Right triumphs!

Before dismissing Old Wives’ Tales or so-called “received wisdom” with the contempt it usually deserves, one should always think of the bread poultice. 

Why would anyone put a piece of bread on an infected part of ones body and then allow the preparation to go mouldy in the fond hope that it would somehow help? 

Yet, and yet, that mould contained a primitive form of raw penicillin which may well have played some real part in making the ill better, in spite of the homely quality of the advice.

Today, the inheritor of the Old Wives’ shawls is the mighty Internet (Microsoft insists that I spell it with a capital “I”) and I have to pay my obeisance to this all-powerful dispenser of knowledge and publically thank it for telling me about insect stings.

The second head of English with whom I worked has since retired and has become, for me, a nodal point for the distribution of jokes, pictures and wisdom from his many contacts via the Internet to me.  I then resend them to a chosen list of lucky recipients.  I do a little light censorship and some messages (for various reasons) stay with me and end their electronic journey here in Castelldefels; others wing their wireless way o’er land and sea spreading joy and irritation in equal measure.

One of the more informative messages recently (and appositely) sent to me concerned insect bites. 

Relief, almost magical in quality, was promised if the bite was immediately treated by the application of a small denomination coin pressed to the puncture point and held in place there with a plaster or piece of Sellotape for 15 minutes.

The affirmative evidence from relieved suffers was so similar to all those patently false endorsements for questionable articles in even more questionable publications that one felt that this was an elaborate and rather pointless practical joke.

However, some mosquito bites are so painful and so compulsively itchy that I have known people (well, me) actually consider cutting out the infected portion with a penknife - as pain is preferable to irritation which cannot be satisfied with any amount of scratching.  So, putting a coin on the wound seemed like a worth-a-try form of non-invasive self-help.

And, by god it works!  It really does!

Given a choice between Toni and my good self, the mosquitos behave courteously towards a visitor and bite the native.  Toni can be punctured like a pincushion while my skin retains its unblemished sheen.  A couple of nights ago, however a rogue and racially insensitive insect bit me in five places down the length of my vein from the base of the thumb on my right hand to the inside face of my elbow.

The telltale itching soon raised five sizeable blotches of blistered flesh and sleep was impossible.  With the light on the damage looked much more impressive than the fingertip exploration had indicated and I decided to Take Measures.

I stomped up to the Third Floor and then, armed with my trusty tape dispenser I stomped my way down to the kitchen and raided the Oxfam bottle for coins which I then taped (artistically) down my arm and waited for 15 minutes.

Apart from feeling like a very badly made-up character in some sort of fancy dress party who had decided to go as the financial crisis as a man down to his last pennies, within 15 minutes when the coins were removed the itching had gone and by the next day there was no visible evidence that I had been bitten!

I think that I will have to put Sellotape around the house with a coin in place looking rather like votive Tibetan prayer strips so that guests can use them when and where to lessen the insect incursion!

My delight is directly proportional to the efficacy of the “household hint” – I haven’t felt this satisfied since someone pointed out that you could freeze cartons of milk.  The usefulness of that particular hint was related to the UK before I got used to UHT milk.

You can get “real” milk in Spain but it is not as readily available as the UHT stuff.  I have now reached a level of adaptation where I can drink the fat-free UHT stuff (I hesitate to call it milk) by itself – even when it is not ice-cold!  A degree of acclimatization that I never thought that I would achieve!

I now vaguely recall an e-mail about the cucumber which listed all the remarkable qualities of this vegetable which Dr Johnson dismissed as something which “should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing” – on the evidence of the usefulness of the coin for insect bites perhaps I should look again at the information about the cucumber and take it to heart!

No sooner said than done!  A swift search and this site listed a few of the qualities of this obviously amazing and under-rated vegetable!  http://food.sulekha.com/recipes/post/2010/04/cucumber-some-amazing-uses.htm

We had a night in with tapas provided by Toni, though we will be going out for a “proper” meal on the last night of the Pauls’ stay this evening.

The intensive sunbathing continues today with the Pauls’ realization that they only have one full day left to change the colour of the epidermis from what Paul 1 laughingly described as “60s white” (as a homage to Delongi Nespresso) to a more appropriate form of second decade beige.  Or not.

They have been fairly dutiful in their going to the beach and have lain like sacrificial offerings on the sand, even venturing into the sea from time to time.

Lunch was tapas with a few glasses of beer and this evening is our last night out having a “real” a la carte meal in the restaurant next up from our normal eating-place.  Ceri had an excellent steak there and I think that the Pauls are looking to emulate that meal.

Well, we didn’t make it to the restaurant.  That isn’t strictly true, we actually did get to the restaurant and were not able to sit outside and had to go inside and, in spite of the open walls of glass allowing the cooler evening air in, it was unpleasantly hot.

And none of the waiters seemed to care a damn about taking our order.  One of them actually passed us and said, “¡Hola!” and then walked on!  We waited ten minutes and apart from the screaming kids and the chattering, over-talking Spaniards and Catalans we were alone and were left alone.  So we left.

We almost decided to go in to the centre of the beach area but, on further consideration we decided to go to a restaurant not far from our house which offered a rather more professional service.

And things went well for the first two courses, and very tasty they were too.  Even the sweet course went well.  Everything went well right up to the bill.

The bill came to €129 and Paul (god bless him!) in a magnanimous gesture decided to pay.  He had taken out €200 from the cash machine and in an excess of generosity and a lack of arithmetic he put the whole of the €200, in four €50 in spite of the fact that he should have put only three of those notes to pay for a bill under €150.  But he didn’t and when his change came back it was from a total of €150 as the amount offered. 

Paul had been robbed of €50.  When the stunted dwarf with a moustache who had taken the money was tasked with theft he stoutly denied that he had seen the €200 which Paul had counted out onto the bill.  The stunted dwarf had overlooked a simple but important fact: although there were three Brits in the party our fourth member was Spanish.  His protestations of innocence were more than met by the vociferous replies from Toni.

Eventually the Stunted Dwarf capitulated and said that he would return the €50 and “half your meal will be free!”  I can’t help feeling that if he had right on his side there is no way that a true Spaniard would willingly give up €50 and I fear it was more to do with being found out because he did not know that there was a fluent Spanish speaker rather than hapless foreigners to deal with.

We went on a triumphant march to the nearest bar and had a very satisfying drink toasting the linguistic victory of Toni against the grasping hands of unscrupulous restaurant managers.

A very satisfying end to a decent evening.