The .4 of a kilo extra since last week. Disaster.
But, as I say, I have excuses.
Yesterday I went, with Irene to the shopping centre connected to EspaƱol’s ground – ostensibly for the buying of Christmas presents. I had no lively expectation that I would make any purchases but I was tempted by the chance of a chat with Irene and going out to dinner.
The shopping centre was packed and I was
lucky to get a space in the massive underground car park, at least within a few
minutes after crawling along in the traffic jam to get into the place in the
first place.
The shops appeared to be horrific. We went into a cheap clothes shop and it was
like a vision of hell with hordes of people and narrow corridors of passage
between shelves and tables stacked with rubbish heaps of items. After pushing our way around for a little
while, I suggested to Irene that I start queuing while she completed the
gathering of what she wanted. This is
the delight of having a mobile phone with a library on it – queues are never
that much of a problem!
My idea was to go to a restaurant, after we
had exhausted our patience shopping, that we didn’t manage to get into the last
time that I was there. Toni and I were
told that the place, Morder y Pasta, or a title something like that was
excellent value for money. The fact that
we couldn’t get in because there was a vast queue and I was not prepared to
wait, in spite of the two kids who had accompanied us bursting into floods of tears
at the idea that they would have to eat elsewhere!
Toni and I walked off and we were
eventually joined by others who saw the sense in not allowing the very young to
be dictators. Especially as the little
buggers had no intention of paying for anything! Something I always remind myself of.
Anyway we didn’t go and so this was my
chance (without kids) to go and find out if the hype was justified.
The place was closed and after asking a
passing cleaner, she told me that it only opened at 8 pm. Later than other places. We decided that we could do just a little
more light shopping and then we should be able to time our completion with the
opening of the restaurant.
We arrived ten minutes early and found a
vast queue. Though not as vast as the
one in which I had previously refused to wait.
Trying to ignore the increasing wind chill factor we eventually got in
and found that we had to pay first!
This, we were told was because once we had got past the till all the
food and drink was ‘free’.
The place was quite large with lines of
joined tables set in frameworks which came up to about shoulder level to
separate them off into sections. We were
ushered into a small corner and then we started to get our bearing and start
the meal.
Which was an utter disaster.
The place had all the ambience of a
hangar. The people were noisy and the
architecture seemed to force the sound down so that normal conversation was
impossible. The beer ran out within
twenty minutes, the sangria was liquid sugar and the white barely drinkable.
The food was unspeakable. None of it was hot; everything was luke warm
and tasteless. Even the boiled eggs
tasted a little strange and their outer surfaces were suspiciously
slippery. It was just awful – I even
left my apple quarter eaten, as it was tasteless.
But the range of luke warm tasteless food
was remarkable: meat, fish, pizza, salad, sweets, ice cream (which I also
didn’t finish) beer, wine, soft drinks, fruit juices. Everything was there but nothing was quality.
I did eat my money’s worth (€13.95 per
person) but I will never go there again and I have put the blame for my weight
increase squarely on the food that I ate defiantly and the wine that I endured
there. It’s not my fault.
I have now taken a more Draconian approach
and flung away some of the little treats that I had been harbouring in the
kitchen. Now the most exciting thing
left for me to eat is cottage cheese.
Life, ‘tis said, is hard. And
with Christmas approaching I am even more concerned about getting below my
present stubborn level of kilos before the new year. We shall see.
The course continues with very few people
posting the writing that they should be doing at this stage, presumably
everyone is trying to get the next assignment out of the way so that they are
not working over Christmas. Fat chance.
Tomorrow the ink arrives to be the fairly
essential ingredient in my drive to refill my disposable fountain pens, though
perversely I have now decided to use my computer to produce my Morning Pages
because it is much easier and more fluent like that. Perhaps I will have to go back to the steam
driven form of production if only to justify my purchase of imported ink!
I do tend to write poetry with pen or
pencil rather than computer – but the poetry section of the course is some
months ahead at the moment. The pens
will keep.
There are always excuses or reasons or
explanations. They keep life going!