Eat in Style!

 

 

The Christmas Meal conundrum has been solved.  We are going to eat in the middle of an Industrial Park!

     This is not quite so depressing as it sounds.  While my first statement is basically true and we are indeed going to be in an Industrial Area, the part we will be eating in is actually the site of a converted eleventh century hermitage, complete with outdoor crucifix, set in its own gardens with extensive foliage botting out the Industrial Units with which we will be surrounded.

     We have already sampled the culinary delights of the place, by going for a menu del dia yesterday, by way of evaluation.  Delicious meals were had by all, and we are much more jocose about the offerings on Christmas Day.  We have to choose a main course (the first course is a selection of shared tapas-like starters) and turkey does not figure at all – I am delighted to say.

     I rejoice in the opportunity to go to a restaurant for Christmas Meal as it means that no one in the family has to prepare the food and absolutely no one has to do the washing up afterwards!  And the price is not extortionate at all.

     To be strictly fair, although we had the menu del dia in the converted hermitage complete with stone floors and rough wooden beams, the Christmas Meal is going to be held in a rather more modern structure in the grounds that is obviously used for weddings and functions – we will however have views of the more architecturally interesting building while we eat in our more functional space.

     This is not the first time that I have been introduced to a hidden oasis of good food in something architecturally interesting as a while back Suzanne and I had a lunch in Barcelona in an unprepossessing part of the outskirts of the city, but the building cwtched away from the vulgarity of the main road was an absolute delight of semi-open air (it wasn’t winter!) with greenery and soft lighting and lovely (if expensive) food.

     Part of the joy of eating out is being surprised by quality – be it food, building or service.  Tasty memories!

     Although there will be a number of us eating, our party of eighteen is just one of many, I am hoping that the quality of the menu del dia will be strongly reflected in what we have to eat on The Day.

     After Christmas Day, the next problem is My Name Day, which is on the 26^th of December.  I think it would be presumptuous to urge everyone to go out for an equally expensive meal on the succeeding day to the excesses of the 25^th and, as the Name Day Person is supposed to pay for the meal for the family, I have no intention of spending hundreds of euros myself.  But the problem is where and with whom are we going to eat?

    As with all problems of this sort, it will be the payment of some of the cost of the final meal that will satisfy all!  I hope!

     Last Christmas didn’t really exist in any way linked to how the Day had been celebrated before.  This time round things are supposed to be a touch more normal.

     But, having said that, new rules have been announced that will require a Covid Vaccination Passport of some sort to be shown for entry into gyms, restaurants, bars etc.  If my understanding is correct this will be introduced from tonight and so tomorrow, I will have to show my vaccination information before I can have my swim.  I have had no information from my pool, and they are usually quick to keep us informed about the latest restrictions.  So, we will have to see what happens.

     I don’t want to travel into the Conspiracy Theorists territory, but I do worry about how much we are not being told about the full potential for disaster in this Pandemic.

     I have had my flu jab and my booster shot and so I am as protected as I reasonably can be, but the news that kids are now going to be vaccinated seems to indicate that we are nowhere near the end of this pandemic.

     And Christmas may pose problems, but the implications of people gathering together is something else.  I am wholeheartedly in support of passports and an insistence on the wearing of masks in all crowded places, but the stirrings of unrest about the ‘imposition’ of rules and regulations and the ‘taking away’ of individual freedom, are things that are going to make any easy resolution impossible.

 

Today my early morning swim was truncated because I had to go for a blood test – which meant queueing up (partly in the rain) while each health card was individually taken away, a sheet for the blood test results generated, and patients allowed in to wait their turn.

     It was all done relatively quickly, and it was certainly relatively painless, with only two test tubes of blood samples taken from me.  The interesting thing was when I attempted to make an appointment to have feedback on the results.

     I was not allowed to make an actual appointment, instead I was told that the doctor would contact me by phone on a particular day, “So keep the volume turned up!”

     Is this going to be the new normal?  No face-to-face appointments, with telephone links filling in.

     I know that in the UK there are plans to make telephone appointments, just that.  Your doctor will be available at the end of a line.  Given the number of ailments that have been supressed by patients during the pandemic, perhaps it is to be expected that medical staff are going to be under real pressure now that things appear to be loosening up.

     I think it is something to be concerned about.

 

 

I have been basking in the pleasure of a considerate gesture.   

     A lady who swims in the early morning with us is not well and she is confined to bed.  I was able to send her an sqb original card, and I included the famous quotation from The Three Musketeers, that she had used herself.  She was delighted with it and had the swimming pool give me her telephone number to express her thanks.

     As anyone learning a language will tell you, telephone calls in ‘foreign’ are taxing.  With my level of fluency in conversational Spanish, they are disaster areas.   

     Luckily, what was looked for in the telephone conversation that I eventually built up enough courage to make, was more conviviality and contact.  Her pleasure came over, as I stumbled my way through the requisite pleasantries.  It was good to speak to her and even better to know that in some small way my tiny gesture had helped.

     Soon may she reclaim her lane!

