A mediocre day in terms of weather – but it took until the
night for the thunder and lightning and torrential rain. And then only for a moment. I really shouldn’t complain about the weather
in this country, but my sunshine standards are higher than they were and I get
factious with any diminution in my daily intake of sunshine.
The
swimming pool is a structure with glass sides and it should be a temple of
water and light. But it wasn’t
today. The sullen weather seeped through
the windows and made my swim sluggish.
I’m sure it wasn’t really, but I was sulking and I like to have a touch
of the pathetic fallacy to keep me company!
I went for
my swim early because we were both going to Can Moncho to have fideua as a
celebration for the completion of the long running roadworks outside the
restaurant. As the place is run by the
husband of an ex-colleague I was able to mix pleasure with duty and go to have
a free meal to support a friend.
In the
event, it turned out that we were there early and we saw a motley crew of aged
people hoping for a free hand-out; the PP mayor looking arrogantly shifty like
the rest of his benighted party; music blaring out; and three kids
playing. Traffic was of course flowing
down the street (the street being open, after all!) and one felt that not all
the health and safety implications had been well thought out. Still, in what was poor weather, people
looked as though they were having a sort of good time in the circumstances.
We were
given a couple or glasses of beer and assured that the fideua would be ready in
‘five’ minutes. Having momentarily
forgotten which country I was in, I believed this.
But, eventually, the fideua did arrive and
was placed on a table outside the restaurant and small plastic plates of the
stuff were started to be given out. But
the restaurant was still open and husband and wife team were needed in the shop
and kitchen. So what to do?
We of
course offered to serve the fideua and soon Toni and I were forming an
efficient team and were distributing largesse as if it were our own and
gratefully receiving the thanks of the inhabitants of the opened street.
People came
back for seconds, we ran out of forks momentarily and eventually all the fideua
was distributed leaving precisely nothing for ourselves! We, however, were feeling cosily smug having
been official helpful and with a couple of glasses of beer we were satisfied
and wandered off quite happily to have a menu del dia in another restaurant!
To be fair,
our friend’s restaurant is more of a take-away so we wouldn’t have had a full
meal, more of a snack: so smug and
replete!
I have now put three versions of the poem that was causing
me problems on:
and I am sure that there will be a few more versions before
I am satisfied, or I give up!
The
miserable weather has prompted me to make a series of notes and that is the
next poem that I am hoping to write. I
have already written one from this morning that features a swimmer who had the
impertinence to be faster in the water than I was. That is also available on http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/
As you can
probably tell, I am trying to boost page views on the site because numbers have
become a point of competition between Toni and myself. Toni with his restaurant site at http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/
but I stay loyal to my poetry site at http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/
and I think this attempt to get viewers has now become squalid. I will have to find another way to put http://catalunyaplacetoeat.blogspot.com.es/
and http://smrnewpoems.blogspot.com.es/
in my writing without making is quite so obvious!
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