to see the other half of the partnership, as her husband had been in the party last night.  She, we were told, was comatose with weariness on the sofa after two solid days of demonstration.

She made a seafood starter, followed by marinated Welsh lamb with salad, finishing with a sort of cream/fruit indulgence that she had made for some French countess when she was a teenager. 

As usual everything was delicious and she knew that she was playing to my weakness when she handed me a sample of the butter-drenched delight that was the starter!  I did attempt to get the recipe but they had all been grabbed during the previous days demonstration and I will have to go on the Internet to find out how to try and emulate her effortless expertise. 

The end result justifies a little effort though.

Tomorrow I shall mix a little art with an ECG – although thinking about it that sounds like the sort of thing that one of the galleries in Barcelona would regard as a bread-and-butter exhibition uniting the two cultures.

The National Museum of Wales has opened a new gallery and I need to see it.  The Welsh Proms are also on and I am inclined to patronize them – in all senses of the word.

I am fighting against the tendency of all travellers to limit their activities when they find themselves in a place for an extended time.  It is the old idea that if you are in a place for a day or so you get to see everything; whereas if you are somewhere for a week you start thinking that “I can do that tomorrow” and you end up doing little.  I have to attempt a judicious mixture of the laid back and the driven to enjoy my time in the UK!

I will evaluate (I have to get used to the word with what is going to happen in the beginning of the next term) my success at the end of tomorrow.

Which is another day.