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow Irene arrives for a short stay.  As I have said before, friends who have moved away, or from whom you have moved, are missed – and oddly, they are missed even more after a meeting.  Their presence emphasises their absence!  But I am looking forward to drinking tea and chatting.  Those I do well!

MY Saint's Day!

SAINT STEPHEN’S DAY, 2017.

Not the first up today, as Carmen is already in her natural home: the kitchen.  But yesterday she was in a restaurant and so she had at least one day off!  At the moment she is cleaning the prawns and as well as trimming the legs and whiskers, she also takes out the eyes as she says she doesn’t like them looking at her.  I do not share her squeamishness, but I am going to say nothing to such a competent cook!

In Spain, one’s name day is almost as important as a birthday and presents are to be expected – one of which I already know, as I am the one who bought it.  

This is a boxed set of Solti’s complete oeuvre with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on CDs.  I know, I know, I have heard all the arguments for ditching my allegiance to such an outmoded form and turning to the dark side of Spottify (or possibly with one ‘t’?) for all my musical needs, but memory stops me. 

I can still remember the cost of the LPs and the first CDs of people like Solti at prices that I could never afford.  It was only with the advent of the bargain LPs that my classical music library grew. 

I am eternally grateful to Music for Pleasure, Heliodor, Marble Arch, Classics for Pleasure and one or two other more obscure labels that allowed me to spend 9/11 (nine shillings and eleven pence, under 50p!) to start off my collection.  Admittedly the prices soon rose to 10/- (ten shillings) then up to 12/6 and so on following inflation, but even I could afford one or two a month.

These labels gave me introductions to Nielsen, Mahler, Sibelius other than the Karelia Suite, Hindemith, 

music from the Middle Ages and other odds and sods that have become part of my musical vocabulary.  I found that the great thing about being interested in Classical Music as opposed to Pop was that every shop record sale, no matter how meagre, would yield something of interest.  Let’s face it, if you like The Greats in Classical Music then there is a substantial back-catalogue to get to know, and therefore always a justification to buy.  Which I did!

So, the opportunity to buy quality music for just over a euro a disc is not something that I can resist and anyway I tend to listen to the music in the car where the CDs are more convenient than anything else.  For Christmas I had two CD cases to contain the discs so that they can be kept in the dashboard compartment and then I go through the music fairly religiously disc by disc – though full operas I tend to listen to at home.  Though I do make an exception with car/opera if I am trying to get to know one of the operas in the Liceu season.  The amount that I pay for my seat gives me the incentive to do a little preparatory work for the ones that I do not know so maximize my investment, so to speak!

Nowadays with the ‘bargain’ CD boxes, the individual discs sometimes have the artwork of the original LPs, so, for someone like myself there is an added pleasure is actually recognizing some of the covers that were well out of financial reach when I was first flicking through the music years ago!

Much of the music will be familiar to me, some of it very familiar, but when was the last time that I actually heard it?  I am sometimes shocked by my reactions on hearing some insanely popular piece of music and realizing that I haven’t actually heard a performance of it in years.  For me the real pleasure is relaxing (if that is the word) into the detail of remembered orchestration and also sensing some of the associations of time and place of hearings. 

For example, my first hearing of The Manfred Symphony by Tchaikovsky was in the Swansea Music Festival in the Brangwyn Hall and being almost startled out of my seat by the entry of the organ that for me (in those days when I had the raw material for it) was literally hair raising.  Every consequent performance and recording has been compared with that first experience and found to be lacking!

Sometimes the experience can be less than ideal.  For example I got to know the Concierto de Aranjuez from a cfp LP where the soloist sounded as though he was actually inside the microphone, one soft pluck of a single string on the guitar was able to drown out the orchestra.  Imagine my disappointment on a student trip to Paris and a live performance where, from the lowly seat (i.e. very high and at the back) that I could afford, I could see the guitarist strumming away but all I could hear was the orchestra!

I am reminded of an amateur performance of The Country Wife by Wycherley, a text I was teaching to an A Level group in Cardiff, where the performance was so dire that, in spite of knowing the text pretty well, I couldn’t follow what was happening on stage.  Restoration ‘comedy’ is arguably something that amateurs should not attempt, but even so they managed to make my own language unintelligible and strange!  In the same way I have heard professional orchestras mangle music where sometimes it is physically painful to listen.  With the ease of access to the best in the world not only in terms of performance, but also in terms of editing, it is hardly surprising that some local orchestras suffer by comparison!

But Solti is a safe pair of hands, and I can be persuaded by a different interpretation of some music I know well, if it is sincerely compelling.  Tempi are the clearest point of divergence for listeners, and departures from what individual feel is the ‘norm’ for pieces of their favourite music can be unbearable.  For me there is one Sibelius symphony conducted by Karajan that makes my skin crawl because of its all-encompassing wrongness.  Even then my inability or disinclination to throw things away meant that I merely added a “DO NOT LISTEN!” sticker to the front of the LP and put it back in its place!

I will have to wait until after lunch to get my hands of what arrived in my house a week ago and, just like the books, I am still amazed at my restraint and ripping off the packaging and getting into them.

But resist I did, and I am sure that I will enjoy my present more as it comes with added deferred gratification!